Busy bees

A baby photo of me and my flatmate Kirsty. Yes, Kirsty who made the awesome Wonder Woman jumper that got Boing-ed. That Kirsty.

Our parents have known each other since they were teenagers, and I've known Kirsty since before I could speak. We've shared a flat together for six years now. We joke that when we do finally stop living together we'll never manage to disentangle our joint knitting needle collection. In truth, it'll be a lot more than just that.

She is a bit under a year older than me. Which means she's got to do most things first. She learnt to speak, learnt to walk and learnt to knit first. She went to university first, she left university first (something I'm still struggling to do). She was even Alice before me, as it's her middle name. And she turned 30 first too, yesterday to be precise. See her failing to blow out all the candles in one go.

On such a momentous occasion, I could bang on about what an amazing person Kirsty is, how much she has taught me, how much she means to me. But it's not really my style. Or hers. Or our relationship's. Or this blog's. Instead, I'll show you one of the birthday present I knitted for her and take some photos of her feet. 

Legwarmers, covered in bees. One hundred and eighty bees to be precise. Nine sets of bees, each containing ten bees.

They are based on Pinneguri's bumblebee socks, but legwarmer-ised (larger circumference, and no toe or heel). I also striped brown and yellow yarn, rather than use self-striping, and stuck to just the three colours. I think the amazing yellow yarn really makes them, it's Jitterbug in "Vincent's Apron".

The project is ravelled here which includes full details of yarn and needles and link to pattern.

It was part of a bee-themed collection of presents (largely inspired by the legwarmers, Kirsty has no special "thing" about bees, though obviously we all know bees are cool). This included sponsorship of a beehive, honey bath things, an actual pot of honey, and a bee-covered honey and chocolate cake.

tidings of comfort and joy

I knitted a hat. It took less than a week. Which is handy because it snowed. Yes, in London. Before Christmas. It settled and everything (Don't believe Hollywood London: most years we have no snow at all).

It's supposed to be Selbu Modern, but because my normally abnormally-super-loose gauge gets abnormally-super-tight as soon as I do colourwork, it's more of a Selbu beanie. Which is at least useful for wearing under my bicycle helmet in the cold. It's also slightly square at the top, but that's due to rubbish blocking (might re-block on a balloon or something). Details of yarn, etc on ravelry project page.

Mince pies! Made by Kirsty, not me. Though the flaky-lightness of the pastry is at least partly due to me. Tip from one of my students: use vodka instead of water in pastry. Works really well. The mince pies were for a small Christmas party we held this afternoon/evening. Both Lara and Felix had to cry off ill, but we still had a house full (including Emms) of merry-makers.

Above is a before shot, some chocolate fruit cake (from Feast. Sounds wrong, but really, really works) surrounded by a pile of pfeffernüsse (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe), and lights draped over our staircase in the background. We also had gingerbread, dundee cake, goblets of mulled wine and about a trillion other things. Very full now. Signs of the remains are below. Season's Greetings to you all.

There has been knitting

The yarn cake: product of the ball winder I finally decided to buy. Its amazing. Why didn't I get one before? Not only has there been ball winding, but there has been knitting. This is partly because I realised how close Christmas is, and partly because I took a few days off cycling to work*, thus opening up bus-journey time for the knit. The links below are to ravelry.

Rosa in Wool Cotton

Robot Hat (as socks) in various sockyarn

Arch-shaped socks in Smooshy

* The pause in cycling due to being HIT BY A CAR last week. Driver decided to illegally turn left and not look before he did it. Clever. I was very lucky, a few bruises, and the bike seems equally unscathed. I got straight back on the saddle, and have cycled into town several days since then, but I was a bit shaken up and stiff to manage every day.

Failed Socks

Looks pretty, yes? Its Ziggy, from last summer's Knitty, done in two shades of Trekking Pro Natura. Ravelled here.

Lovely to look at, maybe. I was planning to give them to flatmate-Kirsty for Christmas, along with a box of her favourite chocolate-mints, seeing as the colours matched so well. But sadly they fail as socks. Put simply, they are too tight. And fail-socks are never a good present, so I told Kirsty she can have them now if she can get them to fit, and I do her a better present for Christmas. Those with bright screens can follow her struggling to get them on and off the other night.

Yes, I did keep the floats loose. I even knitted them in a much looser gauge than the pattern suggests. Yes, we've tried blocking. They are just too narrow. Plus, the bamboo in trekking means it isn't quite as elastic as a 100% wool sockyarn. Grrr. Once you get them on they are ok. In fact Kirsty says that the support of all that tight fair-isle is really nice (once you have them on, and are happy to keep them on, perhaps forever).

