The Finishing Off Project

You may have noticed that I have a real issue where, if I don’t sew my knitting up and weave in ends immediately after finishing it, I never get around to it. A couple of months ago, I started the Finishing Off Project.  The first project finished was Audrey In Unst which had been lurking, waiting for buttons, since 2019.  I had them, so God knows why I didn’t finish it at the time.

I’ve worn this cardigan a lot since I finally sewed on the buttons in February.  Love it!

The second sweater finished was Sandrine, which still needs to be washed, blocked and photographed.  I finished the knitting on it on 1st October last year.  It just needed the ends woven in, the front panels secured together - to stop any gaping - and I decided to turn up the final 5 rows of the body and use them as a hem.  I’ve machine washed the swatch and decided this is definitely one to be hand washed to preserve the stitch definition.

The third sweater finished was When You’re Off Duty, which is a free pattern from the V&A.  The body was finished in February/March 2021 and just needed the sleeves sown on and the collar knitted.  (I did the collar in September 2021.)

There are five projects left on the list:

• Diagonal Pattern Shirt Blouse from Knitting in Vogue.  This jumper predates both Ravelry and my blog, and has been waiting for me to finish sewing on the collar for about 20 years.  Seriously, I’d forgotten it existed until I was looking for something else.  I restarted sewing down the collar earlier this week and I’m 99% done. All that’s left is to position the short edge of the placket and stitch it down.  However, I’ve just noticed a small hole on the back that’ll need fixing. No others - I’ve checked.  With the exception of buttons, this will be finished today.
• Entertain in This based on a pattern from the Lux Knitting Book 1936.  That’s been lurking since 2016.  I think it just needs the cuffs sewn down.
• Trott (aka Carmine).  I finished this one in December 2020.  It only needs the sleeves sewing up.  Seriously, I think I’ve been procrastinating because I know this is going to be a handwash only jumper.  I machine washed my swatch years ago and it shrank to the point where it wouldn’t even make a stubby holder.  I should be able to sew this one up tonight, while watching the Champion’s League Final.
• Acer Cardigan.  This was finished in 2017 and got worn a few times, but I always had a problem with aligning the button band.  Then I realised that I’d knitted an extra repeat on one front, so it was at least an inch longer than the other!  I’ve ripped out the button band, etc, but never got around to putting it back together.
• Deco.  Another one that was finished years ago (January 2015), which just needs press-studs sewn on and buttons attached.  I regret not doing button holes.  The button bands are knitted as you go, so I can’t frog them and add button holes now.

I hereby vow to have all of the above finished and wearable before I return to work at the end of July.

- Pam

Finished Frankensocks

As promised in my last post, here are the original grey socks that I finished knitting back in January 2013:

And here are the finished Frankensocks:-

You can see that they’re related.  The third sock yarn, used on the feet, was from these socks:

It’s James C. Brett’s Funny Feetz.  (I bought 2x100g balls, back in 2019, and have knitted 3 pairs of socks with it plus this pair.  Their quality control is appalling - one ball was full of flaws.).  On the second sock, I ran out of both colours of the Lang Super Soxx, so ended up working in the end of a fourth ball of yarn, alternating with it for about 10 rows.  No idea from which pair of socks it originated.

-  Pip

The Joy of Stash

One of the pluses of working from home during Lockdown is I’ve been listening to a lot* of podcasts while I work: some knitting-related, some not.  For the knitting podcasts, two of the recurring themes during Lockdown have been finishing WIPs (works-in-progress) and utilising stashed yarn.   Some have been furloughed; some have lost jobs or fallen between the cracks of economic support.  Some podcasters are open and up-front about it - there is one podcaster who only has her part-time wage coming in to support her family of four - while others are less so.  

Nobody knows what will happen to the economy before the COVID-19 Pandemic runs its course - I’m half expecting to go back into Lockdown in October - but the UK economy declined by 20.4% in Lockdown. It’s generated a lot of economic uncertainty and the knitting podcasters are worried.   Most won’t openly discuss their finances but the message is clear:  having a yarn stash is a bit like having a woolly insurance policy.  Finished your latest project and want to start something new?  No need to go shopping; just raid your stash.  Got a pile of WIP’s haunting you?  Either knit them/finish them or frog them (unravel) and use the yarn for something else.  Look at all that money yarn you’ve got tied up in something that you’re just not enjoying!  What a waste!

Since I’m on the sleeves of “It Cannot Fail To Please”, last week, I did my own bit of stash diving.   As you may be aware, most of my stash was acquired at yarn shows.  Because you can’t predict what will be sold there, I don’t usually go shopping with a project in mind.  Instead I’ll buy a sweater’s worth of whatever takes my fancy and find a project to fit it.  Sometimes, that’s easier said than done.   In July 2011, I scored 18 balls of “Palette Vintage Series 120/219” worsted weight yarn at a bargain price; nine balls in Red Bud and nine in Macadamia (white).  Hobbycraft were selling it off for £1/ball and I purchased everything they had in both colours.  (At that price, it would have been rude not to.)  However, it’s always been a problem.   It’s never had a viable project.  At 125m a ball, I have 1,125m of each colour which was never quite enough for what I wanted to make.  For years, I’ve fancied using the Red Bud to make Norah Gaughan’s Drift cardigan:

It’s lovely, but the smallest size calls for at least one ball more yarn than I have in either colour and my size probably needs two.  (I never had a plan for the Macadamia.). Finally, last week, I accepted that I would never make this cardigan in that yarn.  I did a pattern search on Ravelry: must be a sweater; in worsted weight yarn; require between 1,000m and 1,200m; and the pattern had to already be in my library.  It turned up Trott (aka Carmine) from issue 25 of The Knitter, which will be perfect for the Red Bud

Another search turned up something for the Macadamia:  the Interlacement Sweater, a free pattern from Universal Yarns.  I’ve never had a jumper lined up for that before.

