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 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

Flash your stash

As the month draws to a close, it was time to share a new 'Flash your stash' update. This photo shows all the yarn that wasn't physically attached to one of my WIP's about one week ago.

If you compare it to my previous post, I think it has stayed more or less the same size, due to the recent acquisition of the big balls of aran yarn that are destined to turn into jumpers, replacing the cotton yarn the went into my Miró blanket. The green yarn has mostly disappeared into my green granny blanket, but there is new blue yarn for my sky spirals blanket to replace it. There also seems to be more sockweight yarn now than there was in March.
Mnz.

YOP: Post 3

 After finishing my first YOP project (which wasn't even officially on my list, but it helped me to learn continental knitting, so it counts, I've started my second one: the Pioneer top. Although Bella Paquita is still my favourite knitted top, I had some cotton in my stash that gave me a good gauge for Pioneer.
The yarn is a mysterious cotton I bought at the market in Spain. I bought four skeins when I was over at Easter in 2011 and so far I had only used 3/4 of one for my Ribbed Lace Bolero, so it was time to use it!








This top has twisted stitch columns and I had totally forgotten how to do those. Luckily the Internet means you're never far from a refresher, so I got the hang of them again, but they don't show very well in this yarn, which I don't really mind because this one is all about the colour for me. For one the photos aren't too bad, although it's slightly less blue in real life. I've also entered this project for the Ravellenics, so I hope I get it finished before next Sunday... I've got two travelling days planned between then and now so it should be OK, but it'll be a challenge.


Why do people destash? To make room for more yarn of course! It'll be my birthday soon, so I decided to treat myself to some new yarn.

The first three skeins are acrylic in three different shades of blue for my Sky Spirals blanket (which was originally a destashing blanket, but I realised that I'd have to add some more yarn if I wanted it to reach a decent size.

Next are a skein of Manos del Uruguay silk blend (for a shared shawlette for my mother and me) and a ball of rainbow (tropical fish) Zauberball. I've always loved this yarn, but I don't know what I will do with it yet...











Last but not least: three skeins of locally dyed sock yarn, two for myself and one for my mother.  I must say I prefer the colours in her purple skein, but I don't like the flecks, so I'm really happy with mine too!












This amount of yarn should keep me busy for quite a while, but I have a lot of items to make before I can even dream of using then. Hmmm. Okay, I think tonight I might just dream of them. There's something wrong with me, isn't there?

Mnz