How to make a bobble

Slowly!  Carefully!  Not while watching TV!  I recently started a cardigan that required a row of bobbles at the bottom, which was very pretty.  I spent an AGE doing them and managed to get only one wrong - I somehow ended up with a hole next to the bobble which I had planned to sew closed later.  However, I soon realised that the yarn I was using for the cardigan (it was a substitute) wasn't working and abandoned the work.  

I was really please, though, that I'd had a go at making bobbles.  I'd always believed that they were very difficult and that I wouldn't be able to manage, or wouldn't have the patience for them.  But, as long as there aren't too many, it isn't hard at all.  It does require patience, though.  And my top tip is to pull that yarn VERY tightly when finishing it off.  Also, when you knit or purl the next row, knit very tightly again.  And no, I have no idea how I managed to make that hole next to the bobble - obviously I must have forgotten one of the many steps!  Easy to do.

So concentrate!

I did a practise square before starting the project

The row of bobbles long the hem

A close up

My new project with Sirdar's Pattercake

I love all the yellows for spring!

I've discovered that a fancy bag from a shop makes a great place to keep my WIP!

When is a square not a square?

I just love the colours of the Sirdar Pattercake yarns.  So delicious!  But what do I knit with them?  I couldn't resist the one called Seaside Surprise as it contained all my daughter's favourite colours.  I decided to knit the blanket pattern printed on the inside of the band, though I used two "cakes" instead of one.  I've knitted this kind of square before and knew exactly what was going to happen:  no matter how careful I was with the increases and decreases, the "square" would end up being kite-shaped.  For some unbelievably weird reason (which the more scientific of you may be able to explain), the number of decreases does NOT equal the number of increases.  So although I used two identical balls of wool, the decrease side ended up much longer.  Also there wasn't enough to end it so the last corner looks as if it has been snipped off!
But after struggling for months with dolls' clothes, it was nice to knit something easy and pretty.
My daughter's room has been transformed by the blanket.  With the introduction of the turquoise and aqua colours, the yellow in the room has found a perfect contrast.  Needless to say, the room only looks so lovely because my daughter is at university!  Aside from prettying up the space, the blanket serves no real purpose.  I just like looking at it.

 

You can still buy the yarn from Deramores here.

Rainbow jumper and scarf

As is usual when I ooh and aah over colours in a knitting magazine, it transpires that they are false.  I don't know how many times I've been caught out by this.  I see colours which are lovely;  I order the wool online;  the wool turns up and it's entirely wrong.

There is a lovely rainbow jumper in Simply Knitting 181, knitted with blocks.  I decided to knit it for my daughter, omitting the blocks which I didn't think were necessary.  I thought the rainbow stripes were in soft shades:  red, orange and yellow in spring shades, with a clear turquoise and soft lavender.  

Hah!  It's not turquoise at all but emerald green and the lavender is dark purple.  How can they get the colours so WRONG in a magazine?  One could accuse the lighting of altering the shades but the colours on the wool website were exactly the same:  much lighter than they actually are in real life.  

I just honestly could not be bothered to send the wool back, although I should have done as it isn't very nice to knit with.  It's fuzzy and the stitches split and tear.  I'm seriously going to be hating it by the time I'm done.  The yarn, in case you want to avoid it, is King Cole's Riot DK and the shade that is so hopelessly wrong is called Chameleon.

This is what it looks like as a (short) scarf:  

 

I've also started knitting the jersey but fear I may only finish it next winter as I'm mighty bored.  I've also noticed, to my despair, that the ribbed edge is curling and nothing I do will flatten it.  I foresee a very annoying jersey that my daughter may not want to wear (the wool is quite scratchy and she's a delicate flower, like me!)

On the Simply Knitting Facebook page is an image of the jersey as it appears in their magazine.  You can see straight away that the colours are different.  There is NO yellow in the image above (taken in harsh February daylight) and the green and turquoise are miles apart.  Yet this is the shade called Chameleon, exactly as I bought it.

