Not sure what exactly it was about my green cardi, but whenever I did anything with it, it seemed to suck the common sense right out of me.

First it was not getting the fronts even, then it was forgetting that I could take passable flash photos using the external flash bought from a recent school fete for the princely sum of five dollars.

So, the Tyrolean, or Duffer, Cardigan is now finished.

Tyrolean Cardigan from Vintage Knits by Sarah Dallas
4.25 balls of Panda Pure Wool, dark green
3.25 and 4.00 mm needles
Start: August 2008
Finish: June 2009
Ravelryed here

Overall, I’m quite happy with it. The bobbles look good, it’s warm (very important now it’s getting proper cold here), and the buttons match well. I suspect that I may have mentioned it in a previous post, but the yarn and buttons were stash, and I already had the book. That in itself pleases me as much as the finished product!

The only modification made to the pattern was to lengthen it slightly to accommodate my longish body. The cardigan body is a perhaps a bit boxy for my body, but that’s easily solved by only using the buttons around the waist. If I were to do it over again, waist shaping a la the non-cropped, non-tryst vest might be a better option for me. That said, I’m sure this is something I’ll be wearing a lot.

A big thank you to everyone who helped in deciding what my next project will be. If you’ll excuse the pun, Your Victory Jumper was the victor, narrowly defeating the zig zag lace top and Bottoms Up. I started on the ribbing last night, and seeing the magenta poke through between the grey stitches makes me want to take back what I said about the garishness of the needles. Magenta needles, I hope you’ll forgive me.

There are a heap of things I wanted to post today. However, I’ve been feeling quite tired and yuck, so didn’t get round to taking any photos. To distract you all from not having a proper post with visual aids, here’s a short list of things that have caught my eye recently:

Roddy and Ginger screen print. Can’t really go wrong with a print that contains olive green and owls.
Silver button ring by Corky Saint Clair and Red Cloud Designs. I don’t know if this was a one off or not, but by Jove I hope I can get one.

Old Swingline staplers. Vintage stationery supplies has always had an appeal, but I think watching Mad Men has whet my appetite for it a bit more.
Moon globes. I’d like to get my hands on one of these on day, but this one’s a wee bit outside my price range. Maybe one day the op shop gods will smile upon me.
Twinings tea tin planters made by Allison from The Lark. Really clever idea, and they look awesome.

A knitting lull has settled here in the wake of finishing Dad’s vest. There are a few projects I’m interested in making, but for some reason there is nary a set of 2.75mm circular or straight needles in the house, the very size that I need for each of these projects. Even more disturbing is that it seems to be a size that’s not available in Addi Turbos (I’d love to be corrected on this, as I’m quite the Addi Turbo fan). Drastic times mean drastic action.

Drastic of course being magenta anodised aluminium knitting needles. I do adore anodised aluminium, particularly in a lamp context, but the magenta is GAUDY! However, besides that nitpicky niggle, I’m happy there is now a pair of 2.75mm needles in my possession.

As I cannot decide what to knit next with my flashy magenta needles, I thought I’d turn it over to you guys. Here are the yarn nominees, along with links to the patterns intended for each yarn:

Bottoms Up (rav link only) by Alice Bell, in Pewter Euroflax Sport,

Blue Bird Jumper (the last photo in this post) from A Stitch In Time, in the sadly long discontinued Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 5ply, green tweed,

Your Victory Jumper by Home Notes, using grey, blue and cream Grignasco Bambi, and

Zig Zag lace top (rav link only again, sorry) in black alpaca lace from the Bendigo Woollen Mills Bargain Room.

I’ll tally the votes on Wednesday 10 June. In the mean time, I try to finish knitting a beanie and, if we’re all lucky, my bobble cardigan.

