Author Archives: Kate

I love, love, LOVE this sweater. Cynically, I might say it’s because it’s taken six months to complete and it’s an achievement to get it out of the WIP pile.

I think this pattern has shown me that I really do love an interesting knit and, while knitting simple garments gets them done more quickly (if I don’t get too bored with them), the sense of achievement isn’t nearly as great. Even though the pattern wasn’t charted, once I had got each panel set they were easy enough to memorise and read, even after leaving the pattern languishing for months.

Most of the modifications I did were to avoid seaming. I changed the shoulder seams to a three needle bind off, and attached the sleeves the same way, as I mentioned in Wednesday’s post. The collar was also knitted in the round. However, I do wish I’d changed the right-hand cable to twist in the other direction so that the cables were mirrored in the way that the lace panels were.

This is the 1 to 2 year size and Rose is maybe slightly small for her age. I know that Debbie Bliss’s children’s patterns are on the roomy side (or at least they used to be; maybe her newer designs are more fitted) and this sweater probably fits Rose the way it is meant to, but it is pretty bloomin’ baggy (good job I didn’t go for the bigger size!). I have rolled the cuffs up now which helps, but I can see it fitting her for most of the next year as well. I did add a few extra rows on each sleeve just to complete a pattern repeat of the centre panel, but that doesn’t account for the couple of inches that hang over her fingers!

I only used five of the six balls of Eco Cotton that I bought. It does have a slightly better meterage than Jaeger Pure Cotton, the original yarn used in the pattern, which probably explains it. Not sure what to do with one random ball of sportweight cotton, but it’ll help feed my stash for a while. It was really nice yarn to knit with, gives great stitch definition and there were NO KNOTS in any of the balls I had.

The colour is perfect for Rose despite being pink, and as it’s a cotton sweater, will be good for layering as it gets colder. I suspect this will get a lot of wear over the coming months, which makes the wait to get it finished completely worthwhile.

I will blame Anna entirely for my new-found obsession with tiny socks. As I said last week, I could happily knit tiny socks forever, just for the sense of achievement: when I actually sit down and knit them, they take pretty much no time at all to finish. However, this is actually only the second pair of socks I’ve knitted for Rose. I think I was put off by the Hugs and Kisses Socks because they were fiddly, on tiny needles and I was at the end of the “morning” sickness stage which had made me feel queasy just at the sight of yarn.

I knitted the pattern as written. It comes in a huge range of sizes, so once I’d Googled a shoe size converter to work out how big Rose’s feet were in US sizing, I was all set. The only modification I did was to change to a standard toe, decrease down to 20 sts from 44 and then graft the toe stitches.

I don’t know why I was so surprised, but they only used 14g of yarn per sock. I have a ginormous bag of yarn oddments from the end of past socks, but chose to start a new ball of yarn from the stash, because I was worried I wouldn’t have enough yarn! Now I have gone through the bag, weighed some likely-looking balls and have enough yarn for a few more pairs, including some from the remains of my first ever socks, which I am really chuffed about. They will be a good project over the festive week, when I may need some calming, uncomplicated knitting to get me through it all.

I snapped Henry before he left for school this morning, which I suppose explains the serious face!

I think I’ve said all I have to say about this pattern last year. Its definitely a good option if you have a picky teenage boy to knit for, although I hope next year that he will want something different!

I love Cotton-Ease. The crispness of the stitch definition is wonderful, and it’s soft as well. I don’t know how it stands up to being used for sewing seams as there weren’t any with the hat, but it feels more tightly twisted together than All Seasons Cotton and maybe therefore less likely to untwist, which is what irritates me.

I’m spending the weekend working on Eriskay and having a lot of baths now that it’s finally been plumbed in. Have a good and fragrant weekend, what ever you’re doing!

*points to calendar*

Look, everyone! Look! It’s 14th November and my festive knitting is DONE.

*oozes smugness*

Admittedly, when you set the bar as low as I have done, getting it done isn’t really much of an achievement! I may knit something else yet, but I don’t have the right yarn colours in my stash, so it may not happen.

Nothing much to say about the socks, which are fairly plain and were good, mindless knitting. The pattern was cobbled together using little bits of other patterns and techniques. Namely, Judy’s Magic Cast On for the toes, then Priscilla Gibson Roberts’ Short-Row Heel and then a stretchy lace cast off for the ribbing. It made a change from top-down socks and when you’re knitting inches and inches of tiny stitches, any change is welcome!

