FO Friday- stocking edition

The latest stocking has been finished!!! Woot!!!!Not exactly Christmassy, but nice and wintery! I especilly love the snowman, even if it doesn’t seem have any eyes!

This is an extra 3 hours 40 minutes on top of work already done, for a total of 7 hours 10 minutes. Not bad really, I do think 🙂

I’ve been watching the snooker whilst stitching these- calm enough that I can concentrate on the stiching, but important enough that any really impressive shots are repeated so I can see them! Excellent all around really!

Is anyone else watching the snooker???

WIP Wednesday

A bit of everything here really!

The cross stitch is still on-going- can anyone spot what this will be when it’s finished? Not really very Christmassy I think, but still rather nice!

This is at 3.5 hours- I’m now trying writing down how long I’ve been watching programs while stitching. It seems less stressful for me than using a stop-watch, even though it’s doing the same thing. So far I’ve watched the BBC dancing awards for the ballet (Oh my gosh, so amazing!), the ballet of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (abstract enough that I don’t need to keep watching to pay attention, and nice enough music to stitch to!), and another thing on the BBC iplayer which is a competition about people and their connection with their dog. Fascinating stuff, even if I don’t have a dog! Makes them seem tempting (I am much more of a cat person!). I’ve also been watching Robot Wars while knitting, but I may stitch for the final! The sooner this stocking is finished, the sooner I can get back to my dads scarf ready for his birthday! Still have quite a bit to go on it.

I have (naturally) started a new pair of socks- this time I’m using a pattern from a book, which means they aren’t all that portable, but that’s alright. I should probably slow down with all the socks- I have 22 pairs now, that seems slightly excessive given how small my underwear drawer is!

I’m not sure what yarn this is- there’s a niggly feeling at the back of my brain that says it’s the old ZigZag(50-50 wool/nylon), but I really can’t remember anything about it. Ignore the ball band- I used the one from my last socks to hold it together.

Besides, this scrap pillow cover can be my portable project 🙂 It’s coming along nicely, although I haven’t yet worked out how many more squares I need to add to the length, it’s definitely going to stay 7 squares wide.

I have also been working intermittently on the brown and brown scarf. This section in the middle is really boring, so I’m trying to power through it, but it’s difficult to want to pick it up, when the pillow cover is bright and colourful! This is nearly 26 hours work, and I’m not quite halfway (this is 32 inches, my dad wants 6 feet plus…)Ahh well, I still have nearly 2 months to finish, and when my thesis is submitted I’ll have more time to work on it!

Any tips on working on projects you don’t really want to? When I hit the half-way point it’ll be much more fun I know, it’s just working on the last few inches before I hit half-way!)

Catch up post of everything

Well, it has been a while since I was last here! Life has been particularly busy, and so I’m going to stop waiting for the right day to post things, and just have one large post of everything I’ve been doing, craft-wise. There are many pictures, so enjoy!

Firstly, I have finished Nikita’s socks:

The yarn is actually much darker than this, it’s jsut difficult to get a decent pic! So you can have these sub-standard ones instead! Very happy these are finished, and definitely won’t be using this yarn for socks again (it’s Louisa Harding Pittura, and I think it’s designed for shawls).

I also finished March’s cross stitch stocking. (This was actually finished a while ago, I just never got around to posting about it).

I’ve forgotten how many hours I spent on this (still tweeking how I keep track! I’ll get there eventually!), but it’s rather cute! Next time I’ll also try to leave more space at the bottom for finishing…oops!

So they’re my two finishes. My dad’s scarf is still on-going, but that’s rather boring and looks just as it did before, just bigger. So no new interesting picture of that.

One new start: a mitred square pillow cover- I’m making it the same size as one side of a pillow case, and then will sew it in place when it’s finished.

