Stash-busting

What joy can compare to using up left-over yarn, or stuff you bought because it was on sale/looked nice/called to some yarn-obsessed part of your soul/wanted to support your Local Yarn Store (LYS)? OK, family, friends, professional success - I grant you these things have their pleasures, but I am here to extol the joys of turning left-over stuff that's clogging up your house into wonderful hand-crafted items of beauty. Some of them could even serve as Christmas presents.

Case in point: there was quite a lot of lovely wool/silk mix yarn left over from a seriously cabled sweater I designed a year or two back. There was also a pattern for a hat I wanted to try using that weight of yarn. Next thing you know I had my first Utopia hat done. (I say first because they're so much fun I am already on my third and am looking at more stuff designed by the wonderful Smariek.)




Another case: I wanted to make a lace hat and saw someone wearing a very nice one. Despite stalking following her as she walked from the train to the car park I couldn't be sure whether or not it was machine-made and felt impelled to look at patterns on ravelry as soon as I could get to a computer. Having found something along the right lines I cast on using left-over Rowan Cashcotton from the Après Surf Hoodie. Not many days later I had a nice, if not very stretchy hat, although it made it over the medicine ball I use to model hats, so it's at least big enough for even a pretty large head. (It wasn't quite the pattern I'd seen on the train though, so the search continues ...)

Henley (sort of) Perfected

The button band just annoyed me too much. I was compelled to try to right it. After unpicking the stitching attaching the bottoms of the neckband pieces with only a few wrongly snipped pieces, it was frogged back to the buttonhole row.

Things go fuzzy after that. I remember re-doing the band, finding I still had more stitches after the buttonhole row than before it, frogging, re-doing the band, maybe doing it a third time, possibly even a fourth, definitely doing the I-cord, stitching it back together and only then realising there were seven buttons but only six buttonholes.

Whether or not I stopped counting how many times I tried to get this right out of frustration or self-preservation is moot. It was so late as to be early when I gave up, packed everything in the bag to go with us for a visit to old friends the following day and drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Fortunately, with the morning came sanity clarity and I pinned the button and buttonhole sections together before using the buttons as a guide to mark where the buttonholes should go. We made a late start, during which time I re-knitted the buttonhole row so that buttons and holes were in line. When we got to our friends' place (I mentioned that they're old friends, right?) I did the last couple of rows of stocking stitch and the I-cord bind-off before putting buttons through holes, checking all was in line and finally sewing the neck edge back together.

Hoo-bloody-ray, it is done. Sadly, the sewn section is not quite as neat as before, but the button band is so much improved that it's still a better garment now.

Henley Perfected

Having really enjoyed making, and now wearing, Connie Chang Chinchio's Après Surf Hoodie, I decided to make her Henley Perfected. The yarn is 50:50 alpaca:silk, Blue Sky Alpaca Silk, and I got it for a decent price and in a wonderful colour.

As ever, my tension is not quite the same as Connie's and I ended up shelling out for 2mm Addi Turbo Lace circulars, which are fine enough to be bloody annoying challenging.

The Henley Perfected has a lot of stocking stitch to start with, with means it comes along pretty quickly. Just as you're getting bored with alternating rows of plain and purl (yawn) along comes the lace pattern. Trying to make all increases and decreases within the pattern rather than at the very ends of rows is also challenging bloody annoying, but the result's not bad.

The only part I take issue with is the button band. Unless I got the directions wrong, which, let's face it, is pretty likely, you cast off two stitches for the underside of each buttonhole but cast on three stitches for the upper side, leaving more stitches on the needle after making the buttonholes than you had before.

I gamely did this and even I-cord cast off, sewed everything together, blocked the neck and wore the thing, but I still think it's wrong. So wrong I will probably have to undo the stitching, frog back to the button holes and re-do the damned thing. If only I were this much of a perfectionist in almost any other part of my life, but no, I save it all up for handicrafts. Bah!

