Inspired ...

This week I have been inspired by another knitter, something that happens all the time, when I see the knitters around me do clever beautiful things,when I see clever beautiful things on Ravelry and on blogs. This time it was a local knitter who has inspired me to finish and complete. As well I've been playing with my new hand carders, and making rolags, and I have that new project to introduce.

This is the project that inspired me, Kiwimoth from Ravelry gifted the youngest cub her Sanquhar mitts. Knitted in lace weight yarn, stranded, and on 1.25mm needles. The gauge is 13 stitches in 2cm, so 65 stitches in 10 cm or 4 inches, 17 stitches per inch - give or take. I am in awe, awe that Kiwimoth knit one, then two of these, awe that she gave them away! Her gift did inspire me to finish knitting mine, which has a gauge of 43 stitches in 10 cm or 4 inches, or 10 stitches to the inch. 

Here is the difference those seven extra stitches per inch make, on top Kiwimoths child sized mitt, underneath my more adult sized mitt.  One of the reasons I was dragging the chain on finishing mine was indecision. I didn't know if I wanted to make them gloves as the pattern was, I've never had a pair of gloves I felt comfortable in. I already had several pairs of mittens, and and to turn these into mittens seemed odd. When I saw how good Kiwimoths mitts looked, which she had finished with a teeny tiny picot edge ... I was inspired to do the same to mine.

I tried the picot edge, and it didn't really work.The top edge stretched, so I frogged and worked the picot again this time decreasing the facing stitches by a factor of 10%. I grafted the live stitches down .. but still the edge flared and the picot didn't sit on the edge. So I was in awe a third time that Kiwimoth had worked a picot edge at that gauge and had done so successfully. I frogged the top cuff back and worked a round of plain chocolate, then three rounds of single rib, then I worked two rounds of rib-slip to set up for a tubular cast off. I loved the final result, not as pretty as Kiwimoths, but neat and tidy.

I also spent some time playing with my hand carders, making little rolags. I turned a 100g  braid of soft silver grey Perendale from Vintage Purls into light sleek roalgs, and then spun a few.  I've played with long draw before, but not really felt in control of the process. After watching the two dvd's I bought I was convinced that like everything, success was reliant on good preparation. I have (Drafting the long and the short of it & How to card wool, as well as several books with instructions on carding it hand carders.   The thing about preparation seems true, because the silver grey rolags are a dream to spin.


I also visted you tube, and the most useful video I found was one by Hervorandweyland. Most videos and books told me the carding teeth should not touch, that they should skim over each other and not even mesh. I understood that to mean the teeth should just skim past each other, and I couldn't see how the fibre would be carded. This video shows the difference between a light hand with carding, where the teeth just brush past each other and meshing the teeth deep into each other (around the 2min mark), Seeing that made it clear to me that the teeth could touch, just not deeply.

I had so much fun spinning the first few rolads of pale grey that I dug around in the my stash to find something else to hand card into rolags. This is deep green, purple, wine merino, dyed by me 160g. At the base of the bag the fibre is more  black and green, at the top more wine and teal. I have no idea how I will ply it yet, but I plan to spin long draw.

And this little project, a hat, knit in the Knit one below style developed by  Elise Duvekot. The knitters study group project this month was Knit one below, which I have done not once but  twice before. I wanted to knit socks, but two things worried me, having enough yarn, I had 50 of the grey green and 100g of the variegated mauve, and fit. Elise recommends yarn with lycra or elastic fibres as being great for Knit one below socks, and I didn't have any yarn with lycra and didn't want to knit baggy socks. So I switched to knitting a hat, using the garter strip as the 'cast-on' edge. I love the way the stripes transition from the garter to the body of the hat. In an effort to stop the hat colours being to regular I'm switching the variegated and plain columns at the pale section of the colour way repeat.

I'm hoping that when little cub comes back from her grandads she will let me post her current project. She is knitting Elijah, and it is such a clever little project. The increases and decreases are all planned very carefully so the knitter knows exactly where and how to pick up stitches for the body, the legs, the arms, the ears and the trunk curls up a little because it has extra decreases to shape it upwards.

Take care
Knit lots, or spin, try long draw ... even
na Stella

Wow!

Look!

