Sashiko in The Knitter!

Well now, I have just got to show this off!

Yup, I got a shout-out in the latest issue of The Knitter! Woo!The internet is a fun place to upload stuff to, but there’s nothing quite like seeing yourself in print. Especially when there are lovely flattering words underneath!

This totally beats the time I got a picture of Zippy, Bungle and George into a kid’s magazine, and drawing feet for all those guys is no mean feat when you’re 5.

Week = made.

 

 

Wonderwool 2013

Last weekend I went to Wonderwool Wales for the first time. This is a gigantic show in Buith Wells Showground demonstrating the many things you can do with wool – but most importantly there was lots of yarn for the buying. Then knitting.

I struggle a bit to take photos at craft shows. There’s no way to get a good ‘wide’ shot unless you have the power of flight. Otherwise it’s just people and the outsides of stalls, with only hints of the fancy goods and displays in each one. Luckily a show as large as Wonderwool makes your picture taking options much easier, by having adorable fluffy animals present.

Angora rabbits are so fluffy I can barely stand it. It’s just a pom-pom with a rabbit’s head! Aaaah! And then that pom-pom gets turned into yarn:

Also present were a smattering of British sheep breeds

My favourites were the Pembroke Poll Dorsets for looking completely bemused all the time, and Shetland sheep, for having awesome wool. Tragically there were no live alpacas present, but alpacas would probably not put up with being on display all day. They have more of a “wait 5 minutes and then try to eat your clothes” kind of temperament in my (limited) experience.

Another particularly interesting sight was this antique foot-powered loom, which was demonstrated throughout the day.

But enough fooling around. This show featured yarn in large quantities so let’s showcase that:

This is from the Five Moons stall. Imagine this picture times 4. Nice stuff!

John Arbon’s Fibre Harvest stall featured all of the Knit By Numbers merino range which makes for an incredible display.

Can’t forget Easyknits whilst we’re on the subject of colourful yarns…

On the other side of the spectrum I very much liked the yarn on the Garthenor Organic stall and the classy men’s jumpers on display.

I bought some good things at this show, unsurprisingly! Some new needles, some extra Excelana to finish off my fair isle cardigan and…some Fyberspates Scrumptious Sock for a garment. Fyberspates is so hard to resist, it really is.

Also! Easyknits Superbiffle Sock yarn (Superwash Blue-Faced-Leicester). The colour of this yarn is giving me life, I love it.

All in all, a successful day out, don’t you think?

Small achievements

Is it, dare I say it, Spring in England at last? The sun has shone on over 3 occasions this last week and people outside are wearing shorts in 12°C weather. It might just be!

If you’re anything like me, you’ll take this opportunity to develop a massive hacking cold and spend all your free time in bed, pretending you’re dying of consumption. After all, being whiny and belligerent is the only respite you really get from full sinuses. It’s so unfaaaaaaaaaiiirrrrrrrr.

This week my main knitting achievement has been winding some skeins of yarn into cakes of yarn.

Yarn Yard Bonny in some delicious spring greens. How seasonal and pretty these yarns are! I have made myself promise to get my gloves finished before I start knitting with this stuff. It’s a hard promise. I want to get my spring-knitting on the go!

WIP: Laceweight Blouse

Yep, kicking off another item in the Knit The Queue challenge: an entire blouse in laceweight yarn, on 2.25mm needles. This is the finest gauge work I have ever attempted, at 10 stitches to the inch. This is a marathon! The pattern is “Blouse with Gathered Neckline” from A Stitch In Time Vol. 2.

It’s a pretty little design, but I never wanted to knit it as is. I want it a little more modern, a little more casual, and with a wider neckline. My first step is make the sleeves t-shirt length. This has the delightful advantage of making them a marginally quicker knit. When I say quicker, I mean “Hey! The first sleeve took less than 10 hours!”

The yarn is Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace and it had to be in red! Well I say that, maybe some sort of Champagne colour would work too, but red goes with the most of my outfits. It’s not a yarn I’ve worked with before but it is totally delightful and I really like the way the fancy little details in the cuff and fabric came out.

Picot edgings are very easy: a decent amount of stockinette, one row of yarnover, k2tog throughout,  then repeat the stockinette, and fold on the dotted line! I gave this a light steaming to make sewing easier later down the line and the fabric is behaving very nicely. It’s good crisp stuff that won’t get all shiny and matte after a bit of a squish.

