If you can keep your head...

The world is pretty crazy right now. It looks as though things will continue to be a whole heap of crazy pants for a while to come. I've been reading quite a few articles and blogs about what individuals can and should do to help. One of the big things for me is the need to pace ourselves; to look after our minds and bodies, so that we can keep on keeping on for as long as is needed. 

I've committed myself to taking small actions every day: writing postcards (so much quicker than a letter), writing emails, bearing witness, noticing events and reminding myself that this is not normal. Brexit was/is bad enough, but I doubt very much that DJT and his crew are suddenly going to morph into liberal minded and highly principled politicians. This is not going to pass quickly or easily. 

To nurture my inner reserves I'm going to keep on knitting. I've got a scarf on the needles just now. Garter stitch oblivion. Springy and green. 

The tale of a hat: Newhaven (FO)

I'm a hat knitter and a hat wearer. I'm wearing one now - sitting at our dining table, typing on my lap top - sitting inside. It's a bit chilly, and I'm going out again in a short while, so I decided just to keep my hat on when I got in. 

I seem to come from hat wearing stock. My dad used to wear tweed flat caps in the 1970s and 1980s when I was growing up, and my brother wears something on his head most days, usually one of the scrap hats I have made for him.

To go back to the story: I wear hats a lot in the winter, and over the last few years I have made quite a lot of hats for other people. My own hat stash was wearing fairly thin. I have a green, striped scrap hat - the original prototype and starting point for my scrap hat recipe (but the tassle fell off last year) - and a lovely red hat, knitted in a soft red yarn (Rowan Kid Classic) using a pattern from a dim and distant Rowan magazine.  If it's cold I wear them both. 

Some time last winter I decided that I need to augment my hat collection. I wanted a blue hat to work with all of the blues in my wardrobe. I put it down on my shopping list for the Edinburgh Yarn Festival, and came home with a skein of completely on-message Wollmeise DK and a copy of Ysolda Teague's Newhaven hat pattern. Tick and tick. 

I also snagged a skein of Ysolda's kitten soft yarn, Blend No. 1 which I bought at the same time as the pattern. Naughty, but very nice. 

Obviously, as the grey yarn wasn't on my shopping list, I wound that first, and then used that to make my first Newhaven hat. The hat has short rows and charts and texture, but before you know it you are at the top and trying to work out how to turn the thing inside out for the 3 needle bind-off. 

Once I figured that out, I put it on my head and I haven't really looked back. It's my new favourite. I can't remember if I have washed or blocked it yet (why bother?!). 

I was wearing the hat the other morning when I saw Ysolda herself, having her morning coffee. I waved and pointed at my hat, and she waved back and gave me a thumbs up. Then she wrote about it on her blog. Ah. Light and love and things to cheer us up. Happy knitmas one and all. 

2016: a retrospective

2016 has been a challenging year. 

Brexit and Trump mean it will have a lasting political impact on the world, but there are other things too. Smaller things about my own life which have been difficult and challenging and which will have ongoing and long-term effects. And, just like Brexit and Trump, these things are also changes that I do not want, that I do not support, and which I have done my best to resist. 

It seems - sadly - that I will have to learn to live with them. To work round them and to rethink my future. 

To get back to the other challenges for 2016, I set myself several crafty objectives earlier in the year, and it's time to take stock. 

1. Tame the stashes 
I did a good job of reducing the yarn stash, and knitting from stash a wee bit (tank top or two, plus a few other accessories), and then bought a sweater's worth of lovely yarn from Skein Queen to make myself a jumper, and two skeins of yarn for hats. 

I did sort the fabric stash, and move a few things around and get rid of some fabric I thought I would never use. But, that didn't shrink it much, and then I found I needed to order some more for a project or two that I had planned, so I don't think I am any further forward. 


2. Use the stash!
Knitting: I made a cowl for myself, a tank top for the bean, another scarf for myself, and a lovely hat. I used the stash to remake a hat for my brother, and knit a Christmas hat for my daughter. I made a slightly too big pair of socks that ended up going to my dad. My needles are currently clacking away on a pair of fingerless mitts for my brother's girlfriend. 

