Category Archives: finished projects

The cuteness of this FO is almost too much! It’s amazing how a bit of stuffing and some little black eyes can give a knitted widget so much personality. I never was much of a toy knitter before I discovered Rebecca Danger’s patterns, but the fact that they have minimal seaming and no fiddly embroidery for the facial features means I am a complete convert and it’s almost too hard to give them away!

The felt heart proved to be a success. I mattress stitched around the edge, using a single strand of the pink yarn, because it looked unfinished ( and covered up a bit of glue that had seeped onto the outside!) and I’m pleased with the result. Other than the intarsia drama, the pattern was a breeze to knit.

I used up more stash yarn for this one: the red was actually leftover from my Evangeline armwarmers, so I’ve certainly been diving into the deepest depths of my stash of late!

Now all I have to do is wrap him up warmly and send him on his way. *sniffle*

Second FO of the year done! *insert smug smiley* Tiny projects rock.

These mitts were a really quick knit, despite being stranded. Though there’s really not that much stranding going on and none in the middle where the increases for the thumb gusset are, so they literally whizzed along once the hem was done. I’d definitely recommend the pattern if you’re looking for something quick but with a bit more of a challenge and don’t mind picking up fiddly provisional cast-ons on tiny circumferences. It’s a well-written pattern and I didn’t deviate from it at all, other than to pick up a couple of extra stitches to avoid holes when knitting the thumb and decreasing them on the first round.

The yarn was from my stash. I meant to add Knit From Stash to my list of resolutions for this year, but I am doing well on it so far anyway. As I’ve mentioned before, I have lots of little odds and ends of yarn stuffed away in boxes or in bags that aren’t really enough to sell, but I can’t in all conscience just throw them out because it makes my inner hoarder wince, so knitting little things like these mitts is great for using them up.

So I’m a third of a way through my swap knitting and the Calmer is calling me: I’d better get on knitting so that I can play with my leafy yarn!

This could be the earliest FO post I’ve ever done. January usually seems to be a washout for me when it comes to FOs, either because I’ve overdone the festive knits and can’t stand the sight of yarn/can’t knit with a new baby or I’m slogging away at secret stuff that cannot be blogged. Finishing another pair of socks so soon after having the pre-Christmas sock marathon was a bit hard going, I’ll admit. If I hadn’t cast on the ribbing back in December, I might have been tempted to just forget that I’d decided to make them. But once the ribbing is done, it counts as a WIP and then it would have to be frogged.

These socks are rather funky-looking. The colour combination was purely because I had these two odd colours in my stash and the Cygnet wasn’t even a whole 50g ball (which explains why it was touch and go whether I’d manage to get the second sock done before the yarn ran out!). I’ve frequently written on here that I’m no good at making interesting colour combinations, so two greens together was nice and safe. I think that with the stitch pattern, they look at bit seventies-ish (not that I remember the seventies…).

The pattern was easy to follow, as usual. I did deviate slightly by knitting a plain heel to save yarn and because I didn’t fancy doing wrong-side stranding. I also cast on 72 stitches and then increased to 80 after the ribbing, rather than casting on 80 stitches on a smaller needle. This was totally not because I changed my mind about how many stitches to knit the socks over halfway through the ribbing, and didn’t even see the part about the smaller needle in the first place… *whistles innocently* I got a little confused at the instep decreases on which colour to do the decreases with while keeping the sole pattern correct and in the end did my own thing so that the second sock looks a bit neater on the sole than the first but I’m sure it won’t be noticed.

The yarns both softened up nicely after blocking and I hope they won’t get holes in after being worn a couple of times. They will probably be ultra-warm with all the stranding going on, and I half-wish that my feet were bigger so I could pinch them.

* * * * *

Lauriel update: I almost have yarn! I won ten new squishy balls of Calmer on eBay last night for the princely sum of £16 (£1.60 per ball!) in a deliciously springy green. I guess I won’t be swatching over the weekend, but can start stalking the postie from Monday onwards.