We thought we might steek the inside cuffs and add a couple of rows of stocking stitch - to give a two-way stretch. Do you think it'll work? Either that, or we need to find someone with super-narrow, super-long feet.

FO: space invader socks

Another vintage FO that has so-far been hidden from the internet (squirrelled away as a secret Christmas present). Space invader socks, made for my little brother. Completed late this summer during flights to and from Tokyo.

I had an idea for these socks ages ago. But great minds think alike and Aija produced her great pattern last Spring. I thought I might as well use her specifications as they were much nicer than the vague idea I had half-formed. However, my (bamboo, 2mm) needle snapped a few cm into the charts. As I was on an aeroplane somewhere over Russia at the time, I was limited to the only other needle in my hand luggage, which happened to be a size up. So, I re-gauged and in doing so had to enlarge and simplify the pattern a bit.

Still, the bigger space invaders show up neatly, and the looser tension means the socks are slightly stretchier. As with the pirate argyles I made my brother last year, these are a pair of socks that are quite silly, but can look respectable under a suit. Let your trousers sit naturally and the embarrassing big-sister knitted motifs entirely disappear: lift them up a few cm and your childish alter-ego is revealed (though you might spot a green monster poking through the left foot on this photo).


The yarn is matchmaker 4ply for the black and knitpicks essential for the green (grass colourway), for those who wonder about such things. And I ended up using a 2.5mmm 80cm addi circular, toe up method.

squirrely top-down raglan

So, it needs a block. And buttons. And, er, to have the ends woven in*. But this is done and I love it and I'm too excited to put off posting. Plus I'm about to go on holiday till the weekend. It's for a baby. A tiny top-down raglan, made with leftovers (and based on the pattern for) these mittens.



*Though only a few because I was good and did them while I worked.

FO - squirrely mittens!

FO! An FO with squirrels.

Pattern: Elli's great squirrely mittens (pdf).

Needles: 2mm addi turbo circs, 80cm - magic looping.

Yarn: opal uni (less than half a ball) for the vanilla-coloured MC, and almost a ball of knitpicks essential for the chocolately CC.

Mods: I changed the cuff, with a icord cast on, then a two-colour rib, al la Eunny's Anemoi mittens. My boyfriend thought this made the trees at the bottom look like mushrooms. He even went as far as to suggest they were magic mushrooms and the squirrels were tripping out, not dancing. But I know they are trees, my squirrels are much too well behaved for that.

Notes: I love them, lots and I'm really pleased to have got them done before the weather got too warm. Although, next time I do mittens I'm definately going to use the Anemoi-style increased thumb gusset, because the set-in one stretches the fabric a bit.

a tale of two sweaters

Let me take you back to Christmas Sales 2005. Cue weird time-travel music (I'm thinking radiophonic workshop).

My flatmate and I got up very early, managing to be some of the first into the John Lewis* wool department. We'd never done sales properly before and hadn't anything particular in mind. We keenly bagged some very cheap Debbie Bliss merino chunky. It promised a super-warm, super-quick knit and I picked out a jumper's-worth in an icy greeny-blue.

Kirsty had been itching to make a fairly-easy fair isle cardigan. It turned out so well, I thought I'd copy-cat, stealing her leftovers for the colourwork. The result.

But the shape never worked, no matter how I blocked and re-blocked (and re-blocked). It hung oddly. It looked bad. Worse, it never felt comfortable. Loathe to waste the yarn, I resolved to re-knit. I decided on a top-down raglan, and looked for a few balls of a less scratchy yarn for the yoke area where my skin is most sensitive to wool.

So, Christmas 2006 and the sales come round again. Again, I'm one of the first through the door of John Lewis. But this time I come armed with a bit more common sense (and a piece of the green merino, to colour-match). A load of extra fine merino chunky was on sale. For some reason my skin doesn't mind this yarn. They even had a gorgeous dark green.

And so my chunky jumper is re-born.


I used the same design I used for the hot-water-bottle cover. It would have been a lot neater if I'd charted the colourwork increases properly, but I was expecting to just wear it around the house - I didn't know it'd would come out so well. It's not super-glamorous, but it's a perfectly respectable garment. Best of all, it feels nice to wear. It just hangs right, which that cardigan never did.

* Literary side-point. This particular John Lewis is built on the birthplace of Lord Byron.

yarn dominance

The first of the legwarmers I'm making based on Cookie's Red Herring pattern. Who can spot the point where I read Veronique's post on yarn dominance?


It's only one cm at the start, you can't see it unless the light is very good. And I now know, so won't do it for the second one. Do you think it'll even out more in blocking?

