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My library got the knitting book I want to read!
Libby has a feature where you can ask it to notify you when your library acquires a book. Since this book came out in 2012, I wasn't very hopeful, but today it came in! I borrowed it immediately. (In the past this has only worked when I tag a book that hasn't been published yet, e.g. last year for the new Murderbot book.)
Almondine de Anne Hanson
Almondine de Anne Hanson
Una publicación compartida por Alex (@taunismausi) el 3 de Nov de 2017 a la(s) 2:11 PDT Estos son los preciosos ALMONDINE que se encuentran en la clase magistral publicada por ANN BUDD y diseñados por ANNE HANSON. La experiencia ha sido muy grata después de un periodo en el que he explorado nuevas temáticas que no creía que me gustarían, para mi sorpresa me ha gustado mucho, quilting. pero me…
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Next sweater project!
The Not-A-Boyrfriend-Sweater is Complete
The Not-A-Boyrfriend-Sweater is Complete
I started this sweater for my husband (then boyfriend) almost exactly three years ago. This week, I finished it. They say you shouldn’t knit a sweater for a boyfriend because you’re likely to break up before you finish (or soon after). But maybe it helps if you marry him part way through. The curse gets a little confused. It probably also helped that I reknitted this sweater three times. Hard for…
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Twas the Season
Well, Christmas was wonderful! Aaron finished work a week before Christmas, so we had loads and loads of time together. And he helped me work on the hall, stairs and landing. Now it is nearly finished, apart from the glossing.
The glossing will occur when the boys are all back to school, as they have already managed to tread in the not-quite-dry-yet floor-levelling compound, and marked the freshly painted wall. So white gloss bannisters and handrails will wait until they are away from here. I just could not face the cleaning bill!
I love the fact we have carpet back down on the stairs, and the wallpaper on the top wall absolutely rocks!
We will need a new carpet at some point, but this is so much better than the Stairs of Doom. The horribly sharp spikes no longer have free reign over the tender skin of our feet, so how can we complain?
The boys’ rooms are also much improved, as we changed the scary Ben 10 wardrobe from D’s room, and replaced the chest of drawers. Now he has an Ikea Stuva wardrobe, which holds all his clothes and shoes, and he has loads more play space on the floor. Lego rules supreme now in there.
We got J a desk, so he can draw and type to his heart’s content. We also cleared out the first of the large wardrobes in there, so he has a very large space for his clothes. All-in-all, his room is better organised and he has more useful space too.
We had a quiet Christmas once all the decorating was done, and we spent time together as a family, building Lego and models, and eating really well.
We all missed dad and Brendan, but I think keeping it a quiet Christmas helped us all move on and hopefully 2011 will be less eventful.
Knittage
I finally finished my gloves!
They absolutely rock – the fit is excellent, and I love the colours.
Details
I cast on using the cable cast on, and knitted 26 rows of rib on 2.5mm. Then I changed to 3mm circulars and knitted up the thumb gusset exactly as per the book using stocking stitch.
Then I knit straight to RC36. RC 37 is where I started the little finger, using 16st, including 1 cast-on one, but using k1F&B instead of a backwards cast on.
The little finger is 27 rows tall, then K2tog to 8st and threaded through and sewn off.
Then 5 rows straight over 48st (2 picked up from the base of the little finger), to shape the upper hand.
Each finger has the following number of stitches and rows:
ring - 18st, 31 rows; middle - 20st, 32 rows; index - 18st, 29 rows; thumb - 24st picked up, decreased to 20st, 24 rows.
I love these!
Having finally finished the gloves, I am now working on Hester, the cardigan from the Rowan book that Amelia bought me. As I am knitting it on 5mm needles, it is going really quickly.
The yarn is Rowan Alpaca Cotton, and I managed to buy this on offer, so it did not cost the 400 billion quid it would have normally cost! The yarn is majorly fluffy, and is making me sneeze a little.
The pattern had me inexplicably foxed for a small while. I had to frog back to the rib when I realised I had missed all of the increases, and then I messed up with the slip stitch and ended up with the pattern being out of step by 2 stitches for 4 rows – more frogging!
It is progressing beautifully now though, and I really like the look and feel of it. I finished my first ball of yarn at RC 55, and am on ball number 2.
The end of the mitten saga?
So the mittens have drawn to a close.
I finished my second mitten a couple of days ago, then popped it, and its mate, oh and Aaron’s mittens, into some lavender wool wash, and let them steep for 5 minutes.
They came out smelling beautiful and feeling very soft and cosy.
Now the three of us, Dylan, Aaron and me, have our own mittens in matching alpaca mix yarn.
