Rainbows

So I’ve been doing lots of knitting in July. In my last stash update I reported the purchase of three balls of West Yorkshire Spinners Aire Valley DK yarn in the rum paradise colourway.

This was intended to be knitted up into two Conscious jumpers for LO and her cousin, who is three months older. Three balls should be just about enough for two jumpers in 2-3 year size.

Here we are in progress. The first jumper I was really careful about matching stripes on the sleeves. The yarn is nice to knit with and the stripes are a really sensible size – would look lovely as a pair of socks!
Ta da, here is the finished jumper for my niece.

I weighed the yarn leftover and realised that I had used more than 1.5 balls of the Aire Valley DK already, so decided to use some turquoise oddments someone had given me to finish the sleeves on the second jumper. This is LO’s favourite colour so I thought she’d like it like that. I used up every scrap of the Aire Valley, hence the non-matching sleeves on this one.

 Then, disaster. LO and I went to visit her cousins, and I discovered that the smallest one can’t wear wool, so LO now has two rainbow jumpers!

And I now have four balls of Louisa Harding Noema yarn (a cotton/acrylic mix) to make a non-wool Conscious. It’s a good thing I enjoy knitting this pattern…

Anyone had a similar change of plan with their knitting?! 

Stash update

It’s been a while since I updated my stash/yarn diet tally on here. I keep a spreadsheet to track it as I go.

My stash totals for February, March and April were quite respectable. Well, I didn’t buy any yarn, and in February knitted up 300 metres and in March 182.9 metres, giving a total used up by then of 759.4 metres! April and May I didn’t finish any projects, so haven’t got any used up totals from then.

May and June it all went a bit off the rails though. I bought three balls of West Yorkshire Spinners Aire Valley DK cocktail collection in colourway Rum Paradise to make jumpers for LO and her cousin.

Then I discovered that our local yarn shop/haberdashery was closing down, so decided to go along and see if I could get enough yarn for the sample jumper I’d admired in there, as everything was 20%off.

That resulted in seven balls of Stylecraft Alpaca Tweed Chunky coming home with me to make the jumper I’d been eyeing up. Plus a couple of balls of Head over Heels sock yarn to make a shawl with (a simple shawl, that should be compatible with TV knitting).

Of course, this didn’t do much for my stash totals. But then a knitting group friend posted a link to City Knits who were offering a special edition of WYS Signature 4ply to raise money for Marie Curie. And they had suggested coordinating solids to go with it… One of my friends is having cancer treatment at the moment so…

 

Yes, I bought three balls, in the Marie Curie colourway, plus blueberry bonbon and butterscotch. I’m intending these to be knitted up into cardigans for LO and her cousin for Christmas.

That means that my stash in total suddenly became 2941 metres for June (OOPS), although someone then got in touch on Ravelry wanting to buy some yarn I had in my stash from a John Lewis sale, so that meant 1800 metres headed out again, which has balanced it up a little bit. I’m still hoping to have used up more by the end of the year than has come in.

Still, I do have plans for all of it, and am excited at the prospect of these projects, so that’s the main thing. Not like my early days of knitting when I bought more random stuff just because I liked it…

 

Socks finished!

Finished the Broadripple socks in Cascade Fixation. They have turned out well and are comfy to wear. I’m still not sure what I think about the yarn but it’ll be nice to have a pair of knitted cotton socks when the weather gets warmer. 

It’s DK weight yarn so they are quite thick to wear but fit inside my trainers ok. I hope the thickness won’t make my feet hot though! That used up almost an entire two balls of Fixation from my stash. 

So, it was time to cast on something other than socks. I’d had Hey Teach in m queue since it was published on Knitty and Pakucho Organic Cotton yarn in my stash since I ordered it from Elann a very long time ago when interest rates made North American yarn very bargainous. Must have been pre-recession in 2008?! I think it must have been in my stash for at least eleven years as I definitely bought it before relocating south. 

LO thought that winding up ten skeins into balls was very exciting and insisted on helping. Consequentially it took ages. 
What have you knitted from your stash that’s been there a while?! 

More socks

Finished the Tootsie Rolls socks and got them to match as well! They are comfy to wear although I’m glad that I didn’t do the rolls on the sole. I have called them the Very Hungry Caterpillar socks as they bear a strong resemblance to one of LO’s favourite books. 

This is my latest pair of socks- Broadripple. I made a pair several years ago but wanted to use the Cascade Fixation I had in my stash which the pattern actually calls for.

Fixation is weird to knit with. It’s cotton with a small amount of elastane in for stretch so you have to be careful not to pull on it too tightly when knitting with it, otherwise the finished knitting will be distorted and not stretchy. As you can see in the picture above, the slightly rippled look to the knitting is where I’ve pulled a bit too hard! 

Beginning to feel like I want to knit something other than socks…

Not socks

This is Hey Teach in progress, I love the way the pattern has knitted up. The yarn, Pakucho Organic Cotton, is lovely to knit with and doesn’t feel harsh on the hands as some cottons can.

I knitted the front and back, then joined the two with three needle bind offs at the shoulders.

And blocking. I washed some of the yarn at the same time as it is designed to shrink slightly and I didn’t want to sew it up, then find the seams shrank! I used a sleeve modification pattern I found on Ravelry to make longer sleeves, as I thought I was unlikely to use a short-sleeved cardigan, but that three quarter length sleeves were more useful. I could have worked the mods out for myself, but just don’t have time at the moment – my knitting time consists of collapsing in an exhausted heap in front of the TV at about 9pm on most evenings!

So, the sleeve mod is where it went wrong. The sleeves have ended up too tight to be confortable. I can get it on, but it isn’t practical to wear over anything but a tight-fitting t shirt, and I’m not sure how comfortable it would be to wear for long. Disappointing after this much work, so I have put it one side for the time being and think I will reknit the sleeves in the next size up once I rediscover some umph.

Tell me about your knitting disaster and cheer me up!

 

Some knitting content

So, what have I been knitting? Well, I started a scrap jumper for LO to use up a few DK oddments where I only had a ball or two of yarn. The pattern is a free one, Scrap sweater for the small ones. The 2 year size came up small though, only slightly bigger than her current chest measurement so I got this far:

And then decided to frog and knit the next size up. This is the, ahem, four year old size, but I think it will be about right for her next winter. The yarn I’m using up is an acrylic – Rico Design Baby Classic DK, which I have in three different, coordinating colourways. With just the ends to sew in and the neckline to finish, it looks like I’ll use up all the purple and variegated yarn, but still have some of the mauve left over. Despite the sizing problem (which might be me – I never checked gauge!), I’d use this pattern again – it’s a nice, basic jumper pattern which you can use in different ways to use up scraps. The suggested pattern includes a fair isle chart, but I just went with stripes.

My other knitting at the moment includes these socks. The pattern is called Tootsie Rolls, and I chose it as I wanted to use some self-striping sock yarn but wanted a more interesting pattern that would work with the stripes. After a bit of playing around (the first go ended up with the plain colours regressed behind the grey/white bits) it worked out like this:

I call them the Very Hungry Caterpillar Socks, as they rather remind me of the caterpillar’s cocoon.

What have you been knitting in January?