July/August goals

Gah!!! How did July fly by??? (Don’t answer that, I know the answer). Life got crazy busy then for a while, and it’s going to stay busy in August too. Blah. Anyway. July’s goals were (slightly optimistic)

(Yes, this is wildly late. Life has been throwing a ton of stuff my way. Unfortunately, none of it is going anywhere until September. Then normal service can resume!)

1. Knit a pair of socks before my mother’s birthday (they’re interesting so this should be doable)
   Done! Not as early as I had hoped, but they were gifted to her on her birthday and she loves them (even though it’s far too hot to wear them…)
2. Get cockatoo brae to the yoke (the pattern is the other side of the room, but given how much zoomies I had on this last month, should be doable!)
   Haha, nope. Probably won’t even happen in August, given the number of trains I’m going on (as well as the issue I might be having with the gauge…)
3. Finish the plastic canvas ‘Let it snow’ cross stitch ornament (probably the best way to stave off burnout on the wedding sampler is to finish something else…)
   Doneeeeeeee!!!!!!
4. Blog post about buttonbox mods (hopefully will start this after I finish cokcatoo brae, I need to be prepared!)
   Doneeeeeeeee!!!! How does the idea of starting buttonbox before I finish cockatoo brae sound? It might need frogging…
5. Bonus: sew Kita’s pillowcase together…
   Nope. Blargh. I need to just sit down and do it at some point…
6. Bonus: crochet the octopus
   Nope, and no motivation to do it either
7. Bonus: Mildred’s socks
   Nearly! I just need to do the heel now, so naturally I’m procrastinating over it…

 

 

Ok, onto August goals. Easy, tame and relatively mindless are the words of this month. I have lots of train rides coming up, so yay for socks I guess!

1. Finish Mildred’s socks. This is getting stupid now. They are also the last things (on the needles) to give other people, so double incentive to finish them!
2. Sew Kita’s pillowcase together. The procrastination is wildly strong on this one…:/
3. Work out what on Earth is going on with my cockatoo brae. If it is my gauge I’m going to be annoyed…
4. Work out which socks have the most left to do that are mindless for all the train rides (4, or 5 if you count connections as separate trains) (If I finish the Mildred socks this is totally a good enough excuse to start new socks…)
5. Bonus: get to the yoke of cockatoo brae, depending on what is going on with it.
6. Bonus: work out what everyone’s getting for Christmas, and if it’s crafting work out a plan of attack for them…

Ok, hopefully they’re all easy enough to do. Unfortunately, I can’t take cockatoo brae on the train trips, I don’t have much space for yarny things in my luggage on each of them.

Ooh, remind me to do a blog post about my sponsored cycle ride…(preferably before I do the damn ride…)

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An update on project birdsocks

Project birdsocks, for people who are new to this blog, is my attempt to knit my mother socks so whe will stop borrowing mine… WestYorkshireSpinners released a range of 9 self-striping socks inspired by various birds, and for each one, they also suggested a solid colour which would work for (e.g) constrasting toes, heels and cuffs. So here I am knitting 18 pairs of socks for my mother.

Two pairs have already been finished and are awaiting her birthday, I aim to have a third pair finished (I figure three pairs of socks makes a good sized present).

The third pair of socks, I duly cast on at the start of June, and then prompty ignored them…*facepalm*. The problem was that I had chosen this wonderful entrelac pattern to really hightlight the colour changes, but I had forgotten how to knit backwards, and with 5 stitches a go the turning of the work was constant, and irritating. Anyway, having gotton around that problem by relearning how to knit backwads, after a few rows, another problem became evident. The thrice-cursed thing wouldn’t fit over my ankle, which was rather irritating, since I love the idea of this sock for scrap yarn. I may try again with an extra stitch in each square and see whether that solves the problem or not.

So, here I was with part of a sock done (uselessly)(it may or may not get frogged, more likely it’ll just go in the rubbish), and a time limit starting to breathe down my neck (my mum’s birthday is near the end of July). What is a person to do??? The answer: take a leaf from ym friend Jon’s book (he’s doing a pair of socks a month this year, in a bid to reduce his sock yarn stash), and knit something relatively vanilla, but with a bit more interest than that.

