Baby knitting

I've been doing a lot of baby knitting recently. So far this has been for friends and relatives (I have a niece due in September), but, as is probably obvious in the photo below, I'm expecting a baby too, so it looks like there will be a lot more baby knitting in my future.

I haven't really started knitting for my baby yet, as it's not due until December, but this is what I've been making for the impending niece:

Ella Funt cardigan by Pamela Wynn. This is a really cute pattern, which I loved as soon as I saw it. It's a bit of a pain to get hold of, as due to the whole VAT mess thing, it isn't available as a download in the UK, and you actually have to go to a shop that supports Ravelry pattern selling and buy it from them, who will then put it into your Ravelry library. Fortunately it turned out that Iknit at Waterloo could do this, and I visited there whilst on the Fashion on the Ration outing so got my hands on it then, plus some balls of Debbie Bliss Baby cashmerino with which to make it. It's a fun little pattern to knit, and I love the elephants! The patterning uses some leftover bits and bobs of thinnish DK that I had lying around.

My brother and SIL really aren't ones for the whole pink/blue thing (well, neither am I for that matter!), but I thought they really should get something that was pink and sparkly, tee hee, so I found this pattern and yarn whilst on holiday. You can't really see the sparkle on it, but I promise it is... I'd forgotten what a pain it is knitting all the bits separately and sewing them all together at the end. So much easier to knit it all in one from the top down or bottom up. Don't think I'll be using this pattern again!

I haven't yet made up the little dress I'm going to make for the niece too, but that should get finished in the next week or so.

And, what am I planning to knit for my baby? Well, I've got a baby blanket half-finished so far, a really cute sheep tank top which I've already bought the yarn for and a puerperium to make too!

And my totals for July are looking pretty good, as I didn't buy any yarn that month, but I used up 728.5 metres. So, the running total for the year so far is 1355.9 metres more yarn used up than stashed!

Holiday 2015: crafty stuff

The last of the holiday posts! I had a few ideas in mind for things I wanted to buy on holiday, as I'm trying to avoid buying just random stuff to stop the stash building up again. There were a couple of nice fabric shops in Worcester, and I found this elephant fabric in Rags Fabrics (I couldn't find a website for them) to make a little dress for my impending-niece.

In Hereford we happened to come across a fabric and yarn shop in an alley leading to the cathedral, Doughty's does have a website. I managed to find both a ball of Sirdar Crofter DK in the same colourway as the one I got in the knitting group's secret santa in December, but also a book of Crofter DK patterns at half price. With two balls I have enough to make a pair of snuggly bedsocks (how old am I?!).

And in Worcester we found possibly the smallest but most packed wool shop I have ever seen, Hopmarket Wools, where I bought a ball of sparkly pink baby wool to make a frivolous cardigan for the impending niece (my brother and SIL aren't ones for gender-stereotyping, so they're going to love a sparkly pink cardi!). King Cole Baby glitz isn't the type of things I'd usually choose... But the balls are 100g, so you only need one to make a baby cardigan.

I am really behind with my stash running totals. In June I bought 458m of yarn, but didn't finish any projects, so that gives a running total for the year so far of 616m more yarn used than purchased. July should look better, as I haven't bought any yarn (yet), and finished a couple of projects, which I'll blog about soon.

Iknit Fandango

I'd booked a ticket for the Friday of Iknit Fandango a while ago, and on the day I had a cold and really didn't feel like dragging myself into London. I probably wouldn't have gone if I hadn't already got the ticket and didn't want to waste the money spent on it. And, I'm glad I did go. I only stayed for about 90 minutes, as I didn't really feel up to much more than that, but I really enjoyed it when I was there.

I liked the venue, at the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Hall.  It was nice and light, which made it easy to check yarn colours. It's not the biggest hall in the world, but this wasn't a huge festival, in fact, it was just the right size to see everything without getting overwhelmed with colour and people and stuff.

There were several rows of stalls to make your way round.  I did one complete tour of the whole thing, looking for yarn companies I know I particularly like and particular things I was looking for.

These animals are from Edward's Menagerie on the Toft Alpaca stand.

And another picture of their stand.

These are the ladies on the Knitting and Crochet Guild stand, who were winding skeins into balls for people.

There were refreshments on a sort of gallery level, provided by the Finchley Women's Institute too.

And what did I buy? Well, I was very taken with the yarn on display on the Triskelion, Easyknits (especially their Deeply Wicked line in amazing colours) and Sparkleduck stands.  But I was aware of the yarn diet, and in the end I was most tempted by the Wollmeise stand. This is a 300g ball (approx 1500m) of Wollmeise Lace-Garn, in the "Spicemarket" colourway. There is enough there to knit me a cardigan. Hmm, a cardigan in laceweight, that's going to take a while?! It also came with a little bottle of wool wash.

