need supersedes planning

As you would know, I have a focus list of projects to work on this month. I have planned which project I will work on and in what order.

But last Monday, my quilting teacher asked all of us who knit (I’m the most obvious one) for a favour. The neo-natal unit of the local hospital is desperate for hats for the babies, mostly premature, in the humidicribs.

As a mother and a grandmother, how could I say no to such a request? My DD was born at 2.630kg (yes I still remember) – a tiny 130g over “compulsory” humidicrib weight. Younger Grandson, even though well over that weight, spent some time in critical care and was given a hat.

The pattern called for 8ply (DK) yarn and 4.00mm (US 6) needles so I thought they’d be a quick knit: 15 rounds of k2p2 rib, 16 rounds of stocking stitch then 13 rounds of decreasing.

I had told myself that I would knit one a day during February (the month of Valentine’s Day and the month of my Older Grandson’s birthday). But they take longer than I thought. One hat takes me two hours from cast-on to completely finished!

Still, a need is a need so the target date for finishing my cardigan has been pushed back.

After I took this photo, I realised the hats are supposed to have turned-back brims! Never mind, they've been knitted in the round so it won’t make any difference!

The one on the bottom right is DD', she obviously has a looser gauge than me!

Seven down, twenty-one to go!

a tale of good intentions (part 2)

Well, as I said in yesterday’s post, the past two months have been full of good intentions.

I intended to deal with most, if not all, of my UFO's but I got distracted.

I intended to make a number of things for the Charity of the Month (NSW Women’s Refuges) for March. I finished a beanie started by DD and two slouch hats (both modifications of original patterns on Ravelry). They didn’t work as well as I had hoped so I knitted one. from. the. pattern.

Yes, you read that correctly, I followed a pattern. I should have finished the hat in two days but I was away on a creative retreat at the end of March and, you guessed it, I got distracted. More of that in a later post.

The hat was finished last night. There is a deadline looming and a promise is a promise. This model has never appeared on my blog before. She is twelve years old but looks much older but it is the hat you came to see, not her.
However, there have been other distractions from UFOs and charity knitting.

The biggest distraction through March was my research of my family history. One of my great-great-grandmothers married my great-great-grandfather before she was twenty-one. Five weeks before she gave birth to their only child, great-great-grandfather James died of pleuro-pneumonia. They had been married about fifteen months. Great-great-grandmother Emma remarried several years later. She and step-great-great-grandfather George had five children. It was the descendants from that line that I was researching and I found some previously unknown cousins, some of whom I have had contact with, which has been very exciting. But I have gone as far as I can with that family line for now so I have dropped the research for a while.

Back on the crafting front (here comes the quilting, Cindy):

Last weekend, Caring Hearts Community Quilt Group, of which I am a member, held their annual Airing of the Quilts. DD and I worked at the show as volunteers on Sunday. Apparently it had been much busier on Saturday but we had a steady flow of visitors for much of the time. I worked on our fabric sale stand and had to work hard with my maths. It’s amazing how fast we lose our skills when we don’t use them all the time! Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera so have no photos of the day.

But the busy time was the lead up to “the Airing”. I had to baste, quilt (in the ditch around both sides of the turquoise sashing and about every four inches between the strips), sew in all the ends and learn how to do a binding with mitred corners; then there was ten hours of hand sewing the binding down. Now that I have learnt to do needle-turn appliqué, my hand stitching has become even finer and I found myself sewing the binding every eighth of an inch (or less)! Because I didn't take my camera, I have no photos of the finished quilt but you may remember the finished top (48” x 64”):


DD and I also finished the quilt we had on the quilting frame but, once again, I forgot to take photos and we no longer have the quilt. It turned out very well considering the troubles we had.

We also made eight wheat bags with calico (muslin) inner bags and removable cotton covers.

The other very pleasurable distraction has been my renewed interest in embroidery. I started monthly embroidery classes with my current sewing teacher on 14th March. My second class was last Wednesday (11th April). I have been enjoying it so much that I took it to “Sit and Sew” class on Monday this week instead of the project I should have been doing.

Here is my progress so far:

Stitches used: stem stitch, whipped stem stitch, back stitch, whipped back stitch, fly stitch, buttonhole stitch, lazy daisy stitch and coral stitch. Only the last was new to me, I just needed to be reminded of the others. There has been some deviation from the teacher’s pattern – I just can’t help myself! The choice of colours are my own.

My teacher is off on a tour to Canada and America next week, including a trip to Paducah, so there will be no embroidery class next month. I hope to have this project finished and sewed into a cover for either my fan heater or my cutting mat before Kerry returns.  I’ll try to remember to bring you progress reports as I continue to enjoy the process.