On 4.5mm needles, both jumpers should go quite fast, much faster than the 4-ply jumpers I’ve knitted recently.  Hopefully, I’ll get both of them done by Christmas.  Finally, two solutions for yarn that has been hanging around in the stash since July 2011.

- Pam

* Prior to Lockdown, the podcast queue on my iPhone was 354.  As I type it’s down to 185.  I’ve finally reached episodes released at the start of June 2020.  Given that between 10 and 20 new episodes of shows are released every week, that means I’ve listened to 300+ episodes!.

Finished jumper to show off

I will have to change the picture in the right side-bar.  I’ve finished that jumper!    It only took two months to make.  This is the Caradon Hill Sweater by Blacker Designs, knitted in Mithril DK, spun from Stansborough Grey sheep in New Zealand.  (The Stansborough Greys are a really rare bread of sheep.  Their yarn was used to make the Elven cloaks in Lord of the Rings.)

I modified the neckline.  I didn’t like the boatneck shown on the pattern.  I completed the shaping given in the pattern then added an additional 6 rounds to the neckline before knitting a ribbed collar.

- Pam

Thirteen plus years in the making

Once upon a time, in 2005-6, I worked in central Reading.  Our office was a short walk from the Reading branch of John Lewis, which is the only major British department store chain to continue selling fabric and yarn*.   My lunchtime “treat” was to wander down Castle Street into John Lewis to browse the knitting yarns.  Sometimes, I’d buy something - the yarn for this jumper, for example - other times I’d just window shop.

At some point, I was drawn to an expensive, shiny, silk yarn, Debbie Bliss Pure Silk DK.  The colours just glowed.  I don’t remember the exact price, although £15/skein springs to mind.  There was a green that just kept catching my eye.  I waited patiently hopefully for it to go on sale.  I was disappointed.  When the John Lewis biannual clearance sale came around, there was none of that green to be seen.  I kicked myself that I didn’t make note of the colourway, while I had had the chance.  They didn’t get any more in stock afterwards, either, and soon after that my office moved out of town.  But still the colour haunted me.  Eventually, I caved in and ordered 10 skeins from, Bunty’s.  It was not something he usually carried, so I had to order out of the catalogue and hope from a tiny sample that I’d picked the right shade of green (there were two).  When it arrived, I paid over my £79.99 and tried to hide my disappointment.  The shade was much more blue than I remembered.  Pride prevented me ordering other green colourway from Bunty, I didn’t want him to feel obliged to take the first order back.  (I couldn’t inflict the loss on Bunty - it wasn’t his regular stock.  He’d only acquired it for me.).   Eventually, I ordered it from John Lewis in Brent Cross and, again, I was disappointed.  This time, it turned out too yellow.  

    

Neither were the exact colour I wanted but, having paid good money, I dutifully put them away in the stash and waited for inspiration to strike.

Fast forward to last year.  I was looking through the stash, wondering what to knit next, when my eye fell on the yarn on the bottom.  In the intervening  years, it seems to have changed colour and is far more like the yarn on the top.  If I couldn’t see the shade number, 27006, in the photo on the bottom, I wouldn’t believe it was the yellow-green one.  Anyway, it “spoke” to me and told me that it would like to be a Blanche Too by Susan Crawford.  I finished it last weekend and wore it for the first time on Wednesday.

See what I mean about the colour?  DH took this photo on our regular afternoon walk, our daily permitted “Lockdown Exercise”.  And this one, in the garden, afterwards.

After so long a wait, what do I think of the yarn?  The comments on Ravelry are full of complaints about the way it was spun:  slubby in places; tightly overspun in others.  I have to agree.  Every hank was an absolute beyotch to wind, having felted against itself in places. After the second skein, I gave up with the ball winder and wound them by hand.  They were unevenly spun, too, so I was surprised that it knitted up as evenly as it did.  

What will I do with the rest of it?  No idea, at this stage.  I may give it to a friend who is allergic to wool and alpaca, but has been bitten by the knitting bug.

- Pip

* In the 1990s, I watched as one-by-one department stores such as House of Fraser, Selfridges and Liberty closed their fabric and yarn departments.  By 1995, John Lewis were the only ones left.

Fashion on the Ration vs Yarn Addiction

I mentioned in my last post that I’m doing Fashion On The Ration again this year.  My big weakness isn’t clothes, it’s yarn.  I have a stash of humongous proportions, so I don’t need any more yarn, but I still managed to blow 40+ coupons on it last year.  Seriously, I bought so much yarn that I lost count!  Some of it was one-off-specials, the sort of thing you find at shows but don’t see every day:  Tweed Valley Clotted Cream 4-ply; some Poledale sock yarn.  I bought a jumper’s worth of each.  There’s no excuse for the rest:  12 x 100g balls of Regia sock yarn, in three different shades of grey (it was a really good price, though); plus several assorted skeins of sock wool, which has now been turned into socks. 

My plan for this year is to knit up at least 20 balls of yarn from stash AND NOT BUY ANY.  Right now, I’m knitting another Blanche Too, from Susan Crawford Vintage.  The first one was out of Debbie Bliss’ Wool of the Andes; this one is out of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk DK, which I’ve had in the stash since I worked in the centre of Reading in 2006 (I bought it in the sale at John Lewis).  I’m almost up to the armpits and started the year on skein 3.  Now on skein 4; it should take another 4 skeins, so that’ll be 6 off the target by the time I’ve finished.