 Julia made me a cake, I suspect she was 'put up to it' by others who shall remain nameless, but she made me a cake. And not any cake, but a cake inspired by David Hockney's swimming pool art, all white and blue .... with dolls in jelly. Well there was jelly before the cake traveled home with me, a tsunami occurred, upon arrival at home the babies were found tumbled in a mass of blue jelly. Bear as an engineer pointed out that once one side of the pool had been munched - the collapse of the jelly water was inevitable. There is a back story, as would have to be with a cake like this. A few weeks/months ago the local knitters were discussing birthday cakes, and how as children we saw amazing decorated cakes in books .. I mentioned that as a child I had seen one formed like a pool with dolls swimming, and Julia remembered and recreated it. I'm happy to cut and pass slices to any who want any - and I apologize for the mess I made of the cake Julia crafted for me. 

Saturday night was the annual local Thursday night knitters gift swap - and I was gifted this amazing duo, a vintage toned crochet scarf and pencil case. I wish I could show you this in all its glory --- and as soon as Julia (yes the same one as crafted the cake  and so here is a link to her blog and much better photos). The colours in the scarf are all soft and tone with everything in my wardrobe ! The joins are amazing, Julia told me the details are all in the blog she links to on her blog, so I looked and I am further in awe that every sing side of every square was stitched to another that way.  I am one very lucky local knitter.

This was my humble offering for the swap, in amidst amazing illusion war of the words socks, and lace shawls and wraps and cabled tams, I managed a teeny little pencil case. Every year Ngaire organizes the swap, and every year we openly tease each other that all the gifts are actually for Ngaire. That way we can talk about gifts without really taking about who they are for. This year my gift was for Ngaire! Ngaire is amazingly artistic and loves all things grey, and draws like I imagine angels draw. When I saw Tom of Holland's Sanquhar pencil case - I knew I had to make it for my swap partner and fill it with things grey. I found this when I was searching out Sanquhar patterns, and now subscribe to Toms Blog, he has a great approach to visable mending that inspires me.

 The local fabric store had the perfect vintage inspired school print, with checkers that perfectly matched the folds in the pencil case.

And this is a new project, a Knit one Below inspired hat that I will introduce next post - because I want to go and admire cake and my lovely scarf, and amazing pencil case, besides my dad is here for the night so I really need to be a good host instead of tucked away with the computer, the internet and blogging.

na Stella

Getting back to unfinished projects

Todays post has two parts, I have a much better image of the finished Teosinte socks, and a languishing project has been dug out of the workbasket and ..... worked on. I also discovered that I had completely missed the start of the Tour de Fleece, the annual self paced spinning event that accompanies the Tour de France. I had signed up .. but somehow wasn't at the start line on the day. I guess that happens some times with the cycling tour, people miss the start.  I'm wondering if my Tour becomes a clearing of the work basket  - with the rest of the time devoted to working on unfinished projects.

Teosinte socks all done and blocked

It is daylight here, Wednesday, and Winter, so daylight is between 9am and 4 pm. Well I might exaggerate a little, but before 9am and after 4 there isn't enough light to make good photos, and I am torn between pulling the curtains and putting the lights on or sitting in the dusk. Some how it just seems wrong to pull the curtains and turn the lights on so early ... but if I want to read, or sew or do anything detail-ish - that is what I have to do.
Teosinte is a lovely sock, and makes the most of a yarn that is more stripy than semi-solid. I like it. 

With the sock off the needles, and the grey cardigan caught in the endless loop of rows between the armscye (fancy tailoring name for arm pit) and the waist ... I dug around in the Work in Progress basket for something to finish. There are plenty of things there, gloves, fish, and a colour work beret. The Gloves won out - so between last night and now I have worked 6 rounds. I'm impressed, I was able to work out just where in the chart I was thanks to the highlighter tape I was using. I opened my workbook page and there the next round was ready marked and easy to spot. There are 13 rounds to work before I divide for the fingers, at which point I get to decide if I am making fingerless gloves, or gloves. Right now I'm not even sure I will make a second, so the decision seems even the more difficult. I've never had gloves that really fitted, I have long fingers, and most commercial gloves have short stubby fingers and leave me with glove-webbing at the base of each finger. I'm tempted to make these as gloves - just to see if I can make gloves that do fit.

