WIP Wednesday: Stop the Presses Edition

About 4pm last Friday, my energy started to flag. I still had work to do so instead of turning off my computer and having a nice cold glass of wine as I normally would on a Friday afternoon, I flicked over to Ravelry. I am so very glad I did, because as I was browsing through my friends patterns, I saw It. You know, It - that one pattern that you were meant to make. That one pattern that you cannot imagine living a knitting life without have made. The One True Pattern.

Christmas wine bottle sweaters by Deborah Tomasello.

!!!!

I was at the wool store literally the minute it opened the next day. I am fairly certain the woman working at the LYS thought I was crazy ("they're jumpers for what, exactly...?") but I did not care. I bought enough wool to make about 12...

.. and started straightaway.

With Lucy's help, of course.

It was such a fun pattern to knit! I carried it around with me everywhere for the next few days so I could knit a round whenever I had time (honestly, not very often. It's a lot more time-consuming doing a fair isle row with the two yarns and having to check the pattern than it is knitting my standard stockinette sock).

Four days later, it is done!

I took the photo in direct sunlight so it's not super great and you can see the seam in the middle where the pattern moves to the next row but trust me - it's delightful. I love it! I have already started the second one and I can't see me stopping any time soon.

Christmas kitsch forever!!

On an unrelated note, I have found my summer drink. It's called a Campari spritz and it is delicious, refreshing and light enough to mean I can still safely drive after having one. In short, it is the perfect party season cocktail.

I am so set for Christmas :)

Spring is well and truly sprung

My neighbour's blueberry hedge has started to grow berries.

These birds of paradise look kind of like a flock of emus.

These cuttings are prettying up my kitchen and (maybe) making new pretty plants at the same time.

WIP Wednesday: Fair Isle Edition

On Sunday evening I bundled up all of my thesis to date and sent it to my supervisor for review. The file was so big I couldn't send it via email! I have some small stuff to work on but I can't do much until I get her feedback so this week I've been in study stasis. Which has resulted in...

BOOM! Fair isle everywhere.

First up, the Fair Isle Socks from Toe Up Socks for Every Body*.

I did one sock with just variegated yarn as a contrast and one with both solid and variegated. Now I can't decide which one I like best.

I tried moving them around but that didn't help.

I stood them up...no help whatsoever.

In the end I posted a plea to Instagram and the designer herself responded, preferring the one with two colours. I agreed yesterday, but this morning I looked at them again and I am just not sure.

While I was making up my mind (am making up my mind...) I cast on the Eesti Hiking Socks from Favorite Knits. I'm using Bendigo Woollen Mills 8 ply Luxury in Lake and Ghost. I had forgotten how quickly thick socks knit up - this felt like it happened in an instant. Maybe these could be another pair of Christmas socks...

I almost like it better when it's flipped inside out.

It turns out that when I am not channelling all of my energy into my thesis then I have a lot of energy left over for other projects and my preferred way of using up this energy is knitting. Knitting is the best :)

Lucy has no extra energy:

The poor thing is completely pooped from lying in the sun all day. It's a hard knock life for some, I tell you.

*A really excellent book for those who like their socks spicy. I love it.

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!

WIP Wednesday: Hello Spring Edition

Yesterday was the first day of spring! Appropriately, the day was full of sunshine, so as soon as I had completed my daily word count I grabbed my WIP bag and headed down to the beach.

I am lucky enough to live about a block away from the beach so there are lots of different places along the bay for me to visit. Yesterday I decided to go somewhere I used to hang out a lot when I was younger: near the local surf lifesaving club.

I had a boyfriend once who was a lifesaver and had a key to the building, so we used to go there so we could duck in to pee (definitely an issue that is under considered when people decide which beach to go to. I suspect that often the warm spots one feels when swimming in the ocean are definitely there because of a lack of public loos!

There is also this gorgeous (although somewhat uncomfortable) mosaic chair which is ridiculously romantic to sit on and drink wine while the sun goes down. I guarantee smooching will follow the sunset, so be careful with whom you share the chair!

For non-romantic sunset drinking, there is a picnic table which fits up to six women who like drinking chardonnay at the beach very comfortably. (It was at this stage that I realised why I hadn't come here since my early 20s - I stopped drinking at the beach!)

I put the picnic table to a non-alcoholic use and set up my two Practically Pairfect socks.

Because I am crazy, I ended up buying another set of 2.25 mm needles last week so I could work on both pairs of socks at the same time.

The striping is so fun and the socks look fantastic (if I do say so myself). 

Welcome, spring! I've missed you and I hope you're here to stay.

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...)

Hello Monday and a pair of true monster socks (2015 FO# 11)

Last week flew by in a massive deadline blur. I honestly didn't even realise I'd missed a week of posting until I sat down now to type this. That's hopeless! The days and weeks feel like they're zooming so fast at the moment I can't even keep up. I am seriously tempted to buy one of these gorgeous colouring books to help me be a bit more mindful and slow down. (haha when would I find the time to do that. Bluergh.)

I did take a few minutes time out today to take pictures of my latest pair of socks. These are full-on monster socks, made out of the 5-10g balls of sock yarn left after a pair of socks have been finished.

To make these, I collected all of the similar weight and feel sock yarns I had and divided them each into two balls. I then cast on and spiralled two at a time all the way up the sock, using an afterthought heel.

One thing I didn't do which I probably should have was weigh the itty bitty balls. Although I followed the same yarn sequence for both socks, since some of the balls were much bigger than others, you can see that the colour changes occur at different places in each sock (the right one becomes a lot more blue faster than the right one does, for example).

These taught me a lot about coordinating colours in scrap yarn. If I were to do it again, I'd divde the balls into 'warm' and 'blue' and spiral accordingly, so there would always be a bit of contrast, rather than what I did which was randomly pick the closest ball to me whenever I needed to add a new yarn.

That said, they are super warm and comfortable and when they're on, the colour discrepancies aren't really obvious.

I have now packed these socks up with the helical stripes set and will drop them off at KOGO, hopefully tomorrow.

In other news:

I know I am not alone in feeling like this winter has been going forever. However, I was ecstatic when I popped outside to observe that some of the coriander seeds I planted before this recent cold snap have come up! I was certain that they would have been destroyed by the frost.

So, although spring hasn't actually sprung yet, there are signs that it might be coming soon. 

Hopefully, very very soon - I'm done with the cold (and so is Lucy).