Phantogram – Black Out Days
*this is a post for the 6th annual knitting & crochet blog week hosted by ekimimi makes. To see other posts on this topic search #6KCBWDAY3
#6KCBWDAY3 – experimental photography or knitting photos with song lyrics
Finished object 8&9 – nurmilintu
Remember that shawl that I posted without taking a good picture of first?
Well I have my photo!
Isn’t it just lovely??? Megs of course but also my shawl!!!
The pattern is nurmilintu and I just finished another, this time for myself and also in my own hand dyed yarn.
Blocking it made such a difference. But blocking with cats? When they’ve taken one of your blocking mats to be their new scratching post? Not fun.
At one point Tina ran off with a pin in her mouth and I had to chase her through the house so she didn’t hurt herself. In the end I locked them in their room (formerly the spare room) pinned it all out and then put it outside and once it got dark then put it into our bedroom and closed the door.
That’s the problem with open plan houses. No place to block your shawl with two nosy kittens.
I’m still not entirely convinced that the lace panels are correct. Either due to me not being able to count or the chart being wrong, but I don’t really care.
It’s colourful and warm and soft and it won’t leave my neck for at least until I finish the picot scarf that’s nearly off my needles.
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Finished object number 7 – sucky socks which turned into unsucky socks
I hated knitting these socks.
Sure the yarn was squishy, the colours were pretty and the pattern was simple enough.
But the yarn was low twist so it kept a splitting, the colours pooled badly, and I stuffed up the pattern really early on in the sock and didn’t want to go back and change it.
So they’d been languishing on the needles for a while as I worked on other projects. 
Then the needle I was using for Olivia broke (4th needle that has broken on that project!), the stitch pattern on the shawl I had on the needles wasn’t working for me, I didn’t feel like crochet and I didn’t want to start a new project.
I had already turned the heel (fish lips kiss style) so I picked them up again. Told myself that I would knit until the end of the football game and then bind off. By the end of the game they weren’t really long enough when I tried them on my foot but I was so sick of the bloody things I just wanted them finished and was not at all prepared to spend any time doing the usual ribbing required of a sock.
So on a whim I figured an I-cord bind off would add some extra length, plus give them a bit of extra stretch and stability around the ankle.
(The socks have been strategically photographed to not show off my giant pattern fail!)
I freakin LOVE these socks now!!!!
The fit perfectly under low topped converse which I practically live in.
I don’t mind the mistakes because they’re under a shoe, and the icord bind off makes the yarn colours look great.
I am definitely going to use this bind off for socks more often now. Plus no time consuming ribbing.
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Finished object 6 – the specialest of shawls
I was gifted the most special of yarns.
Keri (of whendidibecomeaknitter) sent me a skein of her hand spun.
It was sent with a knitted dalek and a Canada Mug (which I use most mornings and I now know most of the words to Oh Canada) and a very precious skein of her own hand spun yarn! From the date on the original photo it has been in my stash since 2013 just waiting for the right pattern to come along.
Well in the end I devised the right pattern.
After casting on 5 stitches I repeated the following two rows.
Row 1: Knit 1, Knit front & back, knit til last 3, knit 2 together, knit 1
Row 2: Knit til last 2 stitches. Knit front & back, knit 1.
Then every now and again I would do a row of yarn over knit 2 together (while following the increase at one end, decrease at the other pattern).
It still needs blocking to even out the 4 rows of yarn over-knit 2 together to end the shawl. But the kittens have stolen my craft room and so now I don’t know where to block anything.
It’s also awkward given my blocking matts have become their scratching pads.
I really don’t want to put such a pretty shawl onto a cat scratching pad!!!
Firstly it was awesome to be gifted some hand spun yarn! It must have taken so long to spin and ply and wind. Seriously just the effort alone is awesome and a wonderful gift.
Secondly as a novice spinner it was really interesting to see the imperfections, the quirks, and idiosyncrasies of yarn that has been hand spun. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t fantastic quality, because it was and is! But seeing hand spun up close is going to help my own spinning (once a part is fixed on my wheel). 
So not only did I get a lovely gift which resulted in a fantastic finished object, but I got a lesson in working with hand spun yarn.
Reason #7482929 knitters are brilliant people.
THANK YOU KERI!!! You’re the best!!!!
