skein

February knitting and March knitting goals

I didn't quite manage all of the knitting goals, but I managed to do quite a bit for such a short month. 

1) finish current mittens. Done! 

2) pick up the double knit bubbles scarf again. Done! I've worked on it a bit since this photo.

 

3) do more crochet. The Groovyghan is waiting! Done!  I wanted to crochet four of the five strips, and I managed it. No small feat for me!

 

4) ravelry kal #2.  Recluse slippers from the project a month KAL.Done!

 5) socks.  Not done!  I spent far too long dithering about my mitts.  One sock done, the other started. 

6) start a mitten ornament.  Done!

7) fingerless mitts.  Done!  But no photo yet. I finally went back to Plan A and knitted the Straightforward Mitts, plain with a bit of twisted ribbing. Just need mr C to take a photo. (These have to be worn to show the pattern!)

Overall very pleased.  

February stash in 220yards

February stash out 517 yards

February stash -297 yards

2013 stash  +2158 yards

I've done stacks of knitting/crocheting in February, but only count FOs in the stash out total. One month I'll seem to knit or crochet an enormous amount when I finish the blanket!

Now for March.

1) Continue with the CAL Groovyghan. I have one more strip, plus borders and a million ends.  Not sure if I can say FINISH it but, oh well, let's say FINISH IT!

2) Continue with the double knit Bubbles scarf,. I have 120 rows or so plus the 3" end to do. Shall I say FINISH.  In for a penny ... so I'll say FINISH IT!

3) Finish the socks I'm currently knitting in Trekking XXL.  One sock to go.

4) Join another ravelry kal #3 of my Sigma13. I haven't yet made up my mind. There are mystery (and quick) kals, mitts kals.  I'm stalking the ravelry boards.

5) knit another five mittens for my Smitten ornament

6) Knit either a hat.cowl, or baby/child. My Sigma13 goals included 6 baby/child, 7 cowls and 9 hats and I've not started anything!

7) More  mitts. Still in the system!

I'm aware that I haven't knitted an adult sized garment since June last year, but I don't have any desire to knit any. There's a sleeveless top I like, in Kauni, but I don't seem able to choose colours!  I love the mustard and cream it's kntited in, but worry that I have nothing to match!  MAYBE, if I get around to doing the huge finishing jobs this month, I might find time to sit down and plan a garment over Easter.  We'll see!

 

Recluse Slippers

Blink and you miss this, it's such a fast knit!

Pattern: Recluse

Start/finish:23-25th February

Yarn: Jaeger Matchmaker Aran, in a coral pink, 2 balls plus antoher 24 stitches worth!

Needles: 5mm.  I used my Chiagoo interchangeable needles - the wooden ones with Twist cables, and I'm pleased to say that they were great, didn't come loose as the Hiya Hiya interchangeables do.

My tension was a bit off though, so these are snug!  Such an easy pattern. You work in the round until you reach the top of the gusset, then you work back and forth and join with a 3 needle cast off.  Would make very quick gifts.  

I'm also pleased that this uses some stash. Might only be a few balls but it's going in the right direction!  It's also part of a KAL on the Project-a-Month group on ravelry.  

 

 

 

I've started my Christmas Mitten Ornament

Another February goal completed - starting this Christmas ornament.

The pattern is a free one on the KnitPicks website called Smitten - A Holiday Ornament.  (I keep wanting to type Glitten for some reason).

Knitted in a worsted weight yarn, I'm using Cascade 220 in red and green, The pattern consists of 24 little mittens and I'm knitting the I-cords loops, intending to knit or crochet something to hang them on to.  I'm thinking these will make cute Chirstmas decorations.  We don't really do trees or the usual decorations, but we do have a few ornaments which come out each December,  I like the idea of some sort of knitted ornament, not too sparkly! 

So, two mittens done.  The first one, the red one, was knitted on a size larger needle, but I've gone down a size for the green one. I also didn't trust the pattern for the thumb length and added another row on the red mitten.  I prefer the shorter green thumb! 

They're really cute!  Will be even cuter when I've knitted all 24.  I must up the ante if I want these finished by the end of November, will have to knit 3 per month!

Bubbles Scarf progress

I'm pretty certain that this has been neglected since 2012!  I'm sure January was all about mittens, and February weekends (when I would prefer to work on this double knitted scarf) has been all about crochet.

My February plan was to work up to the 7th pattern (well, it's not really a pattern as such, you can put the bubbles where and when you want, three sizes, but there is a diagram if you need 'help', which I do!).  I picked it up on Sunday and was a little disappointed to see that I'd only knitted 4.5 patterns, and had a whole 2.5 to go if I wanted to get this specific February goal completed.