And there’s enough left over to make an interesting scarf. My plan is to use the three colours to make a pretty and longish scarf. The colours are in the proportion of half a ball of white, about 1 ball of green and 2 balls of blue.
I haven’t quite decided how to combine them yet, or quite what pattern I will use, but I am keen to try something loose and perhaps lacy to be a counterpoint to the rough thickness of the yarn.
Aside from knitting mittens, it’s been a pretty quiet week. I’ve not been overly busy, and I am worried I am slipping back into my lazier ways.
I’ve been working on a weekly menu to help me decide the weekly shopping. More and more I find I have no idea or design for dinner. My appetite is on and off, and I don’t enjoy cooking for the hell of it. It’s always been a chore, and I can’t see my suddenly loving it out of nowhere. And it’s even harder when I have to decide what to cook as well! Hence the menu idea.
Together with my super-de-duper Mac Gourmet cookery programme, I have loads of ideas and it’s really helping me to sort out the shopping list so we’re not wasting food.
Between that and my lovely slow cooker, everyone is getting to eat well!
I gave my chunky Singer away on Freecycle, and feel much relieved to have one less machine in the house.
I’ve decided to keep my Bond, and that is going to live under my bed. The Singer is in the office, and the Duo 80 is in the loft. So we’re squaring up a little. I plan to manage to cast on and knit a few samples on the Duo, and then decide whether to keep it or not.
The motor is definitely being sold – if Connor and I can remember how the heck to put it back together!
Knittage
In the mean time I’ve started a blanket for Peter and Jen’s first baby. It’s a lovely pattern from Drops Design and it’s knitting up beautifully, in some Sirdar Baby Bamboo in lime which I picked up for a song locally.
The blanket pattern is nice and simple, giving a variety of textures in different panels, all pretty much based on squares.
The whole blanket is made up of 128 stitches, cast on using a cable cast on, and then 6 rows of garter stitch to edge the beginning.
The garter stitch carries on up the sides on 4 stitches at each end, and then the various patterns happen in the panels between.
I’m knitting this on my KnitPro circular needles, using a long cable and 4.5mm tips.
At the moment I am knitting an offset K2, P2 pattern which is making a pretty raised effect.
The yarn is smooth and sleek. It has a vague shine to it, and I believe that bamboo yarns breathe well and are very suitable for babies. I expect it’ll take about 400g of yarn, and I have just a bit over that.
Smitten by mittens
I’ve been bitten by the mitten bug.
It’s a serious sort of infection. I finished Dylan’s mittens and immediately started a pair for Aaron. I’ve now offered to make Robert a pair, and I have my own yarn picked out for my pair. Jack can’t decide on a colour or yarn, but his will be started pretty soon too.
Dylan’s mittens knitted up pretty quickly, and they fit pretty well. I do not like the M1L and M1R which seem to leave a bit of a gaping hole. I have tried rearranging the stitches over the Magic Loop, and their positioning seems to have helped with this when making Aaron’s.
I also found that washing Dylan’s mittens closed a lot of the gaps up. It seemed to fluff up the alpaca nicely.
I also got the Batman bug over the last while. My Xbox is one of my favourite things, ever. I ended up playing Lego Batman to the exclusion of many other things – no homemade soup, fresh baked bread or knitting saw the light of day. I’ve just about finished the game, and it’s released its hold on me for now.
The boys are all back at school, and the weather has been frightful. Aaron has been a darling and has taken Dylan into school for me, as I am a total chicken with snow. I do not drive in snow. I rarely consent to walk in it. I loathe snow. And, no, I do not think it is lovely to look at!
I plan to mend and then sell my motor from the Passap, as I really cannot see my using it at any point.
The spare Singer Memo II from the loft is coming down tomorrow and I plan to take it apart for spares, and then jettison the extra frame. I need the needles, and the springs, but the whole thing is just taking up space both physically and spiritually. I need to cut down more so I can feel happier about knittage!
The Singer chunky and the Bond are now both under my bed, but I think the chunky will be going on eBay very shortly. It has none of the advantages of the Bond and many of the drawbacks, so I think I will keep the Bond to deal with thicker yarns.
I have plans to knit again on my machines. Because I have been feeling very stressed, due to my own lack of vision, I’ve been ignoring my Singer, and hand knitting has taken over. I think, now I have come to terms with my own lack, and have been honest with myself, I can now get back to my machines, and can pour some love into them!
So here come scarves, and jumpers for Dylan – I hope to use up my stashed cones in the next couple of months! And D’s jumpers are so small as to take no time at all!
Now back to those darned mittens!
Knittage
Aaron’s mittens progress apace. Each one has an extra long cuff, as he cycles, so they need to be further up his wrist than normal. The yarn is an alpaca/wool mix, and will be lovely and warm as I am knitting them at a tighter tension than normal.