I’ll update the sidebars in a moment.

- Pam

Goals for 2020

A very clever person on MSE has devised a “20 in 2020 Challenge.  I’m joining in and have set the following goals for 2020:-

1. Knit 20 balls of yarn (that's between 3 & 5 jumpers worth)
2. 20 minutes a day learning French (via Duolingo and TinyCards)
3. 20 minutes exercise a day for 20 weeks
4. Read 20 books
5. Try 20 new dinner recipes
6. 20 gardening sessions
7. Explore 20 new places
8. Attend 20 "shows" (concerts/plays/films/BBC recordings)
9. Do the 2020 Fashion On The Ration Challenge and keep within the coupon count
10. Phone family/friends to chat 20 times (I'm hopeless on the phone)
11. Lose 20lbs
12. Mend 20 items of clothing (yes, that includes sewing on buttons and taking up hems)
13. Declutter 20 items
14. Run 20 miles (but not all at once)
15. Save 20 x £20 out of my “allowance”(£400)
16. Make 20 site visits for work, earning mileage 20 times (it goes to the car fund)
17. Write 20 blog posts (in 2019, I haven't managed one yet)
18. Log 10,000 steps on my Fitbit on 20 or more days (harder to do than it sounds)
19. Have a party in the summer and invite at least 20 friends
20. Watch at least 20 programs that have been on the DVR since 2018

And a special goal, number 21:  Post on TMF 20 times in 2020.  I owe that website a hell of a lot and I’d like to keep it alive.

Care to join me?

- Pam

Spilling the Secret Sauce - Knitting in the Round

You may have noticed that I've updated the right sidebar.  At some point soon, I'll do a show and tell of my latest knitting but, right now, I'm about a third of my way through knitting the body of, Young And Pretty, from A Stitich in Time - Vol 1, Jane Waller's and Susan Crawford's amazing compendium of vintage patterns*.

Here's a link to the pattern's Ravelry page:  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/young-and-pretty   I'm probably going to leave off the ruffle, which is knitted separately and sewn on afterwards.  It's too girly.  This project wasn't even on my radar but the next-in-queue didn't get gauge (I couldn't face the maths that night) and the yarn for the one behind that bled everywhere**.

Not only did I get blue hands, it stained the rug on the couch!

I haven't quite figured out how to get that off.... (I'm hoping it'll just wash out but have been procrastinating, so haven't thrust the rug into the washer.)

Anyway, in the end, I pulled 6 balls of Lidl's finest Crelando Anika sock yarn out of the stash and sifted through my pattern collection - and Ravelry queue -  wondering what to do with it.  I settled on Young and Pretty because I had enough yarn, it didn't need charting - unlike one of my other vintage choices - I hadn't knitted it before and, without the ruffle, it fits into my aesthetic.

As is usual these days, I'm knitting in the round.  No, the pattern wasn't written that way.  It doesn't need to be.  Like many knitters, I hate sewing up seams.  However, it wasn't until early 2011 when I had the "lightbulb" moment, "Why not knit it in the round and skip the seaming?".  (Well, d'uh!)  I don't remember exactly when the penny dropped but I think you can blame Jasmine from the Knitmore Girls podcast for that moment of inspiration.  Ravelry tells me that the first sweater I knitted in this manner is the grey Willow, which I started in March 2011.  (Thank heavens for Ravelry's project pages.).

What amazes me about knitting in the round is that more people don't do it. It's so simple.  I was gobsmacked to discover that someone has written a book(!) detailing the technique like it's rocket science.  No, I don't remember who or the title of the book - it was referenced in a podcast.  It got me angry and I've been stewing over it for ages. I was incensed that something so simple was being presented as "here's MY big idea; MY secret discovery" when it patently isn't.  The thing is:  you don't need to spend good money on a book full of mediocre patterns in order to learn this technique when it could be summed up in five steps. Here is all you need to know.

How to knit a sweater in the round whatever pattern you're knitting

1. Swatch to check your knitting tension against the pattern's quoted gauge, both in the round and flat.

• Knit a long, half-n-half swatch. Using a circular needle, cast on 20 stitches more than the target gauge.  Work flat in garter stitch for five rows, then knitting in garter stitch for the first 5 and last 5 stitches, commence whatever stitch pattern is quoted in the gauge section of the pattern.  (If it says "25 stitches and 36 rows measured over lace pattern" then work the lace pattern.  If no pattern quoted, work stocking stitch). At the end of your first row, slide the the swatch back to the other end of the needle and work the second row, leaving a large loop of yarn dangling behind your swatch. Repeat for 5 inches, then swap to knitting flat and knit another 4 inches before finishing with 5 rows of garter stitch and casting off.
• Wash your swatch and let it dry before counting your rows and stitches, firstly over 4 inches of the knitted-in-the-round section and then over the knitted flat section.
• You may be lucky and discover that both tension sections are the same.  Or you may discover that your tension is very different when you knit in the round to when you knitting flat.  THIS IS IMPORTANT.  Many people have a different tension when they purl to when they knit.  If the latter is true for you, then you will need to use a different needle size for the upper back and upper front of your sweater, because they are worked flat.

2. Read your pattern's instructions thoroughly.  Does it include an extra stitch at either end of the body to give a selvage/space for sewing up? If so, then omit those stitches from your knitting.

