Recently in Knitting Category

School has been all-consuming since restarting. Adding to the busy-busy has been Year 7 Camp - a week of preparing the lessons for my classes in my absence, a week of rain and Sun and tents and too much heat and humidity, and a week spent chasing my tail trying to catch up to how things should be. That would be this week. Throw in a few storms, blocked storm water pipes, a lawn that desperately needed mowing - I could go on and on here, but I'm sure you get the picture.

Calli had to go into boarding for the week. I was away from early Monday morning to Friday afternoon, but the cattery hours meant she had to stay Saturday to Saturday. I finished Ishbel quite fortunately at knitting group on the Saturday afternoon after dropping her at the cattery. So I was able to block it on Sunday in her absence. No wrestling the blocking wires from her or messing with the T-pins or sitting on the knitting I'm trying to block.

Of course, lace looks awful before blocking:



While blocking:



I left it to block while I was on camp, so there was no "is it dry yet?" bother. I forgot all about it until my return. Since then it has sat around waiting for an opportunity to photograph it in suitable light. After work today, I finally found a moment to take a photo I'm happy with.



One thing I can share from what we did at camp was to make bracelets and necklaces from twisted reeds. I understood the principle of what we were doing straight away from spinning. It was quite flexible when wet, but is stiff and has shrunk a bit on drying. I was very happy with my beaded bracelet.



Calli didn't like boarding. She's over it now, thankfully, and it won't happen often. I missed her on the nights I was home but she was not. She might get to stay at my sister's in future - sadly Oscar, her cat of 16 years, passed away the day after Calli went into boarding.

I had a little knitting time while on camp, but virtually none since getting back, so the latest baby blanket is progressing slowly. The dyeing was eventually completed, but the story behind that will have to wait until after the gifting.

It is too hot to be wearing sock, but I finished these Jaywalkers this morning.


I have also been spinning the Angorino, filled a bobbin and chain plied it. I'm very happy with how it is turning out - I'm after long stretches of colour. They show up well on the bobbin:


But the skein looks very different.



About a third of the fibre is spun. I would have done more today, but the wheel is being temperamental and I find the best way of fixing it is to come back tomorrow!

I have also been dyeing more cotton this morning. The particular colour (which I won't name as it is part of a surprise) is one of my dyes I haven't used before and I underestimated its strength. So 546 grams (2 cones Bendigo 8 ply plus one ball of Lion cotton) of yarn are consequently much darker in colour than I wanted. I'm waiting for it to dry before I decide what to do next. Partly because colours are always darker when wet, and partly because I have run out of soda ash and can't do any more dyeing until I've got more.

I have a week and a half before I go back to school. It is too hot to do half the things I ought to be doing!

Dunedin to Nelson

Back on the road again, heading North. I stopped at the Moeraki Boulders, where the tide was out and there were tourists all over the place.



At Oamaru I stumbled across Enterprise Beads and bought some strings of beads for knitting and some spinning wheel charms I will make into earrings. Nothing else terribly interesting on this stretch, since I'd visited Ashburton already coming South. On Wednesday night I stayed in Rangiora.



The Jaywalker socks reached the turning of the heel.

Thursday morning was clear and sunny. I made a last minute decision to take Lewis Pass to Nelson and return on Saturday by the coastal route, rather than the other way around, because the weather forecast for Saturday was not looking good. Mind you, the mountain tops were still hidden by cloud (it's a conspiracy against me!) and road works prevented my stopping at one scenic lookout.

At Brightwater I visited Hallblacks - another supplier of natural coloured fleeces, but she has also got a good range of commercial yarns, and, if it's your thing, lots of novelty yarns including some I've never seen before (maybe that's not hard since I don't usually look for 'dead muppet').



I chatted to Mary, the owner, for quite some time as she is a former English teacher and we were discussing education systems (among other things). I bought a prepared half fleece from a Lincoln lamb by the name of 'Curious'. Apparently the other half of Curious's fleece was purchased by a Melbourne chorister.


After a quick visit to the Visitor Information Centre, I checked into my hotel in Nelson. From my room I had a lovely view of the Church spire.

- Originally posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Fourth term is moving at a fast pace, as it must being a short seven weeks long. But for my HSC (2010) class, the same amount of work has to be squeezed in... One week remains, then two staff days, then I'm jetting off to New Zealand for two weeks. Can't wait.

Two weeks ago, the Ribbons Baby Blanket looked like a big blob, and I had no idea if I was going to have to do a fifth colour sequence of stripes or not to reach the desired size. I was hoping not as each round was taking at least 45 minutes, and it would have meant not being finished before my colleague went on maternity leave.



I tried adding a second circular needle so I could stretch out the knitting and measure it, but couldn't get the length I needed (I had some Knit Pro cable connectors on order, but they hadn't arrived). So I put three sides of the blanket on scrap yarn, leaving the fourth on the needle, and stretched it out on the spare bed.



