Autumn Tam

I finished the Autumn Tam as planned last week, and duly blocked it and took photos, but it’s taken me until today to sit down and write about them. Oops.

The last bit of the knitting was a bit tedious, as the rows got shorter and the colour changes more frequent, but eventually it was all done, and I sewed in the last of the ends – I’d done them about every inch or so, I knew that otherwise it would be a horrendous task, and I was right – on counting up there are about 50 colour changes, so over 100 ends to sew in!

Then I blocked it over a plate, tying the brim as usual – I may have overdone it a bit, it’s a bit wavy, but it fits okay.

And then spent ten minutes in the garden with the camera at arm’s length trying to make sure it was pointing at my head – which is easier said than done!

I’m very pleased with it, the colours are amazing – there are some that are very close together, but it gives it a great depth.

There are just four rounds of the lightest green, but they really make the pattern pop.

The fabric is lovely and drapy, and has blocked so well that it almost looks as though it was made my a machine, as several people at my knitting group pointed out. I think this is a good thing…

And every knitter I showed it to immediately started looking at the inside, so I’ll share it with you too!

Progress

Sadly real life and the need to make some money has got in the way of crafting a bit this week, hence my silence, but there has been some progress made. Although having started four projects at once, it’s been spread out rather…

I have finished one of the new projects though, the cosy silk and alpaca socks to wear in the house. Modelled with my pyjamas this morning, which how they’ll mostly be worn :)

When I finished those I cast on for a new pair, this time using the stitch pattern from the hopscotch socks I made a couple of years ago. These were part of a sock club I wasn’t a member of, but a friend was and I saw her pattern and copied the stitch pattern from it – I think they were originally toe up, but I did them top down with a short row heel as usual. I loved them, and wore them lots, but they’ve been darned twice already and now need another bit of TLC. They’ve faded too.

It’s a very clever stitch pattern, with slipped stitches on the two rows before you cable, then the cables crossing the purl stitches. It’s easier if you can work out how to do it without having to use a cable needle though – the pattern says to use two, which sounds very fiddly!

As you knit it just looks like rib, but when you stretch it it magically shows the pretty pattern. The colours are a bit bleached here, but it shows the pattern better than the photo that was more colour accurate.

This is on my hand, hence the funny shape!

I’ve been getting on with my Autumn Tam too, I’ve spent a couple of afternoons in the conservatory with an audio book, and now I’m up to the decreases for the crown, so it’s nearly there. I’m loving the colour combinations.

And last night I finally made a start on the chunky jacket I swatched for a couple of weeks ago. It’s double moss stitch, which is fairly tedious, especially on big needles (never my favourite), but it’s going to be a quick knit – this is it after the first ball (I think it’s going to take about nine balls). The cable pattern is much simpler than it looks, largely because it isn’t charted (why?????) but it’s basically a cross, then the two branches going outwards with a moss stitch centre. Very easy.

I’ve been doing a bit of spinning too – last Sunday my friends Jo and Nadine came round, and we had a lovely afternoon spinning and chatting. I’ve carried on most days since, and now I’ve nearly finished the rainbow roving I started before Christmas.

This is the last bobbin (of four).

And this is the first 50g plied up. There’s about 200m. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but I’m thinking possible a lengthways scarf, with the two skeins mirrored. Or I might do something similar but woven. Really I just wanted to spin it to see what happened though – I was pleased that the colours matched up quite well on this skein, let’s hope the second one is so well-behaved!

Right, now to see if I can get the spinning and the hat finished this afternoon – it should be doable if I don’t get distracted!

Seem to be starting something…

It’s a new year, so I’ve since Sunday I seem to have cast on for four different projects. Oops.

Sunday was spent with my parents, catching up on television as it rained pretty much all day, and I cast on for the Autumn Tam I bought from Jamieson’s at Harrogate in November. It’s not going very quickly – it needs a fair bit of concentration – but it’s coming on nicely, and the subtle colour changes are very pretty. It’s also very hard to photograph – I really needed three hands, two to stop it rolling and one to hold the camera!

On Monday the sun shone and we went out for a drive and a pub lunch, and at the last minute I found that I didn’t have anything on the needles suitable for car knitting. I didn’t have time to wind yarn, so I grabbed a ball of Regia Kaffe Fassett yarn and started a sock. We had lunch at The Feathers in Helmsley, and found this little chap on the shelf next to where we were sitting -

A mouseman mouse – there were a few round the place. I do love coming across them, and you do from time to time in Yorkshire. Lunch was good too – masses of Yorkshire ham, with chips and eggs.

