Recently in Knitting Category

I meant to get a second post in for July, but I wanted a photo in the sun of the finished Moonlight Sonata Shawl and the sun was not cooperative before I went out yesterday. So let's see if I manage to post more than once in August...

I have actually finished TWO projects in the last week. First off the needles was the Fruit Loop socks. Apart from modelling them for the photo below, I haven't worn them yet. I will in the next few days though.



Second off the needles was the Moonlight Sonata Shawl. I had wanted to knit 10-12 repeats of Chart 2 of this pattern. After 10 repeats, I had 25 grams of yarn left. I thought I would be fine to do one more repeat and the edging. I did have enough yarn for repeat 11, but then had only 7 grams left and could only have manage two rows of garter before casting off, instead of the 6 rows of garter the pattern called for. After a bit of denial and a look at various people's projects on Ravelry, I concluded that the 6 rows of garter were essential to the look, and two rows just weren't going to cut it. So I ripped back 2 rows of garter and the 11th repeat - three evening's work, without a lifeline (I should have put one in...) and knit the border properly. I'm glad I bit the bullet and did it, because the simple border is very effective.

I expected the yarn to lose dye when I gave it a soak before blocking, due to the crocking I mentioned in my last post, but it didn't really lose much at all. So I'm hoping most of the excess dye had already come off the yarn on to my fingers and there won't be any further problem. I still don't like the feel of the yarn, so I probably won't buy it again. There are so many yarns out there right now that there is no reason to knit one you don't like more than once!

The finished shawl is 127 cm across and 66 cm deep - a little smaller than I was hoping for, but a good size for wrapping around my neck, like my Flower Basket Shawl.



I cast on another pair of sock - this one in the Madelinetosh Tosh Sock, colour "Duchess". The pattern is a simple slip stitch one that gives it some texture, though it is mainly hidden by the darkness of the colourway. I'm loving the richness of this yarn and will probably seek out more of it after these socks are done.



I don't think I'll cast on more lace just now. The Kundalini Cardi is being neglected with all its monotonous stocking stitch, so I think I'll have to ration the knitting time and do a set amount of the cardi before the sock each evening to get some progress happening on the cardi. It's fairly predictable that the cardi will be finished about the time it becomes too warm to wear it!

I really should work on blogging more often. But I prefer to get on and do rather than write about doing... I'm over the whole pneumonia/influenza now, and it's school holidays, so I have been 'doing' the 'doing'.

The Kundalini Woolganics Cardi is coming along nicely - I'm below the bust line heading for the waist. It is all stocking stitch though, so it is my mindless knitting project at the moment. It is a bit longer than in this picture below.



I have also been plodding along on a pair of Froot Loop socks in the Dream in Color Smooshy Cloud Jungle yarn from the frogged Leyburns. I started these just before I fell ill two months ago and have typically knit a pattern repeat per day most days. The first sock is finished and its mate has just had the heel turned.



Between the cardi and the socks, I wasn't feeling challenged enough, so I cast on another lace shawl - the Moonlight Sonata Shawl in Dream in Color Starry in the colour "Black Pearl". The yarn is 'interesting' - it is labelled as "98% superfine Australian merino superwash, 2% silver fibres". It feels kind of like acrylic to me, and it is crocking too, so after 4-5 rows I have black fingers. I'm not really worried by it as I expect it will feel nicer and stop crocking once I give it a good bath before blocking. The pattern was a real bugger to start with - perhaps it isn't right to have complaints when the pattern is free, but Chart 2 was a nightmare for the first few repeats. The instructions are also written out, so I followed them for the first repeat, then switched to the chart. It wasn't until the third repeat that I realised there were three different double decrease methods - I hadn't picked S2KP and SK2P were not the same thing. I didn't bother ripping back because I honestly can't tell the difference! I colour-coded about 10 of the 12 or so symbols on the chart with textas so I could keep track. I've finished 7 repeats, but the photo below is from half way through the sixth. I'm hoping to do at least 10-12 repeats in total, or more if this ball of yarn will go that far. The silver does give it sparkle, but it is hard to capture in a photo.



I have been spinning too, with the aim of doing a little each day (oops! I missed yesterday!). I'm spinning up 100 grams of the merino/silk blend I bought at Ashford last December, which I will probably ply with some natural grey merino from the stash. Sorry, I haven't got a photo of the single on the bobbin. Maybe next post.

I can't quite believe I knit an entire shawl in just under two weeks. Admittedly I wasn't working in those two weeks, and the yarn certainly wasn't lace weight, but it wasn't a small shawl either (finished size 210cm x 70 cm).



The shawl is based on the Gaia pattern (Ravelry link), though I made many modifications, so who knows, it may actually resemble some other pattern unintentionally. I omitted the reverse stockinette; made the eyelet rows without bordering them with knit rows except on the bind-off edge; and I made a shallow, broad triangle by doing 4 st increases on RS rows AND 2 st increases on WS rows with the WS row increases knit through back of stitch on RS rows. The eyelet rows were positioned by whim, since the colour transitions in the yarn were too frequent.



I've been wearing this shawl most of the week, despite the fact I now have enough shawls to wear a different one for each day of the week! I wore it to WWKIP day in The Rocks yesterday too. I'm really happy with the yarn, particularly as I spun it myself, and the heavier weight of this shawl makes it a delight for really cold weather. It definitely proved to be the right choice on Friday when we had an evacuation at school.

