Knitting round up 2016

I anticipated not getting much knitting done in 2016, thanks to having LO towards the end of 2015. But I was delighted to find this wasn't the case! LO turned out to be a champion sleeper, which meant we got our evenings back relatively early on, and soon eased back into our previous routine of finishing the evening with an hour's TV and knitting on the sofa. So, I've enjoyed some really good TV this year (The Missing, Homeland (OK, that was the previous year but we recorded it as didn't want to watch it accompanied by a howling newborn), Deutschland 83 were particular highlights, but we also got through the whole of the first series of Outlander and part way into the second series.

What I did struggle to find time for was actually planning knitting projects. I was on maternity leave for all but three days(!) of 2016, but there wasn't much time for getting out different yarns, swatching, carefully browsing Ravelry and selecting a pattern. Which means there has been a LOT of sock knitting in the last year, as it was easier just to go into the sock yarn box, grab a ball and get on with a straightforward pattern.

I already blogged earlier in the year about earlier knitting projects, so this post is to bring us up to date.

I made a Pocket Ted for my God-daughter's birthday. It was very fiddly to knit, but she seemed to like him, so it was worth it. The pattern is a good one, it's fiddly because it's so teeny tiny. The tin formerly contained travel mints.

Gemini was my big garment project of the year, knitted in Mirasol Yarns Lachiwa, which I'd bought on sale a few years ago, so this was a stash project too. The yarn is a lovely linen/cotton mixture and good to knit with. I only got this blocked over Christmas though, so won't be able to wear it until the weather is a little warmer.

One of my more recent projects was a Sensory Caterpillar for my Godson, who has special needs. This was a fun pattern to knit, and I used Stylecraft Classique DK 100% cotton as it's available in bright colours and is sold in the local haberdashery. There is a rattle in one end, and a squeaker in the other, but I couldn't get the squeaker to squeak at all!

Oops, photos out of order, but it's already taken long enough to do this blog post so I'm not going to start rearranging now. This is Gemini blocking.

And, finally, some fun things I've received! This was my return-to-work present from Mostly Knitting. Cool or what?! (well, actually nice and warm as it was rather chilly on my return to work).

A yarny Christmas present - a skein of Countess Ablaze Lady Persephone sock yarn. The photo doesn't really do justice to the depth of colour in this yarn.

And my current project! I wanted something different for self-striping sock yarn, so found the Tootsie Rolls pattern. Simple and fun to knit, and works really well with those stripes after a bit of trial and error. The yarn is West Yorkshire Spinners signature 4ply yarn in the Holly Berry colourway, which seemed appropriate for the time of year.

I have become slightly addicted to WYS yarn this year, which is probably why I haven't managed to knit up more than I've acquired. Although I would have done if I hadn't been given the Countess Ablaze yarn for Christmas. See, unexpected present, I hadn't planned for that... Apart from the sock yarn, the only purchases have been for presents, and I've only used part balls from the cotton which explains why the stash has grown more than I anticipated.

My stash totals for this year are:
Yarn in: 2573 metres
Yarn out: 2159 metres
So I acquired 413 metres more than I used (but the Countess Ablaze is 424 metres, so there!).

I'm anticipating a lot more knitting from stash in 2017, as how much does childcare cost?!?!?!?! So, I'll be aiming to do the majority of my knitting from stash next year, with purchases limited to presents and things I need in addition to stash for particular projects (for example, I want to knit a jumper for LO to use up some DK I have in my stash, but I only have two balls left so will need to buy a little more to have enough). I'm also going to be interested to see how much knitting time I get now that I'm back at work as the evenings are all a bit of a gallop now of work, commute, hurtle to nursery, hurtle home.

What are your knitting plans for 2017?
 

Snowy Christmas and some presents

We had a lovely few days up at my Mum's for Christmas, and it was nice not having to do any of the cooking too! I was spoiled with some great Christmas presents too, including the laptop I'm typing this on - say hello to 'Hadrian'!

This set of saucepans was a joint present for us (although I suspect I'll be doing most of the cooking with them, with the OH eating the results), and they're the first new saucepans I've ever owned. Aren't they lovely and shiny? They are nice and solid too, and should be great fun to cook with. 

