FO Friday - Green Ink Flare

Yes, two FOs in a week! First the Lombard Street Socks, and now Ink Flare. 

Ink Flare, after being a really quick and straight-forward knit, actually caused quite a bit of high drama at the end. I finished the body and the sleeves very quickly - all in all it can't have taken much more than a week - and I was equally quick to assemble the jumper and sew the sleeves on. I then grabbed my crochet hook and set to crocheting the hem, and that's when all the trouble started.

I'd decided to forego the garter hems at the sleeves. The plan was to hem with a crochet chain instead.. Having done it I realised that the end result was... odd-looking. The yarn is so stretchy that the crochet border, even when done very loosely, kind of drew the knitted fabric together in a way that didn't suit the jumper at all. 

So the crochet border was unpicked. Now the sleeves rolled up slightly - much better.

I then went on to crochet the neckline. This turned out to be much more of a problem than the sleeves. Even without the crochet border I'd already had the suspicion that perhaps the neckline is too high / narrow for this type of jumper. I don't mean that there is a flaw with the pattern - it worked just fine for my purple Ink Flare for example - but that for this type of yarn, and this type of open, airy fabric, the neckline needs to be particularly open and slouchy to pull the project together. See, even while I got the correct gauge, the open fabric stretches quite a bit and makes this a very casual knit, wide in the body and the sleeves, and the neckline, I think, needs to reflect that slouchy look. As it was, the neck looked like the only fitted thing on the jumper, making the whole lot appear like it was oversized with only the neckline done to the correct sizing - not a great look! 

So I unpicked the crochet, then tried it on again. While this was better, the neck was still too tight. This is where it got messy. Being the lazy thing I am, I didn't then, like a good girl, decided to de-assemble the jumper to carefully unpick the tops of all the pieces. Nooooo, not me! Instead I decided to do it while it was all still hanging together. 

Yeah.

You can imagine how that went... 

It didn't help that a) the yarn had sort of tangled and didn't particularly wanted to be ripped (it is mohair, after all) and b) that I had already sewn some of the ends in, meaning that I had to unpick as a I went along... 

Great idea, that was... 

I undid what I think was about three rows, then crocheted that border on again, using the leftover yarn from the unpicking (that was another bad choice because there was never enough of it so I had several joins). I cast off, then tried it on. 

Nope, the cast-off, despite  being very loose, was still too tight and bunched the fabric up. More ripping, followed by another, ultra-loose cast-off. Then I crocheted a very very loose crochet chain to finish the now rather messy-looking neckline off more neatly. Tried it on again.

Nope, still not right - the crochet border, once again, pulled the fabric together in a way that made it bunch up. This was quite amazing to me because you can't imagine how loosely I did the crochet border - the loops were HUGE!

So the crochet was ripped once again. Assessing the situation I then decided that I was going to have to go with the flow and just leave that slightly unsightly unfinished border as it was, because at least it meant that the neckline sizing was right. 

I tidied up the sewing where the sleeves attach to the body of the jumper - this looked pretty messy by now but not much I could do about it, and then stuck the whole project in the wash in the hope of levelling out the neckline a little by blocking it. 

Some blocking was required, and it's still not perfect, but hey, the rolling hems do help to hide the unsightly bits!! 

But you know what? I love it.

It's been some journey, this last bit of knitting Ink Flare, but I love the end result. Yes, to the discerning knitter the problems around the neckline and the messy sewing which resulted from the repeated ripping are fairly obvious, but the jumper is cuddly and so so soft, and I do actually quite like how it fits now. The boys like it too - boy #2 has already announced that he wants me to knit a jumper for him now. I'm only too happy to oblige! :) 

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Wednesday catch-up...

I can't believe it's been a week since I've last updated. These past couple of weeks have been sooo busy! And the changing of the clocks doesn't help much either. Nobody tells little children about daylight saving time! All the people we know who have no kids, or bigger kids rejoice about an hour longer in bed, while us, and everybody else with little ones, just has to make do with an hour less sleep every night, because of course you immediately adjust the time you go to bed to an hour later, but your kids will still be up at their usual time, which now isn't 6am but 5am. Oh, the joy!

Despite all the work and the lack of sleep, I've been knitting, though. And crocheting. Mainly the latter, actually. I'm still 2 pattern pieces behind. Actually, it's a bit more than that now, actually, so things are not exactly moving in the right direction! Still, I've nearly completed all the pieces for pattern piece 2 and the weird popcorn stitch. 

