Family Ties

When 0j0 was last here, she found an old Paton's book of bazaar knits (that's bazaar, not bizarre) and was laughing at the knitted ties, tea and egg cosies. She then asked if I could knit a really garish tie as a Christmas present for a friend of hers, and hinted that she really needed that knitted dachshund draught excluder...

Not having anything on the pins at the moment, I was happy to tackle the tie commission, and chose a ball of turquoise, orange and yellow acrylic as I was passing through the Chinese Bazaar yesterday. The tie in the book was a silky slip of a thing; With DK I was obviously producing something much more substantial. Something that could be used to replace a fan belt in an emergency.

I cast on 6 stitches with 5.5mm pins and knitted garter stitch. The yarn was quite pleasant in texture for acrylic; quite silky and without any of the usual horrible squeak. After a foot, I increased to 8 stitches and knitted to the end of yarn, an event that coincided with the end of the programme I was watching on Beeb 2 about Communism in Czechoslovakia. I looked down at the finished article, and realised that the space dye had coincided nicely with the row length, and produced a neat yellow zigzag up the tie. I'm not sure what 0j0's reaction will be as it turned out quite attractive in its own way, and I think her intention was something a trifle more gross...

Holiday knits

The cardigan is for a friend who's daughter is expecting, and was a little experiment in knitting in the round. I enjoy a little light knitting, but always procrastinate when it comes to sewing all the parts together. I used a commercial Patons pattern for the stitch count, and started by casting on the the sleeves together on one loop needle using opposite ends of the ball of yarn. I knitted up to just before the armhole cast off as if knitting a pair of socks, making the increases at the beginning and end of the appropriate rounds. I then left these on a couple of holders while I cast on sides and back in one piece, and knitted up to the armhole shaping again. I had to do a little working out for the buttonholes, as the pattern said to knit one front, space out the buttons, then knit buttonholes to match, but that was easy enough. When it came to attaching sleeves to body, I was on a wrong side row because then I wouldn't need to worry about the pattern. I worked across one front, then positioned the sleeve so that the stitches that would normally be cast off lined up with the stitches that would normally be cast of on the body, and purled the two sets together, thus formimg the underarm seam without any need to sew. I continued across the back, attached the second sleeve and purled across the other front. The next few rows were the most difficult. Keeping the pattern correct, I knitted across the first front, then across the sleeve stitches, back stitches and front stitches, placing markers for the raglan seams as I went. I found it easiest to pull the needle loop through in the middle of the sleeves as I had when knitting them. It was a little tight for the first few rows, but as soon as I started the raglan decreases it got easier by the row. I wasn't sure what would happen with the garter stitch button band as I got up towards the neck, but I just knitted the last garter stitch with a shoulder stitch until I reached the top of the shoulders, then knitted it seperately for the last inch and a half. Apart from sewing in the ends and sewing on the buttons, this little bit was the only sewing I had to do.

The little jumper was even easier. I knitted the body in the round up to the armholes, then completed front and back and cast off. I picked up the sleeve stitches from front and back, taking them through the two layers where front overlaps back then knitted down towards the cuff. There is no shaping in this sleeve, just a decrease row before the ribbing. Again, the only sewing was weaving in ends and sewing on buttons. You will note how uninspiring the buttons are; these were the only ones in the shop that were anything close to being the right colour and the right size. I have knitted both of these in the 6 month size. The little sweater is for the boychild expected in April by our lovely clinic nurse, and he won't have much use for a pully in a Spanish summer. The little cardie however is going to Wet Wales and will come in very handy for their summer...

I have not been idle...

....even if I haven't blogged every day. My evenings have been spent knitting socks, and here are the results; the top striped pair were knitted in the traditional method, top down, using Regia sock wool brought over by DD2. I say traditional, but I did use the two-socks-on-one-magic-loop method. The lower pair were knitted in my preferred toe-up way, using the left over self striping wool and some grey marl that matched the grey of the stripes. Instead of the short row heel, though, I tried the round heel method thatI found on socknitters.com. I think I prefer it, as it is much better fitting than the short row method, and not baggy at all. It also allows for Sl.1, K1. for better wear. I have photographed them before I block them because chances are that if I waited, I would forget to do it at all!

Möbius Neckwarmer

The front view.

