adventures in knitting

Minion Making

Posted on August 25, 2011October 24, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Well last night I cast on a minion thanks to whendidibecomeaknitter.

And now I know who the first one is going to- my best friend who was in a car accident on Tuesday night. She’s ok. Her car is a little shaken, and she’s bruised and whiplashed, but otherwise ok.

So this first minion will be a protection minion.

I’m making life difficult by using magic loop on 2.25mm needles on a 40cm circular needle (I wish I had a larger needle).
The Moda Vera Noir is really cute though. It’s on special at Spotlight for $4 at the moment so I bought a few colours.

I finished the head last night, but once I turned it inside out I realised I’d mucked up the decreases, so that got frogged but I couldn’t pick up the stitches.

So I cast on again and this is where I’m at.

Just another lazy Sunday

Posted on August 22, 2011August 22, 2011 by bekswhoknits

We woke up in Dwellingup after a good night’s sleep on the stretcher beds.
My duffle bag did do a surprisingly good job as a pillow, J’s towel not so much.

It was a beautiful Sunday. There had been a little rain overnight but nowhere near as much as Sunday night (which luckily we were at home for, and not stepping out of a tent to 52mm of rain).
A hot cup of tea hit the spot, before a bacon, egg, mushroom, and tomato sandwich cooked on the gasmate.
A one fry pan meal means less washing up. It would have been better on the fire, but we had run out of firewood the night before.

After breakfast we went for an explore. J took me to where he went fishing last night. The river was flowing. There weren’t as many kayakers around as I expected.
We packed up the tent and went for a drive and checked out all the other places we can go.
We stayed at Baden Powell, and the time before was Lane Pool so next time (and there will be a next time) we’ll get organised and .
We turned on the The Twelfth Man and drove around, looking at the scenery. It is a beautiful place. So green and lush.

Heading home we stopped in Byford for a pie. It wasn’t great, but it still hit the spot.
It’s a good thing I love driving. Well I love sitting in the passengers seat. Listening to the football on talk back radio, knitting, and watching the world go by with my man by my side.

I had a long, long bath when we got home. Another one of my favourite parts or by-products of camping.

Dinner was Chinese Take-Away Wing Bo. It’s by far the best chinese restaurant we’ve found locally, even if we do have to walk there to pick it up.
We shared a chicken and sweet corn soup which hit the spot.
I had cashew beef with steamed rice. Which was delicious, but could have used some more cashews.
J had mongolian beef with noodles which was really tasty too. But I wasn’t allowed much of that.

Chinese food curled up on the couch watching movies (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, and then Gullivers Travels). It was a good way to end a camping weekend.

Camping – Dwellingup

Posted on August 21, 2011August 22, 2011 by bekswhoknits

I love camping

I love getting away from it all.

And food always tastes better on a camp fire.

We set off a little late on Saturday morning. We had planned to leave at 6 but it ended up being about 10. We got into Dwellingup (after a few scenic route detours) around 12 and we picked up some salad rolls at the local deli.
Once we got into the campsite we could relax.

We set up the tent, the (brand new) stretcher beds, self-inflating mattresses, and sleeping bags. Realised we forgot pillows!! We always forget pillows. Then we sat around the fire (I needed coals for the pork belly) and listened to the football on the radio with a couple of cold beers.

People watching gets better on holiday. We started off with some really awesome neighbors (a young, quiet couple) but they left and we got a couple with a child and a boombox. I’m not even exaggerating, it would run off double d batteries and still took CDs!! Anyway, they were loud and bogan and kept us up all night with their arguing.

J went fishing and I kept knitting. It suits us perfectly.
One of the things I love about camping is my alone time.
I enjoy and cherish solitude.
Camping provides that for me. I can sit by myself and watch the world go by.

He didn’t catch anything but I added a few rows to my knitting.

I had prepared most of the evening meal the night before, as in I chopped the onion, carrots, and capsicum so all I had to do once the camp oven was hot was plonk everything in. I left the potatoes whole so they wouldn’t go soggy.
And it was delicious.
The veggies may have been a little on the overcooked side (read slightly burnt) but the pork was delicious.
Seriously awesome.

The rest of the evening read like our usual camping evenings. Drinking beer, listening to music (the national, arcade fire), and talking about life the universe and everything around a campfire.

Imagine the shadows of trees against the sky, and the sky littered with stars. The stars were beautiful. Escaping the city to see the stars.

Did I mention I love camping??

Comfort food is required

Posted on August 20, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Apricot chicken with rice, the way mum made it.
Out of a packet.

Chicken drumsticks, coated in apricot chicken mix, apricot nectar, and put in the oven until slightly burnt (exactly the way I remember).
Then served with white rice.

Accompanied by a new knitting project (bathius scarf) and finishing series 3 of Mad Men.

Friday night is reserved for knitting and mad men

Posted on August 12, 2011August 15, 2011 by bekswhoknits

With a couple of stops for beer.

I’m currently knitting a pair of socks out of Moda Vera Noir.
It’s my first pair of socks and it’s probably going to be a pair of three.
The first one didn’t turn out too well – but the second one is coming along better.

