Last weekend, I had every intention of taking a photo of the pile of neatly blocked pieces of Matt’s jumper, but I got a bit excited and started seaming instead. As my seaming-in-progress photos look like yarn monsters rather than almost-jumpers, I shall instead write about my latest bout of dufferism (a disease for which I’m convinced there is no cure).

Before getting to the dufferism, there is a backstory. As a kid, I used to page through Mum’s sets of craft books. One set, the name of which name I cannot remember (I’d be forever grateful to anyone who could tell me what they were called) had white vinyl covers with gold writing, and the other was Golden Hands.

Both sets of craft books went to the op shop during my teens, and were almost forgotten until I saw an almost the complete set of Golden Hands books at an op shop a few years ago. My strong sense of nostalgia never fails me, so I bought the almost complete set on the spot.

Old craft books are a wonderful mix of comedy, cringe and good ideas. I decided that this vest pattern from Golden Hands Book 1 fell into the last category.

The pattern suggested that I’d need less than 200 grams of 8ply to make the vest. I was a bit sceptical of this claim, particularly given that there was no yardage accompanying the yarn requirements, but I had some stashed Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 8ply in Graphite that I thought would work with the pattern. It seems I was right to be sceptical, as I’m not even half way through the back and there is no way I will have enough yarn to finish the vest.

As far as I can tell, I have three options. I can frog it and forget about the whole episode, buy some more yarn, or frog back to the ribbing and make a striped vest using some more stashed Rustic in a different colour. The first option’s been dismissed already but I can’t decide between the two remaining options. I bought the graphite Rustic some years ago and the label’s long gone, so matching dyelots isn’t really possible. There’s generally little variance in Bendigo Woollen Mills dyelots, but it’s still a bit risky. The alternative is to use some stashed Rustic 8ply in flannel, a light grey.

Graphite and flannel go quite well together, and it would help use up more stash, but I’m not sure if I’ve got much in my wardrobe that goes with a striped vest. At the moment I’m leaning towards flannel stripes, but I’m not 100 per cent sold on the idea.

Dilemmas dilemmas. Sometimes it’s hard being a duffer.

In a recent phone conversation with my sister, the topic of belated birthday presents for one another came up. My sister mentioned that she’d better finish my present off so she could give it to me when I saw her next. My curiosity was piqued by the use of the word ‘finish’ but I tried not to read too much into it. On the weekend I saw my sister, and the present exchange occurred. The little mite had knit me a scarf!

Not just any scarf, but a lovely feather and fan scarf. I’m immensely proud of her — she did a fantastic job, and the yarn she used (Sublime, she tells me) is so soft and warm. I’m not sure if it comes up in the photo but it’s a bit crinkled because the weather’s been cold enough for me to wear it.

Something that the photo hasn’t quite picked up is the colour of the yarn. It’s a bit greener than the photo makes out. A light duck egg blue, I guess is the most apt description.

The owl buttons are a really nice touch too. The white goes well with the light duck egg blue and I’m such a sucker for owly things so she must have known she was on a winner by putting them on.

I don’t know if you read this blog, but thank you little sister, I love my new scarf to bits.

Matt’s jumper, which I mentioned briefly here, has been flying along lately. Although I wanted some respite from the stocking stitch rut I have been in, this jumper has been mostly stocking stitch. Even the cables on the front are surrounded by a heap of stocking stitch. Strangely though, it hasn’t worried me one bit.

The yarn has a lot to do with this. Being worsted weight, progress is easy to see and the colour and texture seems to work well with the pattern. Initially I thought the mottled grey/brown would make the twists either side of each cable disappear. However, now that it’s been a while since I finished the front, I think the twists look fine.

My concerns about having enough yarn seem to be ill-found (or, my positive thoughts seem to be working). I’m currently working on the second sleeve and am just about to start on the fifth of six skeins of yarn. After the sleeve, I just have to knit up the collar and front placket and it’s done. So, it’s looking like I’ll have some yarn to spare. From this experience, it’s fairly clear that positive thoughts while knitting equals increased yardage.

Given my current progress, the jumper should be done just in time for Summer. This shouldn’t be a problem given the weather down here at the moment. It’s likely to be Summer in name only if the cold and wind and rain keeps up.