Now, I'm off to make some pink scrappy blocks; care to join me?

a story of good intentions (part 1)

Hello! It’s been way too long. When I don’t write on my blog, it’s very easy to form a habit of not writing on my blog! Many times I have had a great idea for a blog post but somehow, I just didn’t get to it.

I was going to write on the first day of March about how February had been my month for getting projects finished. I had written earlier in February about my “feeling flat” and that my solution to this issue was to finish some UFOs. It occurred to me that there were just to many UFOs around, and that if something were to happen to me, DD would be stuck with the task of deciding whether to finish them or throw them out. Since she can’t bear waste, she would feel obliged to finish them. We don’t knit to the same gauge so finishing my knitting projects would be a challenge, which would be made even harder by the fact that I rarely use patterns either!

So, in February I got stuck into some of my UFOs and even managed to finish a couple. The quilt and the blanket I have already shown in a previous post. These socks were started on 11th January so they could only be described as UFOs because I got second sock syndrome and cast them aside for something new!
This shawl was a WIP rather than a UFO since Ravelry shows me that I only started it on 16th February!

I am easily distracted. We had a crochet workshop at the Knitters’ Guild in mid-February and I caught the bug again. I made a small baby rug from 200g of 8ply (DK) acrylic yarn in girlie colours. I thought it was too small to be useful and too heavy for a baby (I had forgotten that crochet consumes yarn much more voraciously than knitting!). But my worst crochet nightmare came back to haunt me – it would not lie flat. I talked to the tutor of the crochet workshop. I emailed a blog-friend who crochets (Hi, Maria). I took my completed work to the LYS and asked for help. I was encouraged to block it and try my next project with less chains in the corners.

And so, of course, I began another crochet project while WM and were away in mid-March visiting Taronga Western Plains Zoo (hopefully, I’ll write a post about that later). No matter what I did, the curling continued. The acrylic yarn felt stiff and hard and, ultimately, I decided to rip out both projects. Well, actually, DD ripped out the first one for me while I fixed a problem with her knitting, and the second one sits forlornly in the frogpond! Of course, no photos were taken before ripping the first one but here are two photos of the second attempt. The second photo shows the curling problem.

 

Then, I suddenly realised that the Charity of the Month (CotM) over at Knit4Charities was for NSW Women’s Refuges. My good intentions to finish my UFOs were waylaid by my good intentions to knit a few things for this charity. While watching Castle one evening, I became aware that slouch hats were in fashion with younger women and so I looked on Ravelry for some patterns. Here is 2yo Older Grandson modelling my first attempt on varying someone’s perfectly good pattern to suit myself!
You can read my comments about my attempt on my Ravelry projects page. I haven’t taken photos of my other hats and I need to get them in the post so I doubt you’ll see any more of them.

I plan to write the second half of this post soon, but you have already seen where my good intentions lead!

hat trick

Cricket was a game that my dad loved and played well into middle age.

In cricket, a hat trick is awarded to the bowler when three batsmen are bowled or caught out from that bowler's three consecutive deliveries. Not easy to do, as you can imagine.

The term "hat trick", according to Wikipedia - the source of not always accurate information - was first used in cricket in 1878, and is now used in other sports, as diverse as soccer, lacrosse, hockey, motor racing, darts and poker!

If I had been raised in a "betting" family, I may have called my post Trifecta, so I guess by now you know that three is the essential number here! LOL

I completed three hats (we call them beanies) in three consecutive days so may I present my hat trick?

All three are variations of my "go to" pattern, which is labelled Beanie With Pompoms in Handknits to Wrap and Adorn (Ravelry link). Mine definitely do not have pompoms (nor are ever likely to!)

The first is Self Striping Beanie, which is knitted from 8ply (DK) acrylic which I hand-dyed using acid dyes. Here is the yarn in the round, so to speak,


and here is the beanie:

I love the process and products of hand dyeing but am a bit over the self striping or blotchy "pooling" effects of these yarns. This second hat, my Not So Subtle Stripes beanie, uses the left overs of the above yarn paired with a solid acrylic of unknown origin. I like the way this breaks up the pooling.

You know, it's astonishing how plastic-y acrylic feels when I have been knitting in wool for several weeks! I guess that's because it is a form of plastic!

The third beanie is my favourite of the three. It was actually the first of these three beanies to be finished but I'm one of those people who likes to leave the best till last.

I call it my Subtle Stripes beanie. It is knitted in the remainder of the variegated yarn used for my Water, Forest and Fire scarf (Ravelry link to my project page) with a ball of Moda Vera Pure wool, colour Fern.

I love the way the stripes work in this beanie and will definitely repeat this idea.

Now I understand why so many beanies turn up in the charity parcels - they are so quick and easy to knit! There's no need to repeat one to create a second one (as is the case for socks/mittens/gloves), and no boring repetitiveness (as in scarves) because they are done so quickly. In many cases, a 50g skein is enough to complete a hat so three or four hats can be made from the same amount of yarn taht is used to make one scarf.

