What I made, by Sharon

In general, Strathendrick is going well. I've done the increases for the underarms, and even though the idea was stressing me out, in reality it wasn't all that hard: EXCEPT: the pattern calls for an extra increase at the beginning of the back, and the beginning of the front and the beginning of the back. At 10pm last night I notices that, to me, it looks like it should be at the end of the front and back. I spent 30 minutes trying to work it out last night, I've messaged in the relevant  Ravelry thread, and I spent far too much time thinking about it when I was meant to be asleep last night. I'm sure it's something simple, but I need to get it right or the whole top of the shoulder will look like crap.  When you are as short as me, the hem of your jumper can be as messed up as you like, but everyone sees the tops of my shoulders. I'm looking forward to sitting down with this and working it out. I'm pretty sure it's  the pattern that is the ...

The other Monday Catherine came to knit night and offered me this ball of yarn. 29 grams of "mind the gap" colourway  self striping yarn. Part of me was thinking "what would I do with 29 grams of self striping yarn?" Most of me was shouting "Mind the Gap, all my friends have knit with that. gimme, gimme".  While I was pondering what to do with it, twistedstitching on Ravelry posted this sock: copyright twistedstitching And I knew what i had to do. I found some left over SocksYeah in grey - I would have preferred white but I'm stubbornly using stash.  I've  put them in a ziplock bag. Because I'm still working on  Strathendrick, and I can't bear to put it down. I guess being a monogamous knitting doesn't stop a girl from dreaming.  Or, as my father once very lyrically described marriage "just because you're on a diet doesn't mean you can't look in the cake shop window". It sounded less creepy whe...

I don't worry too much about my row gauge. particularity in a pattern like Strathendrick, where the instructions say to "knit to xx cms". So when I swatched I looked a stitch gauge and whether I liked the fabric. After I started knitting I realised that the final row, which goes all the way across the shoulders, would end in a random spot unless I did some planning. Kate Davies appears to have ended at a random spot in the repeat, but I know I want it to end on a row 17 or 34 - the yellow rows. So I did the maths and worked it out. While I was there, I though to check the size of the arm. the smallest size, which I am knitting, leads to a 25 cm arm at the elbow. I f I have n't me ntioned it in the last 5 minutes - I do crossfi t: Th os e arms are not going to squee ze down to 25 cm. So I  did more maths - it's not very tricky, just maki ng the pre armscyth part shorter, and the chest but longer, to make the sleeve opening wider. So I'm knitting ...

I've been knitting in public since 2008, when I made a pair of socks and took them to trivia with me. When i started knitting in public I felt like people where always asking me what i was knitting. random strangers on trams would stare at me, friends would ask - either, "what are you knitting", or the more freaked out "are you knitting". Now, the only question my friends have is "where is the knitting?" if I happen to not be knitting. I tell this story because, as you know, I recently knit Raph a birthday present : In the couple of weeks it took I saw Raph three times - the last time was at him house, and I had left my bag on the bench. i asked him to grab  my knitting out, and he said "I was surprised you weren't knitting " . So there is was, hidden in plain sight.  It's reversible. somewhat hard to tell, but this is the "wrong" side.

I wanted to knit Kate Davie's Strathendrick since the moment I saw it, in January this year. I bought the yarn in March at Edinburgh Y arn Fest , swatched in May and last T hursday I was finally ready to cast on. I was a tiny bit scared, because it's the size of Boxy , and starts with a provisional cast on of 400+ stitches (join being careful not to twist...). Now that I've been knitting it for (nearly) a week, I know two things: 1) The knitting is rhythmic, soothing and once set up simple enough to knit in public  2) This is addictive. It's no secret that I think about knitting ALL THE TIME, but this is even more extreme than usual. I just want to knit one more stitch, all the time. i would say one more row, but at 400+ colourwork stitches a round takes a while. But it's so addictive.  I am loving the way the yarn ( Tuk u wool fingering from finland ) and the pattern go together. This is one repeat done. I'm really looking forward to the next ...

