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Clue one of the Socktopus Mystery Shawl
I’ve joined the knit-a-long for Alice from Socktopus’ Mystery Shawl [Rav Link] and up there you can see clue one, in its completed state. I’m knitting mine in Socks that Rock (Heavyweight) in Jaded and I’m loving both the yarn and the pattern. Although, really, I think I should have knitted the first clue on 6mm needles as the StR Heavyweight is very much a DK-y sock yarn but I do like the effect it gives now – and there’s still the blocking to take into consideration.
Hilariously, this is the first time that Jam and I are knitting the same pattern at the same time – we often knit the same things but staggered, so it’s quite nice to be able to compare and contrast as we go, particularly as we’re using very different yarns.
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I was on holiday in sunny Cornwall recently and aside from the walking and the constant eating (om nom nom, clotted cream!), I got quite a bit of knitting done. Chiefly, I finished off CosmicPluto’s Milkweed shawl.
It’s an absolutely lovely pattern to knit – I had one or two hitches but it was mostly where I’d missed out an kfb a couple times and tinking back soon fixed that. Mine [Rav Link] is knitted in Fyberspates‘s BFL sock yarn (a very old sock club colourway) and I just made it on yardage – I think I stopped two rows early to make sure I had enough yarn for the bind off.
And as soon as I bound that off, I immediately cast on for the Dream in Color shrug in DiC’s Classy (Go Go Grassy), which I am juuuust about to finish, so I will save that for another post. It’s another very quick and easy knit – ideal for a holiday!
(I am trying to get back on the blogging horse, so there may well be a flurry of posts shortly as I try get into a posting routine again!)
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Now that I’m done with academia and work has settled down and the summer actually feels like it’s actually going to arrive, we’ve been spending a lot of time in what passes for the garden – we do actually have bed space as well but it’s still a bit of a mess until we finish dealing with a pest problem.
But I have herbs (although my majoriam hasn’t taken, woe!) and window boxes and shortly, salad leaves!
And because it requires me to do a lot of it outside, new uses for Altoid tins which have involved spray paint and a semi-fruitless trek around various different hardware stores. Further photos to come, once I pick up the remaining bits and assemble the whole thing.
And, of course there has been knitting. Some of these are finished and others are still works in progress. And there’s more works in progress that don’t have photos yet.
I knitted Ysolda’s Ishbel in Lorna’s Laces sock weight but try as I might, the pattern and I just never properly clicked. There are some mistakes in the finished shawl but they’re all ones I’m willing to live with and it’s certainly been used often since I finished it, so it was a success in that sense! The Abby cowl is my commute project at the moment and is also using up some handspun lace weight wool that I bought off Etsy ages ago.
The socks are Mona Schmidt’s Embossed Leaves [Rav Link] from 25 Favourite Sock Patterns. They’re knitted in Sheldridge Farm Ultra in Apple and I <3 them. And the final picture is my Lace Ribbon Scarf, which was another commute knit.
Also on the needles but currently not photographed is Anna Bell’s Cherry, which is knitting along nicely in a plum Debbie Bliss Cathay and Jared Flood’s Hemlock Ring Blanket, which I attended a class for with the lovely Jared himself at Socktopus last week and look forward to having on my lap come Autumn! I’m using Drops’ Alaska in grey for it.
I’ve also been secret squirrel crafty but I can’t post pictures and talk about them until I’ve posted them all off to their respective recipients! Soon though, soon.
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Oh, oh dearie me. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Er. I moved flat (again, still sharing with Jam), changed jobs (still a librarian but now out of the legal sector) and graduated (Master of Science, baby! Wooooo!) and blogging kind of fell to the wayside for a bit.
I have much more to show but for the moment, I’ll just point at that image there and go bweeee! My Cheshire Cat Stole [Ravelry] is done, blocked and making me grin every time I wear it because the colour is just So Damn Cheerful!
There’s a few more photos of it on my Flickr, plus some photos of the other things I need to post about. Sneak preview, if you will!
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First stash purchases of 2009! The first three are Shelridge Farm’s Soft Touch Ultra in Robin’s Egg (1), Apple (2) and Cornflower (1), purchased from the lovely Alice at Socktopus with a gift voucher I got for Hogswatch (yay!). The final one is Artesano’s Alpaca in Maroon (2), which I purchased at iKnits, partly as retail therapy after a horrible morning involving the Misery Line (Northern) and the dentist.
