Knitting – Page 3 – Enchilada Sunrise

Let There Be Glove

My “Damson Gloves” [Ravlink] are my current main knitting work in progress. I have no gloves, you see! I lost mine a couple of years ago, and it seemed silly to buy new ones when I could make some, so I started on these. And, um… I finished one plus just past the cuff of the second! It wasn’t even like knitting the fingers were as fiddly as I’d been afraid they might be. I think I got distracted with gift knitting and things with deadlines, and just lost the momentum on them. And of course, every time I remembered them again since, it was already cold weather. I do have nice warm fingerless gloves, although that’s not quite the same.

This year, however, I’ve picked them up again. Or picked up glove no.2, to be more accurate. I’d actually knitted up to part of the thumb gusset, but I didn’t actually know exactly how far up. So I ripped it out (it was only a few inches, after all) and started again. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t do so sooner. Well, I do – I had lots of other knitting that I was concentrating on, and these didn’t have a deadline. But now I want gloves, and the weather is getting colder! So this is how I’m doing:

Actually, I’ve now got a little further than that – those photos are from a couple of days ago, and I’ve now knit the little finger and started on the ring finger. If I concentrate on them for another couple of days, I should be finished. Hoorah!

I don’t think I ever did a project info post for these gloves, so here it is now:

Pattern: Basic Glove Pattern (from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns) by Ann Budd [Ravlink] using a 1×1 rib cuff, Wavy Rib up the thumb and Claw Pattern Cable with Bobbles on the back of the hand (both from The Harmony Guides Vol.2, pp.70 & 76).
Yarn: Yarn Yard Hug in ‘Damson’.
Needles: 3.25mm Addi Turbo bamboo circular (80cm)
Ravelry Project Page: Damson Gloves

With a bit of luck, my next post about these will be to show off the finished versions!

Spinning again

As well as not having blogged since July, I haven’t done any spinning since then either. During the blogathon, I posted that I was spinning some gorgeous merino fibre. I got maybe 10g of the 100g braid actually done, and the spinning wheel has been in a corner ever since. I suppose I sort of lost my spinning mojo / motivation, then I was busy with other things. But I’m now feeling much more motivated, and I suddenly felt like actually finishing that. So, yesterday I hoiked the wheel back out of the corner, sat it in front of the telly, and spun all through Strictly Come Dancing and Casualty. And then, because I was on a bit of a roll, I put on the last two eps of Flash Forward which I still had to catch up on, and kept going. I’d split the braid into two approx 50g sections so that I could spin two roughly equal bobbins full, and I’d been aiming to finish the rest of the first 50g. In fact, I finished that first bobbin, and now I’m half way through the second:

I’m going to see if I can get a bit more done tonight before I go to bed. I’m still on a little bit of a sci-fi high from the new Doctor Who episode / special tonight, “The Waters of Mars”. Can’t wait til the next one at Christmas! But I need to wind down a bit more, so a bit of podcast listening and spinning should do the trick. Hopefully, I’ll get these singles bobbins finished and then plied within the next couple of days. I might use the remainder of my birthday money to get a niddy noddy, too. That’ll make winding the finished yarn back off the bobbin much easier.

Insufficient Yarn Error

The main project that I’ve been knitting on recently has been the Ishbel scarf, and I was using some really lovely soft, squishy yarn for it: some BFL sockweight by Nimu.

[thumb:1150:c:t=]

Isn’t it preeeeeeeeeetty? I know you can’t see it terribly well in that picture because it’s only some of the stocking stitch portion. But trust me, it’s lovely – the colour of ripe blackberries. The pattern calls for 300m of yarn, the skein was 365m. I used the suggested needle size because I liked the drape of the fabric that gave me, although it put my gauge a little bit off. That’s not important in a scarf, triangular or not, right? Well, I knitted all of the stocking stitch section, and thought I still had plenty of yarn. The I started on the lace charts: chart A, then B, then as I started A again I began to get a bit worried. I kept going though. Right up until I ran out of yarn with essentially 8 rows to go. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Has my dodgy gauge has eaten more yarn, or something? I’m not sure that makes sense – I haven’t knitted more stitches, after all. I’ve got more stitches to the inch than I should have: that means that to get suggested gauge, I’d have to go up a needle size or two, thus making larger stitches, and therefore less per inch. My stitches are smaller, so they should be using less yarn, right? The resulting scarf must be a bit smaller than intended, that’s all.