So here we have the main points about these socks:

toe up, short row heel, predominantly vanilla in a self-striping yarn. Looking at what other people have done with this yarn (very little), there is a narrow band of two colour yarn between all the other bands of colour. So I decided to purl the dark blue bits of that. I.e. when the yarn about to get wrapped around the needle is dark blue (intuitive rules about when it changes colour part way through the stitch), it will get purled rather than knitted. Having done a few sections, it might have been better to purl when the stitch on the left needle is dark blue, but it works perfectly well this way 🙂

WIP…something day? Scatter brained edition

Ok, so, phew, I survived my three weeks of slight insanity. Umm. Crafting kinda fell by the wayside, with the result of it all wanting attention NOW. Unfortunately, my holiday is now over and therefore I have to do the work thing…

Anyway, what has been happening? Well, I was in York at the weekend for Pride, so much knitting was accomplished on cockatoo brae (long train trips are made longer by delays…amusingly, the train ticket I had was a complimentary one due to the delays I had coming back from York from my viva…this makes claiming compensation rather awkward…) Anyway, cockatoo brae is coming along well ahead of schedule! As well as all the rows I planned to do this month, I have started the increases as well 🙂

(Isn’t all the brown lovely. Find the sarcasm in the last sentence…)

This weekend I will be teaching my aunt how to crochet jellyfish for premature babies. Naturally, this means I a) need more yarn(and crochet hooks), and b) need to crochet one in the first instance so I know what’s going on. 4ply yarn and a 2mm crochet hook are fun! Fiddly, but fun.

My mother’s socks have been started…just. I really need to get on with these, but I can’t take them home this weekend, since I’m visiting her…These will become my priority when I finish Mildred’s socks.

Speaking of Mildred’s socks, I have one finished and the other one past the toe. Before Pride at the weekend there were three members of knitsoc in a cafe, all knitting socks, all from the toe up, (two on circular, one on DPNS), in various colours and patterns. It was rather surreal to be sat there, and have someone ask what we were knitting, and all three of us saying ‘socks’ in unison. Anyway, these socks need finishing soonish. 🙂 They’ll be coming with me at the weekend.

Finally, the cross stitch wedding sampler has been ignored. But you can have a picture on what was done before but not photographed. Hopefully I’ll come back to this after the weekend (it’s probably a little bit optimistic to think it might happen before the weekend, given how it’s all going!)

Right, that’s me pretty much caught up I think (except for what I’ve been spinning/knitting but that should end up being a blog post by itself sooner rather than later…)

Update of all the things!

Naturally, the only thing to do upon finishing two things is immediately start more things! Three to be precise.

 

Firstly: more socks. See, I didn’t have a portable project, since my mother’s socks require two balls of yarn and a book for the charts. Therefore, I needed a new pair of socks, preferably ones with a basic or non-existent pattern. These socks fitted the bill, and I had a great time starting them (I’ve modified the pattern somewhat):

Secondly: my handspun stripy colourwork scarf. I decided it was time to start. And now I’ve done a bit, I need to start over, I want 27 stitches (25 for the colourwork patterns, 1 stitch either end), and I’m also thinking that I don’t want to pair the blue with the yellow… I’m also thinking that my handspun is wayyyyyy too overspun/plied, but I can’t exactly frog and respin yarn…

Thirdly (and most impressively): new cross stitch. After I finished the wolf, naturally I had to make a start on the next cross stitch on my to-do list. This currently has…not an insignificant number of hours in it. I’m currently in the ‘ooh, new start, fun’ mentality of it, and it’s lovely to stitch whilst ‘watching’ the commonwealth games, so it’s getting a lot of attention at the moment.

This new start will eventually become this:

 

As well as all this, I also finish-finished the wolf cross stitch. After two failed hunts, I found the perfect frame in TK Maxx! So yay me!

