Labours of Love

One and a half months have passed since my last post, and that's because of the well-known Christmas Rush'. I've had two weeks of exams, which obviously implies loads of time spent studying and very little spent knitting. And the time I did manage to spend with my needles, was spent knitting a present for someone.

 But before all that started, I did the last few rows of my entrelac mitts. I've turned them upside-down and sewn up the cast-on edge. I did a few rows of garter stitch after the final row of triangles to make a little cuff. Now I've made them into mittens I would also like to knit a thumb onto them, but I've decided to knit the second one first and then see how much tarn I have left. I've wound the ball on to start at more or less the same position in the colour series and I think I have more than enough to knit a thumb from what I've wound on, but I'm not absolutely positive...

My first 'Labour of Love' Christmas knit was a shawl for my grandmother. I sent her a rather long list of nice shawl pattern to choose from and she came up with this one: Revontuli, which, conveniently, had been in my queue more or less since I joined Ravelry. I got a few indications on colour, but not many, so I wound up getting the yarn with the longest colour cycle I could get: Lang Jawoll Magic.This is one of the yarn most used to knit this pattern, but I found it got stripey way too early. I read in the project notes that quite a few people frogged and changed from m1 to yo, so I decided to do that from the start as  YO's are my favourite increases.

The pattern itself was really easy to follow and a pleasure to knit really. I might just make one for myself when I find some yarn that has longer colour cycles. The pattern recommends Aade and Kauni, both of which I might be able to get my hands on one day.
My grandmother wanted this shawl to wear in bed, but now I've given it to her, she says it's too beautiful to wear in bed and now wants to wear it to go out! That means I already have a present for her for next year: another shawl, but this time one she can really wear in bed. It's going to be so difficult to knit that isn't too beautiful on purpose...


Another shawl I will have to knit is one for my mother. She has very sensitive skin, so I got her two skeins of Manos del Uruguay silk blend for Christmas. I absolutely loved knitting with this yarn when I made my S.W.A.N. shawlette, so making something nice out of these two lovelies should be quite enjoyable!

My own Christmas presents included two knitting magazines and three lots of Etsy stitchmarkers -I can now finally stop using loops of scrap yarn as markers :) - And two sets of really nice buttons. I don't have a project in mind for them yet, they look wonderful to me!


My stitch markers were put to use right away.
My present to my father was to knit his a jumper. I had already bought the yarn in Britain over the summer so I've started it now and hope to have it finished in three months. My father is rather skinny, but he's also really tall so knitting his this will probably take an age. Because the chances of this being the only jumper I will knit for him are rather high, I wanted it to be one he's like. He chose the pattern, Dad's Cardigan, and for once, I bothered to do a gauge swatch. Lucky I did, because my gauge was way off on the recommended 5 mm needles and I had to go down to 4.5 to get near enough for it to be acceptable. Reading through other knitter's notes, I found that most of the the abbreviations were wrongly explained, so I just knitted straight from the chart, which, incidentally, are correct. The pattern includes raglan sleeves, which, combined with my father's long arms, meant that it has taken me a week to knit one sleeve. I've got one week of holidays remaining before I go back to school on January 7th and I hope to have finished the second sleeve by then. We will see.

To take a break from the intensive knitting of the jumper, I have also been doing some crochet, I gathered all my little bits of fingering yarn left over from various shawls and socks and decided that, instead of knitting mitred squares I would would crochet some Granny squares a see what I could do with those. As you can see, I've got very few scraps, but I suppose they will accumulate over the years... Scrap project are always long term WIP's aren't they?

That's all for now.
Mnz

YOP: post 10

There hasn't been much progress in my YOP-knitting, and as the Chirstmas rush will set in this weekend, I thought I'd run through my list ans have a look at my progress.

Techniques
1. Learn to knit continental properly, so I'll be able to do two-handed stranded knitting;
pattern: Musica mitts (deadline Jan 2013)
-> Will knit these after Christmas, during the holidays.

