Liesl finished

Yay, Liesl is finished, and I'm really pleased with it (her?). I've made it(her?) quite long as I wanted to use the yarn up - I used up all 406 metres (320g) of the Araucania Toconao I had left over in purple after making my Fantastic Purple Cardigan a couple of years ago. It's 100% merino yarn, bought at 50% off from Norfolk Yarns when we visited there on holiday in 2010. It's lovely to knit with.

I love the Liesl pattern. There's enough happening to keep it interesting, but it's a quick knit using aran weight (you can use different weights of yarn) on 7mm needles. I think it will be a really useful cardigan too in a few weeks time, once the weather is a tiny bit warmer. The yarn is also soft enough to wear over a short-sleeved top or dress.

I blocked it using some Eucalan wool wash in lavender (seemed appropriate, given the colour!), and here is the finished item!

I actually finished the knitting about 10 days ago, but then had to wait for it to dry, and then go and buy a button for it. I only did one buttonhole, and found this purple button in a local shop which I thought would be perfect.

I'm pleased with the fit (it was hard to tell whilst trying it on during the knitting, as the circular needle pulled it backwards. I know I could have put it onto a bigger circular etc to try on, but I couldn't be bothered!).

And the back view. I'm especially pleased with the length of it.

So, that left me with a knitting gap this week, and 2 x knitting group plus an awful lot of TV either on or recorded to catch up with (Broadchurch, The Casual Vacancy, Indian Summers, Call the Midwife, Wolf Hall, The Legacy), so I needed to get my next projects chosen quickly. I did some swatching for Harvest Moon, intending to use one particular yarn for it, but it really didn't work and I just couldn't get gauge. The yarn was also horrible to knit with! Then I tried a swatch using my Rowan/Amy Butler Belle Organic Aran (originally purchased half price in the John Lewis Christmas sale the year I was working in London), and this went much better. The pattern calls for 4.5mm needles, but I had to go down to 4mm to get gauge. However, the knitted fabric feels and looks lovely, and the yarn is a dream to knit with. It's 50% organic wool and 50% organic cotton, with great stitch definition. It's more of a duck egg blue shade than it appears below.

The construction is fun. You knit a garter stitch strip, with a clever thing at the end which sort of centres the edging at the edge (that probably doesn't make any sense put like that). This is the collar of the cardigan.

Then pick up a billion stitches along the edge and knit downwards, increasing for the yoke.The billion stitches took most of one knitting group session to pick up!

It's a really satisfying knit, and is great for TV knitting, including subtitles, as you can work away without looking at it too much.

However, I also had my church's Quiet Day to go to yesterday, which involved 3 x 15 minute talks, with an hour of quiet reflection after each of them (all interspersed with tea, lunch or cake!), and craft activities were being provided to help people to be quiet and reflect. Of course, I could have taken Harvest Moon (and, in fact, I did), but I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to start another shawl. Having purchased two skeins of Triskelion Taliesin 4ply sock yarn at Yarndale in September, I'd been on the look out for a pattern to go with it, and finally settled on Semele.

As I'd suspected, this was a good choice as it required a fair amount of concentration, but still meant I could get on what I was meant to be doing at the Quiet Day! I took Harvest Moon as back up, just in case I ran into pattern problems or something, but all was fine.

Across the finishing line

I managed to get my Canyonlands Shawl finished for the end of the Ravellenic Games.
Got the ends sewn in on Friday, having cast off the night before. As usual with shawls, it doesn't look like very much until it's blocked!

Blocking. This time I used a tiny bit of Ecover delicates laundry liquid, and left it to soak for half an hour, before rinsing and squeezing dry.

And then pinned out - it's so much bigger!

And finished!

Ravellenic Games - and they're off

Right, so I was all set for the start of the Ravellenic games last Friday. We'd been to Reading for the day on the train so I had to cast on on the train back. In preparation I'd wound the yarn for the shawl  into a ball:

And dug out the pattern and yarn for the cardigan WIP I need to get finished. That's a bumper pack of over 1kg of the yarn I got in a bargainous sale at Skip North years ago, rather than the amount I need to knit to get it finished!

