Glitz Knitz

memory yarn

2008-12-02T08:32:00.004Z

Mooncalf recently posted asking which of our handknits actually end up getting worn. It's a good question, and makes for a nice reminiscent post, so I thought I'd go for a trundle down memory yarn. I rarely get compliments on my handknits, and I take that as the biggest compliment of all: few people would ever guess...

Brown langora bolero, from Rebecca. It wasn't as big a hit at first, but since I started wearing a series of dresses in autumnal colours to work, this gets worn all the time. ALL the time. It's cuddly and at the same time not too cardiganish, and I love it.

Rusted Root. Looking slightly pill-y now: I suspect that's cashmerino for you. But still, a wardrobe staple, again hitting that boundary between cuddly and cosy on the one hand, and sharp and cool on the other. As time goes on I think it, like all handknits perhaps?, will become more cosy and less sharp, but I am still in love with the curves and the versatility of this one.

Bulky Cabled Cardigan. For those days when you just want to wrap yourself in warm tweed armoury and say pah! to the world. But in a stylish fitted way. The fashion mags keep claiming 'chunky knits are in!', and I look at those draped, sculpted piles of cables they have on high-end fashion shoots and think, I could make one of those! If I thought about it hard enough! And then I don't think, so this will have to do as my high-impact, high-texture Vogue Knit. It's not all that voguey, really.

Thermal and the Henley Imperfect have started to look like wardrobe classics, too. They have travelled to London and Dublin and been stroked and admired, and their slimness makes them perfect professional garments. Hooray.

Of course, knitting is always like this. I never have disasters. No no no.

I certainly didn't just bundle this one in a bag and send it straight to Oxfam without even trying to fix it, did I? Perish the thought!

Of course, the real classics are the socks. Which get worn day in, day out between September and March. Socks, solid wool socks: only one pair has died on me, the most of them are stalwart as ever. I'm not sure what I ever did without them.

Short Attention Span Knitting

So I finished the Noro yarn scarf, almost in my sleep, so simple and seductive was the lace:

It's short and has pretty colours and tucks nicely under a high-necked coat. But it still feels like paper to the touch.

And thus I was seduced into starting the balloon-sleeve top. This is going to be yet another of those kidsilk frivolities that gets started and never worn. I know it. But shh! I'm enjoying knitting with air and dreamy softness, and hopefully I can hang the resulting frivolity on the wall as art, even if I never end up wearing it. Judging from most Rowan publications, that's the most suitable fate for their garments...

taking the edge off

2008-11-09T19:13:00.004Z

Dark winter evenings. They really do bring the knitting muse on, don't they? Even the finishing muse. My Ravelry list still shows a shamefully long list of wips and zzzs, but nonetheless, I finished the Thermal. And last weekend, mouth full of fluffy parching angora, fingers finding yet another dangling strand to be woven in, I finally finished the Henley Perfected.

FO: Henley Perfected

The Victorian-style buttons are perfect. Unfortunately, there are only four of them, not six as there should be.

But I think leaving the collar open at the top is actually fine: buttoned up to the top might make it a little over-bosomy. And it's reasonably bosomy as it is. Not quite as bosomy as this photo might suggest, mind. I was going through all classes of contortions in front of the time delay setting of my camera, trying to strike a natural pose that would show precisely the right amount of jumper with the amount of drape on, when I remembered that, back when I was a-wooing my lady love, I sent her a dress form for her birthday, and that she now lives with us. So below I have included is a much better idea of what the jumper actually looks like on.

It's form-fitting but not over-tight at all. The yarn is a bit scratchy, but softened up with washing; the finishing was pernickety, but makes the jumper look professional. In short, this is another of those knits that really doesn't look handknit; that is so smooth and finished as to look unremarkable at work. And that may well be the highest compliment going.

Pattern: Henley Perfected, from Interweave Knits, Winter 2007, knitted in size S. This was a good idea, I think; I am obviously not an S (UK size 12, for anyone who's interested), but it's a fitted knit, and handknits always stretch.

Yarns: "Pekhorski" Russian angora/wool yarn, bought off eBay years and years ago. Well, three years ago.

Needles: 3 mm circs and 2.5 mm straights, slightly smaller than called for.

Time sucked: Half a non-monogamous year. A long time to be hanging around, but I lost patience again and again. I am a bad knitter.

Pattern modifications: Magically lengthened.

So now I have two fine-knit, form-fitting jumpers to wear to work, and I am very very pleased with myself.

You'd think, then, that I'd get back to the long-suffering Geno, wouldn't you? Or that Lush 'n' Lacy? You would. But sometimes, you just need to lash into a quick, simple knit, to take the edge off, as Knitting Neels once said on her blog. It's a phrase that makes a lot of sense to me. We all knit for different reasons; there are meticulous, careful project knitters, chunky-knitting product knitters, and, I suspect, quite a few knitters like me, overburdened with twitchy nervous energy, and not sure where else they'd discharge it. So projects where you have to concentrate are all very well, but sometimes you just need something to occupy your hands when you read...

FO: Vintage Raspberry Beret

Pattern: Vintage Beret, from Rowan 44

Yarns: DK lambswool bought on the cone from Kingcraigs Fabrics on ebay

Needles: 4 mm circs

Time sucked: Twenty-four hours, tops

Warm, pink, finished. You'd think I'd be satisfied, right? Nah. You'd be wrong. The siren song of the Woodland Stole was calling, the attraction of mindless lace was too great, and I fell...

I rarely post about non-knitting content here, but I should finish by saying I too am still on a cloud from Tuesday's US election result, and am so, so thankful that Obama will be president in fewer than two month's time. Thank you so much, US citizens! I am on so much of a cloud, I actually went and bought Obama's memoir today, and am now speeding through it as I whisk up the lace from the Noro sock yarn. It's an extraordinary book; personal, cerebral, intense, and much to be recommended. (Unlike feckless startitis. Sshhh).

it's always the way...

2008-11-03T09:25:00.004Z

It's always the way on this blog, isn't it? Months of hibernation, and then suddenly a flurry of posts, followed by silence. I am sorry! And I have so many things to show you, but I haven't got around to photographing them properly. So this is a catch-up and a confession:

Catch-up

It was wonderful going to the States in June. Wonderful... and jet-lagging. What happens when you get jet-lagged? You run around in a panic and forget essential things. Such as your beloved Kaffe Fassett toe-up socks. Clearly, this is no good, and a second pair must be knitted forthwith:

Plain toe-up heel-flap socks, 60 stitches, knitted to the very very end of the ball. I've tried fancier sock yarns, but for that perfect balance between softness and durability, Regia wins out every time. Holds its colour, holds its structure, is always comfortable and has really generous yardage. This is the Twilight colourway of the Kaffe Fassett lime, and I don't think I like it quite as much as the Earth, but oh well. Look how well it goes with my IKEA rug! That has to be the main thing, right?

The other great thing about going to the States, of course, was taking delivery of that amazing shipment of Knitpicks yarn. Mmm, Knitpicks. When will you start shipping to Europe and save our benighted continent from expensive yarns, eh? There's one for the presidential candidates to consider, I say. Forget the politics of oil and arms; it's the yarn trade that should be considered this election. (Or possibly not.) Anyway, finally, finally I got my hands on some Knitpicks Gloss in Parsley, and all summer I slogged away at a Thermal, size small.
And indeed, although the Rosy shrug was my official civilisation knit, I actually was knitting the Thermal on my civilisation day itself to help take the edge off the nerves, so it, too, partakes in the glitter of romance. It took a while. Quite a while. But once done, oh, it is possibly the most perfect knit ever, the first thing I've knit that really, really looks professionally made, goes with almost all of my outfits, always flatters. I wear it at least twice a week, and would do more if I could. We did a photo shoot yesterday, but as only one photo came out that did the Thermal justice, you'll have to wait till next week for the full shoot. In the meantime, here's a taster of its silky gorgeousness.

A confession

I'm still stash-busting. Hell yes. We've moved into a lofteen half the size of our old house, and that stash must be busted. Look, I cast on for a Lush 'n' Lacy in some lambswool I bought a year ago that's taking up a lot of space: I should be feeling the love, right? It's a chunky winter knit. I need to knit up the yarn. It's a popular pattern. And I should be MONOGAMOUS. Except that... on Friday, I took delivery of a copy of Rowan's Studio 12 booklet. Which contains anything but chunky handspun knits. Instead, it's full of light, lacy, silky knits, fashion-forward and amazingly styled. I had to sit on my hands on Friday to stop myself attacking my Kidsilk Haze stash that I have left over from the shrug. It was physical, I can tell you. The lust! What is chunky lambswool compared to this?:

Just. Not. The. Same. That is what. Pray for my knitting chastity, for I fear I won't hold out long...

the return of autumn, the return of knitting

2008-11-01T08:47:00.006Z

Hello!

It's been a while. There are reasons, and I think I'll list them, and then you can decide which excuse flies. (This is the precise opposite of the strategy that works best with parents, teachers and bosses, of course, where the key is to pick one single excuse, any excuse, and stick to it. But you are my loyal readers, and that's different.) So:

I just got civilised!
I moved city, again
I interviewed for a plethora of new jobs
I got a new job
Which involved a lot of brand new teaching
And a lot of brand new commuting
Also, I thought for a bit that I would be buying a fancy pants new camera, but it is possible that this might be a little beyond my budget, new job or not, so I held off taking photos for a bit.

Pick your excuse! That doesn't mean I've not been knitting, though, no no. There's been quite a bit of it since the civilisation. As the chilly storms rolled in from the Atlantic and the temperature dropped, even slimfitting angora suddenly looked promising. So I dragged out the infamous Henley Perfected once more, tried it on, and realised, with a sinking heart... perhaps making it Small under the principle that I have never yet met the handknit that didn't stretch was not such a good idea. It was cropped. Britney Spears cropped. Tummy-showing, rolly-uppy, unflattering cropped.

So I took a deep breath, googled, and found that apparently you can actually just pull a thread just above the hem of a garment, snip the thread and pull it out, pick up the stitches and knit to lengthen it. Who knew? It sounded implausible...

but look, it worked! This is the lengthened back hem: the front hem is still three inches too short.

Like this. But my lovely lady friend then spirited the last ball of angora yarn away to complete a cardigan that she is knitting from it. Leaving me to do nothing but try and pick out the right buttons for the completed product:

These are from a hideous black polyester jacket I bought in a misguided attempt to be smart in about 1991. Polyester jackt: long since dead, pretty Victorian-style buttons: have stayed with me all these years. I think they'll work, don't you?

There are a couple of other FOs to show you, but I'll show you one: my jealousy every time my lady wore her Rose Red combined with my stubborn desire to own a beret made out of RYC silk wool, and I knitted my own:

Man, the silk wool grows. I may have to slip in some elastic, because the yarn is heavy and slippery and feels as though it wants to slip down off my brow and engulf my whole body like an expanding jellyfish. But it looks good, doesn't it?
(Pattern: Rose Red by Ysolda
Yarns: RYC silk wool in Greenwood, 2.5 balls
Needles: 4 mm bamboo
Time sucked: about a week and a half)

And I'm being very promiscuous with my WIPs at the moment, but I'll confine myself to one so you're not completely shocked:

These are the Travelling Stitch Legwarmers from Interweave Knits. There's something about tight Austrian legwarmers that's a weird combo of hippy and, cough, trachtlerisch, and I'm not sure I approve of the semiotics of yodelling traditional Germanic costume. But the gorgeous semi-solid Araucania Ranco and pretty stitch pattern have stolen my heart away, even if I actually never do wear them in reality for fear of looking like a stealth Jörg Haider fan...

Rosy Shrug, triumphing

2008-08-13T09:34:00.002+01:00

HelenMary 08001.JPG, originally uploaded by ceciliamadden.

And lo, here is the Rosy civilisation shrug, finished, and magically ensuring that somehow, these are the only dancefloor photos I've ever seen that don't look ludicrous. I chalk it up to the elegance of the pattern, myself.

Size made: 36, no mods apart from knitting for about 2cm on 5mm needles at the very end of the ribbing, which gave it more of a frilly edging. It is gorgeous, and it was perfect for the occasion, and I am so grateful to Aileen for her gorgeous design!

(I'm also madly in love with my beautiful lady, but sssh. You probably guessed that anyway. It was a blissful, magical day, full of sparkle and sunshine, and we just couldn't stop smiling and smiling.)

knitting and life changes

2008-08-03T11:55:00.004+01:00

Hello!

It has been a long time.

I have been to Chicago!

And I bought this:

And started on a long-lusted after project, this:

There was nearly a month knitting the middle section (two-row pattern repeat for 42", over and over), but I triumphed:

Look how glam and silky and grown-up it is!

I didn't wear anything handknit for this:

But I suddenly realised that I would need something rather special to keep my shoulders warm for this.

Two weeks ago, I looked out the window at the pounding rain, the cutting breeze, and realised with a start that the civilisation would be in three weeks, and that possibly it would not be the balmy and pleasant night predicted by me when buying my floaty, sultry dress. I might, actually, freeze. Have I knitted a stitch for this wedding? I have not. I frantically ransacked my stash for yarns that might just work, and suddenly remembered... years ago, the lovely Felinity came to visit me in the flateen, bearing with her a lovely gift of the pattern and yarns for a pair of gloves. I did try with those Frivolous Fingers: I knitted all the way up the arm of one, battled my way with the palm.. and then came to the fingers. I wailed, I cried, I tied the yarn in knots and then I threw the project across the room and scrumpled it into a corner, where it rested until yesterday. When I held the yarns up against my civilisation dress, and realised that.. it matched!

KSH: a dream to stroke, a bitch to knit with. But I strugged on with bamboo DPNS, ripped back once as I realised I made the wrong size, and finally, the Rosy civilisation shrug, designed by the magic Aileen, is finished! But you will have to wait until next week to see photos of it in its full wedding glory.

(I am so excited. So excited! You can't imagine!)

A clean yarn drawer is a peaceful mind

2008-04-08T16:01:00.004+01:00

I've been writing a lot over the last week, and working away in the back of my mind has been a stash tidy session: destash, knit up, log on Ravelry, contemplate, decide. Gradually working through the stuffed plastic bags that have been clogging up my drawers and my mind for the last year, and thinking, do I really want to take this with me? What have I learned in the past three year's knitting?

A case in point: cotton. It turns out I don't like it, much. Particularly not in heavy weights and in cheap varieties. It hurts the hands and doesn't shine and hangs heavy off the shoulders in a shapeless fashion. It is only ideal for babby knits, but, it turns out, I have no patience for babby knits. I am not a doting grandmother type. Not me. So farewell, entrancing package from two years ago: I've posted one bulging parcel off to a babby-loving friend who'll appreciate you, and one other is ready to go, and a sense of guilt that I never finished a babby knit has gone with you.

And then there's that other cotton, which is indeed heavy, but is not cheap and is complex and a rich rich green: Gedifra Marokko, which I had picked up on sale in KaDeWe in Berlin two years ago (I am made of fancy, I know).

Chuck, gift or knit into a bag? But I don't really do handknit bags: they sag and get grubby and don't have enough pockets. Or... I could trail Ravelry late at night for possible saviours?

Hallelujah. The yardage is exact, to about three metres or so; it'll be short and indacent, but I can wear it over a light cotton vest, and the colour will still be perfect. Type into Ravelry, photo, keep.

And so it goes. There are a few yarns I might yet part with: this sheen-less laceweight Lavenda, for instance,, another eBargain that is sitting about unloved: pure wool and vintage she may be, but she's also unshiny, fine, unsexy.

And that brings me to the point, I suppose: eYarn is not necessarily the way forward, because no matter how knacky the pattern, how perfect the gauge, what makes the garment is the yarn you use, its sheen, how soft it feels against the skin, its halo, the play of its colours. All the things you can never tell in an eBay photo. So do I regret all the eYarn? Of course not. It was my learning yarn, without which I would never know that I have no room in my life for mohair, that tweedy yarns are glorious and fun but to be used sparingly, that there is a great difference between cheap cotton and fancy cotton, that pure wool is not all alike, and possibly most importantly: the yarn on which I discovered what I love to knit and what leaves me cold and unloved. Ditching a half-knitted baby dress or scratchy scarf is much less painful when it only cost €3 in the first place. And sometimes, you even hit lucky...

As with the patient Russian angora-wool, who waited her time in the back of drawers and is finally knitting up into flickering-flame glory, three years on. Sometimes, stash patience really is a virtue. But given how fast my life moves, usually not.

O Stash, How I Love Thee

2008-04-03T09:59:00.005+01:00

No really, I do love my stash. Not all of it equally, of course. But there's such a sense of frugality when knitting from stash! Of achievement! And I am being very, very good and holding off purchasing lots and lots of yarn that I really, really want, because... I have just found out that I am flying to the US in June. Chicago and Madison, homes of local yarn stores and lots of luscious yarn names that I have so far been only able to ogle on Ravelry and Interweave Knits and Knitty, and oh! I am drooling already! Better yet, I have a knitting partner in crime on the trip, so I suspect we'll be enabling an awful lot of fancy American kettle-dyed hand-reared yarn to make up for the acrylic wilderness of Northern England where we now live. Hooray!

So, one thing knitting from stash teaches you: what yarns you really like. Most of my stash comes from the broke days and from eBay. And much of it is sitting there looking... just a bit wrong. Just a bit too cottonny, a bit too acrylicky, a bit too chunky, a bit too listless... a bit too unloved. That's the thing about eBay, of course. No stroking and fondling the yarn! But my adventures in eYarn have been an Educational Experience, for through the medium of bargain yarn, I have found out for very few euros what I do and do not love. And currently, I am all about... the fine-gauge yarn. Yes. I have some stacks of aran and bulky to use up, some plain DKs without shine or brandname that I will doubtless get through at some time or another, but ooh, my heart is going out to fine, slightly sheeny, possibly blended yarns, sock yarns, cashmere-mix 4plys, laceweights... and I hereby promise to buy only the fine. Promise!

So what about that stashbusting, eh? Well, it's been like this...

FO: Chestnut Rose

Pattern: Rose Red, from Ysolda

Yarns: Langora (left over from my bolero), two-and-a-smidgen skeins

Needles: 4mm bamboo DPNS

Time sucked: A week or so. I was on the train a lot.

Verdict: I was risking it, using a fingering-weight yarn in a DK pattern, and even though I knitted the large size, a slouchy beret she ain't. Much more, as my lovely lady friend said, a "bell-y cloche". But my lovely lady friend is a 1930s kind of a girl, and she likes the cloche look. I'm not sure I'd wear it myself, but she loves it, and that is most definitely what matters. Hooray! It's a gorgeous pattern, though you do have to keep paying attention, and I might well stashbust some more and knit up some of the rest of my shocking-pink cashsoft into a properly slouchy DK beret...

And there's more!

FO: Baudelaire Socks

I love looking at all the pictures of these on Ravelry: because they're toe-up, people get fabulously long socks out of them, and really, long socks is where I'm at. Lookit, high lacey socks and mary-janes: it's back to primary school! Except that these are particularly witchy mary-janes, of course...

Pattern: Baudelaire, by Cookie A from Knitty, by Cookie A, from Knitty

Yarns: Schoeller + Stahl Fortissima Socka in pink, bought at the knitting and stitching show (sighs) two years ago. See! I am getting through the stash! I am! And this yarn was always meant for the Baudelaires! I like it: it's robust and even. More on that anon...

Needles: 2.5 mm DPNs

Time sucked: Two weeks. Good LORD, these socks are princessy and demand attention. I ripped back and forth and recrossed cables and picked up YOs and... well, if anyone's paying enough attention to my calves that they notice an uncrossed cable, you really have to worry about them. They're only socks! It doesn't really matter! And yet somehow, it does.

Modifications: I opened out the cables and increased them to allow for calf muscles in what I hoped was a spot of elegant-ish clocking on the side. You can kinda see in the photo. It seems to have worked; the leaf pattern isn't stretching out at all...

So in general, am I pleased with myself? I am. Onwards and upwards with the Henley P., so! It's 16 degrees and springy out, but the BBC assures me that it'll be rainy and back down near freezing at the weekend. Light lacey warm jumpers will be where it's at, then. Meanwhile, to decide how best to get rid of the rejected members of my stash: the poor fluffy baby cottons (hate baby knitting), navy sock yarn (have knitted socks for my dad, don't have any other men to knit for), the lustreless vintage Lavenda 3-ply... all to make way for US yarn. And on the subject, a sad story to finish up with: luxe yarns may be only gorgeous, but look...