3. To start your sweater:

• Using a circular needle, cast on the stitches for the back, place a marker and then cast on the stitches for the front.  Work 2 rows flat, following the pattern's instructions.
• Turn and work your third row.  When you get to the last stitch, check your knitting and ensure it isn't twisted.
• Place a marker and join your knitting, working in the round from this point.  I like to use a dangling row counter for this marker.  It will signify the start of each round, while the other marker gives you the side seam.

4. To divide for the armholes:

• If you haven't decided which side is the front and which side is the back, do so now.
• Pattern instructions usually tell you to cast off nn stitches at the start of the first row, work to end, turn, cast off the same number of stitches and work back.  Ignore them.
• On your first armhole row, do not start by casting off stitches.  Instead, work to nn stitches before the side seam marker, cast off nn-1 stitches.  Swap your seam marker for a length of thread (2-3 inches long) and, over it, cast off that final stitch, by slipping it over the first stitch of the other side and your thread marker.  Tie your thread marker in a loop.  Cast off a further nn stitches.  This forms the base of your first armhole and you have the side seam marked, which will help with placing the sleeve.
• Work to nn stitches before the end of this side and repeat the above step.
• Work flat from here on, following the pattern as instructed.  Remember to swap your needle size if necessary to keep your gauge even.

5. Knit your sleeves. 

• Using magic loop, knit your sleeves two-at-a-time in the round. On a long needle, cast on the first sleeve with one ball of yarn, then cast on the second, using a second ball of yarn. Again, work the first three rows flat before joining and working in the round.  
• When the time comes to knit the armhole shaping, follow the instructions in the pattern (i.e. cast off nn stitches, work to end, turn cast off nn stitches, work back). To make your life easier later, mark each arm's "seam" with a safety-pin.

And there you have it.  If you use a three-needle bind off for your shoulder seams, then the only sewing you'll need to do is setting in the sleeve caps.  Much easier.

- Pam

* Having dealt with both over the years, I think that while the collection of patterns is Jane's - and comes from her original 1970's edition of the book - all the work involved in the reissued book (resizing, knitting up, layout, etc) was done by Susan.

** Luckily, all is not lost.  The Knitmore Girls also have a solution to this problem, a citric acid bath.   http://www.betterthanyarn.com/2014/10/problems-and-solutions.html. I just have to reskein the yarn, having balled it all up and then follow Jasmine's instructions.  I'm kicking myself that I didn't do this beforehand as a matter of course, but I didn't have any citric acid, didn't contemplate that the 15L of vinegar I have lying around the house could do the same job and thought "it'll be fine". (Famous last words.). Hopefully, I won't felt the 100% hand-dyed Gotland in the process.  (In the end, I bought citric acid off Amazon.)

What would I do if....

As you know, I'm working from home while waiting for my foot to heal.  Since I find myself sitting and staring at the inevitable "save" icon on the work laptop for what feels like forever, multiple times during the work day, my thoughts wander off to more interesting topics like knitting.  (It's better than thinking about food and recipes - that inevitably just makes me hungry.)  

One of the mental games I play runs, "What would I do if....", the knitting version of which is "How and what would I knit if I were broke?".  Now, in reality, I have a large stash and if I were broke, I could knit from it for about a decade and (possibly) with the exception of sock yarn, still have multiple-garments-worth of yarn left at the end of it.  I have more than enough yarn.  I am seriously contemplating selling some of it to make some space and because it is highly unlikely I will ever knit with it (the pink and the blue Sublime Angora Merino DK if you are interested).  So let's wind the clock back ten-or-so years, before the stash grew large and contemplate how and what I'd knit if I were broke and didn't have much of a stash.

(This version of the game started because ages ago, on a frugality discussion board somewhere - not TMF - someone remarked that she couldn't afford to knit with "real wool" only with acrylic.  Her next comment, which was aimed squarely at me, was that since I could "afford" wool, I obviously didn't need to be on a frugality discussion board.  I think I replied that it was precisely because of the tips and tricks I'd picked up that I could afford to knit with wool, that most of my yarn was purchased at a deep discount from the likes of Black Sheep Yarns and that I saved £5/month for my knitting.  Anyhow, I digress. Let's play the game...)

How and what would I knit if I were broke?  

For a start, I'd knit whatever yarn I had in the house, until it ran out. I'd dig it all out, pile it on the bed and work out what I could do with it.  Even when I only shopped for the next garment to be knitted and not for the stash, there were always balls and ends of balls of yarn left over after whatever was knitted was finished.  There would probably be enough for at least a couple of hats, some fingerless mitts and a pair or two of my use-em-up socks.  Any short lengths could be crocheted into granny squares - it's about time I learned to do one.  (No, even though I've been crocheting all my life, I've never made one.)

In the meantime, while I was busy knitting up the odds and ends, I'd try to save for the next garment.  Surely I could squeeze £2 a week out of the budget?    Three 100g balls of 4-ply sock yarn is approximately 1200 metres, which  is more than enough to make a vintage sweater like the Jan Sweater, which is at least a month's knitting (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/the-jan-sweater).  There are plenty of free patterns out there, which you can find via Ravelry.  Since I'm using 4-ply, I'd start by searching the library for patterns listed on Trove (the National Library of Australia online archive of vintage knitting patterns). Www.knitty.com is another place I'd look.

Then onto the yarn.  King Cole Zig Zag is reasonable to knit, consists of 75% wool:25% nylon, would give you 420m a ball and is currently on sale via Amazon for £4.79 plus £2.49 p&p, so £16.86 for yarn for an entire sweater.  You may even be able to get a short sleeved sweater out of two balls.  http://tinyurl.com/jgxb7n7  The hardest part will be trying to find a source that sells plain colours.