The back; or is it a hat?

I have had a small ball of eau de nil Jaeger silk and merino hanging around since the 1980s. I shredded a small amount of it to felt into leaves and seed case for a poppy, but I thought there wasn't really enough for anything useful. I came across a reference to Möbius scarves, and went blog-hopping and web-surfing to find out more, and decided I probably had enough of this soft non-itchy mixture to knit a neckwarmer version.

I hadn't realised until I had done 8 or 10 rows, just how much stocking stitch would roll, so I did another 8 rows in purl, then 8 in knit, so I ended up with quite a pleasing Michelin man effect.

Just for the fun of it, I used a hairy caterpillar yarn to continue for a round and to cast off once I ran out of the Jaeger.

If you fancy trying the magic of möbius, here are a couple of links;
Cat's cowl scarf pattern that explains her method of casting on, and Linda's version that shows you another way to start.

Get ahead; get a hat...

Just a quick post of one of the odds and ends that slipped off my knitting needles over Christmas. It has been so unusually cold here over the last month or so that I needed another hat as an alternative to my frog green fleecy pull-on, so decided to try the free bucket hat pattern designed by Amy Swenson for Make One Yarn Studio. I found it at Indiknits. There is a provisional cast on, then you knit to the edge of the brim, on a circular needle, increasing as you go, make a purl row to define the edge, then knit the outside of the brim decreasing again. You next pick up your provisional cast on, knitting two together to make a double brim. The pattern stated Aran weight wool, but I used what I had in the box, a thickish red yarn called Lana, chosen because it was the nearest thing in colour to my red gloves. It is produced in China, but without any statement of content, so it is probably Acrylic. Not surprising as it cost €1.50 for 100 gms and was bought for knitting Gnomes. The Spanish word for wool is lana, but is used just as vaguely as wool is in English, to mean yarn for knitting...
Edited to add link to pdf for hat.

An Inherited WIP...

This was started by my friend Dot, who died in September. Her husband brought me a large black bin-liner full of knitting yarn and five started projects. The wool is peach acrylic, not what I would use for something that entailed as many hours work as this pattern, ( in my experience, it pills after half a dozen wearings) but this has front and back finished, and a started sleeve that I shall need to frog as the slight difference in our tensions will always show if I continue where she left off. It took a while to work out what size she was knitting, and I have become so used to knitting from charts, that the K1, P1, Drop 1 of traditional English patterns is now annoying and hard to follow, so I sat down and made myself a chart from the knitting she had done. The little string loops you can see are there to remind me where the pattern changes. Once charted, it is an easy pattern. The increases up the side are all into a moss stitch band. In from this on each side there is a 17 stitch panel of a moss stitch zigzag on a purl backround, followed by a 6 stitch cable with 3 moss stitches on each side, and the centre is a diamond cable. The 6 row increases fall nicely in line with the zig and the zag, as do the cable cross overs. Below you can see how far I have knitted in two evenings; my sleeve is on my favourite circular needles. Oh, and the colour in the top photo is much closer to reality...

A finished WIP

The kneewarmer/shawl that I showed here is now finished. I ran out of wool about 4" from the end of a row, so I improvised. Because I work on circular needles, it was easy to push the stitches to the other end, and use a crochet hook to cast of the stitches already completed, When I got to the remaining unknitted 4", I crocheted them from the other end and pulled the end of the wool through to fasten the whole thing off. The beauty of knitting really hairy wool like mohair is that it all matts together nicely and hides a multitude of sins! The last stripe rows were made with all the tail ends of the other rows twisted end to end. I am happy to report that there is absolutely nothing left, not even an inch of fluff!

Ignore the dark splodges across the shawl, they are just shadows cast by the bamboo...

A Work in Progress

I've been sorting out a bin bag full of wool that has been in the top of the wardrobe for ages, and thought I would do something with all the odd balls of mohair that I collected back in the '80s. There are no two the same colour and they are from three different manufacturers, but all are about the same weight. I'm using a 7mm circular needle, and a very easy garter stitch ripple pattern, putting 6 rows of one colour followed by two rows of another. I have used some oddments for many of the two row sections. I've first used all the pinky/mauvey colours, then used an ombre green to brown to lead into the centre section that is shades of brown and tan. I'm now using a grey/green/tan combination with stripes of bright green, and I have a ball of vanilla to tale off with. It is easy knitting and is already long enough to keep my legs warm as I knit. It is very light and very warm, and destined as a kneewarmer for Bossman, or a draught excluder for me as I sit at the computer. There is no way that Charlie is going to continue using it to pad on!

