Hot days need warm hats: 2013 FO #2

There are not many things in life nicer than the first morning of a long weekend where the weather will be delightful, nothing is planned except fun things and there's lots of time for knitting and watching movies. Seriously, it's totally the best.

I finished this project a few weeks ago but I wasn't happy with the photos and wanted to take more photos that made me look like less of a grump! But honestly, since I am such a lazy blogger if I waited for that to happen I wouldn't be sharing the hat with you until next Finish it February, so I present you with my latest seasonally appropriate FO - my smooshy alpaca hat (nothing says warm woollens more than a record-breaking heat wave! Please note this hat was modelled while I was wearing a bikini).

As I said last post, I've had a pile-on of deadlines recently. Generally when that happens I get this unstoppable urge to START ALL THE THINGS!! It's like when my deadlines feel unmanageable, knitting provides tangible proof if you just keep working at something, progress is made. Plus, searching through boxes of yarn and browsing Ravelry for the perfect pattern are really, really good methods of procrastination.

So, a few weeks ago when the START SOMETHING NOW bug hit, I pulled out all of the boxes under the bed that contain my yarn. I grabbed some books off my shelf and started matching project to wool then I had an amazing lightbulb moment - I had a hat that I started during Cast On Mania but never moved beyond the ribbing. Why not finish that off instead of starting something new?

And so I did. It took me two days of not very fast knitting to get it done. Why do I  not make hats more often - they're so fast! 

Because I am lazy, I knitted the ribbing section in the same size needle as the rest of the hat (Elizabeth Zimmermann did it like that, and if it's good enough for her it's good enough for me). I added an extra repeat of the cable section to get a longer hat - it's more of a cap as written. I omitted the icord feature because (have I mentioned it?) I'm lazy and it's a decorative rather than functional feature that I didn't think my gorgeous fawn hat needed. 

I love the way the decreases on the crown kind of swoosh the whole pattern to a close. This is a lovely hat and one I can see myself making again - but next time, with better photos taken of it.

Happy weekend!

Day 24: WIP Wednesday

Last week in an effort to wrestle my WIP pile into some sort of order, I decided to pick just two projects and concentrate on them. It worked! One of those pairs of socks is effectively finished (dear weaving in ends, why do you suck so much? love me) and the other one is almost complete.

Since this plan was so successful, I've decided to expand it to four projects and work only on those:

The Barefoot Dream socks are my new handbag stockinette stitch sock. They need to be done by December for my mum's birthday, so no hurry. The mitered square blanket now has nine of the 12 blocks joined. It's being held up because I need to unpick and restitch the first three blocks I joined and, I know it's childish but I just don't want to! The Rainy Day socks are almost done. These are the quickest and easiest socks I have ever made. I keep them next to the computer and pick them up and do a row or two whenever my computer or I am thinking and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, these are almost done. I have to start making more socks on 2.75mm needles!

The final project is the Herbivore that I cast on for during CAST ON MANIA then promptly forgot about. The yarn that I'm using, the completely divine Madelinetosh Pashmina in Thunder, was a gift from my friend Christian. I'm seeing Radiohead with him in three weeks (woot woot!!) and I'd love to have this finished by then. The last Herbivore I made only took me about five days, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I love watching the list of of WIPs get smaller and smaller in number...

24 down, 7 to go.

Nothing interesting to see here (2012 FO #10 - Dad's birthday socks)

I have a confession to make: I didn't get yesterday's work done in its allotted time. My computer crashed, I lost an hour's work and I cracked the shits. I lieu of wine I watched Wife Swap USA and the Made in Chelsea finale and then, gorged on trash, fake tan and garlic and olive oil toasted pita bread, I went to bed.  It was not an exciting night but it was what I needed to do.

Today the sun was shining (clearly to reward me for finally getting my work done, albeit one day late) and I took the opportunity to go outside and take photos of my latest FO (another Cast On Mania project).

There is literally no way to make this project interesting. Even I found it boring when I was knitting it! 72 stitches, top down, flap and gusset heel, knit knit knit repeat.

I tried hanging these socks in some trees but even that doesn't provide any spark. I don't even know what yarn it is because I bought the wool in a grab back of sock yarns and it didn't have a label. I know it's machine washable - because I washed it in my machine - but other than that it's a mystery to me.

I hope my dad likes them and they fit him. He's the last member of my family to get any socks that he can wear (I did send him one pair that are ridiculously too small for him to get on his feet).

That's all, folks. It's a quiet time at the old FO town tonight!

FO Friday: Panel Rib Socks and an amazing discover (2012 FO #9)

You know how I'm always like 'Can't find the cable for my camera so here are photos from my iPhone again' or 'Sorry about the terrible iPhone photos!' like a broken record? Well, my poor camera is broken and in the repair shop so the photos are from my iPhone again.

However, I recently found out there is this app you can use that takes the photos from your iPhone and makes them look pretty and that lot of people actually choose to use this app to take their photos with rather than use a point-and-shoot camera. 