Why not buy your wool from a shop where you can see the colours, you might ask.

To which I would answer:  I live in central London.  WHAT shop??

Bluebell Dress

More images of the bluebell dress I made for my doll.
See here how to make the edging.

Bluebell dress

Sitting on a cushion I knitted years ago!

I used hooks and eyes to close the dress rather than buttons as they lie flat

Bluebell dress for doll

Using the dress pattern I had, I knitted this dress with a frilled edging, a technique I've not used before.  I thought the end result made it look rather like a bluebell! 

The most difficult thing was accurately casting on the vast number of stitches!  However many stitches you need for the pattern, you have to start with FOUR TIMES the number!  So I needed 80 stitches for the dress, which meant I had to cast on 360 stitches!  That was a LOT of counting.  I used circular needles, needless to say!  

Once you've cast on your stitch number x 4, you knit the first row like this:

Row 1:  K2.  Lift first stitch over second and off the needle.  At the end, you have half the number of stitches.

Row 2:  P2tog.  At the end, you'll have the number of stitches you're meant to have for the pattern - and your frilly edge.

It's not difficult but it is laborious.  

Frilly edge

Complete dress

I also knitted (from the dress pattern) the matching jacket but wasn't hugely impressed with the result.  The arms don't fit very well.  But the wool I used was pretty:  King Cole Drifter for Baby DK.  

Here's the link:  https://www.kingcole.com/knitting-wool/drifter-for-baby-dk/

Either I need to find another jacket pattern or try and adapt this one.

Anyone for tennis?

I knitted another cardigan for my doll, this time with matching shorts, headscarf and cute booties.  The cardigan is, once again, the Simply Knitting pattern (for a toy bunny).  The rest comes from a free pattern I found on the Let's Knit website.  The pattern is called Dolly Daydream and this link will take you there:  doll's clothes.

Here she is with the rabbit I knitted.  I think they make great pals!

I had a wee bit of bother with the collar.  I think next time I might knit it slightly differently to the pattern's requirements, perhaps making it bigger (it doesn't lie flat).  

I don't remember the yarn I used for this as they were all leftovers in my wool stash, but I can tell you they were all bamboo cotton, lovely to knit with in summer.  (And a very hot one we are having too.)

Doll's Cardigan

When I spotted this cardi on a toy rabbit in issue 170 of Simply Knitting (first time in years that I had bought a knitting mag), I had an inkling that it might fit my doll.

I worked out recently that this doll is at least 50 years old - possibly older as I think she may have been second hand.  She arrived one Christmas wearing a pink A-line dress (very 1960's) and had a blue pram, which I remember wheeling around the house for years.  My mother had crocheted her a blue granny square blanket, which I've also still got.

The doll came back to England with me as I thought my daughter would be interested in playing with her.  She wasn't, needless to say.  When my mother died 10 years ago, I wasn't capable of doing anything except knitting and sewing clothes for this doll.  I worked without patterns and - since my knitting wasn't very good in those days - the results were sweetly amateurish to say the least.

But at last my doll (and she is mine again) has a cardigan knitted properly from a pattern.  I used an entire ball of Rico Baby Dream DK to make it, including the headscarf.  The latter was a bit small so I've joined the ends (under her hair) with elastic.

The poor doll never had a good head of hair.  Half her eyelashes have gone and she's got a gammy leg .... and this was the state of her when I got her!  But I love knitting tiny things so may get more inventive.  Lucky dolly.

Giant Cream Cushion

I can't believe it's an entire year since I last posted anything!  This doesn't mean I haven't been knitting, though - I NEVER stop knitting!  It's just possible that My Other Life (the one that doesn't have knitting in it) has been intruding a bit much.  Anyway, I'm back and will make an effort to catch up, starting with my Giant Cushion.  This cushion actually started life as one of those neck cushions – you know:  designed to support your neck while you sleep.  I've been through several of these and have come to the conclusion that only angels can support my neck while I sleep as none of them work.