My glorious Lorna's Laces! My fine and finicky Potomatusamuses! Six months of wear and the washing machine, and look what happeneth! I suppose it was inevitable, but let it also be a Warning to me on my search for luxe yarn: luxe is as luxe does, but don't get too carried away by the Shiny. Yes, Lorna's Laces is beautiful, yes, the sock pattern is elegant, but you know what? if the socks aren't going to last, then it ain't exactly worth it. Let this be a lesson to me, in my yarntastic June adventures...

stashbustin' is rock!

2008-03-11T19:42:00.004Z

Stashbusting is brilliant! Look! It's the last, the very last of my ancient Tivoli Luxury Tweed Aran, which kept faith with me through the Debbie Bliss biker jacket and the Le Slouch (now defunct), and has now been whipped up into a replacement Gretel with cunning overtones of my lost Slouch. Zippy swift! (It's a lot faster re-knitting a pattern you know already, isn't it?) And I have two more berets in mind to finish up other luxe yarns, which will be only gorgeous, not to mention PRACTICAL in the horrendous weather that's in it at the moment.

So now, I'm empowered into more stash accessorising: I am knitting, finally finally, a pair of Baudelaires with the yarn I bought for them a year and a half ago.

A year and a half, three or possibly four countries, countless house moves I have been trugging that yarn around for. Good lord. But now finally it can encase my legs in springy decadence!

Accessories are fun, of course, but jumpers are where it's at, and I have finally, finally started knitting up my legendary Russian angora yarn.

I meant it to become a cardigan, for a while, and then it was to become a stole, but then I saw Interweave Knits, and my heart was lost to the dainty elegance of Henley Perfected. For once, I got perfect, heartbreakingly perfect gauge...

And here is the lunar landscape of the back of the Henley P: I've finished the back and am zipping through the front. I'm slightly trepidatious about this one, because it's the first jumper in ages that I'm making without short-rowing. You can't really put darts in lace; but non-darted jumpers either ruck up over the bosoms on me, or look like sacks. Eeeek. I'm hoping the lace will stretch. Please pray for a miracle for me?

I'm really touched, by the way, that there are still lovely people commenting on this blog. Six months away, and you still care that my hat blew off! It's enough to turn a knitting tragedy into a heartwarming moment. Thank you so much!

Next up: knitting vows, fantasies, intentions and realisations: it's Glitz's Knitting Unconscious. Be warned...

the untold viciousness of the ipod nano

2008-03-02T08:52:00.005Z

So what else have I been knitting, these cold and weary months? Warm accessories, yo, to make my life that bit cosier in the wuthering Yorkshire blasts. (I never knew what wuthering truly meant until I moved here.) Some of it has been full of success, for example:

Pattern: Made up myself, from the Harmony Guide to Knitting Stitches

Yarns: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky (bargain! at £2 a ball from the Knitting and Stitching show), colourway 17020, 5 balls.

Needles: 7mm circs

Time sucked: A week or so.

Chunky, cosy, not quite as wide as I had hoped. I kind of imagined that five whole balls of chunky yarn would envelop me in a cashmerino heaven so dense it would be like rolling in clouds, but not quite. Not so much yardage in the chunky yarn, really. But it's still cosy and elegant.

And as ever, there were socks: I was at a job interview for a job in deepest wildest Wales, which in the event I didn't get, but who cares when there are yarn shops?

FO: Leaves on the Line Socks

Pattern: Ahaha. Basically a top-down heel flap sock, no pattern, but, erm, improvised by myself under very trying circumstances: viz, the train being delayed for hours when the journey was supposed to take five hours anyway in the first place. WOE.

Yarns: Kaffe Fassett Design Line, lovely Landscape yarn in lovely colourway 4255, oh yes I love it, bought in Clarewools of Aberystwyth.

Needles: 2.5 mm circs

Time sucked: Hmm. Most of a train journey, during which I mostly but not entirely managed to remember how to construct heel-flap socks. Except that I forgot how to turn the heel properly, in the midst of my trainy woe so there's twice as many stitches in the heel as there should be. Which makes for a fierce baggy heel. Oh well.

But then, alas, a tragedy! A woe! Also in the nice wee woolshop in the wilds of Wales, I saw and stroked some RYC Silk Wool DK. Oh, my. And I fell in love. You would fall, too, if it happened to you. And yes, it's insanely pricey, but oh! the sheen, the density, the colours! So I brought it home, and with great loving care, I constructed me a beret fancy enough for its glory, viz, Gretel.

FO: Oh my darling Gretel

Pattern: Gretel, by Ysolda.

Yarns: gorgeous RYC Silk Wool DK, 2.5 balls of Greenwood (306), bought in Clarewools of Aberystwyth.

Needles: 4mm dpns

Time sucked:Two weeks or so? For I had to rip back and reknit, because...

Pattern modifications... The first time I knitted this, it ended up like a pork pie hat, weeny and tiny, and I realised that the DK yarn required an adjustment. I ended up adding in 4 stitches to the cast-on, which gave a slightly uneven finish - the number of stitches has been worked out fiendishly exactly to give a perfectly balanced pattern. But I don't think you can see the glitch if you're not looking for it - there's an "orphan" point in the star-shaped crown, but you really do have to squint to find it.

And oh, how I loved my green shiny hat, through the cruel winter days of blowing and sadness! But then. But THEN, one windy moisty morning, I put on my iPod, crammed on Gretel, and battled through the dark morning to work, escaping into a cheery world of mashup. I arrived at work, raised hand to head.... and there was Gretel, gone. HOW HAD SHE BLOWN OFF WITHOUT ME NOTICING? Had I been transfixed in a mashup dream too deep to notice Gretel being whisked off my head? Or had my iPod, somehow, actually eaten her?

I know not. All I know is, I have never seen my pricey crafty Gretel again. Sadly, then, I put on my Le Slouch instead, and wore that all the next week.

Until, one windy morning, I arrived at work, put hand to head, and... there Le Slouch wasn't. Gone. Two berets, in two weeks, eaten by the Yorkshire wuthering. Emily Bronte, you should be alive at this hour to record this deepest of all mysteries, because to be honest, it is beyond me.

let's not lie about resolutions

2008-02-27T13:11:00.004Z

Erm. Cough cough cough. A whole six-month hiatus? That would be the hiatus that coincided with me taking up a new job, then. I have been around on Ravelry, and I have been knitting, but blogging? well... not so much. And I'm not going to promise great things in future.

My new year's resolution, then, after an unseemly yarn binge at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate (twice the size of the Irish one! awesome!) is to knit from stash. Thing is, right, I do have an enormous stash, but most of it is my beloved old eyarn from the broke days: nameless pastel cotton, scratchy worsted-weight wools, cheap rough and ready vintage yarns. And now that life is looking slightly less impoverished, I do have a faible for the luxe yarns.

Moreover, knitting from stash is a questionable endeavour. You start, for instance, with the remnants of your Cashsoft and a stash of Jaeger Matchmaker Merino aran, both of which you bought cheap in Knitting and Stitching shows of yore. You have fallen in love with the Neiman pattern from Knitty, and even though it's a pattern that calls for a DK yarn, you decide to repurpose the aran anyway, in the interest of frugality. So you knit and knit at an impenetrably tight gauge, adding in short rows, when, of course, the ten balls of aran you own run out, because there is less yardage in aran than in DK:

So, all in the interests of frugality, you order some more to finish the jumper. Except that Jaeger have now discontinued Matchmaker Aran, so you buy Matchmaker DK instead, and hope it works.

And you know, it works pretty well. The jumper's a bit heavy, and a bit off-the-shoulder, but in general, it's a good heavy-duty winter jumper.

FO: Neiman

Pattern: Neiman, by Weaverknits from Knitty.

Yarns: Jaeger Matchmaker Merino Aran, black, ten balls; Jaeger Matchmaker Merino DK, black, 1.5 balls; RYC Cashsoft DK, fuschia, 1 ball.

Needles: 3.5mm circs. I told you it was solid.

Time sucked:A month, I guess?

Pattern modifications Short rows short rows short ROWS.

Except. Except now, you have two and a half balls of Matchmaker DK left. What on earth can you make with them? And then you think of the almost-whole ball of Tapestry you have left over from your Seaside Handwarmers, and you think, Aha! I will do a scoop-necked tank top loosely based on Fad Classic, but to use up the Tapestry I will add in the fair-isle pattern from Interweave Knits's Sweetheart Vest! How frugal!

So you knit and knit away. And soon enough, you discover that two and a half balls of DK is nowhere near enough to make a tank top. Except that by this time, Jaeger have also discontinued Matchmaker DK. So you order Merino Extra Fine instead, in the hope that it will match. It doesn't. It's much shinier and nicer, even though it's black too.

But it all comes out in the fair-isle wash, and between the three yarns, you have more or less the foxiest tank top in town.

FO: Sweetheart Fad

Pattern: Fad Classic, with extra bonus Sweetheart fair-isle pattern.

Yarns: Jaeger Matchmaker Merino DK, black, 2.5 balls; Jaeger Merino Extra Fine DK, 2 balls, Rowan Tapestry, (Potpourri 172), 1 ball.

Needles: 4 mm and 3.5mm circs.

Time sucked: Two weeks

Pattern modifications Short rows short rows short ROWS. As ever. And I didn't do the fancy Fad Classic waffle stitch, just stocking stitch.

Foxy, yes. But was it really frugal? I leave you, oh friends, if I have any left, to decide...

Rebecca! How could you do this to me!

2007-09-30T12:55:00.000+01:00

This is my first ever no-photo post, and it is just to say AARGH! Rebecca! How could you do this to me! For the very first time I am utterly let down by one of your designs! I love your wrap-style jumper. The body looks unusual but sexy and stylish. But the arms! The first time I put on the jumper, I had to put it on over my bra alone, for no t-shirt would fit underneath those circulation-destroying arms. And for a deep-V jumper, that's not a good look. Small body translated to neat fit on a medium me; small arms were like something from a bustle dress circa 1890, you know the ones that ladies had to be sewn into. So I knit a medium sleeve. Which just about met around my wrist, but I wouldn't swear that a t-shirt would have fitted underneath the armpit either. And now, I am finally after finishing a LARGE sleeve to fit on a SMALL jumper, and if it doesn't fit after knitting FOUR sleeves for it I'll, I'll, I'll make a hat of the whole project, so I will. BAH.

Oh OK, I feel guilty about not having a picture. Look! Conkers! Autumn is here with a vengeance, and where is my warm jumper, eh?

Knitting Frenzy

2007-09-13T19:34:00.000+01:00

What do you think is the very best thing to do when you're starting a new job that could be make or break for your career?

That's right, get knitting-obsessed. I blame, of course, Ravelry for everything. Not my obsessiveness. Nor my lovely ladyfriend's ordering of giant oiled cones of yarn (more later.) Not my feverish desire to get jumpers finished before the autumn comes. No no. It's all Ravelry's fault.

(I'm Glitzfrau on there, but currently I am obsessively cataloguing old projects that you all know far too well, or at least, those of you who follow this blog, that is.)

So I have completed all of the pieces of my Rebecca wrap jumper, only to be caught out by the bane, the horror of the knitting life:

picking up stitches. Well, it's not the greatest horror, but it's frustrating. The border pulls and tugs at the already skimpy top and bah, it won't fit. Meanwhile, the jumper is blocking, so I have to wait for it to dry before I can rip out the ribbing. OH MY LIFE IS SO HARD. Well, perhaps not.

Pieces blocking. It's eyarn, by the way, vintage superwash, dirt cheap, cheerful of colour, rough on the skin and pleasing to the purse. I like it.

Of course, because I am a sheep and an obsessive, I already have another project in mind for the oiled yarn: Interweave Knit's Tangled Yoke cardigan. Though not in fancy Rowan tweed, heavens no. In the looky-likey King Craig's Fabrics silk/wool mix. This is coated in oil for machine knitting, and after consulting the wise Livejournal knitting community, I'm going to go ahead and knit it as-is, and wait for the final blocking to bring out the yarn's Glorious Bloom. In the meantime, it kinda reeks. And feels manky. But it's cheap, OK? All about the cheap right now. For your scientific interest, here's the difference between the unwashed swatch: smells like a mechanic's underclothes, stitch definition crisp -

and its blooming washed sister, felted and fragile and (almost) fragrant. Like the mechanic's underclothes on a date, let's say, but a date with a farmer's underclothes that aren't that fussy either.

I'm a teeny bit nervous about the fabric - it feels a bit sheddy and scary, but so does luxe yarn, I must remind myself. Fine tweedy yarns aren't intended to be robust, right? Right? (That's why I feel safer with superwash, mind.)

A long summer, with much learning therein

2007-09-05T17:05:00.000+01:00

Oh, no. Another hiatus, and after I'd got my knitting mojo back, and all! I am so sorry, friends. In exculpation, here is what I have been doing this summer: finishing a book, going on holiday to Portugal in a heatwave, moving country to the England, and starting a new job. Is quite a lot, no? And my trusty knitting has been keeping me company - indeed it has - but my blogging ability hasn't really. I am indeed sorry, fine internet friends. Now that I am here, can anyone recommend any knitting shops in Yorkshire? Apart from the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate, that I know about, but O! November is a long time away, and I long to be stroking luxurious yarns before then. Please help!

So, I said I learned lessons, and the main one is: Yarn Will Be What It Wants To Be. Lesson one:

Variegated sock yarn is for socks

For real. Like My Fashionable Life says, variegated yarn for clothes is... tie-dye, and well, nothing wrong with tie-dye, but I am not fifteen. Hence, these glories:

Quite easily the most expensive socks I have ever knit, but so so pretty, and just look at that sheen! And utterly absorbing, utterly lovely to knit. Hooray for Cookie A. And hooray for not having knit a variegated skimpy vest that, let's face it, would have got divil the bit of wear this sad sodden summer.

And now, lesson two:

If Glampyre says a cardigan should be cropped, it should be cropped

You may remember my bulky cabled cardigan of yore. It's a Glampyre pattern, but because I was drowning in long smock tops, I decided to knit it long and baggy and... well. It started out shapeless, and I told myself that would be fine, because it would be a snuggle-up-at-home type cardigan. But then, the weight of all the extra wool began dragging it off my shoulders entirely, and I couldn't even get warm in it, because my poor neck was frozen. So last weekend, I finally bit the bullet and reknit it in small, with a couple of short rows, but otherwise much, much more according to pattern:

There. That's more like it, isn't it? Slightly longer button bands, no mixed colours, and snuggly warm shoulders. Chunky knits are in this winter, I believe, friends, so we are in LUCK.

Otherwise, there has been experiments in mitred knitting, which leaves me a bit baffled:

This is one colourway of Noro Kureyon. Number 170, to be precise. And people knit themselves jumpers in these nutso colours? I ask you. Anyway, mitred squares turn out not to be hard at all, but I'm not so sure about the end result. It's a cushion cover, and I'm sure it'll be snug, but well. Yes. Thanks to Radegund, anyway, for the kind gift of yarn!

And now, it's back to my real knitting obsession: sleek little knits for layering. O Rebecca, let me hear your siren song:

Too pink? Or not? The yarn will lead me, I promise.

In which I learn a stern truth about life

2007-07-15T14:46:00.000+01:00

Want to know my stern truth, O readers?

Sock yarn. It's gorgeous. It calls to you, Make gorgeous vests of me! Knit me into a fine lace shawl! Shower your wardrobe with my variegated beauty!

But you know what sock yarn is very, very best for?

Socks. Mm-hm. No more poor sad random camis for my Lorna's Laces, no. She's coming home to where she belongs. That said, she's quite the most expensive sock yarn I've ever bought, so nothing but the most beautiful pattern for her.

Pomatomotamus, Hippopotamus or... well, you know what it's really called. When this pattern first came out I thought to myself, "one day, when I'm a really clever knitter, I'll make that pattern. One day." Of course, that was nonsense. This pattern is beautifully written, clear and elegant, and fiendishly, fiendishly clever. You don't have to have any brain at all to follow it. The fiendishly clever one here is Cookie A. I tell you. This is an old pattern, so you've probably drooled over it already, but look, look at the clever heel flap:

with the scales of the pattern flowing into it. Beautiful.

I'd forgotten how wonderful socks are for taking the edge off. Small and manageable and elegant and so very silly. There's a lot of changes coming up ahead, and I need some truly beautiful socks to help me stride through them, I think.

FO: ravelled bolero

2007-07-08T09:47:00.000+01:00

Or, you know, insert pun of your choice about shrugging or boleros here. It's done! Done! All nine inches of ribbing, done!

FO: Rebecca Bolero

Pattern: Bolero mit Lochmuster, from Rebecca 31, in the larger size

Yarns: Vintage Jaegar Langora, 70% lambswool 20% angora 10% nylone, in colour 353. It took 12 20g balls. Far more than I thought.

Needles: 2.5 and 3mm circs

Time sucked: A month. I wasn't knitting constantly, but still, 3mms take their time

Pattern modifications: I didn't knit it in merino? Also, I am incapable of picking up stitches to order, counting what was it? 366 stitches exactly along the outside edge? How can any mortal figure out what intervals to pick up at? I just pick them up, damnit. Hence, the ribbing probably flares more than it should.

Here's a back view:

Not the neatest lace graft ever, but it will do, it will do.

Verdict: Well. I got gauge all right, but angora is considerably less stretchy than merino, and it's quite a bit baggier than I thought it would be. When I think shrug, I think vanishing little confection, just hugging my shoulders; this has more the ease of a full-on autumn cardigan. So, on the one hand, I'm not that sure it's all that flattering.

On the other hand, even before I'd finished the ribbing, I was more than a little tempted to just cast it off and wear it a few days this week, such is the gap in my wardrobe for a fluffy brown shoulder-warmer this cool, unpredictable summer. It's perfect for the colours I wear. It's small enough not to look wintry, it's fluffy enough to look luxurious, I will wear it and wear it. I hope. Also, it's a Rebecca pattern, the second I've knitted, and they're just so nifty, you know? Here's the Eureka moment when I folded the blocked garment together...

and the polyhedron did become a jacket, after all! Like a miracle! It feels thought-through and properly designed, is what. And maybe some day I will put on half a stone again (probably, indeed), and I will still be grateful of fluffy fitting warmth around my shoulders, and in general, I'm pretty happy.

good lord, Blogger pictures seem to be working!

2007-07-03T10:52:00.000+01:00

Hooray for posting yesterday! I totally got my knitting mojo back. Knitting mojo hooray!

That means, of course, that my work mojo is for the birds. But oh well. It's July, it's cold and wet, and to be honjest, no-one is actually paying me to do work, so yes, sod it. So! While the peculiar polyhedron is drying, I've been busy, oh so busy...

Swatching for Serrano, for one thing, in my Russian wool-angora. For a wool angora blend, it isn't half stiff, and that's after I've washed it with conditioner. The gauge is odd: 26 stitches and 32 rows, I think, which is slightly off the Serrano gauge; but the designer gives two gauges, one blocked and one unblocked, which suggests that the yarn she's using has an awful lot more bounce in it than this one. So I don't know. I might actually write to her once I actually commit to the project, because from all I've read, it's a tricky, complex design, and I might as well get it right from the start. That doesn't sound like me, does it?

No, what would be more like me would be bating into a vest top in the round without the slightest thought for swatching or design. I took my lovely Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock for this first try, and put in the sweet eyelet pattern above... but I got only about eight inches into it before I had used half the yarn available, and the fabric was far too dense. A shame, because it's cute, but no good. This is in the nature of a perverse project for me, seeing if I really can get a camisole out of two skeins of pricey sock yarn, so I will not be defeated! Not I! I will rip back and start again on larger needles and with a more open stitch pattern...

This is the beginning of Katie's Razor Cami, a light sexy knit with sufficiently skimpy yardage to make me think that I might get there. Except, of course, that it's a non-shaped tube just like Orangina, and we all know how well that went. Not well. So my plan is to knit the first skein as far as it goes, block it, and Think Again. I think this may have to have a solid bodice with darts, if the yarn holds out, if if if. Designing on the fly and me: not the best of histories. But it's fun. And best of all, I'm knitting from stash, right?

