Happy third blogiversary to me!

I’ve been away from the blog for a while, and I need to get back into the swing of it. I have a finished project or two to share, for a start. I need to find a good blogging routine and stick to it. Does anyone have any tips to share on how best to do this? Other than being tied to my computer chair til I churn out a post each day?

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.

So finally, after three hours, the Peacock Feathers Shawl is cast off and ready for blocking. That is, the cast off took three hours. Knitting a shawl in three hours would be quite a feat. Maybe one day…

I’ve not tried a crochet cast off before and as crochet and me are not the best of friends, I was dubious about it. I find that a lot of techniques that are useful actually use crochet, such as Emily Ocker’s circular cast on, so it’s a case of having to get to grips with the hook, really, if I want to do these things and to stop being a wuss. I’m a leftie, which doesn’t help matters, of course, but that’s just an excuse. And of course I wasn’t going to skimp on the cast off after spending so long on the shawl. So after a few false starts, I got the hang of it.

(and the photo doesn’t even show the cast off after all that! Pfft!)

It was slow progress, but I’m hoping for that “wow!” moment after blocking that will make it worthwhile. I would say I’m looking forward to not sitting on my bum and knitting furiously for a while, but there’s still another August birthday present to finish.

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 finishing 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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I’ve pinched this meme from Diane’s blog. She tagged me for the book one, but seriously, the books beside me now are Mr B’s programming ones and I’d lose the will to live trying to type out the stuff that’s in there. So!

The rules:

“The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.”

1. What was I doing ten years ago?

In late May 1998, I was a first time mother of a one month old baby and just about managing to remember to get dressed occasionally. I remember a lot about that time. With the younger small person, it seemed to pass in a blur, but I remember all the good parts: having a squidgy little person snuggling in my arms and feeling the overwhelming maternal urge which I never thought I would have. I also remember having bazoomas the size of footballs which leaked all the time, never getting any sleep and the evil midwives, but I digress.

Back then was also when I picked up the needles for the first time since I was a teenager and knitted tiny baby clothes in squeaky acrylic yarn. If I ever had another small person, they’d be spoilt rotten with pure wool and silk and Baby Cashmerino.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

- Knit something that has to remain under wraps for the time being, as much of my knitting is at the moment.
- Do some laundry so that the small people don’t go to school naked tomorrow.
- Make dinner (must do that after posting this!)
- Buy alcohol for the children to take to school. For the summer fayre tombola, I suppose I should add before someone calls me a bad mother who has naked drunken children.
- You know, I can’t think of a fifth thing!

3. Snacks I enjoy:

Chocolate, sadly. I’ve now had two weeks without even a nibble of something chocolately and those people who say you get used to not having it are LIARS. *sniff*

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Buy an alpaca farm and a flock of sheep and make my own yarn. Also give a lot of money to children’s charities. It’s heartbreaking to see some of the things that children have to suffer in this supposedly developed country.

5. Places I have lived:

I spent the first 18 months of my life in Yorkshire. Then moved down south, where I lived in various places including the world’s tiniest flat and then here in Gypsy Towers which is in a horrible area and has no redeeming features but it’s home.

6. People I want to know more about:

I’m passing this on to: Kai, Cairi, Lindsey, Vikki and Megan Moggle.

So Issue 2 of The Inside Loop is online and I can finally share a couple of finished objects that have been hidden away.

Pattern: Wild Strawberry
Yarn: Fleece Artist Italian Silk, 2 x 100g skeins in “Fruit Punch”
Needles: 3.75mm Addi bamboo circs

Summer knitting is always trickier than the rest of the year. But I hope that at least one of the projects in the new issue might be the one you take to the park or the beach this summer.

There’s the matter of issue 2 of a certain online magazine needing to be created. I’ll be back with finished objects that I can actually share next week!

Has it been a week since I posted already?! The last week disappeared in a blur of Finishing Important Secret Stuff for the magazine, without even a cupcake to tide me over. So it was nice to cast on something completely different to have a break from knitting to a deadline for a while.

I’ve started knitting Kai’s Lotus Lace Socks using the Wild Fire Fibres BFL sock yarn.

The lace pattern is really enjoyable to knit. Not too tedious and not too complicated so that I’m dropping stitches all over the place. I confess that I didn’t read the ribbing directions properly which is why I’ve ended up with a k1, p1 rib. Ribbing is the boring part of knitting a sock, so by the time I’d realised my mistake, I was almost done, so not about to frog it! The yarn is dreamy to work with. It’s striping slightly, but not enough to obscure the lace, which is good. Think I might potter about a bit today and knit some more.