I think I may have been abducted by aliens one night last week and taken to their ship, where they gave me amazing speed knitting powers. There’s no other reason for me to have churned out another pair of socks, this time in five days. Well, they were knitted on 2½mm needles and the pattern was very simple, but was an actual pattern so I knew how many pattern repeats I needed to do for the leg and foot, which was motivation to just knit a few more rounds. And Mr B was away, so I could knit in bed. But I think it was definitely alien abduction.

This and the previous pair could ideally have swapped yarns. These are very plain socks, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be appreciated. The yarn is from the Kemps sale I succumbed to, almost exactly two years ago. The other yarn I bought became last year’s festive socks, funnily enough.

The pattern is from More Sensational Knitted Socks which I do generally prefer over Sensational Knitted Socks because there are a lot more stitch patterns and size options for each pair, though I think the patterns themselves are more interesting in the first book. However, the stitch counts for this sock (a five-stitch pattern knitted over 70 stitches) went completely loopy at the heel turn onwards and I ended up just doing my own thing. I assumed it was me being thick and I spent a long time searching Ravelry until I found one – one! – person who mentioned the same error. So we can’t both be wrong (probably).

I have knitted two other patterns from this book without a sniff of a problem, so I am not saying that the book is riddled with errors and a disgrace to sock books everywhere. It was just irritating when all I wanted was a mindless knit and a book to tell me what to do.

That’s definitely me done on the knitting front for the next week or so, though, as there’s just no time to knit. It’s taken me an hour to finish this post because I keep having to do other things. There may be a lot of cake photos coming up! I’ll finish with a little ta-dah! of Mr B’s festive sock collection. As he’s not even expecting one pair, I think it’ll be a bit of a surprise.

I’ve just glanced out of the window, and it’s started snowing here! Definitely the weather for lovely handknitted socks. I think the fact that there was a bit of a pattern and that the bit of a pattern wasn’t too complicated helped with getting these socks knitted so quickly. I honestly, hand-on-heart, just intended to get cracking on these as birthday socks and didn’t expect to be done and dusted before the end of the year. Not being distracted by other projects was probably even more of a help.

I have wanted to knit this pattern since I bought SKS years ago. Started them once but didn’t get further than the ribbing. The yarn I’ve used isn’t ideal because the moss stitch clearly doesn’t show up, which is a shame because it looks so nice in the book. But the cables are plump and I am sure Mr B won’t even care about the lack of moss stitch detail.

I used 2½mm needles for these, which also helped knit them up quickly. The pattern has a 48 or 68 stitch cast on and if I knitted them with 2mm needles, they’d be just a little bit too tight. Though I’m sure they won’t last as long as the other socks because of this. Last year’s Christmas socks are still in perfect condition, other than the fact they have no heels at all (!). The looser-knitted socks tend to get little holes all over the sole so this counts as an improvement!

The yarn is Regia from stash and does what it says on the tin. I did worry that I would run out of yarn on the first sock because the cables just eat it up, but I ended up with about 10g left over, though that isn’t even enough to knit a Rose-sized sock.

And I did start another pair for Mr B’s birthday. I need to buy yarn before I can start on something for myself and that isn’t going to happen until after Christmas, so I may as well knit some stash!

I planned to do this post on Friday, but ran out of daylight for the photo session due to spending far too long doing some festive shopping on Santa’s behalf.

So here, at last, is my final cardigan for the year. It wasn’t on my list of planned projects until I cam across it because of Ravelry *shakes fist* and wanted to knit it for Rose, and because it looked like an interesting knit – which is was!

Unusually for a Sirdar pattern, the fronts and back of the jacket are knitted in one piece to the armholes. I loved the little bobble snuggled into the bottom of the cables, and of course substituted my usual one for Sirdar’s directions. Being chunky yarn meant that it practically flew off the needles and I didn’t even mind the huge amount of moss stitch on the sleeves.

I confess I was intending to knit the hooded version, but after completing the sleeves I felt I was running out of steam, wimped out and knitted a collar instead.

