Lyttelton by Kate Davies
5.5 balls of Rowan Cotton Glace, Mystic
3.00mm and 3.25mm needles
Start: January 2011
Finish: March 2011
Modifications: heavier-weight yarn, larger needles, smaller size
Ravelryed: here

The yarn I used was a 5ply rather than the recommended 4ply, so I ended up making it extra small width-wise, and medium length-wise. There’s not actually an extra small listed in the pattern; I just made the smallest size, less one repeat.

As with the cowl, I was fairly staunchly anti-shrug, but there are shrugs and there are shrugs. Lyttelton’s probably a bit longer than your average shrug, so lets just say it’s more of a bolero. I had some fairly well documented teething problems with the pattern, but this was due to my ineptitude rather than the pattern. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but once again just for my sake, it helps a lot if you read the pattern.

Once in the groove, I really enjoyed knitting it. One of the things that helped the enjoyment was cabling without a cable needle. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend taking a look at Grumperina’s tutorial. I think it saves time, and is a lot less fiddly.

Lyttelton is the first Kate Davies pattern I’ve made, and I’ll be definitely making other designs from her in the future. On a slight tangent, Kate’s latest cardigan pattern, Deco, is due for release in the next couple of days. Although I don’t have any suitable yarn for it in my stash, I’m really looking forward to its release. I’ll definitely be making one for myself.

Back to Lyttelton:

I bought this cotton when I was a uni student. I remember marvelling at it when it arrived in the mail, as it was probably the most expensive yarn I had bought up until that point. It was purchased specifically for the Lace Camisole, the cover pattern from Sarah Dallas’ Vintage Knits. However, before I cast on, I searched knitting blogs to find out how other knitters found the pattern (remember the days before Ravelry? yeah, it’s a bit hazy for me too). The reviews were not altogether positive, so the yarn languished in my stash. Lyttelton is probably better suited to a wool or a wool blend, but the grey cotton goes with a few things in my wardrobe, and I was keen to use the yarn up.

As it turns out, I didn’t quite have enough yarn for Lyttelton. As the colourway had been discontinued years ago, I put out a call on Ravelry for scraps (before Ravelry, how did people find just that last little bit of yarn they needed to finish? I don’t know either). Luckily, someone very generously helped me out, and I was able to finish it. It’s nice to see yarn that’s been in my stash for so long transformed into a finished item.

I should mention that much to my great annoyance, one of the balls I used had two knots in it. Usually I can handle the occasional knot, but two knots in just over 100 metres is quite frustrating. It was particularly frustrating because I knew I was running short so every centimetre of yarn counted, and I find weaving in ends of cotton yarn particularly tedious. As mentioned before, the colour was long discontinued so there was no point complaining to Rowan about it; I could whinge to myself and whinge to Matt, but ultimately I just had to put up with it.

So far I’ve only worn Lyttelton long enough to have photos taken. Currently it sits in my wardrobe, waiting for a warm enough day to be worn. Maybe that day will be soon?

Last post I promised sunny. The weather has been anything but, so I’ve had to make some sun instead.

Gaptastic Cowl by Jen Geigley (rav link)
200g Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 12 ply, Sunflower
8.00mm needles
Start: February 2011
Finish: March 2011
Modifications: Smaller needles, cast on more stitches, knit fewer rows
Ravelryed: here

This is such a straightforward pattern, but the result is very pleasing. The pattern suggests making it 15 inches in width, but I only made it 8.25 inches. I never wanted to make it 15 inches wide as it would just be too bulky for me, but as luck would have it, I ran out of yarn just after half way. As it is, I’m really happy with the width.

For a long time I was anti-cowl, but this pattern has made my steely resolve waver somewhat. I’m still not a huge fan of the smaller cowls, but there are a few longer cowls that I might consider making in the future.

The yarn started life as a diagonal lace scarf. However, it curled badly so I ended up with a kind of draught stopper/rope thing. It seems much happier to be a big seed stitch cowl. It’s possibly a little rough for use around my neck, but I got used to it pretty quickly.

I’m starting to feel like the kiss of death for certain Bendigo Woollen Mills colourways. Sunflower and the light grey I used in my Golden Hands striped vest, were discontinued a few years ago. This run continued last week when this year’s shade card arrived — two lovely rusty red colours, Rust in Rustic and Tuscan in Classic, have also been discontinued. So, if there are any Bendigo Woollen Mills colourways that you’re not a fan of, let me know and I’ll start liking them. It’s a surefire way to get them discontinued.

