the end of one thing….

last night, during a most excellent selection of political satire on tv (if theres one thing i do like about election time in australia its the merciless cynicism), i managed to cast off the body of the summer solstice cardigan:

the suggested measurement of the body length (from where you pick up under the yoke) was 33cm. great if youre a pygmy. im not, and i wanted it to sit a bit longer on me anyway, so i had decided to just keep going until the ball i was on ran out. which it did, one and a half rows through the reverse stocking stitch ‘hem’ (designed purely to stop the stocking stitch roll up). anyway, it ends up being 41cm and sitting on my hips, which i like. it fits really well so far and has a lovely flaired line in the back from the excellent shaping. i thought i might run out of yarn but i still have 3 whole skeins for the collar and two sleeves, so all good there. i think this one is going to be a winner.

i am still undecided on the bruegel v landon issue, but i am using the up coming liz gemmell workshop at guild to help me decide. hence, the swatching. we are instructed to bring swatches of the yarn we think we might like to make into something, and we have to wash and block them and then carry them around to see how they wear. my first swatch is on the suggested needle size for both bruegel and landon, 5mm needles, which is a bit bigger than i would like. it makes a nice soft drapey fabric:

and i get exact gauge for bruegel, 19 stitches and 25 rows. (landon is 18 and 24). my issue here is that i think the fabric might be too open. i am sick to death of things pilling and felting, and i know this yarn can do that (although the swatch is holding up well so far). but i am going to do another one today on 4.5mm needles just to check. i would rather have a fabric that i like and that i know will wear, because the whole point of the workshop is to work out the numbers yourself.

and ive never let a little thing like gauge stop me before, but i wonder what all you good knitters out there would do, gauge or fabric, gauge or fabric?!

kxx

in the middle of things

despite what you may think, in between the shopping, eating and drinking,  i did get some knitting done in bendigo. while in transit i mostly worked on the monkey socks:

i put them on bamboo dpns so i wouldnt get hassled about my carry on baggage, but security at sydney still wanted to check that all the pointy sticks where attached to bits of string. i said to the guy ‘its knitting, im allowed to take it on now’ and he checked with his supervisor, who made that funny hand moving motion that people do when they’re imitating knitters. yes yes i knit. just let me on the plane.

while in bendigo, i spent most of my knitting time working on the stonington shawl. i dont need to look at the pattern for it anymore, and i took everyones advice and am sticking to the amount of repeats suggested by the pattern. i am past the middle of the centre square now:

this is such a lovely relaxing knit, im glad im sticking to my guns on the shetland project and not being seduced by all those pretty little 4 ply shawl flirts out there.

since ive been back i have worked almost exclusively on the summer solstice cardigan, which i didnt take with me. i am keen to start wearing this soon and its coming along very nicely:

it has such lovely shaping, and the colour is more blue than you get here. its going to make a very good wear-into-spring garment. the thought of seasonal change made me think i really should get moving on another baby garment for connor, before he grows too much and i have to knit more. i saw how quickly bells was getting through alice’s garter yoke in bendigo, and that reminded me what good quick little knits baby things are. and there was a discussion yesterday about him not having anything in red yet, and i had this heirloom bliss just sitting around, so i cast on katie bell’s baby cardi (rav link). i am even going to do the embroidery!

the bliss is lovely to work with, not quite as tight a twist as zara, but almost.

and, finally, i also cast on a swatch from the lovely grey pear tree yarn i got in bendigo.

i was originally looking for something for bruegel (rav link), and it looks like the gauge will match, but in the meantime i have been thinking about landon instead. i would need to make a few slight modifications, in that there would be no crossover at the front, the edges would sit flat so i could avoid that bulk and use my silver buttons. i bought the pattern and the more i look at it, the more i think the tailoring of it would be a bit more flattering than bruegel. originally i only meant to swatch for a liz gemmell workshop that i am doing at guild on august 14, but now i am thinking this would be a very handy item to have when i go to new york and washington for a conference in early december.

