Just to say that if you commented on one of my last few posts, your comment was deleted due to my stupidity. *rolls eyes* I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress today and in the time I deactivated the anti-spam plugin to getting the new version up, I managed to get spammed. In my eagerness to delete the spam, I deleted a whole page of comments…

I’m going to do some knitting to cheer myself up.

No peeking, Cairi!

I mean it!

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I realise I’m overdue with my weekly Mystery Shawl progress post. Anyone would think that I had started clue 3, made a mistake, tinked, dropped a stitch, couldn’t find it, frogged the whole thing, restarted, made another mistake even earlier in the pattern, frogged again and then started from scratch for the third time and am now finally just over a third of the way through clue 3… *blushes*

There will be an update post hopefully on Friday. I think I’ll have to leave Clue 4 for a while, though, as there’s a certain other project to finish which has a definite deadline.

So much of my recent knitting has been the unmentionable sort. What with knitting for the first two issues of The Inside Loop and then for a couple of secret projects that must remain un-named, it’s been hard to write an interesting post on here when the knitting content is missing.

But all that is over for now, at least. Though my knitting still has to remain unseen by prying wizard eyes. That means you, Cairi!

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Clue 2 of the Mystery Shawl was posted yesterday, and I imaginatively went for Chart D again. I think now I can stretch the shawl out a little more that Clue 1 is looking a little less scribbly, but looking at the shawls appearing on Ravelry, I’m wishing I did Chart A which has a nice, sweeping, swirly thing going on. But I can always knit another shawl, and once this one is finished and blocked, it will probably look better. And I’ve moved up to a 60cm circ now, which I’m hoping will be long enough to take me through to the end. Mainly because both of my 80cm Addi Lace needles are in use..!

I suppose Clue 3 onwards won’t be posted on here so soon after being released. Now with 288 sts and the next clue being 48 rounds, I imagine it’s going to take a tiny bit longer!

A bit of fun for a Friday, taken from Tournesol and Tigerduck.

The mosaic meme uses your answers to certain questions to make a mosiac of photos from Flickr. Here’s mine:

All you have to do is

a) type your answer to the questions below in flickr search; use only the first page to pick an image, and
b) copy and past your picture URLs into fd’s mosaic maker.

The questions are:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favourite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favourite colour?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favourite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favourite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

Not tagging anyone in particular, but I just suggest that everyone tries it. It’s great fun!

I’m currently finished off yet another round of secret knitting. All I can say is that I’ve had a design accepted for an upcoming sock book from Lark Books and apart from bouncing about with glee, it means knuckling down and knitting!

So while work on the Having Hope socks has been delayed, it’s given me time to get obsessive about the needles I use. As I mentioned in my last post about the socks, I bought some Prym circs which annoyed me and Diane helped me out by sending me some Addi Turbo circs instead.

Well, all was well for a while until the cord began to bother me. I like the cord on the Prym circs. It’s very fine and bends nicely. The Addi cord felt cumbersome in comparison, even though having the stitches slipping easily over the cord onto the needle was an improvement.

So I did the only thing I could do. I bought more needles.

Here we have my growing collection of 2.5mm 80cm long circular needles. The latest acquisition is at the top of the picture - a Knit Picks metal circ that has both a straight needle and thin cord. I have found needle perfection. For the moment…

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’m taking part in the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl Knitalong. Clue 1 was released yesterday - a day early - so I sat down yesterday evening and made a start. An advantage of only having part of the pattern at a time means that this project won’t distract me from my other knitting. At least, while each section is only a few rows.

This is Clue 1 completed in all its glory. Not much to see for an evening’s work. Most of the time was taken up with re-learning Emily Ocker’s Crochet Cast On. I used this for my last Pi Shawl and when I actually manage to do it, it works. And last night I had a lot of practice. I got to about round 10 of the shawl and my yarn snapped. I think due to inefficient spit-splicing on my part, though it didn’t make me feel any better. The worst part is trying to knit in the round with 9 stitches with yarn that’s as thin as sewing thread and bamboo dpns that are going in every direction but where I want them to go!

Anyway, after a break for a calming cup of tea and a toasted crumpet, I started again and this time managed to get to the end. For anyone reading this who is also knitting the shawl, I used Chart D. It doesn’t really look like anything much once it’s knitted up. I’m wondering if the pattern flows into the second section and so on; one disadvantage is not having a photo of the completed shawl to refer to so that I can be reassured that what I think looks like knitted scribble is actually a thing of beauty.

Ever since I learnt to knit socks, I’ve done them the same way: top down with dpns. Last year I had an attempt at knitting them toe up with a short row heel but that one sock has languished in my stash ever since and will probably be frogged and turned into a nice plain sock. I didn’t particularly enjoy the casting on method with dpns, and the pattern is 2 x 2 rib all the way and therefore just a *bit* boring to knit.

So when Diane published her Having Hope sock pattern to raise funds for Cancer Research in Australia , I immediately bought it, but didn’t think that I would ever actually knit the socks. At least as the pattern was. Toe-up was bad enough, but magic loop as well? *shudders*

And then the yarn arrived. It’s another Cairi special: 75% wool/25% nylon sock yarn for long lasting socks and a beautiful semi-solid teal colourway:

Mr B is getting more and more adventurous with his sock colours ever since I started knitting them for him. I wasn’t sure the colours would be manly enough, but he loves them (much to Diane’s disappointment!).

Anyway, with such lovely yarn to be used, I decided I may as well give it a go. One pair of needles quickly bought from one of my favourite eBay stores (more about those in a minute), and I was set.

I trawled the internet for directions on how to do a Turkish Cast On. There are a lot tutorials available; I think the first one I came across was FluffyKnitterDeb’s, but they were all very clear; I just had to try it about half a dozen times because for some reason I was always ending up one stitch short. I don’t quite know what I did in the end, but I finally managed to cast on enough stitches and away I went!

Having never even tried to Magic Loop before, I was surprised how easy it was to master. It’s fairly intuitive - the cord needs to be in a certain place so that you can use one end of the needles to knit the stitches off the other and after a few rounds, I was whizzing along. But the needles (Prym) aren’t the best for the job and I’m going to change to Addis as soon as I have some. I do like Prym circs as a rule, but the needles bend as they join to the cord and when you’re sliding stitches up and down all the time, having to move them over the bump every time is time consuming. But for the time being, I’m happy to use them and watch as my sock grows from a toe into a foot.

I feel like I did when I first knit socks; everything is new and exciting and just a little scary. There’s a lot to be said for being so familiar with the way to knit something that you can do it in your sleep, but I’m really enjoying the edge-of-my-seat sock knitting experience as well.

No peeking, Diane!

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