In the Making...

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas. I had a fabulous new camera, so for a change I'll just show you a photo post.

I’ve finished the 2nd of the Fine Donegal shawls – that I started here . This is the first one I made. I’ve got to make another one in this colourway, now that I’ve finished the pale green one. The subtlety of the colours in this yarn are beautiful. This the 03 Soft Grey colourway but because of all the subtle flecks of tweed, it does look more like a soft green colour.

When these gorgeous new colours of Rico Soft Merino Aran came into A Good Yarn - well I may have got slightly obsessed. It’s not the first time I’ve used this yarn, nor the last. There’s a beautiful array of colours, it’s supersoft, pure merino, good yardage and a decent price too. I’ve got tons of knitting to do but they were beautiful and squishy and warm and well…. Last week, we had a lot of driving to do (he had a very nice birthday at Alton Towers Water Park) and Mr was happy to drive so over a few days I managed to get this lovely, squishy and colourful shawl finished. Can you tell I like it? The pattern is the Betsey Shawl by Amy Miller . Here's my Ravelry project page . It’s a very simple shawl and in my infinite wisdom, I thought I didn’t need stitch markers. Well, turns out I did. I was fine until I started the stripes and just assumed the double decreases lined up on the middle stitch. They don’t. This meant I had an extra stitch...

I got my spinning wheel out last week. It’s been quite some time since I did any spinning because my schedule has gotten a bit hectic. I had a bit of a craving to spin though. I finished what I had started – not good practice to leave singles for as long as I did but I didn’t have too many issues with it ( as long as you don’t look too close). The fibre is Frog Prince roving from hilltopcloud – it’s a blend of BFL, merino, bamboo and sparkle. Using my new WPI tool from hilltopcloud, it’s about 10 wpi, which makes it worsted weight. It’s 3 plied. There’s about 172m, so probably enough for a hat. I’ve started another lot of fibre. This one is from Countess Ablaze .It’s BFL and I got it quite some time ago. I hoping to make this into a 3ply fingering weight yarn. There’s about 164g of fibre, so that should be plenty. I’m not sure at the moment whether I’m just going to go with the flow or navajo ply it. I’m just going to spin the singles first then...

The Woolly Wormhead Mystery Knitalong 2014 has started. I started mine as soon as it was out on Saturday morning – didn’t have a lot of knitting time Saturday but it was done by lunch on Sunday. I won’t post a picture, as I know some people like the surprise. If you are interested in seeing the progress so far then follow this link . I think for a second there, I may have forgotten about the Mystery Hat Knitalong. It’s got a bit colder recently here and I was thinking about my winter wardrobe – so I thought I could knit a warm winter hat. Ahem… so bought yarn, then remembered I was already going to be making one! Oh well, they’re different colours, so I will have two new hats! The pattern I’ve used is Kernmantle – another Woolly Wormhead pattern. I just takes one 100g skein of yarn for the largest size. I’ve used Malabrigo Merino Worsted in Vaa for this one. It's a beautiful deep bottle green colour which is quite hard to capture in the photograph.

Sirdar’s Heart & Sole sock yarn is really lovely. I’ve made a pair of socks before . They’ve just brought out a new colour palette and the stripes aren’t quite as thick. I used the Clever Clogs colourway (love the names of the colours – there is also a Pigeon Toes colour! I may just have to knit this just for the name). I made a Puerperium by Kelly Brooker quite awhile ago from the free DK version. This time I used the Beyond Puerperium pattern, which covers 4 ply, DK and worsted weight and up to 2 years. I made it in 4 ply and size 45cm / 18” chest. Again I used the mismatched buttons, which I think works wonderfully with striped yarn. It’s a great pattern and I definitely see another one in my future! Ravelry Project Page I’m doing Woolly Wormhead’s Mystery Hat Knitalong this year. I particularly like this KAL because each clue is in bitesize pieces and doesn’t take up too much knitting time from other things. Anyone else doing it? ...

Ok, so if you hadn’t noticed, my pattern was published in the latest issue of Knitty . I decided to make Nachtfalter , which is also in this issue. I love garter stitch and it’s a quick and easy project. I used King Cole Baby Alpaca DK in meadow. It was a really quick knit and the finished mitts are lovely and squishy. One to add to the Christmas gift pile.

This blog post is a wee bit delayed. I’ve been away on holiday in Yorkshire, which happily coincided with Yarndale, so I dragged Mr along. The bunting was still up this year but has now been accompanied by lots and lots of mandalas. It really did look fantastic. It was a lovely day and my purchases were quite restrained (well, for me anyway). A skein of Deeply Wicked by Easy Knits for the Woolly Wormhead KAL . Anyone else doing it? A lovely thank you skein of Soliloquy Sock yarn from the Linda at Tall Yarns n’ Tales for the sock pattern in Knitty. A selection of pretty buttons from Textile Garden and a few needles. Oh and a crochet kit from Natural Dye Studio , which I wanted to do on holiday. I was sans ball winder, so a very patient Mr helped me wind 5 skeins of yarn into balls. On the way back, we went to Fountains Abbey in the afternoon and took a few nice pictures.

I’ve made a start on my Fazed Tweed jumper but my attention span at the moment is very short. I keep on moving from project to project. And it gets worse, more yarn… I do have a project in mind. With my pattern being in the latest Knitty, I had a good look at all the other lovely designs. Nachtfalter in particular – it has garter stitch for starters. This lovely colour of King Cole Baby Alpaca DK is going to be ideal – the colour is called meadow. So hopefully you’ll see a pair shortly.

My pattern Ticklepenny , that is in Knitty Deep Fall 2014 issue, uses knit to purl yarnovers. See the panels of leaves down the side of the socks... The normal way of doing this can make a yarnover which is larger than a purl to knit yarnover. When they are near one another then it can make it look a little unbalanced.  There’s a little trick you can do to make them neater – basically, wrap the yarnover clockwise around the needle instead. This does mean you have to remember on the next row/round and either re-seat it or work into the back of it. The bottom leaf has normal knit to purl yarnovers and the top leaf has the neater version (there's not a huge difference in this example but it can be more obvious depending on the yarn and your knitting style). I’ll explain in more detail. A normal knit to purl yarnover is made by bringing the yarn under the right needle, then… ...over the top of the needle and back under again and because it is worked by...