Last night I’d had enough of stranded knitting for one day, and had a wander through my Ravelry queue to look for a garment to knit. I came upon the Drop Collar Cabled Jacket by Debbie Bliss, and remembered a pack of Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Chunky I picked up cheaply a few years ago, so I found it and did a swatch. The pattern says 6.5mm needles, I went up to 7mm but I’m still getting 13 sts/4” instead of 12. I’m going to wash the swatch in case it grows, but it doesn’t look as though it will somehow – I can see me swatching again on 8mm. I don’t like using such big needles, but I’ve got the yarn, so I may as well grit my teeth and get on with it!

After that I picked up the blue sock, but I wasn’t feeling the love, so I found some lovely silk/alpaca sock yarn in my enormous box of sock yarn, and cast on for another pair of cosy house socks – I’ve got a couple of pairs in this blend, and they’re lovely to wear in the evening with my pyjamas.

I don’t think Mollie approves of all these new projects!

In other news, I’ve finished the socks I was knitting before Christmas. I’ve used 60g of a 100g ball, so I might make another pair with either shorter cuffs or contrasting heels and toes – I do like the yarn.

I’ve also been doing a bit of spinning, I bought two lots of lovely rainbow fibre from Hilltopcloud – this is shetland and silk roving – there are four 25g lots, so I’m spinning them all separately to make two matching 2ply yarns (well, that’s the theory!)

I also bought a set of BFL/silk rainbow batts, largely because I bought some for my secret santa gift at spinning group, but then didn’t want to part with them!

Right, must go, I’m back at work this afternoon and I need to get dressed! Roll on the weekend :)

2011 – that was the year that was

Inspired by Jane Brocket, I’ve looked through my photos from this year and chosen one from every month (mine are rather less glamorous than hers though!) I’ve not used any particular criteria, just picked one that seemed to stand out from that month’s photos, either as a memory of a good day, or as a pleasing image.

January – a day out in Whitby with Lucy. The sun shone, but it was bitterly cold!

February – I gathered together all my handspun, with a view to trying to knit with some of it. I think I’ve used one skein from that lot. I have spun more though. Hmmm, not sure that worked.

March – knitting in the garden, in the unseasonably warm sunshine. Mollie helped me photograph these cosy socks.

April – my socks got their spring wash before putting them away for the summer.

May – I went to Norfolk. These lobster pots were at Wells-Next-the-Sea.

June – seems to have been a month of sewing. I made my first quilt, with matching cushions and a bag.

July – in London again, for Knit Nation this time. This is St Pancras station.

August – weaving in the garden. This is probably my favourite of all the things I’ve made so far, my handspun, handwoven stole.

September – in Northumberland with Lucy, this is Lindisfarne Priory.

October – apples in the garden. The same ones which are now on the lawn feeding the blackbirds over the winter.

November – Knaresborough. This was a post that never happened, perhaps I’ll get round to it yet.

December – sheep heid!

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for reading this year, stay with me for more of the same next year :)

Christmas cowl

The last two years, I’ve come down with the lurgy between Christmas and New Year, but this year it came early, and started on the Wednesday before Christmas. I managed to go to work that day, and to our knitting group Christmas meal, but by the next day I was feeling dreadful (and rather damp around the face) and didn’t feel up to going anywhere, so I plonked myself on the sofa and caught up on some tv from my V+ box. Just before this started I’d cast on for a cowl, to match my Snapdragon hat and gloves, and having nothing else on the go, I carried on with it. This wasn’t the brightest idea I’ve ever had, the pattern requires more concentration than I could really manage, but eventually I got there (I did have to drop ten cables back three rows each to cross them in the right direction, pick up ten missed m1s from a couple of rows back, and fix a few more odd mistakes, but I managed!)

I used the chart from the Snapdragon tam (by Ysolda), casting on 150 stitches and starting knitting at row 11. I did the pattern repeats up to row 44, then just carried on working in pattern until I’d done two more rows of the circles/flames. For the last row I didn’t do the m1s to start the flames, I just did the first cable cross to finish off the circle, then did about four more rows. There are four rows of garter stitch at each end.

It’s a lovely pattern, very three dimensional. I finished it off at my parents’ house on Christmas day, once I finally managed to get over there – I was going to go over on Christmas Eve, but I was feeling pretty out of it, and I thought that the M62 was perhaps beyond me. By Sunday afternoon it was very quiet though, so I trundled over in the inside lane and arrived in one piece :)

And this is the complete set – I made the tam two years ago, then the gloves last year, then I picked up a couple more balls of the yarn to make the cowl and now it’s finally all done. It doesn’t do to rush these things! Sorry about the lack of modelled shots, but I still look a bit like death warmed up, and I wouldn’t like to inflict that on you…

The yarn is Possum DK from Jamie Possum, which is an 80/20 merino/possum mix, and very warm and lovely and soft, although it might be a bit fluffy for a cowl, I’m having to be very careful not to get it too close to my mouth! With hindsight I might have made the cowl a little narrower, perhaps casting on 120 or 135 stitches, but it’s okay, I wore it yesterday and it kept me nice and warm!

