What I made, by Sharon

I sometimes swatch, but not that much recently. I have many of my old swatches, which I was keeping for no particular reason. I have taken to keeping little baggies of yarn in case I have to do repairs, I am still patching things from  last year's moth  problem. I was considering doing a swatch for my next project (I'm knitting the Clam tunic Clam tunic as a dress). The gauge seemed like something I was not going to match, so I figured either cast on and risk ripping, or swatch. And then I realised that a swatch is the perfect place to store yarn for later use. it won't get accidentally used on a charity knit, its not unknit yarn hanging about and getting tangled.  While I had all my old swatches out to take this photo I noticed that one of them is for a jumper of Leon's that I patched last week with the closest yarn I could find, rather than the exact yarn that was sitting there all the time! As for my swatch: It gave me 26 stitches for 10 cm before washing and 24 st...

When I was 24 I lived with a flatmate for a year. We met because she had put an ad for a flatmate in the local paper - that's how old this story is. We had a riotous time. There was drinking and boys and late nights, heartbreak and a cat called Matey, and I have no photos of that time at all.  After a year and a half I packed up and went overseas, and Luna has been on a variety of adventures herself,  including becoming a midwife, moving to Tasmania and living a rather eclectic life. She moved back to Melbourne a couple of years ago and at Christmas a bunch of us from "the old days" met up for a drink and a catch-up. She asked if I would knit her a black jumper, and I'm pretty sure I said no. A couple of months ago she messaged me and somehow we ended up planning this   jumper . She sent the jumper she wants the handknit to look like - it's kind of stiff and made of mohair or fake mohair.  We decided on Zealana Air, and she ordered it. It arrived earlier th...

and then WASH IT. I did swatch for my Scotch Mist jumper - a teeny tiny swatch to get the hang of the cable pattern and then a stocking-stitch swatch to work out what size to make - I'm using 8 ply on an aran jumper (again!). When I finished the body, it came out at just shy of 36 inches, which is fine, I'd calculated it at 37 inches, but my notes say i was hoping for closer to 40.  After blocking tit's come out at just under 40 inches. Everything relaxed. This didn't surprise me, the pattern has a lot of knit one below, and they have opened up to this more lacey effect. I like this too, but I might have been a bit less surprised about how much it relaxed if I'd washed my teeny tiny swatch.  Now, dry quickly please, I'm aching to get the collar and sleeves on. 

 After I finished my giant pink brioche cardigan I still had half the yarn left over. Now, the yarn came from an op-shop (thrift store / charity shop) and was new, in it's original plastic packaging By the time I finished the cardigan it smelt odd. Like moth-balls and something unpleasant. I already knew i didn't want two projects in this marvellous shade of pink, so I decided to overdye it. i wanted to run a light blue of gentle mauve through it. I tested out a couple of colours, and then carefully measured out the blue dye - I have a history of being heavy-handed! I mixed the dye well, and then poured it into the dye pot, mixing it well again, before placing my pre-soaked yarn into the pot. The dye-stock was so light as to be invisible. And then the dye kind of separated and clumped and I got this. Now, I really like it. iIm carrying it along with some mohair for the Wednesday Sweater, and it swatched up beautifully, but I'm still super-confused about how my attempts to c...

We are going on a 6 day, 5 night holiday to Tasmania for Festival of Voices. I am really looking forward to it- Leon and Elise's choir are preforming all over the place, and  this time Kris is coming too, which will give me knitterly company. The main question is : what to knit? I'm tossing up between a few options: 1)  The Urban Ballerina Shrug . I just don't feel 100 confident about my background colour, although I love it and am obsessed with it, it might be a bit busy. I think I'l also swatch with the burgundy: 2) A  brioche cardigan . 3) A plainish pair of socks (in this, my oldest sock yarn). The advantage of the socks and shrug is that they are easy to throw into the medium sized handbag / convertible backpack I've recently acquired. I'm obsessed with it. The shrug uses multiple needle sizes, and, while I've never had an issue with carrying lots of needles on a plan, it still makes me a little nervous sometimes.  The brioche will be big, so I'll h...

