Because I felt like it

I may have claimed last week that I didn't have any yarn to make another sick day pi shawl.  In actual fact, I did.  Somewhere in the stash were two balls of green worsted weight, two balls of black and three balls of a beige-ish colour - all Brown Sheep Lamb Pride 

Instead of doing another pi shawl, I decided to make a Meema's felted marsupial tote bag, from the book Stitch and Bitch.  Having knit with Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride wool before, I remember it being slightly scratchy and therefore ideal for felting. 

The design is pretty simple; knit a rectangle in garter stitch and then pick up stitches round the edge, and start knitting in the round.  If you've ever started a shawl with a garter tab cast on, it's a similar principle, just with a bigger tab.  I knitted it with 8mm needles, rather than the 10mm needles which were recommended, as A) I'm a loose knitter anyway and B) they were the largest circular needles I own.  I didn't do a gauge swatch and when I measured afterwards, I wasn't too far out.  Slipping the first stitch of each row made it easier to pick up the stitches afterwards. 

After picking up the stitches from round the edge, I had, what I thought was, a clever idea of increasing the stitches to make the bag bigger.  In reality, my bag looked like a hat and the knitting seemed to go on forever.  The stitches were tight, and it wasn't fun to knit.  There are pictures of me with the bag on my head; I'm too vain to post them.


Luckily, I'd kept the base black and the sides green, so when it came to ripping out, it was easy to see what should stay and what should go.  As I was rushing to work on Thursday morning, I couldn't find my darning needles to put in a lifeline - so instead tied a loop on the end of the sock yarn, and used a crochet hook to pull it through.  Whilst I'm still not a fan of the colour pink, it doesn't half look good next to the green and black. 

All of this (and the above photo) was done on the train on the way to work, with a rather sturdy man squashing me up against the window.  He was replaced by a slightly less sturdy man; I'm sure he farted somewhere between Peckham Rye and Denmark Hill. 

Somehow the ripping out and starting again worked.  I am strongly of the opinion that yarn knows how it wants to be knitted.  Once I'd started again, the stitches flowed beautifully, everything was easy to knit and I could see progress.  Quite a lot of progress, actually.  After Friday's journey in to work, a meeting in the evening and the journey home, pretty much all of the green bit was complete.

When adding the black at the top, I nearly made a rookie error, of knitting in the wrong direction.  The pattern was pretty, but the change from one colour to the other felt lumpy when I knit it. 

Next time, I'd like to try this pattern on the outside of the bag

I made one modification; adding a strip across the top for the popper to go on.  Instead of casting off 22 as the pattern said, I cast off 7, knit 8 and cast off 7. The 8 knitted stitches were then put on a stitch holder. When the main body of the bag was complete, I picked up the 8 stitches and knit a garter stitch flap, to sew the popper on to.  The 8 stitches were slipped on to a needle holder and picked up later.

The floppy bag - before felting

I didn't know whether to felt at 60 degrees, or 90 degrees.  Both would work, but I didn't want the bag so small that it couldn't be used.  I went for 60 degrees, shoved into the washing machine along with a pair of jeans.  When it came out, there were a couple of places where I think it would benefit from some hand felting. 

The completed bag, after felting

I also knit the handles in garter stitch, rather than stockingette.  I didn't want the top of the bag to roll over at the top.  The top of the bagbag itself works in garter stitch, the handles possibly don't.  The next time, I would do the handles in stocking stitch, so that it rolls in on itself and makes a thinner handle than the one I have now. 


Would I knit this again ?

Heck yes! 

Why did I like it ?
Simple and pretty quick to knit.  Way of using up yarn, which may be too itchy to wear next to the skin

Why didn't I like it ? 
Nothing I didn't like about the pattern.  Didn't like the uncertainty of knowing which temperature to felt the bag at.

What would I change ?

Possibly make it bigger, and would definitely try felting it at 90 degrees.  Did make an adaptation with the tab for the popper.  I'd also try and do the section at the top in reverse stocking stitch, to get the pattern between the two yarn colours.  I'd also stick to the handles in stockinette stitch. 

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.

The Sick Day Pi Shawl

So, you may remember this from last December... 

The Sick Day Pi Shawl – so-called, as it is simple enough to be knitted when you're feeling flu-ey and are dosed up to the nines on cold medicine.

Since I knitted it in Yorkshire, of course, it made perfect sense to take it back to Yorkshire to finish off (i.e. weave in the ends) and block.  I'd started off on the ends, but hadn't quite completed them.  The pattern says that it's very forgiving of the wrong number of stitches, which is a good thing.  After the last increase, I was supposed to have 295 stitches; I ended up with 302 with a couple more possible increases when trying to catch a runaway stitch.  I loved the project; clear pattern, very simple to knit, and the seven row repeat was quite easy to memorise, which surprised me.

I used Rowan Summerspun, (which knits to a double knit thickness), on 4mm needles.  The pattern calls for an Aran weight yarn, so my sick day pi was less of a shawl, more a frothy little shoulderlette.  The yarn itself is made up of two thinner strands, loosely twisted together.  There were a couple of occasions where I managed to knit just one of the two strands, instead of both.  (The first time I assumed I’d just caught a thread in the wrong place and dropped it off the needle and with it went the stitch.  Do not try this at home).  I reckon it'd be possible to unravel a ball and use the two strands for a four ply-ish project.  As I don't know what to do with the yarn I have left over, I'm tempted to do just that.  There was one occasion of fraying/near fraying (I forget now), meaning I had to start a new bit of yarn in the middle of the row.

Annoyingly, I also cocked up on the cast off, by not making sure I had enough yarn for the Russian Lace bind off.  Not that I think it would make a difference which bind off I used.  As the yarn is only 50% wool, I couldn't do the clever trick of felting the ends to a new ball.  I did try unravelling the old end and the new end, twisting old strand A with new strand A and old strand B with new strand B and then twist the As and the Bs back together to make a seamless length of yarn.   If it sounds like a faff, it was and it didn't work properly either.  I ended up knitting and casting off three stitches with both yarns and hoping! 

Why yes, I was knitting over breakfast in Weatherspoon's

The plan for completing was to take the shawl to Sheffield, finish the final ends and then block in the hotel room between the matinee and evening performances.  I even packed the pins!

Should anyone wish to use this yarn, the water after wetting the shawl looked like this:

Goodness only knows what the staff made of the towel afterwards, but this is a hotel.  They must have had worse things on their towels than Rowan yarn dye, right?


The shawl in the process of being blocked, 

And the eyelet pattern:

And finally, a shawl selfie:

Would I knit this again ?

Yes.

Why did I like it ?
Easy to follow, easy to remember, simple and pretty quick to knit.  Also learned the Russian Lace bind off.

Why didn't I like it ? 
Nothing I didn't like. 

What would I change ?
To start - use the proper weight of yarn.  After the final increase, the five row pattern can be repeated up to fifteen times.  This time, I did three repeats; next time I would like to do more.