So! To finish up, more from Family Knitting. This time, it's for the fellas. Roll up, oh dream hunks!

This set is called Big Softie. Presumably because Mr. Blonde Beard is mug enough to take your first fair-isle attempt off your hands, smile gamely while wearing it, actually think it's a thoughtful present, and hold out hopes for a proper date next time. Keep hoping, Mr. Blonde Beard. You know the knitting lady's affections are engaged elsewhere...

Mr. Star Spangled is a-coming knocking, with a veritable galaxy of Romantic Love tumbling down the back of his royal blue cardi! You can't compete, Blonde Beard. No. Knitting Lady has fallen hard, and is about to present Mr. Star Spangled with the ultimate romantic gift...

A King of Hearts themed tank top! But look! It's not just a natty reference to the dashing pursuit of Solitaire, the only thing that filled Mr. Star Spangled's life until Knitting Lady turned up. No. Do you see what she did with the heads? YES! Mr. Star Spangled's head is the King of Heart's head! What a card!

Dear sweet god. Whatever about the Cold War, the nuclear threat and mass emigration, if ever I saw an argument for thanking the stars we don't live in the eighties, it's that creepy jumper. Brrr.

family knitting

2007-07-01T21:01:00.000+01:00

What? What?! A whole month since I updated?

I have been knitting. Just not very fast. Good grief. How did that happen?

Anyway! The Rebecca bolero is knitted and blocking, ready for assembly.

Well, it fits the schematic. If any of you can offer any hints, any slight hints whatsoever, as to how on earth this strange polyhedron possibly turns into a garment, you know, those would be very welcome. Really. Any advice welcome!

So my next project...

Is somewhere in the bottom of this cupboard. Yes. Our house is on sale at the moment, and the yarn was hurriedly stashed away in order to give the house that Aspirational Urbanite as opposed to Crazy Knitting Lesbian Ladies look. It's in there, I know. Somewhere. I'm just not sure that my mental energies are equal to battling through it...

Remains only our old favourite, wild futureknitting fantasies. And while in a charity shop, my eyes alighted on a book called Family Book Of Knitting, gloriously and unabashedly from the 1980s. Classic knitting, I thought, hardly changes at all! Look at all the cute 1940s knitting patterns there are out there! I bet with a little change of colour, these patterns will look fresh and funky in a second!

And look at the cover pic. Very funky, non? I'm not about to knit quite that much fine-guage lurex, and boob tubes aren't really me, but this is pretty great, right?

And then... you open the book. And it is hard to figure out where the glory even starts. Let's start here, though, will we? Gilt-Edged Cardigan

Perfect for wearing with Bacofoil skirts! And for disguising ill-fitting bras! And... for matching wedding cakes? Yes. Maybe something with a waist?

Those of you who struggle with hair straightners, just think. One whisk of the time travel wand, and you too can tgravel back to 1983, where frizz is cultivated. That's true femininity, right there. Sure, it's a lot of stocking stitch for one skirt, but if it's going to give you milkmaid hips like that, who's complaining?

OK, you don't like the bunchy waisted look. It's dated. Family Book Of Knitting does have the answer though...

Look, with a trilby over your eyes, no-one will ever know it's you. That's got to be a comfort, right?

angora and lace - implacable enemies or a lovably mis-matched couple?

2007-06-06T10:06:00.000+01:00

I've been away, and back, and away, and back, so sorry, no blogging! I was even in Nuremberg in the pouring rain, and tracked down the yarn shop five minutes after it closed. That was sad. I could even see the latest issue of Verena smiling at me through the shop windows. No luck. No Verena or Rebecca for me this year, it seems.

But buying knitting magazines is only going to do bad things to my stash, and my stash is for busting, this summer. So first up: remember this springy Langora in an autumnal colour?

I decided that a Rebecca pattern was the way t magic it into a summery garment:

A wee shrug, because I didn't know the yardage of the yarn; it's 280 grammes, which seems quite little, but then again it's 14 balls, which is quite a lot. So I decided to err on the side of safety.

Evidently I am wildly conservative, because that's two balls there, and it's the guts of a sleeve. I suspect the whole confection will take 7-8 balls, which will still leave me some stash to bust. I may even have to swap some of it... then again, can one ever have enough baby-soft chocolatey cardiganness?

The prevailing wisdom says that angora and lace don't mix, because the yarn is too fluffy to show any pattern. This is a pretty simple pattern; what do you think?

The yarn is very unstretchy, presumably because the fibres are short, so I'm not sure how it will block... but it's all a brave adventure, right?

rusted fox

2007-05-14T10:28:00.000+01:00

So, alas, Orangina. It could possibly be fixed by unknitting the ribbing and (groan) either starting it further up or (double groan) extending the lace and having only a couple of inches of lace lower down.

Or, you know, I could stick it in the back of the wardrobe and clock it up to experience. And possibly recycle the cotton later, because it is nice cotton. Yes.

But! At a loss for a shrug pattern, and wondering what to do with all that gorgeous cashsoft yarn I bought at the knitting and stitching show, all the sexy knitting photos of Rusted Root caught my gaze. I didn't even mean to knit it. It wasn't a plan. And I had 500g of that cashsoft, far too much for a short-sleeved top. Didn't I need a cardigan?

No use.

FO: Rusted Root

This is awesome. Look at the pink and the curves and the puffed sleeves! And I didn't even mean to knit it. Honest.

Pattern: Rusted Root, by Zephyrstyle, in medium

Yarns: 5 skeins of RYC Cashsoft DK, in a discontinued colour (512), 57% extrafine merino, 33% microfibre, 10% cashmere, 130m per 50g.

Needles: 4mm Addi Turbos

Time sucked: Two weeks, is all. It zips along.

Pattern modifications: Ah HA!

The magic of short rows, is what I added. Thanks here go to Fantasy Knitsfor her curvalicious inspiration. I only added three short rows; Fantasy Knits added six, and if I had to knit this again I'd do the same. But look at the difference they make! Normally, high-necked puff-sleeved tops make me look like a potato sack with an elastic tied around it, but with the rows of joy, no-one is safe from my curves.

I wore it to a style bar on Saturday, and no-one booed me out. No one even raised an eyebrow. A handknit, in a style bar! That's how rocking this is, yo.

not scarlet, but orange

2007-05-13T16:28:00.000+01:00

Ack, it has been a while. As ever, it feels as though there's been no knitting at all, and as ever, I find to my surprise that actually, I've been knitting almost without thinking in the holes of a really ridiculously busy fortnight. In fact, I've f'ed some o's, who would have thought? So first up:

Orangina

Teeny tiny needles, endless ribbing, tough (though softer than usual) cotton: I finished it! But... I'm not sure. I really amn't. Everyone I read online said to make sure that I knitted it a size smaller than usual, so I did: this is an S, and I am definitely an M. And yet, look: I blocked it as narrow as I could, and there's still something slightly loose and baggy about it. Moreover, the nice scallops at the neck, which stick up sweetly in everyone ELSE'S version, don't seem to work on mine. My lovely lady friend says she thinks that perhaps the main problem is that the ribbing beings in the wrong place: nowhere near my natural waist, making me look a bit pointless-shaped. Perhaps. I don't know. It's not a complete disaster, but I'm not sure I'll be wearing this in public any time soon, either. (Even with a vest underneath.) What do you think?

Pattern: Glampyre's Orangina

Yarns: Rowan 4-Ply Cotton in a discontinued shade called Rosehip

Needles: 3 1/2mm circulars

Time sucked: A month or so

Pattern modifications: Not that many, really

stella nova, reviewed

2007-04-22T11:19:00.000+01:00

On my travels, besides knitting frantically on the ribbing of Orangina (which never, ever will be finished) I also picked up two gloriously lurid balls of Debbie Bliss's new yarn, Stella. (I would link directly to the Debbie Bliss site, but weirdly, the yarn's not up there yet.) It's 60% silk, 20% rayon, and 20% cotton, a rather heavy aran-weight combination that gives a very average yardage of 88m per 50g. The colours are absolutely amazing:

the price is a bit jawdropping. It's silk, and priced accordingly, but it handles like a short-fibred cotton yarn, not a sheeny, long-fibred silk. On casting on, the yarn is every bit as fray-ey and splitty as it promised to be in the ball, alas. It's lovely and soft to knit, and much easier on the hands while knitting than cotton is, but it splits like crazy. Another very unimpressive quality of the yarn is the number of knots - lots of little ones holding together separate plies, making for lots of annoying little ends to be woven in to the back of the work.

On the plus side, the stitch definition is, as promised in the brochure, quite good - better than I would have thought - and the fabric it knits up into is really lovely, felted-feeling and cuddly and heavy. Also, it seems to hold its shape quite well. But still, the finished product sheds.

I had a wee stroke of Debbie Bliss's other new summer yarn, Pure Cotton, which is the most sumptuous, silky, gorgeous aran-weight cotton imaginable, and at a much better price. Stella doesn't seem to do anything that this yarn doesn't do anything that that one doesn't, apart from having the heavier, warmer qualities of silk. That said, the colours are amazing.

So what did I actually make with the somewhat maligned ball?

Another Glampyre knit, because clearly, I am unhealthily obsessed. Some day, I will knit up everything Stephanie ever designed, and then you will see a whole new theme for this blog, I swear. In the meantime, I've been slightly obsessed with this pattern: it's the nearest you can get to an accessory while still being a garment, I think, the slightest, scrappiest jumper imaginable. Does it really have a function, I asked? The answer is, surprisingly, yes, actually: it's not just bright and fun and a super-quick knit, but worn on a fair spring day over a cotton t-shirt (as in the pic), it's a really welcome hit of warmth over the shoulders, almost as good as wearing a full cardigan. That would be the silk in the Stella, I guess. Well done, Glampyre, for whipping up a natty solution to a problem I didn't even know existed. That's true science for you.

instant sun top!

2007-04-14T19:24:00.000+01:00

Ever woken up to sun, glorious sun, and wished that you had a brand-new hand-knitted top to swank around in, without actually having to knit it?

Ta da! Just overdye an old one, and swank away! Well, swank away happily until you look at the photos and realise quite how much non-toned tummy is on view. Whoops. Just as well I knitted that extra round of lace edging the first time, no? It's last year's Soleil, overdyed in violet because, well, I just couldn't get my head around that mottled ducks-egg thing that the top had going on. Whereas violet is rock. Just to make sure that no-one mistakes me for a goth, I'm being sure to accessorise with rainbow belt and scholarly own. It's a queer-tastic purple vest top, not gothy purple lace, OK?

You are all, by the way, to be admiring HOW MUCH MY HAIR HAS GROWN in the year in between, OK? It's hard work, growing my wimpy hairs, I can tell you. A full time occupation.

And then I wandered out in the gorgeous spring sunshine to This is Knit's new shop in Blackrock, to drool and admire Lisa and Jacqui's gorgeous new premises. They recognised me as soon as I went in! Even though I've been in Northern exile for so long! That's knitting community for you. The shop is absolutely lovely, and so are the Lorna's Laces yarns. I have a job now, and I had to succumb, if only for the fun of using the ball winder:

Then down to the beach for a bit to gaze over Dublin Bay into eternity, while waiting for the train. I love my city. Lorna's Laces-enabling job or not, I can't wait to be back.

Wheeee!

FO: it's amazing what a giddy rush of colours can do

2007-04-10T13:09:00.000+01:00

It is truly astonishing what a giddy rush of colours can do to a knitter, isn't it? The label on my multicoloured merino yarn said, adorably, Make your yarn happy - Knit It Now!. So I did. Fast.

FO: City Shawl

Tad-da! It's Glampyre's City Shawl, scaled down for a much finer gauge. While I was knitting it, I thought I was slightly crazy. And now I've finished, I think that yes, the yarn was slightly crazy, but the shawl is also awesome. This would have made great socks, but the shawl is something else.
Pattern: Glampyre's City Shawl, modified to suit a much finer yarn. The pattern as written is for chunky yarn. And once I was mistress of the mesh pattern, I started winging it, adding drop-stitch rows and garter-stitch rows at will, as the fancy took me.

Yarn: Celestial Merino Dream, in colourway Fiesta, on sale from Get Knitted. That's just one skein, people. 100 grammes, 280 metres. I can't really believe it myself.

Needles: 5mm circ.

Time sucked: A week. Glampyre suggests a weekend, but there's a lot more mileage in finger-weight yarn.

Unblocked splendour. Check out those colours!

Verdict

Oh, come on. It's awesome. Isn't it? I had moments of doubt knitting it, but the simple pattern turned out to be just perfect for such a nutso yarn. This one is for summer afternoons in the park, listening to hippy drummers and eating Mr. Freezes in the least natural colours possible.

In other news

There's my orangina, lickety-splitting along. Glampyre, she is a genius for the simple and effective. It took me a while to become one with the pattern, though. I think there's three stages in knitting lace; first, the set-up rows, where you have no idea what you are knitting and any mistake could be fatal; second, once you have a general feel for the pattern's rhythm, and have somewhat memorised it; and third, when you really know what function each stitch has in the pattern, and can instantly spot and correct a mistake. It took me a few days to get to the latter stage with Orangina, simple lace though she is, but I'm there now. Roll on summer!

We won't speak of Ivy. Not right now. But thank you, thank you for your kind words!

It all seemed so happy

2007-03-30T21:35:00.000+01:00

Oh, last Sunday! My parents had just left me; the sunshine was beaming in through my bedroom window; I had no work to do, and Ivy had just been knitted up. All she wanted was careful, neat sewing, and I was so excited about how clever this pattern is, how scrupulous in its details, that I was prepared to spend hours getting the seaming elegant and strong.

I seamed the shoulders. I seamed an arm. I tried it on. It billowed, it blew, it looked handmade and lumpy. I checked the other arm, and found that somehow, I had gone way off gauge, and the arm was 5 inches wider across at the shoulder than it should have been. It didn't look puff-sleeved; it just looked crap.

So, yeah. There was nothing for it. I ripped the shoulders back. I love that pattern so much, and I won't have it looking lumpy and sad, you hear me? I won't! But I have this awful crashdown now; I was so looking forward to the finishing line, and to showing off a truly elegant handknit garment. I think the thing that I find most discouraging is that I don't really know why the sleeves went so horribly wrong; I couldn't make either one add up to the pattern, both went way too wide, and yet I got gauge, so I have little real hope of being able to fix it. I mean, I'm trying, but the yarn is a mess now it's ripped and has a different gauge, and in short, I have lost the love. This is a shame, because it was going to be so pretty. I will try harder, I will!

Here, have some Happy Colourdy Spring Photos instead, yes?

Look, bright green new spring sandals, and sunny forgetmenots to dance on!

And this, this is an impulse internet purchase: those colours. Could you have resisted? Now really, could you? I'm sighing and lusting and stroking it, and its dizzying kaleidoscope is taking my mind quite away from the sad Ivy mess.

It's sock yarn, really, 100 grammes (or 280 metres) of it, and of course it would make glorious socks, but I think I don't want it for zany socks. I am torn between making it into a One Skein Wonder shrug, and a very plain openwork shawl. What can you do with 280 metres of fingering weight? Tell!

the first day of spring, the first day of lace

2007-03-21T08:44:00.000Z

Look at this!

Yes, I know it's a dark and obscure little photo. The point is, it's the last tie for Ivy. And that when this is done, I will have all the pieces finished, and will only have to sew it up, and it will be DONE. I have a few wibbles about the size of the pieces - my shoulder decreases on the sleeves would and would not work out, no matter how I tried, so I have a feeling it'll be a little bit puff sleeved - no bad thing in itself, right? But in general, it's going to be a slim slim cardigan in this season's silver, and of course youse are right, I am going to keep it silver for as long as metallics are in style. Next winter it can preen as an all-new violet or green garment; for now, it can stay as it is.

The ties are actually quite painless, particularly if you knit them on DPNS, rather than wrestling with a big long circular that engages in intimate embraces with a long dangling string of knitting. Zip! Zip! Watch this spot!

Last week, you may remember that the heavens were shining, I was trying on new green sandals, and spring was in the air. The soft red cotton of Orangina called to me, and I cast on. Oh, luxe yarns! This is the nicest cotton I have ever knit with, for real: soft and non-splitty and with amazing definition, definitely and definitely worth the extra you pay for Rowan if you don't get it at a bargain price off eBay. Go Rowan.

So I sat on the train, and chatted about politics and poetry, and the train sped ever-northwards, and the wind blew stronger, and flurries of snow started dancing alongside the window, and now it is about zero degrees and all thoughts of pretty light cotton lace seem as folly and vainglory. Oh well. I made a start.

My thoughts are also turning towards that vintage chocolate Langora yarn, and I suddenly was caught by the thought that I haven't yet made a long-armed shrug, and that those are actually perfect for this season's dresses and the breezy Irish weather. But are shrugs completely, utterly, indelibly over, friends? Do you know? What do you think? Would you ever speak to me again if I knitted a shrug?

In the spring, a young woman's thoughts lightly turn to...

2007-03-17T18:37:00.000Z

A young woman's thoughts lightly turn to thoughts of being fickle.

You know? I've nearly finished Ivy. I really have. And I think she's very clever, very elegant, is going to be a gorgeous addition to my wardrobe. Really. It's just that... well, those very last steps, seaming and (yawn) knitting the ties), they don't really appeal. Worse, I then have to dye her, because that pale grey will just wash me out if I wear it as-is, and that sounds rather tiresome, too; how do you dye a woolen garment without a giant stainless steel pan? I suspect you can't. Some day, I will get round to it, in the meantime...

Look at that glorious blue sky! Doesn't that put you in mind of spring knitting? And look at the lovely red yarn, too. I ordered it with Orangina in mind; the eBay seller swore it was Rowan, but I was sceptical. After all, Rowan doesn't come on cones, does it? it comes in strokable little pricey skeins...

Well, it might do now, but this is the genuine article all right; proper vintage yarn in a lovely glowing colour called Rosehip, which I think is discontinued. eBay at its best. Mmm. Little lacey tops, soft summer breezes. Soon. Soon. In the meantime, I will prance about in my new sandals at home, and pretend it's spring proper.

Oh and! Did I tell you about the tragedy that befell my gorgeous bargain cashsoft DK? In our infinite wisdom, my lovely lady friend and myself decided to stash our yarn behind the sofa in the living room this winter; out of sight and ready to hand. Every so often, we would comment to each other about how the heating in this flat really didn't seem to be working, and how cool it got in the evenings. Then, one day, I was convinced I detected a funny burning smell from somewhere...

and dragged out a melting bag of cashsoft from right up against the storage heater, which immediately started cheerfully emanating heat into the room. So we did get a cosy second half of the winter, once we figured out that keeping highly insulating wool right up against the heater mightn't be the most heat-efficient way of heating a room; but I sacrificed rather a lot of yarn in the process. Sigh. There's still quite a lot left that is in perfect nick, and that which is damaged can be used for swatching...

But still. Oh, the poor sorry scorched bits, and the indelible bits of melted plastic clinging on for dear life to the lovely luxe yarn! Let this be a lesson to you all, friends. Anyone who can think of a good pattern for roughly 400g of good cashsoft and 100g of, erm, distressed, please comment below...

tiny tiny knitting, tiny tiny needles

2007-03-14T08:51:00.000Z

The trouble with this knitting on 3mm needles malarkey is that there's not really that much to report. I read, I knit, I read, I knit, and slowly, slowly, slowly, the ivy leaves creep up the body of the cardigan. Ivy really is a beautiful pattern, so elegant, and so cleverly made, full of neat little details. And look! I feel like I make no progress, but look at this:

Add one and a half sleeves to that, which I currently have in the bag, and that's really almost done, isn't it? Apart from... THE TIES. Five feet worth of 1x1 rib, twice over. I'm going to have to get drunk to complete them, there's no other way.

I did get a moment of martyred knitter's gratification, though: on the bus on the way down to the metropolis, I was scrunched in a corner knitting and reading (it IS possible! Did you know? Alas, I am a devoted public transport person, and hence have no opportunity to go cruising around in search of little yarn shops en route, sorry Gilraen) and slowly, slowly marching up the first sleeve. The bus stopped in Newry for a five minute break, and in the pell-mell scramble for the ladies' loos, a girl grabbed me: "I'm sorry for bothering you, but what are you making?"