Dad’s vest was finished in time for his birthday today, but unfortunately he’s not in possession of it at the moment…

Conservative (but pretty!) Vest (rav link) by Julia Trice
9 balls of Lincraft Balmoral Tweed
3.50 and 4.00 mm needles
Start: April 2009
Finish: May 2009
Ravelryed here

It was a rush at the end, but thought two days was plenty of time for it to dry on the blocking mat, to be sent on Thursday. It was dry on Friday, three days after I put it out to block. True, I could sped up the process, but silly me took for granted that it wouldn’t take that long to dry and only realised it was still wet as I went to fold it up and send it off.

Measuring it against ‘the template’, it looks like a pretty close match. As it’s a firmer fabric, with less give than ‘the template’, I’ll reserve my full judgement on the project until I see Dad in it. If I can nab a photo of him modelling it, I’ll post it here.

Although the length and width of the vest is heavily based on ‘the template’, the pattern I used in conjunction was very helpful in terms of shaping. I owe the designer, Julia of Mind of Winter, a great deal of gratitude for her help and patience when I got myself completely confused and in a knot about the shoulder decreases. Turns out I had them reversed on the back, creating an overhang at the armhole side. Instead of doing the sensible thing and trying to work it out when I wasn’t so tired, I got in contact with her to see if I had made a silly mistake that everyone bar me could see. Turns out, I had, and she was just lovely when I explained what a fool I had been.

The whole vest took around 450 grams of Lincraft Balmoral Tweed. I must admit to having a bit of a mental block about Lincraft branded yarn, but I found this yarn fine to work with. The occasional slub added to the tweediness and it bloomed beautifully with a wet blocking. It is a discontinued yarn, which is a shame as I have a couple of projects in mind that would have been great in Balmoral Tweed.

One of the many wonderful things about Ravelry is that you can see what other people think about patterns in books you’re thinking about buying. Nonetheless, I still think there is a place for knitting book reviews.

A little while ago I picked up this book: A Stitch In Time – Vintage Knitting and Crochet Patterns 1920-1949: vol.1 by Jane Waller and Susan Crawford. The knitting patterns I like the most are from the 40s to the 70s, but after seeing some of the patterns on Ravelry, I thought it a good idea to obtain a copy, pronto. I wasn’t disappointed.

While the patterns are the major drawcard of this book, the little details are just lovely. The major title, A Stitch In Time, is embossed in gold. A little thank you card was placed inside the front cover, the pattern names are exactly the same as the original pattern, and the original patterns are included alongside its modernised counterpart. One thing I did find surprising was the paper used – it’s quite thin, thinner than other knitting books I own. That’s not necessarily a criticism; given that the book’s over 300 pages long, heavier paper would have made it quite the tome. I will have to be super duper careful to not damage the pages though.

The patterns themselves are good mix, broken into several sections – The Tubular Look (1920-1932), The Feminine Look (1933-1935), The Fitted, Tailored Look (1935-37), Smart Suits and Puffed Sleeves (1937-40) and The Square Look (1940-1949). The designs from the earlier chapters generally do not suit my body shape or are not to my taste, but there are many patterns in the later chapters that I’d like to knit for myself.

I haven’t tried to knit anything out of this book so I can’t comment on that aspect. I do have yarn stashed away that I think would look lovely as a Bluebird Sweater (pic above). What I like the most is the concept – bridging the gap between vintage and modern yarns and patterns. I think working with vintage patterns, while lovely garments, is more of a hassle than modern patterns. With the exception of mainstays like Patons Bluebell, you have to find a suitable substitute yarn, sizing is generally limited, and vintage patterns seem to assume a lot more knowledge than most modern patterns.

I’m really looking forward to volume 2.

Based on recent posts, it might seem that knitting has become a long forgotten pastime of mine. Rest assured that I have been knitting, every day in fact, but a strange aversion to taking photos of works in progress prevented any of that knitting seeing the light of day. High time I got over that, I think.

