What's in Progress?

Like pretty much the rest of the planet, as far as I can tell, I've been feeling basically terrible for the last few weeks. When I last posted I thought I was beginning to shake it off but I was very, very wrong! A couple of days later I had the shivers and a fever and it's really only the last few days this I've been confident enough to say that I'm on the mend. If anyone else has been suffering you very much have my sympathy because UGH. So mostly I've just been pottering around doing a bit of one project here and a bit of another there when I've been feeling up for it.

In knitting I've been slowly beavering away on the Tauriel pattern by Josiah Bain. I was hoping they'd scratch the cable itch I've been suffering with but I've found they've been requiring a little more concentration than I've had to give recently. Now I'm feeling better they are going a bit faster so hopefully I'll finish them in a week or two. The yarn is Knit Picks Stroll Glimmer which unsurprisingly is a little glittery and is doing a lovely job of cheering the magpie in me right up.

In sewing I'm whipping up (in the very slowest sense of the phrase) another pair of jeans. They're a sort of stone colour, which is a bit boring for me so I decided to jazz them up a bit with some pink top stitching. I'm not regretting it so far. I'm just about to stick the zip fly in so there's not too much to do now.

I've also been spinning, finishing the spinning on a project that has seen me get married, become a homeowner, buy a spinning wheel and have 2 children! This has been spun from 2 batts from Shunklies in a colourway called Monsters Inc. I still need to ply so there's plenty of opportunity yet for more procrastination but I'm hopeful it'll be done this year.

Speaking of procrastination, I did immediately start spinning up these lovely batts while the other singles chill for a day or two. The plan is to spin the first one then ply the Monsters Inc and then I'll spin the second batt and ply them both. I'm really hoping that I can make the finished yarn as pretty as the batts are (Snow Glow by Nunoco), it was almost tempting to just never spin them and keep them to look at.

And today I'll leave you with this pair of Easter bunnies who have been having loads of fun doing Easter crafts this week. I'm loving that they're getting big enough for making little projects like these masks and I'm having great fun planning more things for them to do.

 

What's in Progress?

After my recent whine about my difficulties getting a new knitting project on the go, it seemed only polite to let you know what I'd actually ended up working on.  I was too busy trying not to name names when it came to the patterns that had frustrated me that I stayed tight lipped about what had finally broken me out of my funk!

After all that melodrama I finally ended up knitting Effervesce by Purrlescent.  These socks have exactly the look I was going for with tiny little travelling cables.  They look really intricate and complicated but really they are dead simple and are knitting up really fast.  I cast on on 22nd January and I've just turned the heel down on the second sock less than 3 weeks later.  While I'm aware that's not super fast, I have socks on the needles which I cast on in December 2012.......

These socks never have you crossing more than one stitch over the next so by cabling without a cable needle I'm finding that I'm not being slowed down too much.  The only issue I've had is that I decided to use magic loop (I'm ordinarily a DPN type of girl) and I've been through 3 sets of needles before I found some where the bump in the join wasn't driving me bonkers.

I'm hoping to have these done in a week or so and then the plan is to knit Lissy a sweater. I'm kind of feeling sock fever kicking back in though so she'll have to behave herself if she doesn't want to go back in the queue!

What's in Progress - Craft Edition

As promised here’s a little rundown of what I’m working on right now.  Without further ado, lets go.

Knitting.  I’m working on a couple of things at the moment, I’d been trying to work exclusively on my Driftwood because it’s definitely getting a bit autumnal round here but I managed to misplace my 4^th and 5^th 5.5mm dpns which made life a little difficult.  I probably wasn’t looking very hard for them as Stu found one a few days later and then Felicity suddenly appeared brandishing the other a day later, but hey ho, I can get on with it now.  It gave me a few days to work on my super sneaky blankie project, which I am loving knitting and hating not being able to share for now.

Sewing.  I loved the New Look 6262 pattern that I made up recently so much that I’ve already gone back for round 2.  This is actually the dress that I originally planned to make but I couldn’t quite squeeze all the pattern pieces on the fabric.  Because the first dress was a little too roomy I’ve cut the smallest size this time and as luck would have it I have enough fabric for the slightly smaller version. Yay!  Progress on this has been entirely stalled  by the refurbishment of the dining room so it’s sitting by the sewing machine with only one side of the zip sewn while I wait for a power cable that will reach my machines.  Then I just need to whizz up the other side of the zip, do the facings and the sleeves and the hems.

Spinning.  Yes, spinning!  I bet you forgot I did that!  One of the main ideas behind the dining room redesign was so that we could make it really safe for the girls, allowing them the freedom to come and go from that room.  Up until then we’d had a baby gate at the door to the kitchen which blocked them from the kitchen and dining room.  So far it’s been great and I’ve found that they largely stay away from my wheel now it’s less of a novelty so I’ve really rediscovered spinning over the last few days.  That’s not to say that I haven’t had a few disagreements with disgruntled toddlers about whether they should be touching the spinny thing but we're definitely getting there.  Cassie and I have come to an agreement that she can touch any of the bits that aren’t moving and she seems quite content to sit opposite me with one finger on the back of the bobbin holder and Felicity has become a bit more wary since she stuck her finger in between the spokes which I was spinning.  And that folks, is how you prick your finger on a spinning wheel!  I’ve mostly been spinning up some South American fibre that I hand dyed a wee while ago, I’ve done the first 100g with 100g left, and that is just having a little sit before I ply it up.  In the meantime I’m plying some singles that I spun at least 4 years ago and has been sitting in my corner of shame ever since.