Long live the hat - may many heads be warmed!

FO Friday

In my post on 1st March I said I would come back with photos of finished objects. I also said on Wednesday that there were items in my knitting corner that were awaiting photography! DD visited on Wednesday so photos were taken and I have some goodies to show you.

Firstly, a hat knitted by DD - her first foray into slip stitch patterns; we are both very proud of her results.


As for me (specs on my Ravelry project pages if you want them; listed here in italics):


Lime Spider and Coconut Ice beanie
pattern: Fourth Grade Hat (Rav link)

I said the striping of the yarn looked like lime and pink coconut ice; DD said Lime Spider (or icecream soda) and Coconut Ice, hence the name.

This is an attempt at conventional entrelac - I'm not in a hurry to try this style of knitting again, it's slow and seems to use more yarn than a conventional beanie would. The hat designed by Abby Franquemont looks great, mine less so. Not quite sure why - perhaps the fact that it's knitted in a hand-dyed acrylic and therefore can't be blocked is part of the answer.

Why did I choose to knit this in my handpainted acrylic? I wanted to see what the shortish colour repeats would do in shorter rows of stocking (stockinette) stitch.

I also tried to modify the pattern because it was getting too big - my modifications were not as successful as I would have liked!

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Socks for Someone #1 - a fraternal pair
pattern from the ball band of Moda Vera Noir sock yarn

My first attempt, following the pattern exactly, gave big, baggy socks that were enormous on WM! I ripped the 3/4 finished sock out completely and started again.

I have never done this kind of heel before and was reasonably happy with it, except for the hole where the short rows of the heel joined the foot. If I knitted it again I would slip the first stitch of every row while knitting the heel gussett - it is so much easier to pick up stitches along the gussett if I do that!

These took so long - Second Sock Syndrome plus no record of modifications on the first sock = pain in the knitting needles! I am determined that in future I will knit two socks at the same time; I have enough dpns to do that!

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DD and I dyed 400m (200g) of yarn in this beautiful colourway. While I was winding it into a ball, I started singing "Sunshine Lollipops" so that became the name of the yarn!

Sunshine Lollipops Scarf pattern detail

Sunshine Lollipops scarf
pattern: Drop Stitch Scarf by Christine Vogel (Rav link)

I just love, love, love this pattern - so quick to knit, so bright and cheerful (well, in the yarn I chose and in the yarn on the Ravelry pattern page). How many other patterns give you an eight feet scarf (2.4 metres) in just three days?

I knitted this one in wool. I knitted till it was 1.8 metres long. I usually knit in acrylic and forgot the magic of blocking - voila! eight feet of scarf! I will definitely be knitting this pattern again!

And I'm in good company, more than 5,000 people have this in their projects list, and another 5,000+ in their queue!

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I had some yarn left over from the scarf so I knitted a hat:

Sunshine Lollipops beanie
pattern: Slip Stitch Stash Hat by Renee Rico

If I had not been using a slip stitch pattern, I may have had enough to knit a child size hat but I decided to incorporate some scrap yarn (as the pattern suggests).

The lower third of the hat contains only the Sunshine Lollipops yarn - variegated yarns make interesting slip stitch patterns without the need to join in new colours.

slip stitch pattern detail

crown detail (a slip stitch modification on the original design)

the first of autumn

In Australia, our seasons change on the first of the month (not on the equinox as in some other countries). Today is the first day of autumn - not that it felt any different to yesterday with the temperature forecast about 32*C (92*F) with high humidity. Yet there is a promise of cooler weather ahead.

The organisation I collect knitted items for, Australian Inland Ministries, is the charity of the month in April on knit4charities, as is another event I support: Sydney's Homeless Connect Day. I'm knitting as fast as I can but, as you all know, it's never fast enough! I have revisited some long neglected projects and have knitted new ones. I only cast on a new project when I have completed a UFO so that means relatively monogamous knitting is happening here.

I am currently knitting from patterns. That is unusual for me as I either use my "go to" patterns (especially for beanies and socks) or design my own patterns. Out of curiosity, I typed "charity" into the search box on Ravelry's pattern page and was stunned to get a very large number of patterns in response! I also trawled my friends' projects/faves to add to my Ravelry queue which is now so long (for me) that I'll never knit everything that's on there!

So here are a couple of my recently finished projects:

The Campus Scarf (Ravelry Link) knitted in Moda Vera Cynthia on 4mm (US 6) needles. I modified this pattern to use only 30 stitches because 42 was too wide. My scarf is a little narrow but it's long so it can be wound around the wearer's neck twice for extra warmth.

I'm ashamed to admit it but I finally got around to putting the zipper in this Tomten jacket! How embarassing - I finished knitting this in 2009!

More about my other finshed projects when I have photos to show!