Once it's done it's not quite so bad, but it's still not my favourite pattern. I'm looking forward to pattern piece 4, which has a lovely flower in the middle of each square. Very cute. :)  

Other than that I've slowly making headway with the Garter Yoke cardi. I'm basically at the end of the first sleeve now, with just the cuff to go. I'm kind of bored with this now - while it makes great mindless knitting it's also quite dull to just knit stockinette in the round... Can't wait for it to be finished.

No progress at all on the Lombard Street Socks, mainly because I've forgotten it at work for the past week. That said, right now the crochet squares have replaced it as my small portable project. I'm determined to get this done before Christmas though! 

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The quiet after (and before) the storm...

I've been quiet this past week because... well, it's been busy around here last week. Boy #3 was christened, and in honor of the occasion the German and English parts of the family all turned out in (nearly) full force. The only person who couldn't be there was my dad's partner, something that was regretted by all. We had my dad, my step-sister and her partner staying with us, and D's mum was also putting up various people. Everything went well, the christening was fine, the party after was great fun (the family cherishes the few occasions we get to get together), including even a spontaneous jam session with D on his banjo, his brother on the guitar, and other family members joining in with spoons and drums. A few days after that it was boy #1's birthday so we had yet another party! We've had quite an exciting week!

It was nice having people stay over. Our guests made themselves at home, helped out, played with the boys, who were delighted that we had people staying over who were such fun (aren't kids always all about 'the more the merrier'?!). We had good food and good conversation, and I even got some knitting done (yes, I did! I just didn't get round to blogging about it!).

All that said, the night after we'd waved the last of our guests good bye, and after we'd brought the kids up to bed, D and I sat down on the sofa and stretched out legs. It was quiet in the house. I picked up the knitting and D picked up his banjo and we just sat, not talking, just reclaiming our home. It was lovely having guests, but it was also exhausting, and it's often only once they've left that you realise quite how exhausting it can be, even if those guests are the nicest of people, even if they help out and carry out the dishes, even if they play with the children, and even if they don't insist on partying well into the early hours every night. 

Well, after all that was done we had a few quiet days and then, yesterday, it was the start of the university term, so that's it with peace and quiet for the next 12 weeks!! I'm still knitting, and I will still blog, but it might not be quite as frequent as it often was over the summer. 

Anyway, I might as well show you what I have been up to:

Yes, this is indeed the Garter Yoke Cardi! We've reconnected, that cardi and I, and with all that sitting and chatting in the evening I'm managed to do a good deal of work on it. I'm past the decrease and the increase sections, so it's just plain old stockinette until I get to the right length now. I've quite enjoyed knitting it, although I had a couple of near-misses with those button holes. So many button holes! So two of them were 18 rather than 16 rows apart. I don't think it'll show in the end. 

I've also done a bit of work on the Lombard Street sock - not much, but whenever just a bit, here and there. I'm about 2 or 3 repeats of the pattern away from doing the heel. 

There is no rush with these socks. I'm enjoying them, but it's OK if they take a month longer, in particular as G, the lovely auntie who came all the way from Germany for boy#3s Christening and brought two pairs of socks for all three boys (she knitted 6 pairs of socks in about 4 weeks!!!) is determined to now knit for D and I. I gave her some of my huge stash of sock yarn to take back with her but she clearly thought my huge sock yarn mountain wasn't sufficient because I heard her muttering to herself that she might buy some more once she is back home to make sure that we definitely won't go without sufficient knitted socks this winter. I can't tell you how delighted I am about this development. The boys love their knitted socks and have been wearing them lots at the weekend (school days mean black socks I'm afraid...). 

In other news - do you see this:

Interesting, isn't it? In the throws of yet another bout of knitting insanity I decided to wind some cream coloured yarn I had from frogging a jumper up into a ball so I could use it to knit a pillow. i was envisioning a thick cable pattern...  Not possessing a nostepinne I decided to wind the whole thing around a pen so I could make it into a centre-pulling ball. It worked really well - until I decided to take the pen out. It won't come out. Believe me, I have tried. AND TRIED. It's stuck for good. Brilliant. Don't you just love a job well done? 

But anyway, that pillow. I had it all planned out. I know, I know, I really should focus on the 358 projects that I have already started and I haven't actually started it, but it would look so nice on the sofa... 

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WIP Wednesday update!

Well, it's been a productive week. 

I finished the granny square blanket... I'm still a bit in shock, I think. I've had this on the go for so long I don't think I really believe that it would ever be finished. 

The blanket was done a few days ago, actually, and we've had it on the sofa ever since. It's quite heavy, but in a good way, and very cuddly and warm. The boys love it, although I've had to scold them a few times for digging their little toes into the granny squares. I guess it's quite tempting... 

I'm so so happy with it!

