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So between us, mum and I have almost finished the blanket.
Things that I discovered:
Mum and I pick up stitches differently.
It’s easy to get turned around when something is garter stitch.
Any time you start making something as a present, between the time it takes you to buy the wall and knit juuuuust enough that you’ve really started, someone else will have bought them the same thing in the mean time.
Blankets never end up being the same size as you intended.
This last one was actually a conscious decision. Mum and I decided that instead of being about 5×5 squares, it should be 5×7.5. Ack! Especially since it needs to be pretty much done by tomorrow, since mum and dad are flying over to visit the grandparents. We’re aiming for something that can go around her shoulders, rather than a lap blanket (and that, as a lovingly hand-crafted -just look at all the mistakes! Those really make it unique- it will be be appreciated even though she got given a (fleece) one just recently).
What you can’t really see in these pictures is that the light hits it pretty directionally, so it looks pretty cool from an angle. What you can see are the missing spots in the middle and on the side — those empty triangles on the edges that I need to fill in before they fly off. I’ve done four of eight since Sunday, so it should be possible as long as my wrists don’t give out.
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Ravelry makes me lazy. I’m over here for anyone who’s curious.
So my current projects are herringbone socks (which look like a pretty good ayof using up the odds and ends of sock wool) and a blanket my mum and I are doing for my grandmother.
Since we don’t live together, we needed a pattern that could be put together easily enough and would be convenient to do on the go and we opted for a domino knit blanket. Step one: explaining what domino knitting was to my mum, how the squares go together and so on.
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Most of them, at least.
So I knit a lot of socks because they fit in the bag easily and they’re easy to mess about with. Also, they make you feel like a proper knitter.
This is almost all of the socks I’ve knit and represent long months of accumulated sock-wisdom.
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The beast is dead! Done! Except for the blocking, and maybe me fixing some of the tendrils by reknitting them with smaller needles!
Dead and laid out for the wake!
The pattern is the Seaweed Stole from Needle Beetle, which is a nice, clear pattern. No mistakes, with charts and row by row instructions. The yarn is Lisa Souza Wild Things in Merino Lace. It comes in a loose skein, so the job was winding it into something useable:
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Just trying to get back in the habit of, you know, updating.
This is the Debbie Bliss Donkey Jacket, from the Baby Knits book.
First off, I like the Debbie Bliss products, the end result of the patterns, but the patterns themselves? I think they’re pretty bad. They’re poorly written, unclear and frequently make you do things the longer and more awkward way around. This pattern (which is for a girl -my father assures me that gunmetal grey is fine for a girl, even a newborn, and the mother wears blues and greys more than pinks anyway) was adapted in the following ways.
The sleeves were knit in the round, rather than flat and sewn up. This is because I am lazy and want to avoid as much extra work as possible.
The hood was shaped using shortrows, rather than casting off at the beginning of rows. This is because I am lazy and want to avoid as much work as possible (three needle bind off or grafting is easier than sewing).
The shoulders, where the pattern says to cast off, and then sew the tops together? Three needle bind off, because I am lazy and… well, you get the idea.
The lining (which is basically the outer jacket knit on smaller needles) was not sewn on to outer layer. Instead, I used poppers to join it where it needed it (hood, the button-side of the front, one at the back), so that it could be taken off. The idea is that when the weather warms up and the baby gets bigger, they can take out the lining and still use the jacket.
Baby clothes are so much quicker to make than normal clothes, especially when they’re knit on aran weight yarn. I do like the cashmerino yarn, and I do like the end result of the pattern, so I’d give a cautious recommendation to the book, but with a pretty hefty qualifier that the patterns aren’t written well and there are no schematics.
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So, a while back I submitted a pattern to magknits, which was accepted for the October issue. The pattern itself was the result of one of those “Oh, shiny! Oh, soft!” purchases, leading to the, “Mmm, soft. Mmm, shiny. Mmm… what the hell do I do with this now?” aftermath. In this case, the trigger was the Debbie Bliss pure silk that had just come out.
Here it is, and months later, I’m still pleased with the patterns (though not so much with the pictures).
On a vaguely related note, Purlescence are running a series of competitions. I’m debating putting the shrug I made for Madam A up for the “Cindarella” one, since it was designed to go over a pretty dress, and is both sparkly and soft. I did finish it, by the way, but didn’t get around to taking any pictures before handing it over. Fingers crossed I’ll get some pics from Madam A later.
It did work out rather well, in the end– it fit, the sleeves looked good. I did end up doing (and then redoing looser) some single-chain crochet around the edge in the frosty wool, which worked well as an accent, but wasn’t so much it irritated.
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A friend of mine, who I shall refer to as Madam A (codenames make knitting so much more exciting!) has a whole bunch of weddings to attend to, and as well as searching for a dress, was thinking about what shrug to go over it, since most of the dresses she was looking at were sleeveless and at least one of the weddings was in October. Being the helpful person I am (and this was in no way linked to avoiding working on The Beast or yet another pair of socks), I offered to make one for her. This was interesting, since a) I hadn’t made a shrug before, b) I’d never made anything more complicated than gloves and socks that needed sizing that wasn’t for me and Madam A is a little more statuesque and about a foot taller than me, and c) I was going to be making up the pattern. She wanted a shrug that was fairly tight over the upper arms and back, and then in to big bell-shaped lacey sleeves over the lower arms. Also, to make it more interesting, Madam A finds most wool yarn really irritating on her skin, but has a weakness for sparkly things. This meant using lovely Debbie Bliss alpaca silk (aran) for the body, and then sparkly yarn to be used on the ends of the sleeves where it won’t irritate so much, and she can see the sparkly.
Enough with the words! Pictures ahoy!
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So, I had this rough silk yarn that I wasn’t massively fond of, but didn’t really know what to do with. There wasn’t enough to make anything big, nor so little you can use it as waste yarn, just an awkward amount.
So I figured, hey! Why not trying making a knit net bag. So I did.
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So, my cousin had her baby which meant we could give her this:
Nothing terribly interesting. It’s the basic SnB baby-blanket knitted on nice, artesano alpaca (two strands held together). The only modifications were the addition of edge stitching. It was nice, actually, knitting something with my mum, partly for the sense of continuity, partly because she has very nice, even stitches, but also for the sense of power and authority I got from explaining little bits to her.
The blanket was designed to go with the modified leafy convertible- knit so that my cousin could get something and it wasn’t all for the baby, knit in the same yarn, but single-stranded.
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Just to note that these are all for sale, priced at £5 per set plus p&p. I also take commissions, though contact me first for details. The rings are different sizes, so they’re all hanging off a 5.5mm needle to give you an idea of scale.
Inkblots:
You ever do that experiment in science where you let the ink run on special paper and separates out into the different pigments?
Swirly
Round and round and round and round and…
Greenery
(The stone at bottom is moss agate)
Mummu’s blanket, almost done. [Jam]
