The Trouble With Not Blogging . . .

 . . . is that eventually you have to try and catch up.

Thank you for the responses to my post about my charity shop finds. Some of my 'yarn cakes' have been turned into a Tempest.
This is now finished but for the buttons. Since I have yet to take a proper picture, here is a teaser:

At first I wasn't sure I would ever wear it, because it's a bit on the 'rough and ready' side because of the different yarn textures. With the right outfit it looks punky/emo, though, and the colours are scrummy together.


A totally different look is my crocheted 'Fat Bottomed Bag' from the Happy Hooker. I made this with leftover Patons Sorbet. Very summery and quick to make up!

A probable lapse-of-judgement project is the 'Zip and Zing' hoodie from Simply Knitting magazine 68. There's nothing wrong with the pattern (Susan40james is working on a lovely version using the recommended yarn) and I learned a lot doing it. Maybe the most important lesson is this - if a yarn isn't working with any project because it looks cheap, it probably isn't worth spending the time knitting a adult-sized hoodie with it just because you bought 10 balls of it and you want to turn it into something.

Oh, and I also forgot what size I usually wear and made it too big.

But - pockets! A zip! Picked up stitches! Not wasted, but not really wearable either. Other knitters must have these projects lurking in the back of a wardrobe somewhere, right?

I have some new cute socks for me:

 and some xmas socks currently on the needles.

This is my first time using Rico sock yarn. This is a bit rougher than the Regia I've been using so far - thinner too - but I like it, and I love the way the colour is working up.

That's not all, but it's all for now!

Early optimism

Soon after my last post, my laptop screen fizzled out. £70 and a new LCD screen later, I am back in business (I hope!).

I have much knitting to show, a bit of new stash to flash, lots of blogs to catch up on, and perhaps a bit of puppy news to share.

Charity Shop Rummaging

I love charity shops more than is good for me - if I don't restrain myself my home would end up looking like one. I especially like looking for craft materials, partly because I'm a bit of a hippy, eco sort at heart, but mostly because I'm on a tight budget. I am very envious of those bloggers I see who can look at a fugly skirt and imagine what glorious thing it could become.

I have dipped my toe in the water recently by purchasing knitwear for the specific purpose of reclaiming the yarn. The first two were probably a mistake. I'm still a newbie and I guessed that two jumpers were made of DK weight yarn - alas, they were much thinner and unravelling them is a major undertaking. The colours are a lovely bright green and lavender blue so I'm sure I will use them eventually.

I had more luck on my second attempt with this poncho which was on the children's rack.

The yarn is an alpaca/wool/acrylic blend, which is very soft and drapy. It has fabulous heavy buttons. Unfortunately, the buttons and the fabric aren't a good combination - the buttonholes had all ripped, which I didn't realise until I got home.

This is now becoming a Ribbed Lace Bolero, perfect for the time of year!

Another find was this 'grab bag' of yarn. The going rate around here is 50p for a skein or partial skein of yarn. Since the yarn was in a bit of a tangle in the carrier bag, I offered £5 for the whole bag rather than spending ages untangling the ones that I wanted.

I didn't have any ideas what I would do with it, but I loved the bright colours. The WPI tells me that this is DK weight or slightly lighter. My thoughts while in the shop were along the lines of a granny square blanket or socks (lots!), but there is enough of the blue and green above to possibly get a couple of summer tops out of.

Some of my favourites:

One thing I found interesting is the way the skeins are wound. It looks to me like these have been wound by hand, or at least at home. Can anyone shed any light on this? How do you wind yarn to look like this?

Little Orange Bird

I admit, part of the reason I wanted to learn crochet was because I fell in love with the Amigurumi projects I'd seen on Ravelry. I did start the Exchange Bag from The Happy Hooker, but decided it was a bit much for my first crochet project. Cue, the Birds of A Feather pattern, which is very cute and very do-able for a beginner.

The stuffing is showing through a bit because I didn't have the right size hook and had to go up to a bigger size. But sometimes the urge to cast on (or make a chain, in this case?!) is urgent and must be obeyed.

Done in an evening, which considering this was my first ever crochet project shows just how fast these little guys are to make! I would not be surprised if he ends up with a few friends before long . . .