Hip Hip Hurrah

I'm not sure if this makes me an X-rated blog, but I do think I might make this girl some bloomers. Now I have seen the close up, I'm just glad that I didn't position that off-centre tail lower down, just above what now appears to be an anal sphincter...
May I introduce Hippolyta? I was asked to knit a test run of a pattern written by Eve. I'm not sure I did a very good job stuffing the head, but I do like the way the moss stitch suggests the hairy dimples of a real hippo's nose.

I

Ripples..

Remember the wool I dyed the other week? I played around for a while, then decided to use it to make a feather and fan scarf. I finished it this morning while watching the Grand Prix, and here it is blocking on my old cutting out board.
The dying in the keg method seems to have worked. You can see the only place where it really pooled, and it has at least come out in a symetrical flourish. I am happy with both colour and pattern.

This just shows how I have taken the scarf up and over the board to its full length.

Dyed in the wool

In the depths of a box I came across a plastic bag containing six small balls of vivid pink wool. I had a vague memory of it being frogged from a crocheted item of dress made for a child back in the 70's when such colours were a la mode. A label in the bag said it was 100gms of 3ply 100% wool, and when I weighed it to check, this was correct. The two larger balls together weighed 50 gms, and the other 4 balls made up the rest. I have been wanting to play with dye for a while, and this seemed to be the opportunity I had been waiting for, as I didn't think I could make this any worse than it already was. I rewound the wool into 25gm kegs, and put it to soak in warm water and vinegar. As a dye I was undecided between using violet food colour and jar of sliced beetroot in vinegar, but settled on the violet when I found there was more beetroot in the jar than could comfortably be eaten as a snack. I removed the wool from the dish it was soaking in, and poured all but ½" of the vinegar water away, then added a teaspoon of the violet food colouring from a bottle that has been hanging around for twenty odd years and so is rather more concentrated than it had been. The next step was to just sit the kegs in the liquid so that the dye was only absorbed into the bottom of the keg. I covered the dish with cling film and zapped it in the microwave for three minutes, checking it after each minute. By this time, the water left in the dish had lost its colour and the wool had absorbed it. I left the whole thing sitting for half an hour to cool down, and then rinsed the kegs in tepid water and squeezed them out. (I was half way through skeining the last ball when I thought of taking photographs) Dying in the keg like this is supposed to avoid a regular striped effect that appears if you dye in the skein, as the way it is wound means that the outer layers will have longer lengths in the dye and the inner ones shorter. I clamped the two halves of a wooden dish rack to each end of the balcony table and skeined it out to dry in the breeze. I kept the sun off most of it with the umbrella as I am not too sure how sun-fast food dye is. The light pink patches in the photo are sunlight, not stripes, and the colour distribution appears to be completely random, as promised. It only remained to rewind it when it was dry, and I was pleasantly surprised at how soft it had stayed, and at how little felting there was. Now I need to decide what to make with it. It may become a ripple stitch scarf, but who knows? A great part of the pleasure comes from looking through patterns and it may take months to find just the right one...

Knee Highs and Lows

Two pairs of odd-sized stockings ready to go to their new home. Alas, I chickened out when it came to adding a corset pink stripe as dared by Mountainear, but I may pluck up the courage when I make the last pair. The photo is a poor one as the light coming through the window led to a little overexposure on one half. It was taken at the last minute before I put away the ironing board for another week (month?) or so.

These were made with odds and ends of the wool for a daughter who likes stripes on her socks, and as a long distance hug-and-get-well-soon-after-your-knee-op substitute.

