Sheep in Snow

I didn't manage to knit a lot of sock last week, as we were on holiday in Southern Poland. I did about half a dozen rounds at the airport waiting for our transfer, and about three more rounds one evening when we had a bit of time to spare between getting to the hostel and going out for dinner. So I'm still working on the sock and have nothing yet to show you - in the meantime, I have some sheep related photos from our trip.

Never leave home without your sheep totem

Mt Turbacz 1360m (not many sheep here - they're all down the pub)

Sheep keeping warm - it was minus 14degC outside!

Traditional Highlander sheep cheese presses in Zakopane Museum

Old shepherd's hut in the forest

Monkey see, monkey do

My next project is to be a pair of Monkey socks - it seems like ages since I've made socks and it is also my knitting group's first KAL of 2011. Which yarn to use can be a tough decision - solid colours can look dull on plain socks and a variagated sock yarn that is very pretty on the skein can be surprisingly tricksy to match up to a pattern. Have a look at my Bayerische socks and you'll know how I know this.

So to help me decide, I had a browse of the Monkeys posted on Ravelry - and there are over 13,000 of them. I am SO late to this party that I should be carrying a bin bag and a pair of Marigolds for the morning after tidy up. As well as looking at the favourited projects to see which ones came out really nicely, I think it is equally worthwhile taking a look at the frogged pond to see what turned out, erm, less than satisfactory. For a start, there aren't nearly as many.

I decided that a lightly varigated yarn suits this pattern and started with some Jawoll Magic in greens.

Blending in quite well here on the blog

I got the Jawoll on Tuesday on a birthday trip into Manchester (birthdays are for spending time with friends and buying yarn, not being at work) and also picked up some gorgeous Malabrigo sock yarn, with which I am planning to make a Gail (Nightsongs) shawl.

Lily of the Valley

Pattern: Lily of the Valley Scarf by Nancy Bush, Knitted Lace of Estonia
Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Lace - alpaca, silk, cashmere
Colour: 6977
Used: 1x 50g skein
Needles: 3.75mm Addi Lace circular needle
Mods: Did 10 repeats of central lace pattern

Pinning it out for blocking took a while, and a hell a of lot of pins - I think I need to invest in some blocking wires. This photo was taken first thing in the morning and came out very blue indeed, the second picture of the finished scarf is how the colour really is.

And finished with over a month to spare before my aunt's birthday - not like me at all. The Manos lace yarn is a joy and the is pattern fun and quick, I loved having so few stitches on the needle. Yes, there are nupps, but the Addi lace needles make them pretty easy.

And very pretty they are, too.

Lace Repeat Roulette

My Aunt is a very good knitter but, apart from a foray into the books of Kaffe Fassett in the 80s which introduced her to the wonders of colourwork, never really ventured outside of her knitting comfort zone. At New Year, I mentioned the world of online yarn shops, patterns and communities, and the look of horror on her face at the thought of using a computer actually surprised me. We were talking about knitting and making lace, as my Step-Mum makes lovely, very complicated looking stuff with bobbins that is very impressive and my knitted lace shawls were much admired - I had my fiery shawl with me and Diane had brought with her the Forest Canopy I'd made for her. Having had my work so admired, I thought I would make my Aunt a shawl as a birthday present - her birthday is at the end of March so there would be plenty of time for even a slow-coach like myself to get it done in time. Using the Manos Lace bought just a few weeks back, I cast on for a Lily of the Valley scarf from Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush. I love the delicate pattern and the fineness of the yarn, so pretty in pale grey.


The pattern said 9 repeats of the lily and small flower centre chart, but the scarf still seemed quite short at that point, so I thought I would push my luck and see if I could get another repeat out of the skein of Manos Lace. My luck was in. Hurrah!

Hearty Tomato and Chickpea Soup

It is raining, grey and depressing outside. Inside there is warmth, knitting of lace (more on this later) , coffee and chocolate orange, and making of soup. I made this for lunch today and while we were eating it decided that it was good enough to write the recipe down so I could make it again some time. Sadly, by the time I decided it was nice enough to go on the blog there wasn't enough of it left to take a decent photo of, so I've just written it down and you'll have to trust me.

