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Just a quickie tonight... some photos of a couple of completed projects...
This cardie has been finished for some time now, but I've added photos now because WonderBoy is finally big enough to fit it properly! I mean, it has been knit for a size three so the sleeves are slightly long yet, but because he's grown into such a tall young man, the body fits him well already. When I put it on him, and asked how it was, he rubbed the sleeves and front, saying, "Oh, it's so cosy... Thanks, Mummy!"These photos were taken on Friday last, when I took him into work. One of the other teachers complimented him on his wee cardie, and he responded, "Is yarn. Yarn! Mummy knitted yarn!"
That's my boy.
And these shots are of the completed Linen Print Scarf. I'm so pleased with the way the fringe worked out - it's kinda nice to frog some knitting and end up with something usable!
Crikey... the belly's got started already! Or maybe that's the chocolate.
WonderBoy put up with a trip to the RTA today so I could renew my license, as well as our grocery shopping (which he has come to view with distaste, usually saying "No shopping, Mummy?") and a walk up to the butcher's, so we went to the park on the way home.
Did I say the park trip was for his benefit? Silly me.
While he enjoyed the slippery dip, over and over, I enjoyed close to an hour sitting in the sunshine, working on a little summer scarf.
I'm knitting it from leftover Rowan 'Linen Print' that I used to make a lace top last spring. I think it's been discontinued now, which is a shame 'cause it knits with a lovely drape, and it gets softer with every wash. Once it's done, I'm planning on adding a loopy sort of fringe, and I'm looking forward to teaming it this spring and summer with a crisp white shirt and jeans that have been mucked around with to accommodate my belly as Little One grows bigger!! Speaking of whom, since she or he is due in January (a bit hot for wool!) I ended up buying more Linen Print that I'm going to use in an attempt on an Elizabeth Zimmermann 'Baby Surprise Jacket' for him or her...
Here we are. I'm around or just over the halfway mark.
I enjoyed a fabulous two nights away with Pete last week to see 'Phantom of the Opera' for our anniversary (it's been ten years since we met!), and took the opportunity to get over to Tapestry Craft on York Street, where I picked up this
skein of Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn. I've earmarked it for yet another lace scarf (I'm into those at the moment!), the pattern being the 'Fern Lace Scarf' by KnittingPixie (Ravelry link). I'm totally in love with the colours - I first caught sight of the lime, then the yellow-orange, and then had to look a little closer, where I saw *gasp! Oh, joy!* hot lolly-pink! I can't wait to get stuck into it and see how the colours work out.
On another topic, I am desperately waiting/trying to figure out if and when I might be able to get a hold of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's heart-meltingly gorgeous 'Baby Mine' pattern. I've just found the her blog entries for the 'Baby Yours' and 'Baby Mine' jumpers in July 2008, but for the life of me, I cannot link just the one entry! It's worth it. Go and have a look, trust me. I have a little bit of a feeling that Little One might be a wee girlie, and this is just the sort of thing I'd love to have knitted up and ready to wear.
... because I have created this weekend, a hat that would have to be titled one of two names:
The Biggest Ever Hat Intended for a Six-Month-Old
or
The Greatest Gauge Cock-Up the World May Ever Witness
I jest not. Our darling Little One is due to arrive in January, which I do admit is quite some time from now. Plenty of time for me to be knitting, calmly and in a planned manner, but 'planned' and 'knitting' are words that for me just don't really go together in the one sentence. I will 'plan to knit', so to speak, but I mean I will plan to knit... instead of doing the washing... while I supervise WonderBoy in the bath... on a trip to Sydney. I don't plan projects, projects tend to find me and demand to be placed at the top of my to-do list.
So, I grabbed a very colourful (not gender specific!), slubby single spun Adriafil 'Baba' from a yarn/tapestry/needlework place nearby, thinking if I knitted into a hat to fit a six-month old, but the time the weather had cooled to winter, Little One would be just the right size to gaze up at me adoringly from under its rolled woolly brim.
Ok, so far so good. I pulled out Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's "Knitting Rules" and had a geez at her recommendations for sizing. I even pulled WonderBoy's baby medical record book and checked to see roughly what size head he had at the age of six months. Now, I would like to make this clear from the very beginning - this is most certainly my fault. As much as I followed the Yarn Harlot's guidelines, I paid little to no attention to the enormously chunky gauge of the yarn I was working with. I mean, I did knit and measure the gauge, but I either didn't knit far enough before measuring or I cannot make a basic mathematical equation work.I'd say 'a little from Column A, and a little from Column B'.