New kid on the block

Introducing Sitrus the Sock Monster. He is the result of an hour's slash and sew on Sunday. He is very basic; just a test piece really, as I know that my Elna hates knitted fabric, and the Jones has given up the ghost again. Surprisingly, the machine sailed through the firm fabric of the sock, and the only hand stitching was the mouth, eyes and stuffing hole.
Just in case you are wondering what he is leaning against, it is Kez the Fez wearing a strawberry hat and a Fake Fairisle hat. To the right is a stack of three knitted aubergines/figs/plums?
They are more purple than blue. Kez is wearing the baby size, and the other two are larger. They will actually accommodate my noggin, but are aimed at children. They are worked in short row garter stitch, and each has a different leaf or leaves. I have enough wool left for another baby size. The strawberry hat is strawberry, not the washed out orange it appears here. The white balance on the camera is set to auto. I think I'll have to play about to see if I can improve the colour rendition of the camera, as I can't always drum up the Tuits to open a graphics programme to sort it out. Just in case you think I'm expecting a baby boom in the family, I must explain that these are all going into a basket of hand-mades for the Emaus Childrens' Home in Calpe. We are having a Craft Fair to raise money for their Three Kings presents, and any that are not sold will be added to their stash! I have another ball of strawberry to knit up. If anyone would like to have a go, it's the Urchin hat off Knitty.com, and the leaves are from Nicky Epstein's Knitted Embellishments.

Gnome from Gnome

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I've come across this little fellow a few times lately in Blogland, and couldn't resist having a go. I like knitting, but hate sewing up, so I adapted the pattern for knitting in the round on a circular needle. The pattern for the head/body starts at the top and works down, so before I did the last row and the "break the yarn and thread through the remaining stitches" bit, I made the bean bag bum and pushed it through the opening before I fastened off. This meant I had to stuff the rest of the body and the head through the small hole on top of the head, but this wasn't difficult. I started the legs at the toe and knitted them like a toe up sock, and did the arms the same way, leaving a bit of waste yarn for the mitten thumb and picking up the stitches later. When it came to stuffing the hands, I decided not to! I liked the way the hands became quite expressive when left floppy. I am not 100% happy with the brim of the hat. Maybe I used the wrong Cast On technique, but it didn't want to lie flat, and where I have stitched it down it has gone a bit blobby. The colour isn't true to life. He looks all washed out and a bit orange here, but he is a proper Christmassy red. I might do another one in more Autumnal woodland colours as I have some whiskery yarn that would be good to use.

Edit; I've had time this afternoon to correct the colour on the original photo

Off the needles

Jude's scarf is finished, and as predicted is on the short side, but it is long enough to cross over itself and be held by a brooch. This is the largest brooch I own. I found it in a discard bag from the local charity shop when I was rummaging for bits for a rag rug. "Take what you want and then put the rest in the clothing recycle bin" said the shop manager "save me a job". The brooch was on a turquoise, 1950's style, swing back coat, and had been stitched into position over the top buttonhole, making a lapel. I took the brooch back into the shop on my next visit. "Good Lord! Keep it!" she said...."Nobody would wear that!" I guess that makes me a nobody...

Just in case anyone wants to put a bid in, I'm showing a sock. Strange colourway, but if you want them as bedsocks...who cares? One pair is finished, the second pair is on the needle.

Men...!

I have really struggled this afternoon, trying to make two ATCs for the Men Theme. They are done, but when I look at them again tomorrow, I may bin them. Next month I am definitely not signing up for the Swap until I have the blighters made...

I have the glimmering of an idea for the second of the Wedding cards but that's for tomorrow.

The damson scarf will be finished tonight as I only have half a ball left to knit. Jude was happy for it to be on the short side so she could use it to display part of her brooch collection, although it would have to be a large brooch not to disappear into the undergrowth. Kez the Fez had an easy night of it last night as all fur balls disdained to keep me company, and the yarn flowed unmolested from the hole in his head. Next door's catling did pop in to raid Charlie's biscuit bowl, but didn't stop to say hello. K & C haven't owned a cat before, and I don't think they realise just how much teenage feline's eat!

I'm slowly dissolving...

...in this hot muggy heat. I feel like one of those toffees that get forgotten and ooze out of their paper wrapper as they absorb moisture from the atmosphere...




















I haven't been completely idle. I have finished the
Shetland wool socks. I have made them slightly big as they are 100% wool that should be hand-washed in cool water, but the chances of that happening are slight...



This is a WIP on a scrap of rust-dyed fabric (actually the sleeve of a cast-off shirt) with a little dilute acrylic paint dribbled on. The blob above the embroidered flowers looks like a mushroom, but somehow I don't think that will work! I may do more embroidered foliage, or I may paint in a bit of landscape...

