Experimenting

This is what I'm doing with the first of the wool I scored at Bendigo.



It's the Spring Forward pattern but I'm doing it toe-up, so it's my first go at converting a pattern. So far it's coming along well. I'm actually further along than this photo, almost done with the first cuff. It's my first lace sock and is turning out to be a quick knit. Nice easy to memorise lace pattern. Unlike the scarf I'm working on which is pretty but has a 10 row pattern in which five are lace and each of those is different. Not hard lace but not really memorisable so it gets worked on a bit at a time. The wool is prettier than in the picture, subtle mauve and pink and blue and grey...kind of like early dawn or something.

Hopefully I'll get it done a bit more quickly now that I'm on vacation (woot!).

Purple, purple oh where for art thou purple

I made my sil a bag. She wanted purple, fair enough it's her favourite colour. Turns out a good purple is hard to find right now. There's lots of lavender and mauve and some weird darker warmer...almost yellowy purples, plenty of burgundy but nice deep cool purple was pretty hard to hunt out. Not that hunting through fabric stores is a hardship (though sometimes a danger to the credit card). So note to fabric designers...make with the purple.

Anyway, this is the finished product. It's the Expandable Tote from U-Handbag. It's a bit fiddly but turns out really nicely. I think I might have to make one for myself, it's really roomy if you undo the ties and very cute tied up.

Booty

So much yarn, so little time. My spoils from the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show. And this doesn't include the yarn I bought because apparently I'm thinking about knitting an actual garment. This may be insane. And all Melissa's fault as she painted most of this. And infected me with knitting germs. Oh and I also bought soap.

Tales of cute alpacas over at the writing blog.

Up or down

One of my works in progress is learning to knit socks. (Yes, weird urge but follow the creative urges etc etc).

My first pair was made toe up on two circular needles. My second pair is in progress. It's toe up on one circular (magic loop). Traditionally socks were knit cuff down on four double pointed needles. DPN's just seemed like an invitation for me to drop stitches like a lunatic and possibly stab myself in the process. And toe up seemed logical (plus you get to avoid the dreaded heel flap/turn/pick up/gusset process that made my eyes cross when I looked at cuff down patterns).

But the other day I thought "I should try cuff down just to see". (I think the sil was feeding me knitting germs with the food in Adelaide). I hadn't gone completely insane, so I decided to do a little cuff down sock (the Class sock from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks).

I've finished it now and can I just say I am VERY glad I started with toe-up. Cuff down is fiddly (of course, your mileage may vary and I accept it might be easier on a full size sock) and some of the instructions almost melted my brain. (I think I need to get the sil to demo some of it to me). But I did it. Turned a heel, picked up stitches, grafted a toe.

Here's the wonky proof (sue me, I couldn't be bothered knitting all the bits full length when I was interested in the how rather than the end result). Also, apologies for the slightly dark photo.



I doubt I'll be knitting many cuff down socks but hey, at least I know how.

Let there be lace

I finished my first lace knitting (well, apart from a wonky dishcloth). Woohoo. I never really contemplated knitting lace but I quite enjoyed it.



This is the morning snack scarf pattern, which was nice and easy as an intro to lacy things (though I still managed to screw up a few times and have learned the value of lifelines in lace knitting (it's pattern every row with no purl row so not easy to pick up if you have to frog).

It's a little short even though my yarn had more yardage than the pattern said. It's a cotton and nylon mix (Filatura di Crosa Brilla) so it's not really going to grow. If I did it again, I'd probably grab two balls. But it's still a pretty thing to wrap around the neck.

I'm working on another scarf that's a bit more complicated lace. That's growing slowly as I'm only game to do one or two repeats a time then I stop and thank my lucky stars I didn't mess up. Plenty of lifelines going on there too.

Popular

Mel made...a wise little Owlet.



Mel gave a wise little Owlet to her wise little Mum.

Wise little Mum showed wise little Owlet to wise little Mum's friends.

Mel now apparently needs to make more Owlets.....

I shall have to blame Roman Sock for the irresistible cuteness of her patterns.