In fact, I'm so happy with it, I decided that with the remaining 9 squares (they were the first ones and the gauge was just totally different because I was still learning) I was going to make a little cushion cover for the new stylish Matilda the Caravan. I edged these with blue so they'd match her new shiny outside paint. This is not finished, but I'm planning to crochet around the edge until it's the right size to cover that side of the pillow. I'll then hand-sew the crochet onto the cream pillow itself and tadaa! new cushion cover made out of an old (and rather worn) one!

In between all this I've obviously completed my handspun mobius cowl. I've actually been wearing this on and off - it's great to wear. How did I know know how comfortable cowls are? 

I've also continued to make progress with the Lombard Street sock #2. I've had a couple of hospital appointments this week and as I'm sure we all know, that always entails a lot of waiting around. All good for sock knitting, though, so to be honest I quite enjoyed the quiet time to sit down and work on this .I can't show you a picture though, because, guess what - I've forgotten it at work.

I've also been digging around for some yarn that might be suitable for Steph's Hitofude KAL and I managed to find this:

This is a HUGE cone of some sort of burgundy wool. I think it's lace-weight, so a little thin for Hitofude. May do a swatch, though.

Then I found this:

Honestly, I'm a little bit horrified. There are two cones of 4-ply, one of them superwash. There are also two hanks of Knitpicks yarn, one of them lace-weight, the other 4-ply. Seriously, I had no idea I had all this stuff!! The problem is that I'd have to dye it. Perhaps some Koolaid dying might do the trick? 

I'm also looking forward to starting Liesl. Here is all the yarn - should be enough, no? 

There is still no progress on the Garter Yoke Cardi, but it's next on my list. What with the crochet obsession I've just not found a moment to think myself back into this project (what row was I on anyway??). I'm looking forward to reconnecting with it in the coming week, though.

Oh, and last but not least, D's auntie gifted the boys with this:

Boy #3 calls him 'Ratty Bear'. Isn't he adorable? 

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WIP Wednesdays - on Thursday!

OK, so this WIP post is a day late, but never mind that - there's been some actual progress this week!

My obsession with the granny square blanket has continued unabated, so I'm pretty much done with it by now. In fact, if I hadn't decided last night to add one or two more rows to it so it would drape more nicely across the sofa I'd be finished by now. I've crocheted all the squares together and have even sewn in most of the ends. The only thing left is to crochet once around the whole thing, but obviously I have to wait with that until I've made more squares for another row or two... Hopefully it'll be done by Friday so I can do a proper FO post for it. It also needs to be washed and blocked properly, but I think that'll have to wait - I want to admire it on the sofa for a few days before I wash it and can't use it for days until it's dry!

 I've also made progress on my Lombard Street Socks. I've finished sock #1!! In the end I kind of made up my own pattern, lol, because the instructions were confusing because I wasn't knitting on dpns. It all worked out perfectly, though, so no harm done. Today I briefly went into work to look in on a colleague's conference, but because it's normally my day off I decided that I would use the half hour before to cast on for sock #2. I've only done a few rows on it but I've done the piquot edging , meaning that I can start with the lace and cable pattern now. I'm really pleased with this pattern - it's fun to knit, and the sock fits perfectly.

I'm taking a couple of days off now, which I am very excited about. D and I have plans to finally paint our old caravan. I bought Matilda (yes, all our vehicles have names...) on ebay last year. It was a bit of a spur of the moment purchase and she is very old and hasn't in fact been anywhere since we've bought her. Her tires need looking at and really, my idea was that she'd mainly be a summer house that we could, very occasionally, take with us when we go camping. I'd like to re-do the interior (take out the nasty-looking little bathroom and the wardrobe to make some room, paint the lot, make covers for the seats, etc.

With all those grand plans, though, not much has happened since she came home to stay with us. After her first winter here she looked decidedly run down and overall pretty green and slimy. We were not enamored. All five of us, armed with sponges and brushes and lots of soapy water, were able to restore her to her slightly shabby previous self, but I think the time has come for her to get her make-over, so this morning we armored ourselves with paint brushes and a tub of Dulux Weathershield and got to work:

Isn't this better? She's not finished, of course - she'll get a coat of white around the middle tomorrow, and we are contemplating whether to paint the roof white or blue... 

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A little bit of everything...

... Well, not really, but I have done much more than the previous week. Only the Garter Yoke Cardi didn't get a look in this week. Mainly because I'd forgotten where I'd put it. I've now located it in its little bag in my office so hopefully there will be some time later this week to make some progress with it. Here it is, as it looks now:

These past couple of days I've been slightly obsessed with my Granny Square Blanket.

