Today is Poppy's 5th birthday party, and she work up to find this waiting on the table. Pink cake, her name, purple flowers, green mushrooms and two little ponies wearing party hats having a party on top! When you are about to be five, it can't get much better! We are cutting it latter at the party. Despite that this is a knitting blog, so we do have knitting content - a new sponsored project with swatching, fana cardigan update, and sock progress. 
So, I'm a spoilt knitter, Friday I caught up with a visiting out of town friend, meet her poppets (2, boy + girl both under 3), had lunch, and went shopping together for yarn for a fair isle baby blanket. Gills baby no3 is due August, and she brought along two books for inspiration. A Celtic Debbie Bliss and a Vogue 1930's-1980's book. The Vogue for colour inspiration, the DB for the fair isle blanket idea and sizes. I'd offered to knit something, and that's what the BSJ was for, but am quite ready to take on a fair isle blanket. This is the swatch, where I'm playing with the mix of colours, there are 12 colours, all lovely soft muted pastel shades.
Feels like I'm spoilt, totally spoilt, with the knitters equivalent of a sponsor, some one who indulges my yarn habit, and has provided a complete set of yummy soft fine wool for a new project. I will get lots of purling practice with fair isle - as its all knit flat not in the round as I do in laziness. I pretend its better, and it does give a more even knit, but it could be also said to be purl avoidance aka EZ. I also discovered in working the chart, knitting in the round makes it easier than woking 'backwards' on every second row. Gillian thought of a brushed napped cotton fleece liner, I wonder about double fair isle aka helen of troy's pot holders. Scroll down - I can't seem to link to the pot holder posts directly. I'm tempted to adjust the fair isle chart a little, as it has repeated single rows of colour leaving the colour work yarns at the wrong end to knit (or purl with) in the next row. I've already drawn the chart up larger using knitters graph paper, at 150% of full knitted gauge, and drawn in the colours. The base fair isle has 20 rows, of 6 colours and then the 20 rows are repeated with the 6 colours re-allocated or mixed up as it were. There is a 12 stitch repeat, but like the Bohus - the rows often don't have any relation ship to the colour work below or above them. Gill settled on 12 colours, so a wee few decisions to make. There will have to be a purl fair isle video soon.
Fana, well still knitting, and still by day she is beautiful, but by night - yuck. I'm around 4 cm from the underarm point - so was planning to put the body aside and make the sleeves very soon anyway. I guess thats all on hold now as I get a feel for the fair isle blanket as that has a birth-date. Some how dead-line seems wrong wrong wrong when discussing baby arrivals. KathyR asked it I would wear it most during the day or at night. Mostly during the day - Fana was planned for a work and jeans kinda cardigan, over dark teeshirts and such. This image is pretty true colourwise, and not Christmassy at all - even with the stars.
I'm in the middle of the heel of Toby's Regia stripe sock, I had briefly thought about using diamante for this one - but in one of my few wise moments decided that he really should have a matched pair. We are pretending that the toes are matched. Despite his mums desire to instantly learn about and use Diamante shaping to change the shaping in a 2nd sock of a pair is a really mean trick to play on some one. Diamante has a different structure to Widdershins, there is an extension after the gusset increases - so the fit will be different, and you probably could feel that.
So, I'm a spoilt knitter, Friday I caught up with a visiting out of town friend, meet her poppets (2, boy + girl both under 3), had lunch, and went shopping together for yarn for a fair isle baby blanket. Gills baby no3 is due August, and she brought along two books for inspiration. A Celtic Debbie Bliss and a Vogue 1930's-1980's book. The Vogue for colour inspiration, the DB for the fair isle blanket idea and sizes. I'd offered to knit something, and that's what the BSJ was for, but am quite ready to take on a fair isle blanket. This is the swatch, where I'm playing with the mix of colours, there are 12 colours, all lovely soft muted pastel shades.
Feels like I'm spoilt, totally spoilt, with the knitters equivalent of a sponsor, some one who indulges my yarn habit, and has provided a complete set of yummy soft fine wool for a new project. I will get lots of purling practice with fair isle - as its all knit flat not in the round as I do in laziness. I pretend its better, and it does give a more even knit, but it could be also said to be purl avoidance aka EZ. I also discovered in working the chart, knitting in the round makes it easier than woking 'backwards' on every second row. Gillian thought of a brushed napped cotton fleece liner, I wonder about double fair isle aka helen of troy's pot holders. Scroll down - I can't seem to link to the pot holder posts directly. I'm tempted to adjust the fair isle chart a little, as it has repeated single rows of colour leaving the colour work yarns at the wrong end to knit (or purl with) in the next row. I've already drawn the chart up larger using knitters graph paper, at 150% of full knitted gauge, and drawn in the colours. The base fair isle has 20 rows, of 6 colours and then the 20 rows are repeated with the 6 colours re-allocated or mixed up as it were. There is a 12 stitch repeat, but like the Bohus - the rows often don't have any relation ship to the colour work below or above them. Gill settled on 12 colours, so a wee few decisions to make. There will have to be a purl fair isle video soon.
Fana, well still knitting, and still by day she is beautiful, but by night - yuck. I'm around 4 cm from the underarm point - so was planning to put the body aside and make the sleeves very soon anyway. I guess thats all on hold now as I get a feel for the fair isle blanket as that has a birth-date. Some how dead-line seems wrong wrong wrong when discussing baby arrivals. KathyR asked it I would wear it most during the day or at night. Mostly during the day - Fana was planned for a work and jeans kinda cardigan, over dark teeshirts and such. This image is pretty true colourwise, and not Christmassy at all - even with the stars.
I'm in the middle of the heel of Toby's Regia stripe sock, I had briefly thought about using diamante for this one - but in one of my few wise moments decided that he really should have a matched pair. We are pretending that the toes are matched. Despite his mums desire to instantly learn about and use Diamante shaping to change the shaping in a 2nd sock of a pair is a really mean trick to play on some one. Diamante has a different structure to Widdershins, there is an extension after the gusset increases - so the fit will be different, and you probably could feel that.
4 comments:
WOW! What a beautiful cake! (And knitting to match it, that's a first!) Happy Birthday from San Francisco, Poppy!
Lovely knitting, Stell!
Happy birthday, Poppy! I love the cake and the colours for the fair isle blanket (ambitious!) are very nice too. Fana is looking really good and, as you say, not at all Christmas-like in the photo.
Double knitting a detail pattern is not that easy--you have purl designs both sides of the work!
but you could do this-->add 10 extra stitches (edge stitches) and make the blanket in the round--(no purl--always working on right side of work)
new colors get added in the 'edge stitch' section.when done, steek --> cutting the edge stitches and add a border. (to cover the steek)
It could even be done inside out--(knit to the back of the work) on a large (32 to 40 inch circ) needle and that will make it easier to control the floats.
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