Dad’s vest seems to be well on track to be finished by the end of the month. The back is finished and I’m just about to split for the v neck, so I regard that as being well on the downhill run. The front’s pictured on top of one of his vests, which I’m using as a template along with a pattern. It seems to be a pretty close match to the template vest at this stage, which is quite a relief.

While mindlessly knitting stockinette day in day out, I’ve been thinking about the next project. My cardigan still needs to be seamed up, so that’ll be done first, but I’m really itching to do something else. That’s a post in itself though.

A little while ago, I posted about a book with some missing pages. A lovely offer came my way as a result of that post, and now I know what those missing pages contained.

I had an inkling that it was the instructions for feather stitch lace rib, shower stitch, leaf stitch and pyramid stitch, and I was right. It’s always nice to have a collection of different stitches up your sleeve, you never know when they might come in handy.

Thank you so much Susan for solving that mystery for me!

The photos for this post were taken, what feels like, ages ago, and the brooch finished even longer ago than that. It feels like I haven’t been able to take a breath all week, but now I have a smidgen of time to post before I get back to the madness.

This is another Brown Owls project, designed by George. Mad props to George — I do think it turned out nicely. Her instructions were clear and the template worked well. She (the brooch that is) is yet to have its public debut, but I think today will be the day. Once I stop lazing about, that is.

While pondering this post, I decided that Brown Owls has been very positive for me. Knitting is the craft that I gravitate towards, but there are other crafts I’m keen to try but never seem to get round to it on my own. So far I’ve tried embroidery and making felt brooches, and not only am I pretty happy with how both of them turned out, I want to embroider more and make more felt brooches. Maybe once the craziness dies down.

This recipe has been given a run twice in two weeks and as it’s super easy and delicious, I thought I should give it a plug. As there weren’t any ingredient substitutions, I don’t feel comfortable reproducing the recipe here — the Hokey Pokey Biscuit recipe can be found here on the Taste website.

The first batch was just as described in the recipe, sans fork marks. For some reason, I associate one set of fork marks with yo yos, and two sets of fork marks with peanut butter biscuits. As such, fork marks would have been an very much a baking faux par in this kitchen.

The most recent batch, shown in the photo above, also included chocolate on top. Originally, I was going to dip half of the biscuit in chocolate, but was a little too lazy. Instead, I put a chocolate melt on top before baking, which seemed to turn out all right. It’s worth noting that the dough was barely wider than the chocolate melt – these suckers really do spread out when in the oven.

Next time, I’d like to expand on the chocolate idea a little by splitting the mixture and putting cocoa power through to make Hokey Pokey marble biscuits. That’ll be at least a couple of weeks away, as they’re so delicious I can’t stop at one and end up feeling like a glutton!

The four days off at Easter makes this place a hive of productivity. It’s not stressful like the Christmas holidays are and the weather is much more conducive to productive work. This Easter, I was determined to finish off all the major knitting for my Tyrolean Cardigan. Good Friday I sat down and knit and knit and knit and knit and faffed on Ravelry and then knit some more. Finally, yesterday afternoon, the second sleeve was cast off, folded it up and put it with the pile of Tyrolean Cardigan parts ready for blocking. At this point, I was feeling rather chuffed that I had finished something within the completely non-binding non-verballised timeframe.

Then I blocked it and marvelled at how nicely the stitches had settled the pieces were pinned out. It was then that something seemed amiss with the front pieces. No amount of pushing and pulling would make them look like mirror images of one another. Turns out one is 5 rows shorter than the other.

Normally I’d try to fudge it and hope that it’d look alright once it was seamed up, but it doesn’t seem possible in this instance because the bobbles draw too much attention to the discrepancy. Luckily my dufferism only occurred at the cast off and decreases for the neckline, so it shouldn’t take too long to fix. To be honest, I’m not sure how I managed to muck it up like that, but by golly it’s a good lesson in carefully checking over measurements before gleefully casting off and loudly proclaiming ‘Finished!’.