As a postscript to my last post, I’ve decided to frog Pickadilly. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that they problem lies at the yoke. I’m determined to make it work, but it does mean reworking the pattern (again) to make it fit well. As DrK mentioned, top down raglans aren’t as easy as they appear on the surface, even though they’re often put forward as the ‘easy’ jumper pattern. While seeing a jumper or cardigan (slowly) appear before your eyes is very alluring, it doesn’t make it immune from fit issues. This pattern is a perfect example of that for me. Thank you everyone for you input, you all helped me take the in out of indecision.

At what point in a project do you decide to frog? Usually I have no qualms about frogging something and starting again if it’s not right. However, I’m currently in the midst of a project where I have a nagging feeling that perhaps I should completely frog, but I can’t quite bring myself to take the needles out and spend some quality time with my ball winder.

The pattern is Pickadilly. Since starting it in July last year, I’ve had issues the yoke, the waist shaping and the sleeves. It’s such a shame because I was so excited to start on this project, thinking that I’d found the perfect pattern to go with the Grignasco Tango I had in my stash.

I still think the cardigan looks great in the smokey blue tweed. After re-knitting the waist, I think I’ve got it pretty spot on for my body. However, I’m now onto the sleeves and thinking about frogging the lot and trying it again sometime in the future. A few people on Ravelry have mentioned that they have needed to modify the sleeves and I’m no exception. I’m now on my third attempt at the sleeves and even with heaps of decreases, there seems to be too much fabric around the underarms and the sleeves seem too baggy. To me that suggests that there’s issues at the yoke which means a lot of frogging, but it may also just be a side effect of knitting a raglan from the top down.

It pains me to think it might be best to cut my losses and frog the lot. It’s almost a point of pride that I’ll finish a project no matter how long it takes; Matt’s suave sweater is testament to that. But this feels different. As much as I like the idea of the cardigan, I’ve really struggled with sections of the pattern and I’m frustrated with it.

I really must apologise for the tone my posts have been taking of late. While I’m not a particularly cheery person in real life, I try not to be too negative here. Thank you for bearing with me while I vent my spleen a little, I promise you slightly sunnier posts are on their way!

It seems ridiculous that we’ve reached the third month of the year, and I’ve only just finished my first knitting project. If I’m being accurate, it was finished in late February, but that fact doesn’t seem to diminish the level of ridiculousness. Anyway, enough grizzling. Onward and upward!

Tailored waistcoat from Golden Hands Volume 1 (page 6)
About 180g Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 8ply, Graphite
About 100g Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 8ply, Flannel
4.00mm and 3.50mm needles
Start: November 2010
Finish: February 2011
Modifications: none that I can recall
Ravelryed: here

I’m mostly pleased with how the vest turned out. The curved front pieces are a really nice touch, as is the invisible cast on which was used on all the ribbing. Almost all the ribbing was knit as separate pieces and seamed, which was a necessary evil given the cast on. I did notice though that the ribbing did not hide sloppy seaming; I ended up having to redo the ribbing around the armholes because my sloppy finishing resulted in the ribbing bulging out. Once I stopped being lazy and started paying attention to what I was doing, the ribbing came out really nicely.

At the moment I’m hesitant to call the vest a success because of two pretty big things that I’m uneasy about. The first is the waist shaping: the shaping from hip to waist is pretty severe which makes that section jut out a bit. It’s possibly only noticeable only to me, but if I had my time again, I’d space the increases out a little more.

The second is the length: as I was knitting the back it looked like it was bordering on being too long, but when I tried it on, it was bordering on too short. I’ve given it a pretty severe blocking, but am not sure it’s helped much. Unfortunately I’ve run out of graphite, so it’s not possible to add in a couple more stripes. I’ll just have to learn to live with it.

Although I have a couple of reservations (none of which I might add are fatal flaws, but merely things to be wary of), it is a pretty straightforward pattern and it makes for a nice plain vest. If you are interested in this pattern and are located in Australia, it’s worth scouting around op shops as I often see copies of Golden Hands in the ones I frequent.

Now that I’ve finished something, it feels like my crafting year has finally commenced. It’s such a relief to know that I’ll have at least one finished project this year!

In the last week I’ve politely asked the pattern reading fairy to leave, downloaded more podcasts and got on with the job of knitting and finishing. Thanks to DrK for alerting me to the fairy’s existence (made it much easier to get rid of her once I knew she existed!) and everyone’s podcast suggestions.

The sudden burst of motivation has resulted in the near completion of My Golden Hands vest. It’s probably really silly to feel like this, but I find this part of a knitting project really exciting. No longer does it look like a pile of related pieces, but an actual garment. Even seeing the parts come together neatly with mattress stitch is still slightly magical. Small things…

It turns out that adding light grey stripes was a really good idea. I’ve had to unravel my swatch of dark grey Rustic for seaming, which means that I had pretty much just the right amount of dark grey for the vest.