2. Learn to knit entrelac. I've always found entrelac extremely beautiful and I think this year is the right time to learn how it works.
pattern: Entre deux saisons
-> Started these a few days ago and can't seem to stop working on them. They now look like this:


Charts
1. The 'I Heart You' chart
-> no progress

2. The 'Papyrus' charta
-> no progress
 
Items
1. a top
pattern: either 'Bella Paquita', 'Pioneer', or 'Arbor'
-> Completed during the Ravellenics

2. a cardigan: depending on yarn gauge: 'March Basic', 'Elbow Patch Cardigan', 'Cardigan in Alpaca and Glitter' or another 'Stanton'
->  Completed the 'Cable cardi'

3. Special socks
pattern: either the 'Double heelix' or the 'Skew' socks
-> no progress

4. a pair of fingerless gloves
pattern: 'Knucks'
-> no progress

Themes
1. something geeky
pattern: various possibilities: 'Atomic Blocks', 'Irrationally Constant Mittens', 'Pi socks' (or any other constant socks, for that matter), 'Doppler Effect Socks', 'Space Invaders Socks', ...
-> no progress

2. something stripey
pattern: 'Color Affection Shawl' , another 'More Than a Triangle Shawl' or a a 'Dream Stripes' shawl
-> Base for the shawl is complete, I need to design or find a suitable side-to-side knit border to complete it.

It seems that I have made quite some progress on the larger projects, like the top and jumper, but that the projects that involve more creativity like the chart projects haven't had much attention yet. I'm going to keep my list as it is until after the Christmas holidays, so I can see what I can accomplish during those two weeks, before removing any projects from my list or adding others.
I'll be going to the monthly knitting group tomorrow, where I would like to make a start on one of my Christmas projects: a Revontuli shawl for my grandmother, although I also really need to finish the socks I'm knitting for my mother as her birthday is approaching rapidly...

Mnz

YOP: post 9

Okay, so I haven't go round to post for a month and a half, which definitely means I'm a baddy. But hey, schoolwork goes first, doesn't it?

First of all some new yarn. There was an 'open day' at my LYS, which meant there was some yarn on sale at reduced price. I'm not usually one for pinks, but combined with the red and orange I think they'll make a nice project. I don't know what yet, but maybe an Inspira Cowl?

Moving on to my WIP's:
The stripey socks are growing, but not very fast, as I always seem to have something more interesting to do than finish them. All three culprits can be seen below. I want to have these finished for my mother's birthday at the end of November, so I'll have to get my skates on and concentrate on them.

My scarf/shawl is growing, slowly but surely, but it still needs quite a lot of work. The basketweave stitch is simple enough to make this a mindless knit, so I think I'll take it with me when I go and watch a film with my friends tomorrow afternoon. It's getting rather big and unportable, but it's at someone's house, so I should be able to negotiate some extra space on the sofa to knit comfortably.

My last WIP is one I started yesterday, because I had come to the conclusion that I didn't have a single YOP-list project on the go. Browsing through my Ravelry library, I found 'Entre Deux Saisons', a perfect project: small, more or less portable, modular and colourful. It was also my first try at entrelac, one of my YOP goals. The pattern uses DPN's and although I far prefer DPN's to circ's, I felt the urge to switch right away. As the technique means you're always shifting groups of stitches around, circ's are just so much easier to work with. At this moment, the mitt has already had two more rounds added to it. Entrelac is really addicting!

My only FO in all this time has been a pair of mitts, because it's getting too cold to cycle with bare hands, but it's not cold enough -yet- to need real gloves. I had a single ball of yarn that I had fallen in love with some time ago, and have now finally found a project for. I wanted to make the best of that single ball, so I started with a provisional cast-on, and then knit up. Then I used the remaining yarn to knit the cuff down from her cast-on. After having worn them for a week, I have found that I should have made the thumbs longer. I made these because the cold causes me pain in my joints. The tops of the mitts cover my fingers enough for them not to hurt, but the thumb cover tube finishes just under my thumb joint, so that still hurts if it gets really cold... But anyway: they look nice, they're warm enough and they've taught me how to do a provisional cast-on. Things can't always be perfect, can they?

I hope to be able to update my YOP-list this week, before term starts again...

Mnz

YOP: post 6

The last week of the holidays has finally caught up with me :( so I thought I'd get on with my knitting! I can't believe I'm actually working on TWO YOP-projects at the same time!

When I was browsing on Pintrest the other day I saw this:

It's Andrea's Shawl by Yarnmadness. And I think it's absolutely stunning. As in REALLY flabbergastingly stunning.
So I thought I'd have a go at making something like it, but without the pattern on the white part. This project also fits in in with the 'something stripey' on the 'themes' part of my list.

