If you want to get ahead, get a hat

My Ishbel beret is finished:

It’s ended up much slouchier than I’d expected, although looking at the photos on Ysolda’s blog I think it’s much the same size as hers really. If I make another one I’ll probably make the next size down (this is the medium), but I’m happy with this one and will definitely wear it.

The yarn is Fyberspates Scrumptious 4-ply. It’s not the easiest of yarns to work with; I found that it was quite loosely plied and had a tendency to split, but it’s gorgeously soft and shiny and I really like the way the variegation works with the lace of the hat. In places it’s ended up looking almost speckly, like a bird’s wing. More pictures on Flickr if you’re interested.

The hat took less than half the skein, so to use up the remainder I’ve cast on for a pair of Veylas:

And, to prove that I don’t only knit Ysolda’s patterns, I have also cast on for Perl Grey’s Imogen cardigan* in Lang Mille Colori:

The cardigan is knitted sideways, starting with a rectangle for the back which the sleeves and fronts are knitted on to from either end. To do this, the pattern starts with a provisional cast-on. For years, my favourite provisional cast-on has been the crochet chain cast-on; I tried the open cast-on over waste yarn and couldn’t quite get my head round it. When I came to cast on for the Ishbel beret, though, I was on holiday and didn’t have a crochet hook with me, so I had to use the waste yarn method and found that several years’ more knitting experience made it seem very straightforward, so I used it again for Imogen, except that as I was transferring the stitches from the waste yarn to a needle for Ishbel it struck me that it would have been so much easier if I’d just used a spare cable from my interchangeable needle set instead of the waste yarn. So that’s what I did here. It did make knitting the first couple of rows a little more awkward than it would have been with waste yarn, but not impossibly so, and when I come to work on that side of the cardigan I can just put the needle tips on the cable and I’ll be good to go.

I’m a little puzzled by the pattern, though – according to the measurements given even the small would be a generous fit on me, and I’m definitely not a ’small’ normally. I suspect it may be that the pattern is written as a chunky jacket to be worn over lots of layers, and I definitely want a more fitted look. I have cast on according to the directions for the small as I certainly don’t want it any longer, and I’m planning on knitting the back until it’s wide enough for my back and then knitting the front until I get the fit I want – at least the design makes it easy to tweak the sizes!

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*It was surprisingly hard to google this to find the link, as it turns out that there was a character in the Forsyte Saga called Imogen Cardigan.

Finished objects

I finished the yellow Nancy Bush socks today:

I’m pleased with how they turned out; they’re a really nice fit, and the yarn (Knitting Goddess Blue-Faced Leicester 4-ply) is lovely and soft, and the colour is wonderfully vibrant.

It took me longer than it should have done to finish these, because I barely worked on them at all last weekend; I was too busy designing myself a pair of slipper socks.

They’re knitted in Texere chunky 100% wool on 5.5mm needles, giving a thick, squishy, warm fabric. I started as for a toe-up sock, knitted until it came halfway up my foot and then put the stitches on top of the foot on a holder and knitted flat to about 2″ short of the length of my foot, worked a short-row heel then picked up stitches along the sides of the foot and the stitches from the holder to knit a couple of rows of ribbing round the top. I sewed Fiber Trends suede slipper bottoms on to keep them clean and stop them from slipping on the kitchen floor, and I’m really very pleased with how they turned out; they’re warm and cosy and fit much better than the furry M&S slippers I had before. My first successful design!

Next up, sock-wise: probably the Yarn Harlot’s Earl Grey socks for my husband, although I have yet to find the right yarn for him to buy me to make them out of (it’s our seventh wedding anniversary this month, which is apparently Wool, so I said if he buys me the wool I will knit him socks out of it). I think that a heathery kind of a semi-solid in blue/grey/green would be best. Perhaps Natalie at The Yarn Yard will have something suitable next time she updates. Meanwhile, I need to finish the Ishbel beret and have lots of scarf and shawl patterns lined up.

The wanderer returns

I’m back from a week in the Yorkshire Dales, spent mostly walking and knitting. There’s a lot of wool in the Dales, although sadly most of it is still attached to the sheep:

However, I did pay a visit to Beckside Yarns, which is a gorgeous shop – light and airy and full of yarn – and where I bought a Zauberball and some Araucania Ranco Multy to add to my sock yarn collection:

(The third yarn in the picture is a skein of Posh Yarn Sylvia which I bought a couple of weeks ago. I was planning on using it for Ysolda’s Damson, but I have seen some lovely Damsons made with Zauberball so might use that instead.)

