Jen Arnall-Culliford Knitwear

WIP: The nephew is only getting bigger...

I had a sudden realisation that if I didn't pull my finger out and get on with making the next sweater for my nephew, that it might never fit him. I have 6 balls of Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in a lovely ____ shade (yes, you really don't need me to fill in that blank!), and a pattern from Baby Cashmerino book 2 ear-marked. That's enough yarn to knit the 9-12 month size of the cable and rib sweater - a sweet hooded jumper that I've had my eye on for ages.

Nephew turned 1 last week.

His birthday jumper wasn't finished in time to hand it over at the party. In fact, the first piece wasn't even finished in time to hand over at the party! But there is still some time... Nephew is slim & wiry (a lot like big Jim), so we think that the 9-12 month size will fit him for some time to come. So I spent most of the weekend doing this:

Followed by lots of this:

And more of this than any sane knitter would consider necessary:

And here we are on Monday morning, and I'm here:

The back of the sweater isn't finished. In fact, my abject failiure at finishing anything at the moment is nicely summed up by the fact that I haven't even finished my row. Sigh.

The simple cables are very pretty though. And it's in one of my favourite colours. So I'll keep at it!

You can see all the project details on my Ravelry page here: Birthday present for Nephew

Startitis

What is a girl to do when her normal kick of finishing projects becomes impossible due to a combination of little knitting time, learning a new knitting technique and having meaty long projects on the go? Why, cast on ALL THE THINGS of course!

I have a serious case of startitis. It stems from the fact that I'm not getting my normal completion kick. All of my WIPs were really long-term projects:

The Still Light sweater dress in a light 4ply yarn.

The Goldern Wheat Shawl. Ahem. Am I really still talking about it?!

And a super-secret work project that I can't really talk about yet...

So clearly the only solution to my slow knitting pace was to cast on a whole world of new projects. After all there is something of a kick to be had in searching through patterns in my library, and picking gorgeous yarns out of the stash. For me, it's not quite as good as casting off, but for now it will do.

First up is a very blue pair of socks for Jim. They are nothing fancy, but I really needed something in plain stocking stitch, so that I can whizz round in my newly learnt style (with yarn in my left hand), without having to worry about purling or anything more complicated. I've got 1 sock done, and now I'm having a bit of second sock syndrome, plus the needles I need are in another project.

Next up is a lovely simple cowl design by Stephen West, called Windschief. I'm using some GORGEOUS Old Maiden Aunt Alpaca Silk DK in the Brass Taps and Oak colourway (the picture on Lilith's site is a much better representation of the colour). It is just beautiful to knit with. This was meant to be the project that would prevent me from needing to buy ALL THE YARN at Loop on Sunday. It didn't really work. Well, I don't think it did. But maybe without this project, I would have purchased more. Who knows? This yarn doesn't knit to the correct gauge for the pattern, so I've rejigged the numbers somewhat to make it work.

I've kind of stalled on these colourwork mittens for a young friend of mine. I promised them to her as an 18th birthday present, and I really need to get a shimmy on with making them. I'm finding them hard because I normally do Fair Isle with both yarns in my right hand. At a push I can do it with one yarn in each hand, but since I'm meant to be resting my right hand from knitting, these are a bit tricky to work on. The pattern is Oh Deer! and I'm using the suggested Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light yarn that I purchased online from Loop. They will be super-duper once they are done.

My final WIP is a pair of the amazing Phloem Socks by Rachel Coopey. As soon as I saw these in Knitty, I knew they had to be mine. Rachel is a fantastic designer, with a particular talent for socks. Click through to her designer page on Ravelry (linked above) to see the range of her brilliance. As a former gardener, socks called Phloem were a must. I think there will be a pair of Xylem socks in my future too. I am sure it's been said before, but a girl really can't have enough green socks, can she? I'm using some fabulous Skein Queen Crush for these, that I picked up at my local yarn shop; Marmalade Yarns.

Phew! That's a lot of projects for me. I was doing so well at being monogamous, and really, the more projects I have on the go, the slower I will be at finishing any of them. It's a bit of a conundrum. In the meantime, maybe I'll just cast on something else...

Life + Work = Not enough time

The unusual blog silence is a result of family stuff keeping me away from home again. I'm slowly catching up with work, but it's not leaving much time to write blog posts.

I was delighted to be nominated for a Versatile Blogger award by A Pile of Sheep. Thank you so much! But I'm not sure when I'll get to the requisite onward post.

In the meantime, Still Light is continuing to make slow but steady progress, and I've got a secret work project on the needles as well. All in all, not a lot to chat about! Hopefully after the weekend I might have some finished quilt photos to share, so do stop by next week!

