Thursday, June 12, 2008

Full of surprises

They say women are natural multi-taskers - except me. I took young man to the Red bull Flugtag contest at Hyde Park last weekend. I took along my knitting as usual. Something nice and easy and I brought the pattern with me. It was a lovely afternoon, lots to see and me pitched in a corner with my foot up sat knitting for the entirety. The baby jacket I'm working on has a one piece body with a simple stitch pattern. I focused on my knitting, like any other obsessive would do, rather than all the lovely (non) flying machines diving so gracelessly into the Serpentine. I had enough time to finish the body and both sleeves. What an achievement for an afternoons work. 5 days later I'm ready to sew together and finish it off. I wanted to take some progress shots and began arranging the pieces. I couldn't work out why the pieces didn't look right. It was when I downloaded the pictures that I realised I'd totally omitted the pattern on the yoke area. I managed to convince myself that it was the pattern and not me until I fished the book out and read the 2 lines - the 2 crucial lines - I'd missed out. Obviously I was more distracted by the 'flying machines' than I thought.


Plain jacket - should have a moss stitch ribbed yoke!!


On a more positive note, I sewed 2 panels together on the Mystery Blanket. I've mentioned before that this blanket is a piece of work that incorporates many of the techniques needed generally for knitting. My pet hate - sewing seams is one of them. Armed with Jane Crowfoot's Finishing Techniques for and Knitters, I sewed my first mattress stitch seam. I am queen of the back stitch and my previous attempts with mattress stitch, felt very awkward - so I would give up. However, I knew I had no other choice than to use mattress stitch for the blanket. A few hiccups later and the two strips are done.


You can see my trusted well used book in the background!!

I've created a few problems for myself. I modified the sheep squares, they body of the sheep should have been the loop stitch. I used moss titch instead. But in order to create the look of volume, doubled the yarn. This in turn made the square slightly larger than it ought to have been, which transpired when it came time to sew the strips together. I hope we don't have any more sheep!!

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Mystery Blanket

I have not blogged very much about my progress on the Mystery Blanket aka 'In The Country'. Since I'm housebound I've almost finished the June squares. You will also see in the background my very rarely used ironing board. Is there anyone else who had to purchase an ironing board so they could block their pieces??
As you can see, I've graduated from table top to floor to accommodate the size of the blanket!



Columns 1 and 2 & 6 and 7 are ready to be sewn up. I really love the way the project has progressed over each month and the way the colour scheme works and has come together. There was one new square called Meadow Stripe. The background is reverse stocking stitch and the eye catcher is 9 embroidered lazy daisies. Besides working in colour my second nemesis is embroidery. Suffice to say, the reverse stocking stitch is complete the embroidery is not!! I'm going to have to seek help to do this.



Sheep number 2 - slightly different ( & blurry)

ahh look, they're making friends

Right and wrong sides. I'm winning the battle of sewing in ends!!!

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Picot Edged Sweater

We have a finished object: The Picot Edged Sweater by Lois Daykin from her Baby Knits book. This is the second project I've completed from the book. This pattern however was not a joy to knit - however, it has not deterred me from trying other projects in the book, so there will be more to come. For now:



Details:
Pattern: Picot edged Sweater

Source: Baby Knits by Lois Daykin

Yarn: Rowan RYC Cashsoft DK


Needles: 3.25 and 4mm


Started: 6/3/08

Finished: 28/5/08
Comments: The finished object is gorgeous. The pattern itself is quite simple but the pattern instructions were not the most user friendly. Once I'd read through it a couple of times to make sense of it, it made sense to make a few modifications. I did not do a picot cast off, I did a picot cast on - far less ends to sew in! I did not knit the picot edged bow. Again it was a cast off picot pattern but because the bow is sewn on to the neck line area, I thought that the young wearer may want to try to pull it off. I'm not sure what to put there now.


Two more babies have made their entrance to the world, so no doubt there will be more baby things to follow. Since I'm stuck on the couch, baby things and blanket squares are right up my street right now.