What I made, by Sharon

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 Yarn Fest, swatched in May and last Thursday 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 (Tukuwool fingering from finland) and the pattern go together.

This is one repeat done. I'm really looking forward to the next repeat, because the patternin…

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 matching pair of socks. Co-…

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 knit each …

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 know, and…

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 pilled 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 yarn. I love seeing every…