Knitting Group and Beads

Knitting group was a success last Sunday. Nic and I went along to the Poultry Cross in Salisbury at the designated time where Bexx and Goldfishgirl were waiting for us, then Apricotqueen arrived with her daughter and we took ourselves to the nearest coffee shop. Safely ensconced in a corner with beverages and cake we began to knit and get to know each other. The other 3 ladies already knew each other and as Nic and I did too it wasn’t too awkward. 2 of the others spin aswell so I was able to ask questions about the difference between roving and silk hankies and other terms that I hadn’t quite got the hang of when listening to podcasts. I knitted my On Hold socks while Nic carried on with her blanket which she is knitting in a myriad of pinks for her craft/study room. We’re hoping to have another knitting session on 26 July when Daintykitty has moved to Salisbury from the US and hopefully Ebolajez and Shazspun will be able to make it too. Nic has just got an iPod for her birthday and is discovering the joy of podcasts so I’ve recommended Sticks & String and Cast On and I’m will be trying the two she suggested for me (I’ve forgotten the names right at this minute…) when I’ve sorted out my laptop’s memory issues.

I’ve not knitted a great deal this week as the weather has been ridiculously hot for the UK. But I have made myself a long necklace, bracelet and earrings from some green chinese beads I bought in London at The Bead Shop on Tower Street. I was given some gift vouchers for the local bead shop so I bought extra beads, charms and the chain to make the jewellry with my voucher. I had some credit on the voucher left over so today I bought these wonderful blue beads which I plan to make into a long necklace to match my blue shoes of happiness.

Tomorrow mum and I are heading to Winchester by train to the Handm@de craft fair in the guildhall and the craft exhibition in the Cathedral. Should be a good day out especially as it’s the Winchester Hat Fair too.

Blog like the wind…

I can’t stop for long, my car is extremely unwell so I have to get a bus in 20 minutes if I want to get home in time to see the last episode of CSI:NY series 5. 

My main news this week is (apart from ordering a new car – that is) I’m going to my first knitting group in Salisbury tomorrow afternoon. A few of us on Ravelry have finally got our acts together an hopefully there will be 5 knitters knitting in a coffee shop at 2pm tomorrow. I’m very excited, I hope it becomes a regular thing as I’ve wanted a knitting group for so long.

I will blog properly about it next week. I would blog during the week but I’m one of the few people who doesn’t have the internet at home!!

Goodies!!

Ok so I haven’t blogged for a while AGAIN – I am sorry. My laptop is still suffering from lack of space and it’s making it a real pain to do anything so I’ve just been doing the bare minimum for it.  And good heavens I mustn’t even think of using iTunes at the same time as anything else as then it slows down to a standstill. Anyway, enough whining about technology.

While I’ve been absent it was my birthday and I got quite a few things you may be interested in, I had a week off and I’ve done some knitting so I shall get on with telling you about it all.

For my birthday I was given two books on making Amigurumi, Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden (a.k.a Needlenoodles) and Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts: Amigurumi by Tomoko Takamori. They are both quite similar in that they have the basic instructions and patterns for making Amigurumi animals/creatures only Needlenoodles book is much more me as it’s all Zombies, Ninjas and other creatures of the night as it were. I’m not saying I won’t crochet any of the cute animals in the Kyuuto book but when given a choice I went straight for the creepy creatures. I’ve started making a mini Cthulu (wikipedia link) as I couldn’t resist!

I was also given Socks From The Toe Up by Wendy Johnson as I’d seen how fab it was on Jane’s blog. I had some leftover Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Wild Cherry colour from when I knitted my second Demeter so I have cast on the On Hold pattern (just noticed I’ve knitted them in a very similar colour to Jane!) as it was the one that required the least messing around with to fit on a sock with the number of stitches needed for my little feet. They are progressing nicely and I love the stitch pattern.

I also got Handmade Embroidered Purses by Jenny Rolfe as it was on my birthday list too. I have the Handmade bags book and wanted the purse ones. I have yet to make anything from either book yet but I will one day and they fill me with inspiration.

Other crafty goodies I got were: vouchers for a local bead shop, packs of scrap material by Jennifer Trollope, Lucy Neatby’s 2nd knitting essentials dvd and a pack of oil pastels for my art course.

Catch up time!!

Hello!! I am still alive, I’m sorry for neglecting my blog for most of May.  I’ve been having issues with my laptop suffering from lack of memory, mainly due to my iTunes library from what I can figure out.  So whenever I turn it on it spends most of the time flashing up little annoying messages saying “you are low on memory”.  I’m not quite geeky enough to know what I can do to solve this problem.  Anyway, enough of that, what have I been doing in May then?

My Aeolian shawl is coming along really well and I love knitting it.  I’m supposed to be knitting it on a 32″ (80cm) circular needle but I didn’t have one so I cast on on a 24″ (60cm) one and to be quite honest at over 600 stitches I don’t really think I need to longer needle at all.  But it does mean that I can’t stretch the lace out properly to look at it and therefore, can’t take a really wonderful picture of it as it’s all a bit bunched up! So I’ve taken pictures of the stitch markers I made last Saturday night at about 10pm because the ones I was using were annoying me so much. 