SO Sunday- double edition

Two things to talk about today! Aren’t you all lucky 😉

 

Firstly: new socks! This weekend is 4 days due to all the bank holidays we have floating around! And how better to spend it than b starting a pair of green Spring socks? (Other than working, but I couldn’t do that thanks to my building being shut 😦 ). So, new socks! I am particularly impressed with how the ribbing ended up being framed in the way it was- I was willing to do a complete new colour in order to do it, but it turned out that two colours being framed like this results in 1 inch perfectly 😀

And the pattern is just flying off the needles. The thing I am most excited about project bird socks is pushing me so far out of my comfort zone. I’ve borrowed a number of sock books from someone in my spinning group, and I chose patterns as best I could based on what traits in the yarn I wanted to display (so Spring colours for this green), without looking at how the sock is constructed. I’m looking forward(ish) to doing new things I haven’t done before (or maybe only done once or twice, and then ignored). Here’s to learning new things!

 

The second thing is also about learning new things, or at least experimenting. For my OLAS cardigan (the big cabled thing), I want to put in pockets, but not afterthought ones. Which got me thinking about what has been written about knitted pockets (not much), and what is possible. So now I’m experimenting with different pockets, and will discuss each of them on the blog. (As mentioned in the last blog post, where I mention my monthly goals). And how better to try new things than by killing two birds with one stone, and knitting it left-handed??? (I want to learn proper left-handed, which is different to knitting backwards to avoid purling so I can teach a lefty properly 🙂 More on this at a later date). So here I am knitting essentially a gauge swatch, but will have a trick up its sleeve later, feeling a lot like a beginner again!

FO Friday- March goals edition

Another month gone…where are they going??? So, before I get inot the goals, firstly I want to show off my new finished things.

Socks! Who doesn’t love socks? This pic is of them drying after they’ve been worn for the first time, because I had to wear them straight away!

This pair have afterthought heels, which I really dislike because of the kitchener stitch…

And secondly, another sewn card! (Note: I say another…it’s been quite a while since the last one I did. These are done by punching holes in the card with a large stabby needle, then sewing them in a set pattern with a smaller needle and metallic thread. The companies which produce the cards are form-a-lines (for the A6 size) and…I thought there was a sister company for square cards but I can’t find them again so maybe I imagined it or something…)

This is for a couple I know who are getting married in April. I had to change the pattern slightly so that both hands are holding top hats- in the original design the hand on the right had a handkercheif. I’m very pleased how this came out in the end.

Finally: a bird! This is a generic one done to see how large they are when finished- I think it might be a smidge too large for the planned use, so I’ll have to go down to embroidary thread and *very* small knitting needles (1mm I’m thinking)

So, the March goals I had:

1) Finish my mother’s first pair of socks. Done! The ends are even woven in, that’s how done they are:)

2) Carry on the wolf cross stitch. Done! I hit 75% at the weekend, so go me!

3) Sew the wedding card. Done! See above 🙂

 

4) Get gauge on cockatoo brae. Done! Sleeves are half(ish) done! More up to date picture of sleeves so far:

5) Stick all my sock yarn (not the stuff for project bird socks) on ravelry and find projects for them. Done! See my ravelry account. (Link opens to my stash page filtered to only include yarn with projects associate with it in a new tab). Obviously, this isn’t all my stash, but it’s all my sock yarn here in Bristol. Bonus: I actually also added all my yarn here in Bristol (including my handspun, although I’m not convinced I’ve done that bit correctly…), and found patterns for almost all of it (including my mothers bird socks). This brings me to a total of 28 projects in my queue, of which 26 are socks…

So, next months goals..