So roll on sleeve 2! I am going to have to buy proper lace needles for the body I think. Currently I’m working with sock needles, but I want to continue my modern knitting ways by doing the body in the round. I think it’s the only way I can face 3 inches of ribbing at that gauge. Daunting!

Pattern: Sashiko Cardigan

Exciting times! My first cardigan pattern is now up for sale on Ravelry!

Just think, a year ago this was merely a doodle on paper and I was dithering about making it into a published pattern at all. There’s a lot to learn when first writing a pattern on this scale. The main lesson for newbies is this: Marnie Maclean is your new god! Her tutorials are fantastic shining diamonds on the knitting-net. Thanks to them I can now make the swishiest stitch charts without batting an eyelid. I’m so pleased to have this pattern out at last!

Pattern Details:

Size: To fit 34(36, 38, 40, 42, 44)” bust with about 0.5” of positive ease. I’m between sizes and wearing the smaller one in these pics.

Stockinette gauge:
22 stitches, 30 rows to 4in (10cm) on larger needles
Pattern stitch gauge:
18sts, 32 rws (one repeat) = 2.5” x 3.25” on larger needles

Tools:
3.75mm (US size 5)
3.5mm (US size 4)
Cable needle

Also required:
8 buttons, 22mm in diameter
Yarn needle
Sewing needle and thread for attaching buttons

Materials:
935(990, 1045, 1100, 1155, 1210) yds of smooth, elastic DK yarn in a solid or semi-solid colourway, preferably merino mix.

Suggested Yarn:
8 (8, 9, 9, 10, 10) balls of Sublime Extra Fine Merino DK (126yds/116m per 50g ball, 100% merino wool).

Difficulty:
Intermediate (cabling)

Pattern Style:
Written instructions plus chart for Sashiko motif.

Two odd gloves don’t make a pair

You can’t throw a rock in Bristol’s centre without hitting half a dozen organic and/or locally sourced food vendors. Granted, you might have to bounce the rock off a student or two, but it’ll get there. Sheepdrove Farm is prime example of the fancy operations this place attracts. They have a dedicated butchers in Bristol, selling all the best parts of the flocks they own. All the parts. Which is how I ended up wandering into a butchers for food and came out with two balls of natural brown Sheepdrove Organic Shetland Wool (spun by the Natural Fibre Company no less). Food or wool, what would you choose?

It was an easy choice for me, as I’ve been meaning to make a tragically-gloveless male friend some gloves for a while. I cannot think of a better choice of yarn for such gloves: Hardwearing, warm, a sensible colour and lightly infused with the smell of raw mince. Maybe the receipient will enjoy pretending he totally just killed an animal with his awesomely manly bare hands whilst wearing them. Maybe he will just get a craving for shepherd’s pie, like I did whilst knitting.

The pattern is based on the Ringwood Gloves from Knitty. Quick, easy and good-looking. I love that pattern!

The other gloves I have on the (extremely small) needles are not quick, but they’re coming along too. Look, I finished one! The ribbing makes it a great fit. I’d say it fits like a you-know-what but then I’d have to slap myself through time.

FO: Ilene Bag

All my projects are fiddly right now. They’re 75% sewing, 25% ribbing on small needles. It was a nice break to make the first official FO of my Knit The Queue challenge: The Ilene bag. It conveniently uses up an entire ball of light green cotton yarn that’s been at the bottom of my stash forever. Plus a lady can never have too many bags right?

Incidentally, it occurs to me that a ladies’ handbag is an excellent illustration of the concept of quantum states.

You know how whenever you reach in the exact item you want is always at the bottom, every time? Well it’s the same thing as Schrodinger’s russian-roulette-playing Cat: Any objects within a closed container will exist in a superposition of all possible physical states until the container is opened and the contents observed, whereupon the superposition will be forced to collapse to a single outcome and now your cat is dead and you can’t find your keys.

Oh, I can guess your comments already: “But Ellen! Schrodinger was only using that analogy to talk about closed systems on a sub-atomic scale! Your handbag problem is probably just down to granular convection and the amount of crap you insist on keeping in it!”

Hush. This is a knitting blog. Look at this bag I knitted.

It’s an entirely practical item for once. It seemed rather small once finished, but then I put things in it. You know how mesh bags are – they’ll hit the floor given half a chance. Luckily this one holds a full shopping trip’s worth of food without whacking me in the knees, so I consider it a success.

Back to the fiddly projects then…