Long time no blog

Over a month ago, I was half-heartedly whining about having only one thing on the needles, and the need to go and cast on for something else. Now I once again only have one thing on the needles (the same thing - selbu modern, which I've hardly touched in the meantime), but in between I have knit lots of things. My course kindly provides the required reading in A4-photocopies, which are conveniently flat, making it easy to knit and read at the same time as long as I choose my knitting carefully, and I've been doing a lot of reading since I last blogged. Sadly, I haven't yet worked out how to blog and read at the same time.

Immediately after hitting 'publish post' on my last post, I did indeed go and start preparing to start something else - I wound some handspun yarn (peacock) into a ball and started swatching. I'd been thinking for a while that this wanted to be a scarf in a peacock-tail lace pattern, and now it is! (Although it still needs blocking...)



While knitting the scarf, I decided that I really needed a new hat. This is my own design, although I misjudged the width of the ribbing - it's this wide so I can fold back the hem, but I don't like how it looks folded, so I wear it unfolded and covering most of my face ;-) I'm planning to make another, with less ribbing, and then perhaps publish the pattern (heh, I'm always saying that and never do. Eventually!) The hat got christened on a very rainy Reclaim the Night march, and kept my head warm and toasty and dry throughout, so I am declaring it a success!



When I said I only had one thing on the needles, I was using a rather strict definition of the term, because one of the off-the-needles things is a single mitten, the pair for which I'm going to cast on next. This is a modified version of Susie's reading mitts, worked upside down, with a different gauge and thumb gusset, and with the hem edges knit into the fabric rather than sewed down later. The lace pattern, which was drew me to the mitts in the first place, is unaltered :-)



I spun the yarn for this over my birthday weekend, having given myself the weekend off all study-work and work-work (I'm still behind on both kinds of work because of this, but it's an article of faith that I don't work on my birthday). The yarn is rather more brown than I usually like, but I think the colours suit the pattern, and I'm enjoying how the colour shifts in different kinds of light, looking sometimes more purple, sometimes more brown, and sometimes more grey. This is chain-plyed to keep the colour changes intact, but I've got half of the fibre still unspun, so I think I'll two- or three-ply that to see the difference in finished colours. I'm getting quite interested in achieving different colour effects in finished yarn from the same fibre, and I've got some ideas about other ways to play with this, which I'll blog about if I get round to doing it before I lose interest in the idea!

If this doesn't sound like quite enough knitting in a month to be called 'lots', it's because about half of my November knitting has been on gifts for people who might conceivably read this blog, so the rest will have to stay unblogged until after Christmas!

Project promiscuity (swimming Coriolis)

While knitting Wisteria, I've also done some other knitting...


After I'd finished the heel (eye of partridge, which looks gorgeous with this yarn) of the first sock, I weighed the remaining yarn, and discovered that it's not going to be enough for two full socks, so I immediately put the live stitches on waste yarn and cast on for the second sock with the other end of the ball. These will have contrast legs, but I haven't decided on yarn for them yet. The available one that goes best is the dark red Dream in Colour Smooshy that went with this yarn for the push-me-pull-you socks, but there's more of that leftover - probably actually enough for a whole pair - so I'm reluctant to use it. None of my other sock yarn goes as well, so these might end up being very short socks. On the other hand, the DiC is a suspect in a hat-in-planning I'm thinking about, which would probably leave enough to finish off these socks...

Knitting while camping

Just back from a weekend of camping, swimming and knitting (report on the camping and swimming on my personal blog, and photos on Flickr), during which J and I both cast on for coriolis - she wanted to try a toe-up sock and had beautiful but very dark and rather subtle yarn, and I wanted some simple, portable camping knitting, so coriolis suited both of us. We spent a lot of time sitting at the tent or on the riverbank knitting, and both got to about halfway through the spiral increases. We're planning to cast on the second ones together at the Reading Festival in a couple of weeks (even if we haven't finished the first by then), so these should probably be called my "camping socks", but the swimming trip was so much fun it's taking precedence, and I'm calling them "swimming coriolis".



(This is the variegated yarn I used in my push-me-pull-you socks, but it's so much more beautiful on its own.)

And it's done!

The starry baby kimono, also for Thursday, is now finished! I'm really happy with it, especially the icord ties, for some reason.





Now, what to knit next...

Baby things are surprisingly small

...Yeah, I know. And the pope shits in the woods.

After saying I might get a pair of mittens out of the green-and-orange combo when I'd finished Tomten and the jester hat, I realised that I really should weigh the remaining yarn and work out how much of it was left. It was more than I thought:



This is the seamless baby kimono, with added colourwork - the large star at centre-back is intarsia (apart from the points at the bottom, which are stranded), and the band of small stars are stranded. The light-green-and-orange doesn't work very well from a contrast point of view, because the colours are too similar in brightness, but it was fun knitting it, and has reminded me that even though I'm evidently incapable of maintaining motivation for stranded knitting for two socks, I do enjoy it in smaller amounts.

Since taking the photo, I've finished the body, and am now working on both sleeves in parallel, because I'll be finishing them on fumes and I want the stripes to match. Sadly there's not enough yarn left to do a band of the smaller stars on the sleeves as well.

Green and orange and some more green

Tomten is now finished, apart from the buttons and button loops. I'm trying to source some green plastic toggles for this, but I can't finish the icord trim until I know what I'm doing about fastenings.



Despite being made of the same yarn, at the same gauge, the jester hat doesn't match the hoodie at all, which is good and nicely avoids the absurdity of making a hat to go with a hoodie ;-)



I might make some little pom-poms for the corners of this, and I've got a fair chunk of yarn left, so I'll probably make some mittens as well.

Making speedy progress

I've now finished the body and the hood of Tomten (sewing in the ends as I go); only the sleeves left to do!

The opposite of lost mojo...

...Is what happens when I have loads of ideas for things I want to do, and I flit manically between them, unable to settle on anything for long enough to make decent progress ;-)



My second package arrived today, and I've swatched and started knitting EZ's Tomten, for Thursday (which is what we're calling my oldest friend's child-to-be). I love knitting baby things - they're small and quick, and I get to knit with bright colour combinations that most of the other people I knit for wouldn't wear.

Kraken!

On Saturday I was suddenly struck with sea-green inspiration...


(More images and more detail available under my Kraken tag on Flickr.)

A weekend of socks

In between watching the Watchmen, eating sushi, shopping, hanging out with frineds and watching a lot of console gaming, I spent this weekend knitting these:

I need to weigh a finished sock to see if there's enough yarn left to make three complete pairs - it looks promising :-)

What a nice package to come home to!

Research on Rav suggests that this yarn - Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in 'jungle stripe' - will make fairly broad actual stripes. I'm quite pleased that I remembered to check, since I've been disappointed with the way space-dyed yarn has knit up in the past, and stripes was definitely what I wanted. This will probably be Coriolis, with no further calculation required since I store master numbers for all my New Pathways socks in my clever calculatey spreadsheet, and can just look up what I did last time. Hoorah for Cat Bordhi!

The non-yarn in the package is extras for my Harmony interchangeable needles: two new cables (one short and one long), three new pairs of needles (two large and one small), and the cable connectors that I've been mourning the lack of; these needles can now do everything my Denises can!