And from Toft Alpaca, I bought a copy of Kate Davies' Yokes book, which I've wanted for a while. Lots of lovely patterns, and lovely detail about the history of knitting. And it came in a cute drawstring project bag. I was also on the look out for some Knit Pro Symphonie 3.5mm needle tips, which I found on the Knitting4fun stand, so mission accomplished!

It was also good to see a few people that I knew from blogging and Ravelry, although I suspect a lot more were going on the Saturday.

Fashion on the Ration

Last weekend I went off into London for the day, to meet up with some fellow knitting Archers Listeners for some knitting, lunch and a trip to the Fashion on the Ration exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. I have a rather low opinion of the Imperial War Museum at the moment, due to their plans to close their research library (very bad idea), and then to keep it open but with limited hours and charging for use (bad idea) but the exhibition sounded interesting, and I wanted to meet up with the others again.

I wasn't very good at taking photographs during the day, but there are a lot more, including of the exhibition itself, on Whitehart's blog. We initially met up at Iknit, near Waterloo, for some browsing, shopping and knitting.

Before moving onto the Four Corners Cafe for some lunch, then heading to the exhibition. I thought the exhibition was a good size. It took about 45 minutes to go round, so there was enough to see, without being overwhelming. There was a nice mixture of dresses, men's clothing and uniforms on display, supported by archival sources (including letters, posters and ephemera), film and sound clips. I really enjoyed it, I just wish I'd thought to take some photos inside! I really liked the Utility dresses, and thought it was very sensible way of ensuring good quality clothing that would last, but without using vast amounts of scarce materials.

Of course, a trip to a yarn shop meant that I did some yarn shopping. I'd spotted this cute elephant cardigan on Ravelry, but it was unavailable to buy online due to the VAT mess, and was a yarn shop only purchase. Fortunately Iknit does those, so I could buy it there. I'm intending to make this for the niece that's on the way later this year, so I purchased some Baby Cashmerino that will go with some that's already in my stash so that I could get started on it.

Last week I also acquired another skein of Madeline Tosh Sock, in a colourway that will go with the existing Sugar Plum colourway I have in my stash. This one came via ebay, where I'd got a search set up looking for this in particular. I'm intending to use these for a Byatt shawl.
The new colourway is called "Midnight Rendezvous"

And as you can see, it should look nice with the other skein!

I'll do an update on stash enhancement amounts at the end of the month! Oh dear, Iknit Fandango this coming week... But at least my purchases so far have been for definite projects which will mostly be started asap.

Norwich

I don't know where the time has gone, but the end of October and first half of November were incredibly busy and I simply didn't get time to blog.  At the end of October I went for another meet up of the knitting librarians (we met up once before), this time to Norwich, and took advantage of needing to be over that way to visit Cambridge and stay with Knitting on the Green again. I had a fun day in Cambridge, mooching around the shops and visiting the marvellous new Incunabula Exhibition ("Private lives of print") at the University Library.

The next day we headed off early on the train to Norwich to meet the other librarians. It was good to explore Norwich again, after going on holiday there four years ago. We walked along the river from the station, and explored shops in the Lanes area, including a lovely bookshop, the market and two yarn shops, Norfolk Yarn (which I visited on our holiday in its previous location) and the Crafty Ewe.
I'm still amazed at how much yarn shops have improved in the 9 or 10 years that I've been knitting. Remember the days when you didn't see sock yarn in a shop, let alone lace weight? We see to be well and truly past that now. It's also good to see shops selling a variety of cheaper and more expensive yarns.

Window of Norfolk Yarn

Window of the Crafty Ewe

 We went over to the Forum to have lunch, partly because there was a lot of space for knitters to sit and knit and chat, and also because it's home of Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library. It's an impressive building.

After lunch, I decided to head back to the Crafty Ewe to make a yarn purchase (how did we buy yarn in the days before being able to check yardage on Ravelry on your phone?!) before heading back to the station.

I bought six balls of the very reasonably priced Sweet Briar Chunky in a sort of tealy/greeny/bluey shade. This is intended for a Bulky Brioche Raglan, which was in one of the first issues of Interweave Knits I ever bought, and which I've wanted to make ever since!

Gower peninsula

Last weekend I went to Wales on the train to visit the Gower Peninsula, where my brother's family live.

It's an area of beautiful beaches as well as countryside and history. We did a lot of walking in the area, this is the Mumbles Lighthouse, which was unusually accessible as the tide was really low (don't think I'd have risked going over there though!).

It was raining on my journey over, but after I'd arrived the sun came out and we could enjoy the scenery. This is another view of Swansea Bay, looking over towards Swansea from the Mumbles side.

We visited the new Mumbles lifeboat station. This lifeboat is absolutely huge and can apparently carry over 100 people should it need to.

The next day, whilst my brother was at work, the rest of us climbed over a big hill to Langland Bay. This one used to be really sandy, but lots of pebbles were washed up over the winter, so it's much more of a pebbly beach now. It also had some really smelly seaweed!

And that evening we went to Caswell Bay. We walked down to it through Bishop's Wood nature reserve. This bay is a lot more sandy, and my nephews enjoyed kicking a football around whilst the adults had a cup of tea on the beach!

We left it just as the tide was coming in and the sun going down.

That afternoon I'd also found the Red House Quilting shop, on the way to the park, which had a lovely range of quilting supplies, plus a room with yarn at the back. I found this ball of Regia 4 ply sock yarn, in plain purple, which should be useful for socks with intricate stitch patterns.

And, of course, I needed a project to do on the train there and back, and the existing cardigan project is quite big. So, having read on Roobeedoo's blog about knitting the Wise Hilda's Basic Ribbed Socks, and how the heel turned out quite narrow on this pattern, I thought this might be the one for me as I have the world's narrowest heels... I paired it with a ball of sock yarn from my stash, Bergère de France Opal (which seems to have been manufactured by the makers of Opal sock yarn, just branded differently). I think it looks even better knitted up than it does in the ball! Love those stripes.

So, I got as far as the leg and turning the heel whilst I was away.

And then there was a knitting update

Two blog posts in one weekend? I'm on a roll.

I seem to have got quite a lot of knitting done since I last did an update (OK, so that was back in June, so hardly surprising).

My Fantastic Purple Cardigan is nearly all knitted, I just have to sew the seams and knit the edging. I blocked it on the spare bed one week and it took up loads of room, as it seems to have come out rather large. That's a good thing though, as it's meant to be a baggy cardigan.

I got frustrated with the Mini Mania Scarf and ended up frogging it. I'd wanted to knit it to use up odds and ends of sock yarn, but found that linen stitch was hurting my wrists if I did it for too long so decided to give up. Plus, all my machine washable sock yarn leftovers seemed to be variations on mud colour (have I really knitted a whole pile of mud colour socks?) which didn't make for an interesting scarf. Instead I have started a Sock Yarn Leftovers Blanket using mitred squares. The pattern is more of a recipe into which you add in whatever weight yarn and needle size you want. It's very easy to follow, and this is a great project to pick up when I need something fairly mindless to knit, such as at knitting group where I'm busy talking and drinking wine, or when I'm at home watching TV with subtitles (anyone else enjoying Les revenants?)

My Aeolian Shawl is coming on well, I've just started the edge pattern, although there still seem to be a LOT of rows to go. I've really enjoyed knitting this and, apart from a blip last week when I did four rows wrong, it's been fairly straightforward knitting. It is quite time consuming, as it's now at the point when it takes about 45 minutes to do a knit row.

On a trip to our nearest proper yarn shop, Mrs Moon, with a friend back in May...

I bought a couple of balls of Rowan Cocoon to make a scarf as I wanted a nice straightforward pattern for TV knitting and to take on holiday with me. I finished knitting this in the hottest week of the year - because what more could you want in 30°C than a chunky knitted scarf?!

Not sure why my ribbing looks a lot more even in the photo than it is in real life.

That was a really good shopping trip, as I also found in the sale a copy of a book I'd wanted for ages, Little red in the city, which has lots of info inside about knitting to fit your size and shape.

Think that's all for now.

Giant custard creams, Cambridge and another Puerperium

Well, I'm not quite sure where January disappeared off to, but it whizzed past. I have done various Very Exciting Things, including meeting up with 17 other knitting (or crocheting) librarians in London for a day of coffee, giant custard creams, yarn shopping, librarianly chitchat and then to the pub. We had all "met" via Twitter, and it was great to meet them all for real too.

There were also giant chocolate bourbons, but I decided to stick with the custard cream. Yes, that is a normal sized plate and knife.

We went yarn shopping at Loop (in three batches as there were too many of us to fit in the shop all in one go). It was looovvveeely. I hadn't been there for several years and it seemed a lot more friendly than last time, with more space for gorgeous yarns. I indulged in a skein of Madeleine Tosh sock yarn, to make a shawl with. It is gorgeously squishy, very soft and comes in beautiful colours.