Alternatively, if I'd saved up just a little more, I could get three balls of West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4-ply, 75% wool:25% nylon, quality British grown and spun yarn, direct from the spinners for £7.20 a ball plus £2.60 p&p, a total of  £24.20.  That is a premium product with 30% BFL for less than £25, including p&p.  http://tinyurl.com/ozzvaof. I know which one I'd prefer.  

Problem solved, yes?

- Pam

Enough is enough

This is the story of a pair of socks....

You may remember the craze for Jaywalkers, at one point it seemed that every knitting blogger/podcaster on the planet were making a pair. (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/jaywalker). Ravelry tells me that I knitted my Jaywalker Socks in 2011.  They were pretty:

I remember casting on the 76 stitches and thinking, this is an awful lot of stitches for someone like me with a size five foot (size 7 US/Australian), but the pattern mentioned that there was very little give in the fabric and that someone "with a high arch" (not me) might struggle to get the socks on over their heels.    Little did I realise then that putting the damn things on would be a battle every single time that I wore them.  Since I wear hand-knitted socks to work virtually every day, they became the last-choice-in-the-drawer socks.  Still, I reckon I must have worn them once a month for the last five years, battling to put them on and take them off 60+ times, until this happened last week:

A hole just below the cuff.  A hole that didn't run, even after I threw the socks in the washing machine. (I'd worn them to work that day.).  A hole that, frankly, I've been expecting ever since the first day I wore these socks back in 2011.   You can't blame the yarn, Supergarne Relax Sport Und Strumpfgarn, it knows how to take a beating.  It put up with an awful lot of hauling and stretching over the years, as well as the usual wear and tear from walking and shoes.  

I looked at the hole, today, and did something I should have done back in 2011.  I gave in to the inevitable, and frogged them.  I cut the toe, wriggling the thread through a few stitches

then ripped and ripped.  The yarn has stood up to wear and tear beautifully.  I hadn't realised just how tight the stitches were - it made quite a noise ripping out - and it's definitely more of a 3-ply now than a four.  Am contemplating giving it a gentle soak in warm water before re-balling it up and knitting it into a nicer pair of socks.

Any pattern suggestions?

- Pam

Knitting as the wild side

It's been a long time since I've written a knitting post.  You may have noticed that the picture has finally changed in the right side-bar - the previous jumper shown was finished in October 2013!  I've actually knitted three jumpers and a cardigan since then, several hats, multiple pairs of socks, several pairs of fingerless mitts and two Five Hour Baby Sweaters.

I am currently knitting totally off piste.  Oh, I have years of adapting old patterns to fit me but this is different.  The pattern Entertain in This was impossible to adapt. Initially I was astonished to discover that it didn't quote gauge - no mention of a knitting tension at all.  When I read through it, I realised that the reason no gauge was quoted was because all the shaping was done via changing needle sizes, so they'd have to quote at least five different gauges!  Seriously, the needles used range from 2.75mm for the welt to 5mm for the majority of the body.  There is no way on this earth that the Drops Alpaca I'm using would cope with 5mm needles.

Anyway, at that point, I gave up trying to adapt the pattern and decided to just copy the design features:  the frilled collar and cuffs, and the nobbles.  However, when I knitted the nobbles - purl 5 into the stitch on one row, knit 5 together on the next - they didn't show up.  The alpaca halo overwhelmed them.  Time to grit my teeth and try something I've never done before:  knitting in beads.  

(There are two ways to knit with beads:  the first involves threading dozens of the fiddly things onto your knitting yarn and sliding them down it periodically as you knit.  It really only works on small items, or when you have one beaded section, since all the yarn you will knit with will be pulled through the unused beads.  Completely not feasible for a garment or for anything knitted with a halo, upon which the yarn may catch.  I did this method for the first time at a class in October, at the Knit & Stitch Show at Ally Pally.   The second method is something I knew about by repute but I'd never seen it until I looked it up on YouTube:  using a tiny (1mm) crochet hook to pull your next-to-be-knitted stitch through your bead, so that the bead forms a shank on it.  That's what I mean when I say "knitting in beads".)

Much to my surprise, given how beaded knitting is one of the holy grails of knitting, it is easy!  A little fiddly certainly, particularly as the hole in the beads aren't uniform, but really easy.   Pretty, too!  Take a look:

Believe me, it is harder to take a photo that accurately reflects the colour of the yarn than it is to knit in beads!  It's meant to be a dark blue with purple tones.

Neither of these photos are blue enough, although the latter is closer.

- Pam (only one scary knitting technique left to try - entrelac.)

SitRep2015: How did I do?

At the end of 2014, in this post, I set myself 15 goals for 2015.  Here is a quick summary of how I did.  (Challenge first then result):-

