WIP Wednesday

I've got two WIP's to show you today. One of them almost finished, the other barely started!

First off is this soaker for Ava. I practically know the pattern by heart now so it's nice mindless knitting. Plus she does actually need some more soakers as she's only got one that fits at the moment!



Hard to tell from this picture but the yarn is left over from the Green twisty longies I posted a couple of weeks ago. Not a very girly colourway but the yarn was already wound so I picked it up to use up. I don't think she cares much lol.


My second WIP is going to be much more girly. I'm hoping I can get it finished by the March 15th start date for the Mystery KAL so I'll have to get my bum in gear :-p It's going to be a Bloom for Ava. I'm knitting the medium size but using 3.5mm for the chest rather than the 3.25 the pattern calls for. I don't have any 3.25mm 40cm circular needles and as it's a ribbing pattern I don't think it will make too much difference being 0.25mm out!



A bit random but does anyone else tend to always use the same stitch marker to mark the beginning of a round? I know I can just look where the tail end of yarn is but I nearly always use my red stitch marker. If my red marker is in another project then I will use a pink one instead lol.

(I'm even worse with longies, the red marker is for the start of the round, then I have a purple stitch marker for the left hip and a bright blue stitch marker for the right hip. It has to be a bright coloured one because that I start my short rows on that side so it's to remind me. Yes I am a bit daft!)

Yaarn dyeing

After my sneaky peak on Sunday I thought I'd better show you the finished dye job! I used mainly magenta dye with a bit of red to give it some extra depth and basically soaked the yarn in it for an hour whilst heating. Very technical! I think it's turned out rather nice though :-)



The yarn is Blue faced Leicester DK and I bought it from Bluefaced.com. It's very soft and will make a lovely cardigan for Ava. Look how vibrantly it's taken the dye, yummy!



This yarn is going to be for the Mystery Elena Nodel KAL which starts on 15th March. I'm very excited about it! Ava is less impressed, but she does like to squish the yarn



Anyone else joining in with the KAL? There is still time to join, she's accepting new people up to 12th March. Details on the Ravelry thread

Silent Sunday

IMAG0361.jpg
Originally uploaded by evel_lin

Not an FO Friday

Still working on my Ziggy, I've attached the sleeves now and I'm doing the raglan decreases. I started doing them late at night so some how I missed a couple on one side so I had to do them two rows in a row if you see what I mean. However it doesn't look too noticeable, except to another knitter and me of course so I'll just carry on. Don't tell anyone ;-)

The weather has been very Spring-like lately so I'm thinking of other things I'd like to knit. I wish I had more time in the day lol.

Beth, the talented dyer behind Luscious Little Somethings is running a scheme where you can be a "Luscious Little Helper". Basically this means that she offers you 20% off some yarn which you then knit up and post the finished item to her to photograph. She then returns it and uses the photos to show off her dye work. Naturally my ears perked up at the sound of "20% off hand dyed yarn" but I also thought it would be an interesting challenge choosing a good pattern to show off the yarn at it's best.

I signed up as an Intermediate/Advanced knitter so figured I should probably knit something slightly more taxing than a pair of longies! I was very tempted to knit an Angel Fish Skirt as I think they are absolutely beautiful and I recently bought the pattern anyway. However they are quite simple to make, just using short rows etc. so back to my ravelry queue I went.

I eventually narrowed my choice down to two patterns, Cinnamon and Paprika. As I'll be knitting for my eldest I thought it only fair to ask her what she thought. She loved both patterns but the hood on the Paprika swayed it for her. She did say she'd like a Cinnamon in the Autumn though ;-)

So, pattern chosen, next I had to decide on a colourway. I thought a semi-solid yarn would work best so I asked my daughter what she'd like, naturally, being a 6 year old girl, she chose....PINK!


Actually though, I think a bright pink would work really well, and if there is one thing Beth excels at it's bright colours :-) I'm very much looking forward to receiving the yarn and to knitting it up, what a fun challenge :-)

So my immediate knitting list is as follows:

Ziggy - still a WIP
Mystery KAL cardigan - not yet received or dyed yarn and not sure when the first part of the pattern will be released
Bloom - a dress I'm planning on making for Ava. I bought the yarn a while ago and would really like to get on with
Paprika - need to confirm yarn order with Beth


I could do with making some more dungarees and longies for Ava but I'm too easily tempted away by new projects. Whoops! I'd better get back to my Ziggy now, hopefully I'll have a FO for next Friday :-)

Mystery KAL

How on earth is it March already?? My baby turns a year old at the end of this month, I'm so not ready for it! But look how big she's getting now:



So I mentioned on Tuesday that I'm super excited about a pattern. This is because it will be my first ever Mystery KAL and this one is being run on Ravelry by one of my absolute favourite designers Elena Nodel.

For those not familiar of how a Mystery KAL works I've signed up on this thread to knit a cardigan. However I have no idea what it will look like. The pattern will be released in stages so none of the people knitting it will be able to find out what it looks like until the end. The only clues are in the description at this stage:

Yarn colors: solid and semisolid yarns will be the best to show the garment and designs in it.