Now imagine a jumper knitted by someone who couldn’t read a pattern, using thick, cheap, nasty acrylic yarn, back in the days when jumpers were basically vast tunics.  Horrors!  But the colour of the yarn was lovely – a rich, buttery cream.  I don’t recall ever actually wearing this jumper and as it was knitted in my pre-knitting days, it’s been at the bottom of a box for decades.  I had already taken it apart before it occurred to me to take a photo of it – never mind.  Just think HUGE.  The yarn might be cheap and nasty but perfect for furnishing.  It was lovely to knit with too – about the best thing you can say about cheap acrylics.  I used my lace rib pattern for this which I got to know so well that I could knit it in the dark.  It took a LONG time to knit but it’s done and the cushion is now used mostly as a rest for my sore foot......but that’s another story!

Lace Rib

Closer view of rib

I knitted four "scarves" to fit the cushion, two shorter, two longer.  The longer ones fold over the end of the cushion to button closed.

The pattern stood out more clearly once it was on the cushion

Not exactly a work of art (those end bits are a bit untidy) but I like it

I used pretty buttons I'd been saving for a worthwhile project - buttonholes already provided!

Really Terrible Erika Knight Hat

Isn't this hat lovely?  (See Below)

Not when I tried to knit it.  I used the same yarn, the right needles, concentrated on my cabling......pulled it all out again when I discovered there was an error in the pattern.....worked out the correct pattern......but it just got worse and worse.  It wasn't the pattern error that made it bad - THAT at least I managed to work out and NO thanks to Knit-Today despite posting on their FaceBook page and emailing them.  You'd think if a knitting magazine got a pattern wrong, they'd want to do something about it.  The pattern chart was correct and I managed to work out the pattern from there, fortunately.  However, the pattern asked for 16 repeats of the cable pattern.  If I had done that, the hat would have ended up as a long bizarre scarf thing.  It was also blatantly obvious when I compared my knitting to the picture that everything was wrong:  in the picture, the cabling looking very crisp and, well, quite small.  The hat I made is ENORMOUS and that's with only 10 cable pattern repeats.  Everything indicates different wool and different needles.  The colour isn't even the same - it looks like a fresh pink in the picture but is in fact quite dull.

You can't imagine my disappointment.  Erika Knight yarn is hardly cheap.  Two balls of wool cost me £16 - I don't think I've ever bought anything that expensive.  I wanted to make a super-soft, gorgeous hat for my daughter as her skin is very sensitive.  I thought this yarn would be ideal.  I couldn't have been more wrong.

My faith in Knit-Today has hit rock bottom.  I don't want ever to knit anything from their pages again.  It's bad enough that I'm a bad knitter but to be bad because the pattern doesn't work or the yarn is wrong or the needles were wrong..........hah.

Oh and even the pompoms were terrible!  I followed the instructions PERFECTLY and ended up with a weird oval shaped pompom.  Needless to say, the whole lot has been shoved in a box, never to be looked at again.  When my daughter tried it on, by the way, it looked like a HUGE tea cosy, but made but a square tea pot (do you get square tea pots?!)

This is what it's supposed to look like

Note the different in colour

.....and this is what it really looks like:  notice how the cabling isn't nearly as compact as it is in the photo above - and I was knitting tightly to try and get that effect.....in vain.

Happy birthday to me...!

Making a new year's resolution on my birthday seems like a good idea!  I fancy knitting a pouffe this year (don't you just love that word?!  ~ POUFFE ~ )(makes me think of a dragon blowing a feather away...) and have been investigating patterns.  This seems like the easiest one so far.  I love the mis-translation of the word duvet:  "we tried to make a ball of duves before we stuffed it" and "stuff the duves into the stool."  Erm, yes, quite.  Actually, that's a brilliant idea:  buying cheap duvets to use as stuffing for the giant floor cushion (which is probably a better description of what I'm trying to make rather than ......pouffe.......)  I had thought to use old pillows but they might end up an odd shape.