1. £50 February.  We nearly made it.  As detailed here, we spent £58.83.  I will definitely try this challenge again.
2. January is for finishing Projects/WIPS.  This is more difficult to measure because I didn't list the unfinished projects in the original post.  I think they included my Deco cardigan - still needs buttons - and the Woolly Nanette Tee - finished but the ends still need weaving in.   Let's just call this goal a fail and be done with it.
3. Lose 15lb in 2015.  As detailed here, I succeeded in losing 7lb almost permanently, but I reckon I lost at least 5 of those pounds on 3 separate occasions.  Partial win.
4. The 2015 Fitness Challenge.  Fail.  I'm still a slug.
5. The Feed Me Gardening Challenge.  Almost total fail.  Gardening got away from me this year.  The only thing I managed to grow were courgettes and they were from two plants donated by DH's boss.  Maybe next year will be better.
6. The 2015 Knit from Stash Challenge.  Almost a complete success.  I say almost because I had to buy two extra balls of 4-ply Blue Faced Leicester in order to complete my latest project, It Cannot Fail to Please from A Stitch In Time.  I was really good until October, when  I slipped at the Knit & Stitch Show and purchased two balls of Toft Alpaca Sock, 8 balls of Drops Alpaca and two balls of Jamieson's Soft Shetland.  Only the last has been knitted to date; I used it to make a hat for Dark for Christmas.
7. The Fashion on the Ration Challenge.  To be honest, while I know I blew this one out in July when I bought a load of lingerie, I stopped tracking before then and don't know how many points I really spent.
8. Learn French.  I have worked my way through 2 lessons of Duolingo every morning this year and, according to to the app, am now 7% fluent in French.  While I am far from being able to sustain a conversation, I know more French now than I did after four years of classes in high school.  I'll continue with Duolingo in the new year.
9. To Throw a Fabulous 50th Birthday Party.  Big win.  I had a great party.
10. To Read and Finish 15 Books in 2015.  Not quite a win.  I read 13 books, not 15.  Virtually every book I've read this year was on the Kindle app on my phone or iPad and a lot of them were free or cheap, thanks to joining the BookBub mailing list.  (I now have hundreds of books thanks to BookBub.)  Please, Amazon, update the app so that we can tag the books we've read and easily find them.   
11. To move into the back bedroom.  Fail.
12. The wardrobe challenge.  Fail.  I'm still waiting to make the big trip to IKEA to buy new wardrobes so that we can outfit the back bedroom and move.
13. To make something of my new job.  Success.  I'm not quite back to the same point as I was with the previous role, but I'm close.  I've made friends with two of the business's senior people and, as of tomorrow, I will have a team of project accountants reporting to me again.
14. To blog 26 times in 2015.  Fail.  Somehow, though, I remembered the target as 15 times not 26.  Once I post this, it'll be 15 times.
15. To write that book.  Fail.  Although I have started.  Twice.

So that's a quick review of my 2015.  How did you do with your 2015 resolutions/challenges?  Do tell!

Wishing you a fantastic 2016.

- Pam

Frugal Friday - use up what you have

For the trip to Miami, I bought with me 100g  yarn for a pair of Monkey socks - started just before we left London - and sufficient aran weight yarn to make a Five Hour Baby Sweater for a colleague's baby shower.  The sock were finished last weekend, while the sweater was completed this time yesterday afternoon. Disaster!  I ran out of scheduled knitting!

My initial plan when we visited Michaels earlier this week was to buy some Lionbrand Sockease.  While I know it's not the poshest yarn in the world, I listened to all 100+ episodes of their podcast, Yarncraft, and wanted to give them some custom as a thank you.  Anyway, Michaels didn't have any Sockease; they didn't have any sock yarn whatsoever and precious little fingering weight (4-ply).  This meant that my other plan - to knit a second pair of socks from souvenir sock yarn has been totally stymied.  (There is little chance I'll get to either of the other two major craft stores, Jo-Ann's or Hobby Lobby before we fly home tomorrow.)

So there I was, yesterday afternoon wondering what on earth I could knit now.  I had leftover Toft Alpaca sock yarn, 75g of baby blue acrylic, a set of 2.5mm DPNs and a 7mm circular needle.  Using the acrylic didn't appeal  - I need to save it for future baby sweaters - which left the sock yarn.  I dismissed starting another pair of socks; without weighing it, I know there just isn't enough yarn for a full pair and I don't have access to any other suitable yarn to make a pair of half-n-half socks.  That left me with fingerless mitts/wristers. The only worry being, will I have enough yarn?  

Last night, I started to work out a pattern, knitting as I go.  Following a session with scales this morning, I now know that I have 38g of yarn to play with.  Ravelry tells me that I have 174.8 metres left of the sock yarn.  The scales tell me that the 24.5 rounds I've knitted so far weigh 6g, so 1g = 4 rounds.  That means I can knit 76 rounds per wrister, a reasonable length, and still have a metre or two left over for repairs.  

A bit of thought, some mathematics and a touch of creativity means that I can continue to practice my hobby without spending a dime.  And I'm using up something that would normally get buried in stash for a few years.  One last brownie point - I've started my 2015 Knit from Stash challenge early!  Yay, me!!

(Here I am working on my new project, soaking up the sun and listening to a podcast in my favourite spot at TLA's house in Miami.)

Oops!! I slipped

I'm knitting a Five Hour Baby Sweater out of Stylecraft Baby Aran in the shade Baby Lemon for the newborn daughter of one of DH's colleagues. With 20 rows to go on the body, I know I will run out of yarn. I always knew it would be tight, even after inserting the reminants of some white aran yarn into the yoke to pad out the yarn as a styling detail. (Photo below.)  I can't do another stripe of the white - I've used all that I had - so this morning, I unwillingly went searching online for some more. 

(I really didn't want to go yarn shopping. Even with the Fashion on the Ration challenge, my stash is approaching epic proportions.) Below, is the exact transcript of a conversation I had with with DH…

  ME: Just to let you know that I've ordered some more of the baby yarn from a shop on line. It'll arrive over the weekend (probably).

  DH: Cool. So I assume you order lemon/yellow? 

ME: Yes, same shade. Probably a different dye-lot, though, so I'll have to wait for it to be delivered and then alternate rows in order to ensure the change in dye lots doesn't show up.