Techniques used: a little bit of simple lace, top down raglan, knitting in the round.

Exciting no? I've asked to do the 12 month size which will fit Ava. I searched in vain for a suitable solid or semisolid dyed yarn but nothing really jumped out at me so I've ordered 200g from Bluefaced.com and will dye it myself. I'm thinking a rich pink/purple colour at the moment but that may well change when I get round to actually dyeing it! I guess you'll just have to watch this space!

WIP Wednesday

Today as promised I have a bottom up jumper to show you. I've never actually knitted a jumper this way before so it all feels a little strange. Knitting the sleeves first was rather odd!

Please excuse the phone picture. I was taking it in a hurry before a certain little girl started playing with the knitting!



It's a Ziggy jumper and will probably (yarn permitting) have a hood on. The yarn is a kind of forest green colour, much richer in real life. The zig zags are formed by alternating columns of knit or purl stitches and then traveling cables up the sides divide them off. It's also the first time I've done cables without a cable needle (or rather without a DPN as I don't actually have a cable needle yet) and because it's only two stitches it's very easy.

I'd like to say I'll have this finished by Friday but I think that is probably unlikely as I'm a bit busy this week. However on Saturday my DP is taking the children out for the morning so I will take full advantage of my 90 minutes of quiet and crack on with finishing this :-) How indulgent!

Fluffy post

I've been enjoying a bit of yarn/pattern/needle shopping lately! I've got some lovely patterns to knit up at some point, a lot of them from Elena Nodel after joining in a co-op on the Yarn Lovers Unite forum. There is one pattern in particular I'm super excited about but I'll post about that on Thursday ;-)

Today I would like to show you a couple of yarns I've bought recently and the patterns I'm planning on knitting with them. Firstly is this gorgeous blue cotton which is a slightly warmer blue than the my phone picture shows (DP has taken my camera to work with him in his coat pocket...)



This beautiful yarn is destined to become a beautifully cabled cardigan called Gramps cardigan and it will be for one of my boys. I've got enough yarn for the 4T size but it will depend how true to size it is.

The second yarn I want to show off today is some beautiful Malabrigo sock yarn *swoon*



No, you're not imagining that sheen, it's simply gorgeous! The colourway is Caribeno and it's destined to become not a pair of socks (can you believe I've never actually knitted some!) but another cabled jumper. Are you sensing a theme here? This time it will be using the Little Momo pattern and will be for Eli.


I'm on such a pattern knitting kick at the moment. Yes the yarns are beautiful and I'm looking forward to knitting them but it's the patterns I'm getting really excited about. The problem is not having enough time in the day to knit everything I want to (isn't it always?). My children are lovely but they do seem to want a lot of attention, clean clothes, food, stories, walks round the park... ;-)

However, I have found some time to work on my current WIP. It's my first bottom up jumper and I'll post a photo tomorrow :-)

FO Friday Ridinghood Sweater

Well, it's another Friday and here is Ava's Ridinghood Sweater in all it's glory :-)



I'll be honest, I didn't like this sweater very much. The skirt part took forever and the lace... Well actually the lace wasn't too bad, it was knitting it whilst tired and finding it hard to concentrate that was tricky! I ended up having to frog back 4 rows because I'd made a mistake and couldn't fix it. I did make another mistake later on but that was fixable and now I can't even remember where it was.



The sleeves were a pain. I tried magic loop, it didn't click in my head. I didn't have DPN's in the right size and I'm not a fan of knitting with them anyway, too easy for children to pull out or to poke myself with! I ended up doing them using two circulars.



I used a stretchy cast off called a "decrease cast off" (instructions here for the cuffs and the rolled collar. I didn't fancy knitting another hood and she never keeps them up anyway.

I looked at the unblocked sweater and was a bit "meh". It looked odd and the lace was all messy but when I gently held it out a piece at a time I could see something there. I washed it, blocked it and held it up to the light. What a difference!

And then I put it on her, and it looked so right. The full skirt made perfect sense, the lace was a delicate edging. The cuffs snuggle up against her chubby wrists. And she looked at me, and pulled this face:



And I fell in love with it again. I'm surprised quite how pleased I am with this sweater given how much I loathed it during construction, how tempted I was to frog it and make something else. I can't wait to knit another one :-)

Some special longies

I've finished them :-)



There are cables down both the legs



The cables start from the ribbing at the waistband




I've also got some sad news. I've decided, after a lot of thought, to close down my shop. I've spent 3.5 years knitting for other people and I think the time is right now to move on. I'm so very grateful for all the people who have supported me over this time. Thank you so much to everyone who has bought from me. I think I might go have a little cry now :-)

WIP Wednesday

Would you believe I don't actually have a WIP? I've finished the Ridinghood sweater and the cabled longies (photos of both coming up on Friday) and have yet to cast on my next project!

However, I know exactly what it is going to be, I've got the yarn and downloaded the pattern and everything. Only problem at the moment is this:



There is a poem that sticks in my head at times like these so I'd like to share it with you :-)

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing and butter the bread,
Sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
For children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

By Ruth Hulburt Hamilton