Newhaven Hat by Ysolda Teague

knitted in Ysolda's Blend No 1 

wee scrap hat (own design)

modelled by little bean

scrap hat revisited - own design

I made this for my brother using some frogged yarn from an old scrap hat of his, which was disintegrating from use/wear and washing. 

Sewing: I have made myself two jersey skirts suitable for work, three very small raglan tees for a friend, two pairs of school leggings and a nightdress for the jelly bean. I also made a few upcycled projects using fabric recovered from old t-shirts.

3 x recess raglan tee (See Kate Sew)

made with upcycled fabrics; the fire-engine motif was rescued from a toddler t-shirt and attached using bondaweb

4 x upcycled dusters or polishing cloths. Made from old t-shirts

3. Make some things to fill gaps in my wardrobe: 
I made a cowl, a navy jersey skirt, a lovely raspberry coloured scarf, and a grey hat. It is so satisfying to make things that fit right in to the palette and styles that I wear everyday, and which immediately go into rotation. I also made a gorgeous multi-coloured skirt which didn't really fit into my careful plans, but has been a useful me-made addition nevertheless. 

 Bias stripe scarf (Purl Soho)

Knit with some lovely but anonymous raspberry sock yarn from the stash, and striped with some odds and ends

 

4. Finish the UFOs
There has been progress here. My WIP pile has reduced significantly. I think I just have one long-range UFO in my knitting bag, which I am eyeing up as a Christmas gift. My sewing UFO pile ebbs and flows, but I think it has reduced in size a little. 

5. Continue to work on mending. 
There has been a lot of mending this year. I have darned, sewn, embellished, and ironed-on patches. I even managed to do some of that with friends. 

I haven't blogged much.  But I have been stitching. And I made myself some things. I might not have achieved everything I planned, but I can happily tick quite a few things off the list. Hurrah for that. 

Things I realised this week: why I like knitting

Ah spring. There you are all green and springy, making things start to grow and inspiring me to start All. The. Projects. 

This week I realised just why I like knitting so much. Sure, it takes a relatively long time to get from a ball of string yarn to a finished sweater - but: 

1.  it's pretty portable. You can do it on the bus, on the sofa, in bed and standing up (and in most other places and positions, although please don't knit whilst driving or operating heavy machinery obvs).  

2. it's also highly pick up and put downable: you can do it for a few hours or a few minutes at a time. Just pick up the needles and knit a row, or two. 

3. Knitting is quiet - you can do it on your own, or in company.   

4. knitting is easy. If you go wrong, you can tink back (or frog) and put it right. 

Sewing on the other hand. Well, it's not quite the same. I want to sew, and to make all of the things, and I have lots of fabric. But:

1. Sewing requires quite a lot of preparation - getting the machine, scissors, rotary cutter, cutting mat, thread and fabric all together. 

2. Sewing has lots of stages: pattern tracing, cutting the fabric, making a toile, adjusting the toile, adjusting the pattern, cutting out the real fabric, sewing it up, adjusting it, finishing it off. 

3. Sewing often involves multiple gadgets (sewing machine, overlocker, iron, ironing board, tailors ham, tailors dummy)

4. Sometimes sewing requires all of those gadgets at almost the same time. 

5. Using the sewing machine and/or overlocker is not compatible with watching TV. 

6. Cutting fabric is final - although mistakes in stitching can usually be retrieved. 

Note to self: if you want to finish that quilt you actually have to do some sewing. Just thinking about it does not appear to be having any actual effect on the number of blocks which have been trimmed to size and stitched together.

Sigh. 

Pass my knitting bag. 

Edinburgh Yarn Festival 2016

I had the briefest, fleetingest, shortest imagineable encounter with the Edinburgh Yarn Festival 2016 on Friday, and I was utterly charmed. 

I wandered around the yarn market for an hour or so, with a stop for tea and most delicious cake part way through. It wasn't really long enough to do the place justice, or really have a good rummage and browse for the things I wanted.

I spied a few well-known faces from knitterati: Tom, but no Kate, from Kate Davies Designs, Ysolda, Stephen West - who was impossible to miss in his extraordinary outfit. I was trying to describe it to the jelly bean (age 6). She didn't believe me!