First go at cooking with the new saucepans!

Other crafty presents included a copy of Love at First Stitch by Tilly Walnes, which I've wanted ever since I borrowed a copy from the library. And some stitch markers - these are all shaped like little knitting symbols.

These are some bits from a local windmill - muesli (probably the best muesli I've ever eaten) and lavendar bags. They don't appear to know how to spell muesli though, as it's also spelt as "museli" on their website!

And I bought Lauren Guthrie's Learn to sew with Lauren with a book token I had, ready for lots of sewing adventures with my new machine.

On Christmas Eve we went over to Lincoln to catch up with some friends. It was a cold and frosty day but no snow!

The nephews played football in Mum's garden.

which was then covered in snow the following day!

I'm glad we didn't have the snow down south. What did you get for Christmas?

Christmas crafting

These are the secret projects I've been working on for the last few months - destined to be Christmas presents. First of all is a pair of Hermione's Everyday Socks (pattern by Erica Lueder), which I knitted for my Mum, in Araucania Ranco Sock yarn, on 2.25mm needles.

The stitch pattern really shows the colours up beautifully.

The leg

The foot

Slip stitch heel pattern

The other present was for my god-daughter - I decided to make her the doll from this Laura Ashley book, which I was given by my own Godmother when I was about 10. The story involves a girl called Emily who is desperate for a hat to keep the sun off her face, as she thinks it causes freckles.

These are the two earlier incarnations of the doll. The one on the left I sewed by hand when I was about ten. The left hand one is partially done on a sewing machine, when I was about twelve.

As I started to make the doll, it quickly became obvious that I had a LOT more free time when I was ten, than I do now. I think I also had a lot more concentration and smaller fingers. Still, I ended up making it in bursts in the afternoons when I wasn't working. I had a lot of fun in the local haberdashery choosing some fabric to make the doll's outfit. This is the doll, wearing her dress, and having just finished off attaching the hair - which involves unwinding some wool to make it wiggly.

Now she can see where she's going!

Pinafore finished.

And her hat!

Phew, a lot of work, but I'm pleased with the final result, and it made me get the sewing machine out and use it a lot, which was fun. And nearly finished the sewing machine off in the process!

I hope everyone is having a good Christmas. What Christmas crafting did you do?

Knitting gifts

A friend is expecting a baby in early February and several of us at knitting group had made things for the baby, so we had an evening of handing over presents. They don't know the sex of the baby, so I played safe and went with purple yarn. This is another Beyond Puerperium, as I love the pattern, it's very clearly written with multiple sizes and yarn weights possible. The yarn used is Rico Baby Classic DK, which I've used before for this pattern. It has nice colours and it machine washable, plus very soft and doesn't feel like acrylic, even though it is. According to my notes I only used 70g of yarn, although that doesn't seem like enough?!

I found these immensely cute ladybird buttons at the local haberdashery. They had red ones too, but that didn't look quite right with the purple. I also found this style of button much easier to sew on.

We had a great evening admiring the ingenious things that had been knitted by the group.

And, last week, I received some yarn in the post. This was from Mostly Knitting, who had come joint first of the Sock Sniper competition, and so had won loads and loads of skeins of sock yarn. She offered to post a skein of it to someone who wrote a comment on her blog about why they deserved a skein of sock yarn. I pointed out that I was the one who got her into knitting in the first place, and this gorgeous skein was posted to me:

Especially good timing as I was having one of those weeks, and this cheered me up no end! It is Butterfly Moon by Alina Shea Creations and the colours are amazing. I may already have a plan for it, but more in another post...

Christmas

We had a fairly quiet Christmas, staying with my Mum and eating massive amounts of food (including an entire nut roast just for me. It lasted days). We had a few trips out, to look at kitchen showrooms (!) and to meet up with an old school friend of mine. And my brother's family came over with the nephews, who, of course, are now huge.