i ran a quick twitter poll the other day to see if people preferred bruegel or landon, thinking about what might be more flattering to the larger girl, and would be interested to hear what you think here.

sigh. so much knitting, so little time!

kxx

home sweet home

is it a sign of old age do you think, that while i enjoy travelling and being away, i am always so happy to get home? i did have a great time in bendigo, and was very comfortable in the little house that jody chose, with my room mates yarna and bells, but there is nothing quite like the feeling of your own soft bed, your own comfy house, and your own warm dogs. i missed them quite a lot actually, so much so that i nearly tripped over myself to pat a puppy walking the streets of kyneton.

on that note, how lovely is rural victoria? i have not spent a lot of time in that part of the world, so was really glad that bells and i had hired a car and could take our time getting up to bendigo. which we did. bells took me to her favourite coffee spot in daylesford (it was very good) and then we took a number of wrong turns to find the chocolate mill, but find it we did. then we drove through castlemain and a whole heap of rain before landing in bendigo itself. i never knew it was such a huge town, and it took me a while to get oriented, but theres nothing quite like driving around looking for a supermarket to get you familiar with a place. we spent our first night in with pizza and wine and chocolate and knitting and were off to a pretty good start!

thursday morning we headed off to bendigo woollen mills.

i know you can buy their stuff online but i really wanted to check out all those colours that a shade card can never do justice to. and i heard tell of the famous ‘back room’ which did have some very good bargains, including this lovely baby pure wool 3 ply in ‘holly’:

i bought 12 x 50g balls which is more than enough to make a long flowing drapey ‘adrift’ cardigan.  at $3 a ball, that is a steal!

when we were done here, we headed into the centre of town to look for coffee. i had done some research on this matter before embarking and was keen to try a little place called the dispensary, which was tucked up a gorgeous little laneway, a la melbourne. this was really the find of the trip for me. we came here three times, for coffee and lemon tarts, for hot chocolate (the best one ive had since florence) and cocktails on thursday night

and for a truly amazing breakfast on saturday morning. even though im not a drinker anymore, i like all the stuff that goes with it, especially good service, and they never put a foot wrong here.

cant recommend it highly enough!

friday was the show day, and i really tried to be calm about my approach here. i didnt know what to expect, and i had list of potential projects to buy for, and was determined not to be distracted by one off skeins of brightly coloured sock yarn or lucious lace weight i didnt need. and i wasnt. i couldnt find exactly what i was after, which was enough of an alpaca blend (in other words, kid classic without the mohair) to make a bruegel with. i settled instead for quite a lot of some pear tree yarn

that was labelled 8ply but might be closer to 10, in a lovely soft grey. it was in a bargain box for $10 a skein and i think it normally retails for around $20. it might not become a bruegel, but i am working up to making something with some very delicate vine-like cables (having never cabled before) so i think this will be perfect.  and a nice change for next year after all the lightweight cardis this season. on the way home yesterday we stopped in kyneton where there was a very good yarn store and i bought some buttons to go with the pear tree yarn.

a nice combination! also at the show i managed to snaffle the one and only (when i got there) skein of collinette jitterbug in vatican pie (see, red sock yarn!)

and i also bought 3 skeins from tarndwarncoort, two polwarth/silk for gifts, and one just straight polwarth for me in a darker grey than the featherweight yarn,

this time for a pi shawl. and that is all. grey and red. two cardigans, socks and a shawl. not bad.

now, this was my first time at the show and i didnt know what to expect, and i had a terrific time and was totally glad i went. however, as i walked around, i could not shake the impression that i have been spoiled. almost all of the indie dyers have an online presence. i knew of most of them already, and have bought from some online before and probably will again. there was nothing that i felt i would die if i didnt have, and there were times i put things back because i didnt need them right now and i knew i could get them online in the future. i thought about all the amazing top quality yarns we can now get from all over the world, because of the internet, and i realised how far my knitting has come, in that i am only interested in buying stuff i know i will use or need for specific projects. so even though there was a lot of lovely pretty things there that caught my eye, i came away with ONLY what i knew for sure i would use. does that count for Growth As A Knitter, do you think?