From sheep to sheep

Bear with me, I’m ridiculously pleased with myself today :) My Sheep Heid is all finished, and I’m as ever amazed that it is possible to turn this fibre

(photo from Etsy listing)

into this hat, with sheep and rams :)

with just the aid of a spinning wheel and a pair of needles :)

Anyway, when I finished knitting it yesterday (not long after posting, I just sat and didn’t do anything else until it was done), it looked like this

A sort of slightly oversized beanie. Once upon a time this would have disconcerted me, but I know from experience that blocking over a plate works wonders.

Moll did wonder why there was a hat on a plate on her chair though.

A trick I’m sure I’ve mentioned before is to thread a length of cotton yarn round the top of the ribbing before soaking, then pulling it tight and tying it once it’s on the plate, to stop the rib from stretching out.

Min came to have a look what I was doing in the garden in the cold and damp – she’s not used to seeing me out there at the moment! The apples on the ground are being feasted on by a large family of blackbirds, which is a good excuse for not picking them up…

The brim is a bit itchy, being mostly Shetland, I think I’m going to line it with something, perhaps a strip of merino inside.

I nearly binned this photo when I realised that the washing line was on top of my head, but then I spotted Min sitting on my shoulder!

The details – the pattern is Sheep Heid, by Kate Davis. I used nine different handspun yarns from British breed sheep (Shetland, BFL, Jacob and North Ronaldsay), spun semi-woollen, and with two plies. I used 3.5mm and 3.75mm needles. I used about 80g of yarn in total. The double thickness of handspun yarn should make a lovely warm hat!

Looking sheepish

I have sheep!

The trouble with fair isle hats is that I become completely addicted to knitting them, I could hardly stop yesterday, I kept wanting to just finish one more bit.

I should have read the various forum threads about the pattern before I started though, quite a few people who have taken part in swaps where everyone got 25m of each colour (as stated in the pattern) have run out of one or more colours, especially moorit, which is the colour the sheep are knitted in. I didn’t measure exactly how much of each colour I had, but I counted wraps on my niddy noddy, and I had at least 20 wraps of each, so about 34m, although I seem to remember that the North Ronaldsay I’m using for the moorit was one of the shorter ones, and I’ve run out.

I also didn’t read the instructions properly, and cast on with moorit as well as knitting the first round – if I’d used a different colour I’d probably have had enough, as it is I ran out after row 7 of chart C. I changed to black a row early, and I’ll use something else for the next band, so it’s not a massive problem, but it could have been avoided.

I’m loving the way the handspun is knitting in for fair isle, it’s a lovely dense and squidgy fabric, and any unevenness in the yarn has pretty much disappeared. It should be a lovely warm hat!

In other news, the frequent colour changes in the hat mean I have to find my scissors on a regular basis (we won’t mention all the ends to sew in, I’m trying to do them as I go, but it’s very tedious…) and every time I’ve had to search for them. Then I had the bright idea of putting them on a ribbon and hanging them round my neck, and a quick search of my ribbon box found the perfect ribbon which came with one of my Clothkits kits.

The inch markings aren’t quite accurate, but they’re not bad, so now I’ve got a measure as well. Of course I still keep scrabbling around on the sofa looking for my scissors, but hopefully in time I’ll get used to the fact that they’re round my neck. Just have to be careful not to go out with them in situ!

Ready to knit

I’ve finished spinning up my nine little packets of fibre for my Sheep Heid hat. It was interesting spinning four different fibres, and they’ve made nine pretty little skeins of yarn.

This is the skeins before I washed them, with my hand for reference – they were skeined on a 1.8m niddy noddy, but I doubled the skeins before twisting them up. From left to right, there are four lots of Shetland, two of North Ronaldsay, one of Jacob, and two of BFL. I spun them all long draw from the fold, so semi-woollen (I think!) and they were all fine to spin, although the North Ronaldsay was something of a challenge – all the others came as about 15” of standard top, but that was in very long lengths of very thin fibre, I’m not even sure if it was top, as it seemed to have lots of very short fibres in there, with some longer ones to hold it all together. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I broke off about five short pieces, folded them and spun from the middle, which seemed to work but required concentration! The BFL was the most pleasant to spin – I left that till last because I knew I’d love it.

This is the paler North Ronaldsay, you can see the long dark hairs still, these are mostly the softer ones – I pulled out as many as I could of the really wiry guard hairs from all the different fibres, but I’m sure that I’ll be finding more as I knit.

I’ve been on the Jamieson and Smith website, and matched my yarns up with theirs as closely as I can, and tied labels to each ball with the shade and number on them. Now I’m ready to knit!