Next post I might have a new sock started, littlest cub admired the Tardis socks I knit for elder cub and requested some of her own. Then again  I might have fingers and thumbs, on a glove . .. who knows? The excitement of indecision, this must be why I keep knitting.

Stella

Term break

It is term break, which means the cubs are on holiday for two weeks, in July,  mid-Winter, so frost and sleet and hail and wind ... and maybe if we are lucky blue sky, sun  or snow, all of which would be  good. I've taken two weeks leave, one of the few bonuses of being an academic, lots of leave, but the pay scale reflects that. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of marking and meetings, knowing that I was to be away for two weeks and knowing that I was to come back on a day of teaching - I had to get marking and such squared away before I left. Today is a bit of a tidy up as well, responses to the last post, and reports of things done .... one post-able and one not so much.

Soap sweaters, I posted last time that I had been making a few of these, and I was asked to say more. I'm not sure what to say, there are a few patterns on Ravelry, this is the one that is perhaps the most like the ones I make, but mine are plainer. I cast on as for a toe up sock, and then knit to fit, with increases and decreases as needed. I graft the top together. Some times I have worked an icord three needle bind off and added a wee loop so the soap can be hung up. Previous soap sweaters have been knitted, but I mistakenly thought that I could crochet them faster. Turns out no, but the crochet ones are pretty, and maybe have a little more texture. I think I mentioned before that I like the way the soap sweaters keep the soap from going soggy, especially when traveling, and double up as a bit of a wash cloth. I can squeeze the soap+sweater almost dry in my towel and pop it in my wash bag ... and it survives a trip nicely. I've knit mine in a variety of yarns, handspun, and most weights from sock to Aran ... they all work fine, just use the appropriate sized needle. I use circs or dpns, but I guess you could knit them flat and seam them.

 These are some old and empty soap sweaters. They smell like the soap they contained, so these are a mix of Pears, and Eco Store scents which are heavenly. As the soap is used the wool felts and shrinks around the soap, and at the end there is a little felted bubble of wool with a delicious smell. I store  mine in the blanket box - to keep the winter bedding smelling nice. I have heard that some people make their soap sweaters refillable - and you could if you used superwash wool so it didn't shrink and felt. I'm not sure a button or dome would be useful, but one of the patterns provides for that - with the water and agitation and all, I just can't see that working for me, both staying done up and not shrinking so it could be refilled. Besides I can cover 3 or four soaps  in an evening and I love the little felted peebles and rocks that are left over.  If I refilled them I would miss out on those.

 I finished a sock, the second so technically I finished a pair of socks. Teosinte by Knitspot, all done, rib, cast off, and ends woven in. These turned out a tad looser than I would like, and they have a short row heel with is not my favorite to wear, so I'm putting them aside for Bear. He has ten pairs in his drawer, so I feel ok about stockpiling some for when he needs more. I do have to admit I knit the larger size .. and I would knit this again, in the medium and with a flap and gusset heel for me.

 I used Judy's magic super stretchy bind off for the cuff edge. I love this but have to look up every single time how to work the yarn overs for a knit and a purl stitch. I love how the way the extra yarn overs are worked at the transitions between knit and purl forms a hinge that lets the cast off zig and zag like the rib pattern. I also love how this stretches ..... I don't have a photo but believe me it easily stretches three times or more its original width.

And the last photo, is the two Bears, Big Bear and eldest Cub, hanging out and doing what ever guitar players do together. Jamming? Eldest cub asked Bear to show him how to finger a particular cord, so he could play a particular tune .. and they sat and played for a good three hours. I thought I better record this moment so when one turned into one of those teen age trolls that I hear about I could remind myself that there are times that he is not a troll. Hidden amongst the yarn at the end of the blanket box is my mystery swap knit for 2012. For now that is as much as you get to see, it may be done, it probably isn't, and if you guess what it is or who it is for please keep mum until after next weekend when it is swapped.

The rest of today involves a finger nail painting party with the younger cub, her friends arrive at 1 with their favorite polishes, I have a large pastic mat, lots of cotton balls and nail polish remover, have given several lectures on the importance of 'being very careful', and have bought chocolate biscuits, fizzy and baked muffins. Seems a good way to kick of a term break.

Take care
na Stella