1 tablespoon butter or buttery marg type stuff
1 tablepoon olive oil
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
2 sticks celery
4 radishes
1 small tin chickpeas
1/2 hot red chilli
some tomato puree (about 2" from a tube)
400g can of rich chopped tomatoes
about 1/2 can of water
1 teaspoon reduced salt bouillion powder
some dried basil
small cup of milk with a pinch of baking soda mixed in
few grinds of black pepper

Heat butter and oil together and add roughly chopped onion and garlic, chopped celery and radishes. Chuck in drained and rinsed chickpeas. Chop chilli into very small pieces, add them in. When the onion is softened, stir in the tomato puree and let it cook for 5 minutes. Then add in the tin of tomatoes and water used to rinse out the can. Add in milk and powder, herbs and pepper. Cover, bring to boil and let it simmer for a while, about 10 minutes. Ladle out a bowl full of the chunky soup and whizz up the rest with a hand blender. Return the chunks and reheat if necessary. Serve with crusty bread and a swirl of creme fraiche if you are posh or with some granary sliced if you are me.

Midwinter Blues

There is a definite blueish tinge to this post.

I love the idea of winter. I love the thought of it being cold and snowy outside, and me sitting inside with a hot cup of tea, wearing woollens and slippers, cosy with my knitting in front of the fire. The reality is often more prosaic, especially when you have to go to work, shopping, travel but things could be much worse, the snow looks lovely and there is plenty of beauty around. And occasionally some if it can be tempted into the back garden, where I can take photos of it without needing to go out in the cold.

Early morning visitor

A regular visitor

A slighty more uncommon (round here anyway) bullfinch

After the stresses of the lace cardigan, I decided that I wanted to knit something that was simple and straightforward, using thick aran yarn on biggish needles. So, I picked this entrelac based snake scarf by Kim Salazar. The pattern is based on a self striping yarn like Noro Kureyon, but I love the structured look of the ribbed triangles and wanted a plainer yarn to show this off. In the stash I had some basic Wendy wool mix in navy, picked up at one of of the swaps at my knitting group, which does very well.

Resolutions

This year's New Year's Resolutions (in no particular order of sense or importance):

1. Slightly knitting related - be more careful about measurements rather than blithely carrying on thinking everything is going to be fine. It isn't, and it's much easier to fix when you first spot a mistake than after you've cast off, sewn up and woven in the ends. Yes, cardigan, I'm talking about you.
2. Wear lipstick more often.
3. Read more literature. I have often posted a reading list at this time of year, but this year I won't be as the list could be pretty much summed up as vampires (some sparkly, most not), spaceships and Anna Karenina. So I have taken the Top 100 Book list from a couple of years back, removed the ones I've already read and sorted them by number of pages and the cost to download for my Kindle. This afternoon was spent very pleasantly reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which is a. very short b. very good and c. free. Next up is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

New Year, New Yarn

Santa (otherwise known as my friend Kirsty) sent yarn for Christmas, in a gorgeous teal colour that is going to make some lovely gloves (or mittens - yet to be decided.)

Manos Classica Wool

Between Christmas and the New Year we spent a couple of days in Manchester and I took the opportunity to visit Purl City Yarns for the first time, and there was a sale on so it would have been doubly rude not to buy some of the lovely yarn.

Manos Laceweight: Baby alpaca, silk and cashmere

Fyberspates Scrumptious: Merino and silk

Alice Cardigan completed

Pattern: Alice Cardigan by Karen Bourne
Yarn: Alpaca Select 4ply
Colour: Black
Used: about 550g
Needles: 3.75mm Addi Lace circular needle
Size: 14, but cut 10 pattern repeats off each sleeve.

Got gauge, but should have checked the measurements of the sleeves. I am considering this one to be my trial run, as I really would like to make another one, this time with the thumb holes! It is a lovely design and the pattern was a lot of fun - should be easy now I know how many pattern repeats I need to do to get the blocked sleeves the right length.

I Want That One

Through sheer determination, I have finished my Christmas shopping (except for a few last minute food stuffs like pork pie which I cannot have in the house before because it will be eaten as soon as it gets home, and then my Christmas food plans will go all to pot - and I have a spreadsheet and everything.) I finished the last of the gift shopping during my lunch break today and, feeling a little smug, drove back to work. The queues at the supermarket turn off were incredible and I am sooooo pleased I don't have to spend hours in there, battling with wobbly trolleys, lists, last minute decisions and other shoppers. I try to make grocery shopping less painful by careful planning and list writing, but still dislike it. Apart from one thing that almost makes it worth the trip. Almost. I find it really funny to see what people put back. Me, if I change my mind about something, I will trudge all the way back to the place where I got it from to return it to the shelf, but there are wonderfully carefree people out there that just abandon stuff on the nearest shelf when it occurs to them that they don't want it. I like to think that it's because they decided that what is there on that shelf right in front of them when the decision is made, is what they really, really want instead. And I like to take photos*

Some previous examples. Ooh look, fabric softener. No need for these scones.