It’s obvious from the photo, where Rose is doing a moody model pose, that it’s too big and will have lots of “growing room”, particularly in the sleeves. At some point Sirdar have changed their sizing: I’d normally choose a 2 to 3 year size for Rose but instead chose the 1 to 2 year in this pattern because the alternative was 3 to 4 years, and even that is clearly too big.

The yarn was really nice to work with. I wouldn’t have chosen it if I hadn’t been able to fondle it in the shop as after my experience with King Cole Big Value Chunky I’m more wary, but this is a very soft yarn and hopefully will wear okay.

The buttons are another eBay purchase. I find it far easier just to type in the my requirements in the search box and see what’s available than to search several sites. So far I haven’t been disappointed…

* * * * *

I’m finding already that my knitting time is being reduced as the big day gets closer. The weekend was spent cleaning and then decorating the house, I’m writing lists of important food to buy and not really getting much time when my hands are free. I think if I can get the birthday socks done this week then I might just not bother at all for a week or so til the tree comes down again!

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.

Another hat added to the pile. (Unfortunately with a slightly less cooperative model!)

I really enjoyed knitting this hat. I didn’t really notice it when I first bought the book, but after knitting Queenie, I was looking for other patterns to use up my DK oddments and although this one actually uses sportweight, the maths for knitting it at 22sts/10cm meant I could just follow the stitch count for the next size down while following the length for Rose’s size. It was more of a challenging knit than Queenie, but still didn’t take long to complete.

The hemmed brim started with a provisional cast-on, which is something I normally wouldn’t bother to do. I’ve knitted a few hemmed hats and usually just knit the cast on edge together with the stitches. However, I did this one properly and was chuffed with the results. No ridge where the stitches join together and the provisional crochet cast-on method (scroll down to “Provisional Cast-On”) was really simple to do and didn’t end up with a nasty mess of dropped stitches and tangled yarn (which is what usually happens).

The four points at the top of the hat are formed by grafting the stitches together in groups from the outer edge inwards. The button on top is brilliant for hiding the less-than-perfect centre of the hat where all the grafting comes together.

I think I had most fun choosing buttons from my stash to decorate the hat with. I don’t have a huge collection, but do seem to have accumulated a few pretty ones, especially the sparkly blue one which goes perfectly with the blue yarn.

I suspect the beret style suits Rose better, but I just love this hat. It’s different, cute and will definitely stand out!

Another winter hat is done, so at least one person in the house will definitely have a warm head. I think it was before I went on my holidays that I started knitting Aurora from Bambeanies, but I decided that the yarn wasn’t working out, so quietly frogged it. So this is the first pattern I have completed from the book and I absolutely love it. I haven’t knitted many of Woolly Wormhead’s hat patterns but I haven’t been disappointed with any that I’ve done. The patterns are so well-written and the styles are nicely quirky and unusual. And Rose looks adorable, if I do say so myself.

I followed the pattern completely as written, even down to doing a cable cast-on, which I normally wouldn’t do because In my experience they don’t work well when you want a stretchy brim. But I should never have doubted WW’s wisdom, because it’s not tight at all.

The yarn is the leftovers from Rose’s Whirligig Shrug (I love the contrast between Rose in these photos and the shrug ones!) and is probably one of the few shades of pink that I like and actually suits her colouring. I think it’s more of a pale red, really.

This weekend I will be mainly doing battle with garter stitch in the round. I hope your weekends are a little more exciting!

As I wrote on my Ravelry page for this project, I wish there was a special smiley face to use just for projects that make you supremely happy, because this was one of those.

After the hassle of my last blocking attempt, I had sworn off knitting shawls, possibly until Rose had left home started school. But when rubbishknitter sent me four squishy balls of Louisa Harding Ondine, firstly I came over all selfish and wanted to use it to knit something all for myself and secondly, decided that it had to be a shawl.

This pattern hadn’t been in my queue for long, but based on how much yarn I had, was the one I chose to knit. Mine is one of over a thousand projects, so clearly it is very popular (!) and I don’t think I could add much new insight. I just have a tiny wish that there were more leaves on it because I love leafy lace and the first chart did feel like it was never going to end..!

