Delicious Knee Socks by Laura Chau
0.7 ball Noro Kureyon Sock, S149
0.7 skein SweetGeorgia Yarns Tough Love Sock, Espresso
2.25mm DPNs
Start: April 2011
Finish: June 2011
Modifications: no slipped stitch or cabled seam
Ravelryed: here

During the week I finished these socks. As mentioned in an earlier post about them, these are the first socks I’ve knit for myself and I’m smitten. The two yarns worked really well together and they are so warm, perfect for this time of year.

Working on the cuff in only Tough Love Sock meant that I got a bit more of a feel for the yarn, and I quite like it. The nylon content (20 per cent) makes it a wee bit squeaky, but it feels very hard wearing and I’m still completely enamoured with the espresso colourway.

There’s quite a bit of both yarns left over, so Matt may score a thin version of Turn A Square to wear under his bike helmet. But only if he’s good and keeps bringing me cups of tea after dinner.

Another thing mentioned in a previous post was the pattern, and I still stand by what I said then; it’s a really good pattern and highly recommended it if you’re planning to make knee socks. Actually, the only thing I should mention is that the pattern has a short row heel. While that means you get a nice contrast heel, I’m not sure if I like how the short row heel turns out when you pick up the wrapped and double wrapped stitches. Are they any other forms of construction where you can get that kind of contrast heel? I’m pretty much a beginner when it comes to sock construction so I don’t really know… The heel aside, I’m contemplating making a non-striped pair of these in grey, and with the cabled seam variation given in the pattern. And maybe the over the knee version rather than just below the knee.

Finishing these socks means that the red knee sock challenge has commenced. I cast on the first sock on Monday, and I’ve now finished the leg and am onto the heel. Given it’s now just shy of a month before the Sheep and Wool Show, I think they might just be finished in time. Famous last words.

The Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show is next month, so my mind has turned to the most important part of the event: what knitting to wear. July in Bendigo is almost without fail freezing cold, making it perfect for showing off a knitted item or twelve. Last year I was a pretty bad ambassador for my knitting, with my Henry being the only handknit I wore. Matt, on the other hand, was a far better billboard for my knitting; he wore his suave sweater, Claudius and his Henry. As scary as it is that I can remember which handknits we wore, it’s probably even more frightening that we wore matching scarves last year. Keep an eye out for us this year, we’ll be the ones wearing matching jogging suits…

It’s a modest goal, but I’d like to finish the knee high Kalajokis for Bendigo this year. It’s probably more accurate to say start *and* finish as I haven’t started the Patonyle versions yet. In fact, the Allegro ones are still sitting on my desk waiting to be frogged. These things take time!

Before starting the Kalajokis, I should finish my stripy knee highs. Not that there’s too much to go now; I’m currently half way through the increases on the second sock. The increases on the first sock felt so slow, but on the second sock they signal the downhill run so they’re flying by. By sheer coincidence, the Noro stripes match up almost perfectly. I’d been mentally preparing for a pair of fraternal twin socks, but here I am with a pair of almost identical twins. Silly as it is, I feel almost let down that they’re turning out perfect.

Last but not least, thank you everyone for your lovely comments about my vest. You’ve motivated me to not only try wearing it again, but to also start thinking about possible colour combinations for another vest. I could rip back part of the original vest and fix up the problems, but I want to keep it in its slightly dinky state. Making another one, a sort of do over, seems a pretty good compromise to me.

This is a vest made not long after I took up knitting again, and it’s one of my favourite knitting projects. When I started knitting again, I gravitated towards vintage and retro patterns. As it happened, I was a voracious op shopper at that time, and the op shops I frequented had a really good supply of patterns from the 40s-70s. The pattern for this vest was from the English Woman’s Weekly from 9 November 1974.

The colour combinations suggested in the magazine included grey and blue, amber and rust, oatmeal and sage and turquoise and grey. I was going through a green and brown phase at the time, so used a light green and olive green 5ply from the Bendigo Woollen Mills back room.

It was my first attempt at colourwork, and even now I’m pretty impressed with how it turned out. The knitting’s quite even and there’s pretty much no puckering. However, I never wear it because of a few rookie mistakes. The biggest problem is that it’s too short. This is probably because I used a 5ply instead of an 8ply yarn, and also suspect ‘gauge swatch’ was some manner of strange term I’d never come across. My increases are a bit… holey, even though I’m sure I knew how to do bar increases. So, while there’s not actually many mistakes, they’re pretty noticeable ones.