You may have heard of it - Instagram (yes, I am slow to adopt new technologies. I'm hopeless.) 

An arty shot:

I heart it!

The Specs


These Panel Rib Socks were my Day 2 CAST-ON MANIA project. I cast on 62 stitches and then did 12 rows of 1x1 rib. The paneling is a 5x1 rib with an additional knit and purl stitch that goes down the back of the sock (15cm total cuff length). I did a short row heel (centred on the 1x1 column) then continued the ribbing pattern as established on the top of the foot. It took 88g for a sock the right size for my sister's 6.5 foot.

The Jitterbug (as always) was fabulous and resulted with a thick, squooshy warm sock. The colourway is *very* bright and I wasn't crazy about the pooling when I was knitting them but on the foot they look gorgeous and I hope my sister likes them very much.

And because I can't stop playing with Instagram...

..this is how my cat helps me reach my deadline - sitting on the top shelf of my desk and watching me.

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.

Cast On Mania Day 4: Daybreak Mitts

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.

Today's post is brought to you by McDonald's Cheltenham because I blew through my entire month's data allowance in 2.5 weeks. I didn't think I'd used it that much but I have been doing a lot of procrastination, so really it's a good thing that I can't use the Internet to distract me from actual work any more. However, it does put a bit of a spanner in my week of CAST ON MANIA.

Yesterday I wrote about the socks I am knitting for my sister. I have two sisters and if you have sisters then you'll understand that you can't make something for one without making something for the other because they notice and remember and get incredibly shirty. Everything is remembered - they're like elephants in that way. So to head off any dramas today's project is some mitts for my sister using the yarn left over from the Daybreak I made her for Christmas.  Last time I tried to improvise a pattern using Daybreak as an inspiration it did not go well, so this time I am using weezelana's Mitt Envy as a template. If I sat down and put some serious time into them I could finish these mitts in about four hours. However, I suspect that it might take me a while to get these finished given the amount of predicts that I've started already this week...

CAST ON MANIA.  YEAH!

Cast on Mania Day 3: Panel Rib Socks

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.

I love knitting socks and I try to share the love by giving those socks to my loved ones. Honestly, though, other than Sam (who I know loves his socks) I'm never sure if they really if they actually appreciate the effort that goes into them or if they just look at the gift thinking "You can get socks from Target for $6...this is the scungiest present ever!". So when my sister requested a pair of handknit socks to get her through winter, I cast on straightaway. The yarn is Jitterbug in colourway Fruit Coulis that has been in the stash since January 2011 and it is alternately very very bright and very very dark. I'm not a huge fan of pooling, but the beauty of gift socks is I don't have to be. They certainly add colour to the long cold winter days, so no complaints here.

Cast On Mania Day 2: Dad's Socks

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.

I made my very first pair of socks for my dad. I was shocked at the cost of sock wook ($18! You can buy socks at Target for like six bucks! Little did I know...), I struggled with the skinny needles and teeny tiny stitches and I didn't understand calf shaping or how to get the perfect handknit fit, so I just did what the instructions told me, finished the socks and mailed them to my dad.  They did not fit and he has never worn them.

He will be in Australia for his birthday in July and I think it's finally time to knit him some socks that he will actually wear. The yarn is an unknown sock yarn that I picked up in the grab bag that I scored from a destash last year. It's very thin yarn but the variegation looks quite nice and I think the finished socks will be warm and comfy. Let's just hope that they fit!

In Other News

Yesterday's Radiating Star Blanket is now big enough that I can stop magic looping and start knitting on the circular needles. Check out the cute little star in the middle:

I made bread again. I used Delia's recipe again but this time I skipped cooking the flour before mixing and kneading. That was a big mistake! Clearly baking the flour does something to the amount of water the dough can handle because I added the same amount of water as last week and ended up with a gloopy glue-like mixture. I had to add almost another 200g of flour to get a kneadable dough which threw off the ratio of salt, yeast and sugar. The loaf looked alright when it was baked...

..and the crust is nice, but the bread is a little bit bland and not fluffy at all. It still tastes nice when smeared with butter but, honestly, what doesn't?

 Back tomorrow with more !

Cast On Mania Day 1: Radiating Star Blanket

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.

Today's project is the Radiating Star Blanket by Alexis Layton in Patons Soft Haze, a discontinued yarn that has been in my stash since May 2009 - three years! It's got a really soft and fluffy feel to it so I think it'll be perfect for this very pretty blanket.

The baby its for is due at the end of June so some speed is required. The wool is chunky and the pattern is simple, so hopefully I'll get it done with much time to spare.

In other news, I think I may be part sloth

There are some days where I just want to get everything I have to do with the external world done as fast as possible so I can get back into pyjamas. Today was one of those days, and now it's 1 o'clock in the afternoon and I'm sitting at my desk in my pyjamas, under a blanket with a hot water bottle. It's days like this that remind me how luck I am that I can work from home, sloth-style.

Back tomorrow with my Day 2 Cast On Mania project!