During last week, I knit a swatch for my September tights . I decided to make a substantial swatch, because these are a biggish project, and all numbers are based on the swatch. I cast on 60 stitches and knit ten grams of yarn. After I cast off I counted my gauge, and then  decided to wash it and see if it changed. i didn't care that much really, because I'm using Left Over Sock Yarn, so there are lots of different weights of sock yarn. I washed it, and on Saturday I put it out on the balcony to dry. When I went to get it it was gone! It must have gone flying away. we had a look on the street near my place, but it's gone. I can only imagine it floating away, to land in a suburban back garden and really confuse the person who finds it!

I wound the yarn and swatched as per instructions for the Gloamin-Tide mkal . I quite like the way it came out, although the top two colours look really close. Also, this photo makes them look kind of green, and in other lights they look more yellow.  I was lazy and used the easiest cast off, which was way too tight. I swatched on 3.25mm metal needles and am getting slightly too large a gauge. i love the fabric, so I think I'll switch to wooden needles for the actual knitting and call it good. =The first clue comes out on Monday (actually Tuesday 2am in Melbourne), and I can hardly wait. in the meantime though, I'm planning to KNIT ALL THE (other) THINGS. I think this mkal will take about 4 knitting days each week, which leaves me a little time to work on other things. I swatched  for Carbeth as well - and when I say swatched I mean cast on a sleeve, magic looped 5 rows, decided it was enough for me to know what needle size I need and went and bought DPNs in 5.5 and 6mm. ...

I told you about getting the yarn for Kate Davies Strathendrik. It's currently 6th in my queue, a queue that includes Boxy, and a colourwork vest: So I don't really need to worry about it just yet. But I was. Normally when I'm choosing colourwork colours I take a while. I might discuss it with friends, play around , consider for quite some time. Not this time. With the help of Tiina from Tukuwool it was done and dusted in 5 minutes flat. And then I worried about it. Kate Davies' version is on a light background, with contrasting sleeves and trim , and that's how everyone on R avelry has knitted it too. I decided to do mine with a dark background, and use the same colour for the sleeves. And I worried about it. So I wound my wool and did a one repeat swatch, just to see what the colours look like:  And I like them. The only one I'm not one hundre d percent about is the yellow, but I also think it gives a nice pop of colour, so I will pro...

I’m going to Thailand on Friday with my old school friends. A couple of years ago we started talking about what we were going to do for our 40ths, and decided that, instead of a bunch of parties and presents and all that, we’d go on holidays together. I didn’t think it would actually happen, but happening it is.   Five of us are going to stay in a resort in Phuket, leaving this Friday.   Now, one of the most important questions I have to ask before any holiday is: what should I knit? I’ve decided on Romi Hill’s Village Sweater Wrap. It’s an odd garment – part giant shawl, part cardigan, but I’ve noticed that my taste is moving towards longer, looser, less structured garments. This should be great holiday knitting – the middle is just endless garter stitch, and there is no possibility that over ten days I will finish it. This also has the bonus that I have somewhat  suitable yarn in stash:   I swatched this weekend. Sometimes I can be cavalier about sw...

As you know, I found out I’ve got 1.8 kilograms of sock yarn leftovers, a fact that has been freaking me out. Also, I’ve been trying to make a new jumper for my mother, that she might love as much as the Adult Surprise Jacket (ASJ) that I made for her in 2009. And then I came across this poem: When storage problems arise  you might consider it wise   to knit from your stash,   Clear space, saving cash,   so, go for an “Adult Surprise”! found here   So I decided to make my mother an ASJ out of left over sock yarn scraps held double, changing each colour as it runs out. I cannot describe how excited  about this.  It covers all my needs, should be superfun to knit and my mother should love it. So I sat down to swatch. And found myself asking some big questions:   How do you swatch when the yarns are going to change all the time while knitting? Do I go down by 0.25 mm needle size to try to avoid the stretching o...

