Socks!

I have signed up again for Southern Summer of Socks. Last year I didn't finish a single pair in the six months the KAL ran due to being diagnosed with a frozen left shoulder in October [no knitting for eight weeks] and a frozen right shoulder in January [no knitting for five weeks]. Gripping those tiny needles [2.25mm] is still very difficult and causes me a great deal of pain if I knit for too long. People have suggested to me that I learn to knit without moving my shoulder - I can and do but most people are not aware that the shoulder is involved even if you think it's not. I can't, for example, roll my hand over to face palm upwards due to the restriction in my shoulder. One would think that involves only the elbow and the wrist but it doesn't. I'm much better now than I was at the beginning of the year, then it was almost impossible.

Enough of the frozen shoulder problems - as I said, I've signed up for Southern Summer of Socks. Socks are great for summer knitting, they're small and light for hot weather and easily portable for travelling. I just have to remember not to knit them for too long. My sock yarn stash seems to have multiplied greatly this year; I have enough yarn to knit at least twenty pairs of socks! Even at a sock a week I can't use it all this summer!! And a week to knit a sock seems reasonable given the stress to my shoulder and forearm from knitting with small needles.

On Saturday, I ripped out a sock that had been finished for several weeks [except for the toe grafting]. I had mistakenly used provisional cast-on instead of invisible cast-on and when I pulled out the waste yarn I lost several stitches [sock yarn is so fine!]. I couldn't remember the vital statistics [no I hadn't written them down; how often do others think "I'll remember that" and later find they don't?] so I pulled the whole sock out and started again with an invisible cast-on. My Fair Lady screened on television on Sunday afternoon [man, that’s a long, but enjoyable, movie - 3 ½ hours with ads] so I spent a leisurely day in front of the television knitting about half a sock. But I paid for it later; my left forearm was so sore I could knit no longer and since I'm left handed, I couldn’t crochet either [boo-hoo]. But, here it is - the first of my Moda Vera socks. They're charity knitting - possibly for the homeless, possibly for an Aboriginal community. It depends which charity comes up first on our 2009 calendar.

This afternoon, we are off to visit the parents in Bingara [north-west NSW]. We are staying in Nundle tonight and spending the morning there tomorrow which includes a trip to the Woollen Mill [my second in six months]. Last time we went, it was only DD and I; she wants to spend more time looking around the town with her dad before she gets married in January [one last family break, so to speak]. My dad turns 80 this Friday but is having a low-key celebration. There are some jobs that need doing around their place so my WM has taken a couple of days off work to do them - that's one reason why he's a Wonderful Man!

See you when we get back!

crochet blanket

As I said in my last post, crochet is faster than knitting. There's no way I could have knitted a whole blanket [70in x 40in] and finished it in less than two weeks! That's the advantage; the disadvantage is that it uses up a lot more yarn and is therefore heavier [a minus when putting it together in warm weather]. Of course, that's a plus for the recipient on a cold night. This blanket, like most of its predecessors, will go to Wrap With Love.

And so, I present for your viewing pleasure, the [unblocked] crochet blanket.

Southern Hemisphere "Spring Fever"

I finished knitting a "Tomtem" jacket from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Without Tears months ago but I was never brave enough to insert the zipper. It all seemed way too hard. However, at the beginning of September I must have caught spring fever; I finished a few projects that had been hanging around. Inserting the zip was pretty easy really, once I got my needle through the thick end of the zipper tape.

Anyhow, here it is - my very first completed Tomten.
[I know there's been one in my FO list all year but it got there by mistake - it still has no zipper! I've removed it from my FO list!]

I also finished the striped blanket and a baby cardigan which had also been hanging around for weeks [no photos; it was given away without any being taken]. Now there's just the matter of the summer cardigan to finish and SSS [for two pairs] to overcome! It's those tiny 2.75mm needles that put me off! LOL

Then there'll only be recently cast-on projects in progress: a cotton baby blanket for my neighbour who is expecting her first child in February and another blanket for Wrap with Love, this time made of 28 crocheted 10inch squares. Crochet is so fast compared to knitting! But don't worry, I haven't given up knitting; I'm just taking a short detour while I decide what to cast on next! I desperately want to knit lace but what and for whom? Nobody I know is a lace person and it's not the most practical style for charity knitting. Ah! Decisions, decisions!