And here is what the mixture of stupidity, denial and stubbornness got me this afternoon:
Part of me wants to rip it up and actually knit a hat for a six-month-old, but the larger part of me that is bored with the yarn and wants to knit something else is saying "Sod it, let's get a skein of Noro Silk Garden and have another crack at it later". You never know, I might end up with a hat for me made of Silk Garden.
Next up, my most recent pride and joy: my "Paris" scarf, knit from the most delicious skein of Hand Maiden wool and cashmere sock yarn...
I was able to wear it up to Sydney, the way I'd planned, and I was so thrilled with the way it felt and draped. The colours have just striped and blended like a dream, and I really enjoyed the pattern as I worked it.
Oh, and as promised: another tale of hat woe... I knit this monstrosity for WonderBoy, thinking it would be good to whip up another winter hat for my huge-headed darling boy. Now, I really did research this one. I measured WonderBoy's head and worked on the largest size possible. All I can surmise is that I've knit it tighter than I should have, or possibly on needles slightly too small.
But here it is, on my darling WonderBoy, looking like one of those weird leather gridiron helmets that George Clooney wore in his film 'Leatherheads'...
And yet, he still looks so cute. The necklace-type business he has on there, for those who may be curious is the waistband from an old (clean) pair of my husband's boxers I had just cut up for cleaning cloths.
Maybe the hat isn't so weird after all.
I did a stupid, stupid thing... While I could have got this scarf finished in the last week, I have gone back to work, thus rendering me unable to maintain intelligent conversation, let alone knit lace of an evening. I just need to get back into the routine, I'm sure.
But in the last few days of the holidays, where I always end up cramming in way more than I should in an effort to have 'done something worthwhile' with my time off, I only managed the odd row or two and stupidly, stupidly left the scarf halfway through the the ten-row set (I usually go to the end and stop each time so I already know I'll be back at the start when I pick the knitting up again). On top of this, I've left the Post-It marking a row I had already completed, thus compounding the problem...
I've managed to sort it out, thankfully. I've tinked back a row to see whether the number of stitches had changed, and the began to tink the row before, to determine the pattern of stitches I had finished that row with... I'm hunched over the knitting, held backwards, muttering, "Right, so there's the K3 I've finished with... the one before it looks like a K3tog, but it can't be. No row has finished on that before... unless... a-ha! I thought so. It's a sl1-K2tog-psso! It's Row 7!!"
Ah, the triumph.
I tried last night, but I found it more important to focus on the screening of 'Jamie's Fowl Dinners'. I make a point of only buying free-range eggs, but this show really opened my eyes about just how crappy the life of a meat chook is before it's offed for our consumption. Crammed into overpopulated, shitty barns to eat and eat before being knocked off at the ripe old age of forty weeks old. They're bred to gain something like sixty grams a day, they can barely stand and walk; their bones just can't cope with the excessive weight. I'm certainly not saying we should go veggie (I tried it once and wussed out pretty quickly!), just that we should really try to find out where our chicken and eggs come from and trying to buy the best welfare bird or eggs we can afford. I'm a big Jamie fan anyway, but I think he's going above and beyond being just a chef; he's doing some good things in a lot of areas.
Back to the scarf.
Oh, and could anyone think why, when I spellchecked this post, it wanted me to change 'knitting' to 'antitank'?
What a crack-up! I had lots of fun setting this up this afternoon. I love going through whatever flickr brings up in response to your search query and choosing the best one to go in the mosaic. This is such a fantastic idea, and all the credit has to go to Amputeehee and her blog (which I accessed in a series of clicks and links, through the Yarn Harlot's comments page. I won't bore you with the details!). I will definitely be back to the Mosaic Maker in the future - it's a fun and very easy tool to make use of!
What's that? You'd like to do one too? Go for it! Here's the instructions...
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.b. Using only the first page, pick an image.c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.The Questions:1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.