"It's a cardigan," I replied, "that's the sleeve I'm working on."

"Oh!" she said, "wow! That's amazing! I couldn't work it out, because of the tiny needles, you see! I mean, I knit scarves, but big chunky ones from huge wool. I couldn't figure out what could be so fine!"

You see? Masochistic pride. Obviously, there's no actual virtue in teeny tiny knitting, but it was nice to get the admiration, anyway, from a disciple who KNOWS.

fine-grained fantasy

2007-03-07T08:43:00.000Z

Hooray! After the sober report of knitting progress come the Wild Future-Knitting Fantasies. This is the fun bit.

I've finished both fronts of Ivy, and have cast on for the sleeves; I'm trying very, very hard not to remember that I despise sleeves, and instead to tell myself that stocking stitch sleeves are absolutely perfect for reading along to. I am also congratulating myself at being half-way through a cardigan knitted on 3mm needles. Yes. 3mm. Call me Vera Lynn, or whichever 1940s diva you like; I'm knitting at almost vintage tension. And this spring, I've decided, is going to be all about the vintage tension. Fine knits are the way forward. No, I will never get sick and throw up my 3mms in disgust. Never!

Last night I dreamed I was in Berlin again, and shamefully, I did not dream of museums, cityscapes, or even dear friends I had left behind; no, I dreamed of Fadeninsel, the blessed yarn shop. Tragic, no? All the more so because here, in the slightly less money-obsessed North, the local yarn shop is still thriving in dusty side streets, little havens run by little old ladies filled with acrylic, some pure wool and just a few luxe yarns, all of which you can touch and feel. Like this one, which I found on special offer:

Vintage Jaegar yarn, lambswool and angora, and hence springlike - which is why I photographed it in daffodils - despite its autumnal rich brown colour. I have fourteen 20g balls of the stuff, which unfortunately gives me no yardage, but hey! this is what bargain yarn is all about, right? Living dangerously. So I think a fine, tight knit is in order. Something very like Knitty's Thermal, close-fitting and slightly textured; I have another pattern for a similar knit in a Verena magazine, with a cabled stitch that eats up yarn, but which looks foxier. Maybe I will drag out a stitch directory and experiment. That would be fun.

And then, there is this, the very pick of eBay yarn:

proper berry-coloured red-haired flattering DK yarn, incredibly soft, pure wool, pure cheap. I'm still looking for cardiganal inspiration for this one, and am thinking of - eeek! - using that damn white-elephant SnB knitter's notebook to actually design one. This, of course, involves Maths. I am crap at maths. No really, crap, but crap. Believe me. Watch out for baggy, sorry knits, sometime very very soon. But at least they will show my Creativity!

And then, for summer, there's this poor yarn, fabulous, fabulous raspberry-coloured Russian angora, which I've been neglecting for ages:

It's beautiful. I keep thinking it should be a shawl, but I have now decided, firmly, Look, I Don't Wear Shawls, What Am I , Miss Havisham? So it's going to be a fine lacy cardigan instead, quite possibly Knitty's Serrano - I'm loving Laura Chau's elegant, detailed designs right now, and even though I know some oneline knitters have had problems with this one, I'm more than equal to its sneaky intricacies, right? And that will be that.

In the meantime, though, although I am in a provincial, indeed rustic location, with little call for glittery mohair, I will damn well finish the Harlot's Progress as soon as I've stitched up Ivy. I will I WILL. I owe it to the Kidsilk Haze, so I do. Luxe yarns demand a little loyalty, I think.

and it turned to spring without me noticing!

2007-03-04T17:05:00.000Z

Hello, dear readers! If... if there are any readers left out there? (Imagine me squinting out through my computer screen, but too bedazzled by the unexpected spring sunshine to be able to see any of ye.) It's been a month, and a ferociously busy month at that: new job, new town, new temporary life. The first three weeks were spent in such a frantic frenzy of trying to locate photocopiers, remember names and forgetting to eat that the very thought of a knitting needle was laughable. But the other feature of my job is a long, long bus ride home and back nearly every weekend, and the best way to spend a bus ride is, of course, with an absorbing audiobook and a pair of knitting needles and... a little bit of stash yarn. Just a little.

This is the first eBay yarn I ever bought. I can't remember how much I paid for it, but I thought it was a bargain at the time; only when the box arrived did I realise just how much a whole kilo of fine mohair actually was. Clouds and clouds and clouds of silvery grey yarn, with French labels; I suspect, from the styling, it's vintage yarn from the 1970s. For reasons best known to an earlier, more knit-ignorant Glitz, I decided to double the fine, fancy yarn and knit my first jumper, Cowl and Howl from it; this resulted in a floppy, seethrough, chilly, huge garment, that I tried to wear, but eventually binned. The mighty failure barely made a dent in the stash. My flat is still coming down with the stuff; I tried to knit a cardigan with it a year later, but got the tension utterly wrong; abandoned that, and then finally thought, hmm, Ivy, there's a fabulously curvy cardigan that is just begging for a soft, drapy, sparkly yarn.

So here's the cast-on, fussocky tiny cables that took forever to get through, and made me wonder if this project would ever get off the ground...

but once you're through the cables, you're stocking-stitching away, just perfect for reading simultaneously. Here's the back, and I'm on to the second front now:

Sparkly, fine and drapy, if a teeny tiny bit itchy; just as I had hoped. Have you noticed the larger problem, though? ...the above photo is black and white, and it makes little difference to the image. I don't do monochrome, really; I'm a red-head. Kind of. Of sorts. Look, I haven't seen my original hair colour in about ten years, so it is really quite plausible that I actually HAVE gone red in the interim, right? So I'll knit it up, try it on, and see if I can really imagine a silvery grey top in my wardrobe; if not, I'll dye it dusky purple. Or what do ye think?

I have lots and LOTS of knitting stash and planning news, but in this entry, I'll confine myself to Cold Hard Facts. Stashes and plannings are the exotic spices and trendy cookboosk of the knitting world: it's all very well buying them in, but the proof is late at night when you get in shattered from work, and reach for the pasta and pesto again. Or something. In other words, it's all very well me planning, but give the hours in the new job, I'll believe it when I see it.

fairest isle

2007-01-30T10:24:00.000Z

It's finished! And I am ridiculously in love with it...

FO: Endpaper Fair Isle i-pod cosy

Pattern: Knit in the round, based on Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts fair-isle, and inspired by tragicheroine's iPod sock.
Yarns: Fortissima Socka, in colour 1012 (that's the hot pink), and Sirdar Town & Country 4-ply sock yarn, in colour 154. I used the teeniest scrap; you'd hardly notice I'd touched the skeins.
Needles: Ribbing done on 2mm needles, body on 2.5 mm

Here's the corrugated ribbing, and the attempted tubular cast-one. There's a row of weeny holes where the ribbing starts, and I'm not sure if that's inevitable with the technique, or whether I've done something wrong (most probable).
Time sucked: Half a day, more or less

And here's the earphone hole, at the end of the three-needle bind-off, because nanos, confusingly, have the Hold button at one end and the earphone socket at the other.

(I hate earbuds, can't keep them in my ears for the life of me, feel like a complete fool walking down the street trying to cram them into my ears every step I take. Am I alone in this?)

I know it's silly, but although I've knit far more mighty and far more practical projects than this - cardigans, socks, scarves - this tiny scrap of experimental faux-isle makes me prouder than almost anything I've done. Perhaps because of the number of new techniques I've crammed into this miniscule project, perhaps because of its perfect dinkiness - the pattern just the right size for so small an object - or perhaps just because I like shiny consumer electronics.

Next up: learning to fair-isle properly and to strand my yarns in a consistent fashion, instead of at random. But first, the move. The move!

all isles excelling

2007-01-29T13:41:00.000Z

Isn't the way that Eunny Jang writes about knitting so seductive? I'm a slapdash knitter myself, possibly happiest when mindlessly zipping around stocking-stitch socks while watching television, carrying on a conversation with my girlfriend, and possibly reading the Times Literary Supplement at the same time. Fecky attention to detail makes me, like Laura Ingalls Wilder, feel as though I am flying apart. Moreover, proper attention to detail involves maths, an implacable enemy that cannot ever be underestimated.

And yet, Eunny makes the poetry of detail, the pride in precision seem like a reflection of the works of the Almighty himself. Thus, although, like Felinity, I had been intimidated away from fair isle by Debbie Stoller's dismissive description of it in Stitch 'n' Bitch, Eunny's rhapsodies about "just a little hit" for her Endpaper Mitts had me seduced. I don't really need another pair of fingerless mittens, but the tiny detailing of the project sounded wonderful.

And then, I came across this truly ravishing fair-isle iPod sock, based on Eunny's chart, but with lovely little details such as the corrugated rib and black side seam. Mmmm, I thought. Such a strange coincidence that precisely this electronic item of desire was delivered to my door last week...

...and that, although I had bought a silicone case to protect it, I quickly discovered that silicone cases and knitting households are almost entirely incompatible. Silicone picks up fluff like nothing on earth, and my lovely consumer electronic looks like something the feral cats outside dragged in. (There really are feral cats outside this flat.) I'll just swatch for the cosy, I thought, I don't need to learn all that fancy two-handed throwing yet, just see whether or not it works at all as a concept...

but when it comes to something as microscopic as an iPod nano, a swatch is more or less the size you need.

No, it's not perfect: the pattern doesn't quite match up, I'm not convinced about the corrugated rib, I didn't manage to figure out how to put in those side seams. But look! how utterly dinky, what fairy tininess is in this project:

Teeny teeny tiny, the perfect size for trying out testing new techniques: in one inch, we have a tubular cast-on, corrugated rib and stranded knitting, all new to me before midnight last night. Such a delicious little project. I foresee many, many more.

this one go chunk

2007-01-27T22:00:00.000Z

A small cold moment on a freezing January afternoon gives me the perfect opportunity to finally show off my triumph:

FO: Bulky Cabled Cardigan

Pattern: Glampyre's Bulky Cabled Sweater

Yarns: Tivoli Chunky Tweed, 100% wool, in shade 755, and a random ball of Tivoli Chunky yarn, also 100% wool, in navy.

Needles: 8mm, 7mm and 5 1/2 mm Addi Turbos

Time sucked Probably about a week and a half

Pattern modifications: Ah. Yes. Several. For one thing, I didn't get gauge, but then I didn't expect to, and a top-down raglan is reasonably flexible. For another, if you follow that link, you will notice that Glampyre's snappy original has the ribbing right on the waist, creating a nipped-in silhouette, despite the bulkiness of the overall design. By contrast, you will notice that "nipped-in silhouette" is not quite the way you would use to define my version. "Vast, shapeless mass", perhaps. But I have, you see, a fondness for long floaty tops, and fashion demands, still, low-slung jeans. None of the cardigans that I own actually cover that crucial strip between top and jean, over the kidneys, and you know? it's January. So I knitted on and on and on.

But it worked. Also, I knitted it in reverse stocking stitch rather than in garter stitch, for that tiny bit more structure; given that this isn't precisely the most structured of garments, I'm glad I did.

Verdict

: I DO love it, in all its shapeless glory. Already, the weight of the chunky wool is beginning to tell, and it is becoming more and more an off-the-shoulder cardigan, and a draggy-around-the-hips cardigan. Elegant, it ain't, and I think it'll require a scarf for full body insulating purposes. But oh, it's WARM, and it's generously sized, and the colour is fun, and in general, although I feel slightly bashful about wearing such a classically hand-knitted looking lumpy garment... it's all good. It's warm. It's dancy!

Next up will have to be a very fine knit. But where, oh where will it be knitted? Finally my news: I'm moving to Northern Ireland for a new job next week, so will be in parts foreign and peculiar for four months. No more This is Knit! No more raging at Hickey's! (And of course, no more lovely lady friend, BOOO.) But at least I will now only pay local postage on online knitting orders from the UK. There's got to be some upside, right?

Berry Nice

2007-01-25T10:29:00.000Z

Life doesn't stop whirling, here at Glitz Towers. Tell you what: I'll tell you why at the end of the post. And in the meantime, you have to ogle me knitting and tell me it's only gorgeous. OK?

So first up, that beret:

FO: Twilley's Freedom Spirit Beret

Pattern: Beret, from the Twilley's Freedom Spirit pattern brochure

Yarn: One and a half balls of Twilley's Freedom Spirit, 100% wool, in Earth.

Needles: 3 1/4 mm and 4mm circular needles, though this isn't actually knitted in the round.

Time sucked: Swifter than lightning! Two days, three maybe? And I was very busy doing other stuff those days, what's more.

Verdict

I love it! As Aileen says, it's a very different construction to the Le Slouch: you start increasing almost immediately, then you knit straight around for a few rounds, and then you decrease again. Also, it's knitted flat and then seamed, but since my Lovely Lady Friend taught me to seam, this no longer holds any fears for me.

The stripes in this are a lot more subtle than in Aileen's version, but no less lovely. And janey, do I ever need a dacent beret in this weather...

Actually, I lie. I'm going to put off my news till the next post. Bwa ha haaa!

new lady on the block

2007-01-23T08:34:00.000Z

Hello, lovely readers! This is an exciting notice: my lovely lady friend has finally succumbed to the craft blog temptation, and is now posting her styling threads at http://msbias.blogspot.com/.

Ms. Bias is much much cleverer than me, because not only can she knit like a fiend, she sews. As in tailors. As in can actually make a substantial portion of her wardrobe herself, and frequently does. Go ye and ogle!

Patience is a virtue

2007-01-22T20:53:00.000Z

...and we all know how that one ends.

The bulky cables are finished, and alas... the yarn didn't last out. You know that moment as you are hoping against hope that the last skein is still barely touched, and then when you can suddenly see through the few remaining coils of yarn, and realise that all is lost? Yes. All was lost. Thankfully, the kind eBay seller slipped in a completely random ball of navy chunky Tivoli yarn with the teal tweed, so a rescue, of sorts, could be effected. I dithered and dallied between the relative virtues of a pure, unadulterated teal tweed cardigan, and a cardigan that covered my kidneys, and January won out.

My lovely lady friend claims that the navy makes it look more pulled together; I'm not convinced. It's all looking a bit shapeless and worrying from where I;m sitting. But I will button shop tomorrow, and perhaps that will be the saviour of the cables. In the meantime, chunky pure wool yarn takes a looong time to dry.

Oh! Here is a thing to think about in the meantime:

Last Christmas, my mother, having learned about my new hobby, gave me a stack of King Cole black acrylic yarn for Christmas. I smiled thinly, and freecycled it. This Christmas, she said meaningfully, "I do hope you made yourself something nice with that black yarn," and gave me... this.

Pounds and pounds and pounds of pure acrylic. Please note the classy "Eurogeneral" label. Mmmm. I was in some despair, because evidently my mother would be really, really pleased if I made something with this: but what, hell WHAT? And then, in a charity shop the other day, I came across this:

Somebody's sweet handmade flowery bag. I feel a bit sorry for this bag, because it is handstitched; at the same time, it has no fasteners, and I am not given to yellow floral print, either. But! Look at those on-message handles! It occurs to me that, while all that grey acrylic would be grisly for a jumper, for one of those cabled clutches that are so fashionable right now, it would be just the ticket. And I could knit a strap and put in a metal snap and line the bag and truly, from a well-meaning granny bag it could go to being This Season's Cabled Tote.

Plus, my mum would be happy. Which is the main thing, I think.

winter, fear me!

2007-01-20T10:30:00.000Z

It's been a busy old week here at Glitz Towers, I'm telling ye. And I didn't even get caught up in that astonishing hurricane that Europe saw last week. Nope, I had hurricanes of my own, of the worky variety. The week didn't see that much knitting, though I did make some progress on the cardigan. But last night, in the course of watching The Wind that Shakes the Barley, the ridiculousness of having a pair of socks with just four rows left to knit up grabbed me, so I finished. It felt like knitting with vicious little toothpicks, after my clunky clumsy 8mm needles, but I didn't let myself get put off...

FO: Edinburgh Bohemian Socks

These are from Lana Grossa Meilenweit Magico, in colour 2529, knitted toe-up on 2mm dpns. Plain stocking stitch, the simplest socks imaginable.

Look, matchy toes! After the last self-striping pair, I took the trouble to make sure they did actually match. A wise decision, I think. As was the stocking stitch: that colour pattern is far too pretty to mess up with funny stitching. I love the fabric.

And so back to the bulky cabled cardigan. Ah, clunky bumpy 8mm needles, flying through the chunky yarn at a rate of knots. No dangerous little spiteful 2mms, just good honest workhorse needles knitting up cardigans super-fast.

A little too super-fast, perhaps. I fear this is going to be an extremely attenuated and rather tight-fitting cardigan. The curse of ebay yarn, where you can't buy an extra ball if things go wrong, and perhaps the curse of Tivoli chunky, which doesn't reveal its yardage. "There's nothing in chunky wool," said Aileen, yesterday, "especially not with cables. It's a scam." It was fabulous to meet up with Aileen again, and somewhat startling to realise it's only the second time we've met, so avidly do I read her very entertaining blog. We wandered off to Trimmings for notions and Hickey's for yarn, and alas, it was a far cry from our meeting in Berlin and the riches of Fadeninsel. Hickey's gets more depressing every time I go in there. Who on earth invents these yarns that look as though a plastic goat excreted them? Why on earth don't they stock plain, sensible 100% wool yarn at a plain sensible price? Argh!

However, they DO stock this particularly luscious yarn, Twilley's Freedom wool. The second I saw the photo of the gorgeous beret Aileen knit out of it, I was smitten. It's even prettier in real life, too. Such subtle colours! And look, although I was very, very tempted by the purple colourway, I resisted. Look! Green yarn! Fresh new resolutions for a fresh new year. No longer will I be a slave to pink, I swear it.

Bulky Cables, redux

2007-01-13T13:47:00.000Z

I've been reading a lot about vintage knitting, here and there, over the last while, and one thing that has remained imprinted in my mind is that old-fashioned knitting was done much, much more tightly, to give a more structured knit that repels water and resists wear and tear more efficiently. Whereas today's lackadaisical urban knitters prefer to whip up a giant jumper in Rowan Biggy Print and 12mm needles in the course of a weekend, because at the end of the day, knitting is a fun hobby and not an economical necessity.

Now, I'm somewhat allergic to the concept of hobbyism, the idea that you lavish leisure time and energy on a pursuit that you believe to be useless and extraneous, and don't strive to attain excellence in it, to turn it into art or to make it useful to others. Also, I'm somewhat allergic to the idea of disposable clothing, and knitting knit too loose certainly has a built-in obsolescence. My beloved Ubernatural is feeling a bit bagged-out and loose these days, knit as it is on 10mm needles; then again, it's knitted from recycled yarn, so I guess that's OK.

Anyway! All of that was by way of a wordy preamble to the conclusion that, although Glampyre's pattern for the bulky cabled sweater was knit on 8mm needles, the ball band on my Tivoli bulky tweed yarn recommended 6 1/2 mm, and I decided to compromise and knit it on 7mms. This yielded a very stiff fabric, one that practically walked around my room barking, "Get it together, girl! Sure aren't the rations fierce tight this winter, and after the Glimmerman came calling there'll be no gas to heat the house tonight..." Wartime fabric. Unfortunately, wartime fabric also eats up yarn at a fierce rate. I had just got down to below the armpits, and forty percent of my yarn was gone; robust and noble the cardigan might be, but there was no use knitting it if it wasn't going to cover my waist in my very post-modernly low-slung jeans.

So I picked up the end and cast-on again on eight millimetre needles and sadly slayed the old cardigan to feed the new, as is my wont:

I know that technically speaking you are supposed to rip back the cardigan entirely, wash the yarn to get the kinks out, and then wait for it to dry, but honestly. I am not that traditional.

Slight modification: although I like the photos I've seen of other knitters' versions, I don't like the two fat cables going side by side down the middle of the back, so in the newer version (the one on the bottom) I've spaced them by 11 stitches, rather than by 3. Also, the cardigan is being knitted in reverse stocking stitch rather than in garter stitch, because really, a looser drape is one thing, a giant springy elastic fabric another. I do need some structure.