it was an interesting trip in other ways as well. for a lot of people, ‘bendigo’ is about the socialising, and you know i mentioned i wasnt good in crowds, but i had a great time with the terrific people i travelled with or already knew (bells and knitabulous and randomknits and knitterjp and yarna and lyns), and i went some lovely new people that i had only heard of, and finally put some faces to names, which was a lot of fun!

i really do think im getting old though, because if i go again, i would do a few things differently, and would spend more time looking at other things in the area, and enjoying the local produce, and chilling out with mates. one of the real highlights was a short stop on the way out of town to look at the lovely Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral:

it didnt seem out of place at all in bendigo, and was a lovely quiet way to say goodbye.

oh, and while i might not fly tigerairways again (tinsheds for terminals giving new meaning to the term ‘cattle class’), all that downtime in airports is great for getting some knitting done, see?!:

and now, i must go empty out my google reader and see what everyone else has been up to!

k xx

colour me bendi

only one sleep to go till i meet up with bells at melbourne airport and we get in our little hire car and brave the wilds of victoria, wending our way to bendigo for the sheep and wool show. this will be my first time in attendance, and i am greatly looking forward to it. staying with friends, eating out, buying yarn, exploring a new town, all very exciting. i am a little anxious about collective gatherings, i dont do crowds at all well really, and find it hard to overcome my shyness, but there are some people i am looking forward to meeting so it will be worth the effort.

the biggest dilemma of course is what to take, clothes and knitting wise. i am trying to pack very light, and to be sensible about what i really need, given one tends to end up wearing the same thing repeatedly! i know a coat will be important, as will be the woollens, so i have packed accordingly, and discovered a theme:

i appear to like red at the moment. i also discovered a gap, no simple red handknitted socks to wear! (note: add red sock wool to shopping list!)

i also had to decide what to take knitting wise. the flirtini socks have been frogged back to the heel again, and thats in the naughty corner and not allowed to leave the house.  i am nearly finished sock one of the diamond guernseys but they are on a nickel cable, and i am a bit worried about metal pointy things on the plane, even though they say its ok. so i decided to start some socks for me, out of the personal sock club, and i picked the lorna’s laces (in pilsen) to go with the monkey pattern.

ive knitted these before as a gift and know they work well with variegated yarn, and this is the first time ive knitted with lornas laces and i really love it. really, really, love it. im also enjoying being back on DPNs surprisingly. i do feel like theyre a bit busy, but i will persevere. i cant decide whether to take the cardigan and/or shawl in progress….maybe not the cardigan, as desperate as i am to finish it, but i need to check off rows as i go, and its getting big now. possibly the stonington shawl is better perhaps – its fairly mindless, and transportable? oh, so many choices, so little time.

and i must be honest and admit i will probably be too busy talking, laughing, eating and spending to pay much attention to what im knitting.

are we there yet?!

k xx

working with elizabeth

you may recall that little work-in-progress called the shetland project. i thought it was time for an update, as i work my way through the first item: elizabeth  zimmerman’s stonington shawl. here is where it is up to:

it has suffered one major frogging so far, because i kept forgetting where to put the yarn overs. on one side, they go AFTER the k2tog, on the other side, they go BEFORE the ssk. if i am not concentrating, i can, and do, easily get that wrong. this is despite the fact that i am working with a cheats chart. this being an EZ pattern, originally from this book:

it comes with those famous pithy directions:

in this version, you just knit a garter stitch square. the pattern has been adapted, editted and added to by knitters magazine, and is published in their scarves and shawls book, and thankfully, it contains a little more detail:

