I am Back!

I think. It is amazing how much a young one occupies ones time. The last time I wrote here was before Christmas. In that time I had lots of knitting plans but I tell you, my eyes were bigger than my time! But look at my little one...

The Evergreen stocking for Elizabeth never got done, Forecast never got finished although I am still working on it but, I persevered with the little number below just to make sure I kept my finger in there.

The magazines have really kept me going however Interweave Knits has somewhat taken me aback and I am not so sure I like the new look. Perhaps it needs to grow on me, or I just don’t like change…

I will keep it short just to make sure I return. Until next time, that is if I have any readers still…

It is finally done!

Yes but for one button, Sahara is complete and not without challenges. It has been a long journey for such a small cardigan which my poor daughter will be subjected to wearing for a while.

And there have been some lessons along the way. Now I know…

- There is a reason people stick to EZ’s percentage system and not tinker with it… I did and came up with short sleeves which I had to extend then after that noticed that the decreases were very noticeable. Something I can live with but notable.

- That I should have just bought Sweater Wizard before attempting this little project. It would have saved me lots of time and angst that is why someone came up with the programme.

- How to calculate garment (read sweater) proportions and I would have never known that one needs to pick up fewer stitches than rows for the button band so that it does not pucker.

- Why designers are called such… It takes a lot of figuring out to come up with a garment that hangs together and looks good. I bow to them.

One day, I will write out the pattern and offer it out for free…

Finishing Sahara

I am nearly there. I am not idling, I promise. I would have been there had my calculations been correct. Can you spot the difference in this photo?

You got it in one. One sleeve is shorter than the other. The reason for this is that I am reknitting to extend them. When I finished the collar the other week, the garment looked fine but unbalanced as far as I was concerned… Unless of course one is going for the ¾ sleeve length. I then looked at Elizabeth’s arms… I was way off with the length. Much to my annoyance I had to frog a bit and restart. But I am nearly there now.

It has been an adventure, as there has been a lot of frogging and restarting. The collar was a challenge and I am pleased with how it turned out. When I knit this again in the future, I will change a few things, but they are minor to note now.

Talking of notes, if I had to write the pattern to this… Let’s just say that I started off with good intentions and because of my frustrations along the way, I lost sight of notation.

Voila! The next time you see her she will be complete and on my model.

So what else have I been up to? I will update you soon, but I have also been catching up with Knitpicks podcast. I am really enjoying it and the lessons therein. A bit like an audio knitting book. Great stuff.

Start how you mean to go on…

What did you say I should be doing with this, Mummy?

Needles next, my sweet pea…

Knitting Fool?

One would say so. The other day I had a random thought, to keep me inspired with knitting. Well, knitting little hats that is… What if I visited Knitting Fool when ready, and whatever stitch was featured that day would be the one I use for the hat?

Good one I thought, as long as it is not lace stitch as the hat has to be functional. Never mind that I have a stitch dictionary that I could peruse at my leisure. Anyway, I settled Elizabeth. Did some housework then went online. With much anticipation I surfed my way to Knitting Fool… Wait for it… K2P2 was the stitch featured!

Who is the knitting fool? And the stitch featured today? Double mock ribbing…

p.s. photos are from knitting fool, I hope she does not mind as I did not ask permission.

Knitting Sails…

The other day I had a panic. Not a major one but enough to put some wind up my knitting sails.

It was a rather cool day and I was out and about with Elizabeth. Then I started to think about the winter and how much I am looking forward to Elizabeth’s first Christmas. Then thought about how many sweaters and cardigans I could knit for her. STOP! What about the little things… What little things? I asked Jiminy. Mittens, Hats etc. Oops! I had completely neglected this. So, when I got home and declared to Ian that I would be knitting hats for Elizabeth.

There was a part of me that also appreciated quick and easy knitting for quicker results… Yup! At least one FO this year! But… I am not an experienced hat knitter, so where to start? All the books came out (not magazines that would be too easy). Ravelry and Flicker were searched. I was after a basic baby hat. After much flapping I decided to find one with a pattern and adapt it. I should have started here I would have finished the hat that night!!!! Anyway, I looked at the many baby knitting leaflets I have picked up and found one.

Without even thinking I cast on using dpns. The pattern did not call for these and tension was igonred for brevity. When it came to changing needle size I got stuck. No 4mm dpns in sight. You see, I inherited the dpns and assumed I would have the right size in there. So necessity being the mother of …. I recalled a blog I read where two circular needles were used instead. Well, I only had one set of 4mm needles so I used 3.75mm for the second set (bought the second 4mm the next day).


It was quite satisfying seeing the little hat grow and then finally worn by Elizabeth. Now I have to knit mittens to match too.

Darn Typical!

There I am minding my own business. Elizabeth and I had just come from a music group at the library. This, I might add, is two minutes away from my LYS…

Anyway, we stopped in there. Elizabeth was not too pleased about this and proceeded to screech, while we were in there. My time in there was limited. Then it happened, I looked up… And I saw the exact same ‘Belle’ pattern including rib on an adult’s sweater, top actually but I didn’t care at that moment. Then I wanted to take a sneaky photo to show you on here but Elizabeth put her foot down. So I memorised that it was a Patons pattern in their vintage yarn.

When I told my husband about this, He very sagely said that it is the same with music – there aren’t many ‘original’ pieces…

Janey and Sarah - thank you for the encouragement.