A Wonderfully Soft . . . Swimming Cap

Remember my Blue Odessa Hat? Well, I bought some beads of a more appropriate size and made another, this time using Sirdar Luxury Soft Cotton DK in the colour Lychee. On first glance this yarn looks white, but it is actually a very light blue.

I had such high hopes for this hat. The pattern is wonderful, the fabric is so very soft, the beads are pretty. When I put it on though, DH said "it looks like a swimming cap". Unfortunately, his not-so-tactful observation is probably correct.

I made the hat a bit longer this time, so it can possibly be saved if I frog back to an inch before the decreases and reknit it a bit shorter. But maybe the colour just doesn't work on me in this style? Who knows. The ends are woven in, so this isn't going to be fun.

Having this yarn knitted up makes me see the attraction of the cotton washcloths that people knit. I never really understood why people make them, but this cotton yarn is just so soft and lovely that it would make a really luxurious face cloth.

In other news, I cashed out a £10 Waterstones voucher from an online survey site. I used this, plus the princely sum of 99p of my own money, to buy 'The Happy Hooker' by Debbie Stoller. I have crochet hooks that belonged to DH's late Nan, and I thought it would be nice to learn to use them. Crochet always looked like magic to me - I couldn't figure out how you could possibly keep track of all those lacy patterns and circles and whatnot. Two days worth of swatches later and I am a few steps closer to understanding this mystery. And crochet is so quick! Very good for an impatient sort like me (hey, why do you think I knit so many lacy patterns?).

This is a great book for absolute beginners - I haven't needed to go online to check videos to clarify anything. The instructions are very clear, and the tone stops you feeling like you're doing something terribly old-fashioned.

Cherie Amour is finished!

I have reached a knitting milestone - my first proper wearable garment is finished!

I fell in love with the Cherie Amour pattern as soon as I saw it, and so when the wonderful Kemps listed Patons Sorbet in their clearance section for 79p a ball, the time had come to cast on and see if this slightly unusual pattern would be too much for a beginner.

There are a couple of problems with the pattern - the neckline decrease chart doesn't do what you expect, and you actually have to add in extra decreases which aren't charted. Luckily there are plenty of hints around Ravelry. In my concentration to get the neckline correct, I slipped up on the second error in the pattern which I had already spotted - the symbols in the chart are wrong on Row 21. I made the mistake on both front panels, so at least it is a symmetrical mistake!

When I first tried the sleeveless body on, I was aghast by how wide it made my waist look. It sat around, unseamed, until I had the brainwave of trying it on over a white top instead of black. Much better! I think because this makes the ribbed waistband darker in comparison to the rest, so it appears visually nipped in and smaller. Hoorah.

I'm a dress size smaller on the top than on the bottom, so I started the bottom-up pattern in size S, then reduced the number of stitches on the final row before the ribbing (by more than the pattern says) and did the rest in size XS.

I decreased from 108 stitches to 92 like this:

(k5, k2tog) 3 times, k4, k2tog - repeat to end of row (4 times).

One Dead Jumper

I made the wrong decision to carry on with my teal raglan jumper. I tried it on yesterday after knitting about another 8 inches and it's far too big. After some angst I decided that there was no point carrying on with it.

The only other thing I have on my needles at the moment is Cherie Amour and I needed something straight-forward to knit last night while watching the election results come in.  After some adjustment I cast on for another version of the same pattern. This version will be 4x2 ribbed, with a round neck rather than a v-neck.

I'm hoping that I may get Cherie Amour finished over the next couple of days, while I have one eye on BBC News waiting to see what happens.

Also a couple of finished objects. My Regia Galaxy socks that I was starting to feel like I would never finish:

I cast on one of these too tightly, so I feel like I have to be really careful putting them on!

And, finally, a non-knitting project - a 'sling' peg bag from the book 'Sew What! Bags'. I picked this book up on a whim from the library and have been very impressed by it. I'd already tried a couple of projects from 'Sew What! Skirts' without success, so I was pleasantly surprised by this one. My peg bag broke the same week I brought this book home, which was serendipitous. Really enjoyed making this!