What to feed kitty today? Gourmet gold / Alpen? Kitty loves the muesli bars.


And today: No yummy chocolate drink for me today - I'll be just having these here tinned vegetables...

*That said, I don't have photographic evidence of the funniest one I ever saw (sometimes you have to pay the consequences for not keeping your phone charged) which was a pack of underwear left in the booze aisle in exchange for a bottle of wine.

Surviving Steeking

Backstitch down centres of two adjacent diamond patterns.
Tiny stitches and tiny needle with black cotton - not the pink basting.

Steeking. Slightly terrifying.

Taking no chances; securing edge with sewing machine.

And a finished wristwarmer.

Notes: picked up and knitted 56 stitches on 3.25mm dpns, and then knitted 10 rows of 3x1 rib and cast off knitwise on 4mm needle.

I really would rather not have had to do the steeking. It was not an enjoyable experience, particularly not because it could have been avoided if only I had taken the time to check out the width of my knitting, while I was knitting it, and when it would have been far simpler to do something about it. But still, this isn't the first time I've made this mistake, and sadly, I'm certain it won't be the last. And I did get a pair of lacy wristwarmers out of it.

The ends of the cardy sleeves have been finished off in a similar way, and it is now blocking.

I appear to have italics all over this post, and I've tried but can't turn them off, so they are staying. This is annoying me more than it has any right to, I've had a traumatic day and I am going to bed.

Hiatus

I have been off knitting for a while. I finished my lace cardy and the sleeves might just fit an orang-utan. But, as my other half helpfully pointed out, we don't know any orang-utans to give it to. There were the usual stages of denial (it's not so bad, I can live with it - as the sleeves hang 6 inches off my finger tips), anger (stupid pattern, and how could I miss noticing in the pictures in the magazine that the sleeves are too long, and all the other people with projects on Ravelry have commented about the sleeves being too long, why didn't I take heed?) and finally acceptance (I really have to do something about this, I spent too long knitting the cardigan for it to end up pushed to the back of a drawer.) So I came up with an extreme plan, which *touch wood* seems to be working out ok at the moment but it's very stressful. I don't know if I can bring myself to tell you what I've been doing - are you sitting down??

Okay. Deep breath. The lace cardy is knitted from the back upwards, then increased over the sleeves, decreased and split for the two fronts. So it's not possible to simply frog back the sleeves to make them shorter because the knit stitches are sideways. So I steeked them, and am making a pair of fingerless lace mitts out of the ends. Yes. I CUT my lace.

Photos to follow... if you are brave enough to look.

Learning to Tat

Last week we took a trip to Gawthorpe Hall near Padiham, which is a big old country house with rather impressive interiors (although the grounds are a bit disappointing, I have to add) and a fine collection of embroidery and crafts on display. Some of the needlework is amazing and really brings the rooms to life. Near to the knitting and crochet (such tiny hooks and intricate work!) was a collection of tatting. This really caught my interest and I wanted to know more about how it is done. So, a few deliveries from Amazon and a trip to Hobbycraft later... I am now a fledgling tatter. There are quite a few videos on Youtube, etc, on tatting, but to be honest none of the ones I saw seemed to be particularly clear to me, so I bought the book 'Learn to Tat' by Janette Baker. This has a lot of pictures and comes with a DVD of clear and easy to follow instructions and seemed to be the most recommended of the books on offer. I say "easy to follow" but it still took a good hour or so before I was able to say that I'd got the hang of it.

I bought two types of shuttle, one made by Prym which is a simple symmetrical bobbin and one slightly more fancy design by Pony. The Pony one has a little hook at one end which is really helpful for loosening wrong stitches - and there will be wrong stitches - and the winding bobbin is a nifty trick so you don't have to turn the whole thing around in your hand to unwind more thread. I think the Prym one cost about £1.30 and the Pony £2.40 and in my experience is well worth the extra pennies.

To start with there were some knots, wiggly knots and some swearing. In the guide book it rather comfortingly says that your practice thread may measure a foot or two before it is consistently correct. I didn't quite take a foot, but not far off.

Some mess

Different coloured thread and a breakthrough

Making curly threads - improved tension

Rings

Picots

I am now into lesson 2 and things are getting a bit more fancy. Hopefully soon I will be confident enough to take on one of the projects and have something a bit bigger to show for my efforts.

Black

I love black and wear a lot of it, however despite this, I very rarely knit myself anything black. Well, that's about to change. First, I have started the Alice Cardigan from the August issue of Knitting magazine, in Alpaca Select Natural 4ply in black. Adding to the luxury are my Lantern Moon rosewood needles (not black.)