Ravelry is awesome. these are basic ribbed socks although for whatever reason, it’s downloaded as Kate’s Training Sock in iBooks.

Frog it

Posted on July 27, 2011July 28, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Well this is the slouchy hat I started last week.
I don’t like it.
it’s the slouchy hat with picot edge available free on ravelry.

I ran out of pink/purple yarn so I started with some grey that I had left over. The colour combination wasn’t really inspired.
I also used 4.5mm and 5.5mm needles because I didn’t have any 4mm double pointed (and I figured that the 1mm change would be significant.
I also lost track of the amount of stiches I had during the increase row, and so I muffed that slightly.
And I didn’t leave enough of a tail yarn to turn up the edge.

It was a quick project to whip up, I just think my yarn choice (Moda Vera Cardellino) and increased needle size didn’t highlight the picot edge. And with the two colours? No, it didn’t work.

So after deliberating a few days, I decided to frog the whole thing.

I’d rather have those colours to work with, than a hat which I don’t like.

I think I need to find patterns for yarns that I can buy, and that way I know whether it’s my knitting skills or my pattern interpretation skills which are the problem.

Back to the beginning of my adventures in knitting

Posted on July 20, 2011July 20, 2011 by bekswhoknits

This is the first scarf I made that I was proud of.

It was made in 2 x 2 ribbing from an knitting naturally pattern.
Knitting Naturally and About.com were (then) my first point of call for knitting stuff. Now I know better and I tend to frequent ravelry.

It was made using Homemaker Acrylic 8 ply in hot pink that I bought from K-mart. Again before I knew any better and thought that wool was wool (yarn was yarn). Now I know better and have only scraped the tip of the iceberg.

I knitted it using 4.5m needles and it took me a couple of weeks.
There’s a couple of anomalies on it, but overall I’m pretty proud.

Me lurking under a no-smoking sign, trying to surreptitiously take a photo of myself.
I really must enlist a helper in these things…

Hand knitted creature comforts

Posted on July 6, 2011October 5, 2011 by bekswhoknits

A new scarf.

Made with Moda Vera Bouvardia, an acrylic/wool blend.
But what struck me about it was the colours.
I used colourway 104-05
Which cycles through dark purple plums, with turquoise, green, pinks, and olive.

The base pattern was from knitting daily free lace patterns
I used the lace pattern (p1 yo k2tog) but not the recommended yarn. And i used 5.5m needles as recommended but the yarn.

It took me a while to figure out the pattern.
The language ‘one-row lace’ was/is confusing. I had to research it to make sure that it was just the same row repeated when you work back along the line, and there wasn’t some right side / wrong side inverse knit (k1 yo p2tog) that was necessary.
I still think i’ve done it wrong, and maybe I should have done something different on the wrong side. Mine looks a bit different from the pictures.
I also ignored the colour changes which made it a bit difficult to read the pattern (but easier to knit I would imagine).

But the end result is quite beautiful.

I started Thursday night and finished on Monday night, with another project (and some non-knitting time) in there aswell.
It was simple enough to knit, but the multi coloured yarn really makes it something special.

I love it.

Yarn shopping!

Posted on July 1, 2011July 4, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Even though it was raining yesterday, I needed to buy some new yarn to start a couple of new knitting projects. So I decided to brave the rain and head to Spotlight.

I love Spotlight. It doesn’t have the feel of the little yarn store in Bassendean, but it’s so big you can find pretty much anything you want.

And of course there were a couple of impulse buys. I was tired of using a big sistema container (me tired of sistema, yes I know, world gone topsy-turvy) that was too small. So I bought a fold out kind of hamper ($10), which I thought was pretty trendy until I got it home and J remarked that it looked like something his Nan owns. But his Nan is all kinds of awesome so I don’t really mind too much.

I also bought a knitting needle case ($5). I bought a bamboo set of double pointed needles from eBay which has sizes from 4 – 8 (so a lot of needles) and I needed to have some organization to them. I love order and having everything in place.

Continue reading Yarn shopping!

British Morning Socks

Posted on June 24, 2011June 27, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Next knitting project is for a friend who also loves How I Met Your Mother, and will totally appreciate the Ted packing his overnight bag, not with slippers but British Morning Socks. But said friend is also going to England soon to visit family so it’s a pretty good double play on words.

So I was looking through my basic knitting patterns (free download from knitting daily) and thought that the Mocassins looked easy enough.

I used Patons Inca in red and black. And followed the pattern to the letter.
It uses size 8 double pointed needles, so it looks like a sock pretty quickly. And then it switches to size 5 double pointed for that extra bit of detail.
I can’t reproduce the pattern here, but it should be easy enough to find on the Knitting Daily site.

I’m currently doing up a pair for myself in the Moda Cardellino yarn, but you can’t really see the ribbing detail as much with the multi-coloured yarn. I think i’ll have to buy some more Patons Inca, it really is the better yarn for it.

I can see these becoming a standby birthday/christmas present.

I’m giving them to my friend tonight. Hopefully she’ll like them (and get the joke).