1. Finish the sleeves on cockatoo brae
2. Carry on with the wolf cross stitch (I’d like to finish but think it unlikely given that this final quarter is more complicated than the last and I only just hit 75%)
3. Knit up and write a blog post about afterthought pockets. (I want to in the end do a series on different pockets, and I figure that an afterthought one is probably the easiest to start with…)
4. Knit another pair of the bird socks (or at least get the first one done. I’m planning on doing the socks in their pairs, so this next pair will be cardamon main colour and bluetit cuffs, heels and toes).
5. Bonus: start knitting something with my handspun… This one is slightly terrifying, because it’s my handspun…But I also know that knitting it will allow me to see what’s going on with the yarn a lot more clearly than just eyeballing it! Bring it on! (I reserve the right to not talk about how bad it is if it’s truely awful…)

 

 

 

WIP Wednesday- everything edition (again)

So, apparently when I get busy this blog falls a bit by the wayside…in a bid to catch everyone up with what I’ve been doing, another everything WIP Wednesday!

1) I did, in fact, sew the sleeves into the OLAS cardigan. It’s now blocking by the radiator. Then I’ll cut the yarn ends and sew in the buttons and pockets. Still on track to finish for next weekend when my friend comes to visit to collect it!

2) The headband is nearly finished. I have a decision in front of me- do I use a couple of buttons to hold it closed, or just sew it??? I only have one button, so I would need to order another one online, which I think shouldn’t be a problem… (Edit to add: I can’t find the original button, so sewing it together it is)

3) I did a short row heel! My mother’s first sock is coming along swimmingly now! I also decided to go with a pattern, rather than make up my own which would need more attention. This is Hermione’s pattern, so it’s easy to get into the rhythm.

4) I (nearly) finish-finished my cross stitch (I guess this is a FO Friday but it can hide in here!). I gathered the fabric at the back, but I can’t stick the felt to the back because I appear to have misplaced my superglue…*facepalm*. Ahh well.

5) More spinning! On Saturday the spinning group met again and I finished off all the blue. Now to decide- do I start knitting the scarf now or wait until I’ve finished spinning all the yarn??? (Side note: could you please tell me what the spinning and knitting widgets on the side say? They’re coming up as innacurate for me, but I’m not sure if it’s because wordpress isn’t updaing the widgets or my laptop isn’t updating the widgets). (No picture because it’s just more cute skeins which I haven’t yet washed. Anyone want to give me some tips about washing handspun skeins???)

6) I ordered some things…the kingfisher sock yarn, more knitting needles and some sock yarn to get free shipping. And then some project bags for socks. Gotta keep knitting socks 😀 (No picture on this beause it hasn’t arrived yet 😦 )

7) I updated all the pictures on my ravely at the weekend, and in the process found a circular knitting needle I had forgotten I owned, in a scrap project. Naturally, this meant I had to knit some more squares on both my scrappy projects. They’re coming along nicely (but I still need to knit socks to feed the small squares one) (No pic because scrappy projects start looking the same after a while!)

8) No progress has been made on the wolf cross stitch. After the OLAS cardigan, this will become the main priority until it’s finished (or I get bored of it) I think. (No picture because no progress!)

9) I (badly) darned a sock! I think it was a knot in the yarn which had come free, but I darned a row above it as well as the row the yarn ends were on, and after a while it should start felting together nicely. And that will hold the ends in, so I decided to be lazy and not darn them in that well 🙂

What I’ve been up to…

…since it apparently wasn’t my to-craft list.

Well, there was a lot of work stuff we’ll just gloss over. I graduated (and consequently bought a lot of yarn). I knitted the best part of two (different) socks. Hmm. Maybe the afterthought heel isn’t the best bet for me. I started knitting new socks rather than finish those ones.

I went on long bikes rides. (I still need to clean my bike after the last one). Turns out it’s rather hard to knit whilst cycling fast. Shame really. Maybe when I start doing longer rides by myself I should bring knitting for breaks. Maybe that would mean the longer rides take a lot longer. Hmm, maybe not then.