I stayed mostly on-message - with some rich blue DK yarn from Wollmeise to make myself a hat. That was definitely part of the plan. 

I also picked up some gorgeous DK weight yarn from Skein Queen - also part of my me-made plans. Stupidly I convinced myself that 2 skeins would be enough! It might be close, but I doubt I'll manage either of the two patterns I have at the top of my queue.  And, as you can see in this photo, the two skeins I picked seem to be subtly different in tone/colour. That is probably the fault of the 'show' lighting in the Corn Exchange - I did have 4 skeins to choose from! But it's not insurmountable. 

The extra thing I brought home was this little haul from Ysolda - two patterns and some of her kitten-soft silvery grey undyed yarn. 

The other pattern is her blank slate sweater. I had to pet the yarn a little bit yesterday, and hand wound it whilst drinking tea and chatting to the little bean. It's seriously nice. Silky and soft, and a lovely pale grey. I'll be casting on for that hat as soon as I can find the right needle, and, I can see a blue version coming along just behind it. 

Mending Monday 2016: #3 it's a holey-holeyday

Way back in the mists of time, before the internet and Taylor Swift were invented, I knitted myself a cardigan. It's from Rowan magazine 21, shown on the front cover. 

I have always rebelled it seems, and I knitted it in a nice wool based yarn (Jaeger wool DK I think), not the cotton yarn the pattern was written for. Anywayz. I have worn it a lot - for a long time it was the sort of thing I wore to work. Then the elbows started to develop holes and I patched them up and it became a cosy old friend to wear around the house. Gradually more and more bits of it are wearing thin or coming apart, but I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to it yet. 

Before Christmas I started knitting something for the bean, and realised that the yarn was pretty much the same colour as this cardigan of mine. Last week, I sat down to do some mending and spent a little bit of time patching up the holes and frayed cuffs.

Five or ten minutes, sitting in the light and stitching away. I was talking to my daughter at the same time - you can see her feet in the bottom picture - she is wearing handknitted socks that I made for her older brother a year or two back. That's the sort of housework I like!

Cowlowlowl (FO)

Howsyoudoing today, people?

The sun is shining here, putting a spring into my step (ha, ha). It's still cold and windy though, so I'm hoping I'll get a bit of use from my newest neck adornment, this plain and simple cowl.

I knitted it on a circular needle, using 100g of sock yarn - Regia Highland Tweed. I used a provisional cast on, then knitted until almost the end of the yarn before grafting the two ends together.  

You can see that it has some subtle colour gradations from purple through to pink. I have a lot of blue in my wardrobe, and some pink too, so it should go well with lots of things. It was one of the projects I identified in my New Year list of things to do, so I consider that to be my first me-made wardrobe filler!

It has been for a quick wash to help even up the tension of the grafting, and now it's ready to wear.

plain and simple cowl (no pattern)

cast on Jan 2016

completed Feb 2016

yarn: Regia Highland Tweed

Comfort knitting

It's cold out, and grey and damp (we had some snow for a day or two, but now it's gone), and I need something to sustain myself through these short January days. So I've got me a bit of comfort knitting, it's very plain and simple. 

I'm going round and round on a circular needle, with 100g of sock yarn. It's meditative and sort of slow, because you can't see it growing.  Before you ask, it's that famous brand can't remember, in the colourway no idea. 

I'm knitting a loooong tube  - and will just keep going until I run out of yarn (I weighed things this morning, there was still 46g of yarn left in the ball). When I do run out, I'll graft the two ends of the tube together to make a soft and purpley cowl. Yum. 

 

Mending Monday 2016 #1

Hello chaps.

The new year has heightened my desire to mend stuff. Or, maybe it's just that I'm in tidying up mode and have been sorting things out like a demon. Anywayz, sometime in the Christmas melee, I got my sock needlez out and rummaged in the darkest corners of my knitting bag for a pair of socks that needed repairz. 

(Sorry about the z thing, I'll stop now. Promize)

Here they are in all their newly knitted glory sometime ago (2011 I think!). But they were getting dangerously thin on the ball of the foot, and needed some repairs. Of course, I decided not to darn the darn things, but rather to reknit a goodly portion of the foot.

