WIP Wednesday: Blinded by the White Edition

Lace is a good thing to knit. It looks fantastic, it's fun to knit and there's always a bit of magic in the transformation from lumpy spaghetti monster to an elegant, lovely piece of art. However, it's not a great-looking project on the way to the finishing line. You knit, knit, knit and knit and the piece gets bigger but it is basically impossible of its final size or look from the WIP on your needles.

Case in point:

I am halfway through the edging and at this stage it does not look like it is going to end up as a flat circular blanket. You just have to have faith that 1) the designer knew what they were doing and b) you have not massively cocked something up. Fingers crossed!

 I have to admit that I am not particularly enjoying knitting the edging on. Because I am knitting the shawl in the round while the original was knitted flat, I have made some modifications to the pattern. I cast on provisionally, using a cable from my KnitPicks interchangeable set to stand in for waste yarn. I then started knitting...

..but I just wasn't happy with the look. When you turn the knitting after joining the edging to the main yarn and reducing one stitch, the pattern instructs you to slip the first stitch. I had been doing that with the yarn in front.

Here, you can see the difference. On the right of the picture, I had slipped the stitch with the yarn behind. On the left, I had slipped the stitch with the yarn in front, which then formed a visible stitch.

So I ripped it back, started again and am much happier with the new border. But it's still just the same 8-12 stitches, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth (and so on).

I am also not enjoying knitting with white yarn. It is so boring! Especially when combined with the relentless grey of the Melbourne winter sky and the bleakness of day after day of overcast weather. After two weeks of non-stop white in the middle of winter, I just couldn't take it anymore! So, I cast on a pair of socks in the brightest yarn I could find.

The relief is palpable. Thank God for colour.

FO Friday: The Knit-Purl Blanket (2014 FO #13)

I am back! But only briefly, so please don't tell my supervisor I stepped away from my thesis for a bit. This is our little secret.

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy, uni-wise. I have put on without exaggeration 1.5kg from spending so much time sitting on my arse (both working and eating chocolate). I've been trying to take breaks and go to the park and the beach but the truth is that the final part of any research project requires a bit of slogging to get to the end and there's no just no way it can be avoided. Fortunately, slogging away is an activity that goes remarkably well with stockinette stitch, which means lots and lots of finished projects.

For example, this baby blanket is finished TWO MONTHS before the baby is due. This is an event that surely has never happened in the history of knitting baby blankets before.

Where's the tension? Where's the desperate race to finish it before the mother leaves hospital? 

The pattern was simple - I cast on 100 stitches and then knit it until it felt big enough. I then picked up stitches all the way around and knit the border in garter stitch until I felt it was big enough, then I cast off (yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 8ply in Citrus, Frost and Ghost. I used maybe half a ball of the Frost and Citrus and about 160g of Ghost. There are lots of leftovers).

It felt seriously weird not to be weaving in ends on the way to meeting the baby for the first time.

Of course, Lucy helped me block the blanket.

She is going to be so annoyed when she realises the blanket is not actually for her.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

2014 FOs #2 & #3: Snowflake hat and bootie set

Because I love making booties more than just about anything else in the entire world, as soon as it was clear I would have wool left over from the OpArt blanket, I cast on a pair of baby socks that have been in my Ravelry queue forever.

These socks were easy, cute and used very little yarn (only 34g in total!). 

They're a bit bigger than the booties I normally make (the pattern says they're for 6 to 12-month-old babies), but I figure new mums get heaps of newborn stuff but not a lot of stuff for when the kid is older. I can say for sure that they will fit the baby at some time (hopefully winter time - these socks are very very thick and warm).

I did a short row heel but when I make these again, I'll use an afterthought heel as recommended in the pattern because I think it will look a bit more finished.

I still had a little bit of yarn left over (the case of the never-ending Bendy balls strikes again!) and so I whipped up a matching hat. It was also quick and easy - cast on 66 stitches in yellow, knit 5 rows in 1x1 rib, changed to purple, knit 1 row, increased 6 stitches following row, then continued as shown. The hat took 23 grams of yarn.

For not a lot of extra time, these little extras add a whole lot of cuteness to the package.

I hope the new parents like these as much as I do.

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.

Cast on Mania Days 5, 6 & 7: Two shawls and a hat

I am pleased to announce that this blog's regular scheduling has been interrupted. Instead, I present you with:

Every day this week I will be starting a new project. Every project is to be made with yarn from the stash and all of them need to be finished in two months or less.  It'll be fun!  Clearly crazy, but mostly fun.

Cast-on Mania ground to a screeching halt last week when I realised that, even though I like blogging and sharing my ideas and new projects, I don't like it enough to schlepp all of my stuff to a McDonalds car park so I can steal their WIFI without purchasing any of their products. To paraphrase the immortal words of Meatloaf, I will do many things but I won't do that.  However, even though there was no blogging the casting on did continue.

Day 5: Henslowe the second


This is another Henslowe for my sister. The second time is definitely the charm because I haven't made any of the stupid mistakes I made last time. The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury that has been in the stash for about two years.

Day 6: Smooshy Alpaca Hat

This is the Full Bloom Hat from Yarn Magazine Issue 23. The yarn is some Bendigo Woollen Mills Alpaca I've had in the stash for about four years. That's an insane amount of time to have unused yarn lying around! It is definitely time it gets knitted up.

Day 7: Pasmina Herbivore
As I approached Day 7 of this craziness that was CAST ON MANIA, I admit my enthusiasm was starting to flag.  I knit four rows of this Herbivore (for me! Yippee!) and then moved this to the bottom of the WIP bag. I will get it done but seven projects in seven days proved much more challenging that I thought they would. The yarn is MadeleineTOSH Pashmina and it's a stash baby - only 12 months old.

Three things I learnt from CAST ON MANIA
1. Making things sparkle is fun.
2. While starting new things is fun, starting lots of new things all in one week requires a bit of stick-to-it-iveness.
3. I really have a lot of wool.

Tomorrow, a huge FO and a new book review.