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Embroidery hoop art
There are some things you just can’t do when you’re a cat owner.
One of these things is having a tea cup on your bed side table as a jewelry holder.
Cats will jump on it causing the clinking of China to wake you up at 4am on a Saturday. It may be pretty but sleep does come first.
So I needed to hang my jewelry out of cats reach.
I am pretty obsessed with embroidery hoops so I picked out a couple in my crafty stash which I had painted and put away for future use.
I took some fabric also from stash, secured it in the hoop, cut around the back, and poked some earrings into it!
Then I screwed a couple of hooks into the wall and hung them.
Then I screwed a couple more hooks behind the embroider hoop to hang some of my necklaces on. (If you’re renting or don’t have walls that you can put holes into, 3M command hooks work as well.)
This has got to be one of easiest DIY I’ve ever done.
I now know that I’m missing some earrings which I’ll have to track down. And I found some that I need to return to their original owner!
It also has the added bonus of being almost entirely from stash, keeps my necklaces untangled, and looks pretty cute to boot. That makes it a winner in my book. And the cats aren’t really all the interested!
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We may be able to work it out, but just in case we can’t I wouldn’t get your hopes up
It started off so well.
– The colour is beautiful (why thank you I dyed it myself),
– The cat photobombing is freakin adorable
– The mindless garter is perfect watching all of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt in one night,
and then came the lace……. (use your most ominous tone. I suggest the voice of Cecil Baldwin)
The pattern is Nurmilintu by Heidi Alandar and it’s lovely. The pattern is well set out, the finished pictures look great, and even the finished items from other people look great.
So why oh why am I having so much trouble with this?
There’s only one answer I can come up with.
I can’t count.
Maybe my pre-primary teacher felt sorry for me and passed me instead of holding me back.
Perhaps by the time I was in high school doing calculus my parents had written letters to my teachers warning them to not shatter my illusions of being able to count.
Is this like my colour vision and I’m just suddenly realising that actually there is no such number as the number 7 and it’s all a figment of my imagination?
I honestly believed I could count, but for some bizarre unknown reason whenever I do any kind of counting in this pattern it doesn’t add up. (Pun well and truly intended.)
I counted 3 times (if there even is a number three) that I had the correct number of stitches before starting the first lace part.
Even after the first row I had the right number of stitches left and followed the chart exactly.
But the lace section just does not look right. It’s nothing like the pictures and I can’t work out how.
Then (and this is some seriously wack shit…. ) I counted the number of stitches I had AFTER completely the lace section and I had LESS than what the pattern said I should have had BEFORE I started the lace section?? But I still have increased the pattern????? (All my twitter followers have just had a collective moment of ‘OHHH!!! That’s what Bek was yelling about last night!”)
I just don’t know. I really don’t. I’m flummoxed.
It’s definitely not getting frogged. In spite of my inability to count I’m still in love with it already.
I shall call it a design feature and flaunt it.
Here’s hoping that we can work it out for the second repeat!
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finished object 5 with 100% more ratbags
Well it’s actually finished object 6 but as finished object 5 is currently winging its way overseas and I stupidly don’t have any proper photos of it, I’m calling this finished object 5.
It will need a good blocking but my blocking mats are currently play toys for the two (yes two) kitten shaped ratbags that have decided they now own our house.
Say hello to Snow.
He and Tina are sort of playing nicely with each other. Currently they’re both resting at my feet while I’m writing this in between trying to defeat a boss in Dragon Age 2. (Which hell yes I just beat!! Last quest and I’ve been battling this Blood Mage, a Pride Demon and a fuckton of Shades for what seems like hours but yeh I finally beat them!!!)
Tina just blends in with everything in our house. But trust me she is there.
So there are plenty of kitty hugs to go round at the moment.
I wound my cling wrap dyed yarn into a ball and it looks just as gorgeous as it did in the skein.
However both kitten shaped ratbags were utterly captivated by the swift and ball winder. Plus Snow photo bombed my yarn shot.
I think I can expect more of that in the future!!! As a friend said, I’ve just invited two cats into a yarn palace!!! What have I done.
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FO # 4 – crickety cricket shawl + talk about doctors.
I feel like there is so much happening at the moment that’s a secret.