The fibre was a lovely braid of BFL and sparkles that I got from FeltStudio and I spun it up on one of my drop spindles.  I really loved the colours and didn’t want to mix them so I had my first stab at chain plying on a drop spindle.  Let’s just say that it did not go well but I was determined so I set about pre-chaining the singles so that I could add the twist in a separate step later.  Believe it or not that turned out to be really tedious and I did about half of it over a few sessions before I gave up entirely.  Fast-forward to yesterday and I finally realised that I have some beautiful yarn just sat there waiting to be finished and that I was stupid to keep putting it off.  I didn’t need to keep pre-chaining it, I could just break it off, run the pre-chained stuff through the wheel and then have another go at chain plying which turns out to be much easier for me using a wheel.  I’m so happy this is nearly done although I do feel intense shame at having it left so long.  And so, after barely spinning at all in ages I should have 2 skeins of finished yarn to show you in the next few days, how exciting!

WIP: Driftwood

Don't mind me, just hanging out in my half knitted jumper!

I’ve been charging along on my Driftwood and I’ve now been able to try it on and see how I like it.  Obviously the addition of sleeves and the neck band will make a world of difference but it’s looking ok so far don’t you think?  This has been a really quick and easy knit so far and it’s been nice to see it growing before my eyes, not like those knits that seem to just not get any bigger no matter how much time you put in.  I always think that stripes help with that, especially where plain stockinette is involved because each stripe is a milestone that helps you see you’re making progress.

So that's that.  I'll be putting this aside for a few days to do a bit of test knitting and to put a few rows in on a very secret blanket project I'm working on.  In non project news, Cassie started preschool yesterday.  Safe to say it was a resounding success and she's very happy to be going back today.  When we first arrived there she suddenly lost her nerve and I thought she might not want me to go, but as soon as she say the table with the play dough on she was off and didn't look back.  I was really pleased how easy it was but pretty sad that she didn't even say goodbye.  Then I had to deal with a Felicity fit because she was upset that she didn't also get to stay and play with the play dough!  When we went back to get Cassie she actually burst into very loud tears when she saw me because she didn't want to go home with boring old mummy.  Oh well.

My big beautiful girl :)

What's in Progress?

After finishing my Nathalie cardigan and my 70s dress I was still in selfish mode and started two more projects just for me.  Once they are done I have promised Cassie that I will make her something, but I'll make it a quick one so that I can get on with more things for meeee!

Driftwood has been in my queue for ages, it's right up my alley and definitely qualifies as a wardrobe essential that will get loads of wear.  I'd been giving a lot of thought to yarn and colour combos and never actually made a decision so I'd put off making it.  Its was only when I was looking at my UFOs and my stash that I had a flash of inspiration and decided to rip out an old project and combine that yarn with some of the same yarn in another colour from the stash.

The UFO, Brights 2 from Rowan Studio 9, was started in 2009, picked up again briefly in 2010 after I had a little push to deal with my longest suffering UFOs and has languished in this state ever since.

Please note that the only thing in the post I linked above that ever got finished were my alpaca socks and they fell victim to Stu and the washing machine not long after they were finished.  Clearly I had no real desire to finish the thing so it was definitely time to rip it out and put the yarn to good use.  I had a load of black Rowan Calmer sitting in the stash waiting to be a bolero cardigan that I was only half convinced that I actually like so it seemed like a good idea to combine the two and knit some thing I'd actually, well, knit.

Sewing-wise I'm currently sewing up New Look 6262 in some lovely bird and butterfly print viscose. I'm just about to stick the zip in and then its just sleeves, neckline and hem left to do.  If this turns out nicely then I can see me making a few versions of this dress in the future.  It's really simple, but has a few different options to mix and match and make each one a little different.  There was another project that I finished before that, but Stu referred to that garment as abomination and he is almost certainly correct so I'm avoiding photographing it for the moment.  But I will share it soon, when you're least expecting it, BAM there it will be in all its day-glo glory.  Betcha can't wait!

Brightening things up a bit

Much as I generally love winter the weather here can currently be described in no other way than 'grey'. Although dreary and drab wouldn't be unfair descriptions either. So when picking new knitting and spinning projects I was clearly looking for something to provide my eyeballs with a bit of a pick me up. From my box of ready to go knitting projects I picked this bag

And from my big bag of fibre

I picked this

The pattern I had matched up with the yarn was Nymphalidea and I'm really chuffed with my choice. The rainbowy goodness of the Drops Delight is set off really nicely by the black stripes. The black yarn is some random Rowan 4-ply I bought on a cone from eBay years ago and I'm really glad to be finally using some of it. The pattern itself is really fun and the little sections make it seem like it is growing really fast. The short rows in it really help as no matter how long the rows get 4 out of 12 rows are 22 stitches or shorter, which is a welcome break as the rows get longer.

I haven't got quite so far with the fibre. There is 200g of South American of which I left 1/3 in white, dyed 1/3 neon pink and split the final 1/3 in half and dyed those bits orange and purple. The plan is to make a 3ply with one white strand, one pink strand and one strand with the orange and purple striping. In my mind this will be nice and bright with a subtle variation, only time will tell if it will work out that way. So far I've only spun a bit of the white, I'll spare you a photograph of that! I had a go at spinning with Cassie in the room, I figured she might be grown up enough to understand that she shouldn't touch. Five minutes later she had head butted the wheel while it was spinning, on purpose, and told me that she wanted to lick it so it went away again. My child is a nut.