The White Stuff

So, of course, I was distracted by something else - I suddenly remembered the Sheep Kit I bought myself for Christmas!

I love the ickleness! Tiny needles and balls of wool. :) My sister had told me it was a bit complicated, that's why she hadn't made the kit I'd gifted her a few years ago (not because she knits, but because her curly hair caused me to call her 'Sheep' for most of her life). It's true that, looking through the instructions, I did wonder why they hadn't explained how to 'inc' or why the 'Gusset' picture looks nothing like the pattern results. Luckily I know how to increase a stitch - in three different ways, in fact - and I have absolutely no problem knitting things which look completely different in their final result to the original picture. I think this blog stands as a strong testament to that. Ehem.

So today I had my first experience of loop knitting - slightly irritating at times, and my thumb is not the most consistent of measures, but I think I did OK:

And eventually I'd made a sheep skin rug for a Barbie Dream House:

Then came the legs, ears and head, which were fiddly and ridiculous to knit - fiddiculous, if you will:

I ask you - cast on 2 stitches, knit 2 rows, cast off!? It's barely worth starting!! Van Gogh had the right idea (I wanted to make a pun on 'eyed ears' there, but it didn't work out) - no one really needs ear lobes. But, anyway, eventually I ended up with...

AN ALBINO HEDGEHOG!!

Hurrah.

Done, done, on to the next one!!!

One very stressful football match (still in the FA Cup somehow...) and The Princess Bride (still an awesome film!) left me with all but the collar trim and sleeve seams finished:


And this morning, as I bathed in the pretty rare early morning sunshine, I got it done:


I think we can safely say it's a crop top:

which is not what I signed up for! The pattern appears to be missing about 20 rows in the middle. But on the plus side I still have some pink left, so I could add to the hemline.

Next up:

• Green summer jumper (will it be cropper than the last crop?)
• Grey dress embroidery (one day it will be done... one day...)
• Brown jumper (see note for grey dress)
• that scarf I promised to knit my brother-in-law and that frog I said I'd knit Sandy and those baby clothes I said I'd knit for the Maxfield twins and the 'Darwin monkey' I wanted to knit for me... (see last two notes)
  
• and lots of unpicking for more recycle-balls projects...
  

Except that, actually, what I'm probably going to do next is buy another ball of wool and start work on a completely different Vogue dress pattern, yet again buggering up my priority list... Still, it's a hobby, not an ambition!

The Bell Sleeve Mystery

Homemade lasagne in the oven; serious football match to watch this afternoon; and I only have one more sleeve and a neckline to complete:

The mystery is: why, if I'm following exactly the same trim pattern notes for both, does the bottom of the sleeve look completely different from the bottom of the body? The only difference is I'm not able to knit in the round as I don't have a short circular needle... But I'm using the same needle! I Can't believe turning the knit has made such a difference...!? Oh well.

Bells and whistles for the rest of the evening then...

In the pink... part 2

Second late night in a row, I'm still up, wide awake, only this night I'm not chatting up the local youngster music scene; I'm fighting with Windows Media Player which seems incapable of copying music to my new mp3 player... Damn these modern contraptions and their useless bloody technology!! But rather than get overly frustrated, I've been distracting my anger with the pink jumper...

Which is turning out to be tiny... Serves me right for, as usual, using the wrong wool, the wrong needles... Oh well, we'll see...

Too many late knits...

Belated Christmas parties, movie marathons, missed trains... The only way I'm getting the knitting projects done is staying up stupidly late! I need to invent something that allows me to multi-task my knitting with housework/cooking/going out... Some sort of... rack or... Wallace & Gromit style machine... or something...

So far, the pink jumper is thus:


and the green jumper is still in the experimental stages:



Or some sort of contraption that allows me to knit while I sleep, so as to avoid the apparently busy days...?! On the plus side, my social life always appears in brief bursts, so it's only a matter of time before I can return to the woolly santuary...

We Are What We Do... (To Do)

I've always liked We Are What We Do...

http://www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle/853613-beard-beanies-the-new-snood

http://www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle/853613-beard-beanies-the-new-snood

In the pink...

Many more distractions, but luckily I had another weekend at my dad's to catch up with knitting. The top of the pink top is done - I forgot to take my sleeve hooks with me, otherwise I would have got further:


I also bought a couple of balls of Wilkinsons' lime green wool to knit a summer pullover with. I'm thinking probably this:

It looked green in the photostat, although it's actually gold.... But who cares? It'll be summery and that's all that matters.