WIPs: Slow progress

The good news is that I am making progress on some knitting. I have taken the advice from Principles of Knitting, and I'm holding the yarn in my left hand and teaching it to knit. Still Light is the perfect project to learn a new knitting style as there are acres and acres of stocking stitch to just pootle my way through. Repetition is the only way with learning a new skill. It's amazing that after three weeks it's finally starting to feel fairly natural.

I've now embarked on the second part of this endeavour, which is to learn to purl with the yarn held in my left hand. I watched this excellent tutorial by Rox, and now it's just a case of more and more practice.

 

I've now split the sleeves from the body of my Still Light dress, so it should give the impression of going a bit faster now as there are many fewer stitches in each round. It is going to be a while until I can wear it though!

I've spent much of the last week or so keeping my Gran company in London, so it has been lovely to just knit round and round on this.

FO: Penumbra cowl

On Friday I had the immense pleasure of being driven down to Cornwall for our quilting weekend. I love long car journeys where I can sit in the front and knit away, providing conversation and entertainment whilst working on my latest project. I took the opportunity of Julie driving, to finish off my Penumbra Cowl.

This photo was taken in the car, the very instant after the cowl came off my needles. Perhaps not the world's greatest picture, but I think it conveys my enthusiasm nicely!

We stopped at the beach in Portscatho before heading up to The Sunday House for our quilting weekend, so Julie kindly took a picture of me, complete with my lime green Namaste bag that goes rather well with the cowl!

I'm working on not grinning like a complete lunatic in photographs, and I'm strangely happy with my expression in this picture. I look happy, but not completely bonkers!

There were later requests for a flat shot to show off the shadow knitting design, so here's a snap from my cutting mat before I launched into sewing craziness (more about that tomorrow...).

The design is Penumbra from Sweet Shawlettes by Jean Moss. You can read more about the book in my review post here: Sweet Shawlettes Review. There are still some opportunities to win a copy of the book, so check out the blog tour dates for more information: Sweet Shawlettes World Blog Tour

I used Rooster Almerino DK yarn, which was perfect for the job, and very enjoyable to knit with.

You can see all the relevant technical details of my project on my Ravelry page here: JenACKnitwear's Clever Shadow Knitting

I'm still not knitting very much as my index finger is fairly numb, but I think it might be improving a bit, so fingers crossed I'll be back to something nearer to normal soon. And yes, I will take it easy. Promise!

Sweet Shawlettes Winner!

There were 30 eligible comments on the Sweet Shawlettes blog post, and the random number generator has picked 13, which was Rose. Rose said:

Because Spring is just around the corner, my first project would be Garland with lovely spring-colored flowers. It just is so fun looking and could dress up a plain top to be so much fun.

Thank you for the fun giveaway.

I'm emailing you now Rose, so if it doesn't show up, then check your spam filter. Congratulations!

In other news, I have started to do a bit of knitting again, and I've made some progress with my Penumbra cowl. It's coming along nicely, isn't it?

FO: Striped Baby Cardigan

I whipped up a little striped cardigan for my nephew. It's from Debbie Bliss's Baby Cashmerino 2 book - one I would highly recommend if you want simple designs for little arrivals. This cardigan is knitted in the 9-12 month size, and I worked the instructions exactly as directed. No, really, I did!

I even used the yarn shades in the book. This was a completely switch-off project for me, but it was really nice to make. Again, it didn't require much attention, so I could work on it anywhere, and the pieces are all small so my project bag didn't take up too much space in my bag.

The fabric created by the Baby Cashmerino was lovely, and it is machine washable at 30C, so not too onerous to keep clean - always a consideration with a baby project.

I love the effect of working shaping a couple of stitches from the edge, and unless there's a good reason not to, I always do decreases and increases in this way. I just think it looks smarter and is easier to sew together.

All of the technical details relating to this project can be found on my Ravelry page here: JenACKnitwear's Cardi for Littlest Nephew

I have yarn to knit the cable and rib sweater with hood from the same collection, so I'd better hurry up and do that before my nephew is too big for it!

WIPs: Still Light

I have cast on for a really decadent project. It is the sort of project where every stitch will be a pleasure, and it's simple enough to take anywhere until its size becomes an issue.

Yes, I have cast on Still Light Tunic by Veera Välimäki and I'm using some completely delicious Fyberspates Ethereal. It's a light 4ply yarn made from 65% cashmere and 35% silk, so I won't be wearing this anywhere near my two cats!!

Look! Are you impressed? I've knitted a swatch, washed AND blocked it and hung it with some weight to simulate the weight of the garment as I wear it. With yarn this beautiful and on such a large project, I don't want to risk it coming out the wrong size. Ahem.

The tunic is knitted from the top down and I'm currently enjoying the raglan increase section. My gauge is slightly tighter than the pattern states, but this is a good thing as my bust measurement is smack between two sizes, and with my tension I can get a better fit. Two inches either way really does make a big difference in a stitch pattern that doesn't really stretch. The pattern is deceptively straightforward, so I'm planning to do a tiny modification to make the pocket a little bit narrower at the top as I think it will be slightly more flattering to my figure if I change that slightly.

This swatch close-up shows how gorgeous this fabric is. It's just a delight to touch. I'm afraid that you will be seeing lots of pictures of plain stocking stitch over the next few weeks as I work on this project as a dress at this gauge is going to take a LONG time!

FO: Kai-Mei Socks

I haven't been knitting socks at quite the rate I used to, so I've paired up 6 designs I want to try, along with 6 sock yarns from my stash, and I'm hoping to work my way through at least 6 pairs this year (there are actually 8 pairs in my sock queue, but I'd like to make 6 of them this year!).

This is the first pair to be finished. The design is called Kai-Mei by Cookie A, and it's found in her lovely book, Sock Innovation (be sure to download the errata from Interweave as there are a few that might catch you out).

The design features this lovely stitch pattern that works its way across your foot. I think it looks a little like foxes heads, doesn't it?

The yarn I used is a Cascade sock yarn that I purchased on a trip to Boston a couple of years ago. I bought it specifically for this pattern, so it hasn't taken me *that* long to get them knitted up!

I made a small modification to the stitch pattern, which I found made it slightly neater for me - following the instructions exactly I was finding that the decreases at each end of the yo 4 times row were getting baggy due to all the excess yarn from the 4 yarnovers. So I swapped a yo 3 times instead in that last row, and it just kept it all a bit neater for me.

I also cast on 72 sts rather than the recommended 66 sts. I generally find that one-sized sock patterns are too tight on my ample ankles, so I always need to tweak them a little. This was particularly easy to tweak. I just worked the extra sts in the 3 by 3 rib, did the heel flap as written (leaving all the extra sts on the instep) and then followed the remaining instructions as written to the toe - working extra decreases at the toe. Simples!

If you look closely, you can see that I'm already getting lots of wear out of these socks, and I might need to make another pair...

You will find all other details about these socks on my Ravelry page: JenACKnitwear's Green Socks

FO: Flukra Shawl

I'm slightly in mourning. I finished my Flukra shawl, and I miss knitting on it!

We had some slightly lame snow this afternoon, so took the opportunity to get some apt pictures of this lovely shawl. (Flukra means snow falling in large flakes.)

This was such a satisfying project. It was the perfect combination of great pattern and great yarn.

I worked on the central garter stitch triangle over the Christmas break. It was my mindless knitting in between 1x1 rib while I was chatting with family over the holidays. The garter stitch grew fairly slowly, but I was working on other things at the same time, so it never got to the point where I was bored.

Then came the excitement of the lace pattern. It's a design with lace stitches on both RS and WS rows, and many people put off trying this type of design over fear that it's too difficult, and certainly more difficult than designs where you have a plain knit or purl row between lace rows. I must argue that the reverse is actually true!

Although you can't switch off with a plain row, the rhythm generated by staying in pattern on every row helps to build momentum. On top of that, if you do make an error, you can almost instantly see that the pattern isn't lining up as it should. Thus you only need to tink back part of a row to fix the error (and sometimes no tinking's needed at all - if you've just missed a yarnover, you can pick up the thread between sts to replace it). In the same situation on a lace knitting design (one with patterning on alternate rows), you would need to unpick the whole plain row as well as the partial lace rows.

Flukra's construction kept me interested as I worked. The garter stitch triangle was over before I got bored, and then the lace border was just the perfect length (it only took 4 or 5 evenings to complete), followed by the edging which was just 2 evening's work. I'm sad that it's complete. I need to find a new project that will be just as fulfilling! Maybe I'll head over to The Shetland Trader and check out some more of Gudrun's gorgeous designs...

The lace yarn was also particularly lovely to work with. It's a 100% Blue-Faced Leicester Wool laceweight from Yarnscape, and the shawl used just 55g of yarn. The dyeing is in just my colours, with a tiny bit of variation between blues and teals. It's just enough to add depth, but not enough to distract from the lace pattern. Really, really pretty!

If I wasn't on a stash-down, then I would definitely be buying up some more of Alison's lovely yarns. Sigh. I must stay strong, but you don't need to... :-)