A whole day's knitting and I'm up to 5.5 repeats.  Looks like it takes me that long to knit 40 rows.

I'd put this down because my two colours started to merge and it was impossible for some of the knitting, to discern the two colours in the evening, under artificial light.  I could have frogged, but it's such a pain and it would be difficult to replicate the subtle, long colour changes. 

So we have invisible bubbles. I took a few quick photos this morning before work, outside, but it was quite gloomy and I don't think these show up the bubbles any better than if I'd taken the photos in the evening!

Pale side, going from light cream to a pale green,

Brighter side, going from a blue-green to orange-red.  

I love the contrast on the tail end.  

What you can't see much is that I'm stuffing the bubbles!  That's quite difficult to do too, as I tend tooverstuff them!  For the very tiny bubbles I'm only using a little bit of stuffing, but I also have to cross the yarns at the bottom and top, as the stuffing was migrating (the circle bottom and top is not closed unless you twist the yarn, not too important on the bigger circles but necessary on the small ones).

 I'm planning on going away this weekend, if they sort out these bloody overhead cables on the line - this same problem happened about 16 months ago, just past St. Neots, and it was a nightmare trying to get back to London, took them most of the following week to sort out.  I really don't understand the workings of trains, but Mr C and I were wondering last night if all lines have these overhead cables, and if so, why don't they go down like this. I must investigate!

Anyway back to this weekend. If I go home I'll be taking plain knitting, not this scarf. I tend to be picking up and putting down my knitting, and if the siblings and family visist it's a bit too busy to concentrate, I need mindless knitting.  I still have some socks and slippers to knit, in a weekend and four evenings.  Slippers are cast on and easy garter stitch, good for chatting and on big needles too.  I should be able to finish at least one other project!

Groovyghan progress #CAL13

More weekend crochet, though this time I maaaged to crochet a whole strip in one day, leaving Sunday for banal things suchs as cleaning, cooking, baking and knitting.  :)

First things first, I had to frog my first strip (crocheted with a smaller hook). This took all morning!  I had, unfortunately, darned in the ends ...

But I was soon crocheting.  I like to do do all the first rounds, then all of the second rounds and so on.  

So we have seven progress pics.  I'm afraid most were taken indoors with my lamp giving light. 

And a quick outdoors photo once I had joined the squares (no ends sewn in yet..)

Bright, bright, bright.   I'm just mixing randomly.  There's one colour which came in the pack which I've not used much as I don't think it goes well - an olive green.  I must try and get some use out of it on the stripe bit.  

I'm probably going away next weekend (so Mr C can have his man-weekend - beer, wine, comedy tv, sixties and sevenites music shows, guitar playing, singing out loud, chicken drumsticks, falling asleep on the sofa and waking up at 3am without me nagging him to come to bed) so no crochet but I've done the four strips I wanted to in February. I need a while to figure out that last strip anyway, see if I can sew it onto the others!

 

Knitting catch up

With crochet sucking up my weekends my knitting time has dwindled to workday evenings.  That's a few hours each evening.   Unfortaunaltely when i get in I tend to crash, eat dinner, check out ravelry and twitter and news, and sometimes don't do much knitting at all. 

The past few weeks have been quite bad for knitting production.  I have just one mitten ornament to show!

One evening knitting a mitten orna
ment 

This is one of 24 I'll be knitting. I didn't quite trust the pattern and added a few extra rows of thumb, I hsould have followed the pattern, it looks a bit long in proportion to the hand!

The pattern is a free Knitpicks pattern. (That's the ravelry link). I've been wanting to knit this for a while. 

The other nine evenings of knitting time were spent tryng to knit fingerless mitts.  Unsuccessfully.  It went like this: 

First pattern, Straighforward Mitts: lnit, frog, knit, frog.  Silly mistakes, trying to knit witout any markers!

Second pattern, Basketry Mitts: knit frog. The pattern didn't show up well iwth my yarn choice.

Third pattern, Chivalry Mitts:knit frog, knit frog. I tried this with some black background yarn, didn't like it, found some nicer blue-green yarn but thought the hearts could do with a more solid colour yarn.

So, back to the drawing board.  I like all three patterns, so they will be knitted,  In fact I may well go back ot pattern #1 and take my time, use stitch markers.  

My monthly knitting goals are not going well!  IN the next two weeks I need to knit a fourth strip of my Groovyghan, a pair of mitts, a pair of socks, a pair of slippers and a few repeats of my double knit Bubbles scarf!  Better get a move on!

Groovyghan progress #CAL13

My one day a week rule for this project morphed into the whole weekend.   Slow crocheter and I kept putting it down to do toher things.  But I was determined to finish another stripe.

