Well.

I have a secret project which I wanted to get finished on a deadline, which I've finally got round to swatching for today.

The pattern and yarn were bought from an online retailer; the yarn was recommended for the pattern by said retailer.  The pattern says that 26 stitches and 34 rows measures 10cms on 3.25mm needles.  I know I'm a loose knitter, so started with 2.75mm needles and it came out at about 13cms.  I tried today with 2.25 needles and got down to about 11.5cms, knitting absolutely as tightly as I could.  I do have 2mm bamboos, but I fear I'd snap them if I tried knitting too tightly.

My knitting guru, Extreme Knitting thinks the yarn I have is too heavy for the project  and it might not drape well.  She's suggested a different pattern for the yarn, as forcing the gauge risks me knitting something I'm not happy with (and as it's supposed to be a gift, I darn well want to be happy with it). 

I'm not going to name the retailer, as I've not yet had the chance to contact their pattern support - but for the time being, I have a pattern with a yarn I can't use, or yarn with a pattern I can't use - whichever way you want to look at it.  And that makes me a little grumpy.  Of course, there are always options about what to do with the yarn and the pattern, one of which may be learn crochet.  I rather suspect the project I want to complete, is not going to be complete in time, which also makes me a little grumpy - and disappointed in myself. 

In the interim, I'm re-knitting the sick day pi shawl in the correct weight of yarn.  Yesterday, we had a briefing day for the girls we're taking to Slovenia and Croatia in the summer, at the end of a stupidly busy week.  As part of the day, we went to Pax Lodge, one of the five world

centres for all Girl Scouts and Girl Guides.  They're celebrating their 25th anniversary this year, and I got a badge to mark the occasion.  Everything got a bit too much for me somewhere after lunchtime, so I sat and knitted whilst the girls played games.  The leader in charge of our trip asked if I could teach her to knit, as she thought it might be something she'd enjoy, so I'm counting that as a double win.

What have you been knitting this week, successfully or otherwise? 

Happy Easter

Easter this year has been spent on the South coast, visiting my grandmother.  We've been backwards and forwards between our guest house and the care home where she's staying.  (It's easier for her having shorter visits, especially with the amount she's been sleeping this weekend).

In between times, we went down on to the beach - something I've been doing since summer holidays down here as a kid

Lusty Glaze beach, Newquay

We found the meaning of  'sky blue' 

Mr Knitty got a dune buggy toy in his Kinder egg this morning - so it had a play on the beach too:

We saw some mussels on the rocks.  In my pre-vegetarian days, I loved picking them to take home and cook.  Now, I just love the colour combinations and patterns:

We went exploring in a cave.  Luckily no monsters.  Sadly no treasure left over from the days of smugglers and wreckers:

Of course, hiding in caves is much more fun when you're a grown-up:

Mr Knitty & I

I tried to take arty shots of me and my knitting - in the wind:

Playing with knitting in the wind

For a while, the sun shone:

Until we went inside, and were treated to the more traditional Bank Holiday weather:

Weighing it up

OK, so I’m still technically frogging or finishing all current WIPs, and being pretty tardy on the latter.  The question for yesterday was, ‘do I start a new project’.  The project I had in mind was the Hitchhiker scarf, using King Cole yarn in the lightening colourway.  It just looks the right colourway for intergalactic travel.  

King Cole Zig Zag yarn - lightening colourway

Close up - an intergalactic yarn

Let’s ignore the fact that I have a slightly wonky half pi shawl to deal with.  Given that this week was pi day it did seem the perfect opportunity to resolve the problems, but I chose not to.

So after nice careful consideration of pros and cons, I decided:

Reasons against

• I already have so many WIPs, it would be better to get them finished
• Is there anything else I can knit, other than scarves and shawls?

Reasons for

• I’ve finished one, so it’s logical to knit another
• Something to easily knit on the train
• It gets rid of more sock yarn(if socks are my knitting nemesis, this can only be a good thing, right?)
• It’s mostly garter stitch – so a good opportunity to learn continental knitting

The ayes have it, especially on the last point.

So I watched some Youtube videos and am pretty sure I know what I’m doing with the continental stuff.  On the off chance that I forgot, I didn’t really want to be hoiking my copy of S & B in and out of London as an aide memoire.  So, a last minute substitution brought me to Nurmilintu.  Now, ideally I’d knit this pattern in something bought in Sweden, or a green yarn, or ideally a Swedish green yarn.  (Sweden has pine trees; it fits in my mind).  However, as a non-Green, non-Swedish yarn, this  from Regia Colour Blitz is pretty beautiful, and had been stored together with the pattern, so was an easy one to grab and go.