They are made out of tiger tail, beads and crimps so they have no bits to catch on the lace or yarn AND because there are no split rings involved they don’t move to the wrong place in my knitting.  My other stitch markers are wonderful (from here) but for knitting with really fine yarn they weren’t working properly as the yarn kept sneaking through the joins in the rings and the marker would end up 2 or 3 stitches or rows away from where it was supposed to be.  I’ve been using the tiger tail ones all week now and they haven’t annoyed me once, so I consider it time well spent making them.

I am knitting the edge set up charts at the moment which I thought would be really stressy but to be honest once I’d got past the picking up stitches on the cast on it’s not been a stressy pattern at all.  The purl rows are really long and a little boring but it can’t all be fun, fun, fun  can it? There has to be a little bit of hard work for it to be worth while! I don’t love making nupps either but mostly I really like this pattern and I can’t wait to see it blocked.  And because it’s lace it’s light and doesn’t take up a lot of room, it’ s not heavy on my lap so it’s quite a good summer knitting project. 

Now what else have I been doing? I made rolls of felt with mum which I’m hoping to cut up and make into a felt bead necklace but we’ll have to see how that goes.  I’ve been doing a new project at college on rhythm and pattern, I took pictures around Salisbury of tiles, paving, railings and other patterns and then have turned the patterns into a tonal ladder going from highlight to deepest shadow.  I’m now going to draw a tonal picture of an object and then produce a tonal ‘map’ of the drawing.  Then I will apply the patterns from the tonal ladder to the map of the object and it should produce a picture using patterns from around Salisbury.  I’m working on the tonal map at the moment and I may add elements of stamping to produce the final piece. 

But I do have to admit that I’m pretty obsessed with knitting the Aeolian shawl lately and haven’t done much else. ;o)

If you love fashion and want to be a designer, read Threads by Sophia Bennett when it is published in September.  It’s a young adult read from the Chicken House publishers and I loved it.  I’ve been reading whilst walking to work lately as it means I get much more reading time in a day and it doesn’t detract from knitting time!!!

Making felted beads

That is what I have attempted to do this afternoon. Mum acquired a kit to make a felted brooch after a demonstration by The Natural Wool Company at one of her quilt groups and today we finally got around to giving it a go. I have to say I’m still not sure about it.

We laid a towel out on the table and a piece of bubble wrap each and then proceeded to layer up pieces of merino fleece. This was then made soggy with soapy water and then rubbed until it starts to get matted (felt). I had decided to ignore the instructions and wanted to make rolled felt beads so I have rolled my layers of soggy fleece up. They’ve been rinsed out and are now drying. I am hoping that when it’s dry I can cut it in to slices like liquorice allsorts and I will be able to make a necklace or something from it. But at the moment I’m still not convinced that it will happen…..

I’ve made progress on my Aeolian Shawl and am about to knit the first row with nupps in. Fingers crossed!!

Aeolian progress

I’ve finally got a new camera and am able to show you my progress on the Aeolian Shawl by Elizabeth Freeman from Knitty.  This is the yarn after I wound it into a ball from the skein.  And it pretty much still looks the same size even though I’ve done 12 repeats of the yucca chart.  And this is a close up of the lace so far….

I’ve just started the transition chart which changes the pattern from the yucca chart above to the Agave chart.  It was a bit difficult at first knitting with such thin yarn but I’ve got the hang of it now.  The only niggle is that the addi lace circular that I’m using is so shiny and smooth it means the yarn easily slides off if I’m not careful.

Honeycomb & Aeolian

Well the stupid cold I had last time I blogged lasted about two weeks in total and I’ve only just got over the cough that came with it. Since I last blogged I have cast on the Honeycomb tank top/vest by Sarah Castor in a Debbie Bliss black 4 ply yarn that is really lovely to knit with.

I’m knitting it in the round and am about an inch off the armhole shaping. At first I was really concerned that it would be too small even though it says in the pattern that you must knit it with 4 inches of negative ease so about 4 inches in I put the whole thing on a thread and tried it on so that I would stop worrying about it. It fit fine – as Sarah says, this stitch pattern is extremely stretchy.

Over Easter I saw the spring 09 issue of Knitty and fell in love with the Aeolian Shawl by Elizabeth Freeman. I had put her Laminaria in my queue on Ravelry as I have 1000m of laceweight blue yarn that I wanted to knit into a shawl of some kind but then when I saw the Aeolian with it’s spiky edges that reminded me of dragon wings for some reason I just had to knit it. There was something about the star stitch on the Laminaria that I wasn’t sure about and I’d tried it in a swatch and it just wasn’t grabbing me. So I cast on last weekend and I’m on the 3rd repeat of the Yukka chart. It is very strange knitting with laceweight yarn as it’s so THIN and I’m not very good at knitting loosely but it’s going ok so far. I do have to concentrate quite a bit though, so in between times I knit the honeycomb as that is an easier knit for me.