As for knitting, I was hoping to make progress on the Nancy Bush mystery socks I’m making for the Sock Knitters Anonymous knitalong on Ravelry, but my cunning plan to head into Skipton and visit a coffee shop with free wifi on Tuesday morning so I could pick up the next clue was foiled, as the SKA moderator had dental surgery on Monday and was late posting the clue, and the socks ended up stalled at the bottom of the leg:

Still, this gave me the opportunity to finish my Broad Street Mittens before the weather gets cold enough for me to want them:

and to start an Ishbel beret in the gorgeous Fyberspates Scrumptious 4-ply I bought at Ravelry Day:

I found the Broad Street pattern fairly straightforward, although there were a few errors and omissions in the pattern text and knitting gloves is always going to be a bit fiddly. I think using Magic Loop helped, as instead of faffing around with stitch holders when knitting the fingers I just left the hand stitches on the first needle and used a second one the same size to pick up the stitches for each finger in turn. The yarn is Trekking Hand Art, bought in a little craft shop in St Ives on holiday last September (see, I do use my sock yarn!); the pattern used almost exactly half the skein, so I could probably get a shortish pair of socks out of the leftovers, or possibly a pair with contrasting heels/toes/ribbing.

I had a moment of panic where I thought I wasn’t going to be able to start the beret, as I hadn’t brought a crochet hook, didn’t have internet access and couldn’t remember how to do any kind of provisional cast-on apart from the crochet kind, but after giving it some thought I decided to improvise and came up with something that worked. I love how neat the turned hem makes the hat band, and am generally very pleased with how it’s turning out and definitely looking forward to having the hat to wear. The Scrumptious is as lovely to knit as it was to stroke in the skein. Now I just need the weather to get cooler (it’s noticeably warmer back down here compared to Yorkshire!).

Try saying that ten times fast

I decided to knit Ysolda’s Scroll Lace shawlette in the Rosarios Sole Latte I bought at the NEC Knitting and Stitching Show last year because I couldn’t resist the tongue twister – Sole Latte Scroll Lace – but in fact, the yarn’s drape and the gorgeous blue-green colourway which was what attracted me to it in the first place made it perfect for this pattern.

In this colourway, the waving pattern of the lace reminds me of waves breaking on the shore. I’m very pleased with how it turned out, although given the size (about 6′ long by 1′ wide at the widest part) and the tendency of the stocking stitch to roll up anyway I think it’s more of a scarf than the shawlette it was presented as in Yarn Forward. Which I’m perfectly OK with, as I’m more likely to wear shawls as scarves anyway; I like the way I’ve got it in the photo (and it gives me a chance to model my new Knit Pro Symfonie shawl pin!).

It’s a quick knit, and fairly straightforward. I had a few false starts because my brain was refusing to recognise that the lace was a garter stitch base and I kept purling WS rows, but once I’d got that sorted out and worked out that where the chart for row 14 showed ‘no stitch’ three times it actually meant ‘bind off stitch’ (thank goodness there were written instructions as well!) it went swimmingly.

I enjoyed knitting with the Sole Latte, too. It feels very smooth and silky, and has a heaviness to it that reminded me of silk and which worked very well for this shawl (although I’m not sure how well it would work for a garment, rather than an accessory). I’m still not entirely sure how it’s possible to make yarn out of milk, though!

Redefinition

I have decided (having joined not one but two sock clubs in the last couple of weeks) that I don’t so much have a stash of sock yarn as a collection, in exactly the same way as I have a collection of books. I don’t care that I have more unread books than I can read in the next year, and I don’t care that I have more sock yarn than I can knit in the next year, because I love having books and beautiful skeins of yarn around me for their own sakes. I love knitting, and I love wearing beautiful handknits, but I also love coming home to a squishy parcel of soft, gorgeously coloured hand-dyed yarn. And I love the possibilities of sock yarn; that single beautiful skein can be a scarf, a shawl, a hat, gloves, or even a pair of socks. It could be something for me or a gift for someone else. And it’s complete in itself; all I need to release the possibilities is a pair of knitting needles.

And really, it’s quite a modest habit to have. Most of the yarns I buy cost between £10 and £15, so even if I buy two or three a month that’s quite affordable. Less than I spend on having my hair cut, and visiting the hairdresser is really more of an ordeal than a pleasure.

So, you know what? I’m not going to feel guilty about how much sock yarn I have any more.

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There will be actual knitting content soon. I finished Scroll Lace this afternoon and it’s now blocking (after an emergency dash to the yarn shop in our village, which I don’t usually visit as it only sells pastel acrylic and fun fur yarns, to buy more pins); I’m hoping it’ll be dry enough to blog tomorrow. Meanwhile, in my continued attempt to try new techniques I’ve cast on for two socks simultaneously on Magic Loop, am knitting myself some Broad Street Mittens, and, inspired by a throwaway tweet of Triskellian’s, I have just ordered some yarn to make a TARDIS tea cosy. Because obviously I didn’t have enough other projects on the go. More on all this anon!

Sock it to me

I have new socks:

(Sunday Swing, from the Summer 2009 Knitty.)

These are the first socks I’ve finished for myself in a year and a half (almost exactly; the last pair were my lovely Lorna’s Laces Sweetpeas which I finished on March 4 2008, according to Ravelry). In the interim I’ve made four pairs of socks for my husband, one for my father and the push-me-pull-yous which were supposed to be for me but ended up too big and being given to my friend J instead. So it seemed like about time I made myself a pair.