All that said, I can’t bare to unravel it. Even though it just takes up precious wardrobe space, I still feel proud when I spy it under the piles of knitwear. I definitely want to knit the vest again, but with 8ply and after a gauge swatch. It’s also a project that makes me feel a bit sad. I think it was a fairly adventurous knit for a relative beginner, and it makes me wonder where that sense of adventure went; after all, it’s only yarn and patterns are merely serving suggestions…

On the topic of serving suggestions and a sense of adventure, the magazine didn’t just have a snazzy vest pattern. Amongst other things, it also had a fantastic ad for a well loved foodstuff:

Anyone for paella beanz?

While deliberating on the fate of my Kalajoki socks, I started on another pair of knee socks. This year seems to be the year for making socks for myself, something I’ve never done before. It’s also perfect weather for knee socks; Autumn is barely a blip of a memory now as the very chilly days have begun. As I walk to the tram stop each workday, I think about how good it’ll be to have some knee socks to provide an extra layer of protection against the cold.

The pattern used for these socks is Laura Chau’s Delicious Knee Socks. It’s a good pattern, this one. While the sock itself is a fairly basic toe up, there are lots of foot width/foot length/calf width/leg length combinations which makes it very adaptable.

Getting a start on these socks has meant finally using some Noro Kureyon Sock I was given for my birthday a couple of years ago. Finding a good brown to stripe with the Noro proved to be quite a challenge, however Sweetgeorgia yarns came through with the goods with their Tough Love Sock in the espresso colourway. The swatch provided some concern as there wasn’t quite enough contrast between the Sweetgeorgia and the Noro for my liking. As it turns out, I swatched with probably the darkest part of the colourway; the lighter parts look really good against the chocolatey brown. With the lighter colours around it, the darker sections, which didn’t look so great in the swatch, look fine in the sock.

It almost feels like a waste to use the Sweetgeorgia with the Noro. The socks are turning out well, but I’m not getting a good feel for the yarn as I only get to use it in two round lots, with the exception of the toe, heel and cuff. That said, I have gotten a good feel for the espresso colourway and I’m completely enamoured with it. So much so that the search has started, and has maybe ended, for a way to use that colourway again. The frontrunner is the Callie Bib Tee, using Sweetgeorgia’s Merino Silk DK. This is quite an expensive yarn for me, but it’s amazing what a fairly spectacular appreciation of the Australin dollar can do for your yarn budget…

The aim for this year is to use up as much stash as possible. Not to avoid buying yarn per se, but to make stash the first port of call when starting a project. So far it’s worked fairly well; there was enough yarn in my meagre stash to make a vest, a cowl (with some help from an abandoned scarf) and a bolero (with some help from a knitterly stranger). These socks, however, have put an end the golden run of stash diving.

Initially there appeared to be more than enough yarn to make a pair of Kalajokis. In fact, there looked like there’d be enough to make a pair of knee high Kalajokis. As soon as the thought of red knee high socks materialised in my brain, it was over. It was a pair of red knee high Kalajokis or nothing.

There were four or five attempts to try and squeeze a pair of knee socks out of the yarn I had stashed, but it was to no avail. Even with a pair of knee socks that was close to vacuum sealed onto my legs, there wasn’t enough yarn for most of the foot. There’s definitely enough yarn for a pair of ‘normal’, shorter, Kalajokis, but quite frankly it feels dirty typing those words. Red knee high Kalajokis or nothing, remember?

As it happens, the colour of the yarn (Bendigo Woollen Mills Allegro, in the discontinued colourway Scarlet) is pretty close to Patonyle 8ply in red. Let’s hope the seven balls purchased in the recent Clegs sale will be enough.

As for the Allegro, its future is uncertain. It’s a fairly splitty yarn, so while the colour is good and the fabric seems pretty hard wearing, it’s not the best to knit with. So back it goes into the stash, waiting for another pattern to come along. Hopefully next time round there will be enough to finish whatever I start!

Let’s just say I’m extending Easter by posting about it one week late…

Normally Easter Sunday here consists of throwing a few Easter eggs around and calling it a hunt. Thanks to Not Martha’s timely post on papier-mache easter eggs, this year we took a different route.

It was a lot of effort for five minutes of destruction, but I think it was worth it for the smell of Clag alone. Who knew that the smell of a water and flour paste would bring back memories of Primary School? I feel it’s probably appropriate at this point to point out that I didn’t eat Clag as a kid, and I wasn’t even a little tempted to eat some while making the piñata.

Next time (and there will be a next time), I’ll probably use fewer layers of newspaper and use a slightly less ‘Toy Story ball‘ colour scheme. It’d also probably be a good idea to put in lollies and toys that were a bit lighter than the solid eggs we put in this one; in the end we needed to use four anchor points to hold the weight of the piñata. However, we were still able to give it a bash, break it open and get the contents, and that’s all that matters really.

Hope everyone’s Easter breaks were, or continue to be, nice and relaxing!

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!