College starts again on Tuesday, I’ve re-enrolled on the same course as there wasn’t another one I could progress on to but I’m not the only person doing this. I haven’t painting a thing of my sea shell/urchin picture since college broke up for Easter – mainly because of the stupid cold. But I’m hoping to get my painting mojo back again pretty soon.

On another topic – I have a hen night to go to next weekend and I have bought this dress and shoes to wear.  Aren’t they amazing??? And I got them both in the sale. 

Now I just have to customize a mask to wear to match!!

I’m ill, therefore I grouch

I have man-flu.  I feel rotten I can’t stop sneezing, coughing and blowing my nose.  I figured out that last night I must have woken up on average every 45 mins to blow my nose as there were that many tissues in the morning.  Consequentially my knitting is not really happening. 

Last weekend was Mother’s Day and I didn’t have any knitting with me on my visit to mum’s so she said “you could knit those sock heels for me….” so I did.  Mum had started knitting the same toe up sock from a pattern in Simply Knitting 4 times and stopped at the same point (just before the heel) on each one.  I think she did attempt it on one but the pattern had a slight misprint/ambiguous instruction and she gave up – 4 times! Don’t worry she knows I find this hilarious/frustrating.

So last weekend I knitted FOUR sock heels in a row. And it’s a silly way of doing it, if you ask me. I much prefer the widdershins pattern, it’s so tidy and there are no picking up stitches requirements. AND you end up with a double thickness heel due to the slip stitches, very sensible.  (you can tell I’m ill – I sound grumpy)
This week I have knitted the leg parts of two of the socks for mum and am ready to cast off if they fit her ok – I knit tighter than she does.  I always have, ever since I was little. I remember handing her my knitting every few rows when I was a kid so she could knit a row and loosen it up for me as I would make it progressively tighter and tighter on each row until it was impossible to get the needle in the stitches and then I’d expect mum to fix it – as you do!  I figured I deserved to be allowed to knit the fun leg pattern bit after doing 4 lots of penance on the heels!!

Today as I’m mostly feeling crap I am reading The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, as recommended by Nic here. I had seen it in a bookshop but hadn’t bought it but then Nic said she thought I would like it as it’s feels very similar to 84 Charing Cross Road so I bought it today and have been reading it all afternoon. I can’t tell you if I like the ending but I like the starting very much. The characters are lovely and warm and I feel like I want to go and visit them on Guernsey myself. My parents and I went there on holiday when I was 16 and I remember visiting the La Valette Underground Military museum so reading this book is bringing back those memories as well. I have family there still from Dad’s side so who knows, it may bring on a visit.

College has finished this week for the term but I’m going to enrol again in April. My painting of the sea urchin and shells is coming on well but it does take so long to do anything…. I do find that combining knitting with painting works well. I paint a bit and then while it’s drying I knit and look at it to decide which bit to paint next. If I didn’t knit in between I would pester the wet paint and ruin it – I’m too impatient!!

Tea Cosy

I haven’t done much knitting this week but I did make this little tea cosy for my red teapot.  I improvised the pattern and knitted it from leftovers of Twilley’s Freedom Spirit in the Fire colourway.  I love the yarn but it’s too itchy for me to wear as a garmet so I decided to make something I could look at but wouldn’t have to touch very often.  It came out really well and I’m quite pleased with it.

Flapper Hats

This is the purple hat I made for myself from the Poppy pattern by Justjussi.  I’m calling it my Flapper hat (as in a Flapper from the 1920s), it’s made from Debbie Bliss Rialto DK in a beautiful purple.  The button brooch and bracelet are the ones made by Nic and can be bought here.  I adapted the pattern for an adult and made the rib longer than suggested to keep my ears warm.  It’s currently my favourite hat, I love it.  Close up of button brooch below.

I’ve knitted an identical sized one in cream for Nic but haven’t got a photo yet.

I’ve also knitted a larger one for a girl at work made of Twilley’s Freedom Spirit in colour Fire.  I increased the number of stitches across the rows to 55 but didn’t change the number of segments that I knitted.  The rib is now 122 stitches round so it made it slightly bigger as Emma has very lovely curly hair that just wouldn’t be held in by the hat in my size!! Flap held shut with wooden heart button.

This week at college I focussed on drawing the sea urchin shell (test) that I will be drawing with my sea shells.  I hadn’t really given it much thought until Tuesday so it was quite interesting examining it and drawing an impression of all the nobbles and bumps on it’s surface.  I feel like I now really know my sea urchin!

I’m still knitting the lacy tea top but progress is slow as I keep letting myself be distracted.  I’m almost up to the armholes and at that point it will no doubt get very complicated while I try to do decreases and shaping whilst continuing the lace pattern. 

And to finish off and show that Spring is trying to happen here are photos of my Odessa hat with the little crochet flower brooch I made from the Fall Scarf leftovers and the scarf itself.  This week I’ve been wearing both with a light green coat and apparently it looks very spring like and cheerful – daffodil colours I guess. So my orange scarf is now Autumnal and Springlike.  Perfect.