In the end I solved the problem of how to do the colours on Raph's cowl by realising that, it I knit it to the prescribed 52 centimeters in the yarn I was using, it would be utterly ridiculous. I stopped after I had done one stripe in each colour, and it's still pretty strange. Leon was kind enough to model it for me.  I don't really know what to say about this project. It was a fun simple knit. i think the Milorrachy tweed colours look really good together, but it does look a bit like a ruff. Still, it will definitly keep Raph's ears and neck warm while he walks the dogs, it's still winter, and his birthday is next week. I'll try to get some pictures modeled by him when I give it to him on him birthday next week.

I finished Gloamin-Tide mkal and I'm really happy with it. The process was really fun - a mystery shawl with quite a lot of mystery, variety in each clue, active Ravelry forums and lots of posting on instagram. I really like the way my colours came out, although I like pretty much everyone else's colours too, even the ones who did not follow the suggestion of using "a subtle fade". The shape is a shallow triangle. I finished this on Sunday night, and it was blocking at home when Chris, one of the Richmond knitters, walked in wearing a similarly shaped shawl, point down, frothing down her chest like a lace waterfall. I realised that's the perfect way to wear this one too. Do you like the creepy babies on the wall mural? Apparently it's by a famous St Kilda artist, but I think they are just super creepy.  And finally, I have 60 grams of yarn left over from the three colours, which happens to be exactly the amount of yarn I need to make a ma...

The other week Raph came to the pub and asked if I would make him "a snood" for next winter. After a bit of conversation, I realised he meant a cowl. I've had this conversation before - I consider a snood as a hair covering for medieval women. Anyway, he struggles to keep scarves on, because he has a large neck, so he wanted a cowl. I refrained from telling him that if a scarf was long enough it would stay on fine.It's his birthday in a couple of weeks, so I figured why wait?  I came home looked at some patterns and decided to make Martina Behm's Wolking , using the sample Milarrochy Tweed from the Kate Davies Club I added 20 stitches to the pattern to accommodate his size, and started knitting. I thought I would use half of each colour until I hit the middle, and then knit the same sequence out. What i should have done at this point was to weigh how much a row takes. I didn't. Part way through I realised that I wasn't going to have enough yarn to k...

When I started the Gloamin-Tide mkal , I knew that I would also be knitting other projects as I went along. As a normally monogamous knitter, I thought it would be a good experiment. The next project I'm doing is a huge colourwork jumper ( Strathendick ) and having something small and simple on the go at the same time would be the sensible thing to do. So, at the end of the final week of the mkal, how do I feel about having two active projects on the go? Not so good. It was pretty much okay the first few weeks - I knit the Gloamin-Tide cluefor between two and four days, and then knit other things - quite a few other things, including a Carbeth, a pair of socks, a baby jumper a hat and a bathmatt. And then I cast on the Wolking cowl  . This week I've only been working on Glaomin-Tide, and I'm not sure what I'm doing with the colours on Wolkin and I can't address that, because I'm knitting Gloamin-Tide. I feel like my energy is really split. It's good to k...

This month I can't talk about socks that I've knit, because it was a sadly sock free month. I did have two dramas: A pair of Tardis socks I knit for Leon in December 2012 . It might be darnable, but the thinning goes all the way round the back. Also, I used up all my blue sock yarn scraps . Oops. I also got  a hole in both of these lovelies . Spindle spun in super soft merino, and knitted in 2010, before I knew better, it's surprising they lasted this long.I think I've got some of the original yarn in the stash box, so I'll darn them again, even through they are quite worn and pi lled now. In future sock knitting joy, at the Sheep Show I bought a pair of two millimeter ChiaGo DPNs. I'm pretty excited about them - my HiyaHiya sharps are good, but they are very, very sharp, so I'm excited to be able to compare, and also to possibly make tandem socks. As I like to do on the first Thursday of the month, I'm linking up with Paula , of Spin a...