Another interesting suggestion is multi-stranding wool to make it thick enough to use 15mm needles, rather than buying Very Fat Wool.  2000g of wool would be required to make a decent sized stool that you can put you feet on, though I'm not confident it would be strong enough to sit on.  

I saw a fantastic one at John Lewis but at a rather fantastic price as well.  I wish you could buy that industrial strength wool they use.....unless of course, it isn't knitted but manufactured.  Mmmm, cheating....

Anyway, check out this Norwegian website (it's very possible that Google mistranslated that "duves".....)

http://www.pickles.no/puff-daddy-knitted-stool/

...and here's someone who tried it out:

http://www.homeecflunkee.com/2011/10/how-to-make-knitted-pouf-ottoman.html

This blog looks like a good one to follow:  http://www.homeecflunkee.com/

Hope you've all had a lovely Christmas!  I managed not to knit a stitch....!

Comic cardie

Some time ago, I knitted the most disastrous cardigan in the history of knitting.  Worse, I had struggled with the awful wool for about two years since buying it, so it was a double disaster.  Recently, while clearing out and rearranging my wooden box, I came across the remnants of this yarn and starting knitting a jumper I really fancied in a very old knitting magazine.  I had enough to complete the back and since it seems to be turning out all right, I think it's time to pull out the comic cardie and start reknitting.  Before I do that, I got my daughter to take a picture of me wearing the cardie - sorry, it turned out rather dark and blurred, but then it is the winter's solstice today with no light in the sky at all - very gloomy and dull (though the gloom does seem to have turned a strange shade of pink now that it's 4pm and time for tea...)

What you can't see in the picture are the sleeves which hang about a six inches below my fingertips and the fact that the cardie as about three times wider than I am.  Also, the hood is somehow too short in front.  The knitting itself is crap beyond belief - honestly, I followed the pattern down to the letter.  I used the correct needles and tension, followed the sizing and THIS is what I ended up with - a gigantic saggy brown monstrosity.  

If it wasn't so funny, I might cry....though I think I might have cried at the time and then shoved it at the back of the Disaster Drawer for two years.  Since then, I've concentrated on knitting things well, using lovely yarn in lovely colours and feel much more confident.  But this really knocked me for six at the time....

Oh, look, it's a brown penguin

Previous posts about this cardigan can be found here:

http://www.badknitting.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/joke-jersey.html

http://www.badknitting.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-eternal-bad-knitter.html

The yarn used is Sirdar Tweedy Chunky, thankfully discontinued (as far as I know)

Other people seem to have had success with this awful yarn - have a look at these gorgeous sweaters at Ravelry:

http://www.ravelry.com/projects/poppleton/textured-tunic-with-side-buttons
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/MsGidgetty/design-d---cabled-tank-with-polo-neck

Obviously it's just my bad knitting.

Looking after your stash

While rummaging through my big wooden box of yarns the other day, I noticed that some of them didn't smell....nice.  The fact that they smelt of anything couldn't be good!  I thought it was a musty smell and couldn't decide what to do.  I wondered if I might be storing them incorrectly or if they were just getting old.  I wrote to LoveKnitting.com and got a reply back from Julia:

The main issue would be humidity which can make the wool smell funny.  The first thing I would do is to unpack your wool and let it dry open and in a warm place to get rid of all the moisture.  To get rid of the smell I would opt for natural fresheners like essential oils or a bar of soap.  Add the essential oils such as lavender, mint, lemon or rosemary to a cloth or a bit of yarn or fabric you're not using anymore.  Once the yarn is dry pack it airtight in a plastic bag or similar so that moisture can't get to it anymore.

