Sheep in the Courtyard

My daughter and I went to see the Wool House exhibition at Somerset House this morning and had a lovely time.  I saw more things made out of wool than I have in my entire life!  But where were the sheep in the courtyard?!  I thought there literally WERE going to be, well....SHEEP in the courtyard, penned in, obviously, baaing gently in the rain while we patted them and oohed over the lambs.  Not in London, clearly....

My daughter learning how to spin

The entrance hall with real wool carpet tiles

Wonderful carpet in passage - VERY long!

Bedroom

Bedroom detail

Cushion detail on bed

Nursery

Natural room

Cable chair

Natural room detail

Wider view of the Natural room

Flowers in the Drawing room

The Study

The Modern room

A puzzled knitter

I run two blogs - this is the first one and has been going for some time now (I think it might run into years.)  And yet I have much greater difficulty running this blog than I do my Wordpress one.  I simply can't figure out how to like or follow other knitting blogs.  How dumb is that?!  You would think it would be totally straightforward but if it's a Wordpress knitting blog, I would end up having to use my Wordpress avatar, which totally defeats the purpose of finding other knitting buddies.  If you are a knitting blogger, reading this, and thinking, "good golly, she really is stupid!" then, please, tell me what I'm doing wrong!  I can't even figure out how to add links to other bloggers websites onto my blog!  And yet I do quite advanced stuff on my Wordpress blog.  Does this mean that, basically, the Wordpress is easier to control, navigate, build etc etc?  It's a lonely business making hash after hash with my knitting - I'd really like to meet others with all the enthusiasm but none of the skill.  I am, needless to say, a tad intimated by those marvellous women who knit several thousand toy rabbits a day and sell them, while dealing with heart-rendering family problems.

In the meantime, here is my current project:  the Gedifra jacket.

Pattern pic

Previous attempt - FAR too small but reasonably well knitted

Without flash - better colour definition

Oops...

I started with the sleeves as I've discovered this is a great way of tackling immediate problems - if you don't like it, there's not much work to pull out!  (Specially in this case as the sleeves are short.)  I followed the pattern exactly and yet not only are they different lengths but neither of them have ended up with seven stitches after decreasing!  This sort of thing drives me mad because I don't know whether it's me (have I misunderstood the pattern somehow?) or the pattern itself (long since discontinued so no one to ask.)  I've got them both on stitch holders and will measure them once I've finished the back and front.  That way, I might actually get perfectly fitting sleeves.

Or have to reknit them entirely.

The pattern stitch I'm using is one row purl, one row k1,p1 rib.  Very effective!

Confidence restored!!

My Gedifra Diandra jersey turned out to be fabulous - warm and cosy and looks good too for something that is home-knitted by an inexpert knitter!

I added rows of Swiss darning to make it more interesting.

 The neck edge is simple two rows of knit.

I enjoyed knitting with the Diandra so much that I promptly set about knitting some very chunky wristies, called "mitts" in the Rowan pattern I used.  I'm not keen on knitting cable but these were very simple and I even managed the clever slit for the thumb!

I wear them when on my computer as my hands get very cold.  

My daughter was so keen on the mitts that I made her some too:  I used the leftover Squiggle super chunky that I'd used to make her poncho.  It's much thicker wool so I had to adapt the pattern a little and only made one row of cable.  Also super-warm for the bleak February weather!

So keen am I on knitting with Diandra that I'm currently reknitting a pattern I'd made two years ago.  It's a short-sleeved jacket which is meant to be close-fitting and tightly knitted, using thinner needles than I'd used for the striped jersey.  Although it fitted, it felt too warm and the front gaped, making my bit of podge seem even podgier!  So I'm reknitting it in a bigger size with the 8mm needles to get a looser, more casual fit.

 Yet another yummy colour from the discontinued Diandra range (but have a look online:  some places do still sell it!)

This is the Rowan pattern I used for the mitts.

This is the Gedifra Diandra pattern I used for the jersey:  as you can see, it's a complex cable pattern, which I totally ignored and made a plain, striped number.  For reasons I don't understand as I made no errors and followed the pattern shaping religiously, my neckline isn't quite as low.  (I sometimes think they use machines to knit the pictures you see in pattern books, meaning we can never recreate them perfectly!)

Below is the pattern for the jacket.  I might make more buttons, though, as I'm really very tired of this daft fashion of having your tummy hanging out of an open-fronted cardi.  I'm not exactly fat but I'm no stick insect either and it's seriously not flattering (also it's chilly!)  They've used poppers to close this cardi/jacket with the button sewn on top.

Bad knitting is a little happier this month!

