Sample Knitting - City and Guilds Module 3 begun!

I am starting my New Year's resolutions a little early, as today I started cracking on with my sample knitting for Module 3 of the City and Guilds Distance Knitting/Hand Knitted Textiles course I have been doing, on and off, for about the last 6 years. I managed to get Modules 1 and 2 complete in Washington last year, but have been dragging my heels on making a proper start on Module 3, until today, when I completed 4 samples! One of the ways I am enticing myself to knit multiple samples is to use yarn I want to work up to something - that way it feels a bit like getting a tension swatch out of the way. All my lovely single skeins from America, which are just waiting to be turned into hats and socks could be tried out this way - I feel an afternoon of winding coming on! I usually hand wind off the back of a chair while watching TV - but I have a lot to do, so perhaps a new years treat to myself might be a swift and ball winder.

My plan is knit samples on my train journey to and from work through January, and the husband's stocking stitch sweater in the evenings, when I'm usually too tired to cope with any kind of detail at all.

A very happy new year to all my readers as well - we are off to cut some rug on the dancefloor tonight; wishing you well however you are spending this new year's eve.

Simplicity 9139

Simplicity 9139, a pair of elasticated waist "lounge" pants, is complete. They took me a couple of days on and off, and whilst I certainly wouldn't win any prizes for workmanship, they are wearable, and very comfortable. In fact I am wearing them today, with a slim fitting black merino wool jumper and black ballet flats (somewhat inspired by the mini-series on Bobby Kennedy we are currently watching)! A couple of views below, apologies for the poor shots in front of a mirror, in dull northern light!

The fabric is some kind of poyester mock-wool type thing, picked up from a local charity shop. When I get better at sewing, I will start to buy better fabric! The pattern is really designed to make lightweight summer pants, and I will try that too later in the year, and next time I will cut a small size - this one is medium, and is a little too baggy in the thighs really.

I learnt some good things from making these - the importance of tacking before sewing, and some of the different ways to make elasticated/drawstring waists, which I reviewed on Youtube before I went with casing and thick elastic. I am also hoping to get to the point sometime soon when I can "read" sewing pieces like I can knitting - identifiying fronts and backs of trousers easily for example.

On knitting: working on the husband's 4 ply Cashsoft forest green jumper in front of the TV in the evenings - about a third of the way through the body, which I am working in the round.

Surface is Complete

Finished last night, wearing it today! A little wonky around the collar/top button, so I probably need to re-sew that button. A well written pattern - my main modification was making the blister pattern edgings shallower due to using up a different dye lot on these (see agonised blog entries below as I discover the mismatching dye lots issue when nearly finished!).

Boxing Day musings

Another Christmas is now passing, and this year I did not do any handknitted presents, although I bought yarn for a future sweater and some kind of accessory for my husband, and am sending Julia a random gift of the Nolita Lace Hat and matching shawl after her visit here. Like most other knitters I have learnt to only give handknitted gifts to peope who appreciate them, usually people who craft themselves.

So I have resisted the single skein urge, and have continued on with Surface over the break, and am now in the closing stages of the final sleeve - all going well I will complete it in the next few days. That will leave me with my husbands 1940s sweater, and the Great American Afghan on the needles - so maybe there will be an opportunity for a single skein project (I have been thinking of adding a corsage to the front of Surface to ramp up the vintage look a bit - that would be a good single skein project before I go back to work).

I have spent a lot of today clearing and sorting, prompted by our plan to go for a bike ride on xmas day morning. The plan was foiled at the last minute by our inability to locate the bike lock keys (the bikes were locked up in the back yard), and so we went for country ramble instead. While just as nice, it does point to the fact that there are still things we can't find after our moves last year. Clearing is therapeutic, and I have enjoyed pottering around sorting stuff out (although completely failed to find the bike lock keys), and creating a kind of to-do list to deal with the things I found. One of them (or perhaps I should say three of them) are jumpers to frog and rework. One is for Linda (of which there is a picture below - she dislikes how this turned out so I agreed to rework it for her), and two are old ones of my husbands, made by (gasp) ex-girlfriends. (He has a history of dating knitters). These have been languishing in the loft, but we have less room and less disposable income now, so I suggested to him that I rip and re-knit them and he was keen on the idea, although it brings new meanings to the "sweater curse" I guess! I've been waiting for a snow day to do this ripping, but alas the weather remains mild and damp, so I will just need to get on with it, particularly as I promised Linda a reworked sweater this winter!

