A Finished Object and lots of plans.

Been enjoying doing lots of painting and having all the lovely Christmas decorations out, the little smoking man in particular!

I finished my Juveler cardigan! I'm really pleased with it, it's an open-fronted cardi, reminds me of a bolero or shrug, something to pop on over dresses in the Summer or if you're a bit chilly.
It was really quick to knit and took less than 5 balls of Noro Silk Garden (on 5mm needles). I knit the medium but could easily have made the large and been comfortable, I didn't do any sleeve decreases till I was past my elbow as I worried my sleeves would end up too tight.

I'm currently working on a testknit for a knitter whose work I love. It's going ok, I was really worried it wasn't going to fit how I want it to but it seems to be alright now. I'm working hard on this testknit as I'm keen to cast on a couple of cardigans... The first is Leitzel by Alison Green (pattern from Twist Collective, Fall 2015).

I fell in love with this one afternoon while I was idly trawling Ravelry... I then spent a fun evening looking at yarn and chose Jamieson's Shetland Heather in the end, and after much debate over colour I went for Mist.

Mist! It's a subtle lilac/grey/blue with pink flecks - I LOVE it. I was saying to Rich that I wanted to get back to buying yarn for a project, then knitting it up fairly quickly (he raised an eyebrow when yarn arrived the other day!).

Another pattern I decided I want to cast on soon is a pretty colourwork cardigan. I was watching The Box of Delights with Rich (a family tradition, every Christmas!) and Miss Maria was wearing a corgeous colourwork cardigan, it had moss green, dark blue and red... BBC production so I'd not be surprised if the cardi lives in their wardrobe department and has made an appearance in other 1930s/40s period programmes. I've had a bit of a google and I can't find any images so I'll snap one on my phone this evening when we watch episode 5. Here is the cardigan I chose last night...

I like the fit on this one, also the fact that the sleeves are knit separately and seamed, I'm not keen on steeked sleeves. I think that I'll not make the shoulders quite so wide, I'll make it more like my colourwork cardi (below). Most of the versions on Ravelry have fairly big shoulders (true to the pattern and the style of the time), there are some fab versions on there - here if you're a Raveller.

By the way, I bought the pattern from this lovely lady - the Vintage Knitting Lady - she has so many gorgeous patterns to choose from, her site is a real treasure trove!

The other pattern I've been resisting (because it is massive) is Find your Fade by Andrea Mowry. Definitely a good pattern for subscribers to yarn clubs! There's a lot of knitting in it though, I think about 1400 metres which is nearly the amount I used for my colourwork cardigan above. A month's solid knitting for me as I'm slow, also, I have 3 shawls and don't wear them as much as I wear all my cardigans. Sorry, this is me telling myself that I don't need to cast on Find Your Fade (although I have enough pre-wound Life in the Long Grass yarn)...

It's so pretty though!!!! Let's see how I do over the Christmas period, like I've said before, I really don't do so well with multilpe WIPs...

Updates

I've been in a right knitting funk since finishing my blanket. Casting things on, feeling overwhelmed by longstanding WIPs, not really wanting to work on anything... I was also owed money by a gallery and beginning to panic that they were never going to pay up, so I went through my stash and spent a couple of days putting it all on ebay. I say all, I've still got enough to last me a year at least!

I promised my mum that I'd knit a pair of socks for her friend as a Christmas present. I gave mum the first pair of socks I knit last year (made them too small) and she loves them. She asked if I wouldn't mind whipping up a pair for Sue as Sue's made lots of lovely things for me over the years (she's an incredible seamstress). I did not enjoy knitting these socks, in fact I hated knitting them! The yarn was lovely and the pattern was nice but it's just the small rounds, fiddly dpns (and I dislike magic-loop even more so that wasn't an option). I had to knuckle down and get them done!

