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!

2014 plans

This is a mosaic of my finished knitting projects of 2013, made using Mosaic Maker:

Plans for 2014 include doing MORE knitting. I only finished 12 projects last year, which doesn't seem that many (OK, so the lace shawl did take up a lot of time, but several of those projects were smallish toys, or baby garments or a hat that only took 10 days to knit). And it's kind of amusing as I thought I'd have loads of extra knitting time once I switched to part-time working...

As I said in my last post, I'd like to get more of my stash knitted up, so I went and had a look at the stash wardrobe.

The hanging bit on the right is where I keep my long dresses (i.e. one dress plus my wedding dress and a couple of ball dresses), so all the boxes are the stash. I'd really like to knit one adult garment in each yarn weight, which would create enough space for the things that are lurking in plastic bags at the top and edges to disappear into the boxes, and it would all be a lot neater and easier to excavate.

I've already cast on for my chunky project. This is the gauge swatch for Lima, a cardigan pattern by Jane Ellison using Mirasol Sulka, a lovely lovely lovely soft yarn (merino, silk and alpaca mix), which I bought in 2009 to cheer myself up whilst recovering from swine flu.

I'm planning a 4ply sock yarn jumper, probably the Linnae Pullover, but just using the pattern outline rather than doing the fair isle too. And I'm enjoying looking at various DK and aran patterns, as it'll be a while before I'm ready to start on those. I'm also planning a few pairs of socks and other smaller things.

Oh, and I've started a Bobble Man, for the same charity I mentioned in my last post, using up oddmends of DK.

What are your knitting plans for 2014?!

Decisions, decisions

I've sewn together the cardigan I'm making for a friend's baby, due next year:

Still need to get a couple of buttons for it, but otherwise it's finished. The yarn is James C Brett Marble Chunky and the pattern is a James C Brett one, JB013 - Cardigan (imaginative title there). I do like the Marble yarns (it's available in DK as well) as they're reasonably priced, 100% acrylic but don't feel like acrylic, are machine washable and have interesting colour effects. The Chunky also comes in a huge 200g ball, which meant it only took one ball to make the cardigan. The pattern is slightly annoying (having knitted a couple of Puerperiums I am now annoyed with having to sew things together in other patterns). It actually directs you to knit the edging of the cardigan as a strip and then sew it on - I think not, I just knitted it along the edge, so much easier.

Having got that finished, I was now free to decide on what to knit next, which is when the decisions got difficult. I wanted to make one of the three patterns I was given for my birthday, and settled on Everyone Outta the Pool as it's always good to have some socks on the go. This pattern works best for socks in variegated colourways and uses slip stitches to mix them up to avoid pooling. I decided to use some Trekking XXL, bought in Bristol several years ago as I thought the bands of bright colours would look good with the slip stitches.

At first I wasn't sure this was working as the green/blue sections of the yarn make it hard to see the slip stitches, but now I've knitted a bit further I like the effect it's producing. It's been a while since I did a toe-up sock, so I'm enjoying this one. The pattern has a short row heel, but these tend not to fit my feet very well as my heels are narrow and pointy, so I decided to substitute the heel from Sensational Knitted Socks, which I used for my Beaded Rib socks, back in 2007. However, it turned out when I looked at the notes I made on Ravelry for the socks in 2007, that I'd actually substituted a different heel again, this time from the second issue of Yarn Forward, which I think I sold on ebay a couple of years ago. Oops. As I now can't remember why, five years ago, I didn't want to use the heel from Sensational Knitted Socks, I think I'll go with that one and see what happens.

I also decided to start another present pattern, the South Seas Stole, and settled on some yarn from my stash, the Clicky Needles merino silk lace, which I bought on holiday in Gloucester in May. This, of course, meant getting the swift and ballwinder out.

The yarn feels lovely, and I'm really looking forward to knitting with it, but I can't decide whether to put beads on the stole or not. The pattern includes instructions for with and without beads. The yarn is handwash only, so including beads won't affect how I care for the finished item. Part of me things that I'm more likely to use the stole if it hasn't got beads on (with beads it seems more smart/evening/going out type clothing, but then stoles generally would be in that category), but another part of me wants to do more knitting with beads - I've only done a small amount before, on a workshop I took in Nottingham with Debbie Abrahams, back in 2006. I don't have any beads at home that would be suitable, but it would be very easy to get some as there are several local shops that have things like that.

So, I'm still trying to decide about that one.