I received some lovely presents - some of them are here:

Apron and oven gloves to go in the new kitchen (which we haven't got yet!).
A carving fork to go with the carving knife we already have - I do a roast now every Saturday for the OH and was struggling a bit with the lump of cooked dead animal sliding around on the plate when I attempted to carve it.
Fair trade Palestinian olive oil.
Blackboard style garden labels.

Large box of chocolate toffee (apparently I'm meant to share this with the OH. Hmm. We'll see).
Downton Abbey series 3 blu-ray.
Chocolate shower gel and body butter. (Is there a theme developing here?).
SHEEP SOCKS.

A greetings card organiser (I have big plans to Get Organised this year).
A record book for visiting cathedrals in this country - the idea is that there's some information in the book about each cathedral, and also space to write down details of your visit and your reflections on it. As we seem to visit quite a lot of cathedrals on holiday this seems like a great way of recording our visits!

And a really groovy knitting bag.

Oh, and I realised I'd forgotten to take a picture of my Secret Santa gift at knitting group - some stitch markers:

I got a lot of knitting done whilst we were away, including finishing the first pattern section of the South Seas Stole.

This first part was reasonably straightforward, and I managed to do most of it whilst watching TV (yes, including the Killing with subtitles!), but the charts are now getting more complicated so I'm going to have to concentrate. Luckily I've still got most of a sock to go on the Everyone Outta the Pool socks.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas. We put the tree up a few days before (we leave it up until 6th January), and also had a poinsettia that a friend had given us.

The nativity scene was a little dwarfed by the knitted wedding figures on the mantelpiece. Obviously there were giant knitted wedding figures at the birth of Christ, not to forget the giant knitted robin too.

And I did get the Christmas cake finished on time! I took a day off work the week before, when I got the marzipan put on, then did the icing just before Christmas. Unfortunately I didn't realise until the last minute that we don't own a holly shaped cutter, so this is my attempt at cutting out holly shapes with a knife (much to the amusement of the OH and my Mum). There were also rude comments about my anaemic green holly leaves and "pink" holly berries. Next year we'll go for e numbers rather than the "natural" food colouring...

Someone in the US wanted to know what mince pies are. So this is the batch I made to take into work (I decided to make mince pies for everyone instead of doing Christmas cards).
 This is just normal shortcrust pastry, made with flour and fat, which has sat in the fridge for a few hours, then rolled out. I didn't make my own mincemeat, so this came in a jar from the supermarket. Mince meat (which used to be savoury with actual meat in it) is a mixture of dried fruit, apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, suet and booze. This sort uses vegetable suet so it's vegetarian.

 You cut the pastry into rounds of two different sizes, and put the bigger ones into a greased Yorkshire pudding tin, then fill with mincemeat and put the smaller round on the top, after wetting the edges of the bottom with water.

 Then bake in the oven. I usually put a cross in the top as well, to let the steam escape, but I forgot this time.

I got the Christmas presents I was making done in time. This is part of a batch of lemon curd.

And a laptop case for Mum's laptop. I made the pattern up as I went along, the yarn is King Cole Riot Chunky, bought when we were on holiday in York. I was a bit worried about whether it would fit, as her laptop is bigger than mine, but, as you can see, it fitted perfectly!

 I lined the case with cat fabric, purchased at Gillie's Fabrics in York.

And what did I receive? Some really cool presents. These ones are shared with the OH - a gravy boat to match our crockery (amusingly we opened presents after Christmas lunch, when we'd had to use the milk jug for the gravy. If only we'd opened the presents earlier we could have used the gravy boat!). Some chocolate. And a kit to make raisin bread, with the dry ingredients, homemade marmalade, a bread tin and recipe included.

 And, for me, some gardening things, including Alan Titchmarsh's The kitchen gardener which I'd been wanting to read. A magic tool for making little pots for seedlings out of newspaper and some seeds.

 And this is my present from the secret santa at knitting group - a set of Chibi needles and some locking stitch markers. Cool or what?!

The on Boxing Day we went for a walk on Staines Moor, which looked suitably desolate and windswept, despite being so close to both Heathrow and the M25! Bit of a contrast with last year when it was so icy we didn't dare leave the house.

Hope you all had a great Christmas too!