 

This one's the long stripe, with a shell stitch pattern.  I dithered about the design. I saw a few other types of wave pattern which looked great. In the end I went for this though. Mind you, halfway through I thought I might frog it and redo it in simple treble!  Mr C thought it looked good,  so I carried on (why I should do this, when I know he thinks ANY bright colours in ANY combination look good is beyond me). 

I even went outside shortly after sunrise (sounds good, though that means 7.30am) to try to get some outdoor shots before I left for work.  The snow mean I didn't hang around!

I even managed to sew the third strip to the first two!

And a close up.

I'm thinking that next weekend might be granny squares, I'm worried about the short striped stirp - can I manage to sew the sides to the tops of the squares? I have no idea of row/stitch ratio in crochet!

34th & 8th mittens

Pattern: 34th & 8th

Started: 16th January 

Finished: 2nd February

Needles: 2mm

Yarn: Wollmeise merino, blue and natural

I missed NaKniMitMo by two days!  My own fault, spent far too long on crochet, and kept making the most idiotic mistakes, having to pick up dropped stitches, or stitches knitted together.  On the back, I might add, the very simplest pattern!  I blame knitting on these in the late evening, when I was too tired to actually knit.  They're for me so I don't mind!

I'm having a little break from mittens now, will concentrate on the crochet and my double knit bubbles scarf over the weekend. I have started a few new nrojects though, just little ones. Some mitten decorations (!) and some fingerless gloves.  Need to get a bit more done on these befoer they are blogworthy (i.e. in case they are tipped!)

More Groovyghan progress #CAL13

It's rather addictive, this crochet!

For the seven flower squares I need three colours per square.  First round is the centre, then another colour for the flower, and finally the background colour, which squares the flower.  As I have 18 x 100g balls I can't do separate colours for the whole strip, so there's some duplication on that final round with the centre of the flowers. 

I lay all the balls out on the floor next to my chair (and trip over them when I get up!) and slecect seven centres. Then I do seven flowers, putting the balls back in the bag as I use them,  I can't say I don't subconciously pair up colours - I do!  I like red and lavender, red and yellow,  blue/green and orange. It's very difficult to be random!

Saturday I only had to do five flowers, two were done last weekend.  

I had a few hiccups doing the final rounds.  My first square was a bit bigger than the dot sqares.  I think it was a combination of working from the flower and those granny rounds.  I had to frog and redo, using the same hook but trying to be a bit more in control of the yarn!  Much better.  Another hiccup was when I realised my flower had seven, not eight petals.  I didn't notice until fhe very final round!  I need to count my treble clusters! 

Done, and sewn up. I like this sewn method, it's a lot like mattress stitch but you go from back to front on each stitch.  

No ends darned in yet, I learnt my lesson from my first attempt on a smaller hook. I've yet to frog that strip for recycling the yarn!

And a close up

I now have to think about the other strips.  There's a granny squares stirp, which won't be problem, but I'm not sure about the other two. One is just short horizontal rows of different colours - I'm not sure that I can sew it to these strips, side to top!  And if I can, I might do a ripple strip instead of just straight rows.  The other one is crocheted vertically, suing the stitches on the side of one of these strips.  That will be a lot easier, but I need to do a practise on the 'shell stitch' used, see if a) I can do it and b) if I prefer it to treble. I do like plain treble or half treble! 

Still really enjoying it though. I like that each bit is different, not enough time to get jaded about the project. 

 

 

Crochet CAL13

I'm working on Groovyghan on a weekend day.  Really enjoying it.  These photos are from last weekend.  

Initially I started crocheting with a 3.50mm hook.  Sounds small for a dk yarn, but this yarn is acrylic and I always find (in knitting, at least) that I need to go right down in needle/hook size, no memory in acrylic.  After crocheting the whole seven dot squares plus a flower and a granny square I had a rethink on the hook size.  My squares are a bit too small. So I've done two more squares, one with a 4mm and one with a 4.5mm hook. Both are bigger and there wasn't that much difference in the drape of the squares.  My deciding factor boiled down to which hook I prefereed!  A basic grey 4mm or a Clover 4.5mm.  The 4.5mm needle won.

So now we have seven MORE dot squares. Totally fed up with these now.  And a few flower squares.

(taken in the evening so they have a bit of an oragne glow!)

 

Then I had a practise at joining.  With the previous, smaller squares I used a crochet hook, ss and joined them with rs together, going through the far sicde loop only (so that there was a tidy line of half stitch framing each square.  Looks tidy but takes me time, and would look better with wool, where there's some memory in the yarn.  

This time I've gone for a sewn join.  You work with the squares side by side, working through corresponding side stitches, always going from back to front through both strands. 

I've joined that first strip of dots. Quite painless!