Today I unpacked everything!  I took the wool out their bags and arranged them all over the lounge, mostly on tissue paper as I didn't want them to get dirty.  (That makes my sitting room sound filthy, but you know what I mean....that odd mote of dust floating about...)  I realised that most of the yarns didn't smell at all, it was just the purer wool - and then, when I went to clean the box out, I realised the yarn smelt like BOX!  The wool has actually taken on the smell of wood!  Woody wool (or is that woolly wood?!)  Much relief - so it seems my stash hasn't been suffereing from humidity at all, just feeling a little boxed in.  However, I did repack everything into fresh, new closable bags and a couple of large resealable bags I happened to have spare.  Had great fun - everything is now quite visible and easy to locate.  Also, it was a great reminder of what I've got and what I could do with all those random leftovers (let alone entire bags of ten I haven't used yet....)  I liked the idea of a bar of soap to scent the box naturally so got a bar of lavender soap.  Amazing how LITTLE soap my supermarket had.  Don't people use soap any more?

Julia also sent me a link about storing wool, particularly helpful if you've got dreaded moths:

http://knitting.about.com/od/yarn/f/store_wool.htm

All this has been a huge reminder to KNIT MY STASH - a good idea considering my super-squeezed budget.  It's just that I think we've got enough jersies for now.......!

My wooden box

Wendy Supreme Crossover Cardi

I recently downloaded a free pattern that appeared on my Facebook page, thinking it would make a terrific summer cardigan for my daughter.  I've not knitted a crossover cardi before so it was an interesting challenge and quite simple - you just have to stay on top of the decreasing!  Like a good, organised knitter, I read through the entire pattern first to make sure there weren't any pitfalls and spotted information missing from the tie.  It wasn't information I could work out myself because I couldn't (from peering at the pattern) work out what stitches I was supposed to use for the tie!  I duly wrote to Black Sheep and the publishers of the pattern and eventually got a reply.  I got several, in fact, to say that they were working on it.  Patiently, I went off to knit something else.  In fact, I think I finished several old projects that had been hanging around for a while!  Always nice to finish stuff and get it out the way.  At last I got a reply from CarolAnn at Thomas B. Ramsden who discovered another mistake in the pattern - the slope of the crossover fronts.  Interestingly, while knitting them, I thought I'd made a mistake in my decreasing (always possible!) but made sure that I ended up with the right number of stitches for the shoulder.  What was odd was that I thought I'd made the same mistake with both the left and right fronts - how is that possible?!  But in fact, the error wasn't mine.  However, after all that, the cardi actually looks fine and you'd never know there are errors.  I would have to knit it again to see any difference.  

I found the Wendy Supreme Luxury Cotton dk lovely to work with - very fast, very neat, no splitting stitches.  Particularly good on those horrible hot humid days that we had so many of in summer, the kind of days you just don't want to knit (but know you'll go nuts if you don't!)  I didn't work up a sweat at all with this yarn, so think I'll make another crossover next summer, though my daughter wants longer arms - we both like our sleeves to actually reach our wrists!

..........Oh, dear, I could just tear my hair out - my camera won't connect to my computer and the card port is bust.  So I can't upload any pictures!  Will have to do it later via my daughter's computer, which is sick as a dog but at least it's card reader still works!  However, I have managed to acquire a photo from the pattern itself!  I knitted it in the orange shade 1951 (that's the shade number, not the year!)
(LATER)  My daughter Skyped the pictures over so I've added them below!

I used satin ribbon for the inside tie

The complete cardigan - the colour is just right for autumn!

Stripy Knit in Bamboo Cotton

I've spent most of the summer - the hottest part of it - knitting a jumper for my daughter.  I bought the yarn last year as soon as I spotted it in Simply Knitting [issue 107] in this delicious coral shade.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available anymore, but there are other lovely colours, with new ones recently added.  It's King Cole Bamboo Cotton DK and seems to be generally available.  It was lovely to work with on those boiling hot days we had - light and easy to hold.  Really lovely to work with too as it didn't split.  The pattern has three-quarter sleeves (or what I would call two-thirds sleeves, surely the most useless length of all) but I made them full-length and also added stripes to the sleeves to match the body.  Luckily, the stripes matched the body for positioning!  The pattern also has buttons on the neckline but I honestly couldn't work out how to knit the shoulder bit so blithely ignored the instructions and did an ordinary seam!  Fortunately my daughter could still get her head through the rather small neck hole!  I bought the same yarn for myself but am reluctant to make myself the same jumper - my daughter is very slim (oh, to be 14 again...) and it looks stunning on her.  With my multitudinous curves, I'm not convinced I'll look as good!  Perhaps I'll find another pattern in the same yarn.....

