I started the stashbust with a Calorimetry, which used up the remains of some Artesano Aran in green and maroon. It’s a little big and I didn’t think the colour change out too well, so there’s no photo for the blog, but you can see it on its Rav project page. I am mostly just happy with something that keeps my ears warm and used up some odds and ends.

The next stash bust was this, a Hap Blanket from Ysolda’s Whimsical Little Knits, which rejoices under the project name of The Hogswatch Hap.

It originally started life off as a Hemlock Ring Blanket but I stuffed up the feather and fan and decided to just frog the whole thing. I only had the one colour with me because I was working on it at my parents’ this Christmas, so it became a single colour hap. I absolutely love it! It did get a little awkward to knit once the edging was started but the end result is large enough, delightfully warm (I am sitting under it as I type) and used up a significant chunk of my stash, consisting as it does, of 7.5 balls of DROPS Alaska. It’s definitely on my list to knit again, this time with a contrasting colour.

And excitingly and also, more on the WIP finishing resolution than the stashbusting, I finally stopped sulking about the sleeves on my Cherry – er, round about August I knitted them and discovered that one was about an inch and a half shorter than the other, cue some knitterly sulking and the project being stuffed in a bag – cast on for sleeve attempt number three (the return of the electric boogaloo…) and ended up with a matching pair. Now all I need to do is sew it up, pick up the buttonband and collar and I might actually get to wear the damn thing for this spring/summer! Miracles may never cease, I tell you.

So, so far, so good and I’m determined to carry on with my stash knitting. So, here is a short list of things I am going to knit and the yarn from the stash that matches. (all links are Ravelry)

• Erika Knight’s Lace Top in pale blue Kidsilk Haze
• North Sea Shawl by Cheryl Oberle in DiC Baby in either Forest or Mystic
• Eunny Jang’s Endpaper mitts in two of the many colours of Sheldridge Farm’s sock yarn I own
• Featherweight Cardigan by Hannah Fettig in DiC Baby, whichever colourway doesn’t become the North Sea Shawl.

This is not the full list of course but I’m slowly working through my queue and rearranging/assigning yarns. I’m looking forward to making a dent in both the stash and my long list of queued patterns.

Done several weeks ago, and yes, I still am just that bad at updating. I have a hat done, I have two sets of fingerless gloves made and sent out, I have two sets of socks and a cardigan on the needles, I have new needles and new yarn. All things that I wanted to post about and then just utterly failed to.

Still, back on topic.

This is the second of the Knitting Delight/ Mystery Knit-Alongs I’ve done (via the yahoogroup). The first was the Way of Life stole, which was pretty different in structure and experience.

The Lady Jane had a mystery shape to it, which ended up being a V (rather than the usual rectaangle, triangle or half-circle). The pattern of the lace itself, however, was a lot more simple. It was basically just the edging, so there was a lot more repetition than with the Way of Life.

I was also using a very different yarn, the Oxford Kitchens lace-weight. It’s like knitting with scrunchy floss, only soft and beautiful. It’s also a reminder of how much variation there is in lace weight, because the last one (varigated merino, Lisa Souza) was so much thicker. The Oxford Kitchens is mostly BFL with a bit of nylon and I have mixed feelings on whether it was the irght yarn for this. I love the way the slightly scrunchy yarn looks, especially on the stocking, but I do wonder if I’d have been better off knitting with something more solid, to show off the lace.

I also had to change needles to lacepoints because the yarn really needed it. With regular addis, I might as well have been kitting with chopsticks. The ends were just too thick to pick up the yarn, which wasn’t such a problem with the thicker Lisa Souza.

By the end, it was one of those projects where the recipient (my mum, benefiting from Mothering Sunday falling the week after I’d finished it and the Way of Life having ended up with an honourary-aunt/mum’s best friend for Christmas) liked it more than I did. I was mostly happy to see it done, by that point. I’m glad I did it, but I probably wouldn’t have finished it, if it wasn’t for the KAL push.

I still have half a skein of the lace yarn, so I need a project that will take that up next.

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.

Finally got around to writing up the pattern (In the sidebar or Here.

The pattern works pretty well, I think. There’s lots of stretch and the bias from the decreases/increases means that it stays in place, but isn’t tight at all, so there should be some room to grow. It’s a little loose on the Earthling, but he’s a little small for six months and it still stays on without any problems (as far as I know!)

Plus, it gave me a chance to use some of the casbah which is a gorgeous yarn, lovely colours, nice springy texture… but yeah, I really have to accept that the types of pattern I like to knit don’t work so well with that kind of self-striping yarn.

And yet, I still can’t quite stop myself buying it.

