Debbie Bliss Prima on sale!

That delicious coral cotton is on sale at Black Sheep Wools for only £1.98 a ball!  Actually, it's not cotton, it's viscose bamboo/merino wool but anyway!  Since I've harped on and on about this yarn, turning a disaster into a joyful success (something I actually wear!), I thought it would be worth mentioning here.  The coral is still available, which surprises me as I'd thought it had been discontinued.  There are also other lovely colours.  Yes, obviously I'm going to buy some!  I love my rib top and want to knit more!

Click here for Black Sheep Wools.

Click here for Debbie Bliss Prima at Black Sheep.

Would love to hear what everyone else knits out of this....

My favs are:

Primrose

Ecru

Coral

Avocado

Periwinkle

All in a blur

My daughter took some rather nice pictures of me in my new pink top.....each and every one of them out of focus and blurred!  You have to wonder how that can happen on a digital camera that does everything except print out entire portfolios.  So until I - eventually - get a decent photograph of My New Favourite Top, here I am at the British Library, in a fabulous blur...

Teeny tiny photo!

I tried to take a photo of myself using my webcam.....harharharhar!  Look how SMALL it is!!!  Can't figure out why.  I'll get my daughter to take a better picture of me later.  Needless to say, I LOVE my new top.  For once I've actually made something nice out of something awful!  Hooray!

Could this be any smaller?
The photo, not the top!!

Finished Vest

I finished my ribbed vest just in time for the heatwave except, of course, it's too hot to wear it! I'm probably the only person in England who doesn't like the hot weather....when people say, "oooh, summer has started at last," I smile weakly, as if in agreement, but actually I'm thinking, "aaaaargh, bring on the rain."  Yes, I know the rain has been awful for some:  there have been floods and endless weeks of grey drizzle.  But I live in London and we didn't get THAT much rain.  No floods, just nice bouts of rain that made everything lush and meant I had to wear a cardi most days.  I just LOVE cardi weather.  Also, when it rains in London, it washes the air and sidewalks clean, and God knows, they could do with a scrub!  Rain means a clean city, it means the air is soft and clear, it means the drunken zombies who litter the sidewalks don't come out of their holes and it means the tiny squares and parks aren't lined with near-naked and faintly revolting flesh.

Like I said, bring on the rain!

And when it comes back, I'll have a chance to wear my new top:

It looks a bit crumpled up here but believe me, when I'm wearing it, it looks fantastic!  Just needs to be a bit longer....

It has the simplest edging:  pick up stitches along the edge, knit a row, cast off.  Gives it nice definition.

Above is the original Debbie Bliss pattern, knitted in Amalfi.  I followed it exactly, except ribbed it.  I also didn't do an edging around the arms as they came out well-defined, but I think I would if I knitted it in stocking stitch.  I used Debbie Bliss Prima which seems to have an identical tension, so there was no weird tension maths to do (which I can't do anyway.)  I got this pattern free from the Debbie Bliss website but it seems they change them quite often.  I think the Amalfi book is still available, though.

The ONLY thing that went wrong is that I would have liked it longer.  But I like this sort of top so when I knit it again, will add a good four inches/10cm to the length.  I have no waist so anything that sits too close to it makes me look, well, waistless!  A longer length makes me looks slimmer.  Naturally!

I must say I'm really glad I've got this yarn out my hair!  

On the needles (6)

Debbie Bliss Prima

I feel as if I've been knitting my summer rib top forever.  Not that I'm going to need it for a while....it's been quite chilly!  (Just how I like summer actually:  cool skies and sprinkly rain.....lovely!)  No doubt summer will hit us in full force in September.  I'm sure I'll be finished by then!

The hardest part has been doing the increases up the sides.  Despite hunting about on-line for advice, it seems there is no magical way to make neat increases when you're doing a rib.  Unless, of course, you're actually following a pattern and not making it up as you go along!  The back looks appalling so I tried to do the increases on the front much closer to the edge in the hope that when I sew it up, the mess will be hidden away.
In the meantime, I discovered that DECREASING in rib looks better on the wrong side!
(The pattern is taken from the Debbie Bliss Amalfi book - the pattern was free at some point.  It seems they don't keep free patterns on their website.  There's only one free pattern at any one time!)

This is the "wrong" side but it's so neat, I'm going to use this as the right side!

Not so neat on the "right" side!