I did a little bit of swatching for the shawl, as the top part of it is garter stitch, so I thought I'd investigate how it looked. The shawl is meant to be on 4mm needles using fingering weight yarn, but my 4mm needles were already in use for the cardigan project, so I went down to 3.75mm, as I wasn't sure if I'd have enough yarn or not.

Within five days I'd finished the first half of the shawl, which is garter stitch with increases, so straightforward. This was good TV knitting, including subtitled Scandi-crime dramas. I love the way the greens and blues are coming out in the shawl too!

Not sure how far I'll get with the Ravellenic projects though. Since I cast on the whole new lot of flooding happened, and although my home isn't affected, I've done some volunteering in a local flood relief centre, so haven't had as much time for knitting as I'd anticipated.

Ravellenic games

Back in 2006 I "competed" in what was then known as the Knitting Olympics. I found this old post about it whilst hunting around on my blog for something else. And how things have changed in eight years. Not only did Ravelry not exist then, but it was three jobs and an awful lot of house moves ago. In that post, I list all the things I need to do in the Olympic timeframe:

10th - 26th February. I calculate that I have two Knit Lincs meetings, four nights away for work, nine days at work, two days in London, 300 miles of train travel and 600 miles of car travel (but with me driving) to get done in that time too.

 How things change. This time around, for the 2014 Ravellenic Games (7th - 23rd February), I'll have:
Eight days at work
 249 miles of car travel
No train travel
No days in London
No nights away
4 knitting group meetings

However, according to my across the finishing line post, in 2006 I also had all the catering provided by Mum, plus a cat to cheer me on. Back in 2006 I managed to complete two baby jumpers for Feed the Children in the time. I know my knitting has speeded up since then, but that I also have much less time available now - all those nights away for work consisted of having an early meal in a pub, then spending the entire evening sitting in a B & B knitting away. Plus the trips into London each involved about 3 hours of knitting time.

So, I've joined Team GB for the Ravellenic games. And I'm trying to decide what to knit. I am stash-busting so I don't want to buy any more yarn for it, although I was very tempted to join in with the rainbow project idea to raise awareness and protest about the appalling way LGBT people are treated in Russia.

The idea is that it should be a personal challenge for you, so I have various different ideas:

• Age 9-10 cabled hoodie for nephew's birthday. I have to knit this anyway, and it's a pattern I know well (this will be the fourth). The challenge will be completing it in the time. It might be a good opportunity to do some more practice with continental knitting, which I haven't done for ages.
• A secret project. Needs doing, but I won't be able to blog about it or put it on Ravelry so probably not the greatest idea.
• A shawl in 4 ply - there won't be enough time to do one in laceweight. Not sure how feasible this is, as a lot of my knitting time recently has been whilst watching foreign language sub-titled TV, which really isn't compatible with knitting lace. I really like the Ashton shawlette, but would want to customise it up to a bigger shawl, and I don't have enough of one kind of 4ply yarn to do that, unless I use the Drops alpaca (actually a sport weight) and do stripes. I do have some Schaefer Yarn Anne which is a light fingering weight, although still not quite enough to do the bigger shawl suggested. Or there's the Misty Scarf, for which I actually already possess both yarn and pattern. Or the Juno Regina stole/wrap which looks more straightforward even if it is in laceweight.
• I also really like the Zuzu's Petals cowl/shawlette, which the Yarn Harlot recently blogged about, but it sounds like this pattern is quite quick, so perhaps won't be challenging enough. Or I could combine it with another project too? And I don't have the right quantity of yarn again for it, unless I use the aforementioned Drops alpaca. And I'm not sure I want a stripy one. Variegated would be fine, but not stripy.
• Then there are the sock possibilities. A simple pair of socks would only take me about 10 days, so I need something more challenging. It will have to be the stitch pattern, as I've given up with short-row heels as they just don't fit my ridiculously bony skinny heels. A few patterns are in my queue that I want to try. Aquaphobia socks: lovely pattern, but it's slip stitches so not particularly challenging? The Wraptor socks are quite exciting, but I don't think the heel will work with my feet. The Bigger on the Inside socks are quite cool, and have cables, which I haven't done on a sock before. Hermione's Everyday Socks are a definite possibility. As are the Baroque socks, which have twisted stitches/cables and a heel flap. Or the Sapient Pearwood socks, or Having Hope socks (which also has the advantage of all the pattern proceeds going to Cancer Research). I've wanted to knit the Monkey socks for ages too. And Chimaera.
• Or Fair Isle. I'd love to knit the Sheep Carousel tea cosy, Peerie Flooers hat or Rams and yowes blanket, but I don't have the yarn necessary, so those aren't an option, and definitely the blanket isn't feasible in the time frame!
• Or the adult size garments, although I'm really not sure how realistic that is. Possibilities here include Hey Teach, which is a cardigan involving lace. This has the disadvantage of being worked flat and needing seaming though. Liesl, which is top-down. Or the Lotus Blossom Tank, although there seems to be some negative comments about the pattern on Ravelry and I don't really want to be knitting with cotton in February.

