A Head Cosy....and some lace

Continuing the theme of knitting that looks better with someone in it I present the Loopy Ewe Tea Cosy -- modelled by gorgeous goddaughter Gen. We were rearranging my kitchen/dining room furniture and somehow the cosy ended up on her head.

Despite the warm weather the pizza delivery guy didn't seem to find the cosy hat odd which does make you wonder what else has greeted him on his deliveries.

On the knitting front I've started a lace shawl - Lerwick Lace from Heirloom Knitting. The pattern is included in a booklet which provides background on the history of shetland lace knitters and designs - and guidance and tips on different approaches to knitting the shawl which is made up of 3 distinct components. Although I can appreciate the value of this information I confess that when I started the shawl I found myself muttering - 'just tell me what to do'!

I'm making the shawl with a black cobweb 1 ply shetland wool on 2.75 mm needles. The yarn is quite uneven. In a few places it becomes a worrying sewing thread thickness which makes me nervous about breaks - but so far so good.

The construction of the shawl that I'm using starts on the inside and works outward. I've just completed the centre which is knit back and forth on 149 stitches for 289 rows.

Next I'll pick 181 stitches on each side of the square and knit round and round (with a few increases) for 120ish rows. I expect that may take me some time.

When I've done that I'll knit on a narrow 20 stitch edging. That will take forever but will seem even longer - as edgings always do!

I did this little diagram to show how the knitting works. I'm not convinced it makes anything clearer but it took me 15 minutes in PowerPoint so I'm including it anyway.

Ooops? I've got lots of oops....

On Ravelry recently someone started a thread called "Now show your oops" asking for knitters to post pictures of their mistakes. I considered replying but couldn't decide whether to post the 'destruction of the Babette' or the 'drunken improv knitting' or 'the crown prince denial' or.... And frankly, I didn't have to look to the past -- I could have just picked from the multiple oops'es from my most recent project.

I decided to knit a summer top (Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2003, pattern number 23 - imaginatively titled "sleeveless top") for gorgeous goddaughter Genevieve's 15th birthday. My first oops was the colour. In my continued attempt to use up my stash yarn I chose this green Rowan Calmer cotton/synthetic blend yarn that I bought in the sales last year. It really isn't a Genevieve colour.

No problem - I just decided to change who I was knitting it for, and suddenly Genevieve's birthday present was a late birthday gift for her mom.

I did swatch for this project but (and that 'but' is the clue to my next oops) but I decided that the slight difference in gauge over 25 stitches wasn't anything to worry about. Natually, you clever knitter readers are shaking your head now, because you know that the slight difference in gauge over 25 makes a big difference over 180 stitches.

And I knew that too - but I ignored it.

Until I had knit about 3 inches up the body and accepted that when a design is meant to be form fitting -- you can't fudge a little bit of gauge -- it was definitely going to be too big.

So off the needles it came. And I started again on smaller needles.

The final oops was just a case of being sloppy with the pattern. I was watching the Gilmore Girls (the Gilmore Girls! I hadn't seen an episode since 2002 when I left Canada to come back to England. But last week I entered the 21st century and have digital tv -- and there they were!)(Although I'm a bit lost as they are showing the final season --so I've missed A LOT. When did Rory's father come back? Why did Laurelei and Luke breakup? Where's Dean?) Anyway--I was catching up on the Gilmore Girls and suddenly noticed I had missed some YO, SSK action over about 10 rows.



























I dropped the stitches and reworked them to get the YO and SSK's in the right place. If you're new at this sort of repair I can confirm it is easier than it looks. It often looks sloppy but that can be fixed by using a blunt darning needles to pull the excess yarn into the neighbouring stitches. After washing and blocking it looks fine!

The finished top looks ok - but I don't think it shows off well on a hanger. If I manage to get a picture of the top on Caroline I'll post it.



Speaking of things looking better with people in them here is a photo my sister sent me of herself (without her head) wearing her brand new Kim Hargreaves cardigan! Doesn't it look great?

I've just started a lace project -- which I think will take me the rest of the summer to finish at my current knitting levels. More details next post!

Waddya Mean 'Not Knitting'?

I expect this post is sort of that 'tree falling in the forest' type of post -- we'll answer that age old question if a blogger suddenly blogs after a long and unexplained absence does anyone read?

When last I blogged I was on a bit of a strange scarf in summer thing. I had just completed the very colourful drop knit scarf (good news - there is now an errata on the Vogue site!). A couple of other scarf projects were waiting in the wings (until today) for blogdom and since then -- I haven't knit a stitch.

Not a stitch. None. Zero.

Crazy.

The new job and learning the vagaries of HMRC (taxes!) has kept me occupied I guess....but I'm keen to start something soon. It was my best friend's birthday today and I took her out on Thursday for some yummy cocktails (cocktail bar near London Bridge called The Old School Yard)(comfy sofas, nice staff and amazing drinks - heaven!) and dinner and she turned up wearing some skinny white jeans, a black t-shirt and the wrap I made for gorgeous goddaughter Genevieve at Christmas. (We won't depress ourselves too much by dwelling on a woman who can fit into her 15 year old daughter's clothes.) The point was that she looked fabulous and it inspired me to make something for Gen's birthday.

But I'm still in inspired rather than 'doing' mode so I'll finish up this post with a bit more about last month's scarf mania.

Around the time I finished the colourful scarf I also tackled Victorian Ruby from Victorian Lace Today in a pale peach linen yarn. I decided to take the lazy approach to blocking this scarf, I just washed it and then laid it out flat to dry - no wires, no pins. I shaped it so that the ends flare out which I quite like.

It's a useful summer scarf - the linen means it's light and mostly decorative.

I also tackled a wrap in the most luscious sea foam Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend yarn - a single 100 gr skein was enough for this project. I decided it was time to tackle a mobius wrap and discovered that like most things in knitting it's pretty straightforward.

There are a few methods out there (Google is your friend) here's what I did.

I cast on 130 stitches using backward loop method onto some very long and very flexible circular needles. To get the famous 'half twist' on the first row you don't knit into the stitches. Put a marker on your right needles and then you turn all the stitches upside down and knit into the little piece of yarn between the stitches. (This is muchharder to describe than do!)(Probably easier if you have knitting in front of you.) You knit all these 'between stitches' loops until you are back at the beginning -- and NOW you start to knit the stitches you cast on originally. When you are back at your marker you have completed your first round.

I alternated 5 rounds knitting, 5 rounds purling to get the wide bands of stocking and reverse stocking stitch. I just knit until I was almost out of yarn. I cast off and heh presto - there it was.

It's modelled here by gorgeous goddaughter Genevieve, worn fetchingly over her school shirt.

My final scarf project (and perhaps it was this one that caused my mini knitting hiatus) was an attempt to make my mother a pink Ene's Scarf from Scarf Style. My mom likes pink and I found some mystery pink yarn in my stash (unknown brand) and decided it was about the right amount for a scarf.

My mistake was choosing a scarf design that started at the long edge. Scarves that start at the long edge do not give you the option of deciding that the scarf is big enough if you run out of yarn. You can't just decide to do the border in another colour.

Nope - when you run out of yarn on a scarf that starts at the long edge the scarf just taunts you with the gaping hole in the centre of your scarf. It mocks you for deciding to make a scarf that starts at the long edge with a yarn with unknown yardage that you can't even identify a brand, colour or (ha!) a dye lot for.

You can almost hear the scarf laughing in this picture.

It sits on the needles still - waiting for some knitting miracle to deliver another skein of the mystery unbranded yarn. A knitter can dream.