I chose the spot, snipped a single stitch and then carefully picked up the live stitches with my needles.

As the original socks are striped using two yarns, I picked out two sympathetic yarn colours from the stash and got to work. They aren't a perfect match, but hey, these dudes will be on my feet and unless I am at home, they will be inside my shoes and Noone Will Ever Know.  Okay? 

This time I alternated the colours stitch by stitch rather than round by round to give a thicker and more durable fabric. I did this before with my socksperimental socks
and the man socks with a squidgy toe. Scientists have not yet reported on the outcomes of these important sock trials; an independent commission has been established to examine the reasons for the non-reporting. It is expected that resignations will follow. 

Where was I? Oh yes, re-socking: a surpisingly short time later (silent witness anyone?) the blighters were done and on my feet.  Hurrah for mending. Hurrah for hand-knitted socks. Hurrah for extensive sock yarn collections. Hurrah for me! 

Ahem. 

My reward for mending these socks is to make myself a cowlowlowlowl. Not sure about the pattern yet, but have picked out the yarn...

Stash. Bust.

Howdy folks. 

Some kind of crazy tidying and organising bug got me over the holidays, and even before the New Year bells rang, I began whittling away at the accumulations of things around me, those little drifts of stuff that collect here and there, in a drawer, on a window ledge, above a fire. Then when the rain stopped long enough for me to sprint across the garden to the shed, I tackled a stash. 

[Side note: not The stash, but A stash - more specifically my stash of yarn.]

Last year, we remodelled our bedroom and substituted a gargantuan built-in wardrobe for something slightly smaller. While all of that was happening, my stash of yarn - organised into 4 clear plastic boxes - was sent to the shed to await repatriation. Over the summer my knitting mojo has been fairly elusive and not much has happened (see this if you don't believe me), but with Christmas and all, I picked up my needles again and the mojo was back. 

Kondo's approach to tidying/decluttering is to discard first and then organise. She advocates gathering things into one place, and handling everything as you decide whether to keep or not. Her test involves asking yourself if something gives you joy. For the stash I used a 'do I want to knit with this?' test. 

It was surprisingly easy to part with a lot of stuff: novelty bobbly yarns; squeaky acrylic; single balls of chunky yarn; half a pack of green wool yarn - I used the other half to knit a nice cardigan, but couldn't imagine making anything else in that colour; a whole pile of slubbed cotton yarn in bright pink, and something similar in black which I've had since the 1990s, Habu paper yarn which I've had for about 5 years but never worked out what I would do with...

I also let go of two very lovely handknit Aran sweaters that my maternal grandmother made. They were made for my dad, and I have had them for at least 10 years. I tried them on (again). They still made me look like a lumpy sausage. My husband tried them on too. They made him look like a badly dressed schoolboy, wearing a too small hand me down. I hope they find good new homes with people that they fit.  

Other things were definitely on the keep pile - all of my nice hand dyed sock yarn, and plain 4 ply for baby things, small piles of nice DK yarn, some odds and ends of mohair, and some cones of grey and teal yarn that I have distant plans for. I managed to hunt out all the little project bags concealed around the house and gather them together. 

The end result was a big pile of things 

To 

Go

Away.

We donated it to a local charity shop later that day (the Bethany Shop next to Summerhall in case you are interested). 

And, the rest of the yarn was organised into 2 clear plastic boxes, and stowed without drama in the wardrobe. Tada! 

One box is mostly DK or heavier weight yarn, and the other is 4 ply, sock yarn, lace weight and other special skeins. 

It's nice having my yarn nearby again, so I can squish it whenever I want. It feels like a good to be clearing out and clarifying like this. 

My next target is books, and then after that I will have to take on 

the 
fabric 
stash. 

Cue scary music.  

Scrap Hat Recipe (free pattern for a stashbusting hat)

Dearest knitters, verily I say unto you, 'tis the season for elving. And, because of that I thought I would share my recipe for my scrap hats. This is not really a pattern - it has not been tested by test knitters, or tech-edited or checked for mistakes - it's just a loose set of instructions. The extra bonus is that you don't need to buy any yarn for this, just use your scraps!!