 The yarn was a past club colour from Life in the Long Grass called Garden Fall, I think from the Autumn club last year. The colours in the skein were soothing as I worked on the socks, they really did reflect the colours outside as the leaves fell.

Speaking of yarn, back to my massive de-stash on ebay! I've been feeling a little overwhelmed by all the yarn I accummulated over the last couple of years (since discovering indie dyers). Indie dyers are great, but the nature of their work means you get into this odd mindset that you *must buy* when they do updates because they might not dye up a particular colour again for a while, or dye it up quite the same sort of tone in the next batch (or never dye it up again!!). Then you have their yarn clubs, which are great but again, you end up accummulating yarn very rapidly with no concrete plans for what to knit with it. I kept opening my stash boxes and staring at all the yarn and trying to make plans to use it up. It just wasn't working for me...

The good thing about dyers like Hedgehog Fibres is that you can generally re-sell the yarn at a good price via their group's ISO/de-stash board, the same goes for stuff like Bohus leftovers, although I ended up dealing with a bit of a Wally over my Bohus yarn scraps. And why are there so many idiots on ebay? Questions about some yarn I was selling included 'why did you unravel it?' - fair enough that one, a bit nosey, but it could have been because the yarn was horrible to work with. Then there was 'what does frogged mean?', erm, if you can use ebay then you can use GOOGLE! FOllowed by 'What were you knitting?', none of your business!!!!! I got quite wound up by that person and didn't reply because the tone of the messages was fairly rude in tone, I'd rather give my yarn away than sell it to rude people. Incidentally, that particular skein didn't sell so I gave it to the charity shop the very next day! 

All that yarn selling and I bought this! I've wanted some if this colourway for ages (lace club colour - Husk), so I jumped at the chance to get a double-skein. Then I left the Hedgehog Fibres Rav group, the ISO/Destash thread is just too much of a temptation for me. 

I've spotted the hashtag #wipdowntogether on Instagram over the last month, a lovely idea (knitters often seem to cast on many things!). I was planning to finish all my WIPs and then I made the snap decision to rip them all. Funnily enough this was at the same time as my massive ebay destash. All the ripped yarn was listed, all of it sold too! I spent some of the funds on some Shetland Heather for my next project, a gorgeous cardigan from Twist Collective's Autumn 2015 collection. I'll link to it later, I'm typing this post on my phone!

I'm currently working on a lovely test knit, I'm pretty sure that my gauge had changed since I started knitting though (and yes, I did swatch!). It'll work as written (I tried it on last night), just not as I had originally planned to knit it. 

Colourwork Blanket

Last year I had a long night in hospital after a painful minor operation. It was fairly grim and I spent a lot of my night lying awake staring at the celing tiles and thinking about Marie Wallin's Fair Isle Club. With Marie's club you get a pattern a month to knit a square of a stunning blanket, it runs over 12 months and I was lying there trying to think of ways to justify the price of the patterns to myself (around £120 I think, this year's is cheaper but still out of my price range). I kept returning to the conclusion that although it looked as though it would be fantastic to make, I couldn't do it. I ended up buying her other gorgeous pattern, Sage Throw, which I will make at some point (Sage Throw isn't on Ravelry).

Anyway! I'm a massive Kate Davies fan and had the happy thought (while I stared at those celing tiles), that I could make a Kate Davies colourwork blanket! Yes! I was very excited, it really helped as I tried to get myself to go off to sleep, I played a game trying to remember how many colourwork designs Kate had on her pattern page on Ravelry.

As always, I had a backlog of WIPs and I made myself clear as many as possible before I finally cast on the blanket. Had a fun few months of working on it and then took a break at 6 and a half squares. I decided to try and finish it during this year's run of the Great British Bake Off. I like a challenge, just to help keep me focussed when I become distracted by other new projects! I managed to stick to it and got it finished a few days after the final episode was shown.

It's really difficult to get a photo of the entire blanket in one piece - I'll try changing to the wide lens on my camera and will add more photos tomorrow.