I'm not sure whether you can see the difference between the 7mm fabric and the 8mm, but here are the cables side by side:

The 8mm one is the one on the right, and the cable is mighty, I'm telling you. Plastic and commanding and giant. And although the fabric isn't as tight, it is softer and has a more elegant drape; which leaves me wondering, what on earth were Tivoli thinking when they asked me to knit a bulky, tight-spun, pure wool yarn on 6 1/2 mm needles?

I'm whizzing down to the waist as we speak, so I should have an FO in a few days. Maybe chunky needles are a good idea, after all.

See! I'm not updating once a day, but I'm not dead yet. Oh hell no.

oh look, it's 2007

2007-01-11T10:01:00.000Z

Q: Guess what my New Year's resolution is?

A: Yes, you are right. Not to knitblog devotedly every day, no. Sorry, dear readers, if any still remain: I am a ridiculously negligent knitblogger. Yes, Christmas was mental, no, it does not lend itself to quiet reflection and genteel knitting, yes, work is also quite hectic, but still. Still. There is little point having a blog if you don't update it, is there?

But I have learned an important life lesson, one that I will never forget, from this Christmas: I hate knitting for other people. Gift knitting is the worst kind of drudgery. There, you have it. I slogged through two of my Mystery Christmas Presents, abandoned the third and bought a book instead of the planned fourth. Never, never again. Does this make me a bad person in the cosy world of knitbloggers, all patiently turning out socks for dear old grandmas and cute dresses for winsome babies? But if I can't imagine every stitch transforming me into a foxy bemohaired temptress, or keeping me snugly warm against the astonishing gales we have here in Ireland at the moment, it's no good. I just hate it.

So look. Here's my mystery surprise present for my dad:

Socks! How very dadly! And look, here's the toe:

Now isn't that exciting? Well... no, not really. Inoffensive navy socks make for fierce dull photos. And my father hasn't even bothered to try them on yet, so in general, grrr. Christmas knitting bites. Perhaps my daughterly labours will bear grateful fruit yet; or perhaps not.

The other present was a second Ubernatural for my friend D., and it was a roaring success. Unfortunately, it was also a roaring last-minute success: I was frantically ribbing the waistband half an hour before running out the door for New Year's Eve shenanigans. Said last-minute-merchantry meant that no photos were taken, and now the Ubernatural is shielding D. from the bitter cold in Vienna, where she lives. I'm visiting her in two weeks, so I promise scenic photos on location.

I spent Christmas in England, which entailed a long journey in the middle of the night including bus changes, standing around foggy cities in the very early morning, trekking through the night toting a case, and my health was delicate, to say the least. A hat was clearly required. Neelia's rhapsodies about berets convinced me to give the Le Slouch pattern a try with the Tivoli Aran yarn I had left over from my biker jacket. Et voila! Le style!

The pattern is a simple k4, p4 check, and it came out fabulously textured and took one and a half balls of yarn. I love it. Very now, very warm. You should all beret! Most saliently, though, it took me an evening. Whereas the dadly socks took about two weeks. Proof that altruism is most definitely not the root of efficiency.

(I neglected Neelia's advice, and cast on as many stitches as would go round my head. DON'T do this: the brim stretches no end. However, a quick fix with elastic seems to be working just fine, though less elegantly than a properly fitting rim.)

Since then, I have lashed into another pair of Lana Grossa socks with my Edinburgh yarn:

And started swatching for Glampyre's Bulky Green Cables cardigan, in gorgeous chunky teal Tivoli tweed.

I'm still in two minds as to whether or not bold, bulky cables over my bosoms are the most slimming idea ever, but curiously for a knitter, I don't seem to have very many warm jumpers this winter, and I'm longing for the chunky comfort of a simple woollen raglan. Plus, it's a Glampyre top-down pattern, and as she says in the Ubernatural pattern, "If you don't get gauge, don't sweat it. You'll be fine." That's the kind of pattern I like.

Fame! Fortune! And the strange phenomenon of the Irish Sunday

2006-12-19T11:35:00.001Z

Hello, dear readers! Many apologies for my neglect and absence over the last while. Work, work has been crazy, and the secrets of Christmas knitting cannot be posted to the internet. But in lieu of my own content, I bring you Seventh Day Evangelists, the feature featuring my glamorous self, knitting away in a vapid fashion. Enjoy...

The feature as a whole is most peculiar: it is ostensibly on "people who do freaky things of a Sunday". Besides my good knitting self, there is someone who plays sports, someone who accompanies her daughter to dancing competitions, and yes, a plane spotter. Imagine! The eccentricity! Playing sport of a Sunday! Have you ever heard the like?

I'm not quite sure how I made knitting sound quite so dull, but oh well. Hopefully the feature will amuse some of you. And now, back to the Christmas knitting: I'm up against the wire here, people.

Meilenweit: in der Tat?

2006-12-02T21:29:00.000Z

A burning question: Is Lana Grossa Meilenweit really miles long? Every pair of socks I've knitted, bar the Jaywalkers, has left lots of yarn left over, and I was seized by a curiosity to find out precisely how far the yarn would last, if knitted until the very very end of the ball...

Quite long, is the answer.

FO: Edinburgh Winter socks

Pattern: NONE. I made them up, using Knitty's handy generic toe-up hints. I used wrapped short-rows, not yarn-over ones, and I think I prefer them: they're tidier, no holes left over, and if you get the right technique, easier, I think.

Two heels, one made with the wraps picked up and knit along with the stitch they were wrapped around, one made by slipping the wrapped stitch and picking up the wrap on the next round. The latter method is nicer, but I made that heel far too narrow. Twelve wrapped stitches are easily enough. Oh well!

The pattern is a 3x1 moss stitch rib, which is that bit less stretchy than ordinary rib: I like it.

Yarn: 100g Lana Grossa Meilenweit Scala, in colourway 6533, 25% polyamide 75% wool. Gorgeous simple stripey pattern makes for instant gratification. I shall stop scorning self-striping yarn forthwith. Sometimes, maximum fun for minimum effort is what's called for.

Needles: 2.5 mm Addi metal double-pointed needles

Time sucked: A week and a half, I guess. It's been busy.

Verdict:

What is the point of ankle socks in an Irish winter, eh? These are almost knee-length socks, hooray! That said, my calves are indeed of an elegant and slim nature, but even so, the socks are looking stretched to their last gasp at the cuff. Next time, I should probably increase on the way up, rather than keeping them at the same length. Also, I knitted the stripes going in different directions on each sock, and started at a different place in the stripe pattern to boot, which was probably anarchic overkill. I'm still all about the unmatchy socks, but they have to unmatch in a recognisable ways: either reverse the stripe, or have the toes unmatchy, but not both, I think.

And that, alas, is the end of the selfish knitting. Even though I have another ball of the £3 self-striping Lana Grossa sock yarn from Handknits just waiting for my attention:

No. Advent Sunday is tomorrow, and it's Christmas knitting from here on in. Here's the last of the Christmassy sneak peaks. This one is entitled, "Do not store your yarn in plastic bags next to the radiators."

A lesson for us all.

the trouble with the world

2006-11-25T21:45:00.000Z

Oh yes and! My Falling Leaves socks were the only hand-knitted pair that were clean for me to bring to Edinburgh, thus leaving me in the peculiar position of at once bragging and apologising for them. Look at my LACE SOCKS! I knitted them myself, you know! Aren't I clever? But, um, the colour's crap, and I hate them. The yarn was a mistake, a mistake, a mistake.

On my return home, I realised that this was all stupid. What is the point of hand-knitting items that make you feel sad when you look at them? I have worn the socks several times since their completion, so I couldn't exactly give them as a present to someone else. No, what was wrong with the socks, I realised, was what is wrong with a lot of the world in general:

Just Not Pink Enough.

Hooray for Dylon. And yes, it's a bit silly spending €3 on dye for a pair of socks, but they make me happy instead of sad to look at, now. Also, you can see the lace pattern just a smidgen better, now they are darker. And furthermore, they now look rocking with my favourite pair of shoes this season, my new anthracite-grey Birkenstock felt clogs:

Now, we all know what The Manolo thinks of Birkenstock clogs. They are decidedly not superfabulous. But neither is winter, and neither is knitting, and yet together the three make a wonderfully comforting combination. Sorry, Maestro. And after all, if they do "look like it was put together by the blind medieval monks, for wear by the peasants of the mud", the Maestro also says, "if you insist on wearing these ugly shoes, be certain to wear the wooly socks of grey for the full effect." Why yes! I just might!

Superfabulous can wait till Christmas. In the meantime, I will sport the Certain Cachet of the bohemian.

yarns from Edinburgh

2006-11-23T15:49:00.000Z

Hello, lovely people! I am sorry I have not blogged: I have been Away in pretty foreign cities. To be precise, in the lovely town of Edinburgh:

Edinburgh is spectacularly pretty. It beats Dublin and Berlin by a mile.

I had a fabulously relaxing time, and spent most of my time eating, reading and meeting friends in yarn shops. Edinburgh has some great yarn shops, and although I'm on a bit of a yarn diet at the moment, I managed to buy something small and pretty in each of the ones I visited, thus helping me feel that I supported international knitting, or something. I didn't bring any knitting with me, though: I decided a wee break would make me feel even happier about returning to my WIPS, and I was right. So I have little progress to report, but have two travellers' tales:

Arches

On a misty Saturday afternoon, I was walking across the Meadows from McAree Brothers' yarn shop to Handknits yarn shop, right on the other side of Edinburgh, and this arch, made of bended trees, caught my eye. Was it intentional? Was it a natural phenomenon?

It's a Victorian knitting monument! Well, I find that exciting. You don't have to.

Little Girls' Room

This anecdote happened at a tiny, musty little yarn shop that will remain anonymous.A fit seized me to knit some socks on the last day I was there. I had no equipment with me, but had just bought some comforting self-striping yarn, and decided to splurge on a duplicate pair of sock needles.

(You must imagine the below dialogue occurring between an Irish and a Scottish accent, by the way, if you find that entertaining. I do, which is doubtless rude and wrong of me.)

ME (enters yarn shop, panting and dripping from attack of robust Edinburgh winter): Hello!

DISEMBODIED VOICE FROM THE BACK ROOM: Wait a minute! I'm just in the little girls' room.

A moment later, an OLD LADY arrives.

OLD LADY: How can I help you, dear?

ME: Hi! I'm looking for 2mm double-pointed needles. Do you have any?

OLD LADY: Two millimetres? That's very fine. I'll have a look... three millimetres? That's better, isn't it? Three and a half? What kind of yarn are you using?

ME: Sock yarn. I need sock needles.

OLD LADY (searching through drawers): Hmm... that's very fine... no, no I don't have any. You see, most of the people who have been knitting all their life have their own sock needles, if you see what I mean?

ME: Erm... yes.

Except that I don't. It's as peculiar as going into a bookshop and getting told, "Pride and Prejudice? Oh no, we don't stock that. Most people who read a lot have that already." So no Scottish needles for me that day, and the socks had to wait until I came home.

Self-striping yarn, round and round and round in the most soothing of fashions. I know I have scads of other projects to work on, but the mindnumbing sense of achievement that a simple pair of socks brings is just what I need right now.

when does recycling become undignified scavenging?

2006-11-11T14:27:00.000Z

I have no dignity, you know. None at all. For real.

A while ago, the lovely Felinity posted to say that, to her very great regret, she was chucking out her very first jumper ever, the Big Sack Sweater from Stitch 'n' Bitch 1. O, poor Felinity! I know exactly, but exactly how she feels. My first two jumpers were out of Stitch 'n' Bitch 1, too. My very first was the hourglass jumper, and I was so very proud of myself. Look at my proud face!

And look at that floppy, shapeless jumper! What on earth was I thinking, knitting it out of a far too fine mohair that was neither structured nor warm? And why on earth did I think that bell sleeves and a cowl would be at all attractive on me? Then came Under the Hoodie, and had I learned? No. Clearly, a 40% acrylic mohair yarn would be perfect for this project.

Just as a too-short jumper body and strangely twisted front pocket and completely square shaping would be perfect on me. Not to mention the dropped sleeves. Please, don't mention them.

Alas. I knitted, I learned, I had moments of pride... and when I moved houses, they too went into the bin. Can one ever keep one's first jumper? Is it always going to be a learning disaster? Perhaps not. So I commiserated with Felinity... but I also reminded her that she had used lots of lovely expensive yarn for the project, and maybe she could reuse it. Ach no, she said, but maybe I would like it? Friends, I hesitated for a little while. I really did. It seemed so cheap to accept her first baby and rip it apart for my own benefit.

But we all know I'm cheap, right?

So here the jumper is, and it's so well put together that I feel ashamed to start ripping it. At the same time, I can see why Felinity chucked it: a giant square sacky unshaped pattern isn't going to suit anyone. So thank you, lovely Felinity, and I will try and put the Rowan Chunky Tweed to a more noble use, even if I cannot knit it any more neatly than you did.

***

Ever wondered how far a ball of Kidsilk Haze would go, if you knitted it more or less in plain stocking stitch?

This far, is the answer. This is 25 grammes of yarn. This is going to be the lightest, fluffiest jumper ever. Here's where the Harlot's Progress is at at the moment...

boring back-and-forth neck shaping, accursed cutting of yarn for stripes. Bah. How anyone could bear to knit the whole thing flat, I don't know. But I'm still dying to wear the jumper.

Infamy! Bankruptcy! Semi-nudity!

2006-11-04T18:42:00.000Z

You had no idea that the life of a nerdy knit-blogger was so full of sensation, did you? Who needs Kerry Katona, I say, when you can read ALL ABOUT IT here. Have a nice calming cup of tea handy...

Infamy!

I was sitting down quietly with my jorum of gin the other night, when an email pinged into my inbox. A friend of a friend wrote to say that she was a journalist for a certain national paper, and would I mind being interviewed for a feature she was writing? Hmm, thought I, do I want to be infamous nation-wide for something as trivial as knitting? On the other hand, do I want my magnificent knitting skills, not to mention my astonishing beauty, to languish in obscurity for the rest of my born days, when here is an opportunity for them to receive the fame they so richly deserve? Yerra, sure. I had gin taken. I said yes. Would I mind being photographed, came the reply? Ah sure, in for a penny, in for a pound, sez I.

The next night, I was out with the friend when, as is the way of Dublin, we ran into the journalist herself. What exactly is this feature? I asked. Is it on knitting? Not exactly, she said, it's on... unusual things that people do at the weekend. We have a guy who watches trains and takes their numbers lined up too! It'll be great!

Wow. Knitting, trainspotting and other assorted tragic hobbies, separated at birth and now re-united, I see. You just WAIT, national newspaper! I will wear my sexiest knits and inform you of the newfound funkiness of knitting, and I will show you all!

Bankruptcy!

Well, it was the Knitting and Stitching show, right? So what did I expect? A large jolly hall filled with all manner of money-sucking crafts, is what, and of course I succumbed. How could I not? I found the 3.25 circs I need for the Harlot's Progress, and a knitting book with patterns for Colinette that shoudl suit my handspun... and then my downfall really started. First up, gorgeous monocolour Fortissima Socka. All the softness! None of the porridge! Bright glitzy pink!

And then, I found the Black Sheep, and well, all was lost. Past experience told me that in the heap of discounted ten-packs, there were true gems hidden among the piles and piles of Sirdar. I dived in. My lovely lady friend dived with me. We burrowed, casting Snowflake and Silky Look aside. She found some cotton, whooped, began swimming for the shore. I dived further. Near the sea bed, a treasure glinted: Rowan Biggy Print, extra-discounted, true luxe yarn... but, even in my light-headed state with my oxygen running low, I realised that it's not something I'm realistically likely to knit into a jumper I'd ever wear. And then, as I crawled half-drowning on the bottom, "Glitz!" my lady friend cried.

Yep. Gorgeous, fabulous RYC cashsoft, in a blissful pink. (Seeing a theme, friends?) And yes, it was on sale at roughly 2/3 of the retail price, which is actually still more than I would usually spend on a jumper's worth of yarn, but... but. But. The softness! And that Verena cardigan will be mine! (Unless you have any further suggestions?)

Semi-nudity

I also went to the This is Knit in search of Rowan lurex shimmer to stripe my Harlot's Progress top with, only to be told that it has been discontinued, apparently, and all they had left was a rusty colourway which made us all wince when it was held against my kidsilk spray. I wandered off in search of stashed shimmer elsewhere, and not only did I not find it, but I also didn't make it back to This is Knit before the show ended, which makes me feel bad. The This is Knit women are so insanely friendly and so full of enthusiasm for reviving Irish knitting, I feel I should support them more. Perhaps I can plug them as I pout in the paper beside the trainspotter? And I will go back for the Lorna's Laces yet. Mmm, all-American variegated socks.

(When you start drooling about socks, perhaps you really have crossed over to the trainspotting side, though. A lowering thought.)

My trusty stash, though, delivered the goods, and without me needing to spend an extre eleven euro too: the seventies French silver mohair that I knit my first jumper out of. There's still a good jumper's worth of it around, too. Even though silver wouldn't be my first choice for the stripe (I was thinking claret or gold), it's still a dreamily sheer fabric, no? Shockingly see-through, but friends, it's so sexy I just don't care.

Happiness is...

2006-11-03T11:09:00.000Z

1. Casting on for something utterly self-indulgent for yourself.

No, the Christmas presents aren't exactly finished yet. But they're both about halfway there, and really, it's November. I'm doing superwell. So last night, I turned on a programme about Hogarth, all fancy frocks and panniers, poured myself a jorum of gin, and set about making myself a fancy silken chemise. Perhaps this particular project should be called The Harlot's Progress. Or perhaps not.

I'm feeling doubly louche and daring because I am modifying a pattern by St. Kim Hargreaves - the pattern instructions are for a plain stocking stitch vest knit flat, but I know full well that if I knit it forward and back for aaaages, and then have to seam it to boot, I will not feel remotely glitzy or self-indulgent. So it's being knit in the round, and We Shall See how I get on. I've had this yarn in stash for a whole year, and I'm unreasonably excited about the prospect of an actual garment being finished out of it.

The other decision is Embellishments. I'm knitting this in kidsilk spray, not haze (pay attention!), and it variegates between hot pink and rich burgundy, utterly lovely. Would adding glittering stripes, as in the pattern, over-egg the pudding? Or would they just add to the chemise's seductive power?

The decision (to purchases lurex shimmer, or not to purchase) may be upon me, because...

2. Happiness is also The Knitting And Stitching Show, which I've been looking forward to for weeks, and which is finally THIS AFTERNOON. Yarns! Books! Crazy textile art that leaves me slightly baffled! It's going to be great.

I haven't set a budget. This may be foolish. But I will most certainly keep you posted, possibly even when I come home this evening on a PURCHASING HIGH.

the leaves aren't falling

2006-10-31T10:18:00.000Z

Hooray! An FO, finally!

FO: Falling Leaves socks

Pattern: Falling Leaves socks, from Knitty
Yarn: Porridge-coloured Fortissima Socka yarn in a discontinued colourway, 75% wool 25% polyamide
Needles: Random 2mm DPNs, to my chagrin. This is the last pair of socks I knit on bloody 2mms, I swear. 2.5 mm power from here on in!
Time sucked: I suppose it's only a week and a half, on and off, but for some reason it feels like forever.

Verdict

Rarely have I ever felt less enthused by a project, and I'm somehow surprised that I even finished it. I'm not really sure why, but I think it's the yarn. The pattern is perfectly pretty, and look! I learned how to do toe-up socks. (I know that toe-up socks are the very apogee of True Sock Knitting, and now I can say, yes but perhaps I spurn them anyway. I just prefer the look of a decreased Kitchener toe, it's neater and more professional-looking.) So yes, a lovely pattern, I'm still slightly confused by the idea of lace (airy, lets in the breeze) wool (warm, insulates) socks, but they seem to be common currency on the internet, so I should probably shut up.

No, it was the yarn. I was young, I was weak, I was living it up in Berlin, but I am never ever again buying a yarn that inspires me so little. You can't see the pattern for the weird mottling, but it's not as though the weird mottling is particularly pretty in plain stocking stitch either:

Porridgey. Pointless. That said, I will wear them, because it's Hallowe'en and the leaves are finally, finally falling from the trees. But from here on in, it's hand-dyed or plain sock yarn all the way from me. Yarn snobbery, you will overcome us all in time.