The most difficult, or more accurately, annoying, part of the vest so far has been attaching the button band to the front pieces. Because it’s so long, I put it off as I thought it would be a tedious job. As is often the case though, once I started and got into a rhythm, it wasn’t too bad. At the moment it’s looking pretty good, bar slight lumpiness around the curved fronts. Let us hope a good wet block will sort that out.

For a long time, podcasts and I didn’t get along. Concentrating for long periods of time does not come easily to me, so I felt podcasts were out of the question. I mentioned this to a couple of knitting friends late last year, and I’m sure they found it all a bit odd. Then Matt started listening to Radiolab. He played a couple of interesting episodes to me, so I thought I’d try them again.

The last time I looked for knitting podcasts, there were only one or two about. My, how things have changed! The number of podcasts about knitting now borders on overwhelming. Based on tidbits I’d heard when my friends discussed podcasts, I started listening to the Knitmore Girls. So far I’ve only listened to a couple of their podcasts, but I’ve found them all quite enjoyable. The mother/daughter presenters have a really good rapport, and their conversational style makes for easy listening. In writing all this, I’m sure I’m probably the last person to discover the Knitmore Girls and that this is old news to knitters everywhere.

The title of this post is a blatant ripoff of the Knitmore Girls’ segments, where they discuss issues they’ve had with their knitting. To be fair, in my case ‘when duffers attack’ is probably a more accurate title as the knitting is not at fault at all.

Soon after my last post, I ripped out my first attempt at Lyttelton and decided that it was probably too big anyway. ‘This is my silver lining’ I thought, and cast on again with one less pattern repeat. By the time I got to the sleeves yesterday morning, it was clear something was amiss again.

Comparing the shrug to the swatch, it appears I’m not starting each pattern repeat correctly. This means that the cable and trellis stitch was moving diagonally with each repeat, rather than straight up. Even though it was a fairly silly, simple mistake, it was subtle enough that it took me a little while to work out what I’d done wrong. It was also subtle enough that I can’t really capture it clearly on my camera. So yet again I shall frog, and hope that the mantra of ‘third time lucky’ holds.

As punishment, I’ll hold off from casting on again until I’ve finished the bands for my stripy vest. It’s a fairly trivial task (famous last words!), but each row is 433 stitches. Of 1×1 rib. I like to think of it as the knitting equivalent of writing out lines. That’ll teach me… hopefully.

It’s been very humid here over the past week. Miserable weather is generally associated with the cold, but for me, this is properly miserable. Sticky, energy-sapping and generally uncomfortable.

Because the weather is so, I haven’t been knitting very much. However, I did decide that it was far too hot to be working on my two wool projects, so I cast on Lyttelton in grey (did you expect anything else?) Rowan Cotton Glace.

The rows are a lot more time consuming than my usual stocking stitch, but the lovely trellis stitch makes it all worth it. Having said all that, I’m just about the rip out the whole lot as I don’t like how I’ve incorporated the pattern into the increases. It seems a shame to rip out all that work but it’s much better to start again than persist with something you’re unhappy with.

While contemplating ripping out Lyttelton I reverted back to knitting with wool and started on the armbands for my stripy vest. All was going well there until discovering that I’d lost one of my knitting needles between the house and the train station yesterday morning. Chalk that up as one more reason to buy circular needles, something that I will do after writing this post. I’m also a bit concerned that there might not be enough yarn for the bands at the front, so I’ll think happy thoughts again, given how effective it was for Matt’s Dashing Jumper.

The mildly grumbly tone of this post is completely unwarranted given the terrible flooding in Queensland (and since I originally wrote this, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania on a smaller scale, and also Brazil and Sri Lanka). It’s terribly disarming watching the news and reading the paper, knowing I cannot help with sandbagging or cleaning or fostering animals… or just not be completely useless besides donating money. Having a few problems with my knitting projects pales in comparison.

Thank you everyone for your kind words and new year wishes. I hope the start of the year has been nice and relaxing (or completely frantic, depending on your preferences).

It seems difficult to start with the new year with the past still lingering in the background. As mentioned in the previous post, I’m really pleased with 2010’s last finished knitting project.

Shirt from Patons book 929, Quiet Days in Jet and Skol
5.5 skeins of Cascade Yarns 220 Heathers, Bainbridge
3.75mm and 5.00mm needles
Start: September 2010
Finish: December 2010
Modifications: Shorter body, lengthened sleeves
Ravelryed: here

This is the second jumper I’ve made for Matt and I think it was a much greater success than the first one. Most importantly, this is the first attempt at knitting it, as opposed to the one and a halfth or second or whatever version I got to on the suave sweater. It’s also a bit more fitted than the first one so I think it’ll get a bit more wear. All in all, another win for Patons knitting patterns from the 70s!