One of the others brought along the knitted archbishop she'd made last year. I hope he likes tea. I think the pattern is from the Knit your own royal wedding book. Amusingly one of the comments on Ravelry about the pattern says that he's not wearing any pants under his cassock!! Another one of the comments said that everyone kept looking up his cassock so she'd knitted him some gold disco pants!!

I have also made two trips to Cambridge. One was just for the day, to do a masterclass at the University Library. I was surprised how much more snow there was out the other side of London. I also had lunch with Caughtknitting, whom I hadn't seen for ages.

Remains of a giant snowman outside the library.

The other trip was for a conference at Gonville and Caius College, so I stayed overnight with KnittingontheGreen, where we stayed up late chatting and drinking wine. It was lovely to see her and she cooked me the most amazing meal of spelt risotto with goats' cheese, followed by homemade ice cream. Of course, I forgot to take any photos whilst I was with her, but here are some nice shots of Gonville and Caius:

I got a bit of knitting done on the trains to Cambridge, although I'm currently reading a book I need to review for a journal by the end of February so that's taking priority at the moment.

I did get my third Beyond Puerperium completed in the nick of time, as the Mum-To-Be appears to be about to go into labour any second now. This took exactly 2 balls of yarn.

And, having got frustrated with the lace shawl (no, I haven't made any progress, as I haven't had any quiet-knitting-time-at-home-when-there-are-no-distractions), someone at the librarian knitting extravaganza pointed me towards the Mini Mania Scarf as a good way of using up odds and ends of sock yarn. So I started one of those. It took me an entire episode of Call the midwife to cast on 500 stitches, but now I'm well away, and enjoying deciding which colour to use next.

I'm aware that I haven't taken any garden pictures yet this year, mainly because the weather seems to be alternating between rain and snow.

Cheltenham holiday yarn shops & purchases

As I mentioned in my last post, the number of yarn shops we found on holiday in the Cotswolds became slightly ridiculous.

These are the purchases we came home with. I've added the yarn shops to Knit Map, and my stash is on Ravelry which should link to the yarn shops too, as not all of them have websites.

That's:

A skein of Clicky Needles merino silk lace, from Miju Wools in Gloucester.
2 balls of Katia Olé sock yarn, from Budget Wools in Cheltenham.
1 ball of King Cole ZigZag sock yarn, from Blanshards Fabrics in Wantage.
1 ball of Opal Show Your Colours sock yarn, and a skein of undyed Bluefaced Leicester 4ply from the Bourton Basket, in Bourton-on-the-Water.
1 ball of Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic Dégradé sock yarn, from Ashley's in Cirencester.

We also found several other shops, including another one in Cheltenham and one in Broadway, where I didn't get anything (although I'd have quite happily lived in a town with any of those shops!).

Zoom

I've done a fair bit of zooming around in the last 10 days or so, plus had a throat infection for a few days, so haven't done much knitting (or blogging)!

I worked one Saturday at Who Do You Think You Are Live - promoting family history resources, which was fun, if a bit intense. It was something like 8 hours on my feet, with a short break for lunch when I sat on the floor as it was so busy I couldn't find any spare seats. It took place in one of the halls at Olympia. I was very hoarse by the end of the day, I thought from so much talking, but it turned out to be a throat infection!

Then the next week I went off to Cambridge for a conference, spending the night before at a friend's house. On trotting off to get something to eat I was delighted to discover how close they live to the new(ish) Sheep Shop! I'll be back. It looks lovely inside.

And, no sooner did I get back from Cambridge, but I was off again to the theatre this time, to see someone from work appearing in their local dramatic society production - which was very good but a bit of a late night on a work night.
I received this cute picture of my friend's baby wearing the jumper I knitted last year, which she has just grown into. Cute or what?!

A parcel all the way from Wisconsin, containing the three balls of Grignasco Gold merino DK I need to finish my cardigan. My generous swop partner (I sent her some sock yarn and British yarn) had also enclosed a Wisconsin Badgers mug, and postcards of the wildlife where she lives.

And another squishy parcel from Celticove, after I discovered a 50% off sale, including Araucania Toconao yarn. I wanted three contrasting skeins to go with the purple skeins I bought at Norfolk yarns a while ago, so I can make the Velvet Morning cardigan from Knitty, and I'd been keeping an eye open for a yarn sale for this. I love Celticove, I've been ordering from them every now and again for years, and they always have good sales, and speedy delivery.

And finally, some knitting, or rather crochet. I finished all the squares for the (2011) KAL blanket so have been crocheting them together. It was slow progress at first as I haven't crocheted in a while, but I got faster towards the end. Now I just have loads of ends to sew in and then I need to block it.

I've also been knitting another tea cosy for a friend of a friend, but have been mainly doing the blanket whilst I waited for the yarn for my cardigan to arrive.