As I see it, I have a couple of choices: rip out the whole thing (noooo!) and start again with different needles or yarn, or knit the remaining few rows in something else. But what? I only have this one skein of lovely Nimu ‘Striding Edge’ BFL, and I love the way it’s feeling so much that I do want to use if for this project. Bah. My first instinct is to edge it in a black yarn, since it’s such a dark colour to start with. But the only black yarn I have in what to my naked eye looks like a comparable thickness (I mentioned that it’s a very squishy sockweight, and it’s relatively loose-spun) is acrylic DK. No. I also have some similarly squishy sock yarn by the Yarn Yard – their merino ‘Hug’ yarn, in a couple of colours that might do:

[thumb:906:c:t=Mysterion][thumb:612:c:t=Damson][thumb:823:c:t=Damson knit up]

I don’t know which, if either, would be better though. So I’m posting a poll. Help meeeeeee!

[poll id=”3″]

You know what’s really annoying, though? This is the fourth time I’ve run out of yarn on a project recently. I must be doing something wrong.

41: A knitty post

Since I don’t think I actually posted here when I finally finished Mum’s birthday shawl, I shall do so now! I was almost a year late giving it to her in the end, so instead of it being finished for her birthday in April 08, it was finished for Mother’s Day in February 09. The border had taken me *so* much longer than I anticipated, and then I had blocking anxiety so it took me ages to screw up the courage to do that in case I messed it up! But the finished result was worth all the work:

Actually, I don’t think I ever put put the project stats here for this, since it was Sekrit Knitting, so here they are now:

Pattern: Wild Flower Shawl by Dee Bamford. [Ravlink]
Yarn: Posh Yarn Sophia 2ply (100% cashmere) in ‘Strawberry Shortcake’.
Needles: 3.25mm circular (Addi Turbo bamboo)
Ravelry Project Page: WFS

And would you believe, this shawl is now almost-famous? Our knitting group was in the Readers Projects section of The Knitter magazine, issue 7, and this shawl was one of the ones we sent off to them to feature. Hee!

31: What to knit?

I was knitting on those socks I posted about earlier, but it’s just occurred to me that I could knit my February Lady Sweater instead… it’s been languishing for ages, and I’m sure it won’t take long once I sit down and work on it. Plus, larger needles might work better with tired, unfocused eyes!

12: What I’ve been knitting

I’ve been doing a bit of knitting… although I need to go and cook soon. Anyway, these are what I’m working on right now:

I’m a little worried I won’t have enough yarn for two whole socks, which is why I’ve stopped just short of the toe decreases (yes, my feet are that small) on the first one and started the second. I’m going to see how well the yarn seems to be doing on the way down the leg of sock 2, then decide whether I’ll need to rip back the first one and only have 3 pattern repeats for the leg instead of 4. Hopefully I won’t need to…

9: Finished skeins – no.2

And here’s my second finished skein of yarn:

LGJ BFL Turquoise / Navy / Red - Yarn collage

LGJ BFL Turquoise / Navy / Red - closeup

As you can see from the collage picture, the original fibre was turquoise, navy, and red. I rather like the way the colours blended, both in the spinning and plying process, to give a blue-purple final yarn (with bits of red). The fibre is Limegreenjelly BFL … and I don’t know the name of the colour. Anybody have any suggestions what I could call the finished yarn?

It was a lovely yarn to spin with – not as soft as the merino I’m using now, of course, but I think that was good since I was trying to spin it a little thicker, and since I’m still learning. It came out bulky weight once plied, by the way. The one in the last post is aran weight. The meino should be lighter weight – perhaps DK after plying?

8: Finished skeins – no.1

Still working on the bipolar post (I should stop faffing, really), and I’ve also realised that I seem to somehow be a post behind. So, here are a couple in quick sucession. I haven’t posted on here yet about the yarn I’ve spun, and since now is a good a time as ever… here is My First Yarn:

Navy Blue and Turquoise Corriedale - spun

Navy Blue and Turquoise Corriedale - close-up

This fibre (Forest Fibres Corriedale Top) came with the starter pack I got with my drop spindle, but this is spun on the spinning wheel. I spun about 50g of the navy and 50g of the turquoise, then plied the two colours together. Ta-daa!

