Making things (harder) for myself...

It's been a bit of a disastrous week on the knitting front, all things told. Firstly, the Cinched Waist Top is finished, after lots of hard grafting every evening of this week. Disaster wasn't immediate - I started with the thought that I would create the front and back in purple, and the sleeves in the fake Noro:

I then had to make a decision: four separate balls of wool or winding the two balls on? Thinking it would be a darn sight simpler to wind-on, I went for that option. That produced an initially very long-winded process of twisted the yarn together behind every stitch, but eventually I got into a pretty good rhythm, and I was even unphased by the interesting pattern it made on the front... All seemed to be going well until I looked a little more closely... the problem with the 'weaving' effect this was creating on the wrong side of the knit was that it was totally restricting any natural give the jumper might otherwise have had. Which meant I began with a large, loose jumper, and ended with something a doll would struggle to get into!!

My attempts to salvage the situation while watching Comic Relief came to nothing when I eventually tried the top piece on - no matter how much I might be able to add to the edges to expand them, the neckline still looked ridiculously shrunken. So, with heavy heart, I will need to unpick the lot and start again. I'm thinking this time I'll just choose to be a little less clever and go all purple. I can then always use the remaining fake Noro for a hat, scarf, gloves... anything else, really... It's not the first project I've ever knitted that I've realised after completing will need unpicking and starting over (I still haven't returned to the tunic!). But at least this time I only have to unpick the top half...

The second disaster was an eBay purchase. I decided to invest in some wool for a scarf knitting project I'm working on (I've been using the iPad to help me design... ;)), and purchased £40-worth from a retailer I have used before. This involved a trek up to the Postal Sorting Office to collect a parcel, which at the time, I had commented to the Postie who served me, seemed smaller than I'd imagined it would be... When I opened it, I discovered why: I'd been sent completely the wrong collection of wool. Funnily enough it didn't even cross my mind to send it back - you don't think about these things with eBay. So instead of my box of £40 worth of 3ply and 4ply gnarly colours, I received this:

On the plus side, these are silk threads, worth £10 more than I paid for them (I can only assume someone, somewhere, has a box of gnarly 3ply they really don't want and spent £10 more for...). The downside is they're thin enough to be sewing cotton! I've tried knitting with them, on small and large needles, and it's hopeless. I tried using one cone on the knitting machine and, although things started well, as soon as I pulled the nylon casting-on cord away, the yarn is so so thin it just fell off the needles! I then tried combining eight of the yarns together to make an equivalent of about 1ply - 2 ply at a very big push - and it just ended up getting messy and tangled.

So I had a box full of beautiful silk thread and nothing to do with it! And then, for some reason, I suddenly remembered the bag of scrap balls of wool my mother had given me, in the bottom of which were some old pieces of junk from my old bedroom which had been abandoned when I moved out, and in amongst that junk: a Rocco Flower loom, still with its pegs intact! I decided this would be my last hope - if this didn't work, then I had 20 reels of silk thread to sell off. And things started tough when I realised I couldn't remember exactly how to use the flower loom and couldn't find the old instruction book! Thank goodness we live in a day and age where people seem to want to make videos of themselves doing absolutely anything and everything! It was still tricky trying to get such thin thread to do as it was told, and involved considerably more twists and turns than usual, but it finally looks as though I can use up some of the thread.

Perhaps this will be the good thing that comes from disaster? Coupled with the fact that, based on my previous note that people make videos of everything, I found there is an entire course on how to use a manual knitting machine on YouTube, and even though it's not strictly about my machine, the lesson I've watched so far has already shown me where I've been going wrong and giving up prematurely. It turns out that box of weird looking tools was actually a box of essential tools! So I've decided to work through the lessons and see if I can stop blaming the knitting machine for going wrong and actually make it work! Exciting...!! (I'm giving myself a week before I give up again...)

Things that are going well - or, rather, are still going anyway: Snowflake grew a few inches this weekend. The burgundy Vixen Camisole I mentioned last post hasn't moved much past where it was then:

It's meant to turn into this:

I'm nervous about the stitch-dropping bit, but at this rate I'll have plenty of time to build up my nerves for it...

I've ordered a lot more new wool, from a different shop on eBay and one I am hopeful will make a more accurate delivery, and then it's on with my scarfing plans. If I could only make friends with the knitting machine, I could turn the ideas into an industry...

Pictureless update

The big downside of iPad: the original is the lack of camera. So although I've taken some shots today, until I can be bothered to load up my PC, I can't show you the prolific happenings of the day. Having watched all the Carpools starring members of Red Dwarf, and then last thing scared myself silly with a very old Doctor Who episode (I've been trying to rationalise my fear of dodgy sets, scripts and costumes, and decided it must be a psychological reaction to the old Doctor Who theme music, which is just inherently spooky...), I've been working on Snowflake, the Cinced Waist Jumper, AND Vixen Camisole from Sensual Knits to use up the remaining burgundy from the kimono top I knitted a while back... Many inches left... And more wool on the way! :)

iPad you not!

Yes, it is fair to say, the iPad has taken over my life. It has, on the plus side, saved me valuable, precious time in the mornings now that I no longer need to load up my ploddingly slow PC; suddenly I can consider getting up later, or combining jobs with emails, or doing some proper yoga routines... This is nice. Unfortunately, for every second saved in the morning, many more are being lost in the evening. And the evening was my most productive time for knitting. I have tried to find apps (a word I still resent and yet seem to be using with more frequency than any other) to get my creative needles clacking, but there are none. Even the Vogue Knitting app is uselessly unavailable to the UK (I have made a point of complaining about this). In the end, only two apps have helped:

- a newer pdf reader, which means I've been able to Dropbox (OK, three apps) some patterns onto the iPad, rather than having to print them out - this being something I had always hoped would be useful. FastPDF failed me miserably, but it turns out the iBooks app has an area that works better. Just better.

