2014 FO #6: Bendy Blue Socks

I am ridiculously behind with my FO Friday posts. These pictures were taken weeks ago and have been sitting in a draft post since then, waiting for me to take the time to write them up. I am a terrible blogger!

One Sunday, we were outside trying to get as much sun as we could before winter arrives, when Sam was distracted by a loud sound from above.

It was my stupid cat, who had remembered that it is possible to jump the 30cm from the top of the garage to the roof.

The thing is, once she gets up there it's like her tiny brain explodes and she cannot remember how to get down. Like she can be looking at the the garage roof that she jumped from less than a minute before and still not be able to remember how she got from one to the other.

But do not let the antics of my idiot cat distract you from the real story! I finished Sam's birthday blue socks three weeks early.

They are made with the Bendy sock wool I got before Christmas.

They are soft and smooshy and were lovely to knit.

They also look pretty darn good, if I do say so myself :)

Lucy did eventually find the garage on the other side to jump down. Moron.

2014 FO# 6: February Bendy Birthday Socks

The sock finishing parade continues!

Today's Friday FO was actually F'd at the start of February, but I finished it on the same day I gifted it so I didn't have a chance to get any pictures before it was opened.

Yesterday, after a month of repeated demands requests that the recipient send through some modelled shots, I gave up and went to their house, iPad in hand ready to click away.

Don't they look comfy and warm?

Four pairs of socks to go!

(Deets: the yarn is some Bendy sock wool I got on sale before Christmas. I used 2.5mm needles, cast on 72 stitches and knit the sock top down with a heel-flap and gusset heel. The wool was lovely and very cheap (I think maybe $7.50 a ball?) so a great, enjoyable good value project)

WIP Wednesday: Instagram edition

It's nice to be back online! Last month I used my entire monthly data allowance in 10 days which, frankly, both sucked and was completely ridiculous. I couldn't go into my office at uni because of O-Week and the first week of classes (so many people! so much beer!), so I could only check my email or do fun stuff like read blogs or play on Ravelry if I could access someone else's wifi. I've finally sucked it up and signed up for a fixed broadband plan with lots of data that is double the cost of what I pay now but it irritates me incredibly that data is so expensive in Australia. Not only does it limit the competitiveness of Australians internationally, access to data will be an increasingly large socioeconomic issue. Grrr!!

However, on the plus side, the lack of ability to hang out in cyberspace meant I had lots of time for knitting and other crafts.

Well, only knitting, really. The cross-stitch does now looks like a bird but I also remember why I stopped cross-stitching in the first place...knitting is much more fun! I am determined so I will finish it...not so sure about the other three patterns I bought though.

I finished the brioche hat and started working on the matching cowl.

I'm not sure how much cowl I'm going to get out of this amount of wool, so instead of knitting it in the round I'm going to knit it scarf-style and then sew it up at the end. It might be a while away, though - I find brioche stitch ridiculously slow going. That 10cm of knitting is the result of two movies' worth of knitting! It might end up being my scarf for next winter.

Finally, I've just turned the heel on the Bendy blue sock. I am loving knitting this wool - it is soft and squishy and the colours are pretty and harmonious. Now I would be happy if this project was the one that took a long time to get anything done, but unfortunately it is just zooming by and they'll probably be finished by the weekend. On the positive side, it means I'll have one fewer pair of socks on my to do list, which is also a good thing, so I shouldn't complain.

So, very glad to be back on line! But also have noticed I spent rather a lot less time working this morning than I did last Wednesday, where I had no choice but to put my head down. I'm not sure what conclusions we can draw from that...

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.

Social conventions are stupid

I find December a hard month to get through. Primarily, this is because I am quite introverted and December involves a level of socialisation that I find difficult to cope with. It’s like there’s this unwritten rule that it is absolutely vital to see every single person in you know Before Christmas, as if 25 December is some magical date that, if you haven’t renewed your friendship vows by, they will be declared null and void and your personal relationship will be irrevocably harmed. (As a side note, I feel exactly the same way about hen’s dos. After the wedding, the bride will still live in the same house with the same partner working in the same job as she did before the wedding. The only difference is that after the wedding they will have dropped the equivalent cost of a three-month trip in Europe on a really big party. Ironically, it’s childbirth that really changes the rules of friendships and with pregnancy there’s sadly not the chance for one big last messy night out.)

To be able deal with everything that is required of me in December, in the past I have approached it like a military exercise. I write a list of people I need to see and book them early with dates, places and times. I write a list of people I need to write cards for and have the cards written ready to be posted on 1 December. I write a list of people I need to buy presents for and have the presents ready and wrapped as soon as I can. I do everything in my power to make everything run as smoothly as possible. I am like a well-oiled well-run Christmas machine, making Christmas happen with a precision rarely seen outside a Swiss watch factory or the German railway system. There’s no room for flexibility but I get shit done. 