 [ cough ] 

In order to get free P&P, I had to buy some other wool. Some 4-ply in French Navy. [ cough ] And it made sense to buy 12 balls because a) I don't know how much I'll need to knit the jumper I want (I'll be knitting "off-piste"), and b) it got me an extra discount. (I only paid for 11.) 

[ cough ]

 I'm sure it'll squish down into nothing.... 

[ / cough ] 

DH still hasn't responded.

-  Pam (another 16 coupons spent)

66 Coupons? Not a problem.

I am feeling a bit like a fraud.  You remember my fashion on the ration experiment?  I've just been updating  the box on the right to include all my purchases since I last wrote about it.  And it's left me feeling rather fraudulent.  Why?  Because, a) I have a lot of clothes in my wardrobe, and b), when I have made purchases, they've been second-hand from a charity shop which doesn't cost coupons (5 balls of Sirdar Calico, an M&S t-shirt with the tags still on but labelled "donated goods").

So why does that make me feel fraudulent? Unlike my WW2 sisters, I'm not suffering for my fashion.  To be fair, I gave up on trying to be fashionable a long time ago, when the fashions stopped suiting my body type, so I am not desperately chasing the next big thing.  I don't care if my suit is 6 years old, as long as it still looks smart and fits in with my late-1930's/WW2 fashion style.  Additionally, in Wartime terms, I have quite an abundance of clothing, yarn and fabric stashed away.   Even shoes.  I suspect that level of abundance puts me in the league of the Wartime upper-middle class.

(On the shoe, thing.  After a conversation with Tall, when he claimed his wife had over 150 pairs of shoes - turns out she has 154 pairs and a database of them(!) - I went home and counted my pairs of shoes.  Before I tell you the total, please remember that I am a woman who generally wears the same pair loafers to work, lives in sandals in the summer and trainers in the winter.  So.... You'd expect me to have maybe a dozen pairs of shoes, right?   I have 35 pairs of shoes.  And I probably missed a pair or two in the counting.  And that includes my site boots, my gardening shoes, several pairs of boots, my slippers, etc, etc.  There were even pairs I'd forgotten I had.)

Perhaps I'd better keep this challenge going for a few years, instead of one?

- Pam

Knitting to the foreground

For a knitting blog, I haven't talked much about knitting at all this year, let alone added to the list of finished objects over there ----> on the right.  Time to remedy that a little.  So how am I going towards my goal of knitting six sweaters this year?

Sweater 1 - Norwegian Sweater

Firstly, the Norwegian Sweater that's been lurking in the "What's On My Needles" box is well and truly finished.  I finished the knitting in April eventually wove in the ends in August and gave it to my mother-in-law for her birthday present.  The lavender suits her colouring far better than it suits mine. The only photos I have of it completed do not do the colours justice so here's three, one of it complete, one of a partial jumper and a close up of the yoke, which is the one photo that does show the colours correctly.

Pattern:  Norwegian Sweater
Source:  Knitting In Vogue 2, by Christine Probert, published October 1983 (pattern dates from the 1960's)
Yarn:  Sublime Organic Merino DK in Tuile (main colour) and Felt (contrast)
Mods:  Knitted in the round.  Also, since the yarn is discontinued, I knitted the sleeves first, then the yoke (casting on using the crochet provisional cast on), before knitting the body downwards.  I ran out of yarn at the waist but managed to find some more from McAree Brothers in Scotland. Finally, I did the collar in the contrast colour, back when I was still hopeful it would "lift" the lavender enough to enable me to wear the sweater.

Sweaters 2 and 3 - 2012 the Year of the Four Babies

And four babies means four Five Hour Baby Sweaters.  After the first one took two weeks, I decided that two baby sweaters would equal one adult sweater.  I use Courtney Filner's version for a 6-12 month old (the link will take you to it), but in a fit of stash busting I modified it a little to make stripy sweaters when I knew whether the baby would be a boy or a girl.

Each one takes about 125g of yarn.

Sweater 4 - A Frogged Garden Sweater

One of the forums I participate in on Ravelry is the Ankh Morpork Knitters Guild.  We have a Guild Wars competition and, as part of the third round, I whipped out Veera Välimäki's Modern Garden Sweater.  It's lovely; it's quick; it ate up some left-over chunky yarn from my stash....

But it didn't fit me.  And it didn't fit my sister-in-law.  So I've frogged the body to knit it again.  I'd picked the size to knit on the basis that I only had 450g of the yarn (Zettl Alina, bought from Lidl on the rare occasion they sell yarn).  I was lucky enough to have about 75g yarn left over so will knit two sizes up this time and see where that gets me.  Should take a week or two to do the body (I did stay it was fast).

Sweater 5 - Pretty in Pink

The final sweater I've knitted so far is another vintage Vogue pattern.  This time it's the Cotton Sweater with a Ribbed Yoke from Kntting in Vogue by Christine Probert published in December 1982.  The pattern dates from 1936.

I only have photos of the body, but it is virtually finished.  All that's left to do is to attach the sleeves, weave in the ends and give it a damn good wash.  (Somehow, I've managed to get sweet-n-sour sauce on it from a Chinese takeaway.)

Again, I modified this by knitting it in the round and doing the sleeves 2 at a time using magic loop.  The other thing I always do is finish the shoulder seams using a three needle bind off.

Sweater 6

No idea what I'm going to do for sweater 6.  I have a few patterns lined up in my queue, but they'll all take longer than 6 weeks.  Might finish the Moth Wing Shrug I started in March.  Yes, I know it's crochet, but that counts too.

