Confessions of a Graveyard Gypsy

Can’t believe it’s nearly a month since I last blogged. Time is just speeding by. I’m on half term now, have half an essay to write and so really shouldn’t be knitting, but there you go.

And I had a craving for cables. Not surprising, really, after miles and miles of garter stitch (currently having a bit of a holiday in the cupboard). A small project makes sense, too, because it’ll be finished quicker and I could possibly knit on the six minute train journey to college each week… But Rose needs new sweaters. Even though spring is looming, if we have another rubbish summer this year, jumpers and cardigans will be needed.

The pattern is Killeany from Aran Knitting. It would be nice, after having this book for over two years, if I actually knitted one pattern from it. St Brigid never got more than a few rows knitted, you see, because shortly after starting, I decided to become vegan. Which is a complete, hundred-and-eighty degree turnaround from being a meat eating, animal wearing person. And after a lot of questioning myself, I decided that I didn’t want to knit a sweater from animal fibre because I knew I wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing it. And sod knitting a ridiculously fiddly sweater for a year to stick it in a cupboard! So I frogged my meagre progress and have been thinking about trying to find an alternative yarn ever since.

So Rose gets to be first to have a sweater from the book. It’s not a particularly difficult pattern. There’s a lot going on with the different cable panels, though after a few rows it became easy to read. Other than the snakey cable which I’ve missed twisting or twisted too early a couple of times. I now have a list of all the rows I need to work it on. The saddle shoulders will be a new challenge, too, though none of it is particularly “hard”, it needs concentration.

I’m using Sirdar Supersoft Aran, which feels and knits up very similar to Stylecraft Special Aran; maybe a bit more “woolly”. It’s cabling beautifully, anyway, and will be a breeze to wash. In boring, domestic mode, acrylic is a lifesaver for knitting sweaters than can withstand all manner of spills and just be machine washed with everything else. I look back at the mad woman I was, who knitted tiny silk hats for a newborn baby, and want to smack her round the head. Anyway, the shade – “Poppy” – is a true red-red; less orange than the photo (it proved a PITA to photograph and this was the best of the bunch) and less pink than Special Aran in “Lipstick”.

I will try to blog before another month passes. It’s my birthday in a couple of weeks, anyway, so I’ll have cake to (virtually) share!

Who’d have thought that 132 rows of garter stitch over 132 stitches would take so. very. long.

I have finished the light blue section and am now about a third of the way through a very big navy section. This is going to be a lovely blanket. Eventually!

Just before going back to college I have of course started a mammoth project, because my logic works like that. But it’s mindless enough that my brain can stop concentrating on what I’m knitting and wander onto the essay that I should really start writing once I have an idea what it’s actually going to be about…

Anyway, my wee sister has moved into a new flat and needs a throw for her sofa (she just doesn’t know it yet). After the last blanket I knitted, I knew it couldn’t be something that involved casting on a million stitches and knitting a pattern straight for several miles. I thought about knitting squares but knew that would involve a lot of ends to sew in and seaming and that I’d be put off. So after a good search on Ravelry, I settled on the Moderne Log Cabin Blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting. It’s knitted in pieces which are joined-as-you-go, so there’s variety, but also a good deal of mindless knitting. The sofa is a medium blue, so my planned colour scheme is denim, navy, cream and brown:

However, as I’m using aran-weight yarn rather than DK-weight, I might not bother with the last two squares (which are done with intarsia so that also saves me tangly yarn trauma) and have eight squares like this:

by which point, it’ll probably definitely be big enough! Then I’ll finish it off with an applied i-cord edging in whichever colour I have the most of leftover.

I’m using a bit of a mixture of yarns. I had the cream Cygnet Aran in my stash already, as well as the brown Wendy Aran with Wool, which I bought in late 2008 (!) to knit a Hemlock Ring Blanket for my own sofa. I did actually start it early in 2009 but it was one of the (many) projects that got frogged when I discovered that I needed to start baby knits. All that I needed to buy was some Stylecraft Special Aran in Midnight and Denim to get some actual blue in the pattern. It’ll be so easy to wash and dry which, if my sister does get an army of cats as she’s threatening to do, is a must.

I’m on the third section after a week, so a few evenings of intensive knitting are called for, I think!

I’m currently in my normal, pre-holiday mode of trying to ignore the fact that nothing has been done, apart from washing every item of clothing I can lay my hands on. I have A List, though, and having A List makes me feel certain that it will all get done in time and we won’t leave on Monday without packing something vital. *suddenly remembers to add passports to the list*

But being away from my yarn stash for two weeks means that I need to make sure I have something lovely to knit that won’t be finished too quickly and won’t bore me. (I am also going to pack some books and might actually get some reading done for the first time in ages!)

I loved all the suggestions I was given for holiday knits the other week, but in the end my decision was made when I got a surprise gift of the Owlet sweater from Tina. I had been planning to knit the adult version this autumn, and a wee one definitely counts as portable travel knitting. I had a hasty search for suitable yarn, and soon had three balls of Stylecraft Special Chunky in “Raspberry” to swatch with.

This is as far as I’ve got, as I’m saving it for the actual holiday. I wish I’d planned this sooner, as I could have bought a nice project bag to put it in. It’s just a bit too big for the ones I have, and I don’t want to take my whole knitting bag with me. I think a last minute emergency bag hunt is needed tomorrow.