- a task manager app, on which I have listed all my outstanding knitting projects. Task manager apps are, however, about as useful as to-do lists, since they waste time being written out and they don't make you use them effectively, or get the tasks done...

Despite all this, the distractions, and my apparent silence, knitting has been happening, just on a much depleted scale to previously. My senior manager has introduced me to podcasts - she's about the only person who has wanted to discuss the iPad with me, without groaning - so I've been watching Carpool while I knit. :)

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So here are the updates:

- Having given up on the original plan with fake Noro due to concerns about quantity, I've now used some of it to create the "corset waistband" for Vogue knitting's 'Cinched Waist Top':

It just looks a little bit like a patterned scarf for a wide but tiny necked person at the moment. The problem I have found with the fake Noro is the uniformity of the colour changes, the stripes, which give it too much of a solid, organised look, rather than a creatively chaotic vibe. But never mind. I'm still arguing with myself over whether to use the light purple or blue wool to make up the rest of the pieces. Originally I was going to use the blue to entirely mimic the original pattern. But I thought the purple blended better with the colour mix. I'm now not convinced this is the case, and I'd seen a pattern in Sensual Knits in blue that I fancied giving a go instead. Well, that's yet another story, since I originally thought I'd give the McQueen Sweater a go:

But I've now had a slightly less enthusiastic result with a very similar pattern (*see below), so that freed up the blue. Except that I still quite like the Multiplicity Jumper:

amongst others... Anyway, I've plenty of time to make a decision yet...


- The 'Lacey Neck Pullover', also from Vogue Knitting, which I've previously been calling green summer crop top, is finished! It's actually far better than I expected, although I suspect that was partly because I gave up totally on the whole crochet thing and passed it over to my mother - and even she admitted the crochet instructions were nonsense! She didn't make as many crochet flowers as the original pattern suggested, but I don't think that matters at all:

And, perhaps a little more shockingly, it even fits!


Obviously, there are the usual problems of knitting mistakes, and the fact that it's green and I therefore have very little I can wear with it. But other than that, it's one of my more successful pieces!


- Also finished this weekend is the brown jumper from Phildar, my first Recycle-balls project. Just to reiterate, this is what it should look like:

No, of course it doesn't look like that!! Having readily allowed my dad to take the iPad off my hands for a few hours last weekend, I managed to get all the pieces finally completed, to this stage:

And after much disappointed procrastination, I finally got it all sewn together this weekend.

Here's a long-winded review:
It used two different sized needles, which was an interesting experience and not altogether disastrous.
I used the recycled wool from the old brown jumper, but discovered that unpicking a machine knitted jumper that was, in fact, highly flawed in its original creation was a nightmare. It resulted in a lot of knots combining threads. Initially I'd thought these looked endearing, but after a while they just looked tatty. I've trimmed them down as best I can, but I highly suspect this will be another hand knit that falls apart in the washing machine!
Naturally, being a knit by me, the sizing was all wrong - the wool, amount available for me to use and type, and the needles which were the closest approximation I had at the time, resulted in what I hopefully called a 'cropped' effect. In the end, it's turned out longer than I'd expected, albeit still short.
The neckline was a nightmare to get right - and a nightmare I've awoken from with failure stitched to it! This is the reason I strongly suspect the *above mentioned McQueen Sweater won't fare any better!
Also, I sewed up the back incorrectly, so the wrong pattern is showing, but by the time I'd realised this the collar was already in place and I could not even begin to contemplate unpicking something that's taken me an age to complete!

Any pluses? Well, it does fit... But then it would be hard-pressed not to fit me considering it's baggy and has a very wide neckline!



- Finally, the next Recycle-balls project: I've gone back to Haiku Knits - ironically whilst watching all the tragedy unfolding in Japan yesterday - and am finally going to make a start on Snowflake:
I'm using an old polo neck jumper that I do actually like, but just never wear anymore, as I'm not as fond of high polo necks anymore. It's currently taking on a - shall we say, rustic? - look. I think rustic is my new word now; it basically means very roughly made... ;) Much of my knitting is rustic... ;)



Postscript: This morning, in the sunshine, a few more flowers and leaves appeared:

iPad the Distractor...

I can already see the black and white grainy images of the 1940s movie reel as the iPad marches down the street, awkwardly, tearing everyone away from their terribly important lives and loves... Dun dun duuuuuuuuun.

I haven't neglected my knitting, it's just been taking a bit of a back seat while I play with the new toy; a toy I had hoped might improve my knitting experience by allowing me to upload the PDF patterns on to it, rather than having to print them all out on the sly at work... That hasn't quite gone to plan. So far, the PDFs have either been too slow to trawl through, or Fast PDF has crashed out too often. I also hoped to upload photos directly on to here (iPad), but that won't happen until I purchase the requisite USB adapter... Excuses, excuses... There are also no good knitting apps! Somebody needs to get on that quick...

On the projects: mother has the green jumper, as I gave up hopelessly on understanding crochet - I'll have to get someone to teach m properly one day, since books and videos are useless and assume too much; the brow jumper is still slowly completing - possibly a weekend job. Nothing much else of any seriousness to report. I did spend part of the weekend playing with stitch styles, learning ho to knit a variety of patterns. I'm hoping all that experimentation will come in handy. Probably for scarves, let's face it... ;)


Memories of scarves past: