Jen Arnall-Culliford Knitwear

WIPs and the not as endless as anticipated 1x1 rib

I've been remarkably faithful to my various knitting projects over the Christmas break. I wound yarn for a new project to take with me when we went away, but I didn't end up casting on as I was enjoying the projects I had on the go already.

First up was my Warm Jacket with an Unusual Bubble Stitch Yoke, from A Stitch in Time 2. I knew when I started this project that it would take me a while as I find 1x1 rib quite hard on my hands, but I've been very pleasantly surprised by how quickly it has knitted up. The picture above shows the first sleeve and the back, all done and waiting. This has been the perfect sociable knitting project. It doesn't take much in the way of concentration, so I've worked on it pretty much everywhere. I'm nearly finished with the second sleeve, and then I'll be onto the fronts.

I'm so looking forward to wearing this cardigan - if we get a cold snap in the New Year, this will be perfect for keeping me warm at my desk!

For more interesting knitting, I've been making good progress on my Golden Wheat Shawl. This one has been on my needles for 18 months, but not surprisingly, if you don't actually knit on it, it doesn't get any bigger! So I've now been working pretty regularly on it for a few weeks, and I'm delighted to discover that I can now move my progress bar from 5% to 10%. Better keep at it though...

Finally, I thought I had better have a project for when my hands were tired of 1x1 rib, but my brain was too tired for lace, so I cast on Flukra by Gudrun Johnston. I'm using some lovely Blue-Faced Leicester Lace yarn that I won in a giveaway from Yarnscape earlier in the year. The colour is perfect, and the pattern starts with a garter stitch triangle, so it's pretty brainless for the moment. As you can see, I didn't end up needing it that much, so it's still quite small - the 1x1 rib cardigan was easier than anticipated. But I'm looking forward to it becoming my main project once the cardigan is done.

And that's it! Just 3 projects on the go, and all of them are making some progress. Next in line are the Kai-Mei socks from Sock Innovation by Cookie A, but I'll probably try to wait until I've cast off at least one of these projects before getting going on them.

FO: Lacy hat Christmas present

Just a few small pictures of a hat that I designed earlier in the year. It was published in Simply Knitting, so the pattern should be available on The Making Spot early in the new year.

I knitted this up for my lovely sister-in-law as a Christmas present.

It's knitted flat, with a seam at the back, so not too complex for new knitters or people new to lace.

I love how decreases at the crown spiral in to each other - there are twelve spokes to this particular wheel.

It is a sweet little lace pattern from one of the Barbara Walker treasuries.

Hope you are all enjoying your holidays!

Jen x

FO: Central Park Diamonds Quilt

Now that it's Boxing Day, and the present will have been opened, I can share this quilt that I made for a friend who's had a helluva year. I wanted to make her something to bring some cheerful colour to her new flat, and to make her smile.

I used a Central Park Layer Cake from Moda, that I was lucky enough to receive for my birthday earlier in the year, and I enjoyed sewing every last stitch of it.

The deisgn is called Diamonds At Large, and it's from the book, Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts (that I also received for my birthday!). It was very straight forward to piece, and I got the top finished quite quickly.

The design then took a while to get its borders and backing added. I decided to try piecing the backing as well this time - nothing too fancy, just some different fabrics and the last leftovers of the layer cake.

It's not as straight as it might be, but not bad for a first try, eh?

And the quilt was finished off with simple shadow quilting around the diamond motifs, plus a scrappy binding (which was a pleasure to slipstitch down after all those placemats!).

Ta da!

I think that the mixture of animal prints and florals in the Central Park range is completely charming, and that this quilt's new owner will like them a lot. Fingers crossed!

FO: A little bit of Christmas

Each year we run a Christmas ornament swap at my local knitting group. Each person makes an ornament to hang on a tree - they can be knitted/sewn/clay/anything as long as they are handmade. We bring them along on the last meeting before Christmas - already wrapped up - and then take in turns to draw a parcel out of the bag.

In the past I've made miniature knitted socks, miniature patchwork stockings and a kidsilk haze bauble. This year I tried out one of the Christmas Balls from the book by Arne and Carlos - the pattern was in the latest issue of The Knitter.

Although I'm very pleased with how it worked out, I must say that I absolutely didn't enjoy knitting it. I just hated doing a Fair Isle pattern on such a small diameter. I used all of my tricks for keeping the floats loose enough (turned the work inside out, spread the stitches out regularly, tried both DPNs and Magic Loop) but nothing helped. The finished bauble was stuffed with a good amount of polyester toy stuffing, and it looks fine, but I am all about the enjoyment of the knitting. So if you received this bauble on Tuesday evening, please treasure it, as I won't be making any more!

More project notes can be found on my Ravelry page: JenACKnitwear's Christmas Ball

Curiouser QAL: Sixth Block

It's time for block 6 of the Curiouser & Curiouser quiltalong! This week we are making a block that is inspired by my go-to cot quilt design. It is a simple idea - you sew strips of fabric together, then cut them into stripy strips and put sashing between them. Bob's your uncle (he really is my Uncle!), you have a quilt top all set to go.

Materials

• 3 strips of fabric 2" x 14" prints or plains
• 3 strips 1.5" x 10" plain fabric for sashing
• 2 border rectangles 2.5" x 10" and 2 border rectangles 2.5" x 13"

I've prepared a pdf file explaining how to make the block, and I'm afraid that I had to sew this in the evening, so I haven't got any decent pictures for the pithy instructions. I'm sure that if you've done a bit of piecing before then you won't have any trouble working this one out! Download the full instructions here:  Download 6 Coin Block Tutorial

I hope that you are all enjoying the blocks for this quilt! Please do add a link below if you have blogged about this design. 

Curiouser QAL: Catching up with blocks 3 and 5

I've been a bad QAL partner, and haven't been keeping up with Mélanie's beautiful designs. Anyway, I've got there after an afternoon holed up with my sewing machine, and here are the results:

I present to you Block 3 - the simple 9-patch. You can find the tutorial here: 9 Patch design.

And to follow, the disappearing 9-patch. The tutorial for this one is here: Disappearing 9-patch.

I think that this one is my favourite so far. I would love a whole quilt in these fabrics. I'm a big fan of the disappearing 9-patch. :)

Phew! I'm up to date! It's tough at this time of year to find time for crafting, isn't it? If you'd like to see other people's blocks so far, then head over to our Flickr group and take a look - BendigoBlue, Little Treehouse and Twinkle Toes UK have all shared their pictures with the group. I find it so inspiring to see different fabric choices in the same designs.

Don't forget the giveaway for those who've posted at least 4 blocks to the Flickr group. More information can be found on this post.

More stash gulping...

Having put the baseline data into Ravelry a couple of weeks ago, I added photos of the stash this weekend, and made another crazy discovery. I have managed to add more than a kilometer of yarn to my stash in the space of a week. I wasn't my fault, honest guvnor!  

Last issue I was picked as Simply Knitting's Subscriber of the month, and the ensuing goody bag included some gorgeous Knit Picks Stroll Tonal sock yarn (422m - far left), a ball of fun Rico Superba Stripy (420m - left) in just my favourite colours, as well as a hank of Colinette Art (172m - right) in a beautiful Monet inspired colourway. 

I then only went and won the p/hop giveaway as well - enter a hank of Yarn Yard Twistle (365m - far right). That makes a total of 1,379m of yarn!

In the same amount of time I have probably knitted up 200m of yarn, and I've given away 400m of sock yarn to the winner of the Strictly sweepstake in the Posh Yarn group on Ravelry. This is not a sustainable position to be in, so I AM going to do something about it.

I've put a few things into the for sale or trade section of my stash on Ravelry.

 

 

 

 

From left to right they are Fyberspates Scrumptious Aran (hand-dyed), Louisa Harding Aimée, Rowan Wool Cotton and Rowan Denim. For more information, please click through to my stash pages on Ravelry, and do contact me there if you are interested in those.