Every now and again, I receive emails from someone looking for a particular recipe from my set of Women’s Weekly recipe cards. Often they’re looking for recipes that they, or someone in their family, used to make when the cards first came out. While the cards are long gone, I find it interesting that the memory of the recipe, or more, the resulting dish, endures.

Recently, I received an email asking if I had a recipe for peanut slice. It was one of those recipes what wasn’t in the photo of the card — a bonus recipe, as Pip calls it. When I went searching for the recipe, I imagined something chocolatey and biscuity. My perception was completely wrong, as it was a concoction of flavours I’d never imagined before — beer nuts (peanuts with their red skins on), coconut, raspberry jam and cornflakes! I was skeptical, but it had me so intrigued that I had to make it.

You know, it wasn’t half bad! It certainly was a strange combination of flavours, but it was certainly quite edible. Unfortunately I don’t think it quite worked out for me, as it was quite crumbly. As the recipe called for whole peanuts, the slice would just fall apart as I tried to cut through the soft topping.

I’m quite sure this is because of eggs. I don’t use eggs in cooking, and the topping required stiffly beaten egg whites, something I’ve not been able to find a good substitute for. I suspect the egg whites acted like a glue to make the topping firm and easy to cut through. It was a little disappointing that it didn’t work for me and for that reason, I’m hesitant to post the recipe — let me know if you’re interested and I may post it at a later date. Despite the slight disappointment, it was a fun experiment!

A little while ago, I decided to knit a beanie as a gift for a friend. I had a hat’s worth of yarn in stash in a colour that suits her very well, so it seemed that fate had intervened and the project was obviously meant to be.

Initially I cast on for Porom. The twists looked a bit puffy, but mostly it looked good. That is, until I finished it and blocked it. What was once a nicely-sized slouchy beanie had turned into a perfectly good shopping bag, without handles.

Slightly disillusioned but as stubborn as ever, I ripped it back and reused the yarn in an Icing Swirl Hat. It soon became apparent that it was far too small. So again I ripped the hat back, and soaked the kinks out of yarn. The yarn was starting to lose its structural integrity by this stage, and my disillusionment was starting to grow. As was my stubbornness, for that matter.

I don’t have photographic evidence of either of those mishaps, which is quite fortunate as it means I’ll most likely remember that yarn as this beanie:

Anna Karenina by Veruschka Babuschka
Not very much Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 8ply, Cream
2.75mm and 3.25mm needles
Start: August 2010
Finish: August 2010
Modifications: different yarn
Ravelryed: here

The pattern hadn’t been long published when I knit this beanie up. It was a nice easy knit, with just enough variation to make it interesting. Having two beanie failures ended up being a blessing in disguise — of the three patterns, I think this one turned out the best and I’m really pleased with it.

This isn’t the first time I’ve used Luxury, but I must admit I’m a bit frustrated with it. While it’s a lovely soft yarn and comes in quite a few nice colours, it drops quite a lot after its first watch (see Porom). Sadly, I don’t think this is an uncommon problem. I had been planning to make a few bigger things using Luxury 4ply, but I am now a bit Luxury-shy.

Who would have thought all of this was down to not swatching? I tend to swatch for larger garments, but take for granted that for something relatively small, like a hat, would be ok without a test swatch. I have learnt my lesson.

It was lovely to read everyone’s comments about my Derwents, it’s nice to know that their popularity wasn’t confined to just my primary and high schools.

The Derwents were used to plan out my latest graphic design assignment: an A3 poster based on a song lyric of my choosing. I’m fairly inept at both drawing and using image editors so I had to be a bit creative in how I produced the poster. Luckily, I recently came across a lovely cross stitch blog, and had been thinking about doing some cross stitch. So, it was decided that cross stitch would be a good way to avoid drawing and image editing software.

Armed with grid paper, coloured pencils and youthful enthusiasm, I put together a pattern based on a cross stitch border found on etsy, vintage transfers found on Flickr and a particularly uplifting lyric from Morrissey. A week and a half later and with slightly less youthful enthusiasm, I had cross stitched this:

To save my sanity somewhat, the cross stitch is around A4 size, half the required size. Through the magic of scanners, I then made it A3. Although some of the texture is lost through scanning, it works surprisingly well as a paper poster. I won’t bother posting the scanned version of it, as it more or less looks the same as the photo.

