Knitting Mania

Whew.....back from the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace - my feet are sore and my credit card is reeling a little from use. I'm told the show is much more crowded on the weekend than it was today -- which made me very very happy that I wasn't attending on the weekend.

I have to confess that I wonder a bit whether the show has quite the same impact these days when the world is at the end of a www click. But it was fun to meet some of the people I've been ordering from the past few months, and I did manage to find some buying inspiration!

Without further ado - my purchases:

My first goal was Tea Cosy yarn. (As I expect it was for many.)(Or perhaps not.)(Having said that - I was surprised that there were about 4 stands which were selling tea cosy knitting patterns, so perhaps I've hit some sort of trend here.)

Black and white for the sheep.

Red and green for a Christmas 'bumpy' tea cosy.

Having achieved my goal, I rewarded myself with random purchases....

From the same stall I bought some variegated blue yarn to make a felted bag for my goddaughter.

From http://www.webofwool.co.uk/ I bought some Kid Silk Night in a lovely lilac-y colour - which I think is destined for Romi's Muir.

And I discovered there's a new sock yarn seller in the UK and they win all awards for the best packaging! Look at this lovely tissue paper that the yarn is wrapped in, the cute little sticker and adorable stitch marker. Check out http://www.socktopus.co.uk/ .

From Socktopus I bought two skeins of very squishy sock yarn called Smooshy.

I also randomly bought some 2mm Addi's in various lengths and a copy of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Workshop book as I lent my copy and never got it back. (Can't really blame them - it's a great book.)

And to round off the day I bought some 6ply Regia sock yarn.

Right, I don't have time to blog I have knitting to do! Wahey!

From Tiny Acorns...

the Niebling Oak grows.


This large doily is about 3 feet across, and I made it for my kitchen table.

The oak pattern isn't as intricate as Lyra - it's a far 'sturdier' looking piece of knitting due to the large oak leaves that make up most of the pattern. That suits my kitchen and style, and I'm pleased (with some reservations) with the result.

The pattern is from Anna Magazine, August 1985. I knit it in Jaggerspun Zephyr wool/silk (mostly because I seem to have a lot of it) on 2.5mm needles. The pattern is straightforward to knit and uses similar stitch patterns to Lyra (and I expect many other Nieblings).

My reservations about the finished piece are around the mesh background - which looks a bit sloppy in places, and my blocking.

The Niebling Knitting group in Yahoo is currently doing a knitalong and I'm anxiously awaiting their views and verdicts on the best way to tackle the mesh. I expect some of it is the pattern itself. I knit this mesh the same as I did for Lyra - but I think this pattern flexes the mesh a bit more so it looks much less structured here.

To date my blocking has been almost entirely of pieces which are quite geometric and linear in their design. Niebling designs are more fluid. And my instinct to pull/stretch everything from the centre straight out doesn't do the Niebling justice.

In this pattern for instance you can see there is some curve to the large leaves. This curve isn't knit into the leaf (it's knit straight up) but can be introduced in blocking.

I'm not sure what the next big project will be.....but I expect it won't be long before something grabs me!

From the Sublime Niebling....

...to the ridiculous!

Just before the latest postal strike started this arrived on my desk!

Yep. A whole entire book of tea cosies.

I was first drawn to the book when the St John Ambulance in the UK made a request for knitters to make tea cosies as part of a fundraising effort. I did find a few patterns on line, but I loved the look of that cheerful tea cosy on the cover of the Tea Cosy book. It reminded me of the several thousand pairs of Phentex bumpy slippers my mother and I made when I was a kid.

(Egads! I've just found the Phentex slipper pattern online! I should say that we favoured the checkerboard pattern over plain stripes. But we were sophisticated like that.) (Phentex for those of you lucky enough to have not experienced it is 100% olefin(?) super scratchy, indestructible yarn that was popular in the 70's, primarily for things like slippers. It bears no resemblence to any natural fibre. It was man made and proud of it.)

I digress. The Tea Cosy book arrived and I've selected my first tea cosy!



How cute is that?

The postal strike continues, so I will buy the necessary yarn on Thursday when I attend:

Wahey!