Size

This is a one-size hat for a man or woman. Actual hat size is in the region of 58cm. 

Yarn

You will need approximately 75g of double knit yarn in colours of your choosing. I find it easiest to group together like colours (e.g. shades of blue, or shades of green) with one or two contrasting colours for interest. If you want to add a knitted lining, you will need more yarn. I usually make my linings in one colour - just choose something that will be comfortable to wear next to the skin. 

As the hat is textured, it is also possible to include heavier and lighter yarns.  I find knitting with 2 strands of 4 ply yarn works well, although one strand can be tolerated in small doses. Chunky or aran weight yarns can be similarly tolerated in small doses.

Gauge

something like 18 stitches to 10cm worked in st st in the round on 3.75mm needles.

Instructions

Cast on 100 stitches using a 3.75mm circular needle (or DPNs) and using DK yarn. If I do add on a few stitches for a bigger hat/head then I make sure I use a multiple of 4 - just to make working out the decreases a lot easier!

Knit until work measures 5 cm. This will make the roll up brim of the hat.

On the next round begin your first purl band, and purl for at least 2 rounds. 

Knit a few rounds, and then purl again as your fancy takes you.

Continue to alternate between knit bands and purl bands. I tend to make my purl bands between one round and 3 rounds and my knit bands a bit more than that. I don’t count the rounds between bands, but alternate by eye.

Change colour whenever you feel the urge or your current scrap of yarn comes to an end. Since the whole point of this hat is to use up yarn then there is no need to count stitches, rounds or master the jogless join.  When changing colours you can either employ your usual yarn joining technique and weaving in ends as you go or do what I do and knit the old yarn with the new yarn for a few stitches. This might be seen as slovenly, but in a project like this perfection is not necessary and I like the variegation you get when you knit two yarns together. Do what you have to…

Continue until the work measures approximately 18cm finishing with a purl band of 3 rounds (roughly).

On the next knit round, begin to shape the crown as follows:

*k2tog tbl, k21, k2tog , rep from * until end.

Next alt round: *k2 tog tbl, K19, k2tog rep from * until end.

Next  altround: *k2 tog tbl, k17, k2 tog rep from * until end.

Keeping pattern correct, work crown decreases until…

For a flat topped hat suitable for a bobble

… only 8 stitches remain, then break yarn, run tail through stitches and pull tight, sewing in end firmly to secure the top of the hat. A bobble if desired.

For a hat with a stalk

… work until 4 stitches remain then knit a few cm of i-cord before casting off. I like to tie a knot in my i-cord stalks, so I normally make the stalk about 10cm or so.

For a hat with a tassle,

… work crown decreases until only 2 stitches remain then work 15cm of i-cord, cast off and attach a suitable tassel to the end of your i-cord.

Weave in ends, wash hat gently, shape and dry.

If you want to add a knitted lining, then it's fairly straightforward: pick up stitches inside the brim of the hat. The round where the outer hat changes from stocking stitch to reverse stocking stitch provides a useful place to pick up these inner stitches. Knit the lining using your preferred rib pattern - I use either 2x2 rib or 2x1 rib, just depending on my mood. Knit until the lining reaches the start of the crown shaping on the outer hat, then work crown decreases. I usually work these as follows:

round 1: *knit 2bl, knit 8 , repeat from * to end.
round 2: work in pattern
round 3: *knit 2tbl, knit 7, repeat from * to end. 
round 4: work in pattern..

Keep this going until you have only 3 stitches between decreases, then decrease every round. when there are only 8 or so stitches left, then break yarn, pull through and close up. It should look something like this.... 

Happy knitting folks! I'd love to hear about any scrap hats that you make.... 

Making Monday #10: here endeth the lesson

You will be glad to hear that after all the cursing two weeks ago, I managed to get that scrap hat finished and sent off to my brother in time for his birthday (Happy Birthday, bro!).

After I fell foul of the knitting gods over the whole brim thing, I took a few deep breaths, and possibly a sip of gin, I considered my options. I couldn't see a way of fudging or incorporating the extra stitches into a spiffy new design feature. So, that really only left one option - to detach the brim and then reknit using the frogged yarn. If ever there was a lesson in ultimate yarn thrift, this is it!