(On a side note: the heel demanded a purl three together through the back loop. I struggled through one heel; I lost loops, shoved wildly through impossibly tight yarn, approximated stitches, resorted to crochet hooks, cried. Then on the second heel, I became a heretic and just purled three together. Yes, I know, I am a bad internet knitter. The heel looks a lot less fally-aparty, at least.)

Onwards and upwards! Yesterday I was round at a dear friend's for a knitting and gossiping date, whereI started Christmas Present Number Two, because it is a stocking stitch project and I can't concentrate on fancy stitchwork while screaming and shrieking over feminist theory. Here's a peekeen:

... and now sssh! till Christmas. I'm scooting through it, though. Good times.

I also finalised my plans for that kidsilk spray:

and the pattern's in the very first pattern book I ever bought, back in 2003, in the Wool Shop in Bray. Aeons ago, I know. Back then, I knew not of the way of internet knitting, and I bought patterns full price. Crazy talk, isn't it? Anyway. A Season's Tale is an elegant book full of classic projects for classy chicks, which isn't quite the way I would define myself. But I find myself drawn back to this top:

minus the lurex, because I think there's enough interest in the variegated yarn. But perhaps a little beading around the neck? Or even all the way through the garment? We're talking a fabulous, sexy, luxe top that I can wear to Christmas parties to hide the fact that I've ever been known to be an utterly nerdy internet knitter...

unfinished musings

2006-10-25T10:15:00.000+01:00

Thanks so much to all of you who came by to say such nice things about my ridiculous biker jacket! And particular thanks to those who agreed with how ANNOYING Debbie Bliss's schematic-free ways are. My current theory is that Ms. Bliss made her fortune designing baby clothes, which are basically square and hence need little finishing finesse. Perhaps some day she will realise that women and men are not actually giant babies, and that their clothes can't quite be put together like dinky infant sleepsuits. Some day.

OK! Enough snark, more constructive talk. First of all, I have finished one of the falling leaves socks, look:

Hmmm. No, honest, that IS a lace pattern. Look! Do you believe me now?

See? Yarnovers? Anyone? Ach, this is a funny yarn. I was hoping that when it knitted up the splotches of black and yellow and purple would resolve themselves into some kind of pattern or stripe or something, but no. It's just splotchy, or perhaps porridgey. Which is probably why it was on sale. It doesn't show the falling leaves pattern very well, but it doesn't look particularly great on the stocking stitch sole, either. O well. This is not my favourite project of all time, but I am loving my handmade socks so much that I will certainly wear them into the ground in any case.

And next up? Next up is going to be the dread Christmas Knitting. One good thing about my crazy eBay yarning habit is that at least I have a large and varied stash from which I can pick nifty gift projects. And I am trying to be very very sensible, and to follow two simple rules, viz:

1) only plan to knit four presents, because otherwise I'll be swamped

2) make one present between every project for myself.

So once these socks are finished, Present No. One goes on the needles. Alas, I'm not going to be blogging the presents till after Christmas, because although I'm reasonably sure that my family have no notion that I would have so nerdy a thing as a knitting blog, you never know, do you? But I might show you the yarn for the projects, yes. Such as this one. On eBay it looked a bright pink, you know, jolly and a bit extroverted; but once it arrived on my doorstep, I realised that it belonged to an entirely different species, perhaps a different planet of pink. As in, look. This is just how pink it is:

Yes. Pretty damned pink, no? But I think that the recipient will like it, and it is fun to knit with. All the same, who on earth thought of dying plain four-ply yarn such a colour?

And after that comes the teal-coloured tweed. Alas, I started swatching for the Verena cardigan, and although I got gauge, once I lashed into the back of it I realised that there was no way that the yarn would last out for the whole cardigan. It's only 550 grammes, and in terms of chunky pure wool, that's not enough for a big long jacket, alas. So *deep breath* I think I may design my own jumper. Eeek. My hippy heatwave cami doesn't look like it'll be the greatest of successes, so I am not convinced by my designing (read: Hard Sums) skills. But if I do a v. simple top-down raglan, based on the Übernatural, but with a couple of cables? And just keep knitting till all the yarn is used up? I can't go THAT badly wrong, can I? Can I?

Poor teal yarn. What fate awaits you?

FO Friday

2006-10-20T12:53:00.000+01:00

Look! LOOK! Finally, I have an FO to get off my damned sidebar. If only I were like the inimitable Aileen and could promise you an FO a week (except that, to my tender ears, that sounds much more as though I were promising you a fuck-off every week instead of a decorous and ladylike knitted garment. Who makes up these abbreviations, anyway?)

But after a year on the needles, I present, FINALLY:

FO: Debbie Bliss tweed biker jacket

Pattern: Debbie Bliss biker jacket, from the tweed collection (capital letters not included: this is a high-end English product, and capital letters appear to have been banned for all aspirational brands across the water.)

Yarn: Vintage Sunbeam Lux Tweed Canterbury alpaca/tweed aran mix, 500g; cuffs, collar and waistband knitted in Tivoli luxury aran tweed, 50% wool, 21% acrylic, 20% alpaca, 9% viscose, 100g. SO soft and snuggly, all of it. Here's the vintage yarn pre-knitting: the colour of it is truer here than in the first photo.

Needles: 5 mm circular for the body, 5 1/2 for the bands

Pattern modifications: Apart from not using the recommended yarn? But since when do I do that? I grafted the shoulder seams instead of sewing them up. And I am never sewing shoulder seams again, what's more.

Time sucked: Mensch, who can tell? I'm a year from cast-on to sewing on the last popper, but how long in total? I think knitting the pieces didn't take too long, back in the mists of last winter, but who remembers that far back?

Verdict

Oh my GOD, do I ever have a verdict! So much so, that you get BULLET POINTS...

Yarn: the yarns are gorgeous. Absolutely amazing. Much, much nicer that the Debbie Bliss tweed, which has no alpaca and therefore is not half as fluffy. This Sunbeam stuff knits up into a really solid, cosy fabric, which makes the jacket much more structured, rather than a cardigan. Which is perfect, really. Look, here are the real colours again, even if the photo is silly and blurry:

Pattern: NEVER, NEVER AGAIN. This is a commercial pattern from one of the biggest brands in British knitting, right? Then why the hell is it so hard to provide a schematic? There is none. None at all. And the finished measurements listed aren't at all sufficent to draw up your own.

More, the finishing instructions were minimal. The sleeves ended up larger than the holes for them; my lovely lady friend, who is a tailor, informed me (through my tears of rage and fury) that this is standard for jackets, and that I had to gather the extra fabric in at the top of the armhole. Then, elsewhere on the net, I read that some people sewed the extra fabric along the body seams. Again, who can tell? I am not convinced about the sleeves as they are, I have to say. But then, it is a biker jacket, isn't it? they are supposed to be bomber shape, and funnily enough, this is precisely the season of the bell, billowing or slim sleeve, but most definitely not bomber jacket shape.

Overall: It's a biker jacket! In fluffy purple tweed! It's butch! It's femme! It's a classic! It's utterly square and hopelessly out of fashion! It fits perfectly around the body! It fits weirdly around the arms! It's a gorgeous dense fabric! It's particoloured! It's... oh, I dunno. It's finished. The proof will be in the wearing, right?

Sock Swatching is for the Weak

2006-10-16T08:15:00.000+01:00

As is buying full price sock yarn. Check out my bargainous Fortissima Socka that I got in Berlin for half nothing:

I count five ends. Five! Is this normal for sale yarn? Fretful little fragments at the beginning? But I battled my way past the mess, and cast on for a short-row tow (first ever!) and battled round the yarn-overs and up to the join, three times (it's all education, folks), and finally got to the falling leaves pattern:

to find that it was no use remaining in denial: not only did the sock look unpleasantly like a dead fish's head, but it was a monster, baggy, enormous sock. And this in a pattern that is "deliberately on the small side"! Gah. Time for the rip.

Look, here's a more cheerful thought: an old old FO which lazy me only just got around to putting in the post.

It's a Dream Swatch, knit in a fancy viscose-cotton-glittery-very-very-silly yarn (possibly by Filati, but at this stage I actually couldn't swear. What am I? A fool.) The idea is that you can headscarf it or neckscarf it... or look at it in bewilderment, wondering what on earth to do with it. Hush.

Q: Glitz, don't you have a baby dress and a biker jacket about two stitches from completion?

A: Hush. Yes. Some day, the tidy finishing fit will fall upon me, won't it? In the meantime, I am plotting plotting plotting. I have my family Christmas presents all plotted in my head (though not on the needles yet... sure it's not even Hallowe'en), and on Friday I had a genius stroke: last year, in a fit of desire to emulate my knitting friend hfnuala, I bought three balls of Kidsilk Spray for a lace shawl. Summer came and went, the pattern was sworn over, and five lonely rows languished on the needles. On Friday, the revelation struck: since when do I wrap myself in cobwebby fronds of lace? Do I think I am some class of Pre-Raphaelite Miss Haversham? Answer: no, but what I DO need is a drop-dead elegant sleeveless top for the winter party season. Definitely. So now I am on the scour, friends, for a truly glamorous Kidsilk Haze pattern: all suggestions very very welcome indeed.

Birthday Fingers

2006-10-12T10:31:00.000+01:00

Stripey fingers are the very latest sign of true maturity, you know

FO: Seaside Mittens

Pattern: Seaside, from Magknits

Yarn: Rowan Tapestry, 70% wool 30% soybean protein fibre, in colour 172 (120 m per 50g), one-and-a-tiny-scrap balls.

Needles: 4 mm bamboo circular

Pattern modifications: Well. No intended modifications. Granted, I could have read the pattern properly and realised that at every stitch marked place bead, it meant place bead, not place two beads. But hey! Twice the glitter!

I also may or may not have done some exercises in knitting-on-the-edge and seeing just how far the one ball of yarn would stretch, which means that the ring finger of the right hand is a teensy bit shorter than it strictly should be. But O well.

Time sucked: Three days. Not too bad, right?

Verdict

OK, gloves are always going to be fecky. That aside, it was a very clear pattern, and little was more satisfying than striking through each line of the fully charted stitch pattern as I knitted it. They're soft, and cuddly, and very very silly.

You know, though, I'm STILL not sure about that fancy schmancy yarn. It was pricy, it was luxe, but it still feels a little funny: slightly rough, very furry, and I can imagine that the stitch definition will disappear pretty quickly. (Watch out for the velcro on my favourite bag, yo.) My lovely lady friend has just finished some arm warmers in the alpaca silk that I gave her, and it's just that bit softer, just that bit crisper in texture. Also, less stripey and silly. Possibly, my verdict is that the yarn is a lovely idea, but... not so much in practice.

Then again, fluffy mittens! And the yarn lasted until the last two fingers of the second glove, so I have almost a whole ball left. I'm freehanding a cravat-type-thing to match the gloves. No particular reason...

The gloves had their first outing in the Centre Stage Bar last night, a tiny overdecorated dive that plays Las Vegas shows on the telly and has toile de joie wallpaper on the walls. I describe a very paradise? Well, it would be, did they not insist on keeping the door wide open. As it is, I was very, very glad of the fluffy warmth cuddling my fingers.

Tiger Eyes. Or OWLS OF DOOM?

2006-10-08T09:16:00.000+01:00

Urban lace!

Pattern:Tiger Eye Scarf, from Stitchin' Girl

Yarn: Rowan RYC cashsoft DK, 57% wool, 33% microfiber, 10% cashmere, in colour Poppy (197 yds per 50g)

Needles: 4.5mm random circular

Pattern modifications: I only did two edge stitches instead of three, to save yarn (silly, there was no need at all; the scarf turned out 168cm long blocked... or almost as tall as me. Hooray for lace!) Also, I did the grafted version

Time sucked: A week.

Verdict

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should have given you an AFTER picture fresh from the blocking pins, lace in its optimum glory. But I ripped it from its pins the second it was dry and danced out for a night in the boozer through the mists. That's how much I love it. Lovely easy-ish lace, glorious snuggly yarn, fabulous bright colour. O luxe yarns, you tempt me so much. So much!

Mme. Tapestry slips shyly onto the needles

Oh god, GLOVES. So fiddly! Fingers! So scary! And goodness, Madame the Fancy Schmancy Tapestry Yarn. Metal DPNS wouldn't do for her, so I ordered bamboo ones, which she does deign to wear, but she clings and snags on the slightest roughness, whining softly at every fray. She is indeed soft and fluffy, but she is also sticky like mohair: tinking is a horror, and even knitting at the gauge recommended on the yarn label is a tricky business, because she is hardly plied at all, just loosely thrown together and hence incredibly splitty. Awkward bloody stuff. Bring back the nice technologically advanced cashsoft, I say.

Moreover, the colours are monumentally silly. Which is fine for accessories, I don't mind stripey fingers one bit. But seriously, friends: this is what Rowan would like you to knit from this yarn:

Now look, I am a vegetarian queer woman myself, and even so, I cannot possibly imagine ANY man sighing, "O, all I want for this autumn is a quirkily striped jumper in SOY silk, please, a bit fluffy round the edges, and if possible, with a darling fussy placket detail on the shoulder? And maybe some adorable sky-blue buttons? But who would design me such a gentle garment?"

I mean, I would be more than delighted were I to get scads of comments from genderqueer knitting men, all going, "Actually, I LOVE that jumper, and I'm knitting it in the PINK colourway, to boot." I just doubt it, somehow.

Kelly also asked me about the biker jacket, so here she is:

Sleeves set in (weary, frail sigh... that is a story for another day), zip awaiting my lovely lady friend's sewing machine. But my lovely lady friend is deep in the throes of designing my BIRTHDAY presxent right now, so the sewing machine will have to await her flash of inspiration. Speaking of which, by the way, here is an answer to the vexed question, "but what do lesbians actually DO?"

Sit around of a Saturday night gaily knitting, designing, reading the paper, and making a godawful mess of the living room, is the answer.

The Joy of Grafting

2006-10-06T12:03:00.000+01:00

I was striding into town last night (to see The Black Dahlia - really, don't bother) in my Miu Miu coat (thrifted) and wraparound dress, and it was misty and moisty, and I really, really wanted my lovely cashsoft scarf. Which is why, of course, I absolutely had to stay up till two in the morning finishing it. Definitely.

I left the grafting till this morning, though. Daylight and concentration capacity always a good idea, no? Normally I love grafting: it's nippy and nifty and neat. Normally. But this is lace...

...ah, feck. But you wouldn't notice a thing, would you, gentle reader? If it were cast around my neck in an elegant fashion, and the flying ends were catching your gaze?

I am the queen of sloppy knitting. I am just NOT unpicking it. NOT.

Here we are then, unblocked. Two balls of cashsoft goes a long way, as I hoped. Hooray!

... in fact, precisely the length of my sofa. Rather handy that, no? Ah, blocking: now that is DEFINITELY fun. Those styling leaf-head pins were snapped up at the Turkish market in Berlin, and I wish I'd bought a second pack, seeing they were only a euro: they're headscarf pins, and therefore are much longer than standard-issue pins, about four centimetres.

And now, for the Rowan Tapestry armwarmers, for my bamboo DPNS have arrived. Only the best for Madame, remember. Ohh, hooray for a crisp nip in the air and an appetite for warm knitted accessories!

a discreet flash...

2006-10-03T10:38:00.000+01:00

Like the quick flick of a raincoat. Or something. At any rate, today I am going to flash a teeny tiny selection of my stash, but one that makes up most of its bulk. Namely, a certain eBayed burgundy aran yarn...

There it is. Plain chunky aran, in burgundy. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing particularly right with it, apart from the fact that I do have roughly a sturdy 600 grammes of it, so easily enough for a proper jumper. I bought it on one of my many, many eWhims, which generally take a hold of my fluttering fingers the second I see "pure wool" and "crazily low price", no matter how much yarn is actually on offer nor what weight it is. In my defence, I was also labouring under the delusion at the time that aran weight was the same as worsted, and hence the ideal weight for a jumper. But what I meant was, of course, DK, and now I find myself obsessed with a gorgeous little DK cardigan from Verena magazine:

Cute and elegant, no? Though obviously I'm not about to be knitting stuff in grey. But it is definitely a DK knit, and that aran is just too chunky. So...

There's this Rebecca jumper, you've seen it before. A nifty modern aran, and I love that nipping-in cablework at the waist. But the shoulders, although set-in, are still majorly sloppy, and if I altered the neck to a scoop neck the way I would prefer it might be even sloppier. Hmmm.

There's also this jacket from Verena magazine, which is distinctly different, and definitely chunky (though I would spare everyone the bobbles.) But once that tweed biker jacket is done (it needs a sewing machine taken to it, and I am terrified by the very sight of them), will I really need another chunky handknitted jacket? Or even a sloppy handknitted jumper? Wo. I am just much more into light, elegant, discreet knits in DK right now... but without the yarn.

In better news, I have just one ball of the Kilcarra tweed left, which should, I hope, be enough for a silly matching hat for the scarf, and the Tiger Eye scarf is zipping along. Just in time for the next suit outing? Who can tell?

Scarves, scarves and more scarves!

2006-10-01T19:35:00.000+01:00

It's been a very very worky week, very worky, and alas, needles and yarn and fiddling over yarn overs don't really fit in very well with a worky persona. I haven't been knitting; but I have been stashing, O yes.

- Man at the post office: Have you been clicking on the internet?

- Me (staggering under myriad packages of yarn): Erm...

- Man: Because we'll be seeing a lot more of you this winter if so!

Erm. Yes. I'm not photographing my stash quite yet, as some of it is a bit peculiar, some destined for presents, and in general, I am rather ashamed of my stash, if truth be told. A lot of random eBay purchases, few notions of what to do with them. The shame, the shame.

But! I do have something to be proud of, viz. a FO, if not my shiny flashed face:

Diagonal Rib Scarf

Pattern: Herringbone Diagonal Rib Scarf, by Li at Life's a Stitch

Yarn: Kilcarra of Donegal chunky tweed, 100% wool, colurway 2525, 200g

Needles: 7 mm Addi Turbos; the yarn label says to use 5 1/2s, but you need more drape in a scarf, right?

Pattern modifications: Three repeats of the herringbone rib rather than four, at this gauge.

Time sucked: A week, including ripping and reknitting time. Not too bad, no?

Verdict

This is a lovely pattern, and it knits up really really quickly! It's designed for a DK yarn, but I think it works perfectly with a chunky tweed: just fancy enough to give it structure, but plain enough to let the tweed flecks show through. The perfect scarf for a blustery walk down the South Wall into Dublin Bay, or for throwing over a chunky cardigan when you just can't be bothered wearing a coat.

Wo

O, that Rowan Tapestry. I went to Crown Jewels and found the perfect beads for it. (Crown Jewels used to be on Crown Alley, back in the day, making sense of a rather silly pun, but now it's on Castle Market the allusion is a little... lost). But is the fluffy soy silk mix happy? Is it hell. It is too good for this world, that yarn is: it just slid off my hefty Addi metal DPNs with a shudder, refusing to countenance such brutal equipment. Bamboo DPNs are on order, madame. Whatever makes you happy...

Not More Goddamned Yarn

Yes, yes, I know. I know. The herringbone scarf is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. But as I said, it was a very worky week, and I found myself longing for a smart, light scarf, in an elegant pattern and a monochrome, luxury yarn, that would go with a suit and the Miu Miu coat that I picked up for half nothing in the charity shop. Yesterday, myself and my lovely lady friend and our friend Stellanova went on an intrepid expedition to Springwools, that vasty barn located far, far out in the badlands of Dublin West. We sat on the bus as a torrent buffetted us, and peered out in the rain onto such strange places as Cork Street, Dolphin's Barn, Crumlin and Drimnagh, none of which appeared particularly lovely in the sluicing storm.

Springwools is indeed an Aladdin's cave, but slightly bleak and windowless, with an astonishing selection but a utilitarian air about it. It abounds in yarns both novelty and luxury, and has a fantastic pattern selection, but I found myself yearning, I have to say, for the friendly company of Lisa and Jacqui of This is Knit while I browsed. But I did pick up some bargain basket odd balls (though Stella and my lady friend scored better deals, mumble grumble), and the yarn for the scarf: RYC Cashsoft DK, m'dear, nothing but the fanciest.