My answers:
1. Jenny
2. Chocolate
3. The Hills Grammar School, Kenthurst
4. Green or blue
5. Ewan McGregor
6. Water
7. Wandering through Europe
8. Lemon meringue pie
9. Happy and knitting!
10. My family
11. Unusual
12. Bluejude1980
Photo Credits:
1. Cascade Canyon from Jenny Lake 2. eye candy! 3. Terry Pratchett's Authoring Hat 4. wham: a different corner 5. Ewen McGregor 6. Prenent un Bany. Taking a Bath. 7. Wandering through Assisi 8. Lemon meringue pie anyone? 9. Happy Valentine's Day! 10. "Nourouz" is coming! 11. Just a Orchid 12. 'Cuarto mio' Version 1.1
The only thing I can say I was annoyed or frustrated about was that one of the photos I liked the best was not available to be used. The cool thing was though, it was the picture for 'My Family', and I'd chosen a very funky group of Golden Monkeys. And it was the only one that was not made available. :(
Well. That's one hour of the afternoon gone. Maybe I should get back onto that knitting...
A quick post, but with pictures... Here is our first photo of Little One, due in January...
Meanwhile, it being past 9am on a Wednesday morning, I really must get up and do something useful! WonderBoy and I are set to paint a masterpiece for my mum's (his Nana's) birthday present... if I can drag him away from the ABC's children's morning programmes!
Roll up, roll up! We got finished objects here!
And some news... but I'll leave that to the end...
First up, we have my little yarn monster, inspired by Henry Watts, Esq. His adventures with the humans he lives with with may be followed here, at "A Little Bit Of Happy". I can recommend tripping over there to catch up on Henry's exploits, and urge all and sundry to put a vote in for the fabulous "Henry" t-shirt being modelled as of June 30. I'm certainly not pretending that young Ruby-Lou here is even in Henry's league, but I certainly did try with this striped hussy! The original post where I documented starting her can be seen here.
Next on the chopping block (literally, I think), we have the hat I knit for WonderBoy. As I mentioned, I'm a little unhappy with the way it turned out, or more specifically, unhappy with the somewhat gargantuan size of my son's beautiful head. I still haven't washed and blocked it, so you'll have to see it as it stands right now, so to speak. I am happy with the yarn I used (a good, basic, cheap, 100% wool from my local craft chain shop), and I do like the way the colours worked out...
And then... the hat I was working on for WWKIP. It's a little larger than I'd have planned, but let's face it, I'd rather a hat be a bit big rather than a bit small! I used a lovely pattern on Ravelry, called "Robin's Egg Blue Hat", by Rachel Iufer. The only thing left to add is a big button on the brims where they overlap, but since I haven't yet got around to finding a suitable button, I'm just wearing the bugger anyway. Meh.
We also have a new sock, started so I'd have something to knit on a Preschool excursion to Sydney a couple of weeks ago. I'm using Regia Galaxy, and knitting the Yarn Harlot's "Plain Vanilla Sock Recipe". No issues with the sock and the pattern, but I'm a little disheartened with the fact that it just doesn't seem to be knitting up in the beautiful Saturn's Rings type pattern that I was anticipating. Ah, well... we'll see how we go.
Since the Drape Cardigan and I are having a trial separation, I've taken up with the beautiful, gorgeous, almost edible Handmaiden Casbah 'Paris', and started the "Branching Out" lace scarf by Susan Lawrence. This is how far I'd got as of June 28.
Then WonderBoy decided to bring it to me. "Look, Mummy... big ball!" My heart sank as my eyes followed the thread of yarn as it left the kitchen, wrapped around his little table and chair set as it wound its way into the family room. Bless him, it wasn't his fault; he was just bringing it to me... but the needle had slipped about half the stitches and I just couldn't salvage it and get them back on... so we took a trip to frogsville, just me and the scarf. sigh. When I cast on again, it will be the third time I've attempted this scarf. Someone up there doesn't want me to get this done!
Some stash shots:
This delightful raspberry concoction (modelled by a cranky-looking Luna) is merino/cashmere sock yarn, handpainted by 'The Knittery' in Victoria, and purchased through the lovely people at the Wool Shack. With this yarn, I shall be joining the Clapotis club - I was feeling a little left out!
And this is be a ginormous ball of my own handspun! I *think* I've worked the weight out to mean that I'll need 5mm needles (yes, I swatched!!), and I have a cabled scarf planned for this stuff. I figure now is a good enough time to try learning to cable!
And the big news?
Pete and I are expecting another wee knitter in the family! I'm twelve weeks gone, with a due date for our little friend set on or around January 13 2009. Should be fun! I'll add a ticker to the blog in the next couple of days... should I actually drag my lazy butt back here to get it done!
That's my boy.
Crikey... the belly's got started already! Or maybe that's the chocolate.
