Bucket Knitting

 

I have started knitting a blanket - a baby blanket as a matter of fact.  It is my first baby project for my baby surprise - good going indeed as I don't think I ever finished anything for the other two before they were born.

The pattern is called Hansel and is a traditional Shetland Hap shawl designed by Gudrun Johnson (The Shetland Trader).   Traditionally a hap was a shawl or cover up for every day wear and warmth thus differing from the more intricate Shetland lace shawls often used for Christening shawls.

The pattern consists of a central garter stitch square.  This is knitted on the diagonal, increasing a stitch per row to a point (144 stitches in this case), before decreasing again, thus forming the square.  I've now progressed on the knitted border which is providing me with a lot of pleasure and fun!  The shawl is essentially square but the border is knitted on in the round!  This took me a while to get my head around, but it is a most efficient way of adding a border as there will be no seams for me to join at the end :-).  I am constantly amused though at how this piece of knitting produced by my needles is becoming more and more voluminous - I feel as if I'm knitting a parachute or bucket!

My central square is grey as is the first part of the border.  I've just started adding the colour sequence into it and have decided on a relatively gender neutral colour scheme.  Initially I had decided to hold out until my 20-week scan before choosing colours thinking reds and purples for a girl or greens and blues for a boy.  However, the knitting of the shawl has become a relative addiction and I couldn't take a break from it - patience isn't a virtue I have in great abundance.  I've settled on a scheme of teal, blue, green and dark purple so hopefully it will work whether the baby is pink or blue.

Industrious

I have been industrious - I have finished a quilt.  AND I have another pieced, layered and basted ready for quilting - yay me!

This simple charm quilt is a gift for my friend Wendy's little girl Phoebe.  She was born May/June time - the first little girl after 3 older brothers.  Although I knew Wendy was having a girl I was a bit nervous about going down the pink and pretty path as a little girl was going to be a big change after 3 boys!  I chose some beautiful, bold and colourful prints from a range by Momo - 'Just wing it'.

This is a side on view of the whole quilt - it was too blustery on my washing line the right side up:

Such a happy quilt :-)

The back is pieced with complimentary blue stripy fabric and a strip of butterfly print - I know it's a Moda print but I've had it in my stash for some time so can't remember which line it's from now.  The binding is red and spotty!

It's all washed, dried, crinkly and sweet-smelling and  wrapped up in a brown paper package (which I will probably tie with string ;-)) ready for it's journey to Oz!

Magic Balls

I had a day out yesterday - purely in adult company.  I was very privileged to attend a fabulous knitting workshop with two of my friends at the National Wool Museum - incidentally a great day out should you be in or around Carmarthen or Cardigan.

The course was run by Brandon Mably, of Kaffe Fasset Design Studio fame and was on a colourwork technique known as 'magic ball'.  As participants we had been asked to come with our knitting needles and a selection of yarn - 6 light colours and 6 dark colours - which we pooled in the middle of the class.

This proved a challenge for me before we had even cast on a stitch as it really made me think of how I perceived colour.  We were told to cut arm's lengths of 6 light colours, tying the lengths together and then rolling them into a ball - the exercise was then repeated with the dark colours.  This made me realise that Brandon Mably's perception of colour is a bit different to mine - very often he classed very bright, even fluorescent colours as 'light' ones where I would have just thought of creams, beiges and pastel colours.  He encouraged me when I was working on my swatch to include some pretty, in my opinion, crazy colours into my work.  Oddly enough it actually worked as I shall reveal later!

We all worked on the same pattern, casting on 34 stitches before following a charted design of 'Persian Poppies'.  The idea was to use our dark ball of yarn for the background and the light ball of wool for the flowers using the fairisle technique.  Primarily the workshop was to challenge our creativity and knowledge of colour rather then teaching techniques, although Brandon did show us a rather nifty way of weaving in loose ends at the back of the work and carrying our floats between colour changes.