- Pam

First casualty

I have been knitting socks since 2006 and, in all that time, I have never holed my socks. Until a moment ago. These were knitted in 2007 or 2008, using left over Opal silk-blend sock yarn for the legs, heels and toes, with the feet in Lisa Souza's Sock!. As you can see, it is the Opal that failed - put my toenail straight through it, getting out of the car.

Yarn Lust

Do you know something? I think the yarn-lust has finally worn off. I think I've finally reached saturation point. With the stash all in one place, where I can see it in all its glory, yarn shops don't have quite the pull on me that they used to. If I'm near one, I'll still have a browse but there isn't that "Got to buy wool" that there was. Maybe it's because I have virtually all the yarn I need to make the projects in my mental To Knit List? That's not the same as my Ravelry Queue - a lot of my Ravelry Queue is taken up with trying to find patterns to fit the yarns that I already have in stock, not the other way around. In fact, there are only two projects on my To Knit List for which I don't currently have yarn. The first is a Rowan Kid Silk Creation scarf (photo lifted from their website):

To be honest, while I'm still tossing up between the grey ("smoke") or the cream, I'm gradually going off the idea of knitting one at all.

The other item on my list is this big cosy winter jumper from the Australian Women's Weekly Best Ever Knitting Book, published in 1977:

I've wanted to make this one forever. It requires 1300 metres of 12-ply/chunky/bulky yarn to make the tunic and the hat. This is the pattern for which I wanted the Rowan Cocoon a couple of yarn diets years ago, but there's no rush. And there are readily available alternatives. Besides the Rowan, I could use Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky or Valley Yarns' Berkshire Bulky, both of which I can buy on-line from Webb's. Or I could use some of the Cleckheaton Country 12-ply, in black, that's already marinating in my stash. However, I don't think it'd give the right texture (the original yarn was an 8-ply/DK wool/mohair blend used double) and I'd envisaged the jumper in charcoal grey with the odd fleck of white mohair showing.

Oh, I felt a momentary stab, earlier in the week, when I heard that Reynolds Yarns had ceased trading due to the death of the owner - bye-bye Reynolds' Saucy cotton, Reynolds' Lopi and Lopi Lite - but it wore off pretty quickly.  There will be other yarns. Anyway, a quick browse of the Yarn Barn of Kansas website revealed that they've found an alternative supplier for Lopi and Lopi Lite - it appears they're buying it directly from the mill - so if I want those yarns, I can still get them.  How sad that a yarn company can fold because there is nobody to take over from its driving force.
It's possible, too, that setting this year's yarn budget up front has had an effect. As I mentioned in an earlier post, £60 is not a lot of money yarn-wise and I didn't want to fritter it away. It's all gone now: £8.44 on acrylic for baby jackets; £7 on sock wool; £15.95 on 3 extra balls of the Sublime Organic DK in Tuille because I was running out; £37.45 on Ethical Twist from EBay and £4.70 (inc P&P) on some Robin Paintbox DK in "Patriot" (red, white and blue) that I used to crochet a patriotic tea cosy in honour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee:

The mathematically inclined will have worked out that the above totals more than £60 - it comes to £73.54. It was the Ethical Twist that pushed me over, but that was a case of "act now or never get to knit with it" (it's discontinued) and I purchased enough for a decent sized jumper. Just don't know what yet.

While I won't say "no" to gift yarn (it is my birthday tomorrow, after all), I'm really not fussed if I don't buy any more yarn this year. I have enough.

- Pam

Knitting at the Olympics

Tonight, my knitting witnessed Senegal beat Uruguay 2:0 at Wembley. In a few minutes we'll see Great Britain play the UAE - a great evening of football at the Olympics.

Sorry, Interweave Knits, but you lost me

Dear Interweave Knits

I am writing to tell you why, after a period of 6 years, I will not be renewing my subscription to Interweave Knits. It's definitely you, not me. The "new" layout that you've been using for the last couple of years is a total turn off. I lose the will to live while flipping through the pages to find your patterns and, when I do find them, they just look like more advertising. The patterns don't register in my mind. I can't remember a single occasion over the last year when I opened your magazine, saw something I liked, and thought "I want to knit that". More commonly I'll see something on Ravelry, look at the details and then be surprised that I didn't recognise it since it came from one of your recent editions.

This is the third layout you've had in the time I've been a subscriber. I cannot understand why you think regularly changing the layout is a good idea. You had a layout that worked just fine but you just couldn't stop messing with it, could you? Is it because, each time you get a new editor they have to put their own "branding" on the magazine, like CEOs who rebrand companies to make their mark? It makes no sense to me. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! As well as your magazine, I've been a subscriber to Vogue Knitting for well over a decade and have copies dating back to the 1980's. Throughout that time, their layout has remained constant: advertisements and editorial at the front; followed by pattern stories; and then the pattern instructions. If consistency works for Vogue Knitting, why doesn't it work for you? It works for your sister magazines, Knitscene and Interweave Crochet, who have had the same layout for as long as I've known them.

The other thing I find annoying with you is that you do not include your regular "special issues" in your subscription price. Every year, you publish Interweave Knits Accessories and Interweave Knits Holiday Knitting - don't you think your regular, overseas subscribers would like to purchase them too? If we want a copy, we have to pay DOUBLE the cover price in P&P. It's not as if you don't know you're going to produce several special issues a year - given your lead times, you'd have to schedule them at least a year in advance - so why don't you include them in your subscription? (You used to do this with Knitscene but finally saw sense and created a separate subscription-type scheme.)

It's reached the point where I dread opening your magazines and your emails (Knitting Daily). That is not good.

Good-bye.

- Pam