blaugrana

I finished my hat and gloves for the Big Issue knitting event

patterns: glittens – improvised; hat – Turn a Square by Jared Flood
yarn: King Cole Fashion Aran (blue) & Patons Diploma Gold Aran (purple)

I’ve been wearing glittens myself during the winter and love how handy it is to be able keep your fingers warm most of the time but have them free when you need, eg to use a camera.   I thought the same would apply if you’re standing around outside selling the Big Issue, you’d want to have cosy hands but still be able to handle money.  The hat is the first Turn a Square I’ve made and I love it, I can see this becoming my default basic beanie pattern.

The colour scheme was accident not design.  These are two of my favourite inexpensive arans (although the Paton’s has now been discontinued, unfortunately), soft, hard wearing, machine washable.  I had part balls of each and wasn’t sure if there was enough of either for the glittens, hence the stripes.  It was only when I was half way through the first one I realised I need to hope for a Big Issue seller who is a Burnley fan.  Or West Ham, Aston Villa, Port Vale, Scunthorpe or even the bluagranas themselves, Barcelona.  Or just someone who has no interest in foopball but wants warm head and hands.

beginnings and endings (and carrying-on-ings)

beginnings

On Sunday I started another pair of glittens, this time for a homeless or vulnerably housed person, as part of the Big Issue Knit .  Which was a great fun afternoon out, too, and amazing to see so many knitters in one place.

And it being January, another Open University course is about to begin. This is (fingers crossed) my final course for my degree and is a literature-based research project. Which is scary, being left to myself to turn out 5000 words by September. I’m probably going to concentrate on physical organic chemistry, but the past year of studying physical chemistry has pushed all the organic I knew out of my brain.

most importantly: buy more knitting patterns!

I’ll be starting lots of new beginnings soon with all my new knitting patterns.   Lots of lovely designers are contributing money from their January pattern sales to the Haiti relief effort. So if there’s a pattern you were thinking of buying anyway one day, have a look if the designer is taking part in the Help for Haiti efforts and buy it sooner rather than later.

endings

finally, at long last, I have finished my potions class socks.I really don’t know why it’s taken me so long, except that they got pushed to the back of te work in progress queue. I love both the yarn and the pattern and am very happy with the finished socks.

pattern: Hallows and Horcruxes by Kate Heppell
yarn: Old Maiden Aunt Merino Superwash 4ply shade K1

I’ve also finished some glittens I promised my favourite small girl, an experimental short row slouchy hat, and (with a lot of help and advice from my mum, ravelry friends and the nice lady in Leon’s) sewed myself a bag organiser and a top.

carrying-on-ings

I’m still pushing on with my Bohus cardigan. I finally got the waist decreases to work out for me, and am just about to start the short row shaping for the bust. After that I can join in the sleeves and start on the colour work, which will be a relief from all this stocking stitch.

And the never ending crochet blanket of DOOOM is continuing in occasional fits and starts. It seemed a good idea when I started, to make son’s blanket full sized so he can use it for a long time, but I am regretting it now.

Haiti

Life for most people in Haiti was already hard enough before today’s devastating earthquake. This photo breaks my heart

All the stuff I think I ‘need’, how can I think I need it more than her and her people?  When I get paid this month, instead of spending my discretionary spends on wool and books and such, I will send it to MSF.  Please consider doing something similar.

crochet 2, audrey 0

I am not one of nature’s artists.  I know I can’t draw or paint, but sometimes I delude myself about my ability to undertake other creative tasks.  Take for example the time I decided to bake my son a train cake for his birthday, like the one my friend made for hers.  Baking cakes I can do, and she said it was easy to make the carriages & engine from sponge cake.  At 3 am, surrounded by bits of sponge cake hacked into random shapes and soggy with tears, I found out that her definition of ‘easy’ was different to mine (and then went to the 24 hour supermarket to buy a damn cake).

This is a lesson I seem to need to keep relearning, apparently.  I can crochet, so I can do knock up an amigurumi Darth Maul for my nephew, based on this cute pattern.  Right?

I don’t know which aspect of this is worse, my inability to crochet tightly enough for amigurumi (despite using big yarn and little hook) or my attempts to embroider the features on to it?  On balance, I think the embroidery is the biggest fail.  The tension I can work on (as a self-taught crocheter I can probably learn from some RL crochet gurus) but the embroidery I think falls outwith my creative sphere.

So then I decided to crochet a hat.  This also went sadly wrong, managing to be both too tight at the brim and too floppy on the crown.  Luckily however I found someone it fit perfectly.

old year, new year

Today is such a lovely cold, bright New Year’s Day, perfect for our planned toddle up Mam Tor.  But as we are instead house-bound by a poorly child, I’m catching up on my on-line life after 10 broadband-less days.  Click on more to find out all about my yarn-related Christmas gifting, both given and received.

ssssssh

Sorry it’s been so quiet hereabout lately, a combination of viruses (several minor ones in quick succession) and the Christmas Knitting have left me without much to post about.