The Nolita Lace Cap Gives Me a Single Skein Bug

The Nolita Lace Cap proved a super-fast and diverting knit, and gave me a bit of a one-skein bug. I do, after all, have a lot of single skeins as during my year in America I bought a skein of pretty, local yarn almost every time we went anywhere (and we visited 27 states)!

Nolita Lace Cap

Julia visited this weekend just gone, and she borrowed from my pile of knitted hats as the weather was cold and icy here. She loved the Battleboro hat, but knitting a pattern twice bores me so today I cast on the Nolita Lace Hat, from Andrea Tung's Hats, Mittens and Scarves. Julia actually bought me this cute box of pattern cards as a gift a few years ago, so it only seems right that she should benefit from it! I am using stash of course - King Cole Inspire - left over from a shawl some time ago. Julia wore the shawl while here and admired the colour. Here is the Nolita Lace Cap, so far:

We have two films lined up to watch tonight (a movie marathon), so might even finish it, as the lace is drop stitch and it is already growing quickly.

On The Frustration of Mismatched Dye Lots

After being stop-start for a few weeks now, Surface has come grinding to a complete halt due to my last two balls being mismatched dye lots. I have realised this too late (a result of my free and easy, non measuring non planning ways with knitting) and had to rethink how I was going to do the sleeves in order to make the mismatched balls look intentional rather than accidental (as they do now). The only solution I can think of is to do both the sleeve welts in the darker dye lot, as I have already done the banding and collar in this dye lot. Then I can do the plain part of the sleeve in the lighter dye lot. BUT it means ripping out one sleeve, and half of the other, and starting them again. Really, this is not such a big deal - they are half sleeves after all. However, it is a psychological barrier, and so I cast on instead....

I cast on a jumper for the husband, in the 4 ply Cashsoft I bought at Liberty last week (colour "Forest" - nice!). Due to it being 4 ply, and him wanting something classic and plain, I used my 1940s pattern books for inspiration and am knitting a sort of hybrid of two sweaters - one to get the gauge correct, and one to get the style he is after.

I've broken up now for my Christmas break, so am planning Item 2 in my sewing project (all my vintage sewing patterns), and next in line is Simplicity 9139, donated by Julia when she was having a clear out. It dates I would guess from the early 1990s, and I plan to do View D, the long drawstring waist trousers in some dark khaki cotton blend I picked up from a local charity shop. If I don't have enough material I will do View E (capri length).

Great charity shop pick-up today; found a pair of MaxMara black trousers for a tenner. They will be fantastic for work in the new year, and I can look forward to going back and wearing them!

Freeform-Style Scarf, from Vera Moda Yarn.

Not the greatest picture (taken on the bus while listening to my ipod!) - and all I know about this yarn is that it is the Vera Moda brand, bought at Spotlight Australia (a craft superstore). It is warm and surprisingly luxurious.

Slogging on with Surface

This week I have been bored, bored, bored with Surface, and with only a sleeve (and a half one at that!) to do. So instead of taking it on my commute I took a book instead and some days did no knitting at all!  The book was The Secret Scripture - so good I nearly missed my stop a couple of times.

And maybe the break worked, because I have returned to the last of Surface with renewed vigour this weekend, and flew through the textured "blister patterned" sleeve border on my train journeys to and from London, where I was to spend Saturday with an old friend.

With my friend, I went to Liberty's, and since they were having a 10% off sale (one good thing about a declining economy I guess), and the husband has asked for a fine knit, forest green jumper that he would be able to wear out to restaurants etc, I bought a sweater's worth of Rowan 4 ply Cashsoft in "Forest", and I guess I will get started on that after I sew up Surface.  Now I need more yarn about as much as I need a hole in the head, but I didn't have much in forest green, and certainly not enough for a man's sweater.

Meanwhile, it has turned pretty chilly here in the UK, so I wore a scarf I'd knitted way back in May, when I was staying at my parent's house in Australia. My mother had bought me the freeform-style yarn as a gift, and I knitted it up while there. In shades of greens, with some blues/purples/pinks thrown in, it looks good against my black winter coat. A picture will follow, and some more information about the yarn, which I'll need to do some research on.

Arriving back home, I started to plan what I was going to wear to my works Christmas party this week, and wondered if it is finally time to edge that black wrap cardigan I have been ignoring since September!