For those playing at home, the lyric is from How Soon Is Now? by The Smiths. My Dad seemed a bit dismayed when he saw the cross stitch today; I’m not sure he understood why I went to all the effort of cross stitching something so depressing. To me, that’s the point of it — dainty is often associated with pretty or positive things, when it doesn’t necessarily need to be that way.

Prior to this assignment, I had only attempted cross stitch once when I was ten. My auntie helped me to make a couple of book marks for my parents which I think worked out ok, if not a little wonky. There’s still a fair bit of wonk to this piece, but I don’t think it would be as good if it was perfect.

Irrespective of the mark I get for the assignment, I’m really proud of this work. It’s not often I look at things I’ve made with a sense of pride. I’m often happy or satisfied with a knitting project or other non-crafty pieces of work, but pride is just that step further. The trick will now be to make sure I keep doing things that I feel proud about.

I’m currently doing a short course in graphic design, and my most recent assignment has allowed me to dust off my colouring pencils.

They were my most treasured item for quite some time during the 90s. Back in primary school, Derwents were the king of colouring pencils, so I was very excited to receive a set of 72 studio Derwents for Christmas one year.

These pencils were extremely well loved, and as a result the tin they came in and the plastic trays are a bit haggard. However, they were all in order — even now I have a compulsion to set them all in numerical order, with the writing facing the top.

It was funny to see which colours were my favourites back then. Shades of purple, teal, red and black were sharpened down to stubs, whereas most of the colours I prefer these days, green and brown, have barely been used.

As I’ve been using my coloured pencils over the last week, I’ve been surprised by the memories it’s conjured up. You never know when nostalgia will strike!

A more organised blogger might have a few blog post ideas squirrelled away for times where there’s not much to blog about. Sadly, I’m a fairly disorganised blogger, so I’ve let the blog go fallow again. I have been busy knitting while I’ve been away though.

Grandfather Vest by Veronik Avery
1.25 balls Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 8ply, Anthracite
4.50mm needles
Start: August 2010
Finish: September 2010
Modifications: different yarn, and that’s it!
Ravelryed: here

As soon as I saw this vest, I knew I had to buy the book that it’s from, Knitting 24/7. It’s a book that’s full of good staples like scarves, jumpers, shawls and socks, so although I primarily bought it for the vest pattern, there are enough interesting patterns to make it a good buy (especially if purchased via the wonderful Booko).

The vest pattern is very straightforward as it’s knit in the round up to the armholes. I think that’s the reason why its completion snuck up on me — it’s very easy to get into a trance-like state knitting stocking stitch in the round. Before you know it you’re staring at a pretty much completed vest that just needs buttons sewn on to be done and dusted.

I was originally planning to use a pair of lovely green glass buttons that I received for my birthday last year. However, while in my trance-like state, I decided that the grey/brown fabric and the green weren’t meant to be together. This left me in a slight state of indecision as I hadn’t considered any other yarn/button pairing, but then these grey buttons jumped out at me as I was sifting through my button collection:

The yarn used was probably the oldest yarn I had stashed away, so it fit in nicely with the ‘first in, first out’ stash theory. It was purchased in either 2004 and 2005, and was leftover from a hat and scarf I knit for a friend. While it’s a good policy to make sure there’s more than enough yarn to cover the project you’re working on, my aversion to running out of yarn resulted in my having around 400 grams extra, which is a tad excessive. Having said that, these leftovers have given me a very wearable item of clothing, so my whinging is minimal.

The colourway, Anthracite, is a bit of a strange one. Under some light it looks quite grey, and in others, very brown. I think it’s a colour that was produced for only one or two seasons which is understandable — it was very hard to get a good idea of what the colour was like from just the shade card.

I’m a little disappointed with the fabric I produced with this yarn, as it’s a bit uneven in places even after blocking. I’ve used Classic 8ply before and gotten very neat results so I’m at at bit of a loss to explain why it’s not so good this time round. Hopefully it’ll even up as I wash and wear it.

