Author Archives: Kate

I have so much to write about today that there’s no time for standing on ceremony, so sit yourselves down and get comfortable. There’s tea and coffee in the kitchen.

Lauriel has grown.

Once I had got my head around the alterations, they were of course very simple. I find that reading lines and lines of text and figures makes no sense, but if I have the knitting in my hands I can see what to do much more easily. After the yoke is knitted, the back, sleeves and fronts are worked downwards, but with short-row shaping. This makes the back neck higher than the front and also reduces the number of stitches across the fronts by decreasing rather than wrapping and turning. However, to get a wider front than back, which is what I wanted, I did wrap and turn to gain an extra 12 stitches per side.

I had similar problems with the short-row bust darts which add an extra two inches in length to the front to get the fabric over the boobage without pulling the entire front pulling upwards and losing the whole point of having the sweater fitted under the bust. I spent ages searching the internet for a tutorial on short row bust shaping for cardigans knitted top-down and couldn’t find anything with step-by-step diagrams, which is what I really needed. Eventually, I just drew my own diagram so I could see what it was that I was trying to do and then twigged that I was supposed to knit right to the the end of the front opening edge and back each time, getting closer to the underarm side each time and picking up the wrap from the previous row each time – you don’t want to know what on earth I was doing before then! *blushes* You can see on the photo above that there is a lot more fabric at the fronts and it will never look right lying on a flat surface, but when it’s all done and on me, it’ll look perfect.

After I had decreased for the underbust shaping, I had a lot fewer stitches but the modifications weren’t over with yet. I am currently adding side increases all the way down to the bottom ribbing to allow for the fact that, while my underbust is 35 inches, the top of my hips – where I want the cardigan to sit – measures a much more generous 42 inches. It’ll still be a fitted cardigan, but it will fit ME and my weird shape. All I can say is that I am looking forward to knitting the sleeves which will be mod-free, unless I need to lengthen them for my orang-utan arms – which will then start me worrying about running out of yarn.

Because speaking of which, it seems that Rowan Calmer is being discontinued. I am miserable about this, because I have just discovered the yarn and it is gorgeous to knit with, soft, squishy and just brilliant. There is a petition here to save it, started by Amy Singer of Knitty, which already has nearly 1,700 signatures. So if you’ve ever used Calmer, want to use Calmer, or would just like me to be happy , please consider adding your vote!

I am about halfway through the chart for the leaf motif on the body of the cardigan, so not more than 30 rows away from finishing the entire body. I hope the sleeves progress as quickly, because I want this cardigan done to wear on my birthday on the 26th! The sticking point will be the buttons. They are purely decorative: the fronts fasten with poppers and the buttons are sewn on top, but I don’t have a clue what sort to use. My usual choices of wood or metal don’t really appeal, but I don’t think I want a green button that matches exactly, because they’ll look a bit dull. If any of you lovely people have any button suggestions, with links to said buttons for bonus points, I will be eternally grateful!

Louie finished? Check.

Holden Shawlette finished? Check – but still needs blocking.

So guess what I got up to yesterday?

I finally cast on Lauriel, that’s what! I am getting slightly scared now because I think that the yoke is going to be the easiest part. I thought that making adjustments to the 40″ size to fit 44″ boobage would be simple enough. The book even has a section on adjusting a pattern that uses Lauriel as an example and so it should be easy to follow using my own numbers, but I read it through yesterday and it made my brain hurt. So in my usual fashion, I am merrily knitting away until I have to actually think about what to do and then will panic.

Knitting with Calmer took a bit of getting used to, but once my swatch was done, I had got the hang of it. It has an incredible amount of stretch, so the trick is not to pull it when wrapping it around the needle. It’s really soft, too, and I’d probably have got further on the yoke if I wasn’t stopping to pet my knitting every five minutes!

Readers, I am on the way to knitting something totally for myself and it feels brilliant.

First up is my knitted widget for a Valentine’s swap on Ravelry where we have to knit something Valentine’s related either by colour or pattern name or yarn or whatever and I went with Louie the Lovebot, who I had wanted to knit for ages. Now, the pattern is only available from Knit Picks who, of course don’t ship to the UK – even for pattern downloads which are sent directly by email to your inbox. You still need to have a US/Canada shipping address when checking out on the website. However, if you type in Knit Picks’ own address as the delivery address, it works?! I half-wondered why I should give them my money because I don’t think there’s any other website that makes paying customers jump through hoops just to get a pdf, but I really wanted the pattern so I’d only be cutting off my nose to spite my face.

Now, you may have have noticed that my Louie doesn’t have a heart on his chest. Unlike all the other Rebecca Danger patterns, which are very much hand-holdingly simple, the only direction for doing the heart is to knit it in the round using the two colours. No clue is given to how she did it. I looked at the other finished Louies and found that people had used various solutions – duplicate stitch, sewing on a felted heart and intarsia in the round. I Googled this and discovered about half a dozen or so different techniques which I tried over about two days at the end of last week. None of them worked. Or, rather, they worked, but there was puckering or yarn showed through and I didn’t feel it looked good enough for something I was giving as a gift. I also could have just divided the stitches in two, knitted a front and back flat and then seamed, but I felt this would ruin the shape of the body. In the end I decided to go for the felt heart option and am just waiting for some felt which I will cut and glue to the chest in the same way that I’ve added monster teeth. I may do a little running stitch around the edge for decoration, or I might not.