The response to this blanket from Ravellers has been absolutely amazing, everyone has been so lovely!

Spindrift Shawl again

I made another Spindrift Shawl (pattern by Helen Stewart). This is for my mum's birthday because she hinted that she would like one after she saw mine. She also hinted that mohair might not be a fibre she wanted me to use! I saw an amazing shawl knit by Tinkhickman on Ravelry - here. I really loved the gradient yarn she had used and promptly bought two cakes of similar from the Etsy shop Bilum. It was lovely yarn to knit with but I was worried about the colours and about the shawl possibly coming out too small. I blocked it really aggressively and was thrilled with the result, the colour and the drape are perfect.
It is a bit wafty and floaty and looks perfect with my wafty floaty fancy frock (an ebay bargain at £12 - it was £130 new!). Mum likes wafty scarfy shawly things and will wear it well.

Hedgehog Fibres Blanket Photo Overload

 Sometimes all I need is a deadline and I'll get things finished. This blanket was pure joy to work on from start to finish, all down to the yarn of course! I love Hedgehog Fibres so much (as does James!).

 It's entirely knit in Hedgehog Fibres Twist Sock held doubled with a strand of laceweight (BFL & Merino Lace, HF again). James calls it his rainbow blanket, his favourite colour in it is the pink shade (mine too, colourway is Kitsch, June 2015 Twist Club).
The photos below were taken just after I had given it to him; he wouldn't wait for a wet block so I gave it a light steam.

I wrote a decent amount of notes on my Ravelry project page, here. The main issue I encountered with this project (apart from my basic crochet knowledge being entirely wrong!) is detailed below.

So, I managed to gradually ‘lose’ about 5 stitches (10 in total) either end of the blanket between the first lot of grannies and section 5 (Fill the Gap). At that point I realised I’d lost said stitches and hastily added them back in, then carried on (taking great care not to lose any again). I got near to finishing the blanket, but the section with the missing stitches was bothering me with its hourglass shape, I was quite sure I wouldn't be able to block my way out of it.
After a lot of research (and finding nothing to fix the loss of so many stitches) I sat down with my hook and my yarn and simply started at the bottom of the grannies (where it began to curve inwards) and crocheted my way up along the edge vertically, following the pattern as set and working the 1, then 2, then 3, then, 4, finally 5, stitches back and forth, joining each row to the existing edge using slip stitch. I decreased back down by eye and ended up with a straight edge.
You can see this visible mend in the front-facing photo where James is wrapped up. The section I’m taking about is visible on both front-facing edges in the photo and is worked in orange.
After the edges had been squared off this way, I worked the finishing edging.

Wisteria cardigans

I signed up to test knit the new pattern by East London KNits, Wisteria Blossoms. It was my first top-down cardigan and a fun and quick knit. I had a couple of issues with gauge (which changed from what I had swatched as I was knitting it), that's why the cardigan is pictured 'buttoned' at the neckline - it pulled too much across my bust.
The yarn is Hedgehog Fibres Merino Aran, the colourway is Construct.

My lovely Rav friend Herbscat said my photos & grey cardigan reminded her of the film Howard's End (a modern version), such a kind comment! I was making do with the camera's timer and had the camera itself propped up on a pile of boxes.

So I made a second one, in Hedgehog Fibres again, but in Silk/Merino Singles, on larger needles, also cropped due to yarn constraints! I'm really pleased with both of these, they're both really wearable and pretty.

The pattern will be released next week, I'll link to it if I remember!

Moder dy photo overload

So it went from this WIP (above), to the FO that you've seen in the previous photos! I'm extremely happy with this knit, it was such a good project to be working on.

Now it's back to my WIP pile, I've picked up my Bohus cardigan again and am over halfway through the yoke! The Bohus yoke is nice, quite fun but a little fiddly and slow. I'll have it done soon though, I want to wear it.