But, after much much cogitation, the problem was solved by the arrival of this skein, as reported in my last post. And I really really really want to knit with it NOW, so I went searching around, and found the Canyonlands shawl, which looked like a good match. It's for fingering weight yarn, and can be tweaked relatively easily to get the most shawl out of the yarn. Plus, I've started wearing scarves/small shawls to work and this looked like the sort of thing I could wear with my work outfits. So, that's one event (Short Track Shawls) sorted. This one also qualifies for the Lace Luge and Single Skein Speed Skate events.

I had a look at my hibernating projects list, which isn't that long, and decided to have a go at finishing this wrapover cardigan. Started in January 2008, last knitted in June 2008. It appears to have two fronts, a back, one sleeve and a bit of a sleeve, so it just needs one sleeve finishing, the border knitting, blocking and then seaming. So, I have an entry in WIPs Dancing too.

No idea if all this is feasible in the time I've got available, but we shall see...
Are you competing in the Ravellenic Games this time too?

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.

Of kitchens and heffalumps and other knitted things

I haven't really disappeared off the face of the earth. I've just been a teeny tiny bit distracted by having a new kitchen. Little did I realise how disruptive this was going to be, or how long it was going to take, plus all the new muscles I'd develop carting the contents of the kitchen upstairs to store, and then back down again afterwards.

The old kitchen

The other side of the old kitchen

All the planning, disruption and work has been well well worth it though, as the new kitchen is both lovely and light, as well as giving us more storage space and being easier to clean.

The new gleaming kitchen

Lots of storage space!

I have got quite a lot of knitting done, although it had to happen around all the dust and everything else. We had to eat out every night for about three weeks (ouch) which cut into the time I had available. My main project during this time was a present for my nephew, who had suddenly requested a soft toy for his seventh birthday - a bit of a surprise, as I'd been expecting a list of Desired Lego.

I'd wanted an excuse to knit the Elijah pattern by Ysolda Teague, and this looked like the perfect opportunity. Heffalump was knitted using Sirdar Countrystyle DK so he'd be machine washable. The pattern is great - no sewing up as you pick up stitches and knit in the round so it's a very fun pattern and was quite quick to make. I made a label to go with him too.

 I've also made some more progress with my Aeolian Shawl, and have finished the first section of the pattern, although there's still a long, long, long way to go. We received an invite to a wedding in mid-June, and I had thought about getting it finished in time to wear for that, then realised that is a bit of a vain hope as I just won't have time!

And I got my Froot Loop socks finished - this has been my default easy and portable pattern for knitting group/taking on the train etc so these got finished relatively quickly. I still really like the cheap and cheerful yarn (going to be interesting to see how well it washes), and the pattern is fun - 4 round repeat so easy to memorize.

That's all for now - but I still have various gardening updates to blog about, as well as some yarn shopping expedition(s)!