Violet’s dragon is the sister pattern to Dylan’s elephants, now available to buy for £2 from Ravelry:
Making progress with test knitting a larger size of Dylan’s Elephants – just starting on the first striped sleeve, after careful yarn weighing and calculating to decide which sections to do in which colours. Just crossing my fingers that the blue holds out for two striped sleeves!
I finished Ralph’s scarf (pattern: Clincher by Ash Kearns; yarn: Malabrigo sock in Ravelry Red and Knit Picks Palette in black), and he’s been wearing it around the house even though the weather is warm
And off the back of publishing the one-size version of the Dylan’s Elephants pattern, I’ve written the sized-up version (four sizes: 0-3m, 6-12m, 12-24m and 2-3y) and am test knitting one of them in an assortment of bits of left over sock yarn. If anyone reading this knows doubleknitting (or wants to learn) and has someone in their life who’s under 3 and would like an elephant cardigan, email me – I could do with another test knitter.
I designed and knit this cardigan a couple of years ago, for Dylan, who is the second son of my oldest friend. The pattern’s been lurking in my not-quite-finished pile for ages, but today I suddenly felt inspired to finish writing it up, so it’s now available to on Ravelry, for £2 – this is my first paid pattern.
Even so, there’s more to do. This is currently one-size, for a newborn, and I’m planning to add more sizes to the pattern, and there’s a ‘sister’ pattern, called Violet’s Dragon (designed for the daugher of my third-oldest friend), which is still in that unfinished pile. But for now, the doubleknit elephants are on parade!
I’ve finally updated the Ravelry pattern page to include the double-sided chart that means you can knit these sock cuffs with the text reading the right way around on both sides.
Via Flickr:
Cuff design by me. Download the charts here: www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/suffragette-socks
These are the four faces of my first suffragette cuff. Naturally, I prefer the purple side
There are some mistakes in the white side, although I’ve checked and they’re mistakes in the knitting, not in the chart, so at some point soon I’ll publish the both-sides-right-way chart to go with the simple one. (It’s very exciting publishing a pattern on Ravelry and then watching people adding it to favourites and queue!)
I’m also planning some adjustments to the chart to suit a wider range of stitch counts – it should be fairly easy to narrow the pattern in several places. And I’m thinking about serifs…
I currently only have one thing on the needles! And unfortunately, it requires too much looking-at to be practical to knit while watching TV or reading, but it’s moving along slowly:
What had brought about this strange state of affairs is finishing off two things in the last week: the dragon’s breath scarf, and the swimming coriolis. This is the scarf in its unblocked state:
And this is it held taut-ish to show the pattern off:
(That’s the edge of my Wisteria sleeve visible on the left, and the edge of Making Money by Terry Pratchett (which I haven’t yet read) on the right.)
I’m planning to only lightly block this – I like how it looks like very complex cables as it is now, and I think blocking it completely flat would lose some of its charm.
These are the swimming coriolis:
They look rather more leftovery (which they are) than I hoped, because the roll of the cast-off edge obscures most of the second band of the variegated yarn, so I’m rethinking my original intention of giving these as a gift – I don’t think they’re nice enough :-/
I’ve got various other projects (all gifts) wandering around in my head, but I haven’t got round to doing anything concrete like swatching or sketching or even winding the yarn into balls. Unusually, I want to be already knitting rather than starting to knit, which is a bit of a problem when most of my knitting time isn’t well suited to my sole current project. I’m hoping that writing this post will serve as a kind of catalyst, and prompt me to go and do one of those things, but I’m sufficiently distrustful of today’s energy levels (I’m coming down with a cold) to avoid saying that I’m going to go and start something as soon as I click “publish post”
This is the state of the Selbu Modern:
Since doing a stitch count spreadsheet for Wisteria, I seem to be hooked – I’ve done another one for this, and it’s serving the dual purpose of being a place to note which row of the chart I’ve finished, and telling me how far through I am (currently 36%).
Now I’ve got enough of it done to get a proper look at it, I’ve more-or-less decided that I prefer the dark band, and the light base colour for the pattern. Luckily, these are on the same side of the hat Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind later, which is why I’m glad I’ve made this as double knitting instead of stranded. It’s loads of fun to knit, as well – I prefer double knitting to stranding anyway – and now I’m over some early clumsiness with the pattern, I’m sailing along and only needing to look at the chart occasionally. I still need to look at my knitting most of the time, which is a bit of a pain because it limits what I can do at the same time, but it’s fun enough on its own that I mostly don’t mind.
Having finished Wisteria, even though I’m enjoying both of my other projects and finding both of them easy, interesting and quick, I started getting the urge to cast on something else. The stranded knitting on the starry kimono, and the double-knit-esque hem on Wisteria reminded me of my intention to make some non-sock thing in two-handed knitting, so I stand some chance of finishing it before I get fed up with the fiddliness of the technique. My new short hair and excursions into red in my wardrobe suggested a red hat, and after some Ravelring, I decided upon Selbu Modern. I’m double knitting this, rather than stranding it, because I couldn’t decide which way round the colours should be. Hence this two-sided swatch:
That’s only a little bit of the pattern, obviously. Just enough to measure gauge and make adjustments for the looser gauge of double knitting compared with stranded, and for the fact that the needles I wanted to use are larger than those the pattern calls for, so technically I suppose this is 7/8 of a Selbu Modern
I’ve just come back from a week roleplaying in Lincolnshire, during which I did quite a lot of knitting – my second pair of push-me-pull-you socks, for R this time (on the equivalent roleplaying holiday last year, I also made socks for him). I took this photo as I was just about to turn the heel:
The heel is progressing slowly so far, because I got my yarns mixed up and had to tink about three rows, but I think I’ve got it fixed now.