Several knitting projects

I was going to go on a yarn diet as I'll be on maternity leave for almost all of this year, but present yarn is excluded. I took LO into London

 to meet up with some friends, and managed to make my way to Iknit as well, where I found they stocked West Yorkshire Spinners sock yarn (something I've been greedily eyeing up online). Two balls found their way home with me (Bullfinch and Cayenne pepper) initially intended as a present, but then the recipient let it be known that they had a present in mind, so I bought them that instead and kept these for myself! I am now using the Cayenne pepper to knit a Thousands cardigan, using some leftover sock yarn as the contrast colour.

I then had the bright idea of knitting a Thousands cardigan for LO, and some knitting group friends were doing a bulk order to save on postage, so I ordered two more balls of Signature sock yarn in Poppy seed.

I've got a couple of finished project to finish off. This is a hoodie for my Godson's birthday, when he'll be two. The pattern is Playdate Hoodie, a free Lion Brand pattern, and I used some John Lewis Heritage Aran from my stash. It's a nice pattern, with not too much sewing up to do.

I've also finished a pair of socks. These are another pair of Garter rib socks, for me, using Baby og Hosegarn sock yarn from my stash.

Up until now I've had one project on the go at a time, as I didn't think I'd have time to do much knitting with a baby around. But I've had a few incidences of her falling asleep in the car, and me having to sit in a car park, outside the house and wait for her to wake up (we haven't got a travel system, so I remove her from the car seat to take her out), when it would be really  handy to have a small knitting project with me. So I think I'm going to have a home project and a project to take around with me from now on. Haven't decided what this project will be though, but probably another pair of socks.

Like last year, I'm keeping track of yarn acquired and used this year. So far:
Yarn used: 1455.1 metres
Yarn acquired: 1600 metres

so I have a bit of work to do to make the first figure bigger than the second!

Stash stuff

I realised I hadn't got round to updating my totals of stash used up last year. I'm pleased with how I did, although being pregnant and knitting small baby garments definitely helped! I kept track each  month using an Excel spreadsheet, and last blogged about it in October.

I think I will total up October - December together, as I had the baby then, so there was less knitting taking place. I looked back at my Ravelry projects page to work out what I finished knitting each month.

Total in: 0 metres
Total used: 2045.2 metres

That means, over 2015, I acquired 4726.5 metres of yarn, but used up 8793.8 metres, leaving me with a grand total of 4067.3 metres of yarn less than at the start of the year. I'm pretty pleased with this, as I started the year intending to reduce the size of the stash, and it looks like I've succeeded. I'm planning to do more of the same in 2016, not least because I'll be on maternity leave for over eleven months of the year so won't have much spare cash to spend on yarn.

My current projects are going well. I'm mostly knitting the garter rib socks at knitting group, which means that not a lot gets done as I usually spend at least half the meeting feeding LO!

I've been working on a Playdate Hoodie for my Godson's birthday in June, when he'll be two. I've made the largest size and am using John Lewis Heritage aran which I had in my stash. This pattern knits up quickly, and is fairly simple but a satisfying knit.

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.

Zooming along

Probably because I haven't done a knitting update for a while, I seem to have a lot of FOs to show off. I'm particularly pleased with my Harvest Moon cardigan, which is really comfy to wear (I love the pockets, even if they were a bit fiddly to knit) and which I really enjoyed knitting. The pattern is Harvest Moon by Heidi Mirrmaier, and I used 11.4 balls (570g) of Rowan Amy Butler Belle Organic Aran on 4mm needles. The yarn is 50% wool and 50% cotton and lovely to knit.

This is it prior to blocking!

I've also finished a couple of baby cardigans for friend's babies' birthdays. These are the Baby Vertebrae pattern by Kelly Brooker (whose Puerperium cardigan I also love). The yarn I've used is Patons Fab DK, an acrylic which doesn't feel acrylicy, and you can get a 12 - 18 month size out of one 100g ball! This colourway is Violet Print, and I got it from John Lewis at Nottingham. It's come out a lot more purple/brown than I thought it would from the ball.

This colourway is called "Fruity", although I think "Neon" would be a better description. This one was from Love Knitting using a discount code.

Remember this Beyond Puerperium I knitted back in November? Here's a picture of the recipient wearing it!

And, of course, after all that knitting, I needed a new project. I'd just seen Tabitha's Heart Design's Samwise Gamgee socks pattern, so decided to make a start on a pair of those, combined with some Katia Olé sock yarn from my stash. 

So, I haven't done a stash in/out update for a while, and I've got through a lot this month (I only count totals for yarn used in a finished item in the month it's finished). There is another secret project which I also got done this month which is included in the totals.  So far this year:

January: In 0m Out 820.7m

February: In 388m Out 406m
March: In 274.3 Out 1703.7m
April:  In 424.3 Out 1644.2m

So, I have acquired some yarn so far this year, but for projects that are presents. That is 1086.6m acquired, but I have knitted/destashed a total of 4574.6m, and every month has seen more used up than acquired! So, so far this year, I have used up 3488m more than I acquired. Which is good as I have trips to Iknit and Iknit Fandango planned during May, so my totals may not look quite so good soon!

Stripes

So, the Not Nautical or Striped, nautical striped sweater now has stripes. Confused? Yes, so am I. But I seem to have got round the problem of discovering I had two different colourways in my stash (oops) by introducing the stripes into the top section. I'm planning to echo this on the front as well. And, depending on the light in the room, it's not actually that obvious.

The garter yoke cardigan is coming along well, and I'm now well down the body. It's quite quick to knit, despite being in DK.

 I was worried that it might not fit (I'm knitting the smallest size), so I tried it on once I'd got a bit further along. It meets comfortably at the neck at the front (not that you can tell from this photo) and I think will be fine.

In other news, I have done a swop, thereby reducing my stash a little more, then promptly acquired 800g of free 4ply which the barman (who is a knitting designer in his spare time) was giving away in the bar where we meet for knitting group. But I haven't taken photos of any of that yet, so it will have to wait for another post.

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...

Bobble man

I got Bobble Man finished - with a bit of a wild hair-do. May be Bobble Woman now, but I think I'll leave him/her as non-gender-specific!

Bobble Person is going to the same charity as the previous toy I knitted, which teaches RE in nursery and primary schools. I'll need to make him/her a friend at some point, so that the kids have a pair to act out the story of the man who built his house on the rock.

Bobble Man the pattern is quite a fun knit. It's in the round, so the finishing isn't too horrendous, although you have to keep your mind on what you're doing as it's easy to do the bottom half of the body at 90° angle to the top half. That looked a bit strange. The hair I added, using the technique outlined in this blog post about creating Harry Potter characters. It takes a surprising amount of yarn to do the hair for one toy!

I'm making great progress on my first stash busting project, the chunky yarn pattern. This is the Lima cardigan in Mirasol Sulka. The yarn is ovely to knit with and the cardigan's coming together fast because it's on 6mm needles. So even the moss stitch isn't taking too long.

And, yes, I have ordered more yarn, in the 10% off New Year sale from GetKnitted. But this is for a definite project, another hooded jumper for my nephew's birthday - in his favourite colour. Despite being acrylic the Supersoft Aran feels soft and not squeaky to knit with, plus it wears really well (I used it for two jumpers for my nephews three years ago, and they're still going strong, although getting a bit small now).

Thank you for the comments about flooding in my previous post. Fortunately the water has gone down now (bizarrely fast, as though someone had pulled the plug out!), although everywhere is still very wet.

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?!