scarf

a little progress

Posted on July 30, 2013August 2, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Apart from the blip that was embroidery, I’ve only knitted on the items which I disclosed last Tuesday.
I had every intention of setting them up next to a ruler to show the progress and taking nice photos of them all.
But we got home later than usual last night, and I found myself at 7:30 unable to keep my eyes open let alone deal with the terrible light in our apartment.

I have found out that a cabled jumper is not the best thing to be knitting during a close game of football, but it was quite good to knit during Little Dorrit. My mum leant me the DVDs so long ago that when I returned them on Sunday she had forgotten she had given them to me. If you haven’t watched it I thoroughly recommend it. It’s a mini-series based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same name (which honestly I had never heard of before I watched it, now I’m reading it – its free on ibooks.) It has a huge cast and at one point I was playing a game of ‘ooh they’re from doctor who’, ‘she’s from hotel babylon’, or ‘he’s from vicar of dibley’.
Parcel is now at the point where I need to figure out how many stitches I have. Because I didn’t follow the pattern (because I didn’t read the instructions properly) I now need to decrease sharply, or do some maths.
I haven’t decided yet.

I’ve turned the heel on my vanilla latte socks. I have a few more rows of the pattern and then I’ll start the ribbing. I really hate the heel on them. I’ll chalk it up to experience and delete the sockcalc app from my ipad.

I’ve been aiming for 2 – 3 rows on mini-mania every night and except for last night I achieved that.
So here’s how long that looks now, using my hand as a guide.
Pretty soon I will have to compare it to a few existing scarfs so I now exactly where I’m aiming for. Otherwise I will get impatient and cast off and then always regret it.

FO 17, 18, & 19 – loose ends

Posted on July 15, 2013July 15, 2013 by bekswhoknits

What a productive weekend! It was all about tying up loose ends and finishing off projects.

I found the perfect project for my Downton Abbey and tea yarn club yarn. This is some seriously gorgeous yarn, but it needed the right project.

The weeble wobble cowl was the answer.
I didn’t follow the pattern. I just did some short rows when I felt like it.

I also finally sewed some buttons on a chunky cable cowl that I finished ages ago but it’s a bit short. So I bought some buttons and sewed it together.

I also finished off a hat for a birthday present. When you immediately get a photo of the birthday boy I think it’s been well received.

FO 16 – a not so lucky cowl

Posted on July 8, 2013July 8, 2013 by bekswhoknits

This cowl has been on the needles for three weeks now. And in all those three weeks my football team have won.
But when I wore it for the first time yesterday, we didn’t win.
I’m still more inclined to blame the players, particularly as inaccurate kicking was clearly an issue yesterday so I’ll give my scarf another challenge next week against the team on top of the ladder.

But enough about football, and onto the knitting.

This gorgeous yarn is from ladybug fiber company.
I was researching for my birthday wish list (which no one in my family took any notice of anyway) and I found the perfect teal, grey, and black yarn.
A quick twitter poll told me to buy it and I obeyed.

The perfect pattern had to be found, and when I stumbled upon this cute but simple rib cowl I was on to a winner.

I made it longer than the pattern indicated because I wanted it to wrap around twice. And I’m super happy with it. Even if Port Adelaide don’t win every time I wear it.

Somehow I managed to get another piece of Port Adelaide merchandise in every single shot (except the back of the boat). Purely coincidence. Or proof that I own a lot of merch.

a cure for cast-on-itis (+FO#13)

Posted on June 17, 2013June 17, 2013 by bekswhoknits

New crafts!!!

I did spent 6 hours untangling a ball of yarn! Looking back I don’t even know how I managed to be patient for that long. But I had a plan to dye that yarn and didn’t want to waste it.

Then I did some research and found that acrylic doesn’t really dye too well with food colouring.
So it was back to the drawing board. I did just test that theory anyway. It didn’t turn out all that well. I also had an idea about bleach dyeing coloured acrylic yarn.
That didn’t go so well either.
I was hoping that soaking it in bleach would take the colour out of the yarn, meaning I could dip an end into bleach and create a self striping yarn. Similar to how you can with clothing. But it turns out that yarn (well Moda Vera Marvel) is quite well dyed.

So that my 6 hours wasn’t completely wasted, I unwound and then rewound some balls which were similar to the white one that caused me so much heartache.
A broken chair became a makeshift niddy noddy which I should really put back in the spare room. It would be hard to tell if the place was robbed or not.

I did however make it to spotlight over the weekend and bought some pure wool yarn. So I’m hoping to have a go at dyeing that sometime in the near future. (As well as getting it straight in my head how to consistently spell dyeing correctly.)
Whilst at spotlight I concocted a plan to make some pretty stitch markers. So I bought some jewellery making supplies. As usual I spent money before researching which added to my pre-existing crankiness when I tried to do what I thought would just be easy but actually unsurprisingly isn’t.
So I’m going to wait until my crankiness has lessened before trying that again.

I’ve also been researching drop spindles. I had always had the idea that I would learn to spin when I was living in a house, rather than an overcluttered apartment. I have since grown impatient, particularly as our house plans are now a little further out of reach. So I’ve been researching and after showing pictures to hewhofishes , he said “I can make that!”. So we’ll see what happens there.

