In the Making...

I can finally reveal the knitted projects that were made for Christmas gifts. The first is a Neat Ripple Cushion made for my Mum. It's the Neat Ripple Pattern  by Lucy of Attic24. I made an 18" cushion.  The yarn is Rico Design Essentials Cotton DK  and there is such a lovely array of colours to choice from. It lends itself well to crochet and I used it in my African Flower Bucket Bag I crocheted one piece 18" by about 42" then folded over and crocheted together on the edges and a few tiny buttons to close it. Also, Mum got a pair of fingerless mitts that are my own design. I used Rowan Pima Cotton DK , which is beautiful yarn and made a lovely soft fabric but it was a little tricky to work with in fair isle. It has lots of different elements, broken ribbing, vikkel braids, fair isle, corrugated ribbing and an I-cord bind off.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I thought I'd share my Christmas tree with you! I've made a few decorations for the tree. This flat ceramic bauble is double-sided and from the photo above you can see the Christmas tree on the other side. A ceramic glazed santa Hardanger embroidered decoration and it's filled with cloves so it smells very Christmassy Secret Garden folded fabric blocks with lucet cord and beaded tassels And, it's not just me. These are Mr's contributions, a wood turned bauble and a star for the top of the tree which is made from white leather (a strange material for a star but it looks nice) These are a few tree decorations that friends have made for me over the years. Going through them all, I've realised there is not one knitted decoration. That will be something I'll have to remedy for next year!

After having made quite a few möbius cowls recently (see this post ). I've been doing a bit of research into the background of möbius strips and the different ways of making a möbius shape in knitting. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a "Möbius strip"; "/'mə:bɪəs/ ► noun  a surface with one continuous side formed by joining the ends of a rectangle after twisting one end through 180° ORIGIN early 20th cent.: named after August F.  Möbius  (1790-1868), German Mathematician Though it was independently discovered by Johann Benedict Listing at the same time. One of the main practical uses for a möbius strip is for drive belts; but I think that the best use is in knitting (though perhaps I'm a bit biased). There seems to be two main categories for making a  möbius ; flat and circular. Flat The first option is for the cast on edge to be the long horizontal, the piece is worked flat and then twisted and sewn a...

I feel like I've been on a production line of knitting recently! I've produced 4  möbius  moss stitch cowls for Christmas presents.  All are cast on with 124 sts using a  möbius  cast on. I used the opportunity to try out a few different types of  möbius  cast on. The silver and purple ones are cast on using  Cat Bordhi’s moebius cast on.  I liked the relatively simple way of casting on but the first row was very tight and difficult to do. This seemed to cause the stitches to stretch very slightly but enough for me to notice it! The silver/white and the silver/pink are cast on using a different  möbius  cast on, which is  Alternating Cast-On for Moebius  from June Hemmons Hiatt’s “The Principles of Knitting”. The provisional cast on used for the centre is very similar to Judy's Magic Cast On . The upside of this one was I found it really easy to do and the first row was worked easily wit...

Since Mr's Birthday has passed now, I can show you his surprise funny Birthday present. He has always been a big fan of Lego and as soon as I saw this guy, I knew where he was destined to go. The pattern is Some Assembly Required , and was a very clearly written pattern. It was a little fiddly to make but not too much sewing up like some toys. The majority of the pattern was made in the round on DPNs. The arms have safety eyes as joints, so his arms are poseable. He can be completely separated just like a real lego guy. Suffice to say, he went down rather well!

There are some SPOILER photos here; so don't continue if you want the hat to be a surprise. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've taken part in the Woolly Wormhead Mystery KAL 2012 . This is the first time I've done this and I really enjoyed it. I normally steam through projects and I was kind of nice to be able to do a project in small portions; made me appreciate the experience more! Also, I'm not 100% sure I would have picked the hat had I seen it first. It's lovely but probably not something I would normally do. It's good to try different things. It took an awful lot of effort to finally choose some yarn; I kept finding that everything I wanted to do would just go into a 2nd ball to fit the size I wanted. I finally found a yarn that would work with just 1 ball which is Louisa Harding, Amitola which is quite an unusual yarn. It's sold as a DK but it has 250m/50g which is an immense amount of yardage for a DK. It's a single ply yarn with long stripes....

I've some finished objects to show you. I bought a new winter coat last week and thought it needed a new scarf to go with it. I chose a bright yellow to match the brass fittings on the coat. The pattern is Hana Shawl  by Kristina Vilimaite. The yarn is King Cole Bamboo Cotton. It's quite a different construction to other scarves and shawls I've made and I enjoyed the change. It's cast on a large number of stitches along the patterned edge and after the pattern, there is a section of short row shaping to give it a curved shape. The suggested cast off is a Fake Tubular Cast Off which I've never used before and must say I'm enamoured with it. Very simple to do, not much more complicated than a regular knitted cast off and it gives an interesting edge. The instructions for it are from TECHknitter . Also, I've finished my Yak hat. It's made from handspun yak/silk which I blogged about here . I just improvised a 2x2 ribbed hat. It'...

Finally finished my Rams and Yowes blanket.  It's such a beautiful design  I really enjoyed the centre fair isle section. Having a look at the beautiful blankets others have done, there seemed to be a bit of an issue with wavy borders which I definitely wanted to avoid. So… When I cut the steek, I steam blocked a section of the blanket to get my gauge (I didn’t bother doing a swatch to begin with). My gauge was 28 sts by 32 rows in 4”. I also made a small garter stitch swatch which was 26 sts in 4”. With that sort of gauge difference, then a 1 to 1 pick up would definitely give a wavy edge. On the cast on and cast off edges, I picked up at a rate of 13 in 14 sts and on the steeked edges 13 in 16 sts (pu 4, skip 1, pu5, skip 1, pu4). So in the end I picked up 684 sts instead of 780; which is a huge difference. I don’t have wavy edges, though. Hopefully you can see in the before blocking picture the borders look relatively flat. Before blocking After blocki...

I seem to have been really busy this last week or two but not a lot to show for it. I've been sucked into the enthusiasm of the 2012 Woolly Wormhead KAL . I really enjoyed the Orchid Thief KAL. I've been very good recently and there has been an embargo on stash acquisition, which accidently came to an end yesterday when I bought this: I've a feeling one ball won't be enough as I've got rather a large head. There is 250m on the ball so I'm crossing fingers. There's plenty of knitting going on but nothing finished. Here's a sneak peak of my Rams and Yowes blanket: Hopefully it'll be finished shortly but I had a minor disaster with it last night. I'd sewn the border down to the inside and blindly did the whole thing without checking the tension of the sewing. When I'd finished I did my usual thing of pulling it into shape and proceeded to snap all the sewing that I'd done. I'd done it way too taut so I'm pa...

I've spent a few days recently on my spinning wheel. Here are my latest yarn-like creations: Remember this? It was some of the Wensleydale/Silk roving I dyed recently - blogged here It's changed into a 2 ply, 15 w.p.i., 157m/100g - sport weight. I finished the Faux Cashmere I mentioned last week. It's 18 w.p.i., 268m/100g. I've finished the mate to the Teal Shetland - so it's all ready for some fair isle mittens. It's a very pale green, BFL, 161m, 17 w.p.i. Not identical to it's mate but close enough for the mittens. I've also made a couple of mini skeins. The sparkle will hopefully become a Christmas tree decoration;  and the other two are the start of a larger lot of yarns for another fair isle project. The original idea was for some Bandelier socks, so the colours I have are similar but think I might use the same pattern and improvise something else. Don't think I really want make a pair of s...