So while Louie is on hiatus, I started the third and final swap knit. This is for a sock yarn shawl swap which uses stash yarn (woo hoo!). After finding something in the stash which suited my partner’s colour preferences (Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome (discontinued) in “Misty Moor”), it was hard to find a pattern that wasn’t getting lost in the colours. Eventually, it was a toss up between Multnomah and Holden and Holden won for the entirely superficial reason that I don’t like the wide centre bit on Multnomah.

It’s perfect for the yarn because even on the stocking stitch section, the colours are beautiful but very variegated and any stitch pattern is just going to get lost. The wavy lace on the edge will be fine, though. It’s a very simple shawl, so I’m hoping to make good progress over the next couple of days.

It’s probably a good thing that I don’t have the yarn for Lauriel yet, because I have a couple of other projects to work on first. At the end of last year I signed up for a couple of swaps on Ravelry, including a birthday swap where you exchange a package with someone that has a birthday in the same month as you. Had I thought about this more thoroughly beforehand, I’d have twigged that it would mean having something ready for February (d’oh).

So on getting my partner’s details this week, I had a browse on Ravelry for patterns that fitted with her preferences and cast on for a pair of Lusekofte-sque Mitts.

After the stranded socks, this pattern is a breeze! The pattern is well written and by this morning I have just the thumb of the first mitt to complete before I start the second one. Not bad considering I only started them on Monday afternoon. The trickiest part was the provisional cast on and then grafting said cast on with the live stitches which was very fiddlesome when the circumference is so small – and I’ve got to do it all over again..!

I’m using more stash yarn for these: some Wendy Guernsey 5ply which has probably been in my stash for six years, because I intended to knit the Chalet Socks from Folk Socks with it. According to Amazon, I bought my copy on 2nd January 2006! The cream yarn is the last of the New Lanark DK leftover from my Deep V Argyle Vest. (It’s three years since I knitted that, too.) I originally started off using some Rowan Classic Cashsoft 4ply for the contrast colour, but it didn’t work with the Wendy yarn – too slippy – and the New Lanark is much better.

This is the sort of almost-instant gratification knitting that I like best. These’ll be done and blocking by the weekend, by which time I might even have some sweater yarn to swatch with.

The first one for 2012! Everything feels almost back to normal today. The boys are back at school and Mr B is glued to his laptop. Last night we took down all the decorations, so it’s all a bit bare and dull this morning but it does mean that knitting gets more priority at last.

I started on Mr B’s birthday socks just before Christmas, which basically meant casting on and knitting a couple of rounds of ribbing before they were put away and forgotten about. The past few days have been more knitting-friendly, and I finished the toe on the first sock this morning:

Yep, stranded socks. He is bloody spoilt, my other half. The pattern is from the engagingly-titled Four-Stitch Reticulated Patterns section of Sensational Knitted Socks. (I’m getting my money’s worth from that book at last. ) More stash-busting with the yarn, as I’m using a combination of Cygnet Wool Rich 4ply and Patons Diploma Gold 4ply, both of which have been in my stash for a very long time!

I’m knitting the socks over 80 stitches on 2.5mm needles so I’m hoping they will have enough stretch. I can get the finished sock on my foot pre-blocking, which is a good sign. I’m also really concentrating on getting these done so that I can look to finally being selfish. So I’m off to knit!

Nothing on the needles today. The birthday socks are done and are having a nice bath before their photo session.

These are clearly not actually going to be birthday socks, but Christmas ones. It’s too tempting to not give Mr B two pairs of socks instead of one! Which leaves me with the dilemma of whether to knit another pair for his birthday. Maybe that’s just spoiling him.

Truthfully, one of these WIPs is actually a FO, but it’s not managed to get onto a WIP-W before now. (Blimey, that last sentence was a bit acronym-tastic!)

I came across Sirdar 3888 on Ravelry when someone was looking for the pattern and just fell in love with it on Rose’s behalf. I managed to get the pattern on eBay for not too much money and intended to knit it in the new year. And then there was a trip to Hobbycraft, ostensibly to buy stuff for Henry to build a WW1 trench for a school project (which is going well, even if it is as big as the dining table and will need two people to carry it…). I naturally needed to visit the yarn section whilst I was there and found some Hayfield Bonus Chunky yarn in a lovely shade of teal, which was so soft and cuddly that it ended up coming home with me.

I of course cast on immediately I got home, but then it was put aside for other stuff. As soon as Eriskay was done last week, it was pulled out of the bag and literally took a few days to complete. Chunky yarn rocks. So I have a preview of the finished cardigan, and a proper FO post will follow:

Now to my actual WIP. I was going to knit some more wee socks for Rose and then I remembered I rashly mentioned knitting Mr B some birthday socks..! Rather than knitting like a fiend mid-January, I figured I might as well start them early and be A Smug Sock Knitter again!

The pattern is the creatively titled 3×3 Cable with Moss Stitch from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. I actually started knitting this pattern YEARS ago when I first bought this book, using some very unsuitable pure wool yarn. I didn’t finish them, which is probably a good thing as they wouldn’t have lasted five minutes! The yarn I’m using now, Regia 4ply Color, isn’t ideal as the moss stitch panels aren’t really showing up, but the cables are nice and plumptious and it’ll wear much better!

I am just over half-way on the first sock and trying not to think about the possibility of having them as festive socks instead. I definitely don’t need the pressure of deadline knitting when there are only 18 days to go ’til the Big Day!