Knitting Accessories

I never got round to posting about the needle-holder my mum made me for christmas. I asked for a circular needle holder, as although I don't use circs very often I have still managed to obtain quitea few and wanted them all in one place rather than floating around my needle-drawer. So I found a couple of examples on etsy and sent the links to my mum. We were having a £5 present challenge, so I thought this was something she could make me from her fabric stash or something. Anyway, she came up with this:

Isn't it great? There is space for 9 circs, although I've doubled up in some pockets. Its just what I wanted, and as ever her sewing is perfect. My mum is so good with her sewing machine I often feel that I should do more sewing, but I haven't touched a machine since I was at school. Lack of storage space means we can't have one in the house unfortunately.

Next up are some Brittany cable needles I picked up when I went to the LYS to get 4mm DPNs for the Fetchings I made for Gran. The shop sadly didn't have any wooden or bamboo dpns in 4mm so I had to settle for metal ones. But then these caught my eye:

The basic cable needles I already have are just like dpns really - only there is just one of them. The advantage of these guys is that they are really SHORT. Which was helpful doing the fetchings as I found cabling on dpns quite fiddly at times. They also have a slight bulge at each end to help keep your stitches from falling off. Brilliant! The pack of three cost me £2.75 which I didn't think was bad.

Obviously the legendarily crap Brittany packaging is a bit annoying though.

Fetching!

fetching4
Originally uploaded by cob_web

I knit a pair of Fetching over the weekend and finished them on monday night and posted them off today for my Gran. I have no idea if old ladies like this kind of thing, but she likes the fact that I knit so I wanted to make her something to let her know I'm thinking of her. i'm quite pleased with them!

The ridge you can see is where I did an extra cable round by mistake and had to frog. Grrr.

Wearing an FO

bohemian V-3
Originally uploaded by cob_web

So here is a pic of me wearing my "bohemian V". I had lots of requestes elsewhere for an action shot! You can see lots of other shots on Ravelry or on my Fickr (should be a link on ere somewhere for both).

No news

I haven't posted for a while, sorry. I've been hit hard by going back to work. Maybe two weeks off was too long!

I'm knitting my second jaywalker sock and have nothing else OTN (Sheldon has taken a short holiday to stay with my mum for a while, she can crochet you see). I keep wanting to cast on the first Fetching when the sock needles hurt my fingers, but a combination of hardening fingers and not so long to be able to spend knitting has meant that point hasn't come yet.

My Gran has had a small stroke and I think is in hospital (my mum said last night that she was, but my sister didn't seem to think so). They are going up to see her as I type - if they'd waited one day I could have gone :-(

I'm wondering if there is anything I can knit for her. I know she liked the slippers in Vogue Knitting Socks Two but I'm thinking she probably needs something with a more substantial non-slip sole really, being old and all. Do you think an old lady would like a pair of Fetchings?

Yarn shopping!

So we went up to Nottingham on friday for Liz's birthday. Matt ended up with a horrible cold so we came home before the party on saturday, but it was nice to spend some quiet time with Liz and Denzil and actually get to chat.

Anyway, you don't care about that do you? This is a knitting blog! The point of this is that we got into Nottingham early so we could do some shopping. So of course I insisted that we go to Yarn in Beeston - since its pretty much just opposite where we had to go to catch the bus into town anyway. Yarn opened up after I had left Nottingham, which is such a shame. Its small, smaller than the Interknit cafe in Farnham which I guess is my LYS. But its lovely, and the staff are very friendly. L&D bought me some yarn from there for my birthday last year, which I thought was incredibly thoughtful seeing as they have no idea how to knit and had no idea how expensive yarn was! LOL.

My favourite purchase was some Araucania yarn called Ranco Multi. I had never heard of this before - its from Chile, which seems rather silly given the amount of sheep we have in this country but I'm afraid I just could not resist the purply-goodness. This will become socks for me as I have a distinct lack of purple socks, which seems wrong.

Next up was more sock yarn. I asked Matt if he would like me to knit him some socks, mostly thinking he'd say no. But apparently he would. So I said he could chose some yarn - whatever he wanted. I knew he didn't want stripey socks, so there was some nice dark grey and some nice blue semi-solids I spotted. But no, he went for this:

This, my friends is Opal Uni in the brightest red you've ever seen. He also wants PLAIN socks, no pattern at all. I think knitting stocking stitch in this stuff for his man-sized feet may just send me INSANE. You know those times you wish you'd kept your big mouth shut? I doubt he would ever has ASKED for socks... LOL!

Oh well, will be a good opportunity to try out toe-ups I think.

And finally, a single ball of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. The plan was to pick up a ball of this to knit a pair of Fetching for my sister. Mostly as a quick "sorry" present - I forgot to pack her birthday present when we went for New Year (her birthday is the 22nd Dec) but also because I want to have another go at cables, and its a present for less than a fiver. They didn't have much choice in colour, so I ended up with this quite nice green:

Not what I would have usually picked, but its nice. However, Soph gets bad eczema on her hands and needs proper gloves in the winter, so doesn't think she will use them. I might do them for her anyway, for spring. They look like a nice little project so I'll probably knit them and then decide what to do with them.

Bohemian V - finished

Bohemian V-finished
Originally uploaded by cob_web

So I finished my "Bohemian V" just in time to wear it to my parents for New Year/Xmas2. I had wanted to wear it so my sister could see it as she was really interested in the pattern and wanted one for herself.

I had a nightmare with this pattern. It was (IMO) badly written, and I had to re-write sections myself so I could follow them while I was knitting and not keep thinking "WTF?".

The finished measurements were ENORMOUS and after a bit of internetting I decided to cast on for the size 8 (even though I measured up as a size 12). After a few rows I thought it was going to be too small, so frogged and cast on for the size 10. Posts on the web said that it was really long, and measuring against jumpers I like seemed to confirm this. So I made it 10cm shorter. I moved the v-neck up a bit to compensate, so had to re-calc how that would work.

As it is I think its a fraction too short, although as my aunt pointed out, things that sit on your hips tend to make you look wider, so short things are good. I can see her point, as I share her ample hips. However, I really dislike that gap you get between your trousers and your top when you sit down... ah well.

I wore it over a black shirt and I think it looked pretty good. My sister was impressed enough to place an order for one, and I got lots of compliments. Although everyone there was related to me...

No pics of it on as we were rather distracted by my parent's poor dog having to have surgery after being attacked (see my LJ). I was going to take pics today but realised I haven't washed my hair for 2 days...

I'm going to look for a sub for the Rowan Big Wool to see if I can make it any cheaper for my sister. But she does really like the colour, and I have a ball left over as I made mine shorter, so she'd only need 4 balls (if I can match the dye-lot). So if anyone knows of a good sub for Rowan Big Wool please shout! It is a bit pricey.

Picking up all the stitches for the v-neck border was hell, but as Alice predicted it all turned out OK. The combination of all those stitches bunched up on the needle and ribbing looking crap to begin with was to blame.

Details:
Pattern = Forever Green, Simply Knitting 35
Yarn = Rowan Big Wool in Bohemian, 4 balls
Needles = 10mm, 9mm for ribbing
Pattern Mods = made a size smaller than suggested. Shortened body by 10cm, moved start of v-neck up by 4 rows.

If anyone is interested in doing this pattern I can type up my re-written sections. Thought I'd better not post 'em here - probably against copyright or something.