The Christmas knitting is nearly finished (only 1.5 hats to go), I’ll be sharing photos & details after the 25th. I don’t think anyone who is likely to receive a knitted gift from me actually reads this blog, and I know none of them are on ravelry, but it still feels wrong to post pictures of gifts before giving them. When I was a kid my mum always told me it was wrong to read a book you’d bought to someone else, or try out a toy or listen to a cd, or whatever, before you’d given the gift. Posting pcitures woudl feel like playing with the gift before giving it.

One thing I can post is this hat from the Woolly Wormhead knit-a-long. It was meant to be a gift for an adult, who is petite and unlikely to appreciate a very slouchy hat, so I chose the smallest size. Sizing fail, no way will it fit an adult woman but fortunately it looks adorable on on a 6 year old.

pattern: Mayrose by Woolly Wormhead
yarn: King Cole Mirage, shade 866 Georgetown

Work on my bohus cardigan and son’s blue blanket has been on hold for the Christmas knitting, but I’m looking forward to have a Big Push on the cardigan over Christmas. In other news, I got my Open University results and have passed all my courses this year (2 summer schools + chemistry with hard sums), which leaves me with one more course to do, to complete my molecular science degree.

yoga for the mind

Whenever I see someone frazzled, overwhelmed, and upset, I always feel bad if they don’t have any knitting. I feel sure that the tangible, even progress of knitting would make anybody feel better. (However, so far my attempts to give upset people some yarn, needles and a knitting lesson have been less than successful. Maybe my timing is off).

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (the Yarn Harlot)

OK so I’ve never actually done yoga for the body, but I do know that knitting can calm and centre a troubled mind.  Knitting has been very comforting and soothing to me in difficult times.  This weekend, we were visiting my son’s friend who was recently badly hurt in a car accident (he’s going to be fine tho, yay). About this time last year, his mum was inspired to take up the needles again when she saw me making a fake isle hat, and I’ve been happily enabling encouraging her since then.  She was telling me how glad she was to have her knitting with her while she was by her son’s bed in the hospital, it gave her something to do and focus on, and she found it like a meditation.

Helping people learn/relearn how to knit can bring such unexpected benefits.

what I am doing this Saturday

Going to Manchester Yarn Day!  I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it, but I can and am so looking forward to it.  See you there, Manchester knitters.

all around my hats

What with the clocks going back and the weather turning decidedly autumnal, I have been knitting hats recently:

Meret Beret

An early birthday present for a friend visiting from central America.  Her birthday’s not until December but there didn’t seem much point waiting till then, when it’s cold and damp now (and in January she’s going back home and won’t have much need of a woolly hat).

pattern: Meret (Mystery Beret) by Woolly Wormhead
yarn: Rowan Pure Wool Aran shade 673 Cloud

I worked one extra pattern repeat, for slouch but not too much slouch. I love this beret pattern, and it looks lovely on Osiris.

Rose Red Beret

I fell in love at first sight with this pattern, got the yarn at UK ravelry day in June, and have finally got around to actually knitting it.

pattern: Rose Red by Ysolda Teague
yarn: GEM Teeswater, shade ‘Fire in the Heart’
needles: 4 mm & 3.75 mm

I love this hat, although I’m not convinced it actually suits me (isn’t wearing this hat supposed to make me as beautiful as Ysolda?) but I don’t care. Love the colour and the pattern, wearing that hat constantly since finishing it, even in the house. Haven’t blocked it yet and not sure I will, but I think I do need to reknit a tighter brim.

There’ s going to be more beret knitting in the next couple of months, both my mum and my sister have requested berets for Christmas.

And I have also been working on a new hat patterns of my own but you’ll have to wait for the publication of Bobbins for that ….

10 000 Years b.r.

What did you do in the olden dayes, mummy?
Well son, back in the dark ages, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, long before the internets were invented and St Bob gave us ravelry, we used to go to the wool shop and choose from the delightful range of knitting patterns on offer …

My mum’s been having a clear out of her old knitting patterns. She was going to throw them away! Of course I objected violently and so she gave them to me instead. I don’t know if I will ever knit anything from them.  There are a lot of of aran jumper patterns in there (which probably explains where I got my love of cabling from) and I will probably use the stitch patterns at least.  And anyway I like having them if only for comedy sentimental value.

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This pattern is where it all started.  I was a football-mad 11 year old tomboy who refused all my mother’s efforts to teach me ‘girly’ stuff like sewing and knitting, and I desperately wanted a Liverpool FC scarf. My mum refused to buy me one or make me one, instead she took me to the wool shop to pick a pattern and wool to make my own. So I had to learn to knit.  I also made my Dad and Grandad hats from this pattern.

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I once made my sister a hat from this leaflet, the one on the top left. Lovely. Luckily for her, both my knitting skills and my taste in fair isle hats have improved since then
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My mum made me this jumper, at my request. Look, it was the 80s and I was a teenager and I thought it was beautiful. And I wore it a lot. Not that I do ever doubt that my mum loves me, but if I ever wanted to make sure, I just have to look at this pattern. It’s not just all that (shudder) intarsia, which I now know she hates as much as I do. It’s the pattern itself. You’d expect to find a chart when you opened that leaflet, wouldn’t you? Well you’d be wrong. It is written out, line by line, not a chart in sight. And my mum still knitted it for me. That’s love.