I saw this on someone's Facebook feed:

Pay it Forward 2011: I promise to send something handmade to the first 5 people who leave a comment here. They must in turn post this and send something they make to the first 5 people who comment on their status. The rules are that it must be handmade by you and ...it must be sent to your 5 people sometime in 2011.

It could be ANYTHING...!

Take part and pass it on

I like the idea. I don't think I'd feel comfortable making things on demand, but I am thinking, in the spirit of making something for someone else, and similar to Yarn Bombing, I might try and make things for other people too - besides scarves for Christmas. Although, let's face it, it'll mostly be scarves... and possibly a Frog Prince... I'll be writing a post entitled "I'd like to teach the world to knit" and covering everything in crochet and loomed flower power before you know it...

Acceptable in the Eighties

My scanner is still broken and I couldn't get away with pretending this was work today, so sadly the pictures aren't great, but you get the idea:

(<-- Slightly fishy dress, but I do actually like it.)
(The lovely Paul Nicholas. --v)
(<-- Who shall we get to model? Well, it's for Wildlife, so... how about Kim Wilde?! Nah, too obvious...)

(Alright then, let's try Michael Palin! He's been in Fierce Creatures, Wind in the Willows... Not yet he hasn't. This is 1989. Well... he likes fish, doesn't he...? No... I don't think he does... --v)

(Fine, let's just get Liz Hurley again. Excellent! Nothing says 'wild' like safety pins...

Too soon...?)

Just bad trends...

Knitting has been a bit minimal lately (illness/tiredness/distractions). I'm now seven rows into a new jumper which I'm hoping will use up my left over lighter pink from the recent Kimono. I'm aiming for this from the Glam Knits book:

So expect something completely different to result.

I'm also a couple more leaves nearer to completion on the grey dress - only half a woolly woodland left to go!

Today Olive 'the best tea lady in the world' at work bought in a collection of books she was hoping to sell off for charity - £1 a book. I wouldn't normally be bothered, but Pip in my department came running over with an absolute classic, and I've spent the past half hour admiring pictures of old 80s celebrities in some of the best/worst knitwear of the era, including the delightful Paul Nicholas, whom I remember not just from the brilliant Just Good Friends, but also from going to see him in The Pirates of Penzance in Southampton when his fame was at its 80s peak! And henceforth loved Gilbert and Sullivan. Having looked him up today, it turns out he is still appearing in Pirates of Penzance! Not sure if it's in the same role though...

Anyway, the book is called Knitting Wildlife, and also stars Kim Wilde, Mike Rutherford (and family), Elizabeth Hurley and Michael Palin to name but a few.

I'll try and share some inside pictures soon. You might wonder why I would waste a whole pound on a book of oversized jumpers with pictures of animals on them that I'll probably never knit, but actually there is one dress, modelled by Marie Helvin (NOT the one on the cover) which is really quite nice. Probably minus the fish swimming all over it, but still it's a great shape, so I figured it was worth a charitable donation just for that.

Of course, that doesn't explain why I then also bought the other book: The Edina Ronay Collection... Maybe you can have too many Eighties knitting books after all...?


Actually, when I consider what I'm (very slowly) doing to that grey dress, I don't know how I can really criticise 80s knitwear!!

Wavy lines...

Latest scarf is finished:

Of course I like it! I've yet to dislike a scarf. I just love scarfs... And of course it looks nothing like the pattern illustration...

...I'm off to look up the difference between a fetish and an obsession, whilst singing along to angst-ridden female singers - in my new scarf! ;D (Well, there's nothing on TV and I've finished watching the first series of Frasier... "Ever heard of Lupe Velez...?")

The blues...

I finished the blue top on Wednesday evening, I've just been too tired to get online for the past few days:

I still have to crochet the edges and fix the 'pleats' a little, but other than that it's done.

I decided to use the remaining blue wool (the jumper took up barely 120g, with sewing and edging!) to knit a matching scarf (also from Haiku Knits):

The fact that the wool is double knit has somewhat changed the pattern, but I don't think it's any the worse for it. I've changed needle size to try and make the pattern more visible - no longer lace, more wavy waves... Slightly less Clear Water, as the pattern is called, and a little more "mildly choppy sea"... ;)


Wool used: Yarnfair DK Blue (shade 205/80)

Kimono

I'd never watched the film Silver Streak before tonight. It took that, an episode of The Professionals and The Simpsons to finish sewing up the Kimono. Memoirs of a Geisha may be my favourite novel, but I don't think I'm turning to Japanese knitting. I really think not. Still, it may go better with a different outfit - something other than my pyjamas. So it's just floor pics for now...



Blue top is mostly finished - it also needs sewing up, which will be tomorrow night's project I think. Can't wait to see what's on TV...