You may have noticed a certain... lilac quality in my knitting to date. And nothing wrong with lilac, but it was time for a departure, no? I rather like this pingy chilli (colour 512, Poppy), even if it won't go with anything I have...

The pattern is the fabulous Tiger Eye scarf from StitchinGirl. Though I think it looks a little more like owl eyes, like the creepy owls in the Owl Service by Alan Garner, for those of you who liked your childhood reading gothic. It's a great crisp urban lace, though, I hope, and far, far away from boho flowers and mad-old-lady purple.

Credit where credit is due

2006-09-24T19:25:00.000+01:00

The equinoctial gales tore into town last weekend, ripping trees down and scouring my patio with rain, and finally the eerie eternal summer that we've been living through all September broke, bringing with it proper cool weather. Not very crisp, now, just about fifteen degrees centigrade; but fifteen is a lot more sensible than twenty for this time of year. Suddenly, there is a sense to all the piles of pure wool in my stash. And suddenly, my neck started thinking about feeling cold...

This is the lovely Herringbone Diagonal Rib pattern, as designed by Li, of Life's a Stitch. Alas, I have had to rip this back since, as the pattern is for a DK weight yarn, and I'm using a chunky weight. Four repeats of the rib is far too wide, so I'm doing three. I love the pattern all the same - the perfect balance between knitterly and unfussy.

I'm knitting it in an Irish yarn, Kilcarra Tweed, which has the most sumptuous colours, even if it is a little stiff. But that is one of the problems with pure wool, after all. I haven't seen Kilcarra in Dublin ever; I picked six balls of it up in a yarn shop in the little Cork town of Clonakilty last Easter. It feels good to be using a local yarn, and frustrating that Irish yarns are so ridiculously hard to get hold of. Which is why it felt so damned good to go out to visit the This is Knit stall at the Blackrock Market today.

I had heard good things of it from Aileen, and she was so right. The stall has a small but exquisitely chosen selection of luscious designer yarns, and Lisa and Jacqui were unbelievably friendly and enthusiastic and kind. Better yet, they have the same approach to knitting as mine: it was fab to talk to another Irish knitter who mostly learned off the internet after having produced a few dolls' blankets in primary school, who knew all about the patterns in the latest Knitty and Magknits, but who would prefer to knit them in local yarns, if possible; who is excited about socks and knows that most Irish knitters are likely to be only just learning to make them, and sources luxury foreign yarns while trying to track down local wool.

The knitting revival has only just taken off here, I think; only about five years ago, the last yarn shops in the centre of Dublin shut down, and an Irish Times article declared the craft of knitting dead in today's cash-rich-time-poor (bleech, horrible phrase) Celtic Tiger Ireland. As this article from 2004 shows, a few suburban shops struggled on, but knitting as a popular craft for young urban women had yet to take off. It's so fun to be able to hook up with people who are providing services and products for selfish knitters like me, who want to knit delicious stuff for themselves, not for babies. Hooray! I really, really hope that this means a revival in the fortunes of Irish sheep farmers, too, and that I can start buying locally produced yarns rather than buying imported goods from the big British craft empires.

Mind you, the new Irish knitting circle doesn't appear to be all that huge just yet... as soon as I put down my email address to be added to the This is Knit list, Lisa said, "Oh, you were living in Germany, weren't you! You took Aileen to the yarn shop in Kreuzberg!"

Yes. Ireland. About as large as a... not very large sheep farm, and Irish knitting bloggers are about as anonymous as sheep dyed luminous pink. Or something.

It would have been a sin to stroke all that lovely yarn without buying any, wouldn't it?

Lovely, lovely soy silk and merino mix yarn, destined for some handwarmers.

And some insanely soft alpaca silk in teal as a present for my lovely ladyfriend. She did get me that amazing yarn from Toronto, so it is only fair that she get something back, no?

Snickets!

2006-09-17T18:28:00.000+01:00

I finished the Snicket socks! And don't they look gorgeous?

Pattern: Snicket, from Magknits.

Yarn: Schoeller and Stahl's Fortissima Colori, in colourway Turf, 75% wool 25% polyamide

Needles: 2.5 mm Addi metal double-pointed needles; 2 mm DPNs for the ribbing

Time sucked: A week, I think. Standard sock obsessive length...

Modifications: Ribbing done on 2mm needles; toes done with a Kitchener stitch finish, rather than a simple pixie-toe decrease.

Persnickety

Oooh, these were persnickety. Very, very much so. I tried using the useful cabling without a cable needle technique promised by so many websites, but at this tension, a cable needle is easier. Four sock needles AND a cable needle AND two extra for the heels? And yet... and yet... I do love them. And I did love knitting them, in a self-hating way. I also have a fair bit of that gorgeous subtle yarn left over, which makes me cross: these would have been gorgeous three inches longer. Motivation to learn toe-up knitting!

Best knitting in public experience yet

I was sitting on the Luas (the Dublin tram), fretting over a purl stitch on the cable needle as we zoomed over the Nine Arches at Milltown. My tongue was stuck out in unflattering concentration when I heard a voice:

"Miss one! Miss one!"

I looked up: it was the ticket inspector, gazing at my knitting in awe and wonder. "Oh - just wait till I've done this, and then I'll get my ticket out!" "Oh no no, please don't!" he said, panicked. "I wouldn't want to be held responsible for you missing a stitch! Keep knitting!" And he walked off.

I did have my ticket on me, because I am a Good Citizen. But this is a useful trick to remember for future necessity, no?

And in other news...

I am flying through the neck and waistbands for my Debbie Bliss biker jacket. Yes, yes, I know: a biker jacket in purple tweed is as silly as it gets. But it's pretty damn queer, isn't it, at least?

Here is a (slightly glorified) closeup of the body yarn (a vintage eBay alpaca/wool mix) and the darker neckband (in Tivoli luxury aran tweed). A tiny colour variation between the two, a bit like a Siamese cat: and then each yarn with its own gloriously bright flashes of primary colour. I am going to love wearing this.

terrible confession

2006-09-11T16:57:00.000+01:00

Here is a thing I have not yet admitted to you yet. Well, I haven't really admitted to myself yet. Being home in Dublin means being home with a vast, extravagant stash, a squiggly sad frog pile... and also a shameful pile of unfinished objects. A huge one, I mean. I think that now is not the time to admit to its full horrors. I think that I will introduce you to my little UFOs, one at a time, so that you do not think too badly of me.

Yesterday saw me revisiting Dublin's dirty old city centre, now furiously piling on the expensive makeup as fast as she can muster. I was wandering around Henry Street, and thought, Why not just look at the sale table in Hickey's of Henry Street? They're more or less rubbish, but they are the only yarn shop in the city centre that ever stock wool yarns, and well. You never know.

And look! On that very same sale table, alongside scary giant 400g balls of acrylic yarn, was some absolutely gorgeous mixed-fibre Tivoli aran tweed...

which cunningly matches a UFO that I have sitting around at home, i.e. a Debbie Bliss pattern for a knitted tweed biker jacket. I know. I know. It's ridiculously silly. But I ordered this amazing alpaca/wool purple tweed yarn on eBay, and it just seemed right at the time.

Sadly, the yarn ran out before I could complete the whole jacket, but what remains to be knitted are the cuffs, neckband and waistband, which can be done in a contrasting colour. Originally, I thought I'd do them in Kureyon, for full-on boho craziness. But this yarn matches almost exactly, and is almost too close in colour - in some lights it looks almost identical to the original, in others about two shades darker. Now to hope, of course, that the jacket actually fits. I am not sure that I'm really a biker jacket person, and Debbie Bliss patterns, stupidly enough, do not have a schematic, so I'm not even sure of the shape.

***

Oh and by the way: that looks very like a respectable Snicket, doesn't it? Now for number two.

I am deriving ridiculous comfort from my Jaywalkers as the weather grows colder, and can't wait to own more handknitted socks. Yes, I have a sad, sad life. I know.

I Swore I Wouldn't Sock Again

2006-09-08T15:23:00.000+01:00

Hello, all! My profile is telling you lies, first off. I am no longer in Berlin, home of Fadeninsel and myriad wild and wonderful knitting magazines: I am back home in Dublin, where there are huge numbers of sheep but strangely enough hardly any yarn shops. Work is crazy busy, as is trying to move my head from one of the most chilled and scruffy cities in Europe to one of the most commercial and hectic. Little time for knitting.

But - but - have you seen the new Magknits? The prettiest accessories ever! I was only browsing, I swear, and then I suddenly saw the prettiest socks ever: Snicket. Lovely, fancy socks that wree neither lacey (who wants woolen winter socks with holes in?) nor frou-frou: just a lovely simple-looking lace pattern. Simple-looking, that is.

This, now this is the heel, done in a new-to-me funky double-stitch method. ANYTHING to avoid the heel-flap picking-up-stitches vale of misery. ANYTHING. Even knitting on six, count them, needles with a seventh to boot AND - AND - at one stage - cabling every so often too. I didn't feel the rage quite as badly as when I was doing the heel-flap on the Jaywalkers, but I made horrendous mistakes. And yes, there is a weeny hole where the gusset joins the heel. Again.

Heel turned! I do think I like the look of it better than the heel-flap misery, nonetheless.

It looks like such a simple sweet pattern, but oh no: the twisted cabling, one stitch at a time, is deceptively tricky. No television-watching while knitting this one. It's worth the messing around, though - look at that gorgeous transition from the twisted rib to the lattice pattern! I'm not sure that the marled yarn I'm using shows the twists to their best advantage, but oh well.

And here is Snicket's leg, showing the gorgeous subtle, subtle transitions of the yarn. The designer says that the pattern is intended to mimick net sleeves, but I think that in this yarn (Fortissima/ Socka Colori, 75% wool 25% polyamide), whose colourway is after all called "Turf", the pattern looks more like an artefact that's been preserved in a peat bog: an ancient branch, perhaps, that shows its ring pattern when it's dug up, or perhaps even the half-erased half-uncials or leather tooled binding of a long-buried mediaeval psalter.

If one is to be fanciful about so mundane an object as socks. Which, it appears, is actually de rigeur, in the strange strange world that is internet sock knitting....

jaywalkers!

2006-08-20T21:30:00.000+01:00

Look look LOOK! My first pair of socks! I did it! I finished them!

Pattern:Jaywalkers, from Magknits. (A name that makes no sense to me, I realise: in German, I don't think there's a word for jaywalking, because it is so taboo; in Ireland, by contrast, ignoring all lights and zebra crossings is so common that, again, it is just known as "crossing the road." I know I'm home when all the police jaywalk.)

Yarn: Regia 4-fädig Nation Color sock yarn, in colour 5399, 75% wool 25% polyamide

Needles: 2mm Addi metal double-pointed needles

Time sucked: A week. I knitted like a woman possessed. My fingers are falling off of me.

Whoa. It's not true, folks: socks are NOT easy. Particularly not for a reading knitter like me. You see, confession: I'm not a perfectionist knitter. I admire Eunny Jang's utter devotion to detail and process no end, but alas, I have to read while I knit. Or watch a film. Or talk. I can't be counting and watching all the time, my head would fall off with the boredom. So the socks are full of mistakes and wobbles, and many of them were not just learner mistakes, they were avoidable, but was I going to frog? On TINY needles? Hell no.

But look! Look at the gorgeous colourdiness of them! I particularly love their anarchic non-matchiness, and the teeny tiny tip of purple on the toe of one sock. So very cute.

Here are the heels, which caused me no end of grief. Not the turning so much as the picking up stitches: I tried two methods, one the one I knew already, which leaves a slight seam, and one a fancier method picking up slipped stitches, and neither was much fun and both caused sweating and misery and ugh, and there are still little holes in the corners of the gussets, which I'm not sure how best to avoid.

Yes, I do have a birthmark. And weak ankles, to boot.

Neelia is right: handmade socks feel completely different. It's almost as though they were tailored, not knitted: a perfect, stiff fit, tight to pull on and bulky to wear. I do like them, but do I have the bug? Not yet, I think. My hands are damned SORE. But I am kind of bursting with pride, I do have to admit.

I came, I saw... I jaywalked

2006-08-14T07:31:00.000+01:00

Ow. Typing hurts. And whose fault is it? Mine, mine alone, of course. It was all supposed to be so innocent: I went down to Fadeninsel to get a set of double-pointed needles, or a Nadelspiel, as they are charmingly called in German. This time, I remembered to get youse a photo, even.

Look at all the bargain yarns and handknits in the windows!

I went in and asked for the needles. Already, I had become sucked in to the cultish world of socks, because I asked for 2mm; the internet says that it prefers a firm pair of socks, and I aim to do this right. And then, I saw the most fabulous, tacky, chain-store-coloured stripey sock yarn on very very cheap offer. And I fell, and tumbled.

I never really understood sock knitting, you see. I knit because it's a fun distraction, and because I like being able to knit gorgeous or silly stuff that I couldn't buy in the shops. Socks, you can buy anywhere. Plus, in the summer I wear sandals and in the winter I wear boots, and I don't have much opportunity for showing off fabulous lacey short-rowey goodness.

More, I am more than a little scared of the cultish devotion that sweeps sock knitters online. Knitty tells you, "Add a little zing to YOUR socks!", assuming that you knock out a pair a month at the very least; bloggers the web over state their hatred of toe-down, their devotion to short-row heels, their passion for Lorna's Laces (all very well if you live in the States), their hunger for new techniques, and good grief, they are just SOCKS. But the Regia Color yarn was so bright and cheery, and so very artificial and un-artisan, that I just had to try...

Jaywalker! And look! I turned the bloody heel! I TURNED it! It may or may not have involved tears, flinging the sock across the room, feverishly googling for instructions, aching fingers and passionate hatred, but... well, I must be hooked, because that's about 12 hours work, more or less solid. On 2mm needles, what's more. That sock isn't just firm, you could stir your coffee with it. I may be a heretic and go for 2.5mm needles next time, because my hands are about to fall off, and perhaps I don't mind having a slightly softer sock after all. That's just the kind of rebel I am.

hooray! MORE YARN!

2006-08-09T08:23:00.000+01:00

Because that's just what I need, man. Yesterday, I met up with the lovely Neelia for the first time ever, for a high-powered fast-paced raid on Fadeninsel, the best yarn shop I have ever seen in Europe. Neelia was nearly overcome at the lusciousness of the yarns on display, but did recover a little when she realised the high acrylic content of most German designer yarns... I still haven't got a photo of Fadeninsel to show you, but I must do. It's a cute little shop in a funky, very Turkish neighbourhood, a shop run by sharp-eyed women who anticipate your needs before you've thought of them. Yesterday, the woman in charge was kind enough to speak (flawless) English to Neelia and switch to German when talking with me, which is an attention I liked. Usually, service personnel and many other Germans I encounter here either have no English at all, or are so pleased at the chance to practice their English on a native speaker that they don't let me speak German. But not in Fadeninsel!

I shall not report the extravagances of the lovely Neelia, but look what I got:

Sock yarn! I've never made socks before, but now may well be the time. The yarn on the left is going to be made into leafy embossed socks, because it's all autumnal and all, and the yarn on the right - bought on sale! - is going to be my learner pair. Neelia suggests Jaywalker for the pattern, but I'm not sure yet.

I also got the new Rebecca magazine:

and got inspired by this photo. I have all this báinín aran yarn sitting around in Ireland, and have never been convinced as to what to do with it. I always think of báinín jumpers as being similar to Celtic armband tattoos and Sinéad O'Connor, part of the Oirish cultural revival of the early nineties, and more than a bit embarassing now. But a funky waist-nipped aran, with a scoop neck instead of the one pictured, might be just the trick. Hmmm. I have two weeks to decide.

Talking of decisions:

My lovely girlfriend brought me back this Fleece Artist yarn from the most amazing yarn store I have ever seen, in Toronto. I am so lucky. It is just luscious: slubby and rich-coloured and hand-painted and thoroughly, thoroughly North American. I so want to do it justice: there's 750 grammes of it, more than enough for a garment, but which garment? I've never seen patterns for anything this thick, and I don't want to make something that looks like a cropped sleeping bag. Any suggestions very, very welcome.

hippy heatwave cami!

2006-08-05T14:59:00.000+01:00

Whoops. Life caught up with me, and yes, not so much blogging happened. Which doesn't mean that I wasn't knitting, I was, it just wasn't very... bloggable. I have been futzing around on that silly baby dress for a month, and I still amn't at all motivated to finish it off. I really should.

But! I have been doing something that is much, much more exciting, viz: designing my own top! Sort of. Kind of. It's influenced by a) that monster box of cotton I scored off eBay b) Soleil c) the Prosperous Plum Tank. Also by a heatwave we had in Berlin, hence I am tentatively calling it the Hippy Heatwave Cami. The idea was a top with the curvy shaping of Soleil, but in a reasonably modest lace. And then I got mad and decided that two-tone contrasting laces was the way to go (this is the hippy bit.) A dull day at work produced the following, cough, kinda design:

No. I cannot draw. But I can get kinda obsessive about knitting once I get an idea in my head, and even in the 38 degree heat I kicked off:

And this is where I am now:

Of course, it is now no longer a heatwave, and an airy cotton vest suddenly seems much less appealing. But it might still be wearable as a going-out top, right?

I am particularly proud of my lace decreases in pattern:

Look! Up until the last couple, you wouldn't even notice those sections, right? The laces are Fern Leaf and Beech Leaf from the Knitter's Bible, a tribute, if you will.

I'm somewhat less happy about the sizing, though. It seems very, very small. Cotton lace DOES stretch something amazing, though, right? Even Soleil feels very baggy afte a few wears, and that's only stocking stitch, so lace should be even more accommodating? Ack. I thought I planned OK from my gauge swatch, but am now getting cold feet. Not so much that I would stop knitting it, of course.

intarsia, bet into submission

2006-07-26T11:34:00.000+01:00

Look! Look look look! That looks like intarsia, doesn't it? Complete with... horrible dangly ends. But still! I beat it! Tatjana, you were right: being over-zealous with chopping the yarn into tiny pieces is the way to defeat and humiliation. I carried the yarn over three whole stitches in some cases, and nothing terrible happened. Mind you, it still looks babyish. But I guess that's the point.

Intarsia, I hate you

2006-07-19T07:58:00.000+01:00

I had guests over the last week, and my knitting mojo was seriously damaged. But then, the wonders of eBay saved me, by delivering up a copy of The Knitter's Bible, by Claire Crompton. It's the anti-Stitch 'n' Bitch: crisp, no-nonsense instructions a bit like the admonishments at the back of Rowan knitting magazines ("It is a great shame that so many garments are ruined by poor seaming"). I think the cutesy writing of Debbie Stoller was just what I needed to get me past the first fear of knitting, but now that I really do believe that I can knit anything, if I put my mind to it, clear prose with detailed photos is exactly what I want.

And oh! It has the most wonderful stitch library, over 100 stitch patterns, and now my mind is running wild with notions about designing a lacey camisole, based on the Soleil shaping, mostly knitted in a simple eyelet pattern in a dull olive green cotton, with hot pink accents in a more elaborate lace. Exciting times. For fashion-obsessed knitters, that is.

***

First, though, I have a pile of baby clothes to get through. I was doing so well with the first Anouk, and whizzed through the back yesterday. So cute! So fluffy! I find it hard to believe that babies really are that small, but apparently they are. It was all going so well. And then, armed with the Knitter's Bible, I decided that nothing, no nothing held any fears for me any more: I would teach myself intarsia.

Horrible, horrible intarsia! With the sucky tension and dangly ends and tangly balls of yarn! And it looks dreadful at the front and even worse at the back:

Ghastly, gruesome vision! I have a nasty feeling the baby will feel mortally offended at being presented with such a grisly mess, to say nothing of its stylish mother. And you can't even frog intarsia, because all the ends are cut! I despair. I will finish the pocket, and think again, but perhaps I'll just lazy-daisy the dress and leave it at that. It's not like I'll ever want to use intarsia on a garment for myself, after all, and after all, whatever I pretend, my knitting is all about Me.

stitch markers

2006-07-13T12:42:00.000+01:00

No new knitting for the moment, friends. I was whisking through the first Anouk, but then I sustained a sorry injury when I momentarily forgot the useful function of a chopping board, and am invalided out of the knitting world at the moment.

