30 posts tagged “fo”

The first sekrit project is what many partners of knitters will have been given today, the heart from Knitty. This was loads of fun to knit, and small enough that R didn't even notice that for a couple of evenings, every time he looked in my direction, my hand 'happened to' cover what I was knitting. The yarns are Dream in Colour Smooshy in dark red, and Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Valentine - luxury sock yarns for a luxury heart :-)

Heart, front view

Heart, back view

And I'm continuing to make progress on the red cardigan, which now just hits my hips, although there's a way to go still on the body. The current plan is to knit to the minimum acceptable body length, and then switch to the sleeves, then switch back to the body to keep knitting until I run out of yarn.

Red cardigan in progress in the mirror

(My mirror is now slightly cleaner than it was last time, but I can't figure out how to get it not to smear.)

On holiday last year, Kauket got me hooked on the PS2 game We love Katamari. Long before I had ever played it, I'd spent a lot of time watching other people playing, and shouting things like "get the elephant!". A Katamari, you see, is a magic sticky ball which picks up anything you roll it over that is smaller than its current size, so you start off rolling up paperclips, and end with rolling up continents, passing through elephants (and tigers, and giant squid, and dinosaurs - I don't know why the most appealing things to pick up are all animals) on the way.

I had previously come across this crochet pattern for a Katamari with magnets, but since I didn't know how to crochet, had filed it under 'cool but impractical' and mostly forgotten about it. I'm not much of a computer gamer (can't knit at the same time), so didn't play Katamari for a while, until I introduced my parents to the game last autumn, and then bought them a copy, and a PS2 to play it on, for Christmas. Since they're even less gamers than I am, it seemed only polite to unlock all of the levels for them, so I spent the first few days of my Christmas holiday playing a lot of Katamari (in the name of giving, you understand).

Coming with surprising haste after Christmas, as it always does, was female-R's birthday, and I remembered the crocheted Katamari. One evening was enough for me to teach myself basic crochet, and another was enough to make the base ball-shape. With the arrogance of an newbie, I modified the pattern to make the ball in one piece instead of two, and then ordered some magnets from the interweb, and waited for them for days when unexpectedly heavy snow stopped all of our post.

Working out how to place the nubs, once I'd made them, was difficult. I started by sewing on the poles, and then made several attempts at placing the others, but eventually came up with a plan - I used waste yarn (it's visible in the third and fourth pictures above) to mark the ball into quarters, then sewed on the equatorial nubs halfway between the quarter marks, which made it easy to place the rest. I'm so happy with the results I'm planning to make another for myself :-)

Finished crochet Katamari

Today, The Princess Bride and the push-me-pull-you socks have been vying for my attention. I've had to pause in my knitting during particularly interesting bits of book, and pause in my reading during particularly interesting bits of sock. The socks are now finished; the book has about a third to go.

1. Joined at the ribbing, just before casting off.
2. Just after casting off, looking like what would happen if Georgia O'Keefe was a knitter.
3. Immediately post-separation. Outer sock still inside-out on the left; inner sock on the right, right-way-out as it has been all along (my first real sight of the right-side!)
4. Both socks right-way-out.
5. On my feet, with the stripes lining up! (With bad colour matching - the other photos are a better match.)

Hemstitch

This is the end of my new scarf, finished today. It's much more warp-dominant than I was expecting, so the colour changes between the two weft yarns aren't as noticeable as I'd hoped, but it's very pretty, and much smarter and more sensible than the cherry pop scarf.

The finishing is a new thing I've learnt: hemstitching. All my previous scarves have had their fringes secured with knots, which are fine, but this is less bumpy, and the weft yarn makes it a decorative edge as well as a secure one.

And R complimented it without me even having to tell him it's new :-)

...and that the viscose pashminas I'd been using as scarves were not up to the job. Then I realised that I hadn't woven anything for me (the first scarf doesn't count, because it was just a trying-it-out project, and isn't up to being a warm scarf for a number of reasons). My next thought was that the Cherry Pop yarn which had briefly been a mini-cardigan was soft and warm and looking for something to be. So on New Year's Eve, I wove this. All 212cm of it, in one afternoon. Weaving is quick.

Cherry pop scarf

Weaving is also good for my stash levels. When I was just knitting, my stash was fairly well under control. Then I started spinning, and my stash started to run away from me: I had fibre to stash now as well as yarn, I was spending less time knitting, and - even worse - the time I wasn't spending knitting, I was spending creating more yarn. Which then went into the stash, sometimes never to come out again. Weaving, on the other hand, uses up yarn. Not only that, it uses it up more quickly than knitting, and in smaller batches - well suited to the relatively small batches of handspun I've been producing.

So the Cherry Pop is now out of the stash and into my wardrobe, and very warm it is, too.

Christmas presents from my parents and from myself (!) have given me new toys heddles to use with the loom, allowing me to weave finer fabric, and do some simple patterning, so currently OTL (on the loom) is another stash-busting project - a purple scarf (also for me :-) made from three different sock yarns - the semi-solid lavender Ripples I bought at Ally Pally, the purple CTH leftover from Clessidra, and the purple-variegated Filcolana leftover from Bellatrix. I'm finding wielding two heddles to be fiddly - it's difficult to get a clear shed (space between lifted and lowered warp threads, through which to pass the weft), so I've temporarily shelved plans for patterning until I get the hang of producing plain weave this way. When starting to weave it, I wasn't entirely happy with how the colours were blending, but then I caught sight of it while glancing past, when I wasn't thinking about it, and suddenly it looks lovely :-) The warp is Ripples, each end is going to have the CTH as weft, and the middle section will be Filcolana.

Purple sock scarf

(The red flower-patterned thing in the background is my ironing board. Almost never used for ironing, but often used as a crafting table - it's wide enough for the loom to rest against, and it's height adjustable, which makes warping the loom, and using my sewing machine, much easier.)

Hat for Evey

Since I had to guess the size of this, I'm really hoping it's not too small for the intended recipient!

My first ever weaving project, in progress (made from Knitwitches sock yarn):

Beginning weaving; shuttle

Finished scarf