7: Merino soffffft

I’m still working on the bipolar topic post, so I though that this half hour I’d show you what I’m currently spinning. Well, not currently, since I’m typing right now, but you know what I mean ;-)

I am, by the way, very much a beginning spinner, so my results aren’t fabulous, but the whole two skeins I’ve produced so far are nice enough, and definitely usable. Which is the point, right? The fibre I’m spinning now is really really lovely, so I hope I don’t make any horrible messes with it. It’s 100% merino from Limegreenjelly in “Take Me Out”, and it’s really beautiful – see:

Charcoal, hot pink, deep jade green, and flashes of purple. Yum!

3: A yarny post

As I said the other day, I’m not only going to be talking about bipolar, but also about the knittng and spinning that I’m doing. I’m even hoping to get some spinning done during the event (because if I sit on this computer chair for 24 hours straight, I may never get up. It also occured to me that today might be a good day to do some finishing: sewing up and blocking of some of my knits that only need that doing for them to be finished. Sewing at the computer is probably easier than knitting at the computer, right? Although I could try that too. I know last time that didn’t work out terrible well, since I need two hands to knit and two hand to type… and don’t have four hands (dammit).

In preparation for doing spinning, the current view directly to my right looks like this:

And the view directly behind me looks like this:

Topics for the Blogathon / Q&A

As I said yesterday, one of the things I’m planning to do during the Blogathon is to talk about some of my experiences with being bipolar, and I was hoping that people would ask me any questions they have about the subject so that I could have a go at answering and maybe make some things clearer. I’ve thought of some possible topics to start with, so here’s a handy poll:

[poll id=”2″]

Or do you have any other questions or related topics you’d like me to expound upon? Is there anything specific that you’ve heard about bipolar, or gathered from the media, that you want to know about? Or do you want to know about stupid things I’ve done while manic? Or what knitting has to do with it? Feel free to ask absolutely anything (er, about bipolar / being bipolar) even if you think it’s a bit personal – if I feel it’s not something I want to talk about then I’ll say so, but I’m going to try to be as open and thorough as possible with this. Anyway, leave any other questions in the comments. Thank you!!

And as well as that whole topic, I’m planning to post about:

Knitting: what’s on my needles, recent finished objects, and what I want to do next.
Spinning: it’s the last two days of the Tour de Fleece!
Books, film, TV… maybe. Things that I’ve been reading or watching recently, which may include fanfiction. (Funnily enough I’ve just started reading Harry Potter fanfic again, which is what I did during the first Blogathon I took part in back in 2003. Oh the synchronicity!)
Links to other ‘thon-ers (mostly likely when my brain has shut down in the middle of the night ;-) )

I think that should keep me going!

On Giving In Gracefully

So, back in March I made some bloggy resolutions about what I intended to do for weekly posting goals. Obviously, I haven’t kept those up… and then I started feeling like I was in catch-up mode all the time with myself, and oh noes, panic!! Which is bad, since this blog isn’t supposed to be a duty! Therefore, I have Made A Decision: I’m giving myself permission to “give up”. In actual fact what that means is that I’m going to forget about Project 365 this year, since taking the photos already wasn’t working out – maybe I can go again another year, but I’ll see how it goes. I’m still going to do the Friday 5 whenever I feel like it, but not necessarily every week. I am going to try to post more about knitting and spinning and things in general. This way, it’s more of an adjustment of my goals to something more realistic, rather than really giving up.

Another thing that I’ve decided to let go of is taking strict part of the Sock Knitter’s Pentathlon ’09. I haven’t been knitting very fast this year, and I’d ended up knitting nothing but those socks and still not finishing them. It all got a bit too much like hard work! So even though I love the patterns for the first two socks, and I really like the look of the third one which has recently been released, I’m not going to start #3. I do intend to finish the first two socks, but not as my most immediate projects. Instead I’m going to go back to my other knitting works in progress and try to get those finished off. They’d been pushed back while I was knitting just socks. That’s meant that I’ve now almost finished the shawl I’ve been making for Emily (I’m casting off at the moment, but that’s deadly boring so I’m just doing a few stitches at a time then putting it down again *g*). And I’m really looking forward to picking up the projects I’ve been neglecting and making some real progress on them. Hooray! I don’t even feel like starting something new, because my old projects are almost like new ones by now.

I’m also thinking about giving in using Coppermine for my photo album software. Yes, I’ve been using it for years on this site, so it seemed like a more sensible decision to keep using it and integrate it with WP rather than migrate to something else. But there’s a good photo album plugin for WP, and the integration plugin for Coppermine doesn’t do precisely what I want it to do – it’s a great plugin, and it’s probably perfect for everyone else… but I’m picky! Also, I do have to do some tweaking of the source code every time it updates because of the way I have my Coppermine set up, and… well, in the long run it might just be easier to change to using something more integrated with WP. It’ll mean not having to theme Coppermine to match WP, too. I’m going to ponder it a while more, but I expect I will change over.