The next two are 5x7 inch pieces of the same shirt, also rust dyed using a wrought iron curl that fell of a candlestick, a choke chain and a couple of washers. This was my second attempt at this process. I had three pieces under the metal, and three pieces on top. It is interesting how one gives the positive, and the other the negative...I intend to use these as the basis of a set of PCs. There were a couple of scraps in the mix as well, that will be used for a trial run as ATCs.


I had a play with my watercolours this afternoon and made two ATCs. I am not sure what they need, but they need something...
Edit: It's obvious now ....I forgot to put in a calyx...that's what comes from drawing on one's memories...memory fails!

Socks

The first pair are finished. The photo shows them after I had given them a dunk in warm soapy water, because I had used some wool on one that had been knitted up as a glove, and I hadn't steamed it first, idle woman that I am...
The next pair are on the needle. The tan Shetland wool feels quite harsh to the touch, but I cut a length and washed it, and it softens up considerably. They can always be worn with a thin pair of cotton socks underneath I suppose. I'll wash them in hair shampoo and conditioner when they are finished!

Tweet has legs, and so do the socks

I decided against the felt feet, and gave Tweet dangly legs with buttons to give him enough weight to balance on my monitor.

0j0's socks are now waiting for feedback on the length of the leg and whether to stripe or not to stripe. I finished another crazy quilt postcard and shall send it on its way tomorrow. When I went to the PO on Saturday, they had run out of stamps again, so that hand franking was the order of the day, rather than a special request!


Now that the socks are on hold, I shall try to finish the broomstick crochet blanket that is sitting in a bag on the sofa. It may take a while, as there seems to be no end to the blue yarn that Dolly gave me back in September. I had a look in the bin bag of 1980's wool downstairs, and found four 20gm balls of 4ply Shetland. Something has eaten the labels, but the wool looks fine. I have noticed that my camera doesn't reproduce colours accurately. This is a much more orange-y tan than it looks here. I thought it might do for ankle socks; I fancy doing something with a lace pattern, and this is a light enough colour for me to be able to see to work by artificial light. I only managed the navy socks at night because it was plain knitting.

In the round...

..both knitting and crochet. I've made a start on a pair of socks for 0j0. When I have tried to knit socks before, it has been on four needles and from the top down. I was never happy with the way I got a loose ladder of stitches between needles, and found juggling the needles took away the pleasure of knitting. A couple of weeks ago, I came across an article on the use of circular needles to knit socks. I love circular needles for flat knitting, as they allow the weight of the knitting to be on your lap, rather than on the needles, and have occasionally used them "in the round" to knit hats, but I had thought that the number of stitches in a sock was too few to make this practical. Now I know better. If you would like to know how, have a look here. The reason I am not knitting the pair together is that my needles are not long enough, but I do have a longer set in a size down, so if this pair of socks turn out, I'll adapt the pattern to the change in tension. I have two 50gm balls of this navy blue Paton's Beehive that traveled out from UK in 1986. It's 25% wool, 25% nylon and 50% acrylic, so it should wear well. I think it should be enough, but if it looks to be running out, I can always start striping the cuff; another advantage of starting at the toes and working up! Once I've had this practice run, I have 4 balls of King Cole Superwash wool waiting in the wings, also from the 1980's! I shall get through my stash eventually...
In case you are wondering what the white thread is for, it is so I know which side is the start of my round.








A link on Craft Gossip led me to an article on Amigurumi, and following the leads, I wound up at BitterSweet's blog. She's a writer after my own heart, and a generous one as well, as she offers free patterns to those who enjoy her work. As there was a crochet hook in my pen tub, and a ball of knubby cotton on my table, I made this little fellow. I didn't have any toy stuffing, so I used cotton wool from the bathroom. He has turned out egg shaped rather than the sphere of the originals, but I don't suppose that matters, and I have used felt for the eyes, rather than the safety eyes that Hannah used. The head tuft was my addition.

I always have to think when using crochet patterns from the web. Single crochet in an American pattern is double crochet in an English one. I assumed that this was American, but I may have been wrong, and that could account for the elongated shape....or maybe I was just mean with the stuffing? Looking at him sitting on my desk, I have almost decided to give him some orange felt feet.