What I made, by Sharon

  The last couple of weeks I've been working on two things - the Field Day Jacket  in bulky handspun and, when that got too big to carry around with me a Musselburgh   to match my new blanket jacket. They look so good together! There are no photos. I managed to wear the hat and out on Friday and Saturday without getting a photo, the first time to go to my parents for dinner and second for my in-house pole competition. Today we went to the St Kilda pride centre for Leon's end of term choir extravaganza and I wore the cardigan and the hat.   I love this cardigan so much. I was trying to spin 8ply (doubleknit) yarn, and failed abysmally. the bulky yarn sat in my stash until a couple of weeks ago, when I went on a mission to find a pattern that would work with it. I did not know I needed a bulky oversized cardigan with toggle buttons, but now that I have one, I can tell you: perfection. I knit it pretty much to pattern, although I did add the pockets - perfect ...

 Last weekend I finished spinning the fibre I've been working on for a while: 480 grams and 983 meters of around an 8ply. I'm pretty happy with it. It was very fun to spin, and to produce what I had been aiming for. I then decided I want to make  the Argyle cardigan Links  so I needed a contrast colour. I decided to dye some fibre pink and orange as the contrast: I mean, I love it, but I would call it scarlet, mauve and pink. I'm pretty pleased with how fluffy the fibre is, even after dying. Meanwhile and unrelated I found out that avocado can be used as a natural dye. I asked Anna, my most avocado eating friend if she could keep her pits for me. On Tuesday she gave me a week's worth of avocado pits. I extracted the colour, let them cool, strained it and threw in a skein of of sock yarn, just to see what might happen.   I really like it. i also really like the Nundle "high twist" sock yarn, it's very plump and pleasing, while still being a true sock-we...

I've been knitting the Alpine Bloom dress for a month. Heavy laceweight on 3mm needles. On Sunday night I tried it on to see if it was long enough and discovered two things: It was time for the bottom and, despite being commercial yarn and all from the same dye lot, there are clear differences in colours from the different balls. Despite knowing I won't wear it like this I finished it. It was about 20 rows of lace for the bottom and one sleeve. Now I have to decide what to do. I know I don't have the energy to rip and reknit. I could try to dip dye it, but that may well wreck the whole thing, particularly because the yarn is partly cotton. I could rip it back and have a pretty top, but I don't want a top, I want a dress. I could embroider something on it, or duplicate stitch some matching flowers to call the eye away. I could ignore it and wear it anyway.  I could always stand in dappled shadow so that the stripes don't show. The stripes did soften after a wash, b...

 My 83 year old mother fell over on the street the other day. She put down her left hand (she's left handed) and fractured a bone in it. While it could have been worse, it's  not great, particularly since she is very left handed. She can't go to her gym classes, or swim, which are her main sources of exercise, so, for the first time in her life she's seeing a personal trainer. She's irrepressible and I love it.     Anyway, it's winter and it's cold and she can't wear a glove over the brace she has to wear, so she asked me to make her a mitten. Just one. I tried to suggest I make her a pair, but she said she was happy wearing mismatched mitts. I was going to make her two anyway, and then i realised that was because I would hate wearing an odd pair. So I did as requested. One large simple mitten that goes over a wrist brace. I know because I tested it on my old brace. Hopefully she won't need to wear either the brace or the mitten for too long. And the...

I finished the  Primervera socks I started for something small and convenient to carry around at Bendigo. Every Christmas, our good friend Dani of HalfBaked HandDyed fame dyes the Richmond Knitter's a special self stripping, riffing of the Christmas theme. this one has twelve different coloured stripes, for the twelve days of Christmas. I stole Sonia's photo, because it was better than mine: Stunning. I have come to the realisation that I don't like wearing plain, stocking stitch socks. They sag, and don't grip my legs well. The patterning on this sock is basically a 7 x 4 rib, with some extra fancy stuff thrown in every 6th row. They are so comfortable! The heel also called for a style I've recently adopted - adding one or two garter stitches to the edge of the heel flap. For some reason if I just slip the edges of my heel flaps it never ends up as neat as I would like, but this technique makes picking up those stiches easy and very neat. Even with this modifica...

This weekend I finished my final project for Bendigo - the  Noosa Scarf . This means I've knit the Richmond Knitters jumper for our annual Knit-A-Long , and a hat , j umper , socks ,  and now this scarf for the Bendigo Project, which is an initiative launched last year by some Australian designers. Last year I didn't knit any of the patterns, this year I went wild with it!    Knitting this was pure joy. I bought the yarn (locally died merino possum) on our recent tr ip to Adelaide . I cast it on the same month as I bought it, which is always a fun time It's the sort of knitting that uses just enough of my brain to keep it interesting. A little too complicated to knit when out and about, but just right when sitting at home on the rare quiet weekend or unfortunate sick day that has happened recently.  I knit it to pattern - right down to using a merino possum wool! I went up a needle size because I think my yarn is just a tiny bit thicker than the...