Regia 4 ply Colour Blitz 

Yarny close up! 

Anyway, lace charts on an overcrowded commuter train?  What could possibly go wrong?

A Treat of a Retreat

Last weekend I was at the Jolie's kitchen knitting retreat.  There is so much to say about it, I don't know where to start, even a week later.  Karie Westermann's take on it is here if you're interested. 

My train on Friday night was delayed by 20 minutes. Yes, 90 minutes.  I had to telephone the hotel to confirm that I was still coming, for fear of giving my room to somebody else.  Apparently some of the other ladies who were attending the retreat had been in the bar earlier knitting.  Sadly I missed them, and hoped to catch up with them the next day.  On the plus side, I did manage to get through a decent chunk of my knitting project.

This was the first time I had ever been to a knitting event, and realised afterwards that I did not take enough photographs.  It was lovely to be in an environment where everybody was knitting, it wasn't considered weird to grab somebody's clothing and ask about the use of colour, or to admire the stitch work.  In fact it was positively encouraged.  Of the projects that stood out were Fiona's fair isle sweater (Ravelry link) and Catherine's beautifully colourful cardigan. 

The event opened with Kate Atherley talking about her life as a knitter.  She was born in a local hospital and not Toronto born and bred as I had always thought.  My second favourite part of her talk was her discussion of how people seem afraid to get their knitting wet.  Apparently she has been in classes where she has grabbed people's knitting and stuck it in a glass of water, just to prove that you can get knitting wet, without the universe imploding or similar.  As she quite rightly asked have you seen the places where these sheep live? They're places where it rains.  Apparently Herdyshepherd  has quite good photos to prove this.

My favourite story was on the subject of gauge.  Apparently there are many women in New York who are rich.  One of these women came into a knitting shop complaining that her knitting hadn't worked.  When the shopkeeper asked her if she had made a gauge swatch, she replied that her maid had done it.  Yes, the maid had made the knitting swatch.

Over the course of the weekend I took two classes. The first was with Kate Atherley on sizing and fit.  I will admit, that she was pretty much the reason I went the retreat.  I think this is a separate blog post in itself, but it was a class worth taking, partly for the knitting, partly because I got to draw pictures of boobs and partly because it confirmed some of the things I already sort of knew.

After pizza for dinner (the Northern Quarter has really come up in status since I lived in Manchester), we met back up for a talk on British wool and the raffle. Louise from Knit British talked about British yarn, and how it's packaged and marketed.  Apparently if something is labelled as British, there's no guarantee that it's bred, sheared, spun, dyed or packaged in Britain.  She mentioned the woolsack webpage, which lists British yarns available for sale.  She passed around samples, and the ones which took my fancy were:

Falkland Merino (turquoise), Teeswater (white), and Wensleydale (brown):

Chilla Valley alpaca (brown, top left), Jacob aran (top right, beige) and more Teeswater (bottom, beige)

The raffle prizes were scrumptious (and all won by other people)

Kate  and Karie took over Joeli's Periscope.  

At some point in the evening, I went back to my hotel, properly looked at the goodie bag which we'd been given (which was amazing) and went to bed far too late. 

Sunday started with a class on hap shawl construction (which has three parts), and making our own mini version of the Mahy shawl.  

The class was good fun, with a lot of laughing and some crude comments - which may have come from me.  If you describe lace knitting to me as 'strategically placed holes' what sort of a reaction do you expect?!  There was also discussion about how Japanese people are wild for Shetland lace (it was the only useful book I could find in Tokyo).  I mentioned  this article in Knitty, and why chart knitting therefore is something that transcends linguistic boundaries. 

Somewhere along the line, mine went wrong, so had to be ripped back by a few rows.  Now, I know I'm not the most proficient knitter, but even I could see what was wrong when I put it back on the needles:

I didn't have enough time to complete what we were supposed to complete before the session ended, so I had the good idea of taking the needles out, threading a lifeline in and picking it up when I got home.  Again, spot the problem:

This is what happens when you don't get enough sleep the night before! 

The weekend ended with Kate Hepple talking about how she got involved in Knit Now magazine.  (Basically, she was working for the NHS and was headhunted via Ravelry).  She gave us an overview of the process - call for submissions, deciding which will be featured (only two garments per issue, all the rest are accessories), tech editing and knitting samples, if I remember correctly.  There's a vlog here which explains it.  There was also a great discussion about the models used for knitwear shoots, and the discussion between 'real women' and size six models.  I suspect this is a discussion the knitting community isn't going to solve in isolation.

