Knitting

We may be able to work it out, but just in case we can’t I wouldn’t get your hopes up

Posted on March 18, 2015March 21, 2015 by bekswhoknits

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!

So many capital letters!!! ALL THE THINGS!!!

Posted on November 10, 2014November 10, 2014 by bekswhoknits

I honestly don’t know what I’m more excited about**

That my shawl is finished, blocked, and looks more amazing than I thought it would.

That my tenth doctor yarn arrived on Friday!

AND I’m now the proud owner of a hand crafted spinning wheel!!!!

Oh and I made a tea cozy.

**Pretty sure it’s the spinning wheel. It’s going to take all and I mean ALL of my energy to not look at ALL THE SPINNING FIBRE while I’m at work!!!!
And all the spinning tutorials.
Seriously when my Grandma (in-law) casually suggested that she had a spinning wheel and would I like to use it as it was currently in storage as a decoration I don’t think she expected the excited shriek that followed. The tea cozy was made for her on Saturday in gratitude.

Getting tweedy with it

Posted on October 27, 2014October 27, 2014 by bekswhoknits

I finished two shawls on the weekend in between writhing on the couch in pain watching gilmore girls, WA winning the Domestic One Day Final(!!!!), and having a very adult-y dinner party with some good friends, good lamber, and Emu Export.

The first one is a Ffrench pattern – Seven and Zero.
I swoon over all of her patterns. I just do.

This one was started so long ago I don’t know exactly when. I’m not exactly sure why considering it’s a pretty easy knit, excluding the counting part. If you look closely there’s a few times where the yarn over rows are a bit closer than the rest. It’s not a mistake it’s a design feature.

But it’s finally off the needles and blocking as we speak.
I literally used every single scrap of the Yarn Vs Zombies Tweed as I ran out while casting off.
So I wove in the ends I had and then used those scraps to finish the cast off. I was stressing for a while but I had just enough. I blocked it with points instead of straight. Just because I could.
Check my instagram for shawl selfies as soon as it’s finished. I can almost guarantee I won’t be able to resist.

This second shawl is a Stephen West pattern – Pogona.
I’m pretty sure Keri raved about Stephen West patterns all the time. So when I was trying to find something for Yarn vs Zombies Tweed dyed in 11th Doctor colourway this really spoke to me.

This literally flew off the needles. I was blind to all of my other projects. I had to finish this before I finished Seven & Zero or blocked the Spiral Blanket of Awesome which was also recently finished.
I probably had enough yarn left for another few repeats but I wanted to play it safe.

But I think that the universe was secretly telling me that I needed to have enough left so I can make a bow tie out of the rest. Because bow ties are cool.

Imagine the stash you could keep in a TARDIS

Posted on October 7, 2014October 7, 2014 by bekswhoknits

I had so many Doctor Who and yarny related goodies in the mailbox recently I don’t know where to start.

Ok there was two. But they were both awesome that it seems like more.

First up, I managed to nab a Tangerine 8 project bag! I have been trying to get one of these for ages, but they sell out almost immediately.
One night I was lieing awake at 2am, surfing Twitter and saw a shop update. I set my alarm and then later that morning scored myself the project bag of my dreams. How could I possible not have longed for a knitting bag with yarn rolling out of the Tardis. *swoon*

I’ve now located all of my Midnight Scribbles Doctor Who stitch markers and this did seem like the perfect place for them.

I now have 6 of these stitch markers, one for each month of the Doctor Yarn Club by Yarn vs Zombies.
Another 2 yarns arrived in the post this week!
Australia Post hasn’t been kind to Kiki and there have been missing packages all over the place so I got two at once which was a very nice surprise.

So in the mail arrived the 12th Doctor and the 2nd Doctor.

Which was good timing because I just last night finished off the 9th Doctor (plus nanogenes) which I made into 22 Little Clouds.

And have started knitting the Of The Moon using the 3rd Doctor.

I cannot wait to see how this one turns out. I love all of Caitlin Ffrench’s patterns. (Who by the way has just released her first book! Which you can buy in PDF onlyor in hard copy book format. It also includes natural dye recipes to recreate the yarns perfectly.)