The colour is almost identical to the Raspberry shade of Rowan Pure Wool DK I used for Rose’s Queenie Hat, and as I seem to be losing the battle to avoid pink clothes, I may as well chose shades of pink that I can live with.

Conversation with Rose the other day:
“Which cardigan do you want to wear? The blue one or the yellow one?”
“Pink!”
“You don’t have a pink cardigan.”
“Make me pink one now!”

Special Chunky is just as nice as Special DK, and possibly even softer. I wish the colour palette was as wide for the the 4ply, Aran and Chunky yarns as for the DK, though. Just a nice charcoal grey and olive green would do. *adds email to Stylecraft to the To-Do List*

This is going to be my last blog post for a while. I hope that when I get back I’ll have lots of knitting progress to show off! Unfortunately, for the second year in a row, I’m going to be away for my blogiversary. It’s seven years this year, so I think that when I get back, there needs to be a little give away of some sort to celebrate. Until then, see you all in two weeks’ time!

I needed to cheer myself up at the weekend after my cardigan catastrophe, so I decided to finally delve into my Stylecraft Colour Pack. Saturday afternoon was bliss. The weather was lovely, so I sat in the garden with a cup of tea and a giant bag of yarn, and played around with all the crochet patterns I had wanted to try. Most of them were frogged because I didn’t fancy starting something huge, but I have sussed out how to do a granny stripe blanket which is now winning over the ripple at the moment.

In the end, I returned to cushions, and the Square Cushion on the cover of Granny Square Love by Sarah London, as my subscription gift copy finally arrived last week.

Certainly not the most challenging item to crochet, but I loved the colours and it will match the curtains in Rose’s room perfectly (when she finally moves in…). The patterns in the book use Cascade 220 throughout, but Stylecraft Special DK in Lipstick, Fondant and Magenta are almost perfect matches for the cover cushion. (Fondant is maybe just a bit too bright.) Of course,mine is going to end up a bit smaller, possibly, but cushion pads come in several sizes.

This book was what spurred me on to subscribe to Mollie Makes because it was a few months back when the crochet bug was new and I didn’t have any crochet books (I do now, and will do a blog post sometime!), plus the free crochet hooks included were pretty. Now it’s three months later, I am glued to my unexciting Clover Soft Touch hook which doesn’t hurt my middle finger, and the initial excitement has worn off a bit.

But it’s still a lovely book. All the patterns are based on granny squares so there’s no real shaping to worry about and the colours are bright and inspiring for someone like me who has colour fear. The one problem is that the yarn is the same throughout and there are two or three of the patterns that really would not be A Good Idea if you were to actually use Cascade 220, namely towel and bedsheet edgings and a bathmat, which clearly would all end up in a felted disaster when you washed them at a decent, germ-killing temperature.

When I started out on the Big Crochet Adventure, too, I didn’t appreciate how many ways there were just to make a granny square. And the method in the book feels cumbersome, so I replaced it with my current favourite.

I have also sorted out my holiday knitting, which I will blog about before I leave. Right now, I do need to start getting organised with other, non-knitting holiday stuff, because I don’t suppose we can go away without clean underwear.

It’s been a productive couple of days. The Leaf Panel Cardigan is blocked and awaiting a button. I was going to order something from Textile Garden, but I have heaps of suitable buttons and it means I can wear the cardigan today. *ignores rain clouds* And in speedy knitting news, the Little Girl’s Shrug is blocking. It must be one of the quickest garments ever to knit. I started it Monday evening and it was finished Tuesday afternoon. So lots of FO posts to follow!

And I can’t possibly exist without something on the needles, so I cast on for the Hearty Stripy Socks.

Initially, I didn’t think I had any yarn I could use to knit these for me. Plenty of yarn that I could use to knit for giving them away, but that’s not very selfish. Then I remembered a couple of balls of Sirdar Snuggly 4ply that I bought last year with the idea of knitting a stranded hat for Rose. The pattern didn’t work out, so the yarn has languished ever since. It’s not a yarn that makes you immediately think “Socks!” but the fibre content is actually almost identical to Berroco Comfort Sock (which seems to be 50/50 hate/love, but I’ll risk it!).

I haven’t knitted much of the actual heart pattern yet, so there’s not much sock to see, and the colours remind me of a watermelon, but I’m looking forward to finally knitting some socks all for myself!

Well, clearly the leaves won. I had a feeling they might, so I cast on for Sirdar 9428 last Thursday evening and, thanks to a couple of very long tennis matches, had the back done by Sunday evening. I think if I hadn’t had such engrossing viewing, I would have died from stocking stitch-induced boredom!

But now I’m on to the good bit with the leaves. It’s such a lovely pattern to knit. You know sometimes there are patterns that are quite fiddlesome to knit, but are still lots of fun and you don’t actually mind if it doesn’t end for a bit? Eriskay was like that and these leaves are just the same. The only cabling is the twisted cables at each end of the leaf panel. The travelling stitches are made by decreasing and increasing. The leaves pouf out for a three dimensional look, and I can’t stop patting them as they emerge after each pattern repeat.

One thing I particularly love about the pattern is that the leaf panels are mirrored. When I knitted Sirdar 1236 I rewrote the pattern myself to mirror the panels, and I am pleased that whomever designed this pattern did the same and saved me a job.

I am knitting the sleeveless version of the pattern to save time, which it appears I have a lot of as there’s only the remainder of the right front to knit before I have the button bands, collar and sleeve ribbings to add. I’ll seam the sides and knit the armholes in the round because that’s just what I do. I will have another cardigan for my holidays!