4ply jumper finished, dyeing and some new stuff

I got my 4ply jumper finished, and braved the heat to try it on for a photo. I did take it off again very rapidly afterwards and put it away for when colder weather is here! I really enjoyed knitting the Bello jumper pattern. It's a clear and well-written pattern, knitted in the round from the top downwards, so I could try it on as I went. This really helped me achieve the fit for it. The cable down the front, and the side shaping really help to keep it interesting (I'm surprised how little time it took considering it's knitted with 4 ply sock yarn!). It also only took six balls of Regia Design Line Garden Effects sock yarn, which I bought in the Hobbycraft sale at £1 a ball, making this my cheapest jumper ever knit (it normally retails at £4.70 a ball). I still have four balls of it left (in two different dyelots) too.

Having done a bit of a stash sort-out, I decided to do some dyeing as well. I had a ball and a half of RYC Cashsoft 4ply in cream left over from a project from years ago, and I thought I would be more likely to use it if I dyed it a different colour. Plus, of course, dyeing is fun.

I skeined it up ready for the dyebath, and bought some Kool Aid online from DT Craft & Design. There is a garden centre about 10 miles from me that has an American food section, which I thought might have Kool Aid, but no one answered the phone when I range to check, and I wasn't going to do a 20 mile round trip on the off-chance that they had some! Plus, it doesn't seem to be sold for human consumption in this country, so I'm not sure if they'd have been allowed to sell it as food at the garden centre anyway?

So, I mixed up some Kool Aid in a microwaveable bowl. I can't believe how strongly this stuff smells! This was two 50g sachets of "Polar Blast" flavour.

Added the pre-soaked yarn and then nuked it in the microwave. There are instructions for Kool Aid dyeing on Knitty.
This is the yarn that resulted. I knew it would be quite pale as it has some acrylic in it which wouldn't have taken the dye. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and I still have two sachets of "Black Cherry" flavour to use on something else!!

Plus, Mum came to stay, and she'd been on holiday to a couple of places and brought me back stuff from both of them! First up is two skeins of gorgeous Crookabeck Angoras Young Goat Mohair from the Woolclip in the Lake District.

And some groovy ceramic buttons

 

And, she'd also been to the Holy Land (just before the current Situation started) and brought me back various things, including some sheep made out of wool balls. I have put them away with the Christmas decorations.

Finally, I've been getting organised with a new project, another one for the year of projects. This time it'll be aran weight, and I decided I wanted to use up the 15 balls of Debbie Bliss Cotton Denim Aran which I bought in a sale on Skip North back in 2007. Eeek, that means it's been in my stash for 7 years?!?! I was hoping to make the Lace Edged Cardigan, but was three balls short, plus I'd have had to have bought the pattern book. The yarn is discontinued, and I think mine may have been seconds originally, so attempting to buy an extra few balls would have been tricky. Instead I have settled on Louisa Harding's Nautical Striped Sweater, although mine won't be nautical or striped. I already own the pattern book for this, but need to do a gauge swatch.

I'll let you know how I get on...

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...

Have you read...

... "Lullabies for little criminals" by Heather O'Neill? I'm meant to be reading it for Reading Group next week, but I'm not getting very far. It doesn't sound cheerful from the plot summary in the link above, but I'm not even that far yet - only on page 25! I just can't be bothered to pick it up and read any more of it.

I finished reading "The believers" by Zoe Heller last week, and I'm wondering if that had something to do with it? I picked this one up at the library as I'd enjoyed (probably the wrong word? More like "found compelling and got sucked into it"?) "Notes on a scandal" and thought I'd try something else by Heller. I wasn't too impressed with this one either, once I'd realised I couldn't care less about any of the characters and the fact that nothing really happened until page 82?!?! Apparently one of the things Zeller does is produce unlikeable characters but I'm not sure where the incentive is to keep reading if you don't give a damn what happens to anyone in the book? According to the reviews quoted in the Wikipedia article: "It has been called a "cruelly clever new novel", "an observant and unsentimental family drama that pits rationalism against faith", "at heart an American novel: a larger, more considered, layered and utterly assured study of a family driven by political passion whose personal lives refuse to comply with prescribed ideology", and simply "a brilliant, brilliant book".

Maybe I missed something? Still haven't decided whether to carry on with "Lullabies..." but if I procrastinate much longer it'll be the Reading Group meeting and I won't have read it so the problem will be solved.

In other backward steps I frogged (again) the Herringbone/No purl monkey socks and began pattern attempt no. 3 with the sock yarn. Has my concentration suddenly become really bad or something? I can't ever remember having this many book and knitting failures all at the same time?!

This time I'm attempting the Rib Fantastic pattern from the "Knitting socks with handpainted yarn" book. I'm loving the book (see, I can still read and enjoy something! Maybe it's weird novels that are the problem?) and found the introductory chapters really helpful in terms of different styles of handpainting/dyeing and what to look out for when you're deciding which pattern to use.


I've also knitted half of a tea cosy for a friend's birthday (which was on 3rd April, but I only gave her last year's birthday present at the beginning of March so I'm not doing too badly really...). The pattern is from the RYC Home book and the yarn is some space-dyed DK I bought from Wingham Wools.

I have also been playing hunt the button. I've nearly finished my Suri cardigan and needed five small buttons. Via Twitter Blueadt suggested trying Duttons for Buttons in Harrogate and Anne suggested Dragon Yarns, both of which I liked the look of. But then I got an email from Kangaroo, whom I'd forgotten sold buttons and they had some I really liked. Except of course there's a minimum order, so I ended up ordering more buttons...

These are cheap and cheerful black plastic buttons, along with some sweet little Rowan ones:

and I couldn't resist some of the Debbie Abrahams hand-made buttons, even though they're too big for the cardigan.


I've been playing around with my veg box delivery order too. I use Riverford Norton, which delivers from Hampshire, and I had been getting the mini fruit & veg box every week, but that never includes potatoes or onions, so I've switched to alternating between a mini fruit & veg box, and a mini veg box with extra fruit bag. Except I then invariably find I prefer the look of the other box contents that week so end up switching around again.

Still, this was last week's mini veg box - looks rather good, doesn't it? I consumed the last of it tonight with an omelette!