I used flower-shaped shell buttons for the front opening but did not make buttonholes as I - correctly - thought they were superfluous.

I'll get my daughter to wear this tomorrow and take a "live" pic!

Gedifra Jacket Finally Finished

The reknit of this project was abandoned a couple of years ago as I developed an extremely painful shoulder.  It has since spread into my other shoulder too and I found working with heavy wool and huge needles utterly impossible.  I've not knitted with anything bigger than 4 mm for quite a while now!  However, my shoulder (the really bad one) is finally getting better:  2 injections, several physios and some rather strange medical acupuncture seem to be doing the trick.  And endless exercises.....did I mention the endless exercises....?!  But having finished one project this week, I decided to have a go at this one and finally it's done.  I hadn't knitted it badly the first time but it was too small and too tightly knitted, making it murderously  hot to wear.  So I used bigger needles than I was supposed to and made the biggest size and at last I've got an autumn jacket with a bit of swing.  Just in time for autumn, in fact!  (Summer being over, at last.)  As it's quite roomy, I've decided to close it with my shawl pin rather than add buttons.  It looks a little flat lying on my bed here, but honestly, it does look better on!

For the previous link to this story, click here.

Summer Breeze Headscarf

I found a new knitting magazine recently called Knit Now.  Easy to miss considering how poorly stocked my local magazine outlets are - it has become virtually impossible to find a knitting magazine anywhere.  The answer - probably - is to subscribe but I don't feel compelled to buy a knitting mag every month and besides, I want the variety of different ones!  Also, I've got projects I've been meaning to do going back to issues that came out three years ago and often, magazines just seem to repeat the same stuff - I mean, how many mug warmers do you need?!

Anyway, the patterns in Knit Now are a little harder than the magazines I've been used to.  Their "beginner" is my intermediate!  Although that might have something to do with the fact that I'm not a hugely adventurous or skilled knitter.  I'm currently knitting the Summer Breeze Headscarf (Issue 34) with some gorgeous yarn I bought an awfully long time ago.  There were only three balls of it - all I could find in the John Lewis sale.  This was back in the days when they actually did excellent yarn sales.....sadly, they could no longer be bothered selling yarn off cheap, nor do they have a particularly good range.  Three cheers for on-line shops.  But I digress....

The yarn is Gedifra Fiorista Fino, 88% cotton, one of those divine yarns that look like a gorgeous painting by the time you've finished.  The pattern actually calls for Artesano Linen Silk DK, which costs about £8 a skein (Knit Now is really big on skeins) but I thought my cotton would work better as a headscarf/headband.  It's a lot finer but considering that you just keep on increasing until you basically reached around 80cm, I figured I just need to keep going with my triangle until I've got the right end width and then I'll know it's big enough!

I started it earlier this year but made the huge error of trying to knit it in front of the telly.  It's not a difficult pattern but you do (or I do) really have to concentrate.  I restarted it this week and am knitting in the afternoons when I'm quite tired after a morning of hard work and need to sit down for a bit!  Decent sci-fi stories on R4 all week have really helped!

I've learnt some new things as well:  for a start, there really is a difference between knit 2 tog and ssk.  I couldn't figure out how to do the latter so didn't bother - big mistake!  Another reason to pull out my first attempt [see directly below].  However, I found ssk really difficult and am doing knit 2 tbl instead.  Is there a difference?!  

My first attempt. Lots of mistakes, but aren't the colours lovely?

Must have been an exciting bit on TV as there are about ten mistakes in this bit....!

Knit Now magazine

The pattern - the photo has actually come out quite clearly and you might be able to copy it!

My second attempt, using a different ball, so the colours have started out differently.
No mistakes so far!!

My three balls of precious end-of-line Gedifra...