I’ve knitted each one using 4.5mm needles for the cuff ribbing, and 30 st for these, and then up to 5.5mm for the body of the mitten itself, with an additional 5 stitches added.
They fit extremely well, and I’ve been trying them on him as I knit. The gusset seems to have knitted better this time, with the holes from the made stitches being much less evident.
I’ve completed one mitten bar the thumb, and the other has been completed just past the gusset. I plan to finish that one similarly, and then knit both thumbs. Perhaps inspiration will hit and I will be able to make nicer thumbs this time!
Ooh! I finished off one of my fisherman’s rib scarves too! It’s really short, as things went awry with the machine part way through, but it is still a goodly piece, and will be suitable for one of the wee ones no doubt! It’s knitted in a 3ply burnt orange acrylic, and is absolutely lovely and soft.
The fringing is a nice simple short fringe, in the same yarn, with 4 strands to each fringe.
Read this book!
I've had a really wonderful Christmas, with many presents, and lots of food. Everyone has been here, and we're all getting along really well. Aaron, being the wonderful man he is, bought me Ann Budd's 'The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns' and this has been the most useful present I've had so far. I'd even go so far as to say it is the most useful hand knitting book I have ever owned. The best thing about this book is that it offers simple and clear information about how to make simple garments using many different types of yarn. Everything is based on the tension gauge you achieve, and, as a machine knitter, I am very familiar with knitting tension squares. Very simply, you can knit a tension square and then use the charts in the book to make mittens, gloves, hats and so on. This is the sort of thing I find so useful. When I decide to knit anything, I look at about a billion patterns. Then from those patterns I tend to like the shape in one, the yarn in another, the drape of still another. And this then leads to tape measures, and calculators and graph paper, trying to get a simple garment made up with the yarn and needles I have, and a rough idea of what I want. The Ann Budd book just offers a great solution in a number of charts. For example the mitten charts are all very basic, and they will produce a standard mitten using pretty much any yarn. This means that you are then free to mess about with style and colour, which I think are far more interesting. Should the cuff be 1x1 or 2x2 rib? How about a rolled cuff? Stripes? Or fairisle? And maybe an open finger area? This is much more the type of knitting I enjoy. I do like leafing through patterns looking for inspiration, but 9 times out of 10, I will cherry pick this and that from multiple patterns and try to come up with something new. That's exactly what this book helps with, and this is why I love it! I also managed to finish off Mary's scarf for her birthday, and ended my Singer fisherman's rib scarf early when it all fell off the machine. I know why it did it though, so at least the next one will be longer! Funny how things can influence you. My machine knit scarf is lovely, in a 3ply yarn, and is in the most wonderful tucked rib ever. It took about 40 minutes to knit 500 rows, and I am thrilled with it, though the next one will be over 2000 rows with luck. The scarf for Mary has taken 2 weeks, is in a lovely Cashsoft yarn and is in a beautiful wave lace pattern. It has far fewer rows and seems to have been something I have worked on forever. Each one has its qualities. Each one was fun to knit. But in my heart of hearts, I love the machine one more, because it allows me to move on to the next thing. I really ought to learn to enjoy the journey more!
Knittage
I've knitted the first of a pair of mittens for Dylan, using the Ann Budd book and some Peru Naturals yarn. It has a high alpaca content and is lovely and warm. I knitted a round tension sample, and decided on 6mm round needles using Magic Loop, based on a 4-stitch-per-inch tension.
Dylan's New Mittens Originally uploaded by Knittage
I cast on using a long-tailed cast on, and knit 5cm in 1x1 rib. Then everything followed on in stocking stitch and added a gusset for the thumb. The gusset stitches were on a stitch holder, and the main part of the mitten knitted up really quickly in the round. I did not like the backward loop cast on to add a stitch to the top of the gusset, but I expect I can grow to like it. Also it uses M1L and M1R which I find a little holey, so I will be looking for a happier alternative. I picked up the thumb stitches and knit them straight up in the round. I had to lengthen the thumb after trying it on him, and that was easy enough to pick the stitches back up and add about 2cm. The whole thing took me about 3 hours, which I thought was reasonable, and I think I should be able to knit each successive one more efficiently. I think I knitted the mitten a little too short, but he seems very happy with them. I really like the yarn, though it does shed somewhat. I think I may keep it in the freezer before knitting with it! It actually patterns really nicely, and I will be making the same style of mitten for J, Aaron and myself in the same yarn but in a different colourway. Mary's scarf has now been completed, and I am thrilled with it. I used the last of the yarn doubled to make an i-cord to tie it with, and now I hope she will love it!