 I knit a Ranunculus in 2021 as the Richmond Knitter's Bendigo jumper for that year's (later cancelled) Richmond Knitters Bendigo Sheep Show project. It was never quite right - it got shorter over time and the colours were a bit too swirly.  It is a very useful layer - in winter under a jacket, in summer it's light enough to stuff into a small handbag. Two Tuesday 's ago I cast on a Love Note , which is a similarly themed garment - fluff knit on 6mm needles. The day after I cast on I washed Ranunculus, since I had taken it on both my recent interstate trips. It came out like this: It's not felted, but it seems to have become shorter and wider and the sleeves are long and tighter. Weird, since I did it on a wool wash with all my other woolens, as usual, and the rest of them are fine. Luckily Love Note fills the gap: No too short Not too weirdly coloured. Not too anything. Just a really light, wearable, delightful jumper.  I knit it to pattern, except I didn't do...

 I knit Andrea Mowry's Bright Lights shawl out of my own handspun, and there are very few joys more joyful than knitting something where I've managed to spin the perfect yarn for the situation. The project was great for taking out and about - simple and intuitive. As usual (I ranted about it here ) Andrea Mowry writes out the pattern as if they are a bunch of individual rows, rather than a simple, cohesive pattern. She wrote it out as a 16 row repeat, when it is actually a two row pattern, with one tiny tweak every 16th row. And then there are 30 finishing rows that are the same as the pattern repeat, but written out separately. The whole pattern is 8 pages, but the actual information needed could fit on an index card. I guess that's modern pattern writing. Why do I keep buying and knitting Andrea Mowry's patterns when I don't enjoy her pattern writing style? Because they are simple and effective and (usually) very wearable. Once I had the hang of the pattern I did...

 I've been saying for a couple of years ( since 2019 ) that my sock draw is full, but I still find excuses to knit more socks! This time it was Socks for the Bendigo Project. I love a knitalong and I love using up leftovers / making things matchy and this fulfilled both of those. I thought they would be perfect for our trip to Launceston , and I was right. Easy to knit, compact to carry, perfect all around. I recently bought some Addi Novel for knitting socks. This came about because I read about the Addi Unicorn and they looked so cute, but I couldn't get them here and also I think they are a blunt tip. So I bought these and I really like them. They are sort-of square and have little ridges on them. They are not as sharp as some of the needles I use, but they are sharp enough. And they don't bend while I'm using them (I'm looking at you, HiyaHiya !)  As part of my packing I took my Hederas , a pair of Cookie A socks I made in 2010 from the sadly departed Socks Th...

I decided to use the leftovers from my Celeste jumper to knit a McKinnon beanie. This beanie is part of the Bendigo project . I test knit the jumper for this fun knit-a-long so i thought it would be fun to do a hat (and socks, but that's a next week situation. I haven't knit brioche for a while, and I've never knit brioche cables, but it was easy to remember and fun to knit.  And it makes such a beautiful squishy textured fabric. My moment of greatest pride was when I had to rip - I'd started a new background colour at knit night, and was three rounds in when I noticed that I'd chosen the wrong colour. I ripped it back and got the stitches back on the needles and it was fine. i had thought it might be one of those situations when I just keep tinkng back one more row to fix it, but no - I can't even tell which row it was.    It's such a bright and fun hat, and it was a pleasure to knit. I'll try to get some outside photos over the weekend, since Pint of...

This year  Richmond Knitters chose the  Celeste Sweater by Petit Knits  for our annual Bendigo Sheep show knitalong. It wasn't a jumper I felt particularly drawn to, but we had agreement, and early, so I was happy to knit it. the pattern is written for 8ply, and I have enough 8ply jumpers, particularly as a colourwork yoke adds quite a lot of warmth. For me a lighter jumper for inside with a jacket over the top if going outside is perfect for our Melbourne winters. Melbourne winter can be pretty sad and grey, so I wanted bright pastels (Easter egg , or 'candy' coloured were my inspiration ). I'm pretty happy with the results. There were a couple of dramas with the knitting - where the pattern calls for the main colour to be used in the yoke, it didn't really work, and then I used a speckled white, which also didn't work, so I ripped and reknit the last 8 round (the ones with ALL the stiches) twice. And then I realised the row that had been ripped out from and re...