What I made, by Sharon

This last week I knit a Cochal cowl, in colours and pattern to match my Stasis jumper , socks, and hat (we won't talk about the mittens). It's from Kate Davies' 7 Skeins Club - I have now knit, or attempted to knit - all 11 patterns from that club (there is a fail mitten story there too) It was a really easy, fun knit. So easy that I finished it at Geelong Beer festival, and made Leon take photos on the train on the way home. After it was blocked the edge curled a bit less, but I'm fond of these photos, so I'm using them. It isn't the designs fault that the edge curls, I changed it to a i-cord cast on and cast off and then went into a few rows of stocking stitch, rather than the garter called for in the pattern, to help it look more like my Scottish set. I also left off the last couple of repeats - I think it is plenty long enough, and I was worried that if I knit it any longer it wouldn't sit nicely round my neck And one final pictu...

As I said earlier in the week , and all evidence to the contrary, winter is coming, and I thought I would get Leon's winter set (2016) done. I knit the mitts as part of the 7 Skeins Club, and last week I made the hat, also from the club. I decided to improvise the scarf by taking the motive from the mitts and putting it on a scarf: It does mean that the scarf has a right and a wrong side, but I think it will look good anyway. It also meant a lot of flat colourwork, which did took forever, and I've still got the other end to do. It will be worth it to have the matching set though. I'm reading Half the World by Joe Abercombe. It's the second in the Shattered Sea trilogy, and I'm loving it as much as I did the first .  I really don't want to put it down. I love reading good fantasy, and this certainly qualifies. And I'm still struggling through M agda Szubannski's memoir   Reckoning . She's just so negative. And I'm a third of the way ...

For the last seven weeks, on a Friday evening I've had a Kate Davies Seven Skeins club pattern arrive. The club has been very rewarding. This is what I knat over the seven weeks:   I missed week two because of my fail mitten , and because of that I have a bit more yarn left over. On the suggestion of Louisa I'm considering knitting a Goat set, which uses three skeins of yarn. Although i do seem to have a few recently knit Kate Davies hats floating around. I consider this club a complete success, because I enjoyed it, I knit some good stuff and I was inspired. I'm making Leon's Winter Set (2016) out of Buchaille yarn and I'm going to knit the other beanie pattern from week four. I loved week one's socks enough that I made another sock weight pair .  Most of all I enjoyed the thrill of opening that email on Friday evenings. I'll have to find another way to get my knitting thrills. Suggestions welcomed.

When i saw this weeks pattern I felt much like I did last week - neutral, maybe a bit puzzled. But last week after I knit them I was even more confused . After knitting this weeks pattern for oobits (felted bracelets) I feel very differently. I love them. I loved the process, going from a large floppy thing: to a tight felted bracelet. I'm loving wearing them because they are soft and not clacky like normal bangles.    They are also very warm, so I can imagine wearing them all the time in winter. I'm already planning to make more, with some left over Jameson and Smiths I have in pretty colours.   

I expected a Christmas tree ornament some time in this club, and  it showed up this week. As a non-Christian I though Kate Davies managed this very gracefully, calling them Whigmakeeries , and  describing them as:         a decorative or fanciful object, a piece of ornamentation …a knick-knack, gew-gaw, bauble, fantastic contrivance, or contraption .” In other words, a whigmaleerie is a wee thingumajig, of the kind folk often like to hang on trees at this festive time of year. I knit them even though I am not of the tree hanging persuasion, because I am working the process for this club. I decided to put a bell in them, and maybe give them to the cats.  They are huge! Leon and I have been throwing them around like mini footballs. I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do with them.   As for the cats playing with them, this is what Tarragon had to say about that idea

This weeks club patterns was a choice of two hats. I really like the stranded one,  but I'm going to knit that for Leon's winter set. My intention is to buy more of the yarn, once it's available and knit his the hat and a scarf to match his Pawkies . So that left the stripped hat, for me.  I decided to rip out my failed mitten , because I love the aqua colour, and wanted to use it, rather than leaving it in a sad, failed mitten. It was a simple, quick knit, quite fun to me doing simple stocking stitch in the round for a change. Obviously these photos are unblocked, and I don't think a project like this can really be considered done until it is blocked, but I was excited to be finished and wanted to share.

