Knitting small things

As part of the great knitting up some of my stash plans, I've done a few small projects, as well as the bigger ones that are currently on the go.

I needed to make a second Bobble Man to go with the first, which I finally got done. That used up some more oddments of DK.  The pattern is really very easy and removes the need to sew on lots of fiddly little bits, something I've always hated when knitting toys! I've also discovered that the easiest way to do the hair is to do it at knitting group, as it's easy to do at the same time as chatting, but not so easy as the same time as watching TV.

After finishing one of the Puerperiums, I still had a chunk of the yarn left over, and it's an American brand so I'm unlikely to find anything else in my stash in the same weight to use it up with. So a little baby hat seemed like a good plan. I  will either send this off to a charity knit, or add it to the pile of knitting sold on a stall each year at our church Christmas fair.

The pattern is just the basic hat pattern from Ann Budd's Knitter's handy book of patterns, which is a really useful book to have around.

I've also used up a ball of Cashmerino Aran making a pair of Fetching fingerless gloves for me, but they're waiting to be blocked so I haven't photographed them yet.

My Lima cardigan knitting is also complete and waiting to be blocked before I sew it together, so I should soon have another couple of finished items to show off!

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.

Finished projects - cardigan, scarf, beanie, man!

I got a few projects finished just before Christmas. One was Fantastic Purple Cardigan (the Velvet Morning pattern from Knitty), which I made with Araucania Toconao. It's turned out to be a lovely snuggly cardigan, very warm as the yarn is aran weight.

It's not quite as swingy as the Knitty pictures, as my gauge between the plain and fair isle sections turned out to be very very different, so it pulls in quite a bit round the middle. But I still like it, and will wear it, so that's the main thing. I do need to do more practising of fair isle though, as the sleeves (which I knitted last) are much better than the body! The balls are 100g each, which means I have nearly 350g of yarn of the purple (and a bit of the other colours too) to make something else with.

According to Ravelry it's taken about 10 months to knit this, which isn't really true. It was quite a fast knit, as the fair isle keeps you interested, and the aran weight means it goes fast. However, I wasn't keen on the idea of sewing the neck edging all the way round the front, as sewing up really isn't my favourite thing, so I did loads of procrastination. When I eventually did get round to it, I mattress stitched the collar on, and it didn't actually take that long after all...

Another finished project is a ribbed scarf for my BIL for Christmas. This used three balls of Patons Colour Works Aran, which has some fairly subtle colour changes in it. It's nice and soft (and machine washable) but a bit on the splitty side for knitting with.

I made this beanie hat in about 10 days just before Christmas - finished on Christmas Eve just in time to wear it to Midnight Mass! Again, this didn't really take 10 days to knit, most of it was done using magic loop, but I realised I'd find DPNs more useful when the circumference got smaller, and Hobbycraft didn't have the right size in stock so I ordered some from GetKnitted, who were commendably fast (I did wonder whether they'd get through the post before Christmas!).

The pattern is the Thrifter Beanie by Woolly Wormhead, knitted in Manos del Uruguay wool clasica, which is another lovely squooshy yarn.

And this chap is the Man Who Built His House on the Rock, which I made for a friend who runs a charity that does RE teaching with primary school and younger age children. The idea is to have two larger figures that can be used to tell the story, and then make some smaller pairs of figures to give to groups of children so they can tell it for themselves. The figures don't have to have any particular look, and don't have to have a "Biblical" look, they just have to be different to the other one in the pair.

This one is based on the basic pattern from the Sirdar Nativity collection by Alan Dart, and I used some leftover bits and pieces of DK. I wasn't going to make the cloak thing for him, but you can see where the head is attached to the body without the cloak so I added it. Cardboard circles in the feet ensure that he can stand up! The hair is some leftover fun fur yarn someone at knitting group was getting rid of.

I found it quite hard going, as there are LOADS of little pieces to sew together (not my favourite thing!), so I thought I might give Bobble Man a try for the next one! I love the Ravelry pattern browser/advanced search, as it made it really easy to narrow down what I was looking for!

I also found a Downton Abbey season 4 mystery knitalong whilst I was looking for Bobble Man. Shame I've already seen it...

According to my Ravelry projects page, that makes 12 projects completed this year, seven of which used stash yarn, which is pretty good going (I haven't yet done a calculation about how much my stash grew this year!).

Cables and elephants

A lot of the knitting I've been working on at the moment is for presents, so I haven't been able to post pics. But it was my god-daughter's second birthday yesterday, and I'd knitted her an elephant (this is the Elijah pattern by Ysolda). Apparently she's very pleased with it and has called it "Elephant". An elephant takes exactly one ball of Sirdar Country Style DK, using 3mm needles to make the fabric firm enough to stop the stuffing appearing.

I got an iPhone for my birthday, and have been playing around with pictures and knitting apps (I've never owned a smartphone before), which is why some of these pictures may look stranger than usual. I'm loving the Yarma app, which lets you take a photo of your knitting or stash and upload it straight to Ravelry.



And I've been knitting a cabled hoodie for my nephew's birthday in December, but had to get it finished last week as they were coming to stay on Friday night, en route to Heathrow.

This is it a week ago, almost finished, with just the hood to do. That's the point when I ran out of yarn (John Lewis Heritage Aran, which comes in huge 400g balls), which wasn't available online. In the end I had to ring John Lewis on Oxford St (where I bought the first ball) and they tracked down another ball at the Brent Cross branch, which someone then posted to me. Can't beat the John Lewis customer service...

Some frantic knitting this week got the hood finished and sewn on, then I blocked it overnight on Thurs/Fri, and wrapped up on Friday, about two hours before he arrived! The colour below isn't very accurate, it's more of a royal blue as in the picture above, but by the time I finished it there was no daylight so this was the best I could do.

Hopefully he'll like it. This is the 9-10 years size, which is almost big enough for me to wear!



After leaving it blocking I went off to one of our "extra" knitting group meetings - in the daytime several of us who work part-time/are SAHMs sometimes meet up for an extra knitting group - and had to quickly grab my sock yarn blanket as I hadn't got anything else to knit at that point! A strange feeling.

This is coming along well, considering I only knit it when I haven't got anything else on the go. Despite it being a leftover sock yarn blanket, I did buy a couple of balls of My First Regia to get the bright orange and yellow colours I needed at one end of it.

And yesterday I cast on a scarf to give to my BIL for Christmas. This is just a simple k2p2 ribbing, using Patons Colour Works Aran, which is lovely and soft to knit with, but a bit on the splitty side. Still, I like the way the colours work out in it. Despite being aran the recommended needle size is 6.5mm, so it's growing fairly quickly.

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)!