I have secret tutorials happening, secret patterns that I’m writing and editing, secret projects for friends who read this so I’m totally not telling!!!!
There has been a lot happening, but not much I can blog about.
Fortunately my health is going really well! For those who missed my Twitter meltdown I had a really shitty appointment with my pain management specialist where I ended up dumping him. So I went to my GP who is lovely and actually takes time to listen to me and prescribe me new medications that won’t conflict with current medications (unlike said specialist).
So the new medication I’m on is helping me feel like a person who can actually sit on the couch without rubbing her neck in pain. Albeit a drowsy person, but I can deal with that. Knitting needles aren’t classed as heavy machinery.
Anyways I have finished an object that I can show you.
The yarn is the 5th doctor in YarnvsZombies Doctor Who yarn club. As the 5th doctor being known for his cricket vest I wanted a cable pattern that I could call my crickety cricket shawl (the designer called it storm warning.)
My name comes from the Children in Need special Time Crash where the 5th Doctor and the 10th Doctor meet.
“The hat the coat, the crickety cricket look, the stick of celery….. Brave choice celery, not many people can pull off a decorative vegetable.”
Kiki (the mastermind behind YarnvsZombies) cleverly included the decorative celery in the yarn.
It makes for a really gorgeous shawl. It was a breeze to knit up, the yarn is supersquishy and lovely. Once I got a hang of the pattern, including putting in an extra stitch marker to help me count, it went really quickly.
I love this shawl and cannot wait for it to get cold enough to wear it.
I got a grand total of one shot of me, in the aircon, before it got too hot to wear. And unfortunately eeyore doesn’t have the figure to model a shawl!!!
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So much yarn so little time
I feel like I’m trying to knit everything all at once!!!
I have my Sunshine Shawl making good progress after watching Australia beat England and India beat Pakistan over the weekend.
Then I am so close to finishing my crickety cricket scarf it’s just beckoning for me to finish it, even if that means staying up all night (which I am vehemently resisting but a girl is only so strong!)
I’m definitely on the home stretch.
Then there are my spirally socks. I’ve just turned the heel which means that these are also nearly finished. I’ve already planned the next project for my sock needles.
Then this shawl has gone missing and I’m systematically turning the house upside down looking for it.
And then there’s also this yarn that I dyed and just can’t stop petting.
More about that later…. When I have time!!!!
There’s still Dragon Age 2 that I’m trying to finish, and Mass Effect 3 which I’m really starting to get hooked on, plus the desire to play Dragon Age Inquisition which I have played until the final quest but there is still so much I need to do!
And so many feelings!!!!
Plus you know a full time job, plotting for birthday presents & surprise mail, and some big ideas for my blog.
I need a nap just thinking about it.
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FO3 – It nearly all went aSKEW
I absolutely love this pattern.
And I really love these socks.
I zipped through these in almost record time too. Mostly because the construction was so interesting I just couldn’t wait to see how it all came together. This is one pattern where I identified as a process and a product knitter.
Sometimes’s I’ll slog through the process in order to get to the finished product.
Others I’ll enjoy the process but be underwhelmed by the product. Very rarely will I be both at once!
I really had to trust the pattern as there were so many elements I couldn’t get my head around how it would turn into a sock.
It was almost recreating the feeling that I had when I made my first ever pair of socks, you keep knitting and blindly following directions with the hope that you’ll get a sock at the end.
I knitting the toe and the body of the foot two at a time (on my beloved Addi Turbos). Then turning the heel had to be done on seperate needles.
Each sock was then worked separately until the ribbing, which I put back onto one long circular needle so that the ribbing was exactly the same length.
The only modification I made was after 3 failed attempts at kitchener stitch, I substituted a three needle bind off to graft the heel. No one (except me and now the rest of the internet) will ever notice.
The yarn is from ladybug fiber and has been in my stash for AGES! I tried making it into a shawl and that got frogged. I then tried it into a shawl, but it was really just waiting for me to listen to it’s desire to become a pair of socks.
Ladybug Fiber has a self striping sock yarn club which is the best way to get your hands on some unique yarn for yourself.
You’ll notice that the heels have felted a bit in the pictures. These socks demanded to be worn straight away and so they didn’t get photographed until they spent a day in hi-top converse!
polka-dots & sparkles 