This is such a long-term project and it's using up scrap yarn that's accumulated over many years. Now, though, it's nearing completion. I've finally figured out how to attach the squares. For a long time I was balking at the idea that I may have to sew all these little squares together, in particular when I was imagining the untidy hand sewing that I was bound to produce. The other day, though, I suddenly hit upon the solution - I'm going to crochet them together. I immediately set out to try it and lo and behold, it works, it looks tidy and it's a lot less fussy than sewing all these pieces together.

I still have a number of squares to complete, and ideally I'd like the blanket nice and big, but I've made a lot of progress on this these past few days and I'm so in love with its mad and mismatched look!

Apart from that I've also been busy with my Lombard Street socks.  can't show you a picture because I've forgotten them at work, but I've turned the heel! There was some slight pattern confusion because the patterns is written for dpns and I'm using a circular needle, but fortunately by that point I'd basically memorised the lace pattern anyway and I just ignored the lace instructions post-heel and carried on with the pattern as before. It's working well and I should complete sock #1 soon.

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The summer holidays are a tough time for knitting - and for writing the blog.

This week I'm having the boys at home, which has been nice, but which has also meant that there has been precious little time to myself, resulting in a lack of progress on my knitting projects and a lack of blog posts. It's OK, I don't really mind. Instead, we've been to the cinema and we've  been to the playground, we've tidied their rooms, only to make them untidy again almost straight after. D has taken a bit of time off here and there, and today we had a whole day together.

We took the chance to go to Whitby on the North Yorkshire Moors railway from Pickering. What a fabulous day it was. We started off really early because not all the steam trains go to Whitby. A lot of them seem to stop at Goathland  (Hogsmeade in the Harry Potter films) or Grosmont but there isn't a lot else to see for kids apart from the steam train, so we thought it might be much more fun to go all the way to Whitby.

We had a great day. The boys loved the train, and despite the crowds, Whitby is lovely. I'd never really seen the town itself (I'd been before but mainly to the beach and to walk by the sea). It's so pretty, and the view from the old abbey is beautiful.

Walking back to the station we watched all the crab fishers by the harbour. Boy #1 was very taken with this so we may have to come back at some point and do some of that...

On the way back on the train I realised that it is Wednesday today, so I took a quick picture of the Lombard Street sock as it is right now. I'm almost at the right point to start the heel.

Despite the slowness of this project it's so much fun knitting this. Just complex enough not to be boring but not so complex that it becomes annoying.

This doesn't mean that it's flawless (my knitting, that is, not the pattern). Really early on I managed to twist a whole row of cables, and while I was knitting in the cinema the other day I must have managed get a bit muddled up with my rows but can't really detect what it was that I've done. All I know was that I was half a row out with the pattern.

Will I rip to fix these issues? Nope, I don't think so. The past few weeks of summer holidays with all their chaos and imperfection and fun have emphasised my natural pragmatism. Live and let live, right? If this was for anyone else I might have ripped straight away when I realised that the cables were twisted (I noticed that pretty quickly), but you know? It's all good. These socks are for me, and I don't mind the twisted cables, never mind the other mistake that I can't even quite see.

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Late on Wednesday, but I was at work all day so I only now found time to quickly plunk all my knitting on the table after bringing boy #3 to bed. Boy #1 is doing his loom bands and boy #2 is watching Transformers on TV. D is tinkering with something he built in his workshop earlier. It's a typical summer break early evening scene. 

Knitting has been slow this week. I am still feeling the effects of the cold I picked up in Germany - to be honest, I'm not sure it's even still the same cold. It might be that it asked a few friends along, because this cough feels slightly different, plus I also have a sinus infection now. I'm also back at work of course, which means that daytime knitting isn't really happening at the moment. I have a day off on Friday and I might take the boys to the cinema so we'll see if that generates some knitting time...

Still, work has progressed. I'm still knitting along on the Garter Yoke cardi and am nearing the end of the garter section. All the shaping has kept this bit interesting, but it's also been a bit difficult to keep track of the rows while sneaking a bit of knitting in while sitting with the family. 

I've also knitted a little more on the Lombard Street sock. I'm enjoying the pattern but progress has been slow. I think I may knit a bit more tonight.

As for my reading, I've (slowly) been working through David Pirie's Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes books which are based on the Murder Rooms television series (which is excellent), which he also scripted. They are fiction, but have biographical elements to do with Arthur Conan Doyle's life and his friendship with his mentor Doctor Bell. He writes the fictional adventures and criminal investigations of the two as Doyle's inspiration for his fictional detective. It's really clever in mixing fiction and fact and it's well written, and I've really enjoyed the books. 

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