I had an hour between finishing work and circus school last night, and it was raining, so I sat under the roof of the convention centre and knit on my Seven Skeins project for this week, which is a slouchy beanie. While I sat there I listened to Graeme Greene's The End of the Affair . It's kind of sad and kind of slow and I am veering between hating all the characters because they are useless and pitying them because they are so real ... and useless. I'm reading Ann Lekie's Ancillary Mercy and am just loving it. Well written sci-fi with great characters. It's the third (and last) in the series, so I'm not surprised at how much I am enjoying it. As always on a Wednesday, I'm playing along with Ginny's yarnalong . Pop over to her blog to see what she, and everyone else, is knitting and reading this week.

When last I wrote about my knitting, I said I was finally getting the flow of my  Kokkeluri  mitten. When I finished the first one I had a couple of observations: 1. It took forever. A week for a single mitten? I normally knit a pair of complex patterned socks in a week. 2. My hands and arms hurt more than they have in a very long time. 3. It looked like crap. The tension was uneven, the joins between needles were lumpy and they yarn felt really splitty to work.My colourwork didn't look as crisp as other peoples. Now, I know how to knit colourwork , and I can do it so it looks good.  I came up with a theory - I recently looked up how colour dominance is supposed to work, and as Kate Davies writes on her patterns -  the foreground colour is held in the left hand and the back ground in the right. I'm a continental knitter, so I normally hold the yarn in the left hand. I think for all my other colourwork projects I have held the background colo...

I had an hour to kill between work and needing to be anywhere yesterday, so I sat by the river and worked on my Kokkeluri mitten.I'm finally getting into the flow of it. I'm listening to Oprah Winfey's What I know for Sure . It's a rather rambling collection of thoughts, but it's read wonderfully by Oprah herself, and I needed an inspirational pick me up. I'm reading Valley of the Dolls. It's a trashy, pretty terrible book. It's worth clicking through to the Goodreads   link, because the reviews are hilarious. And that's me for another week in the sunshine. Click through to Ginny's blog to see what she and the rest of the yarnalong are up to this week.    

I had a fabulous weekend. The weather is starting to warm up and Leon and I took a Kayaking course. We went out on Port Phillip Bay, and kayaked down the river through the Docklands and it was magnificent. I didn't have my camera with me, because I didn't want it getting wet, so this is the only photo I took: I didn't get much knitting done on the next Kate Davies Seven Skeins Club Pattern. I'm choosing to do the Kokkelur i mittens. I cast on on Friday night, and messed up the vikkel braid twice. Then I finally cast on successfully on Saturday. I hadn't had a chance to print out the pattern, and was fining it horrible working the chart on my tablet, so i put it aside for the rest of the weekend.This is all I got done: Instead of knitting the mittens, I finished the body of Epistrophy . I was a bit surprised it knit up so fast, since I'm spending most of my time on the Seven Skein Club. Right, now I'm off to get really stuck into those mittens.

I decided to knit the stripped version of the seven skeins club house socks. I wanted to be able to wear them in sneakers, because I love the way they don't fall down at the ankle and the clever heel construction. I had to make a couple of changes to the pattern, but I think they keep the spirit of the original. I cast on in left over sock weight yarn, using 64 stitches and 2.25 mm needles. I knit the toes and the foot as the pattern suggested, and then did the heel in stocking stitch. I knit two together at the centre point of the heel for a few row, to try to reduce the pointy heel situation Generally I am very happy with them. It is a fun, simple way to make sneaker liners, and I was excited to make two patterns for the first week of the Seven Skeins Club. I am very much looking forward to what comes next in this adventure.

I'm so excited that it is getting warmer here, and I can sit on my balcony and knit, read and listen to books. This week I am knitting striped Baffies , to go with the stranded ones I knit at the beginning of the week. They are from Kate Davies Seven Skeins Club , and I cannot express how much fun I am having knitting them.  I am reading Daryl Gregory's Afterparty    and loving it. I want to keep reading all the time to find out what happens, but I also don't want this book to end. I've had a few books in a row that I have really enjoyed, and this is definitely one of them. As for the audiobooks I gave up on  Guns Germ and Steel   three hours in. I was really uncomfortable that he kept referring to native Americans as Indians, and then he tried to answer the question "why were people hunter gatherers after farming had been invented".  That's like me asking "since I love my e-reader, why are people sti...

As promised, the first pattern for the Seven Skeins Club arrived on Friday night. I was stoked to see that Kate Davies had sent us a pattern for sneaker liners .  She thinks these are house socks, but i know the squishy goodness is going to be so comfortable in my bike shoes. They have a really interesting construction, and knit up ridiculously quickly.  The club actually included two separate patterns, one for  colourwork socks, which i chose to make in the same colours and yarn and the club yarn. But there is also another pattern included, for two colour ones with stripes rather than colourwork. It wouldn't be difficult to do the maths and knit these with regular sock wool... watch this space.