The Apple is going to be pair of socks, although I haven’t decided which pattern yet and the Cornflower and Robin’s Egg is going to be whatever colour-work item I decide to do. Right now I am contemplating Endpaper mitts but there’s a beret I quite fancy as well. We shall have to see!
And because we briefly had sun today, I took some photos of the February Lady Sweater now that it is finally at a stage where it’s not a crumpled mass on my needles. It’s going quite well. I’m planning to knit about another inch of the lace on the body and then switch to the sleeves as I don’t want to leave them till the end. I might modify them to be a bit more tapered but will need to go have a poke about on Rav and see what others have done before I do that. 
I really like the lace pattern – the first row went a bit wrong but the next round has clicked it into place and now I can watch tv while I knit it and I’m def. going to knit the actual baby version for my wee cousin when I’m done with this one. That kid is going to drown in hand knitted clothes, if I have anything to do with it.
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So, it’s over halfway through January and I am on a finishing things roll (hold the mayo). For one thing, as of last Wednesday I am done with my MSc. thesis. Yup, one hundred and eighty five pages on online communities and social bookmarking was printed out twice and handed in, two days before the deadline.
I can now knit without guilt and a constant soundtrack from the Daleks of Procrastination (Pro-cras-tin-ate! Pro-cras-tin-ate!) in my head. Hallelujah!
So to continue on with the theme of finishing, have a couple FOs.
The High Street Hat in the RCY Cashsoft that I was bemoaning leaving at home in my last entry had to be frogged because I had mucked up on the yardage. So I turned it into a Fidget instead and it became the last thing I cast on in 2008 and the first thing I finished in 2009 as I knitted it over New Years Eve. It needs to be properly blocked – I steam blocked it originally but it has now returned to pre-block curling but has definitely been useful, what with the weather recently!
And finally – and aptly! – the Leftover Vest I started the last time I was At Home with the Daleks of Procrastination was finished in between writing the last bits of my thesis. It’s not completely finished as I still have to weave in all the millions of ends inside but I have worn it once already and with the exception of having to tweak the ribbing on one arm and finish all those ends I am actually quite happy with it. It’s certainly decreased my stash somewhat! 
I was, after the rush of finishing, down to two wip on the needles. One is my Cheshire Cat stole, which is a back burner project because I like to knit on that for long periods of time without distraction and the other is the lace ribbon scarf, which is my current commute project and is growing nicely.
Of course, this two wip state of affairs was doomed to last though as my two goals for 2009 can now be be started with the finishing of my thesis. To wit:
- Knit a garment that actually properly fits (the vest is a little bigger than I planned) and actually uses up some of the yarn I have in garment sized amounts.
- Learn to do colour work!
Goal number one is responsible for the latest wip on the needles. I have cast on for a February Lady Sweater in Debbie Bliss Stella (lilac) on Tuesday, in thesis finishing celebration and am currently coming up for the end of the raglan increases. I will take proper photos once it gets to the stage where it’s not one giant scrunched up thing on my needles. I am rather amused by the fact that I will be knitting it during February and with any luck, will have it finished by the end of Feb.
I haven’t decided what I’m going to do for the second goal. Probably something small in the mitts/hand warmers range, so I have been scouring through Ravelry and amassing a small collection of possible patterns.
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I’m back at work until Wednesday. It is as thrilling as you might imagine because work is like a ghost-town, complete with tumbleweed. But, it does mean that I am free to putter around the library, update this blog, stalk patterns on Raverly (I might have tripped and fallen into the bargin bins at John Lewis, more on that in a moment!) and bemoan the fact that I forgot my knitting at home. I have the bag, the second ball and the notions but the needles and the item itself are still at home. Oh, epic fail!
Hogswatch is over and done with for another year though (yes, technically, Hogswatch is tomorrow but I move it back to Dec the 25th personally.) and the knitted gifts went down a treat! Hooray! Next year, I am starting them earlier though. Gah. And, now I can blog them!
First up: not technically a Hogswatch present but a significant portion of my extended family were born in December (myself included) and a large majority of them have managed to wedge themselves into the days spanning the 5th to the 8th of December. I don’t knit gifts for everyone though and in fact, only did so for one person this year. My aunt got a Fidget [Raverly], which I knit up very quickly in a skein of Blue Sky Alpaca’s Organic Cotton and finished off with three wooden buttons I picked up at John Lewis awhile back.