But I do have a finished object to show you!
I present the Weeble Wobble Cowl.
Remember the poll I did a couple of weeks ago? Even though it wasn’t the winner, the recipient got the final choice.

Importantly, it’s a good luck scarf because the brown and gold team won on Friday.
This weeble wobble is pictured in its new habitat – the inglewood hotel.
Thanks Midnitemoose for being such a good model.

FO #12 – I found myself a hitchhiker

Posted on May 20, 2013May 20, 2013 by bekswhoknits

What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?
The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy says that the answer to the Question, is 42.

The number 42 has since become its own popculture reference with 42 towels, this 42 shirt that my little bit geeky boyfriend wears, an entire episode of Doctor Who, and the hitchhiker shawl which has 42 little notches.

This is the only true hitchhiker I’ve made. The other two I stopped before I got to 42. Mostly because of time constraints, but also because I’m pretty selfish and wanted mine to be the only true 42 hitchhikers.
Plus neither of the recipients of the other hitchikers would care about the reference.

So here it is. You have photos of work-Bek today because I finished it only minutes before I was due at my friends place to watch Eurovision.
Time restraints = terrible selfies.

If you don’t take pictures did it really happen? (FO 12 & 13)

Posted on May 13, 2013May 13, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I’ve failed as a blogger this week.
Only after I had three packages of knitted goods complete with care instructions all wrapped up in tissue paper did I think about photographing them.

The mittens I already had photos of because I’d blogged about them before, but I’ve just sent two hitchhikers into the wilderness without any proof they were here.

Well that’s not entirely true, but it does leave me at a bit of a blogging loose end.

I do think the hitchhikers were a success. The colours I chose matched what they were wearing when I saw them (always a good sign).

The hand knitting process gives you plenty of time to um and ah over colour choices so I was a little frazzled by the time I had finished.

So in absence of good pictures, I have the ones for my care instructions.
I use the Phonto iPhone/iPad app which makes putting text over photos very easy.
I use that app to make personalized cards too. My mum is always requesting photos of me and my partner so I find a decent photo, add our names to it and put a fridge magnet on the back.
Next time I think I’ll crochet a border for something different.

Hitchhiker

Posted on April 5, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I may be the last knitter around to cast on Hitchhiker going by the project page on ravelry. But last year I told my mum I would knit her a pattern of her choosing and that’s what she chose.
She has been grateful for some truly awful knitted gifts from when I first started, and I’m trying to even the score.

So I cast on Hitchhiker with a bamboo viscose yarn, which is really nice to knit with.

So far I’ve ripped it back 3 times. Only a knitter knows just how difficult counting to 6 can be.

Ps. Don’t forget to enter my giveaway

FO#6 leftover wurm cowl

Posted on March 15, 2013March 15, 2013 by bekswhoknits

This was a stash buster. I had some terrible acrylic which I made socks out of but still had stacks left. All acrylics aren’t made equal. This one was squeaky and my skin crawl.

So you may be wondering why I wanted to make a cowl rather than burn it in effigy. Well I don’t know, but I wanted to try and use up some mohair at the same time.

So I cast on I don’t know how many stitches on a 80cm needle and started knitting.
Every few rounds I’d purl.
And then knit again. Kind of replicating the oh-so-popular wurm hat but with reckless abandon.

When I ran out of pink, I changed to grey using up all of this particular yarn so I never have to buy it again. The mohair was gifted and I don’t know what else to do with it, but it combines with other yarns quite nicely.
It softens the acrylic and makes it bearable.

Now I need to decide whether or not I want to block it.

Arm knitting (or keeping yourself out of trouble for an hour)

Posted on March 12, 2013March 12, 2013 by bekswhoknits

And now for something completely different. (But not really. More like a variation on a well blogged theme.)

I was surfing through tumblr the other day (follow me if you like endless reblogs of things I like) and I found the video below of arm knitting.

The concept intrigued me so I decided to try it for myself.

The results were pretty satisfactory.

First I tried using 3 different 8 ply yarns. That looked terrible. Absolutely hideous.
So I finished that off and filed it under ‘big mistake’.

So I found some super bulky 12 ply from my stash and started again.
This time it was a success.

The process is really quite strange for someone used knitting with needles. It was a lot of fun though.
I’d definitely recommend trying it at least once.

It does require an uninterrupted block of time. At least one of your arms will be covered in yarn at any one time!
Even if you’ve never knitted before the instructions are very simple and gratifying.

Favorite things.

Posted on February 26, 2013March 12, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I’ve been making some progress on my Mini Mania scarf which I started just before Christmas.

This is the reason that I blog. I always forget how much progress I make, particularly on these long projects.

This scarf is taking ages. Mostly because I keep looking at how pretty it is rather than knitting it. That and getting into a rhythm of knit one slip one takes a bit of doing.

But this week I’ve needed something distracting but simple whilst I’m at home with uterus trouble.

Here are some of the other things keeping me sane this week.

There’s no milk in the house, so fruit tea is brilliant. This is one of my favourites. (Plus polkadot cup!!!)

Tim Tam mini packs are fab. My sweet tooth comes and goes depending on the time of the month. It’s also a great way to try out new flavours. Turkish delight is my favourite chocolate. Can’t wait to try them.
Plus a heat pack is essential.