 This is how my shawl looks at the moment. It's aran weight, so it will be something to wear in the winter when it get really cold, which it tends to do here. Especially if you get put in a single-glazed classroom and/or one where the heating has stopped working. I've been there.
The original shawl is knit bottom-up, but I chose to knit top-down to make the most of my yardage. It's a simple garter tab cast-on, followed by a traditional triangular construction in stockinette stitch, knitting all the YO's through the back loop to avoid holes. The borders are two stitch garter stitch borders making and the dropping a YO on the side you carry the yarn on to avoid the typically problematic asymmetric degree of tightness. That's the body. So far so good.
But now the challenge. I would like to knit the border sideways, like in the inspiration photo, but I couldn't find one that I liked enough, so I decided I'd design something myself. It's my first time, so I have absolutely no idea how that process will go. Fingers crossed it turns out nice in the end.

The other project I'm still working on is my cardigan. Thanks to the people who left such positive comments on it last week! I cast on the first of the fronts and I think I'm about halfway through. Although the pattern said I'd need most of my two skeins of yarn, I think I'll finish the first front with the first one, So there's something wrong there. I'm not convinced by how the back piece turned out, but the front looks promising. I found the short-row shaping on the corner a bit bizarre , and the pattern is written in the typical jumbled DROPS style, but you get used to reading everything five times to make sure you don't forget to do anything...

That's all for this week.
Mnz

YOP: Post 5

I'm really enjoying this group. Although I only seem to be posting YOP updates, at least I'm posting something! 
In the last few weeks I've started my next listed project: the cardigan for myself.
In the end it isn't one of the patterns I had listed, but who cares.
The pattern I've chosen is 'Chocolate Passion', a jacket-cardigan kind of thing with cables.


















I made the first sleeve while watching the last two days of the Olympics and made the second one while travelling back from the UK ten days ago. On that same trip I started the back, but I had to leave that aside for a while because it has been too hot to knit that kind of thing for the last week or so. But the weather has taken a turn for the cooler end of the spectrum and made some more progress on it yesterday. The colour of the yarn is just gorgeous, but sadly it doesn't show very well on photos...

Although I didn't work on my cable cardigan, the heat didn't stop me knitting. I cast on a shawl(ette) to take me through the hot spell and it is blocking as I'm typing. This one really needed to be blocked! The pattern is 'Lunatis Folium'. It's my second bottom-up construction and I still haven't decided whether I like the idea or not. I think that it's main advantage is that it's a better idea is your yardage is just slightly under what is required: you can just play around a little with the short rows, whereas in an top-down shawl you can't just not knit the last row of lace, you have to rip it all back. I don't really mind monster cast-ons either. The thing that keeps me from loving this construction is that I like to see the shawl's basic shape grow, something that just doesn't happen in bottom up.
Anyway, this particular one is not your traditional shawl shape. It's very long, but also very shallow, so I can't really decide whether it's a shawl or a shawlette...

As you can see, blocking really does miracles for this thing. Without it, it's just a sausage with points on one side. When I blocked the Ginko Shawlette, I used some improvised blocking wires for the first time and when I did some more research into them, I read that some people use cotton thread as a blocking wire, so I thought I'd give that a go.
The verdict: not as good as real wire, but miles better than pins on their own. I didn't really look for any techniques, I just gave it a try, so I think that I might just do some surfing around later to see whether I can find anything...

The other project I've make a little bit of progress on is my green granny blanket.
I'm now working on the final part, the long rounds. My lime green is practically finished and I've got one more skein of the other green left, so I'm looking for one last skein of dark green to do the final stripes and bring the whole thing together. After that, there'll be a few ends to weave in (but not too many) and that should be it!

Mnz

YOP: post 1

I've been working on my first goal: learning to knit continental.












(colour is best on the first photo)

These socks are also my first non-basic socks! I must say I don't like the look of the 1x1 ribbing much because my tension seems to be all over the place, but the openwork pattern is very forgiving. I cast on 60 st. on 2mm needles as the pattern has quite a lot of give, and then reduced to 70 st. after picking up from the heel flap because I feared that they would be too small if I went back to 60 again.