There was also a swaps table and mini market place.  Should my husband ask, I didn't spend a penny on new yarn.  (I don't think he's noticed the new acquisitions however). 

There is so much more I could have said about the weekend.  It was very strange to be back in Manchester after about fourteen years; I hardly recognised it.  It was brilliant to be among women who were funny, and creative and smart.  And if you want an example of how welcoming the knitting community are, I turned up wearing a shop-bought acrylic sweater, which nobody commented on. 

Why I Felt Like It

There are always two parts to a project; what you're knitting and why.  We've covered the what (Meema's Felted Marsupial Tote).  But for this project, the why was just as important.

I was knitting it to take to my grandmother's funeral.  

Although she never taught me to knit, she was a knitter.  My mother repeatedly talked of a dress she knit for my younger sister, which was knit and then folded back, to reveal a decorative border.  I inherited a lot of her stash, after she move to the care home, when we cleared her house out to sell.  I haven't knit any of it yet, but there is some lovely yarn there.  

For me, knitting is, at least in part, about connecting with the generations which have gone before.  Knitting is a way of connecting with her in her absence.  It was only half way through the project that I thought about the name.  Meemama was what her great 
grandchildren called her. It was as if the knitting fates had approved of my decision. 

Her death didn't make me sad for her.  She was 97 when she died, had Alzheimer's and no quality of life.  My heart broke seeing my dad carrying in her coffin.

Everybody leaves a legacy of some sort.  This one is remembered in needles and yarn. 

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. 

Running to keep up

Love Knitting has a Frog or Finish challenge running; the yarn version of put up or shut up.  If it's something that's working - get on and make it work and finish it up.  If it's not working, get rid and make it into something that is.  This may have been running for just January, but I'm going to take it into the rest of the year.

So, I was all keen to get on with this, and get rid of the neon scarf thing I started in March 2015, using the initial section of the gallatin scarf.  

The original neon scarf, before ripping out

Whilst was fun to knit, the fabric is too stiff and it's highly unlikely that I'll ever wear anything quite so bright around my neck - even if the 80s do make a come-back.  So, it's time to hit the frog pond and free-up a set of needles.

At the same time, I'd been sort-of-training for London Winter Run.  My running hat is 100% acrylic, and I don't particularly like it as a result.  So, the plan was to get the neon yarn knit into a new running hat.  Hopefully being a higher percentage of natural fibre would make it more comfortable to run in.  And what better place to début a new running hat, that at a winter running event? 

It sort of did and sort of didn't go to plan.  I ripped out the scarf, as it was.  I did some editing of the yarn.  I did a gauge swatch, I did the maths and started knitting.  Then had a major flap about whether I'd left enough ease and whether it was going to be big enough, so ripped it out and started again with four more stitches to the row.  Four.  Freaking.  Stitches.

Had I not had the freak out and rip out, the hat would have been done in time, even if it didn't properly fit.  As it was, the 10k was finished before the hat. 

Before the run - with the acrylic hat

At the end of the run

The new hat

I did try a photo of me wearing the new hat, but it basically looked like I was wearing a condom on my head.  I've not run in it yet, but it feels like a good fit. 

You'll notice that the hat has a decided absence of pink.  I'd love to tell you that I don't have anything against the colour, but that's a lie.  There's very little in our flat which is pink, and it's not a colour I choose to have around me in swathes.  I don't dislike pink as a colour; I simply loathe the fact that it's become the colour of gender stereotyping. 

Today, I've spent most of the day in bed with a cough, cold and general lurgy.  What I'd really like to knit is another Sick Day Pi Shawl just to see how easy it is when ill.  Ironically, despite the size of my stash, I'm not sure I've got any yarn... 

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.

Confession

Take a look at any knitting blog at the moment, and they'll pretty much all be saying: 'it's nearly Christmas and I've not knitted all my gifts'.  I've found an easy way round that; don't knit gifts for other people (unless you're sickenly organised and have them done by November). 

There, I've said it.  I'm not planning on knitting any gifts for Christmas.

Of course, this is likely to all slip once I've found the right size needles to hit gauge on the jumper for my ninja nephew.  (Knitted way too big, so if I don't get it done in time for Christmas, he can have it for Easter). 

There are things I'd meant to knit by now.  There are knitting deadlines I have for next year.  I'm going to have to get cracking soon and put it all in a spreadsheet.

What I do want, knittting-wise, is a project to last me over Christmas/New Year.  Most likely this will be a shawl of some sort.  I also have sewing, and need to find a new job, and reading some plays and catching up on sleep and tidying the flat and sewing up some of my UFOs... 

Good to have a holiday with nothing to do, isn't it!