Finally, it’s done!!! I’ve spent so many posts on this thing. I’m really glad in how it turned out. It’s my first complicated lace shawl, and my first FO with complicated beadwork (Celestarium was a breeze in comparison). So, I’m proud of myself for completing it, though my eyes are always drawn to the big coffee stain on chart 2 and a couple of goofy stitches here and there. I didn’t bother with a provisional cast on for the edging (chart 4) , and I did a 3 needle bind-off instead of kitchener-ing the live stitches together. I deeply regret that short cut; the join is very obviously visible. Next time, when a pattern calls for provisional cast on, I’m going to listen. It may not be a museum piece, but my daughter loves it. She appropriated it for herself and it’s now living in her blanket fort with her bird, cat and unicorn.
Why yes, green is one of my favourite colours. I’ve only been working on a couple of projects recently, not for lack of knitting but one them is a demanding knit. I’ll let you guess which one.
Snape Fingerless Mitts – These are coming along nicely. I really love the yarn, Knitting Goddess 4 ply British Wool and Nylon. It is soft and supple, yet strong. I can’t wait to see how it wears. I’m not following a particular pattern for these; I’m consulting one for the gusset and another for the picot edging. I think I will also do a little fringe with some leftover Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift in Mooskit.
In Dreams Shawl – I’m happy to finally pick this up. I haven’t worked on it at all since autumn 2014. It’s slow going, which I find very frustrating. But the elation when I finally finish a chart is what is going to keep me on track. I have set a goal with myself to finish this by the end of the month. I have 3.5 charts to go, but one of the charts is so big it’s split into two pages. I’m more than a little worried about getting it done on time, but I will try my best. It really is lovely, just very hard to photograph on the needles have it not look like a lumpy mess.
My daughter hates the toe-seam on commercial socks, even when she’s not wearing shoes, so I set about to become a sock knitter for her sake. I really enjoyed making these, though there was a fair amount of ripping back at first. I knit them two-at-a-time using magic loop. They are toe up with a FLK Heel and a Russian lace bind-off for stretchiness. I found the bind-off in Custom Socks: Knit to Fit Your Feet by Kate Atherley, an amazing resource for all things socks.
This yarn was once a pair of fingerless mitts that I frogged a while back. I found it to be a little splitty, but that could be because of all the wear and tear it’s already been through. I will be making more socks for her from this yarn since purple is her favourite colour and she is very happy with these socks.
I’ve been trying to stick to a regular schedule, but if I did another WIPs Wednesday it would be a “look at the beads! There are more than last week!!” kind of thing. So here is something I finished, my Hitchhiker shawl.
It is a simple, fun knit. I memorised that pattern quickly, it was a great take-with-me-anywhere project. This is my first FO with a speckled yarn. I really enjoyed the randomness of the colours. I can see why speckled yarns are so popular at the moment.
I wanted to make 42 pointed teeth, but I ran out of yarn after 38 teeth. It makes a great scarf that I can easily wear with my winter coat.
The little bit of yarn at the top is all that remained of my skein; less than 1 gram.
I’ve been making progress this week – I should finish my hitchhiker and my child’s socks in a few days. I turned the heels on my socks this weekend and the recipient doesn’t want her socks to go to far up her leg, so almost done! I’ve also finished chart 3 on my Evenstar, and am now casting off with beads!!
I knit this for my Whovian 10 year old son, who loves it. It was really tight around his head before blocking, but thankfully, blocking did the trick. The yarn is just lovely, silky 100% merino with just a perfect barely there amount of drape.
I knit the medium size, and I followed the pattern, though I did use the It’s not About the Hat pattern‘s colour-work technique. The standard Fair Isle technique of carrying yarn behind the work has never worked out for me, my tension is too uneven, and not even blocking can save the FO. I really love this new-to-me colour-work technique; it’s actually very simple, though there are very detailed instructions in the It’s not About the Hat pattern. I may even use it to substitute intarsia one day.
Next time I knit this hat, I would do about twice as many rounds of ribbing at the beginning, as there is barely enough ear coverage for truly cold days (say, -25C and below).
I made these to match the Dalek hat above (actually, I made the mittens first then the hat). I inverted the colours to make sure that I would have enough to make the entire hat/mittens set.
As you can see in the photo, these mittens are getting a lot of use, especially being snow-covered, jammed into coat pockets while soaking wet, a lot of friction while damp, etc.. etc… And they are holding up really well. I am very impressed. Tosh DK is not the princess-y kind of expensive yarn I was worried it might be. They also dry very fast; my son hasn’t had to deal with trying to keep warm by pulling on wet, soggy, somehow-even-colder-than-outside slush blocks (aka ‘mittens’).
Insulate! Mittens
I didn’t quite follow the pattern. I changed the patterning on the palm – the yellow just completely overpowered the blue, it was very unbalanced (with my colour selections). So I just did the simplest pattern I could think of – y,b to end, next round b,y to end, repeat these 2 rounds. The thumbs are knit in the background colour, then the contrast colour is duplicate stitched in. I didn’t quite finish the duplicate stitch chart; I did just enough so that pattern flowed from the hand. Duplicate stitch is just not my thing, but it’s a good idea for the thumbs, obviously.
All in all, I loved knitting the hat and mittens, and I am so happy my son loves them too!
I finished a WIP from last week, the Insulate! mittens, so as one does, I immediately cast on for two more projects. The Insulate! hat is actually done, I finished it last night. The photo was taken yesterday afternoon; immediately after taking its picture, I decided that I had to work on this hat. I pushed everything else aside, including this post, which should have been written and posted yesterday. It’s super cute, though a little small (did I check gauge? no, of course not) but I haven’t blocked it yet, so fingers crossed it will get larger.
Insulate! hat
I cast on a Hitchhiker as well, I’m using Hedgehog Fibres Twist Sock, which is 80% BFL wool and 20% nylon. I love the yarn, and the colours are amazing. I find knitted speckled yarn gives a lovely gentle overall effect, but can still use many wild colours, while variegated can be hit or miss when it knits up. This shawl’s construction is fun to knit, since it goes so fast at the beginning.
Hitchhiker Shawl
I am so close to being done with Chart Three on my Evenstar. Only 1.5 rows of patterning, and 5 rows of plain knitting, left. I can’t wait to start the bind off/Chart Four. I haven’t worked on any of my other WIPs this week, though the socks are bugging me. My daughter hates the toe seams in commercial socks; the guilt of not being a consistent sock knitter (e.g. my Monkey Socks took me just over three years to complete) is really getting to me.
Evenstar Shawl
And yes, I did put an overturned box on my back porch to use a table / snow protector to take these photos. On a sunny day, the snow outside (it is everywhere) works almost like a light-box. The colours are accurate for once. Oh! and that overturned box was used to ship an Ashford bottom whorl spindle to me. I plan to learn how to spin, but for now I just want to get my feet wet; I want to master the spindle and enjoy it before jumping into the spinning pool.