This post contains knitting content not suitable for Diane if she doesn’t want to spoil her birthday surprise. Otherwise, read on..!
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Having a ten year old makes me feel ancient. But I can take my mind off it with cake.

I was going to post that I haven’t bought any yarn this year because people keep giving it to me, but then I realised that wasn’t quite true, seeing as I had bought the yarn for Mr B’s boring socks and then the yarn for the Catherine Socks. So maybe I’ll rephrase that and say that I haven’t bought any yarn for a project all for ME ME ME! Until now, that is.

Today I received a squishy parcel of Wild Fire Fibres Superwash Blue Faced Leicester in “Blueberry Muffin”. Vikki even enclosed a tiny box (the sort of size that is perfect for a mouse to keep their best hat in) containing some stitchmarkers.

The yarn is gorgeous. The purpleness drew me to it in the first place, and I have never tried Blue Faced Leicester for socks before, so clearly it was a matter of doing important yarn research that I buy it.

And in one of those lovely coincidental happenings that must happen because the knitting gods are smiling at me and saying “buy yarn because you’ll need it!”, while I was waiting for it to arrive, lovely if spinning wheel obsessed Kai has published her first ever pattern, Lotus Lace Socks!

The pattern is just perfect for my new yarn. They look lovely in purple, and the lace isn’t going to be overpowered by the yarn variegation. I can’t wait to cast on as soon as I possibly can!

So other than eating muffins yesterday, I also got to fondle yarn.

Diane brought me a gift from her trip to Australia: a skein of Touch Yarns “Exclusive”, a kid mohair/merino blend yarn. It’s like having a little purple curly pet and will make the snuggliest scarf imaginable next winter.

Pear and Ginger Muffins from Nigella Express

Spending all day working deserves a bit of a muffiny treat, wouldn’t you agree?

…almost! Mr B’s sixth pair of handknitted socks are finished. He has more pairs of socks than me, but I don’t mind. He wears them, asks for them, and he knows that if he ever even whispered about the amount of yarn I have that there would be no more handknitted socks for him! *evil grin*

Pattern: None to speak of
Yarn: 1 x 100g Trekking XXL, shade #184.
Needles: 2.25mm Susan Bates Silvalume needles of loveliness

Of course, there was some sort of pattern involved. A very basic, cast on 68, half for the heel flap, a quarter for the stitches picked up, etc. Nice, mindless knitting. And once a tad more secret knitting is finished, I can start thinking about something that should have been done a while ago..!

…a pig flying overhead, and a confirmed sighting of the Loch Ness monster. All things I expect to happen today, because this parcel was delivered:

My Rowan International membership gift! I renewed my membership in July last year. A whole nine months ago. I had given up pretty much ever receiving the gift as I was holding out for the purple colourway and it was never in stock. Clearly I’m not alone in my purple obsession. But to give Rowan their due, it arrived!

I don’t intend knitting either the waistcoat or shawl patterns that came with the yarn as the stitch pattern doesn’t appeal to me. But it’s good to know that you can get a shawl from 4 balls of yarn and I might do something lacy of my own instead.

Now off to hunt four leaf clovers and see if that rainbow has a pot of gold at the end of it..!

Done! The pattern is available to download from the Free Patterns page, or from Ravelry.

The pattern has been changed to a 16 stitch repeat and is now knit on larger needles (depending on your personal tension, of course!). And I do think the pattern looks best if worn with the minimal amount of negative ease. I’ve not changed much else, other than to use a fancy heel flap, but this can be replaced with your own personal choice. Enjoy!

One skein of purple cashmere goodness…

…complete with feline approval…

…goes to a name drawn from a hat full of paper…

…and that name is Shelby! Congratulations! Email me your address and I’ll pop the yarn in the post to you.

I’m so glad no one fell for the April Fool’s joke. Mainly because I couldn’t stand it if hoardes of people suddenly came knocking on my door, desperate to snaffle some of my stash! Though I can solemnly promise that I will never take up modelling with matchsticks, ever. Even if my MIL decides that she can’t live without a model horse drawn fire engine.

Nothing new to see here, I’m afraid. I could put up a photo of a slightly-longer sock cuff, but my camera needs charging and it isn’t that exciting anyway. So in an attempt to be interesting, I’m having a competition!

I have 100g of ColourMart Cashmere 3/28NM Heavy Lace Weight in “Vatican” left over from knitting Matilda. Enough to knit another one the same size as mine, or another lacy shawl.

I’ll give the yarn to one random commenter drawn from all comments on this post from now until midday Friday (UK time).

ETA: Comments now closed!