I do have a plan for another new project: I've always wanted to own one of these ever since I saw a version of it in a Darwin exhibition at a museum in Cambridge:

They're not particularly cheap to buy though. But I did think it might be fun to try and combine this:
with a simple mini skull pattern and some rectangular book-shaped things... ;)


Wool used for Kimono: DK Shamal (Forsell) in 1818 Carmine and Aztec 4ply Chenille in Dusky Pink

Blue Tips

One of the good things about staying at my dad's for the weekend - besides the SkyHD with Sports and Movies packages, free food, a cup of tea and a biscuit in bed on a Sunday morning... and, obviously, seeing my dad - is that I get to knit for long periods of time without distractions in front of a large enough TV to view over the needles. So I was pleased to finally finish the last piece of the Kimono:

which now just needs to be sewn together...somehow... and, during two FA Cup ties (including Man U v Liverpool... :)) I got to start a new project:

also from the Haiku Knits book, which is supposed to eventually look like (my version of) 'Running Brook':

Rather a lot of errata in this pattern, but luckily her diagrams make it clear when the words sound like nonsense... That might be what was missing from some of the Stephanie Japel patterns, and my constant confusion over her wording (and maths).

This weekend I was struggling a bit with my blood pressure - this tends to happen particularly when I walk from a very cold place, like outdoor England, into a very hot place, like overheated shopping precincts, and vice versa, during which transitions my toes and finger tips tend to throb like a chav's car stereo speakers. However, I was a little perturbed this weekend to also discover that my finger tips had turned blue!!

But after a short moment of mild panic I realised I'd been knitting for the past four hours with some very cheap blue wool... I must remember not to wash any finished products with anything light...!

Thank the heavens for that!

I had hoped I would finish the kimono cardigan yesterday. However, on Sunday night I noticed the disturbing vision of my unplucked eyebrows (I still haven't brushed my hair since December 28th, although I have washed it... once...), and immediately after dealing with those, I noticed the state of uncleanliness in my house (no, not because my eyebrows had previously blinkered me, although that would have been cool!). So I spent the penultimate day of my holiday, a typically cold and miserable bank holiday Monday, half-cleaning and half chilling (in both senses) beneath a blanket on the sofa. I also finally cooked up my own turkey and trimmings, which I'd been putting on hold until I'd finished everyone else's leftovers.

I didn't, therefore, get properly started on the knitting until Stargazing Live. So far, in the past month thanks to the impressively thick and persistent cloud cover over this part of the world, which doesn't seem to feature on any Met office account of the weather (definition of a weather forecaster: idiot who can't look out windows), I have missed: a lunar eclipse, a partial solar eclipse, a meteor shower and the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus. I can't wait to discover what heavenly wonders I won't get to see for the next two nights! I did make the decision that, instead of a Nativity scene, for December 2012 I am going to knit the little Mayan month glyphs and have them dance in a circle around a knitted Professor Brian Cox being tortured on the rack whilst wearing a T-shirt saying "Science Rules, OK!" - I figure it may be the only way to appease the Mayan gods and prevent the impending doom of the total solar system conjunction. Of course, when it's successful, scientists will claim it had nothing to do with my coincidental knits, because they are arrogant like that...

In the meantime, however, I still have four projects to finish in the here and now. But the most excellent news is, the upper body of the Kimono is, at long bloody last, finished!!

Just the tie-trim to go - 26 stitches in simple rib for... 56 inches... [sigh] I wonder if the creation of the Large Hadron Collider seemed as long winded as this - an initially good idea which takes too bloody long to realise! Still, when the LHC has long since stopped communicating with aliens, allowing us to travel through time, and melting all the chocolate factories in Switzerland (I shall miss Lindt), hopefully my kimono cardigan will still be going... It bloody better be!

'Be ready to do one more forever...'

That's what Sarah Kline always says, while I'm crouched on the floor watching her do another thirty frog-squats... I've been thinking about that a lot over the last 24 hours of Morecambe & Wise (finally!) on the TV, Match of the Day, a beautiful sunny day and a lot of wrist ache... Just one more row, just one more row...

I thought it would be a really great idea to knit Chrysanthemum from Haiku Knits; it's a really easy, simple Kimono-style cardigan which can actually be worn in two different ways (it took me quite a while of staring at the pictures to work it out - then I read the instructions and it was all obviously there...). Really easy, in fact, in that you're just knitting three rectangular shapes - one normal one, one with a chunk cut out, and one very thin, long one. So simple, it hurts. Literally. I never thought I'd get bored of stocking stitch, but after 31 inches of the stuff, I'm pretty fed up. This is definitely an exercise in Japanese disciple and zen mastery...