A Useful Thing

My lightweight shawls and scarves spent several years crammed into a drawer, with only the ones at the top being worn because it made too much mess to go down lower, but all that changed after my last trip to Ikea, where I bought a Komplement Multi-Use Hanger, and found a great use for it…

It’s a simple idea, 28 rings, crocheted together, with a hanger on the top, and it’s great for my scarves. I was a bit amazed that I managed to fill it instantly though!

Ta-da! It hangs on a over-door hanger on my bedroom door most of the time, so I see it and smile every time I go past, but there was no light to photograph it there, so I moved it into the spare room with its handy hanging rail. I tried to colour coordinate the scarves as best I could, but I’ve found out that over half of them are shades of pink or purple, with some blues thrown in, and just a couple of oranges and a green for variation. Perhaps I need to expand my colour palette a little!

Bits and bobs

Thanks to everyone who left lovely comments on Chickadee! I’m very tempted to start another cardigan, probably Cria, but I think I don’t want to commit to another big project so close to Christmas. But things are getting done :)

Once again I’ve been doing lots of bitty things, wandering from one to another and doing a bit here and a bit there.

I’ve spun the first 120g or so of the big batt I bought at Wingham a few weeks ago. I’ve been doing it longdraw on my Mazurka, and whilst it does spin okay, the various bits in it offend my compulsive desire for nice smooth yarn. I’m trying to go with it, and actually now it’s plied up it looks better. It’s definitely nice and squishy! This is about a third of the batt, it could be a while before it’s done!

Once that was off the bobbins (and they were gratifyingly close in length, so I could clear the bobbins without worrying about wasting singles) I made a start on the nine little 15g bits of different coloured natural tops I bought a couple of weeks ago to make Sheep Heid. I’ve started on the Shetlands, these are the first three, and there’s a darker brown one on the wheel. I’m spinning it semi- woollen, longdraw from the fold, to make it as smooshy as possible. There’s between 30 and 40m of each, and it’s taking about an hour to spin each one. It’s a bit faffy to have to keep changing bobbins, but I’m getting there. I did think about chain plying, which would have meant one less bobbin change, but then I looked at some Jamieson’s yarn, realised that it’s a two ply, and decided that they probably know what they’re doing.

That’s my yarn on the top and the Jamieson’s on the bottom, they’re not looking too different.

Speaking of Jamieson’s, they sent me a replacement for the ball that was missing from the kit I bought at Harrogate, and told me not to bother sending the duplicate ball back. Which was nice, although they sent it by recorded delivery, meaning that I had to trek to the sorting office to collect it – it seemed a bit unnecessary for a £2.70 ball of yarn, but at least it’s sorted.

Anyway, I’ve been treating myself again, this time to this lovely BFL from Freyalyn – it’s the same colourway as the baby camel and silk I spun earlier in the year (and which is halfway through being woven into a scarf, I really should get on with that!) and I just couldn’t resist buying it when a bit of money came my way. I really shouldn’t be buying fibre (or yarn come to that), I have so much, but hey, it was pretty!

Speaking of yarn, Jen posted on her blog about how many patterns she had in her Ravelry library, and how many miles of yarn she had, and I had a quick and scary look at mine – I have 5,386 patterns. And 186,891m of yarn. Which is 116 miles. I may never need to buy yarn again. And that’s not including all the fibre, which is really just yarn in waiting.

I have been knitting some of it up though! I’ve finished these socks for my office secret santa present – the yarn’s some Regia Kaffe Fassett I bought cheap from Kemps a couple of years ago, and I was pleased at how exactly they matched up – I made sure to cast on in exactly the same place in the colour sequence by tying my slip knot at the point where the colours changed, and they matched up exactly before I started the heel.

It did go off a tiny bit after that – I think it’s probably because it was harder to keep the tension exact when doing the wraps for the heels, but I started the toes in the same place, and they’re pretty similar. Which is good, because the recipient is even more OCDish than me. I used the shadow wraps for the heels again, and I definitely like them.

Not wanting to start a big new project, I fished another ball of yarn out of my stash and started another pair of socks, for me this time.

The yarn is Fortissima Colori from Schoeller and Stahl, and I’m loving it – it’s very soft and cosy, and the colour changes are similar to handspun – there are four plies which all seem to change randomly (I’ve not found a colour repeat yet).

A bit blurry, but you can see the different colours.

And it’s knitting up into a nice tweedy fabric. I did think about doing a patterned sock with this yarn, but I’m glad I didn’t, I love the way it looks like this.

Now I need to psyche myself up to make another frilly scarf, for my sister-in-law for Christmas. At least they knit up quickly! And that’s the last of the presents I’m making, so not as much stress as last year. And I’m definitely not starting a baby jumper five days before Christmas, I learnt my lesson last year :)