Good Beer Week starts tomorrow, which is super exciting.  As usually happens, I try to pick a project that will withstand 9 days of low lighting, public transport and beer. This year I have decided to knit the Honeycomb Vest, from Knitty. I've cast on for the second smallest size. I am somewhat concerned that it will be too big, although it should be fine. Did I swatch? No I did not. Why not? Well the swatch size was in pattern, which I consider ridiculous. How do I measure something "after blocking". Pin blocking? Light blocking? And should I do it in the rib or the body pattern? There is a gauge for both. What if I can match one but not the other? Seriously, be specific, pattern. Anyway, in a day or two I will knit this on to longer needles and see what the fit is like. Although I just realised that last time I made this exact set of decisions, it ended up with an abandoned project. Stay tuned for the thrills and excitement of trying to make a garment that fits.

The Ursula pattern is well written, but I'm finding it overly prescriptive. I've come to the button bands, and Kate Davies says to pick up 88 stitches. Well, this doesn't work for me, because I made it into a v-neck. And I would always rather a designer write "pick up x stitches for x rows" than prescribe a number of stitches. I did work out that she means pick up 3 stitches for every four rows. But people on Ravelry have used a range of different ratios - 2 in 3, 3 in 4 and even one to one. So I did what Barbara Walker told me to, and put a button band on my swatch: And what I learnt is that a 3 to 4 ratio seems to work. The only problem is I started casting off with a stretchy cast of (near the top of the photo) and I thought it looked messy, so I switched to a less stretchy one. It looks better, but on my Decima l, the cardigan itself has grown a little over time, but the overly tight cast off could not, so the button band pulls now, although it did not wh...

I can sometimes be a bit cavalier about swatching; cast on a sleeve and see what happens. Because the Ursula cardigan is quite a particular pattern, this wasn't going to work. So, since Kate and I are doing this as a knit-a-long, we sat down and swatched together. This made a task i sometimes find tedious much more fun. I learnt many things from my swatch:  I love the colours for my cardigan.  I love the fabric on 3mm needles.  I'm getting pretty much exactly stitch gauge, possibly one stitch less per 10cm, which is exactly what I wanted.  My row gauge is way out, so I will probably have to do one repeat less of the pattern.  I knit much looser than Kate does.    That's Kate's tiny looking swatch at the top. Same number of stitches, same size needles. And no, I don't know why they both look blue. All in all I'm reasonably confident I may get a cardigan that fits me at the end of this, and that's really all anyone can ...

To my excitement my new Addi Lace Clicks were delivered on Friday. I unwrapped the package and the needle case is wonderful - and practical. As well as being terribly pink it holds everything in place, so I could throw the whole thing into a bag and go.  The needles are pointy and the red cords are just like the ones on the Addi Lace fixed needles that I love. I had a moment of panic when i touched the needles, they seemed kind of tacky / sticky. Then I washed them, and whatever caused that came right off. Which is good, because the whole point of buying this was to get a a slick, sharp needle. I used them to swatch for Cria , and enjoyed knitting with them. Now the swatch is hung to dry and I'm going to work on finishing my socks so I can cast Cria on. 

The other night I went to bed and couldn't sleep, so I started thinking about Spice Trail , a jumper from the latest Knitty. I'm a bit obsessed with this little jumper, and I want to make it from my stashed Rowan Denim. The gauge in the Denim is 20 stitches to 4 inches, which the gauge on the pattern is 23 stitches to four inches. And I can't just go down a size, because, even at gauge, I would be knitting the smallest, or the second smallest. So I lay there, fretting about it. The only measurement I had was the bust measurement of the pattern and my own bust measurement. I didn't have the waist measurement, the recommended ease or even a gauge swatch in the Denim. And I lay there and did maths and somehow made it work and eventually dropped off into a restless sleep. Which is all to explain why I swatched for this project, even though it will be weeks, and possibly months before I cast on. At least now I can actually do the maths and work it out, inste...