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.

Hashtags

I keep seeing the hashtag 'yarnporn' everywhere and wonder if I'm the only person who finds it a bit creepy, like people are supposed to be literally getting off on gorgeous yarn like those people who are in love with and have relationships with inanimate objects? I know I'm definitely reading too much into it, it just sounds so gross to me, like it could be a specialist section on an actual porn site. Sad, stuck-up old me, I use the hashtag 'lovelyyarn'!

Feeling much better about painting in general, the commissions are finished and it's time to move on to getting some pieces done for a lovely lady in Australia. Fun!

Here are my greeny-blue skeins, much more greeny-blue-deep plum than pictured. Can't wait to see how they knit up (these are my own hand dyeing efforts).

 And on to the expert dyeing... This is a Rose City Rollers sock I'm knitting in Hedgehog Fibres sock (24 Carat colourway), I have never knit with anything so soft before in my life, it is absolutely amazing, not to mention the wonderful brown/gold of the yarn (it's got quite a 1970s sort of vibe to it).
This sock should be quick to knit, technically I should have finished the pair already, but I've lost one of my wooden dpns and am using a smaller metal one in its place (yuck) and I'm also feeling quite focused on my colourwork cardigan, more of which I will share on Wednesday.

Doing dyeing

So all the hand-dyeing stuff arrived yesterday. I was excited to get started but was also pretty nervous, what if everything I dyed was horrible!?

Anyway, I cracked right on and I did it! It was so much fun. Mixing up the dyes was a little bit like mixing oils from dry pigments but not as easy because I had no idea what the final colour would be like, it was sort of like watercolours in a way but again, not as easy. Lots of fun though, did I mention that?.
I did two types of dyeing, the hand-painted sort and the traditional dye bath sort. I liked both but found hand-painting quite tricky, the sections I wanted to be lighter came out lighter in a 'the dye hasn't been applied properly' sort of way but I'll see how it knits up.

 I had to have a massive clean-up before I started anything... Our kitchen gets pretty chaotic on a daily basis.

Can you see the squishy soft yarn in the above photo? Hedgehog Fibres again (another impulse buy)! It's their Kidslik Lace and ooh, it's so lovely, I'm so glad I snagged two skeins. I'm planning on knitting a gorgeous summer cardigan with it, double-stranded,one strand Kidsilk, one strand sock weight. The cardigan is called Celastrina, it's light, floaty and empire-line (my favourite style).

The pink! The rust! The mossy tones... Just perfection. Will be back with my imperfect little skeins in the next few days, oh, and a couple of small stash enhancements too.

My Byggleton

So this was intended to be Bygglier than it ended up. I think I got lazy halfway though and a bit overconfident that the yarn would stretch (it was really stretchy as I was knitting that lace pattern...). Anyway, long story short, after blocking, the sleeves were not going to go round my arms very well once seamed. This is typical of me, I wish it wasn't but I still slip up like this from time to time. Anyway! I didn't unravel it, I just knit a couple of stockinette strips and seamed them in, it's the sort of thing that only knitters will really notice in any case and I'm quite contented with the finished object, it feels very nice to wear (magically light yet warm) and it looks pretty nice. The pattern is Lyttleton by Kate Davies, yarn details below.

The yarn is just stunning, as ever. It's Hedgehog Fibres Silk/Merino Singles in the Pollen colourway. I swear I have got to delete my Instagram accounts and leave the HF updates list! Do you know that this year I was intending to de-stash (in the sense that I would knit all my stashed yarn rather then sell it) and I was also intending not to buy any more new yarn. I gave away all the acrylic & the stuff I didn't swoon over when I opened my yarn boxes, I spent maybe one month, possibly two not buying more yarn and then I got HF fever.. I need the antibodies.

I did add my leftover skeins of Pollen to my trade/sell page on Ravelry but changed my mind after a couple of days and put them back in my stash, I quite fancy knitting a Pollination scarf at some point, probably a bit thinner than the pattern suggests so I can get the length I need from my leftovers. So much yarn, so little time. Half the fun of knitting & collecting yarn is planning though, isn't it?

Stash

It's all too pretty.... So I got a bit obsessed with Hedgehog Fibres recently and went crazy buying yarn from them in dribs and drabs. I do have plans for all of it, three cardigans, lots of socks.

Some of it should be knit up soon. I'm just in the process of finishing my first proper pair of socks - finished one and it was literally the most exciting thing I have done in a LONG time! I was grinning from ear to ear and pretty giddy with this little sock... I have pretty cold feet, so after discovering Hedgehog Fibres I decided I would sort myself a sock drawer out! A good reason to start collecting all those beautiful skeins.