Saved by Diandra

After the horrible disaster of my five-foot wide cardigan, I dived deep into my wool box and hauled out the Gedifra Diandra I bought on sale several years ago at John Lewis - back in the days when they actually had proper sales.  It's quite chunky but different patterns require different needle sizes - 8mm seems to work best.  It's the most deliciously soft wool mixed with 15% linen and it's SUCH a shame that they discontinued it.  Why do they always discontinue lovely wool??  This seems to be an eternal problem.  It only cost £1 a ball on the sale so I bought about 40 balls in lilac, a sandy beige colour and a reddish brown.  They are all still available if you look very hard on the internet, but no one has the creamy colour left, which is a great shame:  I would have loved to have knitted with it.  I need hardly say that it's a pleasure to knit with AND it goes really fast.  My confidence as a knitter has returned somewhat!

Really need to get my act together and get some pictures taken.  In the meantime, this is what the front looked like when I was knitting it:

I didn't have enough lilac for the jumper, so decided to stripe it with the beige colour.  Not ideal but honestly, the jersey is so lovely and soft and warm and pretty, it doesn't matter if it isn't a work of art. I also - cleverly, I thought - did the sleeves first so that when I was finished the hardest part (the V-necked front knitted separately), it meant I was nearly finished.  I had to knit the front edging about three times before I got it right and it's still not ideal but it'll do.

I'm now knitting cable mitts (Yes!  Me!  Cable!!) with the beige colour and they look so fab my daughter wants some too...

Photos at the weekend, I promise!

Joke Jersey

The second last day of the year and I've finished the mud-coloured cardigan.  I should be rejoicing but things turned out worse than I could have imagined:  worse even than the colour!  I actually began to appreciate the colour after a while.  It might not be as yellow as advertised (a false yellow as a result of flash photography) but the tweedy effect, all the different shades speckling together, are quite attractive.  I even began enjoying knitting with the wool - it felt less like string and the texture was quite interesting and easy to manage.  Hope began to stir:  perhaps the cardi wouldn't so bad after all.  I even enjoyed knitting the hood.  I've never tried anything like that before and it proved to be fantastically easy.  Luck was on my side with the button band too and it fit perfectly.

So why isn't this a success?

Because it's about five feet wide.  I already had an idea that it was rather large but thought it must just be the pattern.  I decided that the girl in the pattern picture was wearing a smaller size or had had it pinned behind her so that it seemed to fit perfectly.....but even if this was pinned it wouldn't fit me.  The size is RIDICULOUS.  It's ENORMOUS.  My daughter laughed for about ten minutes and I was too disappointed to even cry.

What has gone wrong?  I followed the pattern exactly.  I used the wool and the needles as requested.  My tension was perfect and I didn't use more wool than required.  I knitted this very carefully.  NOTHING should have gone wrong.  I can only imagine that the jersey knitted in the magazine was NOT the same as in the pattern.  They must have used much thinner needles.  I felt all along that the needles were too big, hence the laddering effect in the rib, yet the needle size is given as 6.5mm.  Have the manufacturers got it wrong?  Is that why it was discontinued because, frankly, the wool is just a disaster?  Have I been duped by a rubbish wool company?

It looks so stupid that I haven't taken a photograph.  When I've recovered and my sense of humour returns, I might post a picture or two, but until then, I've got yet another unwearable monstrosity cluttering my wardrobe.  

Perhaps I should make a New Year's resolution as it's nearly the new year, but what?  Stop knitting?  I'll tell you one thing, though:  I'm NEVER knitting anything out of a magazine again.  I don't trust them.  Knitting is a luxury for me and to have wasted so much money (and SO much time...) is just galling.

The Eternal Bad Knitter

I haven't blogged for a long time, I know.  It feels like months!  I've been having a bit of a knitting crisis.  It's the one that goes:  everything I knit is rubbish!  I'm a really bad knitter!  I haven't improved one iota in the last few years!  I just want to knit easy stocking stitch so that I don't have to think in front of the telly!  I'm a blob!

You can see where this is going!  But it's true that I have been having some difficulty with my knitting and have lost confidence somewhat.  Perhaps everyone goes through this.  Perhaps I knit too much.  Perhaps my Real Life (the one that knitting is supposed to take me away from) is impinging on my wool space.  (Or should that be yarn space?!)

I finished the hot water bottle cover I made out of that leftover Bad Yarn - that's the cream stuff that I had to unravel from being double-knitted, out of which I did manage to make a halfway decent at-home cardie.  Although I did wear it to work once - can't say that anyone noticed but then it isn't that sort of job.  It might not be the most beautiful cardigan in the world, but it's very warm.  

The hot water bottle, in the same weird, stiff acrylic yarn knitted up very neatly, I thought.  In fact, the finished product looks really good EXCEPT I didn't realise the yarn was much thicker than the DK required.  How could I not have realised?  Didn't I notice I was knitting with bigger needles?  So the final product is, in fact, a gigantic hot-bot cover, a cover of immense proportions, one that slides around all over the place and is just thoroughly ridiculous.  What an embarrassment I am to myself.

If you look closely, you can see the much smaller hottie bottie inside!