Like most of my knits these days, it was largely stocking stitch, but I don’t remember getting bored at all. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’m in slight mourning that I don’t have to work on it anymore. That’s not to say I’ll be unravelling it and starting again though…

Cascade 220 was great to knit with. The yardage/meterage was fantastic and the colour matched the pattern well. Initially I had concerns the twists would disappear in the slightly flecky yarn, but I think it looks fine. Most importantly, 6 skeins was exactly the right amount. There’s probably enough left over for a hat, but not much more.

The buttons, as usual, are from Buttonmania.

Normally the end of a project signals the beginning of another. In this case, finishing Matt’s jumper brought me back to two works in progress which is my usual number. I’d love to start something new, and have already chosen my next project, but really must finish something off first!

It’s astounding how seemingly quick projects can be held up by little, but important, details. A fine example of this is a couple of small baby items I started nearly two months ago. The knitting portion of the projects was completed very quickly, but finding the right buttons was really difficult. I visited all my usual haunts (and lamented the shrinking collection of buttons at the Elizabeth Street Clegs), but couldn’t find anything suitable. Finally the right buttons were found and the projects finished.

Pebble by Nikol Lohr
1 ball Freedom Sincere DK, grey; a skerrick of Freedom Sincere DK, yellow
4mm needles
Start: November 2010
Finish: December 2010
Modifications: slightly larger needle, small row- and stitch-count changes accounting for gauge, striped garter stitch section
Ravelryed: here

Now that it’s all done and photographed, I’m a little disappointed with how this version of Pebble turned out. Pretty much all of this is down to two decisions I made when first starting Pebble.

The first problem is the yarn choice. As my friend’s baby was due in November, I thought using a cotton yarn would be more practical as we’d ordinarily be heading into warmer weather. So far, this summer can only be described as tepid, so a wool-based yarn might have been ok. It’s been quite some time since I’ve worked with cotton, and had forgotten how unforgiving it is relative to wool. So, the fabric’s probably a bit more uneven than I’d like, and some of the weaving in of ends shows through a little bit on the front.

The second problem is my dogged insistence to have a striped yoke (if it indeed can be called a yoke). Initially I wanted to make the garter stitch section blue, yellow and grey. As it wasn’t possible to hide the edge where I carried the yarns, it looked really messy and was quite bulky. By this stage my friend’s little girl was born so the blue was ditched and the garter stitch section consisted of grey and yellow stripes. Even with one less colour and strand of yarn it still looks a bit messy and bulky.

Despite my mild disappointment with the end result, I think, and hope, it’s still wearable.

One thing I should mention about the pattern is the number of ends it produces. This wasn’t helped by using two colours in the top section, but it still seemed like quite a large number for such a small garment. The photo above shows how many ends were woven in… So don’t be fooled by the fact it requires no seaming. You will be paying for that privilege in the form of weaving in ends.

Happily, the other quick project for my friend’s baby girl turned out quite well. As it happens, there’s a free bib pattern out that roughly matches the pebble vest.

Easy Peasy Baby Bib by Michelle Acuavera
Scraps Freedom Sincere DK, grey
4mm needles
Start: November 2010
Finish: December 2010
Modifications: smaller needle, small row- and stitch-count changes accounting for gauge, striped garter stitch section, press stud closure
Ravelryed: here

These were very quick to make and a good use of leftover grey yarn. Small modifications were made to the number of stitches cast on and rows worked because I used 8ply instead of the recommended worsted weight. After a small amount of market research, I opted to use a press stud as the closure rather than a button hole. According to a friend with an almost 2 year old, a buttonhole closure might prove a bit fiddly. It looked a bit plain with the hidden press stud, so a button was added for purely decorative purposes. I did toy with making some bibs using the yellow cotton, but decided pretty quickly that it wasn’t nearly as practical a colour as the grey.

It was quite a relief to get something, no matter how small, finished. It felt like quite a while since I’d triumphantly snipped off the last woven in end of a project!

Thanks everyone for your opinions on how to proceed with the vest. As you can see, the stripes won.

Despite my rash claims that there was nowhere near enough yarn, there may have been *just* enough to make the vest in one colour. However, I’m not much of a risk taker and having non-matching sections from different dyelots simply wouldn’t do. The gentle prodding in the comments and the fact the two greys look good together may have also played a part in the final decision…

Initially I was a little concerned that the two-row stripes were a bit wide, particularly because I envisioned stripes a la Treeline Cardigan. As I’ve knit more and more, the stripes seem fine as they are. Who knows, with my current enthusiasm, this may end up being my last finished object for the year!