Beary special

We finished 16 bears to give to my contact for Operation Christmas Child. DD and I knitted, WM sewed and stuffed [and occasionally knitted scarves], I did the finishing [faces and attaching scarves]. I would have liked to have made 19 teddies in memory of my Nanna who passed away 19 years ago [12 October 1989] but we ran out of time. It was Nanna who made my first teddy who still graces us with his presence. Apparently he arrived from England soon after my birth, stuffed in an OXO cube box! In 1986 he was beheaded and restuffed for the arrival of DD [the first grandchild and great-grandchild].
When she marries next year, she will not be taking him - I will keep him here with me and will consider passing him on to my first grandchild when the time comes!

The saga of a blanket

Back in May, I took an entrelac knitting workshop. Sometime in July, I cast on for an entrelac blanket. The blankets I knit are for Wrap with Love and measure 70 inches by 40 inches. It soon became apparent that a blanket knitted in squares 10 stitches by 20 rows would become very monotonous so I did what I always do in this situation - redesign!

I decided to have one panel of entrelac, one panel of stripes, repeated for the length of the blanket. I finished the first entrelac panel. I picked up stitches along one edge and started the stripes. One word - yuk!

But I was not defeated! I carefully separated the two panels by unpicking the cast on edge [I wasn't going to undo 8 inches of stripes, was I? LOL] I threaded in some waste yarn and continued knitting stripes. I'd figure out what to do with the entrelac strip later.

I soon had an idea that the blanket was not wide enough – I measured: sure enough, it was only 26 inches wide; 14 inches too narrow. No problem – I would knit a border around the stripes! So I continued on my merry way, knitting stripes until the strip was 14 inches short of 70 inches [that’s 56 inches folks; this English teacher can do maths! LOL]

Now, faced with an ever increasing [in length] border, I decided that a border of little squares [10 stitches by 20 rows] was the way to go. I could knit two lengths the same as the striped strip [try saying those last two words 10 times quickly] then pick up the stitches on the waste yarn and the not-cast off end to knit the top and bottom strip of squares. This worked very well but, now that’s it’s finished, I wish I’d put a plain border between the stripes and the squares. Ah well, we live and learn, don’t we?

To finish off the blanket, I did several rows for a border: [K1 row, change colour, K 1 row, P 1 row, change colour] 3 times, K 1 row, P 1 row. Voila! A very pretty striped border and a nice finish with the mitred corners.

And what of the original entrelac strip? Some of it was unpicked to make little squares and the rest of it is in the frog pond waiting for the next time I need short pieces of yarn!

Beary interesting production line!

Recently I found a new pattern for knitting teddies. For the past few years, I have knitted teddies from the Trauma Teddy pattern I found at the local library. You can see some of my previous bears here [scroll down a bit]. This was the pattern I was experimenting with in a previous post. My experimental bear worked very well - I knitted him in "double knitting"; that is knitting a tube on two straight needles by casting on an even number of stitches, *K1, yf, slip 1 purlwise, yb* and repeating that to the end of the row, turning the work and keep repeating. At the arms I simply transferred the stitches to the appropriate needles and used a third needle to knit the chest and back to-and-fro. I knitted the arms as tubes too and knitted them into the bear while doing the chest/back. I then went back to double knitting for the head and closed the head with Kitchener stitch [grafting] after stuffing the bear. I think it was successful because he doesn't look too different from the bear I knitted the conventional way and spent much longer sewing up! LOL

Anyway - the new pattern was found in The Friendship Crochet and Knitting Book which can be bought from the Ku-ringai Branch of Knitters' Guild NSW. These bears are smaller and have much prettier heads! The pattern consists of two flat pieces [knitted on straight needles] then sewn together. I have tinkered with the design and am now knitting in the round on two straight needles.
And here's where the production line mentioned in the title began. I couldn't quite understand the 'making up' instructions after completing the knitting. I asked WM, who enjoys the occasional challenge of origami when we have Japanese visitors, and he worked it out for me. I knitted and he sewed up the bears! He looks very awkward but the job gets done and who am I to complain if he does the sewing for me? Then last Friday we took one step further. His mother taught him to knit when he was a child; last week he knitted a scarf for one of the teddies! It's the brown scarf on the bear in front. Admittedly, I cast on and off but he did the two rows [144 stitches] of garter stitch. He says he did not enjoy it and it won't continue but send good thoughts/prayers our way and you never know...