Here is the finished hat, with a reknitted brim. 

As is usual for my scrap hats, there was a knitted lining - seen here - , which I also needed to rework. I frogged and reknitted for two reasons:

1. after making that rookie mistake with stitch numbers, I wasn't going to get caught out again (shakes fist at knitting gods), and 

2. because the outside of the hat is mostly wool or wool mix, it has shrunk a bit with inappropriate washing over time. The lining for this hat is made with cotton yarn (a bit cooler than double wool as this is a summer hat, obvs!) and hadn't shrunk, so it was a bit saggy. 

I picked up stitches inside the brim and knitted the innards using a 2x2 rib. 

Nice huh? Remaking and repairing is just as satisfying as making new things I find. What are you mending today? I'd love to hear...

Mending Monday #8: hat it again (or what knitting taught me this week)

It doesn't seem possible that my house/life has quite so much mending in it, but I am not making it up, people. I live with ruffians I tell you. 

I saw my brother recently and he presented me with a very sorry looking hat. It is one of the three scrap hats I have given him over the years (he wears a hat most of the time, even in the summer. No, I don't understand it either). One of the yarns I had used had started to disintegrate with the result that the hat was developing organised holes in various places. I say organised because the fabric and stitches around was intact, so picking up live stitches seemed fairly straightforward.

Here you can see one of the smaller holes.

This hole was a bit more dramatic. As there was a complete round or two of dodgy yarn here, it soon parted company with the rest of the hat. It looked very scary, but I did my best not to panic. I cant possibly comment on rumours about gin. 

Anywayz, I made a start with some duplicate stitch over the top of some of dodgier areas, and to fill in the gaps in the smaller holes near the top of the hat. 

Once that was all fixed, I moved onto repairing the body of the hat. I ripped out the dodgy yarn and picked up stitches around the bottom of the hat. I needed to add some length back in to compensate for the bits lost through dodgy yarn and felting. It was all going so well. I was bossing it big style. I added a few more rounds and then set about grafting the new live stitches to the old live stitches of the brim. 

Me and old Kitchener are great friends, and I am sure (although I have never tried) that I could successfully graft a sock toe in near darkness. I set about the great graft. I took it steady, working on groups of 10 stitches at a time just to break it up a bit, and allow myself an opportunity to drink tea, wrangle children or put it down occasionally. I didn't think I would be able to guarantee a whole 6 hours of uninterrupted grafting that this would surely involve.

I did half of the grafting and then stopped for some family event (dinner maybe). After bed time, I picked up the hat again. I was going to nail this mother. I grafted and grafted and grafted. I sipped my drink, I admired my work. It was looking so good. I was down to the last 30 stitches, the last 20, the last .... 

Um. Something didn't look right. I looked again. I stopped. The knitting demons laughed and laughed. 

The remaining numbers of stitches did not match. It wasn't a fudgeable 1 or 2 stitch discrepancy it was EIGHT - 8! Eight whole stitches had somehow disappeared between the brim and the rest of the hat. 

I should have counted my stitches. I should have counted my stitches. 

There endeth today's lesson. 

to be continued... 

Knitting 0 Little Bean 1

My knitting mojo has been lying low for a while. Not completely awol, just kicking its heels and skulking around the corner.  The last time it went awol I was pregnant, and that's definitely not the case this time. 

Anywayz. 

Since the Rugby World Cup 2015 started, I've been making myself do some knitting while I watch grown men bash into each other whilst trying to get an oddly shaped ball over a white line. I picked up a sock of my own unvention, which I started earlier in the year. Things have been going very S L O W L Y with it since the heel flap. I love the look of the sock, but something about knitting it is really annoying me.

Last night, I sat down with my husband for an hour or two and we caught up on the last episode of Bake Off some serious documentaries. I picked up the sock, and managed finally to start the toe shaping. The end was in sight.

I put the sock aside, happy and relieved. I was looking forward to the Kitchener stitching to come, and went to bed.