And in the New Year I will be knitting down some of those lovely projects I have queued up. I shall be endeavouring not to add to the stash. I'm not going to say never, but I am going to be as good as I possibly can at resisting temptations. Stash gulp indeed.

Happy Birthday p/hop!

Have you heard of p/hop? It's a knitting campaign in aid of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). Knitwear designers donate patterns to p/hop and knitters donate money for the patterns - the idea being that you donate pennies per hour of pleasure (p/hop) for the patterns. P/hop has been running for 3 years and has raised over £30,000 for MSF in that time. Not bad going, eh?!

I was lucky enough to win this wonderful prize from p/hop in their 3rd Birthday Giveaway yesterday (thanks Yarn Yard and Undercover Owl!):

If you fancy downloading a pattern, making a donation, or entering the birthday giveaway competition, just head over to the p/hop website to find out more. If you're quick there's still time to enter the Day 9 giveaway (it closes at 2pm on Wednesday 14th December 2011), and there will be 12 Days of giveaways in total.

To keep up to date with p/hop's activities, you can check out their blog, and also follow them on Twitter, where they are @msf_phop

Thanks again p/hop, and happy knitting one and all. xx

FO: Quick Work in Thick Wool

I'm absolutely delighted with my first finished garment from A Stitch in Time volume 2. It's the aptly named Quick Work in Thick Wool jumper, and would indeed have been even quicker to knit if I had been faithful to it! Getting good photos is a bit of a problem at this time of year, so I took a trip down Catherine Hill this morning, and asked Rachel in Millie Moon if she would mind snapping a picture of the finished jumper. She kindly obliged (and I'm modelling next to my quilt which is on display there at the moment!).

I'm delighted with everything about it really... The fit is great. I found the right buttons for it (at Millie Moon yesterday). I don't even mind that I ended up sticking with shorter sleeves, as I like layering and this will be fine over a long-sleeved top. My favourite part is the scooped neckline - I adore it!

I knitted it using Fyberspates Scrumptious Aran, in a hand-dyed colourway that I bought a couple of years back at the iKnit Weekender, and it used just less than 4 skeins of yarn.

Can you believe that I only have 2 (ahem, really 3, but the Shetland lace I started 3 years ago doesn't really count, does it?) projects on my needles now. There's the Golden Wheat shawl (I did a whole pattern repeat over the weekend) and my Bubble Stitch Yoke cardigan (I'm an inch into the Back). Go me! I've been casting off. Now... what to cast on next?

FO: Veyla Mittens and some socks

Despite appearances, I've actually been doing a lot of knitting. I'm on an organisation and finishing kick, so I pulled my Veyla Mittens off the naughty step, and finished off the second of the pair.

Ysolda's pattern is lovely, and the yarn (Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk) is lovely, but for me, they just didn't work that well together. The Alpaca Silk didn't have any stretch at all, and I found it hard to keep both lace and stocking stitch looking neat as a result.

They look much better now that I've blocked them, which is a relief. I'm sure that the intended recipient will enjoy them, and that's the main thing.

Next up are some plain socks. These are ready for Jim's Christmas stocking and they are absolutely plain vanilla socks, worked from my head, so nothing really exciting to report. The yarn was lovely to work with. It's Fyberspates Gloucester Tweed, and makes a lovely fabric for socks. I think these will get worn lots. Jeni doesn't have this colour in stock anymore, but there are some lovely alternatives: Storm Gloucester Tweed is beautful for example.

I'm popping into town shortly, and hoping to find the perfect buttons to accent my Quick Work in Thick Wool from A Stitch in Time volume 2. I finished the knitting and sewing up on Saturday, so I can't wait to wear it properly. And in the spirit of clearing the decks, the only new thing I've cast on is a bauble for my local knitting group's annual ornament swap. So I only have 3 things on my needles right now - and more surprising is the fact that I've worked on all three over the weekend. If you've been reading for a while, then I think you may know what that means... Pics will follow.