*disclaimer- as much as I gush about these products, they were paid for with my own hard earned dollars. Although if anyone ever wants to send me free yarn please feel free, but my honest opinion can not be bought!

14 in 2014

Posted on January 6, 2014 by bekswhoknits

Last year I did 13 things. Well I did a lot more than 13 things, but I set out to do 13 specific things.

This year I’m doing 14. I don’t know what I’m going to do when we get to 2025 but I’ll cross that bridge when/if I get to it.

Andi and Jesse have already posted their lists, so it’s time to get my butt into gear and write out my own.

So without any further ado, this is my list of things to do in 2014.
1) Knit 7 pairs of socks
2) Read 20 books
3) Try 3 new crafts
4) Make an artwork for our house
5) Keep making cushions (Related: Find people who want cushions)
6) Sew (and wear) a garment
7) Write a guest post for Marielle’s Spread the Love feature
8) Crochet a granny square blanket
9) Make jam
10) Dye a yarn collection
11) Send snail-mail to friends
12) Spin 100g of yarn
13) Learn 3 new embroidery stitches
14) Actually finish a Knit-A-Long

So these are my goals / tasks / things to do but if I don’t then I’ve probably found something more interesting to do.

May 2014 be my craftiest year yet!

FO#24 – Elementary Watson socks

Posted on November 15, 2013November 15, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I have been killing it at being an adult this week. My giant to-do list is getting shorter, our new house is now insured, our apartment is one step closer to being rented out, and in a surprise twist almost all of my Christmas shopping is done.

Mums pressie has been done for ages, the family over east just needs wrapping, and a pair of socks for Dad came off the needles this week.

Although technically they are a birthday present. There are 3 December birthdays in my family which I tend to include as part of Christmas shopping.

The pattern is elementary Watson. It’s cables like this that make me wish I was attracted to solid sock yarn.
The pattern does get lost in the self striping, but it’s still there.

I particularly liked the fleegel heel. I think I’ll be using that again in the near future.
And as usual these are toe up, two at a time, magic looped on my trusty 2.5mm Addi Turbos.

This is sock number 7 this year! I have to get shuffle on if I’m going to make 12. Methinks slightly larger needles for the next pair.

knitting is awesome

Posted on June 25, 2013June 25, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Knitting is trending today due to photos of the Australian Prime Minister being published in Women’s Weekly.
Rather than pick fights with random people on twitter (never a wise idea) I’m channeling my annoyance into reasons why knitting is awesome.

Image links to shorpy

And then I got distracted by pretty yarn and all my anger faded.

Which is the number one reason knitting it awesome. Pretty yarn.

etsy link here
Plus
-it’s relaxing
-it’s good for my mental health
-it makes marathoning tv shows somewhat productive
-it makes watching all 5 days of test match cricket somewhat productive
-you can make things while you wait at places
-you can’t fidget and knit at the same time
-ravelry!
-you can pretend to save money by making things you see in shops (when really by the time you add up time and yarn$ you haven’t saved anything)
-learning new things
-all the geeky patterns
-the heightened sense of awareness of other people’s knitwear
-other knitters, even if you have nothing else in common there’s knitting
-that smugness whenever you see someone knitting in tv or books
-and for someone who spends her work day on a computer I really like being able to say “I made that”

And the #knittingsongs hash tag.

I love being a knitter
🙂

FO#15 – Frankie’s 10 Stitch Blanket

Posted on June 24, 2013June 24, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Ive finished my 10 stitch blanket. I know I was saying a couple of weeks ago it will probably take me a few more years to finish but it’s done.

The secret? Make it smaller.

Now this isn’t just pure laziness. The idea came to me when I was cold at the office. I am always cold. I do have a heater, but I don’t like using it all the time. So I was using a cardigan as a lap blanket and my wheely chair kept running over the sleeves. I started thinking about patterns and what I could quickly whip up when I remembered my 10 stitch blanket was just about big enough.

I worked on that steadily over the weekend and finished it. Just in time too. The circular needle broke with about 15 rows to go.