Slightly less luxurious perhaps, some random black acrylic aran (on 4,5mm bamboo dpns) which is going to be a pair of ankle warmers. I have just taken possession of some rather fancy black patent leather ankle boots which will look good with a pair of chunky socks, but are not big enough to comfortably wear a pair of chunky socks in, so I am making these ankles warmers to wear tucked into the boots rather than in eighties legwarmer style. That's the plan, anyway. There is no pattern, I'll just stop when I think they're long enough.

Bits and Bobs

First some teddy purses from the Jaeger Handknits for kids JB29. I made one of these years ago and it turned out pretty well, so I used the same Sirdar Countrystyle DK, buttons and velvet nose as before.

A couple of mobile phone cosies out of left over sock yarn, the one on the left is Opal Tiger with a manly flap and the one on the right is Opal Carnival with girly beads. I made the Carnival one first as a simple tube with a picot cast off, but was not happy with the seam at the base so with the second one changed to a Turkish cast on which is much neater.

Cleverness

Colourway 'Greys Corner'

And then I got carried away. This pair of yoga socks (again for Mum because they proved so useful) I thought I'd try making two pairs of socks at the same. I have these dreams of doing the two at once on dpns where you knit one inside the other, alternating between stitches on each sock but while I may be occasionally overly optimistic about things, I am not delusional - so didn't attempt that. The two socks on two circs went pretty well to start with. It is a little fiddly having to cast on the stitches and then rearrange them on the circs so that the leading yarn is in the right position but there are some good websites with plenty of pictures to follow. The cuffs went pretty well and it seemed to be generally quicker than knitting them separately would have been. Then I reached the heel cast off and cast on edges and it got all very confusing and fiddly. I ended up dropping a stitch (which thankfully I found and recovered before it caused a complete catastrophe) and also had some loose stitches and holes appear at the rib edges. They had to go. So, I ripped back to the heel hole, separated the socks onto two sets of circs and finished them one at a time. I'm glad I tried the two socks at once thing, just to get it out of my system!

Lornas Laces Shepherd Sock 'Pilsen'

Lornas Laces Shepherd Sock 'Pilsen', originally uploaded by Sheep Happens.

After the success of the first pair of yoga socks I decided to make a pair for my mum's best friend, whom I really like. It's also a treat to knit with the lovely Shepherd Sock yarn, so worth it. This colorway is Pilsen.

Traveling Woman

P1000987, originally uploaded by Sheep Happens.

My knitting group decided to have a KAL and chose the Traveling Woman shawl by Liz Abinante. I think it looks good in variagated yarns, so decided to use some really colourful stuff that had been given to me as gift but I didn't know what it was apart from it being approximately 4ply and very very bright! Taking a bit of a chance that it would block, it turned out really well and I'm dead chuffed with it. Lovely autumnal colours will be just the thing in a month or so.

Ishbel

Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Jade Sapphire Lacy Lamb, 100% lambswool
Colour: Oxblood
Used: about 15g
Needles: 3.5mm Addi Lace circular needle
Size: Made large size, bigger st/st section, followed charts A, B, A, B, A, C, D then E.

Surprisingly, the hardest part of making this was the stocking stitch section. The lace charts were a joy to knit and seemed to take no time at all. The Lacey Lamb yarn is very, very fine - and wonderfully soft - so I was a bit concerned that the shawl would end up the size of a handkerchief but after the wonders of some vigorous blocking, it came out a very good size.



The whole thing weighs about 15g and is mostly air.

Yoga Socks

I recently spent a quiet weekend at my Mum's, as she's not been very well lately, hoping to get quite a lot done on my Ishbel, but after a few tentative stitches under the watchful gaze of Cassie - quite possibly the prettiest, fluffiest, cuddliest cat in the world - all hopes of knitting ceased as her claws wooshed out dangerously towards my lace yarn and circular needle.

I did manage to count my stitches, and discovered I'd somehow ended up with two too many stitches. This was easy enough to fudge and a couple of k2togs at either end won't show. Once safety back at home, I finished the lace section, which actually seemed easier to knit than the stocking stitch, possibly because of the fine yarn and the finished shawl is now upstairs blocking on the spare bed.

Meanwhile, I decided that Mum might appreciate some yoga socks (she lives in toepost sandals but gets cold feet) so made a pair using some Lornas Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in Purple Iris from the stash. Superwash wool - very important! Mum doesn't hold with fancy yarns! I used the free pattern from Patons' website and they are a super quick, fun knit. The yarn is lovely - so I've just bought some more!