Speaking of school, I returned last Monday and managed (just) through the whole week. I'm still on antibiotics and had another chest x-ray on Tuesday (which I assume was fine or I'd have been contacted). The long weekend is very welcome!

I have now started another cardigan, with raglan sleeves this time. I've decided that round yokes like on the Tea Leaves Cardigan (which I really should get a good photo of) and Tangled Yoke Pullover don't suit my shape and are not as comfortable as raglan shaping, like my worn-out, favourite black cardi or the modified Mr Greenjeans. So this cardigan will be somewhat like Mr Greenjeans, with more stocking stitch, a lace panel at the bottom and moss stitch bands. The yarn is Woolganic Organic Merino 8ply in "Kundalini".



Visitors to my blog (as opposed to reading through an aggregator) may have noticed that the work in progress bars have changed - they are now linked to Ravelry so are updated more readily. One of these days I will finally fix the title bar - I've always intended that the big white areas either side of the text would be filled in. One day.

Being ill has benefited my knitting as I simply haven't had the energy for much else. But before I became ill, I knit the Alpaca/Gotland yarn I spun at the end of the holidays into a pair of wrist warmers. The yarn was a bit over spun, but the resulting wrist warmers fit the bill perfectly and will get plenty of wear this Winter.



The Tea Leaves Cardigan is almost complete. I need to reknit both cuffs as I forgot to change needle size and they are a bit loosey-goosey. Then it is just a matter of weaving in all the ends and blocking it. The photo below is from about 4-5 days ago. The body is longer, and I even had enough yarn to put a ruffle along the lower edge. A few things trouble me about it though - the hand spun yarn is a little uneven, and the last few balls tended to be thinner than the yarn the yoke was knit with. It seems mostly okay, but the area in the front between the armscyes and button band are a bit too ruffled and don't sit right. I'm hoping the neck edge has been a bit stretched during knitting and the blocking will help sort it all out. Or I may be wishing too much from blocking. There's no way of knowing other than to simply try it.



As much as I like the look of these round-yoked cardigans, I think raglan sleeves suit my shoulder shape better and I ought to steer clear of the round-yokes.

I am also knitting Fruit Loop socks in the Dream in Color Smooshy in Could Jungle. This was the yarn I used for the Leyburn socks, but hated them so much that I frogged it. The Fruit Loops are better, but I keep forgetting to get a photo...

Baby blanket the third was gifted to my work colleague today in my absence. There was never any surprise that there was going to be a blanket after blanket one and blanket two. So the surprise this time around is that no one at work knew anything much about what this one looked like.

I chose to knit the "Tweed Baby Blanket" by Jared Flood. The intention was to knit the centre in dove grey and the border in blue/purple if it was a boy, pink/green if it was a girl or green/purple if it was unknown. As with the previous blankets, Bendigo Woollen Mills 8 ply cotton was used for its excellent weight, stitch definition and washability. The yarn does not come in grey. It doesn't come in blue/purple/green/pink shades that appeal to me either. It was dye pot time.

I'm good at getting strong colours on cotton with Procion MX dyes, as proven before with the second blanket and other garments like Daniel's jumper and Charlotte's Anouk. But black and pale colours have been problematic. I knew my "black" dye was actually bluish, and so would not come out grey at reduced colour saturation. I had bought a grey dye ages ago, but had never used it. Still, I threw 400 grams of cotton in a dye pot with the grey dye and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, what I got was not grey and too dark (below left). I didn't leave it in the dye bath for the usual duration, because I hoped to reduce the depth of shade. That didn't work. So I put another 400 grams in a new dye bath of much reduced strength. Still not grey, but actually a quite nice pale blue (below right).



I had to abandon all attempts at dyeing grey cotton. I could have knitted the two shades of blue, something like the two shades of grey used in the original blanket, but I feared if it was not a boy then it would suffer an identity crisis in a blue blanket! I came up with a new scheme - the centre would be in the colour "Parchment" that Bendigo does. The border colours would remain the same, and the pale blue I already had could be used as is, and some of the extra could be over-dyed to make the green or the purple and the only additional dyeing required might be for pink. I began knitting the centre panel before school started in January.

On returning to school, my colleague said she was not going to find out the baby's sex before birth. So I split 200 grams of the pale blue into two skeins, and over-dyed each to get purple and green. The day after the dyeing was done, she had a scan, and it was very evident it is a boy. Never mind - I liked the green and purple so much that I stuck to my revised plan.

The garter centre panel was tedious. I enlarged it to 221 sts on the diagonal so that there were nine pattern repeats of the border on each side rather than six, as cotton has less give than wool and would not block very large. It took 339 grams of cotton to make a 78 cm square. The border was a delight to knit but became tense towards the end as I nearly didn't have enough of the purple. The bind off was supposed to be icord, which is very yarn-hungry. I modified it to a suspended bind off (*K2tog tbl, pass stitch from right to left needle* repeat to end) and had just 4 metres of the purple left over (98 grams of purple, 41 grams of green used). The final size is about 90 cm square.

I got a picture message on my phone earlier of the happy recipient!