For info, they look and feel great worn, but I'm waiting till I've done both before I do the happy FO dance of joy and share it with you all.

gifts

Christmas happened so I can show off the pieces I've been making as gifts. Above and below are knee socks for my mother. I did it toe-up, but with a flap heel (my own formula) and finished with a fair isle cuff. I used Jeagar extra fine merino 4ply with some leftover luxury tweed for the colourwork.


Then, for my brother, a pair of Aaargh-yles - perfect for the guy who wears a suit by day but everyone knows is a secret pirate. I used the chart and guide for knitting argyles from mothheaven. The black and white are both paton's wool rich 4ply, the red and grey are leftover extra fine merino from mum's socks and ones I made for my Grandfather last March.


I also gave my mother a sock knitting kit of yarn, addi's, crochet hook and toe-up pattern (I decimal-ised knitty's universal sock formula). She sent me a text at midnight last night to say she'd swatched and was ready to fill in the gaps in the pattern.

And this morning I had an extra gift in the shape of my final secret pal package, loads of sock yarn, with a fair isle pattern. She also revealed herself - Cassandra, from Philmont. She hasn't told me her blog yet though. SP9 still runs till the end of January, so I'm going to wait a bit before sending the final package the lady I'm spoiling, it's all set out though. All the packages I've sent have been themed - I've had so much fun working them out.

FO: fair isle hotwater bottle cover

I felted a swatch of the the fair isle project I was working on. It didn't felt that evenly, so a lot of the colourwork pattern was lost. Plus all the green went out of the turquoise yarn - a plain blue just wasn't the same.

So I decided the fabric would have to be kept un-felted and, after taking a few measurements, realised it would make a perfect hotwater bottle cover. My mother, who doesn't have my issues with wool. has just moved house, so it was an ideal housewarming present.

I sewed up the cast-on edge. I'd started it with a few rounds of garter stitch, hence the odd edge. For the top, I shifted to working just in brown and decreased a few sts evenly around. Then, after a few cm of st st, I worked a couple repeats of a cross stitch pattern*, through which I run a crochet-chain of the CC as tie. The friction between the yarns means the tie bunches up very neatly.

The book I found the fair isle design in was from Marion, who was my SP last spring. The yarn was a thank you gift from Veronique, who's SP I was. I'm pleased I managed to match them.

* This is similar to the stitch pattern I used in my knitterati entry - I'm going to post the pattern for that in a few weeks.

solace on fair isle

Downloading* photos from my camera yesterday, I found I a WIP shot of the lost hat. I'd completely forgotten I'd taken it. So I can share quite how lovely the colours were.

Easing my pain, I found a use for the blue and brown wool Veronique sent me. I finally got the hang of holding a colour in each hand, and am breezing along.


I was going to do legwarmers, but I'm still worried about wool-itch. I'm pretty sure it'll be a bag, but if I felt it (yet to test a swatch) I could cut the fabric up for something else. It'd probably make a great bag, I'm just not sure I need one.

* Or is it uploading? In fact, what's the difference? When is the computer up or down?

luxury tweed tanktop done

The slipover I've been making for my flatmate's birthday is done. I am holding it ransome till she seams the skirt she made me for my birthday, but the details can go up now.

Pattern: Nice design, but badly written. It works - there are no actual mistakes, it’s simply hard to read. The instructions are clear enough, but badly structured. I'd like to know instructions in the order I'd need to apply them thank you. But a nice enough pattern. I modified it to do 1x1 rather than 2x2 ribbing. But that is just because I'm stupid and didn't read that bit of the pattern properly*.

Yarn: Luxury Tweed. Mmmmm. Nice yarn. Nice colours.

Needles: 3.75mm circular addis for the back. I swapped to straights for the intarsia. I hate working on long needles, I feel ungainly. They were an old pair of metal ones that used to belong to my mother, and ok (for straights). The only 3.25mm circular we had was bamboo. Bamboo is not the needle for this yarn, the friction was just stupid. Plus these are the sorts of bamboo circs that have the annoying little bobbles at the join between needle and wire.

I actually quite enjoyed knitting this. I learnt to knit backwards and had a play with continental knitting too. It was fun and I'm very pleased with the finished product which I think'll suit Kirsty lots.

* Actually its because it said work "in rib" and I forgot to check which rib they meant. Would it hurt to say which rib when you are asking the knitter to start the ribbing, really? I know I have a below average short term memory (part of delights of being dyslexic) but well, pah gah blah blah blah (occasional failing of vocabulary also pleasure of dyslexia).