I’m making it out of yarn I used for my socks (plus two rogue squares), and when finished Nikita will have it. I’m making it for her so I get her sock yarn scraps (ahh, the delight of introducing friends to the wonders of hand-knit socks!). This is a standard mitred squares pattern- 43 stitches, central 3 stitch decrease on alternate rows. I’m decreasing the row after picking up so the decreases happen on wrong side rows as I don’t like the way they look. This blanket is using my 2mm needles, so naturally I had to buy another 2mm circular for my socks! It makes perfect logic! I just need to wait for it to arrive…

I haven’t yet started my April stocking. That will happen at some point this weekend (it’s on my to-do list, at any rate…). I just need some suggestions as to what to watch while I work on it, since the Great Pottery Throw Down is finished, and I’ve watched all the Blue Planet episodes which were available on the iplayer. Anyone got any suggestions on things to watch? Prefrebly on the iplayer, but if I can access them from a UK computer, I’m up for trying them at least!

I’ll also try to not leave it 2 weeks before coming back, but no promises! I have about 2 weeks before my thesis deadline, and that naturally takes precedence! I’ll also update my WIPs page, but that definitely won’t happen until after the thesis!

WIP Wenesday- catch up edition!

Hello my lovelies! I didn’t mean to be gone so long, I just got slightly overwhelmed by real life! And I really will continue to be until probably the middle of May, so expect further disruption! But I will continue to swing by and see you all as much as possible!

So, what’s new with me? I have a new sock on the needles:

These will be jaywalkers for me, 84 stitches as usual…it’s such a fun pattern, and I really like how my other pairs of them fit so yay for that! Gotta love basic sock patterns which can be done without really thinking about it!

I also have March’s cross stitch started. This is just 1.5 hours (an episode of Mary Berry and one of the Blue Planet. Gotta love the iplayer!!!) I think that measuring the time by episodes of tv watched might be easier than remembering to start and stop a stopwatch, so I’m going to try that for a while!

The scarf will still be measured using the stopwatch- I usually do that while listening to music or watching someone on twitch, so it doesn’t have the same set amount of time as the cross stitch. A while back (the last time I worked on it, before I had my finish the scrap blanket kick) I had to frog back rather a large amount- all the way back to the start of the middle section of it. But I’m now much happier with what is going on with it (which is good, because I have rather a lot of that to go- my dad wants this scarf to be 6 foot long…) We’ll see I guess…

I think that I have finally decided that I prefer the white horse on the black background, although they are both gorgeous! I have an idea to make two wall-hangings out of green and white Rohan horses, to go either side of some door in my eventual home…

FO Friday- cross stitch edition

Finished!!! Well, it was actually finished a while ago, but I was too busy to blog about it 🙂 According to my stopwatch app, this took me 4 hours 25 mins. Plus an extra 10 mins I forgot to turn the stop watch on for! D’oh!

This was an interesting stitch. I was very eager to get started on it, but then it started dragging. I find it harder to pick up cross stitch to work on than knitting, so I’d make excuses to work on my knitting, rather than set this up. This might just be what I’m like, or it might just be because I had it kept out of the way all across the room… So I moved things around tidied up a bit and put everything I needed for it on my bed side table. Much better 🙂

In future, when I get a proper flat for myself, rather than a room in a shared house, I hope to have everything I need for cross stitch in a bag/folder by my evening chair, so it’s easier to work on. After all, if I have to get up to go get something, guess what? I’m not going to work on it.

How do you store WIPs? I’d love to read about it all

WIP Wednesday

So, why does Christmas only have 25 letters???

Becuse there’s no l!!!!!

Yeah, I know, I’m hilarious 😀 The stocking is coming along slowly- I keep finding excuses to not work on it, which is hardly ideal, but on Sunday I had a tidy up and reorganisation and then immediately picked it up to work on while I watched Les Miz. Excellent musical 🙂 This is 3hr 20mins of work, so I’m hoping that I can finish it this evening…wish me speedy fingers!

 

The sock is also continuing along apace 🙂 I measured it against the recipients foot on Friday, (which is the cause of this somehow amusing photo), and then it was 4.5 inches shorter than the foot, so I needed to do 2.5 inches more before doing something clever for the heel (I’m trying an afterthought heel this time, so that if it wears through rather than felting, it’s relatively easy to replace). The sock at that time was 4.5 inches, which makes it easier to keep track of (although I will measure again when I think I’m far along enough).

I now only need one more inch, so coming along well 🙂 The pattern is from socks a la carte 2, since I might as well use the patterns I’ve bought… I’ll hopefully be at the measuring stage again on Sunday, when I have a movie evening planned with the recipient!