The yarn was really nice to knit with and it’s good to make a dent in my manly sock yarn stash. Somehow I have accumulated even more manly colours without realising and I am so behind on knitting socks for MrB – this is the first new pair he’s had since LAST Christmas! – that at this rate, I’ll still be using it up when Rose has started going to school… though it’s MrB’s birthday at the end of January, so I’m hoping to get another pair done by then.

Now back to the hat knitting!

An entire pair of mitts done! It seems the answer to me actually finishing a pair is to make them as simple as possible. I am so tempted to get out all my mitten pattern books and drool over them, but I know that will lead to the road to ruin, startitis and no finished festive socks!

The pattern was very simple to follow, even for a glove knitting novice. The huge amount of ribbing for the cuffs was a PITA, but it was worth it to ensure warm wrists. I did find the order that the stitches were picked up for fingers a bit counter-intuitive, after following the directions to the letter for the first couple because I was terrified of doing it wrong. So I just did my own thing after that and nothing bad happened! I also added buttons to hold the flaps down on Henry’s request, and I might move them down to the ribbing, if I can sew them down without stopping it stretching. They’re too high up really at the moment. Also my button loops are a bit rubbish.

BTW, the pattern isn’t available at the time of writing this. The pattern notes say the pattern has been updated, so I guess it’s just a temporary glitch. Pattern is back up!

The colour selection was Henry’s, so I just picked yarn oddments from my stash that matched. He wanted white stripes, but I showed him the cream Cashsoft 4ply and he didn’t object. I have so many oddments – of 4ply yarn especially – that I can’t really put for trade but are too big to just bin (I hate throwing away even the titchiest oddments of yarn which is probably part of the problem!). I always feel virtuous when I can avoid buying yarn for a project, totally ignoring the fact that I have already spent the money on the yarn to have it in my stash, so it’s not as if I got it for free..!

I’d definitely knit these again, though maybe not this year. I didn’t really suffer from second mitt syndrome but I don’t want to tempt fate.

And on a really very wet and miserable day, having a snug new waistcoat to wear is perfect. I actually sewed in the last end and blocked it last week, but with waiting for it to dry and then more waiting for buttons, the reveal got a bit delayed.

I love the finished result. The stitch pattern gives a lovely texture to the yarn and the styling is very simple but cute. I can’t say I enjoyed knitting the stitch pattern, though. It wasn’t hard, but needed concentration on every couple of rows and so wasn’t mindless either. By the second front, I was pretty much forcing myself to sit down and knit it. What saved the whole thing from being stuffed in a bag and hidden in a corner was the fact that I was knitting the waistcoat and therefore didn’t have two sleeves full of pattern to knit as well.

I followed the pattern completely as written, even managing to pick up enough stitches for the collar and button bands. I did toy with the idea of only working two or three buttonholes at the top, but went with all six, which I slightly regretted when I went to buy buttons.

One modification I did do was to sew up the side seams and leave a gap for the armholes, then pick up and knit the ribbing around the armhole in the round, which just meant picking up a couple fewer stitches to ensure the ribbing worked.

I wasn’t sure what sort of buttons to go for at first. I was thinking about dark wooden ones, but then saw these adorable heart-shaped metal buttons here and they clearly were perfect:

My only niggle is that they came in packs of five, so I had to cough up for two lots. But it also means I have four cute buttons for something else…

The yarn worked well for the pattern, and it was good to use up more stash rather than buy even more yarn! Rose is showing a preference for red things at the moment, so I am going to encourage this.

And finally, this year I have knitted (and plan to knit) more Sirdar patterns than I have in all the years I’ve been knitting. I was always unreasonably (as it turns out) sniffy about their patterns in the past, because of the fact they were knitted flat (and didn’t have any charts, which does still bug me a bit). Once I had discovered circular knitting I felt that clearly this was superior to any other method and seams were for mad people. But after knitting so many top-down raglans, I think I needed a change and I was ignoring so many cute and interesting patterns. And seaming isn’t so bad once you’ve done a few projects. I’ll be knitting chart-less Shetland lace shawls before you know it!

And now I finally have a hat. It’s not what I started out wanting to knit, but I do like it very much.

The pattern was very simple to knit, and didn’t cause a headache like my own hat attempts had done in the previous week. I used a heavier yarn than specified in the pattern and although my stitch tension was fine, I had far fewer rows to the inch. I stopped knitting after four repeats (I think) before working the decreases and the fit is perfect; just a little on the slouchy side, which is what I like.

I chose the yarn mainly because it matched the yarn I used for Bitterroot so nicely. But it knitted up nicely, is soft and feels very cosy. So I’m all set for the winter, but will definitely be knitting myself at least one more hat because with my track record, I am probably going to lose this one. At least I managed to get a FO post before it vanished.