The pocket was a good idea, though:  keeps my hands warm.

In meantime, I've also finished the long, striped cardigan for my daughter.  That went very well indeed, though I did get rather irritated having to change colour every four rows for the sleeves!  It was an easy enough pattern and very easy acrylic to knit with.  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, it was my first cardigan with a border and I managed to pick up TOO FEW stitches along the front for the border, resulting in the pulled-up look you see in the photo.

With flash

Without flash

Pretty "wooden" buttons

Keenly feeling the disappointment of these two "failures" (the fact that the hot water bottle cover is used every day is neither here nor there, nor is the fact that my daughter loves her cardi as it's long and warm), I decided it was time to confront my biggest disappointment of all.

Sirdar Tweedie Chunky in Honey Yellow.

Needless to say, it has been discontinued and all I can say is thank goodness because it's horrible stuff.  I saw a pattern in the November 2010 issue of Knit Today of a lovely hooded cardigan and was quite won over by it.  The Honey Yellow looked like a lovely colour and the sample shade in the magazine was identical to the one on the on-line shop.  That's TWO places where the colour was the same - you'd think that would be the colour you'd get?  I bought this for myself as a birthday present two years ago so imagine my disappointment when the huge parcel turned up with this grungy dull mud coloured wool.  Feeling disinclined to return it as it was my birthday present and it was too late to buy anything else (shopping around Christmas time for birthday presents isn't easy), I convinced myself that it would look better when I knitted it.

I then proceeded to knit it about five times, starting it, pulling it out, starting it again.....first I couldn't get the basic rib right and kept making mistakes.  Then I battled with the cable pattern.  It seemed impossibly difficult and after much blood, sweat and tears, I gave up.  It was almost spring and I didn't want to be knitting in an ugly, mud-coloured yarn that was depressing and felt like string to boot.  So I abandoned it for nearly two years, picking up again recently, having thought a great deal about it.  I decided I just needed to concentrate harder, to use lots of stitch markers so that I didn't get lost with the cable and to use nice bamboo knitting needles.  The latter proved to be too sharp and kept snagging the wool.  And the cable pattern, which I managed to master (it was quite easy) look terrible.  Despite trying to knit as tightly as I could, it laddered very badly. Naturally I blamed the yarn and shoved the whole lot back into my wooden box, abandoned once more.

But why not just abandon the cable??  What I good idea, I thought.  So after much research and studying my previous creations, I decided to knit the whole thing in Mistake Rib (which, I hope, has other names.)  I thought this would make it chunkier and less likely to show up the laddering effect that this yarn seemed to produce.  HAH!  It's not called Mistake Rib for nothing!  Despite never having any problem with it before, I just could not see what I was doing with this tweedy yarn:  I couldn't see the pattern, which meant I kept losing myself.  Which meant, of course, that I made thousands of mistakes.  Grimly, I kept going, sure that you wouldn't really be able to see the mistakes if you didn't look too closely.  I finished the entire back, shoved it in my wooden box and abandoned it.

Again!

Finally, I realised I was just going to have to knit a boring cardigan out of it, no pattern, no cable, nothing interesting at all.  What else am I supposed to do with this wool??  It can't sit in the box forever.  I hate it but perhaps it will be warm.  Yet ANOTHER poor quality home cardi.  Aaaaargh.

So far I've finished the back, two fronts and am halfway with one of the sleeves.  The colour continues to be muddy.  The yarn continues to feel like rough string.  There's nothing about it I like.  But I'm knitting and sometimes I just need to knit.  Perhaps it doesn't matter what I knit as long as I don't go entirely mad......

Mistake rib - without flash.  How can the colour vary so much?!

Mistake rib - with flash

Seriously bad picture of original "colour" in magazine.  Looks much more yellow...

Current knit.  Doesn't the colour look great with a flash?

This is what it really looks like.....

The colour is actually called Grouse.  Indeed.  That's just what I feel like when I knit.  An old grouse, grumbling in the corner.  I think my next project needs to be seriously orange or purple or something....

Happy Hallowe'en

Only a day late, not bad!  I managed to finish the striped cardigan in time for Hallowe'en, as promised.  It was a very easy knit except for the very long border.  I had to pull out my first effort which was excruciatingly painful.  Also, the most obvious error I made is in the border:  I didn't cast on enough stitches (and yet I seemed to have so many...) so it pulls up at the bottom a bit.  However, my daughter doesn't seem to care.  The striped version isn't supposed to have pockets but I thought they broke up the rather endless length of stripes down the front!  The style suits my daughter rather well as she is long and thin but I was concerned that it is a perfect fit - and I made the biggest size!  If I make if for her again, I'll have to increase the width quite a lot, which is a bit daunting.  But it seems such a waste to only use a bought pattern once!  Even if it was on special offer...

That's a bat on my head, in case you're wondering

Yes, these are pockets

Let's party!