Tie it up in an ending

When I bought this un-marked skein of yarn in Sweden in April, I never thought that I'd be wearing it back in Sweden, before the year was out.  But that's exactly what happened.

Mr Knitty was supposed to be working on New Year's Day, until he wasn't.  Since we didn't celebrate Christmas together (he was on nights), we decided to go back to Sweden for New Year.  The original plan was to go back to Stockholm, until we found that flights to Copenhagen were cheaper, so we went to visit friends in Southern Sweden instead.

Knitting for the trip was the stockingette section of Eyeblink (Ravellry link), started on the train to the hotel we stayed in, the night before we flew.

In the last gripping instalment of the scarf, the yarn had snapped after I'd finished the cast-off and I didn't have enough to weave the ends in.  The solution to this was to knot the good yarn to the snapped yarn and felt the two together, giving me a tail long enough to weave in properly.  True, I wasn't expecting to be doing this in a hotel room at gone 11:00 at night, but sometimes needs must.

We saw 2016 in at the Malmö fireworks.  After being used to the London fireworks for so many years, it was very strange to be such a small event.  I was expecting to be waiting for hours beforehand.  Friends of mine were planning to arrive at quarter to midnight.  Oh, and they had Land of Hope and Glory, in Swedish.  The guy next to us was bobbing up and down, as if he were at The Proms.  

I have no idea what the words mean, but friends tell me that they had been re-written for the event and were very pro-immigration and welcoming to newcomers.  I find it slightly amusing that it's the total opposite of what it actually means in English.  If anyone is able to give a translation, that would be really helpful. 
New Year's day was lovely.  We travelled from Malmö to Lund and had a walking tour.  (Only one row on the train, as I found a knot and had an impromptu splice of the two ends, by felting them against my jeans.  Thank goodness for 100% wool yarn).  I got to meet-up with more friends and introduce them to Mr Knitty.  We ate pizza, played games and generally had fun.

The day after, Mr Knittiy and I had a look round the Malmö museum.  I bought a postcard of a woman knitting, to give me a 5k coin for the locker.  We took photos of the windmill which appears in the opening credits of The Bridge  

And I wore the scarf again:

Annual round up of 2015

At the beginning of 2015, Let's Knit magazine wrote a list of twelve things that knitters should do over the year 2015.  Rather than go through each one individually, it's probably easier to make a list of the ones I didn't manage. 

• Knit a top-down seamless sweater (Not sure why this should be better or worse than a bottom-up sweater) 
• Try steeking
• Learn to crochet
• Take part in a yarn bomb
• Try a new craze
• Dye your own yarn

All good ideas, I just never got round to them.

Of the rest....

• Join a knitting group

Sort of.  There was a knitting group of about five or six people from work.  I went along to one meeting. 

• Take part in a knitalong

I thought I'd considered it, but turns out that was in 2014.  

• Knit in British yarn

Yup, Shetland yarn for the last project I started in 2015

• Design your own pattern

Yup, the Frances sample scarf.  Didn't work, but I did learn something from it. 

• Go on a knitting holiday

No, although a knitting retreat has been booked for next month

• Knit socks

Only sort of  I have yet to conquer the heel. 

A quick look back at my personal resolutions gives a similar picture:


I did try to learn how to turn the heel of a sock.  The first Youtube video confused me (despite the number of comments saying how helpful it was).  It didn't help that the person narrating said to use half the stitches - and then only  after I'd started knitting, said that this should be an odd number.  The first time I tried to get a friend to teach me, I was ill and tired.  The second time I was just tired.  Neither of these were good times for learning, so it's still an unfulfilled resolution.

The 'not buying yarn' thing also did not go to plan, even excluding the get-out clause for souvenir yarn.  In trying to find something before Christmas, I found two balls of sock yarn I totally forgotten I'd bought.  This officially makes me a yarn slut (from the old English slattern.  Why, what do you think I do with my yarn?)  Over the Christmas holidays, I've been back to what was my local yarn shop and got even more sock yarn; one for fun, one for a project I want to knit.  Which nicely goes back to me learning to turn a heel. 

Basically, what I'm trying to get at, is that I'm recycling my resolutions from last year.  This year, I want to:

• Learn to turn the heel of a sock
• Knit an adult jumper (not even fussed whether it's for me or my husband any more)
• Reduce the stash, especially of sock yarn

I've actually tried to be organised this year and made a spreadsheet of what knitting I want/need to do and by when.  You know, birthdays, Christmas and the like.  Hopefully this will keep my mind and fingers focused.  I'm not going to share it, as I don't want the shame of having to admit that none of it went to plan).  

In the interim, please excuse me.  I have a Ravelry stash  stash to update....

Christmas-ish.

Alright, I swore I wasn't going to do and Christmas knitting, and I was only sort of right. To clarify, I did not specifically knit anything for Christmas presents. What I did manage, was to sew up all the baby hats I'd knitted for my ninja nephew and get them ready to be gifted. Everything had been knitted over the summer, but then left at the 'nearly finished' stage. You know, that low point between the fun of knitting and the joy of seeing something finished - also known as sewing up. Luckily, the commuter trains were quieter than normal in the week running up to Christmas. Even more luckily, I work in London where nobody speaks to anybody else on the train,even if they're brandishing a darning needle and sewing up baby hats! Just to check that everything was safe to shove in the washing machine, I did just that on 23rd December, blocked the hats and left them overnight to dry, to wrap them before going to work on Christmas eve. 

The yarn is left over sock yarn, which I managed to intercept from knitting/Guiding friend K, as she was passing it on to knitting/ Guiding friend Goo. Neither of them minded. K got rid of yarn, Goo was given other bags of yarn to make pom-poms with her Brownies and I got sock yarn for a sock yarn blanket. 

Yes, a sock yarn blanket. 

It was only after reading a leaflet which came with one of the knitting magazines, possibly around the time of Princess Charlotte being born, that I realised my yarn had a higher calling. I still have some of the sock yarn left over, so if I do ever make a sock yarn blanket, I can look at it and remember the baby hats made for my nephew. 

The pattern was part of a layette set. The pattern was a fairly simple rib with a one stitch selvage, followed by stockingette stitch, until a set of descreases for the brim. I found it easier to ignore the selvage stitch and do a simple 2 x 2 rib, and then increase by one stitch when it got to the stockingette section - so that I had the right number of stitches for the decreases. All in all, a very simple pattern, which I would knit again. 

Also a really easy knit to take with me to Japan to do on the plane and shinkansen. The red, white and black one was knit in a park in Ueno on my first day in the country.  The black and white one was knit at the top of Tokyo Skytree.  The pink, grey and yellow one (Opal yarn) was knit on the train to the airport home. 

I did attempt a jacket as part of the layette, but I could not seem to get guage without using really small needles. My worry was that I'd knit a fabric so stiff that baby wouldn't be able to move in his/her clothing. There's less of an issue with knitting hats. Babies grow so quickly that the hat will fit *sometime*. As it was, they all ended up a slightly different size, so he's well kitted out for the winter.