Sunday 24 November 2013

Perfect Weather for Knitting

The time has arrived in Suzhou where snuggling up with a hot chocolate and some knitting is the perfect evening activity - although in my book that's OK in summer too! Today has been cold, grey and damp so you'll have to make do with indoor photos taken in rubbish light. Sorry about that! 

Remember that little lacy something I was working on from this blog post? Well that didn't last long! It was going to be a Sacha shawl but my brain wasn't coping with the lace. It's something I have knit before but I'm just too busy/tired to set aside the time needed for it. So I frogged this gorgeous yarn for what seemed like the umpteenth time and started accepting that I might never find a perfect pattern for it. Until I stumbled upon Gravitate by KallioKnits. It's easy, simple and I think quite elegant. This is destined for a very good friend of mine and I hope she likes it as much as I think I'm going to! 

Gravitate Shawl, Fyberspates Rural Charm 
My socks have seen a little daylight although not much since I last posted. It's enough to see how the stripes will knit up and I like them very much. 

Fish Lips Kiss Heel sock, Fishknits Yarn
Over the last month I've been challenging myself to spin a 4oz batt before the 30th November. I've completed the first 50g. While I've started the second 50g, I doubt I will have time to complete it. It's looking lovely so far though. The batt is Hummingbird by Nunoco. Don't you love the sparkles in it?!  
Hummingbird Batt, Nunoco
My Vertex cardigan is coming along. I have joined the fronts to the back and have knit about an inch and a half more. Thankfully, the rolling of the stockinette stitch hides my glaring error. Despite having stitch markers to mark the edges, I'm still going through periods where I'm knitting stockinette stitch and not garter stitch. Quite frankly, I can't be bothered to rip back the 5 or 6 rows to fix it, and while I realise I could also try and drop down the stitches to fix them, I'm reluctant to, as the yarn isn't the easiest to work with. So I'm living with it as a design feature. I think this will be a cute cardigan when it's done but I'm not massively enjoying the knitting of it. 

Vertex Cardigan, King Cole Merino Blend 4 ply
I hope you've had a productive fiber filled week. Until soon! 

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Sunday 10 November 2013

What's in the bag?

Just in time, I discovered that Nicsknots is running a blogging competition to see what's in everyone's project bags! A little late to the game, I thought I'd write a quick post about my project bag. 

The project bag was custom made for me by Grace of Grace's Cases. She makes fabulous things to a high standard and is a delight to work with. I have one of her needle cases too and it's brilliant! The fabric (which is more muted in real life) was from Spoonflower, which is an absolute time suck so be warned!! What you can't see, is that the bag is reversible and has some lovely owls embroidered on to a coordinating orange fabric. 



In my bag was this:



As you can see I have a pair of socks that I am working on. The gorgeous yarn is from Fishknits Yarn. It's a spilled milk colourway so there were only a few skeins of it. The stripes are so much fun and I'm really enjoying my first self striping yarn. 

The other project is my Vertex Cardigan that I started a little while back. I have completed the back and started the right front but ran into a problem. My row gauge is off, so the right front was knitting up longer than the back. I ripped out a few rows of the back and extended the length of it. I hope this will solve the problem now. 

As you may be able to tell I haven't done the best job of picking up stitches on the shoulder seam. The yarn (King Cole Merino Blend 4ply) made it difficult and I think I would have preferred to knit the fronts separately and then seam them afterwards. Hopefully the left front will be neater though. 

I would love for you to leave me a comment telling me what you can fit in your project bag. Also, if you have a few minutes, check out the blogs that have taken part in the competition. You can find the links in the blog post on Nicsknots. 


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Sunday 3 November 2013

All Skeined Up

I spent my Saturday morning skeining up my gorgeous Iridescent Puddle yarn. It took a while and I had to splice a few ends together to join the separate balls, but it was worth it. The resulting yarn is stunning. I love how the colours blend from the green to the pink.


Today I counted my yardage and while it is the most I've gotten from any skein I would have still liked there to be more. It measures about 249 yards. Perhaps I should wait until I've spun the other batt before deciding on a project so I can really make the most out of these colours. 


The fiber was from Nunuco on etsy. I would highly recommend taking a look at their shop. The batt was a delight to spin. It drafted very easily and was really well prepared. Handily they come in pairs of 50g batts so a 2 ply is very easily done. Prices and shipping are very reasonable and they process orders quickly.

I have my next spinning project all lined up but that can wait for now.

Have a fantastically fibery week everyone! 

P.S I've joined Instagram. Are you on there? I'm knitiot if you want to check me out. I haven't posted much on there yet. 

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Friday 1 November 2013

FO Friday #2

As I said last week my aim this week was to finish my Nunoco batt. Well this week I did! I finished the spinning on about Tuesday and then spent the last few evenings plying. It's in quite a few different balls as I had to play around to get the colours to match up better in some places but I really like the consistency of it and how the colours have blended. I need to re-skein, wash and measure it yet though so have no real information to tell you about it. It's so soft and really squishy and overall I'm thrilled with how it's come out. I will post a much better finished picture soon. 



That's it from me this evening. I will probably be back with another post over the weekend though. I'd love to hear what you finished this week!

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