Why am I mentioning this, when no-one but me cares? Because it kind of fits the theme of the rest of this post: I’ve been hanging on to some things that I should have gracefully given in on a while back. Letting go and making a few small changes will make things easier. Note to self: change is good, and giving up on something doesn’t necessarily equate to failure. There we go, that’s my deep personal insight for the day. Now I shall stop rambling, let go of this post and send it into the big wide world (= hit the publish button)! TTFN.

Spin spin spin

Today is 4th July, which means it’s the start of the Tour de France for this year, and therefore also the Tour de Fleece. (I understand the date also has some link with Americans blowing up aliens with fireworks, but I’m not really sure about that.) And what that means is spinning along every day that the Tour de France is on. I’ve joined up to the Ravelry Group for it – this is my first time, which puts me on the Rookie team and I’m also in Team Jelly Legs, which Jo set up. That’s appropriate in more ways than one, as spinning every day will no doubt give me jelly legs, and I’m going to be using fibre from her etsy shop, Limegreenjelly.

This is the fibre I’ve started with:

Limegreenjelly Bluefaced Leicester in Turquoise-Navy-Red

It’s Blue Faced Leicester, and it feels absolutely lovely to spin with. I shall post progress photos when I have them. And do what I said I would yesterday and give some updates on what I’ve been up to in general!

Project 365, 22nd March – 4th April

I meant to post these weekly, but I’ve gone and slipped up already. So here are another two week’s worth of Project 365 photos. They’re also up at Flickr in my Project 365 ’09-10 set and in the Project 365 album for this year in the photo album here (you can see the great-big full size versions there). This time I’m going to put the medium-size pics up here rather than the thumbnails and put some comments in as well. Ideally I want the medium pics to link to pop-ups of the full size versions, but the plugin I’m using to integrate the blog with the photo album is being a bit temperamental about that. But with a bit of luck that’s what I’ll get. Here we go:
Continue reading “Project 365, 22nd March – 4th April”

Conquering entrelac

Or so far… not. Heeeeelp! I’ve been going backwards and forwards on the first half-inch (the setup triangles) of the entrelac sock pattern that is the second pair for this year’s Sock Knitter’s Pentathlon. I was getting great big gappy gaps between the triangles and after I looked at this tutorial / pattern [Ravlink] for an entrelac scarf that someone on the mailing list recommended, I came to the conclusion that it was because of the extra two rows at the top of the triangles in the sock pattern – they didn’t ‘attach’ to the sock cuff. (The triangles were made by knitting increasing short rows, using one more stitch from the cuff every time until you get to six. I don’t think I can describe it any better than that, but the scarf tutorial has pictures.) The scarf tutorial, which starts the short rows with knitting one stitch instead of two like the sock pattern, solves that problem. So that’s what I’ve now done with those.

[thumb:1122:l:l=d:t=]Pattern: buttercupia: Noro Entrelac Socks. [Ravlink]
Yarn: Posh Yarn Emily in ‘Troubadour’.
Needles: 2.75mm DPNs
Ravelry Project Page: SKP09 Pair #2

However! Now that I’ve done all the triangles, I’m a bit stumped. I have to pick up stitches to start the rectangle / diamond section, and it says to work left to right. But I’m not sure if I’m sposed to turn the work before I do that, or go “backwards” on the right side, or what. Aaaaaaah, confusing! I think I’m just going to have to experiment and see what happens. I should have knitted a swatch first. Oh well!!

Other than the entrelac socks, I’ve been doing some spinning, actually remembering to keep up with taking Project 365 photos (I’ll post those soon), and… um… also doing other stuff? Oh, I know – I have new glasses which is great because now I can see what I’m typing (always helpful), and I’ve also been reading a fair bit. In fact, I’m thinking of doing Dewey’s Read-a-thon, although I should probably make my mind up soon if I am going to join in. If I do, I don’t think I’ll commit to the whole 24 hours because I don’t want to mess my sleeping patterns up again just as they seem to be improving, but I could do 12 hours easily. I would say more, but it starts at 1pm BST (the site says GMT, but they mean current UK time by that, not actual GMT) and that would make my finishing time too late. And in fact, since it’s just past 1am right now, I think I’d better go to bed and get some kip! Night.