This morning, on my way to the shower, I noticed a tangle of yarn on the carpet. It was a bit like - oh, b*gger, it was the sock yarn. All 4 DPNs were scattered to the wind, and the yarn tangled and stretched from one side of the room to the other. 

I found the needles. I picked up the yarn, and the sock, and I stuffed it in my bag. I didnt inspect the damage - my first glance was enough to confirm some serious damage to the toe, and quite a lot of squiggly frogged yarn. 

I glowered at the culprit. 

He gave me his winningest smile. 

Reader, I forgave him everything. 

Itty Bitty Hats (FO) (warning: contains images of very small & cute hats)

Yo ho ho me hearties.

As you (both? all?) know I have a healthy stash that I try to keep tamed and somewhat under control. Ahem.

Now and again I get the urge to use up a few scraps of yarn and make some baby hats using my common or garden baby beanie pattern. Sometimes I make the hats for people and babies that I know, and sometimes I make them just for the hell of it. After all, what's not to like about knitting round and round a few times, making an itty bitty stalk and ta-da! a hat appears? 

I kid myself that I'm stash busting when I do this, but really? Each hat probably uses 20g of yarn, so it aint going to make much of a dent. But do I mind?

Not in the slightest.

4 of these dudes have sprung off my needles lately, although I can only find pics of 2 of them. They share a colour palette, and have consumed the last remains of some sock yarn used for other projects, like these, these and this. 

I'll be donating these to the folks at the Pregnancy & Parents Centre to help them raise funds. 

New Year, New Socks (FO)

In the midst of all the festive travelling and visiting and eating I managed to finish off a laggardly pair of socks that have been hanging about in my knitting bag for aaaages.

Nothing fancy - just plain vanilla socks, knitted top down. I had the yarn for Christmas last year, I think. I seem to have lost the ball band, so can't remember what brand it is - Regia maybe?

'Tis the season

Winter is almost here. My pockets are stuffed with hats and gloves, and the nights are getting longer and longer. Maybe it was the clocks going back that did it, that caused a switch in my brain to turn on. 

C R A F T! 

it says

M A K E!

Knit, sew, cut, stick, bake, glue - just DO something. Christmas is a-comin, dontcha know?

My fingers are itching to make and do. My head is full of ideas and plans, There are lists and notes, books, magazines, blogs and websites and flashes of inspiration here and there. In the last week I have bought card stock, circular hole punches and a new guillotine. I am lusting after fabric and yarn - but trying to restrain myself to shopping in the stash. That is the challenge: Use. The. Stash. 

I am planning:

• A zippered bag for shoe cleaning kit for DH (probably the Purl Bee one)
• A waistcoat for the bean (BBC vest by Schwin designs)
• A dress for the jelly bean (Figgy's Sunki dress)
• Zippered pouches/project bags for the jelly bean
• Some raglan tees for the bean (Recess raglan tee by See Kate Sew)
• Some self-made bias tape for my MIL
• A knitted cowl for the bean
• To finish the Phoebe cardigan for the jelly bean

Then there is a Christmas cake to make, plus peppermint bark, fudge and a whole pile of Christmas cards to make (and write). And, of course I could add a few more projects like: make decorations, finish that quilt top I have barely started and tidy up some of the other WIPS lurking in corners. But doing that would be ALL kinds of crazy, and I am definitely not crazy: I am completely in control (yeah). 

Since the crafting fever began last week 18 Christmas cards have been made, Christmas cake ingredients have been bought and the patterns for Sunki dress and BBC vest printed out. And, yesterday I bought two presents!

Stripey hat #1 (FO)

The autumnal weather has brought a few mornings cool enough for a woolly hat. I've been wearing this one which I finished a couple of weeks ago. 

It's not too thick, and squishes easily into a pocket - but, best of all it works perfectly with my purple rain jacket. I don't quite know how I ended up making a tam - there was no pattern involved, just instinct! 

The yarn was a gift, a ball of Lang Jawoll magic degrade, in a fabulous self-striping purple, pink and red. I think my mother in law gave it to me two or three years ago.

As soon as I finished the man socks the other day I cast on for the hat I promised the jelly bean. I hope to get the sizing right this time...