Calli came to see what I was up to, and immediately sat on the blanket and tried to doze off. It had the Calli seal of approval. And the blanket was big enough too. I finished that stripe then started the edging - a sequence of 2 rows of garter of each of the four colours, then the first colour again, then cast off. Throughout the blanket I only changed colours on a knit row so that all the colour changes were crisp on the right side - so the first row of each reverse stocking stitch stripe was knit. At each corner, the yarn overs on every second round were knit/purled through the back of the stitch on the subsequent round to close them. There were two stitches between each increase at the corners, but in the border they became 4, 6, 8, 10 and then 12 stitches apart, resulting in a more rounded corner. Here's the right side:



And the wrong side:



The cast off took about three hours over two nights. No special cast off. I'm amazed I got it so even and the right tension first try, but I was careful as I had no desire to rip back and cast off c. 700 stitches a second time. Then there was another evening spent weaving in the ends, then it was washed and dried. It gave off a little dye - nothing too bad and not more than I expected (the skeins were not washed to the point of no dye coming off them straight after dyeing). The finished product:





Done with six days to spare, the finished blanket was gifted on Thursday to my colleague, and was very much a surprise.

Wouldn't you just know, I have to start another blanket after Christmas? Since this one isn't what you could class a "surprise", I am concealing all details (colour, design) until it is gifted. I will only say that the cotton has been purchased... I do not foresee more than this one further blanket in the near future. I hope.

Not sure if I'll blog again before going away or while I'm away. I've just downloaded BlogPress for my iPhone to give a try. Next weekend will be busy with visiting my parents, who will be Calli-minding (they love having their "grandcat" visit). I may tweet some "postcards" while I'm gone and maybe some posts, but otherwise, I'll post about the trip when I return.

The house is finally resembling some sort of order both inside and (amazingly) outside now, so I have the chance to update my knitting progress.

I have plodded away on the "not Calvert" cardigan since April, putting it down while I finished a baby blanket, picking it up again in the July break, putting it down again while I packed and moved, and finally picking it up again and plodding on to the finish line in the middle of the school holidays just gone. A trip to All Buttons Great and Small in Newtown and an afternoon at SSK sewing on four perfect buttons finished the job.



I have been wearing the finished product off-and-on over the last two weeks with Sydney's changeable weather, and I'm very happy with the resulting garment. The yarn, Sublime's extra fine merino 8 ply, was not cheap. I bought more than I needed for Calvert, being unaware that Berroco add an extra margin to their published yarn requirements. So I had added an extra extra margin. So I had 18 balls. I used 14 balls, but not very much of the 14th. The leftovers will make a child's jumper somewhere down the track. The yarn was well worth it though - beautifully soft, it holds stitch definition well, and is pilling only very lightly (I expect this will settle down). Ripping out Calvert and starting over was a very good decision.

The pattern I based the cardigan on is Mr Greenjeans. I changed the cable and rib to 'Double Lace Rib' (p129 The Harmony guides Lace and Eyelet Stitches Erika Knight ed.2007), and it is this feature that seems to generate the most positive comments. I made the neckline a tad wider than it perhaps should be and the V-neck is a bit lower than I would have liked, so if I wear the cardigan over a summer shirt, it tends to slip off my shoulders a little. No problem with my winter tops which seem to grab the knitting more, preventing this.



I'm now planning another cardigan in a lighter yarn (4 plyish) and open lace pattern for summer wear (I wonder when, since there is already so much on my mental to-do list!).

My current knitting is another baby blanket, for another expecting work colleague. The first one was so well received, it seemed somehow wrong not to do the same again. Well, not the same, since that would drive me insane (the zig zags were annoying me by the end of that last one!). The baby's sex is not known, so I decided on bright colours. Which meant dyeing up some Bendigo cotton. I couldn't find my dyeing records folder (and still can't!), but mixed up the colours and ran with it anyhow and am very pleased with what came out of the dyebath.



The "pattern" is the Ribbons Baby Blanket, though I haven't actually got a copy since it is pretty easy to work out what to do. I started out doing all stocking stitch though, and that didn't work - it wasn't going to come out as a flat blanket. So I had to rip back and start again in the alternating stocking stitch/reverse stocking stitch stripes. I changed my increasing method too, which is also helping make it more square. I'm back to the same stripe I was on last Thursday when I ripped back.

The big challenge will be finishing it before she goes on maternity leave - in six weeks' time. I couldn't start sooner because of moving house and really wanting to finish the cardigan. It will either be tight or not achieved. I can manage to finish it by her due date in early February though. I may regret working in the round - as I know from the pinwheel sweater, those rounds get *very* long!