Even though it’s a really simple pattern these took me almost a month to make. That’s at least partly due to losing a week to the flu and then spending last weekend making S’s hedgehog; in terms of actual knitting time they were very quick, but the main problem was that I found them an utterly boring knit. The lace pattern is incredibly easy, but its very simplicity made it hard for me to read the knitting and, for the first few rows of each pattern repeat at least, I found the only way to keep track of the placing of the decreases and yarn overs was to count the stitches between them, which prevented the socks from being the straightforward, mindless knit I’d hoped they would be.

I used an eye of partridge heel instead of the plain stocking stitch in the pattern, because I prefer reinforced heels and Eye of Partridge is so lovely in variegated yarns:

Anyway, my next sock project is going to be the mystery socks for the Sock Knitters Anonymous September Sockdown KAL, and I’m planning to try knitting two at a time on Magic Loop, which I haven’t done before, so that should offer plenty of interest and challenge. And, with autumn just around the corner, there are lots of new non-sock projects I want to get on with – I spent all last winter planning on knitting a beret and not getting round to it, and my convertible Fetchings have more or less given up the ghost (although three winters’ wear isn’t bad for something as soft as cashmerino) so I really need more gloves before the weather gets cold. And I’ve started knitting Ysolda’s Scroll Lace (from Yarn Forward 15) in some blue-green Sole Latte.

So I think I probably have plenty of interesting knitting to be getting on with!

Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined

One of my favourite books when I was little was Smith the Lonely Hedgehog. My first pet, a hamster, was going to be called Smith, but he turned out to be a she so had to be Matilda instead, after the friend Smith finally finds.

Obviously, I was thrilled to discover that not only was the book one of Ysolda’s favourites too, but that the latest pattern from Whimsical Little Knits 2 was inspired by it! And when I woke up this morning feeling much better and wondering whether I’d be able to make a toy to give my nephew as an extra christening present tomorrow, I thought I’d give Smith a go (I did initially consider making Mousie, but I thought a mouse might be more appropriate for a cat than for a small child).

I made the tiny version, using some leftover sock yarn from my stash – the cream is the Bluefaced undyed yarn left from Tim’s cricket socks, and the black was left from a pair of Cheshire Cat illusion socks I made for a friend the Christmas before last. It took me about six hours of fairly solid knitting with the Test Match in the background – quite a lot in a single day, especially on such small needles; I probably would have put it aside halfway through if the christening wasn’t tomorrow. Still, I’m pleased with how it turned out – I just hope that S likes it!

Rose is a rose is a rose

I haven’t managed much knitting lately, as I came down with the Dreaded Pig Flu (or something very like it) last weekend and one of its effects was to render me utterly incapable of even the simplest knitting. I kept picking up my Sunday Swing socks (which are about the simplest knitting imaginable), knitting a round and then putting them down again in frustration. I had been planning to cast on for the ‘It Cannot Fail To Please’ jumper from A Stitch In Time, but that was obviously right out. Still, it’s not all bad: I have been spending a lot of time on Ravelry and have some new ideas for future projects.

And I’m definitely on the mend now; I finished the first Sunday Swing sock last night, and today I used some of the leftover yarn from the mystery shawl to make this little flower brooch (pattern here).

I might have to make more of these in different colours – it’s a great use for leftover yarn and I can never find brooches I like in the shops. And I might even feel up to casting on for the second sock now…

Orange Blossom

My Mystery Lace Shawl is finished, and probably the loveliest thing I’ve ever knitted:

If I’d seen the pattern when I signed up for the knitalong I’m not sure I’d have dared to try; I was envisaging something like Ishbel, mainly stocking stitch with a lace border, and would have said my knitting skills weren’t up to an all-over lace shawl with several different pattern sections. Which, it turns out, wasn’t true at all. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy I found it to read my knitting and keep myself on track with the pattern as I went along, and by the end I was even knitting it happily in front of the TV (although the other night when I was knitting and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD I should probably not have picked the episode ‘Hush’). I may well be making more lace shawls in the not-too-distant future, which would probably be good for my sock-yarn stash!

Meanwhile, I’m left without a serious project on the needles (I do have some simple socks for myself on the go). What I want to do is to turn the Cotton Glace left over from my lilac cardigan, plus a couple of extra balls in toning colours, into a striped sleeveless pullover with a scoop neck, but I’m having difficulty finding a pattern with everything I want at the right kind of gauge. I think I’m going to have to more or less design my own, which shouldn’t be too difficult but does mean there’s quite a bit of work to do before I can think about casting on.

Can you have too many cardigans?

Hey, Teach! is finished:

I’m really pleased with the way it turned out, and I suspect it will get a lot of wear. Having started off worrying that I might not quite have enough yarn, I ended up having a ball and a half left over. If I made another one I might make the body a bit longer, but the length is fine really.

It only took three weeks from cast-on to sewing on the final button. I’m amazed at how quickly I seem to be knitting these days, especially when I remember that it was only three years ago that I finished my first cardigan (and four years since I started it).

I’ve also been working on the Mystery Lace Shawl. I’ve finished the first section, and am waiting eagerly for Monday to find out what to do next.