It seems my trance-like state was very productive, for as I was creating round after round of stocking stitch, I decided to make the cabled jumper for Matt rather than the striped raglan. As much as stocking stitch makes for good commute projects, I found myself wishing for something a bit different. Something with cables should scratch that itch, even if it flies in the face of ‘first in, first out’.

Cakes are the bane of my baking existence. My attempt to make a sponge cake in Year 7 Home Economics resulted in a spongey pancake, despite following the recipe to the letter. And a failed attempt to bake my birthday cake a few years ago ended with a teary phone call to my parents, telling them not to visit (of course they still visited). In the case of the birthday cake I was admittedly also feeling stressed about a looming uni assignment deadline at the time, but it was the cake that pushed me over the edge of sanity and into the embarrassing dramatic display void.

Clearly, I bear the psychological scars of cake failure, so It was with some trepidation that I tried this cake recipe. I (and Matt, for that matter) am glad to report it was a complete success!

Ginger Cake (from Women’s Weekly Recipe Cards, circa 1970’s)

Cake:
185g butter
1 cup treacle
2 cups brown sugar, lightly packed
4 cups plain flour
0.5 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
2.5 tablespoons ground ginger (the recipe calls for 1.5 tablespoons, but I like ginger a lot)
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
1 egg

1.25 cups milk, warmed slightly

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line two deep 20cm tins

Place butter, treacle and brown sugar into saucepan, stir over low heat until sugar dissolves and leave to cool.

Sift flour, salt, baking powder, ginger and soda into large bowl, add cooled sugar mixture, lightly beaten egg and warmed milk. Mix well.

Pour mixture into tins, and bake for 55 to 60 mins. Cool slightly before turning out onto cake cooler. Ice when completely cool

Icing:

90g butter
3 cups icing sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons lemon juice (I measured the first tablespoon, then added to taste)

Cream butter until soft, then gradually add icing sugar. Add lemon juice to taste, and until it’s soft and light.

It’s a pretty dense cake, but the light and fluffy icing offsets this well. Most importantly, it’s a delicious cake. The only drawback is that the recipe yields two cakes, and it’s hard to halve the recipe on account of the one egg. I can’t say I’ve conquered my fear of baking cakes, but this recipe has certainly put me on the road to recovery.

It seems that a layer of dust has started to settle on this blog. It’s been a bit crazy round here; a good and exciting kind of crazy, but irrespective of whether it’s good or bad, crazy can be quite time consuming.

In dealing with the craziness, knitting is a luxury that has only possible on the work commute. As a result, Pickadilly’s progress has been a little slower that I’d like. That said, I’m just about to start the increases for the second half of the waist shaping. Pickadilly is the second top down garment I’ve made (Liesl being the first), and the novelty of being to try the garment on as I go hasn’t worn off one bit. I really need to dust off my copy of Knitting From The Top and make top downs part of my regular knitting diet.

While actual knitting has stalled, yarn acquisition is in full flight. Machen|Machen recently made a lovely jumper using Cascade 220 Heathers in Bainbridge. I’d been wanting to try that yarn for a while, so I bought some.

Never fear, it was a well considered purchase which involved the usual amount of umming and ahhing. In the end, it was decided that the colour would match this pattern rather well:

I picked up this pattern book, Patons Jet/Skol Book 929, at an op shop a couple of years ago. Mostly it was for the pattern above, but I can’t deny the kitschy attraction to the fly fishing theme that runs through it.

Like with a lot of older patterns, a bit of gauge-wrangling might be required. However, as long as I’m careful, I won’t end up knitting this jumper two and a half times like I did the last time I knit Matt a jumper using a pattern from the ’70s. I might be a tad optimistic in only buying six skeins of yarn, but he’s a skinny lad and I’ll think positive happy thoughts as I knit it.

I’d really like to start making this jumper soon, but I feel bad for the yarn I bought to make a different jumper for Matt last year (I often feel bad for inanimate objects, it’s a failing of mine). Is it completely ridiculous that I’m thinking about instituting a ‘first in, first out’ regime for my yarn? As much as it’d bring a bit more order into my chaotic knitting life, I can’t help but think that it is.