And of course, the cat had to help. When I blocked the back, on a very damp towel, he insisted on settling on it. There is no way that was comfortable, he was just being a typical feline.

Knitting Pusher

My colleague with the long, skinny feet, who was able to take my unexpectedly long socks off me, has joined the tribe of the obsessed.

First of all she made a headband in garter stitch that her roommate now wears, then she used the rest of the original ball of yarn to make a scarf. Now she has used multi-colour wool to make a really long scarf. Isn't that an impressive early effort?

The next stage of the process of turning her into a fully-fledged knitter is to teach her to purl. With knit and purl mastered you can do everything. Everything is just a variation on those two stitches, or combination of them. Ribbing? Alternating knit and purl on the same row. Stocking stitch/stockinette? Alternating rows of knit and purl. Cables? Hold some stitches to the front or the back while you knit others, then knit the held stitches. And so on, and so on ...

I blame the Yarn Harlot

The wonderful Yarn Harlot was recently in my old home town of London, adding to my high regard for her by writing about the place so well that it made me proud to have lived there and also very homesick.

On top of that, she showed a knitted Dalek that someone had brought to her talk at Lindley Hall and I just had to make it. My friend Katie, who despite 1.) living in London, 2.) being a knitter (currently not so much, but she claims she'll re-start) and 3.) having my serious suggestion she go to the talk, completely missed the opportunity. She redeemed herself by tracking down the pattern in record time.

Naturally, Exterminknit is on ravelry too, so I could look at what colours other people had used. For me, the classic is red with black spots. I remember them as being the ranks. Black with gold was the chief. Clearly, there is a whole sub-culture of Dalek denominations that even I am not quite sad enough to spend too much time exploring online.

The Dalek fits one of my requirements for day-to-day knitting projects in that is is easily portable. Sadly, it has too many parts where a little attention is required, making it harder to fit in a quick row while waiting at the doctor's office, or while reading on a train. Bobbles, colour changes, ribbing with colour changes - it all takes time and occasionally glancing at the work.

The whole thing took less than a week, although that included a weekend where very little else but knitting got done. At the very least, it made 'Im Indoors laugh like anything, and that's always good.

The Joy of Socks

The too-big-for-me socks are finished, photographed and handed over. They look to be a pretty good fit on my colleague, which is pleasing, and she's using them already, despite the weather still being pretty warm.

Far more pleasing is that she has definitely drunk the Kool-Aid. The ball of cream Patons Classic Wool Merino 100% wool yarn and the nice needles I gave her have been put to good use. She's not only knitted a 10 stitch wide band that her room mate wears as a headband, she's now used most of the remaining yarn on a very good first effort at a scarf in garter stitch. There's one dropped stitch that will have to be sewn up to stop it laddering, but the tension on the piece is admirably even. Next stop - purl.

It's always a good feeling when someone shares your enthusiasm, but introducing a friend to a new skill that they enjoy and will have use for is incredibly satisfying. Of course, it helps when the learner has aptitude. I have tried teaching people who appear to be made entirely of left-hand thumbs, judging from their inability to turn sticks and yarn into any identifiable object, and that can be ... frustrating. How can they not get this? Don't they know what fun they're missing?

Striped Socks for Bigfoot

The first sock has gone quite well, apart from turning out absolutely huge. Also, now I've turned the heel it all seems perfectly logical, but the first time I swore (repeatedly) that a vital line of directions had been left out/typed up wrong/stolen by demons.

Having finished the first sock and found it to be a good one and a half inches too long for me I feared falling prey to the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome (thanks for naming it, Yarn Harlot). Luckily, a lady at work has very long skinny feet, to match her legs, and the sock pretty much fits her, so I'm working on the second one now. She has expressed interest in knitting herself some legwarmers, which will require teaching her to knit. I got some nice short, 4.5mm size Clover straights and 100g of pure wool (good old Patons Classic Wool Merino) to start the process. Is this the yarnhead's version of persuading someone to drink the Kool-Aid?