I followed the directions for the shawlette size. However, using DK weight yarn meant that it ended up about 160cm (63 inches) across, so is much more of a shawl and perfect for keeping snug this autumn.

I loved the yarn, too. The colours are beautiful and it almost shimmers. If it’s not discontinued by next spring, I am going to buy some more and knit a full-sized cardigan with it. Possibly for Rose because it’s more likely to get finished, but definitely a garment because it is delicious to knit with and there weren’t any knots, either.

I may be tempting fate here, but I kind of wish it would get colder so I can wrap myself up in my lovely new shawl.

Oh, but those foam blocking squares are completely brilliant. Admittedly, it was hard finding somewhere to put a 180cm long strip of foam where a small person couldn’t get their fingers on it – in the end it was balanced precariously on the ironing board – but compared to finding a safe floor space for blocking, it was no contest!

The swap scarf is done. I spent a long time trying to find a pattern I liked. I wanted to knit something original – i.e. not from an existing pattern, but as most stitch patterns have been used at some time or another, that isn’t necessarily very easy! I tried several patterns from Heirloom Knitting, but many of them needed a huge shawl to show them off properly, rather than a narrow scarf. Plus garter stitch lace didn’t suit the silky, crisp yarn. Then I remembered there were several small scarves in Victorian Lace Today and found the Diamonds and Triangles shawl, which isn’t small at all, but does have a small centre pattern. I worked five pattern repeats across, rather than nine, and just knitted until it was a good length and I realised that I was about to run out of yarn!

So although I had intended to work a knitted-on edging all the way around the scarf, my plans had to change to a knitted-on border at either end. This time, though, Heirloom Knitting did come to the rescue. I found the jauntily titled Coburg Edging with Faggot Insertion, changed it to stocking stitch lace and got it done with just metres of yarn to spare. I always forget when adding on a knitted border (in my defence, I suppose I don’t do them often enough to get it stuck in my brain) that it is only attached to the main section on every other row. This is not good when you have done the maths to make it fit over a certain number of stitches. Fortunately, knitting the odd couple of stitches together doesn’t make a huge difference.

I love the finished scarf. The yarn is really lovely to knit with – very silky with a nice sheen and looks beautiful when it is blocked. I hope my partner now approves!

Modelling is a serious business. Couldn’t get Rose to smile for a photo this morning, although she honestly does love her new bear hat. She’s completely obsessed with bears at the moment and next to cuddling a bear, she would probably like to actually be one.

The pattern caused me a bit of trouble because it didn’t include the head circumferences or even any finished measurements. After swatching, I merrily cast on for the toddler size and it was gigantic. So I sat down and worked out what the finished sizes actually were myself, and cast on for the next size down. Still too big, because I didn’t allow for the fact that it’s a very stretchy hat. Third time and the 0-6 month size worked perfectly, although I lengthened it to match the 6-12 month size.

The ears are very nicely constructed, although I did use Judy’s Magic Cast On instead of the one given in the pattern, just because I love it.

I’d never knitted with Sirdary Snuggly before, but I fell for the fact the colourway was called “Baby Bear” and it was for a bear hat (it’s a laugh a minute round here ). It’s actually really nice to knit with, very soft and will probably survive the apocalypse to boot.

Now it’s time to turn my attention to my Bitterroot shawl and Rose’s other cabley bobbly sweater and then my WIP pile will be clear. I am on a roll!

And yet another Miss Dashwood is done! I am going to guard this one with my life because the thought of having to do that cast on again makes me break out into a cold sweat.

I’ve written before about my love of this pattern, so won’t go into it all again. But I will be very sad next year when I have to knit the biggest size and then there’ll be no more of them for Rose. I also think by that age she might not be so keen on frilly sunhats. Though she might be like her mother and want to wear silly hats well past an age where it’s acceptable, but I’m not sure I give a flying frog about being accepted if it means being boring.

And the sun is shining for once, so it’s time to put the hat into action!

All done, just in time for the weather to turn and get hot enough to run around outside naked, if you were so inclined..!

