Knitting Confessions #3

I am quite particular with certain things - probably even more so in my hobby time as I do it purely for my enjoyment. I love to knit with indie yarns but I really love to knit with my indie needles! 

I have several sets of Dyakcraft's knitting needles and completely believe that they are worth the cost. I don't have any on order at the moment and doubt I will for a while at least due to my collection!

The joins are amazing; particularly on the Heavy Metal sock needles, in fact they are practically seamless. The points come to a lovely taper so stitches are easy to move to and from the tips and the colours....well, based on my two most recent sets what more do I need to say? They add another dimension to my knitting and make the experience even more enjoyable! 

The sets I currently have are:

2 US 4-9 3.5in lace tips
1 US 4-10.5 3.5in regular tips
1 US 4-10.5 5in lace tips
1 set of US 0-3 3.5in Heavy Metals   
1 full set of DPNs US 0-9 

What is your needle collection like? 

Good Mail Day....

Dyakcraft Darn Pretty interchangeable knitting needles.....need I say more?

Sunrise 3.5" set of Darn Pretties

Heaven on Earth 3.5" set of Darn Pretties

Life in Jakarta so far...

The main road into Country Woods estate

My goodness, a month has just flown by! We are continuing to settle in well here and life in Jakarta is good. I'm especially excited about having Bahasa lessons and am making much more of an effort to learn some local language than I ever did in 3 years of living in China. Having an Indonesian driver should help too but I'm not promising anything!

I'm getting very used to having a swimming pool in our compound and trying to use it a few times a week in a bid to improve my dwindling fitness. However this didn't go according to plan last week as my legs were attacked by many (or possibly one very hungry) mosquitoes and I didn't want the chlorine to irritate them further. 

The view from our balcony

Last weekend I was very lucky to be able to meet up and knit with a fellow knitter and her husband while they visited from Bali. Being away from other knitters is one downside to life abroad but it makes meeting up with knitters all the more special. It was lovely to compare yarn, patterns and experiences and I hope to stay in touch with them. 

Talking of knitting I couldn't let the gorgeous yarn for my cardigan sit in it's skein any longer. I've wound about half of it but it's enough to keep me knitting on my cardigan for a little while. The second sleeve is finished and I can now start the fronts. Also in a bid to motivate me to get back into knitting I've ordered some yarn from Juno Fiber Arts in the Alice base. There is no guarantee that it will reach me but I have my fingers crossed!

Trees line the roads

 
















Our flat is looking more homely with the addition of a new sofa of our choosing. Our shipment is due to arrive at the end of October and we're really looking forward to being able to personalise the apartment even more so.

The playing field

That's it for now but do stay tuned for more posts about life in Indonesia. 

Knitting Confessions #2

There are certain things that I feel it's probably quite important to know in knitting once you've got the basic stitches sorted...for example what the RS and WS is of your fabric, how to tell a knit stitch from a purl stitch, how to read your stitches and how to fix basic mistakes in your knitting. 

Now, I feel pretty confident with most of those aside from the fact that whenever I need to fix a mistake in garter stitch I end up doing it in stockinette stitch. Sadly I have no real excuse apart from laziness for not learning the technique properly I suppose. On occasion I've fluked it and fixed a dropped garter stitch correctly but most of the time I end up with a little line of stockinette stitch...which more often than not stays there because:

a) nobody looks closely enough to notice and 
b) I can live with it! 

There is a fixing knitting mistakes class on craftsy that I'm tempted to enroll in so if you have any reviews I'd love to hear them! 

If you have any confessions you'd like to share nip on over to Stitched Up in Toronto to post your link! If not enjoy reading the confessions of other knitters out there!

Knitting Confessions #1

As I was reading a few blogs I came across Stitched Up in Toronto's Knitting Confessions and thought of the perfect first Knitting Confession and had to share it with you.


So quite a while ago I discovered Hunter Hammersen's sock patterns and decided that I'd like to knit some pretty, lacy socks. After many hours of trawling through the patterns and photos I decided on Gramercy. Now I had only knit one pair of socks before I embarked on this project and they came out fine without swatching, so I decided, in my vast sock-knitting wisdom, that I didn't need to swatch for these either. Do you see where I'm going with this?!

Happily I knitted away on them, really enjoying the stitch pattern and liking how they looked on. It took a while but I eventually finished the first one and cast on for the second one almost immediately. After putting them on for the first time I had this niggling feeling that I ignored for quite some time. 

Each time I wore those socks that annoying little niggling feeling, telling me something was not quite right, kept coming back. I ignored it for a little while but eventually I had to admit to myself that the socks were

a) baggy around the ankle 
b) too long in the foot and
c) different lengths in the leg due to an extra pattern repeat on one of them. 

Brilliant....!

Having finally, reluctantly accepted all of these errors I cast them aside and they sat at the bottom of the cupboard, unloved and unworn, for quite some time. Perhaps they could have been gifted to someone with bigger feet than me but there they sat...until I had to pack to move to Jakarta....when....I threw them in the bin. I didn't even unwind the yarn to reuse guys!! I just casually threw them away as if I hadn't spent hours and hours and hours working on them. Oh the shame! 

Sadly I have no photos to share with you as I believe I deleted the ravelry project and the photos of the socks so you'll just have to imagine them...not that you should! 

So if you have a knitting confession to make hop on over to Stitched Up in Toronto and share it!