Finished! Done, and finished in good time (week of the final clue). I think this way of working, to sectional deadline, is very helpful for me in terms of getting things done. It was possible to catch up on a lazy week in the next week, and do that week’s clue as well. And the advantage of width-ways shawls is that at least there aren’t so many rows.

I’ll probably pick up something by the designer again. Very decorative, complicated lace pattern, but still manageable to knit as long as you can track a chart.

Cthulhu is a bold little beast. Brash, almost. You can’t see his wings so well in this picture, but they’re pretty neat in a straggly, eldergod kind of way.

Crcoheted using sock yarn and a 1.25mm hook, rather thanthe yarn they suggest. This picture doesn’t show it so well, but the eyes do gleam red at you. Took about a day or two to finish. If I do it again, I’ll probably do the tentacles on a bigger hook so they come out looser.

I do like crochet -I like the movement of it, the nice dense fabric it produces- so I hope to find more things I want to make.

Yes, quite.

First up: Finished Objects!

It’s a cardi for my wee cousin, Annabell. It’s the snappily named ‘Design C’ from the Sirdar Baby Bamboo pattern book and is knitted in the Baby bamboo (lovely yarn, btw) in green. I actually started it and finished it a couple months ago but I kept delaying on the sewing up because I am) a lazy and b) I fear sewing up. But, it is amazing what you’ll do with the help of the Daleks of Procrastination and if it is going to fit her, I need to get it to her soon. I opted not do the daisy stitching in the end. [Ravelry]

I’ve had a skein of random variegated cotton lurking in my stash for aaaages, so I cast on yesterday and turned it into a couple of dishcloths. There are actually two but I haven’t bothered photographing the second one as it is pretty much identical. They’re both the basket weave stitch cloths from Star Athena’s Back to School, without the text. I look forward to trying them out. [Ravelry]

Behold! A new WIP:

Because I don’t still have a ton of Hogswatch knitting to do and my Cheshire Cat stole on the needles, I cast on for Alison Hansel’s Leftovers, on the justification that it would shrink my stash a bit and I could do with a knitted vest to wear over my work shirts at the moment. Yes, witness my justification!

It’s going well so far – after a few hiccups vis-a-vis the number of cast on stitches and my inability to count stitches made from doubled yarn accurately – and I am now happily playing with the stripe pattern. I’m mostly winging it. It’ll all be fiiiine! [Ravelry]

I will…write my thesis. Somewhere in all this. Yes. *looks shifty*

This image has been severely tweaked in an attempt to make the pattern clearer. It looks fine in real life, but not so much on picture with this yarn. In person, the pattern is more 3D, it’s easier to see the nice bias, the wool is lovely autumnal shades… in photo, it pretty much just looks like a mess.

This picture gives a much better idea of the colour:

These are basically a mod of the Nutkin sock pattern turned into wristwarmers, but adapted in the following ways:

12.5 repeats along the arm, then the thumb (about 10 stitches knit on waste yarn, picked up and worked in the round for the thumb).

For the thumb, I started decreasing until it was a tight fit. I placed it so it travelled across two pattern repeats, which means four stitches (two either side of the thumb) I carried on as purl. The decreases I did to carry on with the way the pattern had set up and then, when it was the right tightness, I did a 1×1 cable stitch to keep up the diagonal.

On the pattern repeats after the thumb, I omitted the YO, doing a purl stitch where it wold be, to keep the pattern tight around the top of the hand. When it had decreased enough, I did the YOs again.

At the top, I did chromosome-crosses (wobbly, and going in the same direction as the pattern)- basically a four stitch repeat:
k1,p1,k1,p1.
c2r (knit stitch crosses in front of the purl),k1,p1
p1,k2,p1
p1,twist 2right (stitch from the left crosses the right), p1
p1,k2,p1,
p1,k1,c2r,p1
p1,k1,p1,k1.

I mirrored all of this (including the nutkin pattern) on the other hand, for the entirely rational reason that if the pattern pointed in the same direction on both warmers, then one would always be on the wrong hand and I wouldn’t know which.

i’ll write up the pattern more clearly and take close-ups if anyone wants to know more.

It’s been so long since I posted anything to this blog. So about time, right?

This, by the way, is the most recent project I’ve finished. The pattern is from Sidar, to use with their baby bamboo (great yarn), but I had some baby cashmerino so…

I’m very happy (and deeply relieved!) with the way it turned out. I like cabelling to knit, but the yarns are very different –cashmerino is soft and springy, bamboo is slippery and drapey- but it’s ended up being the right size. I still want to block it, just to make it that little bit neater, and find some buttons but it’s pretty much done.

My first attempt at fairisle, which turned out pretty well. It’s a nice, easy pattern to remember and it let me use up some odds and ends of sock yarn.