It’s a lovely pattern – mindless so ideal for commuting and watching dvds. I think I got through most of the second season of the IT Crowd with this one and the yarn is just, mmmm! I still have a bit of the skein left, so will have to find something to knit it up with.
Next up: Juliet Scarf (Raverly) from Louisa Harding’s Knitting Little Luxuries in Angora Pure for my mother. I had a bit of a problem with this pattern – I couldn’t get the pattern to click when working off the written instructions but once I shifted to the chart, it went a lot smoother.
The pattern reckons you can knit a 37 inch scarf and the rosette out of one skein. I say otherwise. I knitted to gauge without the rosette and got 27 inches, which I blocked out to 30. I could have undone my cast off and started with a second skein but I decided to leave it as it was and just did the rosette out of the second skein because it was a good length for an underjacket neck warmer.
The final item was the Rocking Strat Socks I posted about earlier. They were great to knit (aside from the length required for my dad’s feet) and sent my dad into raptures and requests for more socks in the future. They’re a pain to get an action shot of though, hence the lack of one. I tried and tried but none of them came out well enough.
We actually spent Hosgwatch internet-free, due to a wiring problem and I made serious inroads into my Cheshire Cat Stole, having now crossed the halfway point and coming to the end of my first ball of yarn. Yay!
It’s definately at the point of being too awkward to knit on the move though, so I’ve cast on for another High Street Hat, which is the item I have accidentally left at home today. Bah! That one is being knitted in a lovely dark blue Rowan Classic Cashsoft Chunky, which I “accidentally” bought yesterday in the sale at John Lewis.
Other things accidentally bought in the sale include ten skeins of Debbie Bliss Cathay in a beautiful plum-red and four skeins of Rowan Classic Pure Silk DK in silver. I’m planning to knit the Lace Ribbon Scarf in the silk and stalk Raverly for a pattern for the Cathay, which should take up a bit of time at work today!
Heh, my list of projects for 2009 is filling up rapidly! I am going to try knit more of my stash up and put a bar on buying yarn in 2009, which will hopefully mean more finished objects and posts here!
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I’m down to two items still on the needles (The Leftover Vest and my Cheshire Cat stole) and thankfully, all the Hogswatch knitting is done. Hooray! Still can’t post any photos though – but am looking forward to the action shots!
I then realised that I still had a couple hours worth of knitting time left on my commute but a lack of suitable projects to fill them, so I dashed off to the LYS and purchased myself a skein of Artesano Aran in a beautiful green (Dawn colourway) and cast on for Fingersandtoes’ High Street Hat [Raverly link] after admiring it in the pub a couple weeks ago.
It’s a really quick knit – I cast on quite late on Tuesday night and during the week, I get most of my knitting done on the commute and then in my lunch hour but it was finished off this morning and proudly jammed on my head as I flung myself out the door for my last day before Hogswatch. (T-minus 2 hours and counting. I have an awful case of Lastdayitis today!)
I’ll def. knit it again because it’s ideal for quick, last minute presents. My Rav project page is here.
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I’m trapped in our flat because the boiler made horrible noises and expired this morning, spitting black water onto the kitchen wall in the process. One phone call to the plumber later and I am waiting for someone to turn up between the hours of 9 and 12.
Of course, I’ve already booked all my vac days up, so whoo, unpaid day at home!
It’s not all bad though. I’m huddling under a blanket and taking advantage of the extra time to knit! My WiP/Hogswatch knitting are breeding, I think. I now have five things on the needles, most of which I can’t talk about until after Hogswatch. But I can post pictures of a few things!
First up, a WiP I can talk about. The leftover vest is now up to the splitting point and I’m knitting the back at the moment.
It is far more further on than the photo but this at least shows the stripe pattern, which I pretty much generated on the fly as I knitted.
And a Finished Object!
It’s the baby hat from One Skein, which I knitted in an evening for a co-worker’s new baby. Not got any photos of baby in hat yet because daddy’s is on paternity leave + vacation until the new year but hopefully, it will keep the new addition to their family warm this winter. Plus once I’d got through the first two rows, the pattern clicked and off it went. I’ll definitely be knitting more of these in the future!
[Meg] Mystery Shawl – Socktopus edition