This leads me to the secondary reason I have trouble with December: it makes people go crazy. I start being involved in hour-long discussions of how to deal with the fact that Auntie Doris doesn’t like turkey but Uncle Mike thinks it’s not Christmas unless there’s a full turkey dinner. A reasonable answer would be to ask each person to bring a dish that they’re happy with eating (and, maybe if Uncle Mike realised what an effort it is to make a moist delicious turkey he wouldn’t be quite so fussy about wanting one every single year) but instead there’s drama that usually involves the person hosting cooking two or three different meals to appease each of the four people attending dinner. People spend too much money on presents and then get upset about the presents they do or don’t receive. They drink too much and have fights with their partner about who agreed to be the designated driver and who just can’t control themselves around an open bottle of sparkling wine. It’s exhausting.

Part of the Christmas preparation for me is the making of Christmas gifts. I’ve embarked on different projects over the years: knitting everyone in my family a pair of socks; knitting just some a pair of socks and, this year, knitting two pairs of socks. But I don’t know if it’s because of the unseasonally cold weather or just general end-of-year tiredness, this year I have less tolerance for the Christmas drama (I don’t care if there’s chicken instead of turkey. I don’t care if you order pizzas! It’s about the company, not the food. And, if you insist on cooking the whole meal yourself and not accepting any offers of help and not allowing anyone else to bring any food, I do not want to hear one single word about being a martyr to the family. Not one.).  In a first since I have started knitting as an adult, this year I have absolutely no desire to knit gifts for anyone else. So, instead of working on the socks I was planning to give away, I have worked on nothing other than this:

Isn't it gorgeous? It's an Op Art knitted in Luxury 8ply in Sunflower and Purple Storm. 

The pattern is super simple - one knitted row followed by one purl row, changing colours as required. Rinse and repeat until the blanket is the desired size or the wool has run out. Stress free, cheerful and soft to the touch, this is exactly the project the doctor ordered. With the aid of this blanket, I might just be able to make it through the month...

2013 FO #15: Serenity-ish blanket

After what feels like months plugging away on the six-stitch garter-stitch border, this week I was finally able to cast off and block my Serenity blanket. Yesterday was beautiful and sunny and the baby is being delivered in three days (by pre-booked cesearean) so I decided to gentle block it outside in the sun to make sure that the blanket was dry and delivered to the mother before the infant was. I like the idea of a baby being delivered in to the world with an item that was crafted solely for them.

Lucy, of course, thought I'd placed it there just for her. I hope this new bub is not sensitive to cat hair!

I think I should really call it a Serenity-ish blanket because I heavily modified the finishing of the blanket to fit in with my very particular ideas of what a blanket should look like (square, big and concluded).

The original pattern had the lace and cable inside finishing halfway through a 'leaf'. There is no way I could have an incomplete leaf on a blanket of mine, so I continued the pattern so that the unfinished leaves were closed. The already closed leaves were continued to the border with a seven-stitch cable, and the inner section was then finished off with two purl rows.

I then did 20 rows of bee stitch (10 of the two-row repeats) before knitting another two purl rows and finishing it all off with a six-stitch garter-stitch border.

This resulted in a blanket that is big enough for mum to use it as a lap blanket if she wants as well as being the perfect size to wrap a baby in.

I am very pleased with this blanket - I think it's gorgeous and perfect for a summer baby and was fun to knit - the knitted present trifecta.

Pattern: Charts A, B and C of the Serenity blanket, then modifications as outlined above.

Yarn: Almost two full balls of Bendigo Woollen Mills Cotton 8-ply in Daffodil

Notes: Fun! A great project.

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!!

First stash acquisition of the year

Happy Monday, everyone. I hope you all had lovely weekends :)

I broke the screen of my beautiful Macbook Air a few weeks ago and finally put it in for repairs on Friday. I know it's stupid but I really miss it! I'm working my old very heavy, very slow laptop that doesn't have any of my bookmarks, favourites or Word shortcuts stored in it and it's just not the same. I know, I know, first world problems, but still! Also, and this is even more heartbreaking, the cost of the repairs is the exact same cost of the iPad I wanted. Grrr!!

Fortunately a package arrived from Bendigo Woollen Mills that cheered me right up:

This is the first lot of yarn I have bought all year. I had no idea I'd been so restrained! There is two balls of 8ply cotton in Daffodil to make a Serenity baby blanket, one ball each of Luxury 8ply in Sunflower and Purple Storm to make an Op Art baby blanket and a ball of unlabelled burgundy sock wool because (honestly) it was $8 for 100g of superwash sock wool and I cannot resist sock wool that cheap.

And, because it doesn't count as stash if you cast on straightaway:

I may have to wait a bit longer to buy an iPad but at least I'll have a lot of knitting to do in the meantime!