I loved knitting this cardigan. I am admittedly a bit obsessed with bobbles at the moment, but I do have my limits and there was just the right amount of fiddling about to be done. It was easy to follow and modify (more about that further down) and hardly took any time at all to knit. I forgot to mention on my last post about this pattern that I was knitting the collared version, which is just because I like collars and had plenty of yarn.

Now for the mods. I’m not sure if it shows on the photo on the Sirdar website, but the bobble pattern is exactly the same on both fronts. This is most noticeable when decreasing for the neck shaping and bothered me because I was in an anal sort of mood, so I mirrored the stitch patterns. It would have been a lot easier to do if the stitches were charted (!) but instead I just worked the left front as written and then read the directions backwards for the right front, substituting the twisted stitches for each other so that they travelled in the opposite direction. If it was charted, I would also have probably seen straight off how to remove the three bobbles that are randomly in the bottom corner of each front, and not knitted those because they don’t attach to the central “trunk”. As it was, it wasn’t until I had done a whole repeat that I saw how the pattern flowed together and at that point I didn’t want to rip out my work! So I guess I’m anal but also lazy. I also for the life of me couldn’t pick up enough stitches for the collar so I followed the directions for the next size down, but kept the length. It’s not too tight, fortunately!

The yarn I used is deliciously soft (and far too WARM at the moment!) and was a complete bargain – I bought both the yarn and pattern from Deramores who have only just come on to my radar, but would definitely recommend. It knitted up beautifully and being a big 200g ball meant no fussing around with joining in new yarn.

The buttons I am very relieved about. I went shopping on Saturday for them and in the course of running around making sure everyone else was ready, forgot to take a bit of the yarn with me for colour matching. So I had to guess a bit using a similar coloured yarn that was in the shop and fortunately they look just fine.

So, on to the next project. Maybe it should now be a certain hat..!

The £@#*! rain is back again and indoors we are once more, trying to get a decent photo from poor lighting. So please excuse the most rubbish quality of the photos in this post. I did like the above photo, though, as it does really typify the relationship Rose has with the camera, where she will do anything else but stand still and/or just look at me for three seconds!

I queued this pattern on 8th November, 2009 according to Ravelry, which would mean Rose was at the 6 week growth spurt stage at the time, when I spent a lot of time surfing one-handed and downloading a lot of patterns. It’s good to finally get round to knitting it!

It’s a cute pattern. Obviously the construction is the same, top-down raglan that I always knit, but I liked the little cable detail at the waist. It looks a bit odd in the pattern photo because it doesn’t show it on a real small person, but when actually being worn, it looks a lot better. Fit wise, I found the sleeves are a little small. I went up a needle size to knit them and picked up a couple of extra stitches, but they’re snug when worn over a top with sleeves. The bottom garter stitch edge also has a habit of turning upwards, but that may well be caused by the yarn rather than the pattern.

I also got to use some more of the bunny buttons I bought ages ago, as the colour is a perfect match.

I actually found somewhere that sells yarn near to me – not a very inspiring selection, nothing is priced and it’s not particularly well arranged, but it’s a start! – and took the Elle Pure Gold DK off the shelf for a fondle because I thought it was something like All Seasons Cotton. It doesn’t feel or look like 100% acrylic at all. And it was a bargain price (£1.99 for 100g) so it came home with me. It knits up really nicely, though it’s now fluffing up a bit on the cuffs which according to the label it shouldn’t do. Does fluffing up not count as pilling? I think it must be discontinued, as all I can find online are odd balls off the stuff. Mainly in brown.

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I’m finding it hard to get inspired to start anything new at the moment, though. Or anything that’s currently half-knitted for that matter. I do have to start another Miss Dashwood before we go on holiday at the end of July, just in case the weather suddenly improves. But that cast on is going to be a bugger character forming.

I confess I was a bit bemused by the comments on my last post, most of which helpfully suggested I learn new seaming techniques. Do you lot really think that I don’t know how to do mattress stitch?! As I said: I know how to sew things up to look beeeyootiful and luvverly. I just hate doing it (like Jennyff!).