Bad Bolero

When I started this blog, I mentioned the Bad Bolero from hell.  I am relieved to say that it is no more.  It was quite difficult having to pull it all out - after all, I put a great deal of work into it.  The back knitted easily, as did the sleeves. But the front curve boggled me completely.  I was so puzzled by the pattern that I had to write to Rowan (twice)(the first address must have been wrong or old) and got a very nice reply with VERY precise instructions.  So I was able to finish it off.  I then had to knit the front rib on circular needles.  Having not ventured into the world of circular needles, I decided to knit a Very Very Long rib and then sew it on afterwards.  Except it was too wide.  So I pulled it out and knitted it again.  It rather resembled a narrow scarf.  Bizarre!  I then battled to sew it on, despite my new-found knowledge of mattress stitch.  Well, frankly, it just looked bad!  And when I tried it on, I wanted to cry.  Horrible!  It got stuffed at the back of the Disaster Drawer and stayed there for the next two years....

Since then, I've realised WHY it went wrong:  it was the wrong yarn, for a start - FAR too floppy for the pattern.  Secondly, I'm not a bolero person.  I've always thought they were utterly daft but some people look fab in them.  Not me!  I wouldn't call myself Amazonian, but somehow I look like a bodybuilder in such a teeny weeny cardi!  

It's taken me a while to decide what to knit with the wool:  Debbie Bliss Prima Viscose/Merino in a pale coral no longer available (yes, I bought it on a sale....obviously!)  I rather fancied a lacy top I discovered on the Vogue website.  If you register, you get access to their free patterns, which are rather fantastic, though not necessarily easy knits (aside from the fact that it's all in US knitting language).  But I couldn't manage the lace pattern, so thought I'd use the lace rib I'd successfully knitted before.  I have a scarf in the same Debbie Bliss yarn in a pretty lace rib - brilliant, I thought.  I never wear the scarf.  It's far too scratchy (you'd think bamboo/wool would be soft...) so I'll rip it all out and knit this fab lacy top.

Hah.  Because the Prima was a much finer wool, I had to cast on about a million stitches to get the width and was lost in the rib barely five rows in.  So I studied all the lace stitch patterns I had and found another one.  Needless to say, those ten rows or so I've managed have been utterly abandoned, the needles rattling with bobble stitch markers.  It was going to take me nine hundred years to knit this lace top and frankly, the wool just isn't good enough for lace.  It wasn't going to work, no matter how good a knitter I was.  It was time for simplicity.

And simple it is:  I found a free Debbie Bliss pattern for a very easy vest top.  The tension and needles are identical for the wool required (I can't actually remember what you're supposed to use....will check it out and blog it next time) so I haven't had to do any mad knitting maths.  I'm really bad at working out tension stuff, anyway!  I'm knitting it in k2,p2 rib, which is about as simple as it can get.  I love this rib.  It's so relaxing!  So I am now very happy knitting away on this while watching thousands and thousands of episodes of Springwatch.  My daughter loves it, though after a while, one dead baby bird begins to look rather like another.  All too tragic for me.

Photos of my current knitting plus the pattern I attempted plus the pattern I'm using will come up in the next blog.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of my bolero.  Belly laughs guaranteed.  

Nice colour...shame about the crumples and fold lines....

In fact, shame about the whole thing.  What a disaster!

Butter Yellow Poncho

It was hotter than hell last week and there I was, finishing off a poncho!  Typical!  The cable edging was the most boring thing under the sun to knit, so I was most relieved when it was done.  I've not done anything like this before and was delighted with the outcome.

Debbie Bliss Como.  Colour:  19017.  90% Merino wool, 10% Cashmere.

The pattern for the cable edging couldn't be simpler:

Cast on 8 stitches.  Stocking stitch for 7 rows starting with a knit row.  Eighth row is the cable row:  knit two, put four stitches on a cable needle to the back, knit four, knit four from cable needle.  Repeat these eight rows several thousand times and you've got your edging!  

It took nearly 300 rows to get around the poncho!

Doesn't it look just like a rope?

I overlapped the end and added a button just for show.

Now I just need a cold day to wear it!

ps.  A virus recently attacked my computer (everyone's nightmare) and I had to restore my computer back to factory settings.  I managed to save everything that was important onto a memory stick, but not my photos.  I still had all my photos on the camera card, though, so it wasn't the end of the world, but I have lost all the cropping and crimping and work I did on the photos.  I can't imagine doing it all again!  Fortunately, the best ones are still here, on my site, for my pleasure, at least!