I also made a video about it. Particularly how I do the corners. It’s a bit different to how the pattern says but I think it’s easier. Special thanks has to go to HeWhoFishes for being a lighting and camera man. I couldn’t have got the close up shots of my hands without him. Also as a non-knitter he said he understood what I was doing, so I think I did an alright job of explaining myself.

Making a tutorial was one of the goals I set myself for 2013, but I never imagined I would film a video.

To finish off the blanket I added a simple crochet edge.
I’m really pleased with it. But I don’t think I’ll be making another one soon. And certainly not one in sock yarn!

The finishing touches FO#14

Posted on June 21, 2013June 21, 2013 by bekswhoknits

My modern garden cardigan is finally properly finished. It has buttons and everything.

And now it has buttons you can clearly see that I messed up the button holes.

I may research ways to insert a button hole, I may also just try to force it. Or I may just leave well enough alone. I haven’t decided yet.

I sewed the buttons on with matching embroidery thread. The buttons are from spotlight and I still have 3 left so I may make a matching hat.
Again I haven’t really decided yet.

Apart from the button hole lapse in concentration I’m super chuffed that I made this.
I do always feel a little bit self conscious wearing things I’ve made. In primary school wearing home made clothes put a target on your back which I haven’t altogether forgotten. I think things have changed though. More people see home made items as a hobby rather than a sign of lack of wealth.
Plus I burst out laughing any time someone insinuates knitting your own clothing is cheaper.

It’s Friday!

Posted on June 13, 2013June 14, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Firstly some housekeeping.
I have recently changed my ravelry name. Instead of rainruinedclothes I am now known as bekswhoknits.
It makes my rav name the same as my twitter name plus means I don’t have to explain about rainruinedclothes (Editors lyrics from the song The Big Exit).

I’ve also recently updated my about page. I hadn’t updated my old one since I started this blog and it was out of date, and a little old.
I’ve also been mushy and sappy and given my partner in crime a new code name – HeWhoFishes.
He is such a big part of my real life and a tiny little part of my blog and I want to fix that. Giving him his own persona will hopefully help.

Secondly I have to share a recipe with you. Ian Hewittson is an Australian TV chef who is a bit of a Ron Swanson type.
Hewhofishes and I watched this just before going to bed last night and we were in hysterics.
With the focus of many TV chefs these days being healthy but tasty food, Huey has stayed true to the food he’s been cooking on TV for 20 years.
So for some unknown reason we can’t help but find it amusing when Huey adds a bit more butter, or sprays a mixture of butter, cheese, and breadcrumbs with olive oil spray for good measure.
So this breakfast just spoke to us. The final straw was when he served it with iceberg lettuce and mustard dressing, the mustard dressing including a cup of vegetable oil. And then he called it a ‘light breakfast’
And he is probably the only TV show I know that if you post a stamped self address envelope to their address, they will post you back the recipes. Its a delightful pre-internet concept.

Huey’s Light Breakfast
Brown onion and bacon. Add chopped sausages.
Top with cheese and breadcrumbs, salt and pepper.
Make a indent and break eggs on top.
Add more cheese and breadcrumbs.
Spray with olive oil
Bake in a hot oven for 20minutes or until golden.

Sounds delicious.

On the knitting front, I have had a bad case of cast-on-itis. Where nothing I already have on my needles seems right so in casting on something new. This one in particular I love the yarn, love the pattern, but not the combination. But I don’t know whether to frog or continue.

While I think about that decision I started a crochet cowl.
I don’t know what I’ve done, I think I’ve unintentionally increased on the first row, to create a curve. And I’m not sure if I like it or not.

While I think about that decision I cast on a hat. This I do like.
Although it’s a pain to knit as I’m holding two strands together and haven’t compensated enough with the needle size. So I’m pushing pretty hard on the needles. Hopefully it’s quick enough to finish so it won’t annoy me.

Has anyone got a cure for cast-on-itis? How do you decide if something’s worth frogging and starting again.

How cute is this frogging poster!!! For those curious, when I talk about frogging I’m talking about ripping back my knitting and starting again. Rip it, Rip it – like a frog.