But the jacket is all finished now and looks splendid. I knitted the smallest size, which is for 2 to 3 years and really bigger than Rose actually needs, but it’ll mean she gets a bit more wear from it. As opposed to all the baby stuff I knitted which lasted five minutes.

I haven’t knitted from a Sirdar pattern for a long while. Partly because of the fact that they’re all flat patterns, but also that they’re all printed and it means waiting for them to arrive and I like instant pattern gratification whenever possible (though they’re now available to download from Patternfish which kind of knocks that argument on the head).

But they’re well-written when you know what you’re doing, and the finished garment is very cute. There are no errors in the pattern and I didn’t run out of yarn or have heaps left over. It was the running out that bothered me more as I doubt I could find the same dyelot again!

All Seasons Cotton still drives me to distraction with its eagerness to untwist when sewing up. I had the same issues with Trellis, but did I learn?! I do like knitting with it, but now I have none left in my stash to use up, I don’t think I’ll be in a desperate rush to get some more. There’s plenty more yarn left in the sea, or something.

The buttons are from my button stash. I am desperately trying the remember the name of the shop I bought them from. Bought from RibbonMoon. I bought them years ago, when I was hunting for something in particular and finally found it but had to make a minimum order of £5, so ended up buying a load of buttons that I didn’t really want/need at the time. They’re coated plastic – not solid metal – so don’t weigh the cardigan down at all.

And the sun has come out! So hopefully the next FO parade will include outside pictures as last.

And the parade comes to a halt with the biggest monster of them all! Despite the number of stitches cast on and the number of rows knitted for the body, it didn’t really register just how big Bea was going to be until she was all stuffed and finished. She has a Monster Chunk on her lap for scale.

I have to say, though, that she might be my favourite so far (just don’t tell the others!). There’s something very comforting about her big, cushiony body and little beady black eyes.

Thanks to Rhian’s suggestion, I used James C Brett Marble Chunky for Bea’s body. It’s lovely yarn: soft, nice to knit with and the colourway I chose was nicely variegated without big stripes of colour. Definitely a yarn I’d use again and for garments, too. I used the rest of the green King Cole Bonus Chunky for Bea’s ears and feet, but there wasn’t enough for her ample bottom as well, so that is also pink.

Bea is definitely the big mummy monster to all the others in my little collection (maybe that’s why I like her so much; we’re both big and pink and have lots of small people to look after ). I do want to knit Baldwin the Bathroom Monster at some point to hide amongst the towels once our new bathroom is finally installed (it’s taking a long time to finish, but will be worth it to replace the pink bathroom suite that came with the house when we moved in!) but I think that’s it for a while.

The monster parade continues with Toothy Joe, Henry’s choice from the book. He was a very fun knit. I like the wide mouth, which is created by casting off half of the stitches on one round and then picking them up again on the next to create a line across the fabric. Though by the second long, stripy leg I may have been silently cursing.

The yarn I won’t discuss again; my thoughts are still what they were when I posted about Gabby. Actually, I suspect the fact that the monsters are used as impromptu footballs and swung around the room by their ankles doesn’t help them to look less worn out!

I have been putting off posting this FO and perhaps just pretending I didn’t knit it at all to save me the pain of admitting out loud that this is another bloody hat I’ve lost. But the photo is on Ravelry and I did finish it. Maybe looking at the cuteness will encourage me to cast on for another one.

This is my go-to summer hat pattern and with Rose’s old one being too small, I found some lovely Aqua blue Rowan Handknit Cotton on Ravelry for sale – more than I actually needed which is now probably A Good Thing! I finished it quite quickly after the nightmare of the picot cast on. This is the biggest Miss D I’ve ever knitted and I swear it took forever to cast on 5 sts, cast off 2, cast on 5 more, etc. But once that and the bobblesome rounds were done, it whizzed along and was done and on her head. Til I lost it.

I can’t face that cast on again. Rose has an emergency, shop bought (oh, the shame ) sun hat for the moment, but it’s not nearly as cute or practical. I shall have to gird my loins and just get on with it, though it calls for far superior chocolate reinforcement than I have in the house at the moment!