I started spinning! This probably should be at the top of this list, but I forgot until now. There’s a spinning group just the other side of the park from where I’m living (hi to all the spinners who mentioned stalking my blog.). So I dug out my drop spindle and fibre, and firmly remembering why I wanted handspun yarn, I headed over. And had a wonderfully delightful time 🙂

I finished spinning some form of white yarn, and plied it, for a grand total of (wait for it)…85 yards

Isn’t it such a cute little skein???? I may have cooed over it for quite a while before getting around to the next bit of fibre, the bright blue from this pile:

So far I’ve got this much done

I started one of my mother’s new socks (the bluetit ones). No pic because I pretty much just got past the toe. I’m making up a clever slipped stitch pattern as I go, so it’s not completely mindless. (Second point about these- they’re actually the second attempt at starting socks. I started the owl (I think???) colourway, saw a pair done in a particular pattern I have, decided I simply had to do them in that pattern…and the pattern is in Salisbury. *facepalm*. I’ll do those later, if I remember to!)

I did actually do some knitting! I finished knitting the main stuff for Kita’s cardigan. I just didn’t get enough time to finish it for all the reasons listed above. That’t tomorrow’s job (I say that now…)

I did some other knitting (disclaimer, this actually happened yesterday so isn’t the reason why I didn’t hit my January goals, but hey, I knitted a thing. You should see it!). Whilst cycling, wearing a hat is rather problematic, so clearly I need an alternative. A headband can actually be removed (I think) without removing the helmet, so I started knitted one. Yes, the cables are going backwards- I prefer cabling forward without a cable needle, so why not?

Ok, I think I’ve caught you up to everything I’ve been up to. Now…I think it’s time to put those little nifty things down the side of my blog to keep track of how much I’ve knitted (and spun, since I’m now doing that!)

WIP Wednesday- Catch up from Chritmas edition

Phew! Christmas really went on for far too long this year (last year?), partially due to visiting friends, which generally I had previously avoided. However, it is finally over (or at least will be when I manage to shift this cough), and we can all get back to normal.

So, let’s get back to business! Kita’s cardigan is coming along a storm, I have 37 of the 50 cm before armhole shaping done now (and 4/5 of the buttonholes), although I still haven’t memorised the pesky back central cable.

The sleeves have been completely finished, but that’s a whole separate blog post (remember my issues with getting matching sleeves? Still got that somehow)

And two pairs of socks have been started. One pair you saw last Wednesday, and they haven’t had any more doing to them since then (just a toe and some of the pattern), but there is also a sock which is much further on, so I’ll show you that one instead.

I’ve finally had enough of vanilla socks, but strong stripes like this generally don’t go with intricate patterns very well, so I’m trying variations. This is a waffle stitch (wich you probably can’t see…I’ll try and get a better pic later on)- 3 rows stocking stitch, 3 rows 3×3 rib (3 because I do 66 stitch socks). Repeat ad infinitum…I’m also trying an afterthought heel, put in when the sock foot length is from the tip of my middle finger to the wrist joint. I’ll keep you all informed how it goes 🙂 This is actually my second attempt at a pair of socks from this yarn- I got through the foot and heel of a pattern which involved slipped stitches, but I hated it so I decided to start again. I am much prefering this pattern, and think that (provided I learn how to count to 3 reliably…) this may become my go-to ‘vanilla’ pattern. We shall see.

 

And also, bonus update on the Wolf, even though I haven’t been working on it over Christmas. I stopped timing how long it was taking me, because it was starting to stress me out, but I have done quite a lot more than the last time you all saw it!I’m hoping to finish off the top by the end of January (including all the backstitching I haven’t yet done), but we shall see.

FO Friday- Hufflepuff socks

Yes, the monstrous socks of unnatural size have been finished! And I had plenty of yarn left over to add to my current scrap blanket 🙂 Which I will show you all next Wednesday.

But today’s focus is on the finished Hufflepuff socks. You can only see one there, but they are both there! Here, have another pic of them, spread out this time!

I really hope that my friend likes them! (And that they fit…) It is surprisingly stressful making socks for someone for the first time!!! I guess that if they don’t fit, I can always make more and improve…

Right, I need to go and pack for a quick (ha!) 50 mile cycle trip to Salisbury tomorrow…should be fun 🙂