And of course the scrap blanket is getting worked on 🙂 I’ve done 4 hexagons this week, so yay for that! And this last stripe is more than half done, so yay for that too! Nearly finished this blanket!!!!

Next up: either garter stitch entrelac or mitred squares…hmm…decisions decisions decisions…ahh well, I still have a while before I need to decide, I guess!

Stocking the first et al

So I finished this month’s cross stitch 🙂 I kinda cheated, since it was already half finsished, but I also didn’t have the full month to work on it (I came back to York on the 4th), so I’m calling it quits 🙂

(Ok, I just realised that I forgot the star which is supposed to go just to the right of the baby’s head. I’ll add that in later when I can find my gold sparky thread…)

I also finished the first sock, which I put a rush on because I needed the needles to…gauge swatch!

The gauge swatch is also done, washed and dried. I get gauge of 28 stitches to 4 inches on 2.5mm needles. More on this on Saturday, when I’m going to do a post about modifying the pattern I’m using.

And finally, I’ve done a few more hexagons on my scrappy blanket. One more stripe and I’m going to call it done, although I’ll still add hexagons from time to time. I will however, come up with another blanket. And I think I change dmy mind about designing my own pattern, it just seems very complicated right now, when I need to be concentrating on other things. Maybe later. Does anyone have any good free scrappy blanket patterns?

This has to be my favourite hexagon. The yarn is regia hand-spun effect, and the colour runs are longer than this, I just started at the best spot ever! I’m not putting another hexagon in with this yarn, it’s that perfect!!!

Rethinking my SMART goals

So, I realised something the other day while pondering my goals for the year. One of them was to cross stitch about 28 small stockings, and then finish them as stocking ready to be used as an advent calender. Now, as I was thinking about this, I suddenly realised that meant I had to have 25 of them done (and finished) by the end of October, in order to free up November for NaNo…this is massively unfeasable, and therefore getting changed. Even if this was feasable, it would result in this blog showing nothing but Christmas stitching and gift crafting and I think that isn’t reall ideal…So now, rather than stitch 28 of them, I’m knitting 9. One a month up to September. Then I have October to make them up (not that they really need makng up until I have 25, but let’s stay on top of it all…), November for my NaNo project, and December for the frantic Christmas making (a shawl, a scarf, two hats, a seagull, a pair of gloves, a pair of socks, two pieces of embroidary, an advent calender, and something as yet undecided). Not all of this will be done in December…On that note, what do you get a friend who is instantly knitworthy, and you’ve made him a blanket, a pair of handwarmers and an advent calender, and he’s loved all of it??? (No, he’s not getting socks. I don’t think he’s that knit-worthy.)

 

Have a picture of my current cross stitch, because otherwise there aren’t any pictures, and that would be a shame:

This won’t actually be on my Advent calender. I have an idea as to who may get it as a Christmas ornament, but that sort of relies on one of them still being alive, and they’re both on palliative care, so… Otherwise we’ll see

Oh, and a sock! I started this on Wednesday, on the train coming back up to York. It’s great fun, and I’ve started increasing for the heel already 🙂

I am back!

After spending the summer with my aunt (sho doesn’t have unlimited internets, so I was restricted to just using the web for my work), I am now back and busily crafting away. How is it September already?!? Christmas is just around the corner, and I have nothing finished… (excpet my to-do list!). One of my friends is going to Japan at the end of November, and so her present (a crochet attic24 blanket) needs to be done by around about the middle of November, so I can postit to her before she goes. However, I don’t have the yarn for that yet (I ordered it on Tuesday), and so I’ve been getting on with another Christmas present, this one for the aunt I went to stay with. It’s so pretty! Naturally, I want to keep it to myself, but I’m sure my aunt will like it 🙂

I have also been crafting over the summer, and have a bit to show you all! There is a finished pair of socks (of course!), and a nearly finished other sock, using the longitudonal pattern. It’s so fun! It produces a completely different pooling effect, which is why I’m using it- I didn’t like how it pooled when knitting normally, but this garter stitch is lovely 🙂 I haven’t taken any photos of them yet, so I’ll show them off later.

There has also been some cross stitching- not very much as there was a 5 year old around as well, which meant I didn’t want to get into the technicalities of a pattern and threads etc etc etc, but I have done a few stockings.