I'll probably be knitting these socks again as my mother loves them and wants a pair for herself, probably also in a semisolid yarn, because I think the pattern-yarn combo works rather well. But as I won't have enough yarn left after this pair to make her one, she'll have to wait until I find some more nice yarn -which shouldn't be too difficult :) -

YOP-progress: I am now comfortable with continental knitting in the round, both on circ's and on DPN's, but my ribbing tension is still rubbish. I'm also finding it impossible to knit continental back and forth as I knit with one needle in my armpit. Knitting with both needles free is just too much of a strain on my wrists if I want to knit at an acceptable speed. It also stops me from knitting without looking at what I'm doing which is a big strain to my eyes, but I guess that's part of the learning curve...

Inspired by the earbud yarnbombing that went on  at the cwtch I decided to do the same to mine. But as I didn't fancy doing lots of i-cord I just covered it in crochet! I don't know any crochet terminology in English as I learned in Spanish, but the translation I've found for the stitch I used (punto bajo) is 'single crochet', though I have no idea whether this is UK or US terminology...






I've also finished and blocked my Ginko shawlette. I knit it at a very loose gauge, so it's slightly transparent. I used some wires to block it into shape so it would be straight and symmetrical and then used pins to pull out the points.

 
I didn't block out the pattern leaves, but just left them as points.
Remember the Wingspan? After knitting that I mentioned wanting a green shawlette, well, I think this might be it, though I'm not a big fan of elegant stuff, but I suppose it'll be a good item to make a casual outfit look slightly more elegant...

Mnz

Two months on

Wow, I haven't blogged for more than two whole months. The explanation for that is that not much has happened.
 I've completed my Miró blanket, which I presented at my Aesthetics exam on in June. Even though it's only loosely in Miró's style, I think it looks okay and I think my teacher liked it. He'd probably never seen anything of the kind...
In the end, I got 80%, definitely not bad huh?





I've gone on knitting my mother's socks and they sort of ground to a halt for a while, but a whole afternoon of chatting and knitting at Zuiddag last week gave me the chance to finish them off.
The problem with these was that they progressed very slowly as other projects seemed to creep in front of them in the WIP-queue. Something that did just that is my new shawl, a 'more than a triangle' shawl, which I started after being inspired by Stiched-together's Blog week shawl with it's beautiful stripes. I have a disproportionate love for stripes, especially for black and multicoloured ones.

It's a simple garter stitch shawl that lends itself very well to striping. The only problem I had was that it got quite asymmetrical colour-wise as it grew. Because the yarn's colour repeats are a set length, the colour that I began knitting a garter ridge with was usually very different to the colour the yarn was when I got to the same place at the end of the row. Obviously this didn't happen on the other side. This problem manifested itself after about 15 colour ridges = 30 ridges = 60 rows. To solve it I then changed direction and purled for 10 colour ridges = 20 ridges = 40 rows. After that I was rather fed up of purling and changed back to knitting. It blocked out slightly asymmetrical in shape because even though the colour change tightens the edge, it's not as tight as the slip stitch edge I did on the other side. I'll have to do something about that when I knit another one, as I think that is very probable...


Another blanket that I have been working on is my green stashbursting granny square blanket. Because I sewed the center panel and didn't join as I went, I have to sew the next row of squares and then add a few rows round the center panel and then join it to the row of squares. I'll still have some yarn left after that and the blanket is hardly a reasonable size, so I'll have to decide whether to do more squares or to just do more rounds round the whole thing. We'll see.

Another stashburster I'm trying is a double ten stitch twist. I'm using the yarn I reclaimed from my frogged Printemps cardigan, together with all sorts of blues and greys. The colour rule is: If the sky can be that colour, then it's allowed. The first swatch I did with these yarns was a log cabin shape, but I decided against it because the striping in the yarn stops you from seeing the construction. I didn't really follow the pattern as I had already made a single ten stitch blanket for my Miró project. the biggest mod is that my center is a bit different to the original version. I also chose to knit one spiral at a time a keep the other side on a stitchholder. I think my yarn would get very tangled if if knitted both spirals at the same time... It still looks a little weird and I have no idea how big it will be in the end, but I think there's enough blue yarn in my stash to keep me going for a while yet.

Mnz