one detail is the addition of the eyelets in the garter stitch square, hence the chart, and i think they are a nice touch. even though all i am doing is making simple concentric squares, i need to glance at the chart at the beginning of each repeat, just to make sure, and this is where EZ and i part ways. i love her pithy directions, but i also hate them, because while i understand them in principle i struggle with them in practice. there is much i admire about EZ’s approach to knitting, given that her underlying principle is ‘there are no knitting police’, and i think there is a lot of potential for Growth as a Knitter in her approach to things. she assumes that we have some idea about how knitting works and are smart enough to figure out what to do as we go along. sometimes, this is true, and sometimes its not. sometimes i love the sense of freedom she promises and there are other times i want to pull my hair out and beg her please to just give me an actual stitch count for something!!

for the most part though, if i just breath, and think about it carefully, i do understand what shes saying. knitting the test swatch for this shawl certainly helped, and i am confident about what i am doing and how i will get from one part to the next. what i am not so confident about is how much yarn to use. my gauge swatch put my yarn about halfway between shetland lace and jumper weight (well der, it is a 3 ply), but required amounts are in metres, and i only have grams. because there is no required stitch count, no need to count rows, technically, it doesnt matter how big i make the center square. the knitters magazine ‘cheat’ pattern suggests 8 repeats of the chart before starting to decrease down to 2 stitches again, and i am on the 8th repeat now, but think it would like it to be bigger. my problem is estimating how much yarn i will use.

for example, i have used 45 grams to get to the middle of the square.

i assume it will take me another 45 to go back the other side, and i have 74g left on this one ball.

then i have to do four sides (which involve increases to make corners) and then add a lace border (just a simple one). but do i have enough yarn for all that, if i keep making the square bigger?

im pretty sure even mrs zimmerman wouldnt proceed until she could figure that one out! but how would i know? anyone?

or can i just trust my instincts and go one or two more?

k xx

the second half

so here we are, into july, and i have been living in this house for over a year and where the hell did that year go? so much has happened, and i have been thinking lately about how much of it i blog, and ive realised i probably do too much. i know you can do whatever you want on your own blog, and i do have trouble separating aspects of my life – when im down im down and i dont really hide it. but ive decided its time to start being a bit more circumspect, and maybe post a bit less if i need to at times. which means that sometimes, all i will have to talk about are works in progress. the endless works in progress!

i have finally finished the two halves of the yoke of summer solstice. its knit from the middle of the neck over to the right shoulder first, and then you are supposed to do the sleeve and then come back and pick up the live stitches in the middle and then knit the second half down the left sleeve. i took someones advise and have stopped at the top of both sleeves and put them on waste yarn, because i know im going to run out of yarn, so short sleeves might be necessary. a strange experience this was, at first it made no sense what i was doing

but then it started to come together

and now i realise what i have just made

cool, huh? this has taken me much longer than it should have. its just stocking stitch, its only about 100 rows on each side, and i have been almost completely monogomous all this week. you can see why i worry about only posting WIPS, the rate i move.

of course, i can always post endless pictures of the dogs, and because they were very cute this morning i think i will! ricco stole a sock out of the washing i was trying to hang out and proceeded to tease possum with it

making her stalk and then chase him around the yard

when i manged to retrieve the sock they played tug with an actual dog toy (ricco would prefer to play with just about anything OTHER than a custom bought dog toy)

and then we went out to collect the paper, possum doing a fine job of bringing it to me

until ricco interfered

and then bounced around with it thinking he was very clever.

he is kind of cute. thats why he gets away with it. meanwhile, jem, tired of all these puppy shenanigans, really just wanted to come inside and see what i was cooking

its tomato and chorizo soup, by the way.

so i am hoping that the second half of 2010 is so calm, boring and uneventful that i have no personal drama, issues, feelings or injuries to blog about, and can pretend im just a normal suburban white collar worker like everyone else! with plenty of knitting to show for it.

k xx