But I do have pretty pictures nonetheless! I got the dinkiest parcel from my friend Katie through the post, all full of sparkles and loveliness,
containing a gloriously anarchic selection of stitch markers.

Hooray! So pretty! No more elastics for me! If ever there was an inducement to start knitting MORE lace, this was it. Thank you so much, lovely!

Desert Princess Jacket. Or not?

2006-07-07T12:49:00.000+01:00

FO: Desert princess ajour-patterned jacket

Pattern: from Verena magazine. (They don't go in for cutesy names in German knitting magazines)

Yarn: Schoeller and Stahl Scooter, colour 9857, 4 1/2 balls

Needles: 5mm circs, manufacturer unknown

Pattern modifications: I was supposed to pick up and knit ribbed sleeves on, but alas! the jacket has become vast enough as it is, and I suspect the human frame could not support its weight if I were to do so.

Time sucked: One week. Minus the arms

Lesson learned: Swatch more sternly in future. It is too big. It is just too big. Snacky little bolero, not so much. On the other hand, I learned something fascinating about shrug construction, viz: a shrug is just a square of fabric, turned into a tube. No wonder they are so popular!

I do love it, despite its vastness. I will try wearing it out tonight, perhaps, and we will see what happens. Anyone have opinions on the sleeves?

desert princess jacket down, thousands of Anouks to go

2006-07-05T10:49:00.000+01:00

So there she is, my desert princess ajour jacket, blocking on the sofa. What do you mean, it looks like a giant carpet to you? Tsk! I should have included something to give you an idea of the scale, butcurrently it's pretty huge, about sixty by seventy centimetres. I'm not blocking it too severely, because it turned out a little larger than the pattern measurements state.Somehow, this huge floppy piece of heavy cotton is going to be transformed into that delicious little jacket. Do you believe it? I'm not quite sure.

And this is the lace blocking, close up. I do love the strong geometric pattern, and it wasn't at all hard to learn. I'm still a bit bewildered by the choice of yarn, though. Heavy cotton worsted-weight shaggy yarn for lace? I don't know.

*

Next up: the Anouks! And here is where the fun bit comes in. I have a whole paintbox full of pastel cotton yarns, and I get to decide which colour combinations go to which baby. One gets the hot turquoise and orange combo on a pale blue background, one gets the more gentle floral set that cunningly uses up the rest of my sock yarn. Or not? I have rose and olive to play with still, after all. Decisions, decisions. Fun decisions.

The sun has got her hat on

2006-07-04T11:03:00.000+01:00

By which I mean, of course, Hurrah!

FO: Knitty's Soleil

Pattern: Soleil, from last spring's Knitty

Yarn: ggh Molina, 100% cotton, colour 05, 4.5 balls used (ca. 225 grammes)

Needles: 4 mm Addi Turbos

Pattern modifications: One extra repeat of lace along the bottom; edging on arms and neckline picked up and knit rather than crocheted, because, erm, I haven't learned to crochet. Yet. Yet!

Time sucked: About a week and a half, with a week's break in between.

What colour would you call this, then?

I'm intrigued by the yarn, rather than in love: it's soft and shiny and light, and the colours are aubergine, sky blue, turquoise, cream and mid-blue, all plied together. I thought, somehow, that when it knit up, the colours would resolve themselves, but even in a garment, they're as indetermined as ever.

I think I like this: it is, as I intended, a plain-ish, no-fireworks garment that I could even wear to an office. The fit is fabulous around the waist, perhaps a little matronly around the shoulders: if I were to knit it again, I'd decrease for the last six rows under the arms rather than increasing, and make the straps thinner. (Also, I would stand up straighter while being photographed. Good grief.)

But let us be honest with ourselves, friends: I'm not going to knit it again. Ever again. Never mind the slight mercy of the lacey edging (Felinity, it was indeed fun, though very, very easy.) Repeat to yourself over and over again, Glitz: No more stocking stitch garments, no no NO.

Oops, I laced it again

2006-07-01T13:48:00.000+01:00

German knitting magazines are odd, odd things. You might know about Rebecca, the German knitting magazine that Debbie Stoller describes in Stitch and Bitch as being full of attractive Aryans frolicking on the beach, a snide but reasonably accurate description. Rebecca tends to simple-ish, classic designs that feature ggh yarns only, as it is the in-house magazine of the ggh yarn house. Rebecca also, I think, has a US edition, and hence an English-language following.

But there are others that are not translated, more obscure and considerably more mad. I am particularly fond of Verena, which is put out by Burda. Unlike Rebecca, Verena is not hampered by being bound to use the yarns of any one manufacturer; but still, I suppose, like any knitting magazine, it is bound to market the new yarns that are put on the market. And lord, the German market is absolutely full of crazy novelty yarns, in ever more unlikely combinations of synthetic fibres. Thus, Verena is half-full of creations like the one on the left, above, that feature more novelty yarns and plastic than you would have thought possible in one jumper, cost a fortune, and are of so astonishing a hideousness that they probably regularly feature on You Knit What? Presumably, the yarn manufacturers figure that, unless the wizards of Verena whip up a design featuring their latest crazy shiny sticky string, no-one in their right minds would buy it.

But then again, they also feature wonderful eccentric bohemian knits, the like of which you don't see elsewhere. So take, for example, the delicious little snacky jacket to the right, which, the blurb charmingly says, is designed for "desert princesses". Look at the gorgeous intricate lace! The plain-ish yarn! I have been ogling it for weeks, and yesterday... I fell. I didn't just fall into knitting yet ANOTHER lace project for myself, no; I felll into, for the first time ever, buying the original yarn specified for the project, at full price, Schoeller and Stahl's Scooter.

And lo, I suppose that the yarn manufacturers have a point, for I certainly would never have dreamed of buying this rather odd yarn otherwise: 64% cotton, 27% viscose, 9% polyamide (the colour is true in the photo of the ball, but not in the photo of the lace). It feels and looks a bit like carpet pile, with a golden shiny polyamide thread running through it, and whoever thought of designing a lace pattern with it? But I'm enjoying knitting it up, and, erm, have achieved quite a lot since yesterday. Whoops.

Thus, my friends, a double sin: not only have I not started knitting scrumptious little baby dresses with the cotton, as I said I would, but neither have I finished sewing Soleil. There is a reason for it, though: it needs to be finished with a crochet edging picked up and knit along the armholes, and no matter how I google, I cannot find instructions for how to do that. Perhaps I will have to give in and ask the Livejournal knitting community for advice; or perhaps I'll figure it out on my own somehow after all.

packages!

2006-06-30T10:58:00.000+01:00

Is there anything more delicious than packages?

With, for example, shiny yellow cotton-viscose yarn, and pretty old-rose cotton yarn, and slightly dull-olive cotton yarn, and more shiny cotton- viscose baby-blue yarn... for example.

I had ordered the yarn in a slight rush of eBay madness, not quite knowing what I would do with it; colours never show up properly on eBay yarn photos, and I thought that green and pink and yellow sounded like colours that I could wear. When they arrived, though, they proved to be just as pastel as the photo had advertised.

Not quite suitable for a sophisticated adult knitter, then. But for the not one, not two, but THREE baby girls who have been born to my friends and family in the last month? Oh yes. And perhaps also for the little boy who is no longer a baby and has a birthday coming up this summer too? Yes indeed.

Now to go poring over baby patterns online. Not something I have ever done before, but I think it might well be fun. Does anyone have any good suggestions for pretty summer cotton dresses and jumpers? (I know that soakers are all the rage, but even the name of them makes me shudder. No no no. I'm not quite ready to face the messy squicky aspect of baby care yet.)

die Sonne kommt wieder

2006-06-29T10:55:00.000+01:00

Greetings! I have been away in Vienna, and although I meant to do a thorough scour of the yarn shops there, I got no further than peering through the window shutters of a small yarnery late at night. The prices were in keeping with Vienna, i.e.: not small, and as you may have gathered by now, cheapness is of the essence in my yarn purchasing. Perhaps this blog should be called MiserKnits instead. Sigh.

I didn't bring knitting with me, but have been lashing into Soleil since I came back. It'll be finished by the end of the week, I hope - I most devoutly hope. I had entirely forgotten how utterly dull stocking stitch is, and even though I'm only slogging up the back of the neck at the moment, every purl row is torture. Never again.

Isn't it funny how one's idea of what is a nice garment changes once one starts knitting? At least, that's what happened to me. When I started, I wanted to knit what I saw in the shops: simple, stretchy stocking-stitch and rib knits, in this season's shape. And then, I knocked out a couple of boringly-shaped stocking-stitch jumpers, and realised that I probably never, ever wanted to knit that much predictable fabric again. Now, I find myself looking at knitwear and admiring fussy little details like fairisle, lacework, fancy shoulder shaping, neat waist details - none of which are fashionable, all of which would be both fun to knit and very instructive. Soleil is fine, it'll be a sturdy flattering vest in my wardrobe, but have I learned anything from it? No. Until I get to the crochet edging, of course.

die Sonne über Berlin

2006-06-18T15:59:00.000+01:00

Hooray! I have cast on for Soleil in the ggh Molina cotton, and it's going to be gorgeous. The yarn is so silky and soft and light, I can't wait to wear it.
(Some use fancy beaded stitch markers. Till the day when I can afford those, hair elastics do me just fine.)

In other good news, not once but two of my school friends have had baby daughters in the past two weeks. Thank goodness that I have that yellow cotton/viscose coming in the post this week; it'll make some luscious baby items. Now the fun part of deciding which.

The Cheapskate's Guide to Stash Enhancement

2006-06-16T17:53:00.000+01:00

1. I hoped this was a recycled yarn score: hand-knitted charity shop jumper, with a gorgeous drape, made from a luscious heavy cotton/viscose (I think) yarn. In the shop, I think,Huzzah! One of those classy chic mixed-fibre German yarns will be mine as soon as I have unravelled the rather ridiculous 80s batwing shape!

But alas, alas, alas. This second picture shows the colour better, and may also give you some idea of the horror of the hand-stitching, all done in thread, not yarn. All the ends are SEWN in, and WORSE, when you manage to unravel them , the cotton becomes unplied from the viscose and aaaargh. Aaaargh, the horror. It took me six hours or so to do (don't worry, I fitted in some wine and flirtation while I was slaving), and I lost about a quarter of the yarn in the process. What to do with a small amount of heavy semi-ravelled viscose/cotton? Some kind of simple shrug, perhaps? Oh, I don't know.

2. Today I needed some proper stash enhancement to recover. Et voici: 100% cotton ggh Molina, on sale for €1.50 for 50g. I bought 250g, and that better be enough for a mini flirty vest top. The summer isn't getting any cooler, thank goodness.

Some day, I will be a proper rich grown-up, and will buy silks and angoras without count for the cost, won't I? Some day.

More dilemmas from the land of dirt-cheap yarn

2006-06-14T14:36:00.000+01:00

This is what happens to women who are too poor to pay for proper yarn and too obsessed with flea markets to say no to bad bargains. I was wandering around the flea market at Boxhagener Platz in east Berlin last Sunday and found this extraordinary mass of lilac yarn. Now, of course, at a flea market, you can hardly whip out a lighter and demand to carry out a burn test on the spot, surrounded by old newspapers and various other flammable goods. But it was only €1.50, so who cares, right?

Once I got the peculiar pie-like object home, the test suggested, unsurprisingly, that it's acrylic. Possibly with a slight odour of burning wool around the edges, but mostly pure itchy plastic.
So what to do? I was lusting after the pattern on the left in this edition of Rebecca, and swatched it for the lace, but it's a touch too fine. And anyway, the thought of acrylic lace anywhere next to the skin... urrgh.

I should, I suppose, give it up. Alas. But it was SO CHEAP! How can I part with the prospect of a fabulous €1.50 FO?

random knitting link

2006-06-14T13:49:00.001+01:00

From the Guardian:
Kick one, purl one. An unusually knit-positive article from the Guardian's World Cup blog. I especially like the article's focus on the positive values of knitting for men:

[...]And younger males concerned about the flak they may get from their mates need not worry.

A Knitter's Review forum dedicated solely to this kind of anxiety has Pamela Kite boasting how when her "closet knitter" sons went public they were hated by the other boys not because they knitted, but because they became the centre of all the girls' attention.

But I like Elsie's advice best: "I always encouraged [my son] to do things well, do it because you like it, and the hell with everyone's else opinions."

Oh yes, I like that. I'm not doing a Knitting World Cup, though: it's hardly as though I need any encouragement to knit ever faster and ever vaster.

Dilemma

2006-06-13T18:16:00.000+01:00

So, there's this yarn, right? Fabulous, fine, Russian rasberry-coloured yarn in a soft shiny wool/angora mix.

And there's this gorgeous, luscious lacy stole pattern: Eunny Jang's Print O' the Wave Stole

Oh! Just look at it! So shimmery and airy and very, very clever! Would it not be the most fabulous project ever?

But... look a little closer.

That stitch pattern. If you look at it REALLY closely? It's somehow very, very similar to the dull wave-with-fingers pattern Convertible, isn't it? Only magically transformed into a complex, bewitching design. But still. Could I bear to submit to that damn pattern again, so soon?

Ripe for conversion

2006-06-13T18:01:00.000+01:00

Up close and looking... socky.

the skinny

Pattern: Convertible, from this spring's Knitty

Yarn: Lana Grossa Meilenweit Cotton Fantasy sock yarn, 45% cotton, 42% wool, 13% polyamide, in colour 809

Needles: 4 mm Addi Turbos

Pattern modifications: None as such; I stopped after 14 buttonholes, rather than 16, but otherwise it was knitted entirely to pattern.

Time sucked: About two weeks, from 20 May till 8 June, knitting pretty constantly while I read during the day.

Aargh

I'm not sure about this entire project, and haven't been from start to finish. I was seduced by the fabulous flexibility of the stole-with-buttonholes concept, and jumped on the first yarn I found to make it. I'd heard before that sock yarn is a good idea for making stoles with, but it was horribly, horribly inelastic. Perhaps the places where I heard this rumour were American knitting blogs, written by knitters who have access to seductive silky merinoey handpainted sock yarn. Perhaps this yarn had too little wool to adapt properly to knitting lace. As it was, knitting it was a pain: the yarn was completely inelastic, as I've said, and the shiny needles were completely wrong for it, so the stitches kept falling off. Moreover, the lace pattern was actually very, very dull to knit. I think I prefer lace with pretty figurative patterns where you can go "Look! I just completed a leaf!" rather than this kind of quiet repetitive pattern.

I'm not sure how I feel about the FO: I still love the colours of the yarn, and I'm hoping that a cotton/wool blend will indeed be, as the label promises, "klimatisierend". I've yet to buy buttons for it (which I am ridiculously excited about, as Knopf Paul is an emporium of delights and wonders), and I think I'll wait till I've actually tried it on in all its permutations before I decide whether or not to keep it.

eScore!

2006-06-13T16:29:00.000+01:00

Hooray! I just scored 1.5 kg of cotton yarn on eBay. Just in time, really, because my fingers were getting itchy, but itchy for something new to knit. I suspect it may become a Soleil, seeing as half of the yarn looks as though it is exactly the same colour as the model, but I might just get daring and knit me a W instead. Or as well. It is a kilo and a half of yarn, after all. Or maybe the yellow could be dyed green, for more of a red-head colour?

Ebaying yarn is SO much more fun than buying it new, I tell you. So much more room for ridiculous experimentation, because hey, it's only cheap, right?

first post...

2006-06-11T22:19:00.000+01:00

Hello, and welcome to glitzknits, complete with the very annoying spelling. The first entries will backdated, I think, because otherwise my mighty knitting progress might look rather poor.

Recycled yarn, hooray!

2006-05-30T19:51:00.000+01:00

See this jumper?

Now you don't!

aaaand jumper!

Pattern:Ubernatural, from magknits

Needles: Addi Turbo 10s, 10 mm DPNS and 8 mm circular and DPNS for the ribbling

Time sucked: Three days

Modifications: I knitted the sleeves longer by knitting 20 rows in stocking stitch on 10mms before switching to rib, slightly lenghthened the body, and nipped in the waist.

I am ADDICTED to the top-down raglan now. Addicted! So quick! No seaming! You can gauge the measurements precisely as you go along! It may not be the most slimming jumper ever, but I wear it every other day at the moment. I found the pattern pretty straightforward, once I had found the pattern corrections. Before that, I admit I was crying over my circulars for a bit. But only for a bit.

Recycling is not just for yarn

2006-05-14T12:09:00.001+01:00

Recycled jumper tote, using an old Penney's jumper. I have a horrendously low IQ, and spent hours last night trying to work out the spatial logistics of how to line the bag and which side to sew on. Nightmare, I tell you, but it gives the bag so much more structure. Also, it looks cuter.
Pattern: Made more or less according to the instructions for a recycled sweater tote given here, but with a square bottom, and lined.

Materials: old Penney's (Primark, for UK readers) lambswool stripey raglan, patchwork cotton for lining.

Time sucked: Two somewhat frenzied evenings.

I like it. I wear it with pride.

Rebecca lace jumper

2006-05-13T08:46:00.000+01:00

Pattern: Model number 40, from Rebecca knitting magazine no. 40.

Yarn: The original is knitted in pink cashmere, and I calculated that to use the yarn required would work out at about 220 euros.

220! I might JUST pay that for a jumper hand-knitted by Vivienne Westwood, but certainly NOT one cobbled together by me. So it's knitted in a discontinued Prestige yarn that I scored on eBay, hence the slightly unexpected bright orange colour: Bluefaced Leicester Hog DK, it says, 70% wool 30% silk.

Modifications: I also only had 550 grammes of this, and it turns out that it's a really heavy yarn: I didn't want to knit the jumper with flared sleeves anyway, because they annoy me, but I had to shorten them considerably to make the yarn last. But I think it looks pretty damn nice with short sleeves too - which also means I can wear it right away even though it's May already.

Time sucked: About a month, on and off

The pattern and lace chart was very easy to follow, and I think the lace is gorgeous. The only quibbles I have is a slight problem understanding how to increase on the sleeves - are you supposed to increase in pattern, or have a section of plain stocking stitch growing on each side of the sleeve as you increase? and the fact that the pattern only comes in one size, 38/40 (10/12 Irish/UK size). I was slightly worried that it wouldn't stretch to fit me, but blocked, it did. However, it fits pretty snugly, so I'm not sure how large a range of sizes it would fit.

Overall, a MUCH more fun knit than any plain stocking stitch jumper I've knitted, AND it turned out really flattering. This is the first thing that I've knitted that feels as though it is more fabulous than anything I could buy in the shops. I'm delighted.

Vintage FO: Blackberry

2005-12-01T12:17:00.000Z

Following on my adventures in recycling yarn, I bring you

FO: Knitty's Blackberry

First we had Shapeless Charity Shop Jumper, which I scored for seven euros:

and then we had Stringy Yarn...

And now, within the space of roughly five days, we have a cardigan!

http://www.knitty.com/issuefall05/PATTblackberry.html
Pattern: Knitty's Blackberry

Yarn: Recycled 100% wool purple tweed.

Needles: 7mm Addi Turbos

Time sucked: Five days. Went on the needles last Thursday, was finished, blocked and dried by tonight.

Pattern modifications: I changed the reverse stocking stitch to normal, and left off the bobbles, because the poor wool had seen enough bobbles in its last incarnation.

Verdict

Now, I know it's not the most flattering cardi ever for a bosomous person, but it is
quick and goddamn, it is warm, and my flat is fucking FREEZING in the daytime. Curvy people need chunky sleeves
too. I may not look va-va-voomish, but I recalculated the gauge properly (which thrilled me no end) and I now have
cosy shoulders, and really, what is not to love? This is an astonishingly easy knit. And seven euros it cost me for the
original jumper, which, for pure wool, is a bargainous result by anyone

hat on dpns

2005-02-12T14:13:00.000Z

Stocking stitch hat knitted more or less freestyle on 3 mm dpns, out of ggh superwash 100% wool yarn, trimmed with ggh Mystik in seed stitch. I used the kitty hat in Stitch and Bitch as a rough guide, but merrily adapted it myself for skinnier wool. This was before I learned to ssk: hence, the crown decreases make a spiral shape, as they are all k2togs.

Verdict: hats in dk yarn are not warm enough. But I learned!