FO Friday: Shades of Purple Blanket with a bonus spectacular moustache (2015 FO# 12)

This FO Friday post is one day late! I have a (not very) good excuse - I took all the photos yesterday but then I had one glass of red wine while I was cooking dinner followed by another one while I was eating dinner and then I was completely cactus for the rest of the night. I ended up in bed by 8pm watching a delightful film noir (Somewhere in the Night (1948), starring John Hodiak, who wore one of the most fascinating moustaches I've ever seen)

What even is the purpose of a moustache that size? I could not take my eyes off it. Anyway, it was a really nice night and I feel relaxed and refreshed today. However, I did not get any writing done (#noregrets).



This blanket is one I finished a while ago. In August 2013 I started knitting this for a friend's baby. I liked knitting it and thought it looked nice but the edge seemed too unfinished for the blanket to be given away as a gift. I tried a few borders but none of them looked right so instead I blocked the blanket to see whether that would fix the edging issues.

It was promptly adopted by Lucy, and the rest is history (I bought a nice baby blanket from Target. It was the right thing to do).

Mine, all mine.

The pattern is an easy one: cast on three stitches and increase every row by knitting into the front and back of each stitch. Continue to knit until you have used up almost half of the yarn. Knit three rows without increasing, then decrease by knitting the second and third stitch of each row together until you have three stitches left. Cast off.

The yarn iss Patons Soft Haze, which is lovely (although almost impossible to rip, so try to avoid making any mistakes!). It has sadly been discontinued. I used six balls to make a decent-sized blanket.

I still think the blanket needs a border - maybe a knitted-on icord? I would definitely make one of these again but this time keep it hidden from my mischievous cat.

Hey, what's my blanket doing outside? (I suspect that Lucy and I might spend too much time together...)

2014 FO #1: Luxury OpArt blanket

My first finished object of the year is done!

My Luxury OpArt blanket is done with two weeks to spare before the baby is due. 

 It was pretty ruffled and out of shape when it came off the needles...

..so I blocked it really severely (with Lucy's help, of course). 

I liked knitting this blanket - the pattern's super easy to follow and I like tedious knitting. However, it's became clear as soon as I took out the blocking wires that this is not a blanket that wants to be square - unless it's blocked every time it's washed, it's going to end up bendy and ruffled again. I hope the new parents like unusual blankets and think of this as a design feature, or else I'm not sure the blankie will get much use.

However, have a look at the accessories I made with the leftover wool - cuteness in a teeny tiny package.

More on those tomorrow.

Roadtripping: T minus 1

Last Tuesday, I left Melbourne on a roadtrip to Sydney. I was super excited because it is my first holiday of the year and I had reached that point where my mind was starting to go a bit melty. When you can't remember how to operate a cheese grater (hold, move cheese), then it's time to take a break!

As a knitter, one of the most important things to plan for any journey is which project and how many projects to take. I knew I'd be in a car for at least 20 hours so I wanted to take something relatively involved but without any loose needles. I knew the perfect project - a Serenity in the Bendy Cotton I bought a few weeks ago.

I  knew I had to get past the stage with DPNs (too much chance of dropping one while driving and being stuck without knitting until the next rest stop) so I cast on a week before I left to give me enough time to get to the circular needles. All was going smashingly until I started transferring the stitches to the circular and saw this:

A big hole where I'd messed up the increases. Because of the cabling that was in the middle of the lace, it was just too hard for me to fix and I almost cried as I unwound hours of work to get back to a mistake-free row.

So much smaller! But (luckily), still big enough to STREEETTTCCCHHHH around the circular needle and, shortly after this photo was taken, the blanket was packed up with its pattern, spare stitch markers and healthy travel-appropriate snacks and on its way to Sydney. 

Roadtrip!!

Finally Done FO Friday: Big Blanket Complete!! (2012 FO#7)

This occasion feels so momentous to me I wish I could mark it with a drum roll or fireworks or something loud and extraordinary.  I am so excited to say that I have finished my biggest project ever - a full-size adult blanket!

It's huge!

Did you get the shot?

I started this blanket on New Year's Day 2010, which means it's taken me two and half years almost exactly to finish it (!!!). That seems like a long time but this blanket is both big and very fiddly.

Warm and cuddly enough for even the manliest man to wear as a shawl

It's the April project from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac, Mystery Blanket: Weaving and it is *a lot* more complicated than Ms Zimmerman would have you believe. The knitting of the squares is quite easy and fun - each one took me about two hours and they were done pretty quickly. BUT after you've knit the squares, they all need to be grafted together. Then once you've grafted them together, you need to pick up the corner stitches (the black square) and then knit 5 rows of 20 stitches - very awkward when your blanket weighs almost a kilo! This process leaves a gaping hole at each corner, which needs to be tightened. Did I mention that each square generates a minimum of six ends to weave in? And there's 24 squares? I estimate that the finishing took me at least as long as knitting the squares did and was much less enjoyable. I love how the blanket looks but if I were to make it again I would to the increase rows all the way to the end of the squares, omitting the need to 'fill in' the corners. That said, I think I did a pretty good job of fixing all the gaps:

I love this blanket. It's big and warm and soft and looks fantastic on my couch. The Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 12-ply is hand wash only but I doubt I'll be washing it very often, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Now I just need to convince my cat to let me use it...

No Blanket For You!

About two years ago, I started knitting a Moderne Baby Blanket (rav link), mainly because I had a huge pile of 5-ply crepe that I wanted to use up and I have a bit of a problem with delayed gratification - if I get into my mind that I will do a certain thing, I want to do it now.  After knitting three and a bit stripes, it was put away and forgotten about.

Then, when doing my WIP Round-up last year, I pulled it out of its storage place to take a photo of it.  This is how it looked when I last blogged about it:

Because it was out in the open again, I occasionally picked it up and worked a random row.  There was a baby due in February, and since this is a baby blanket I thought it was a match made in heaven.  Then there were complications with the pregnancy, so the due date was moved to the middle January, and I started working harder on the blanket.  This is what it looks like now.  I love knitting on this blanket!  It's nothing but row after row of mindless knitting.  Every now and then you need to cast off a few stitches and then pick some up, but not very often.  It's a wonderful project for knitting in front of the TV, and as a plus it looks ridiculously stylish and much harder than it actually is.  

The couple I was knitting the blanket for are Sam's second cousins.  They're really nice and we see them about six times a year, but only as a group and at family functions.  We never see them outside the family, and even though I like them immensely, I don't know them very well.  So I started thinking ... I love this blanket - will they?  Will they understand the hours of work that have gone into creating this modular masterpiece?  Will they appreciate the gift of my time and affection that it represents and take care of it accordingly?  In all honestly, these people may be the No.1 ticket holders in the fanclub of Handmade Stuff International.  They may appreciate my work, time and effort.  But I don't know them that well, and I am not prepared to gift 100 hours of my time to someone who may or may not appreciate what they are receiving.  

I really grappled with this decision, and I eventually found a solution.  They're getting a knitted hat instead - it's super cute (it has a pompom!), super quick, made from stash and I am not invested enough in the hat to care if they use and appreciate it or not (of course, I hope they do.  See how cute it is?).  Now, everyone's happy. Me especially.