We were encouraged to keep knitting and under no circumstances rip out our work.  I am convinced this was aimed at myself - Brandon did find me undoing a few stitches (read couple of rows) at one point but this was purely because I had dropped my pattern on the floor and got a bit lost.  I never once started again because I didn't like my work.

My swatch started out rather 'tasteful' in the words of the man himself and I was encouraged to be a bit more vibrant.  He suggested some lurid green and yellow and despite my reservations I boldly went into a voyage of colour exploration!  Here is my completed swatch:

Don't look to closely at my technique :-) but what you can see is how I improved during the course of the day.  Brandon encouraged us all to look at our work from a distance as it gave us a much better perspective of what it looked like and at the end of the workshop he put all our swatches on a board for us to view:

As you can see the work looks quite different from a distance and every swatch was beautiful and sort of 'went together'. Mine is the in the first row on the left, third swatch down.  I was a bit concerned that my top two poppies looked like breasts rather than flowers but the man himself referred to my swatch as a gem.  And praise from a word renowned designer I am more than happy to take!  It was a great day and I am determined to try this technique and pattern again in a project.

Long time, no post

Well hello blogland!  It has been a long time - almost a month in fact!  I seem to lose track of all time during the Summer months.  We're well into the school holidays here so children and family have keeping me busy not to mention a couple of challenging situations.  My sewing room has largely been out of action due to a little stream of Summer visitors who have come our way, and I've pretty much decided to put my Farmer's Wife Quilt on hold until September.  I have, however, been busy knitting away but progress is always much slower than with machine sewing so there is not much photographic evidence of my hard work yet!  This last week I did set up my sewing machine on the dining room table to press on with a couple of baby quilts I need to finish.  There is a sneak peak of one above and the second one is well in progress :-).  Hopefully I'll be posting some finished projects by the end of this coming week.  Baby projects are going to keep me busy for a while yet - my sister-in-law is having a third baby, my twin niece and nephew are coming up to 6 months and I have a group of particularly fertile friends!  I can also divulge that some of these baby projects will be for my own surprise little bundle - I'm nearly 17 weeks pregnant.  In the words of one of my friends: "a happy accident"!!!

Bagels

I went to University in London which is where I became properly acquainted with bagels. Not the supermarket variety which I grown up with, but the proper hot-from-the-bakery Brick Lane variety. Since those youthful days I've also experienced bagels in NYC which took bagel eating to a new level. Despite my bagel love, I had never attempted making them myself - until this afternoon. Using the recipe from the River Cottage 'Bread' book, I can report success and they were nowhere nearly as labour intensive as I had imagined. The proof will be in the eating of course - I can't claim they will be as good as the Jewish bakery ones but I'm looking forward to enjoying one with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs :-).

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Neglect!

This blog has been sorely neglected of late.  Life is extremely busy for us as a family at the moment and I cannot even begin to remember when I last sewed at all!  Roll on school holidays and annual leave - the former is still over three weeks away and the latter more!

Even if I haven't managed any sewing (and it's not as if I don't have any sewing to do) I have managed baking and knitting.

A mountain of scones - plain and fruit.  Am thinking of making some cherry ones for the weekend....mmmm!

I've also managed to complete a pair of knitted socks!

 

 These were made as a Father's Day gift for my Dad and were well received.  The yarn is by Regia.  I must say that, in my opinion, socks are the ultimate knitting project - they are portable and quick.  The pattern is easy to remember and the self-striping yarn maintains my interest because I never know what's coming next!  I pretty much always have a pair of socks on the go as well as many other things!

Speaking of other things I'm hoping the postman might bring me some wool-containing packages later.  It is very important to start planning Summer Holiday Knitting before the hiatus starts :-).

Snowflake

Yes, this does seem an unseasonal title for a blog post what with it being mid June.  Snowflake is a lovely, lovely jumper I've made my youngest niece.  I've been knitting a lot of late - I find knitting a more portable and sociable crafting activity.

I loved every minute of knitting this jumper.  You can see why it is called 'Snowflake' what with the lacy yoke and the Christmas colour theme!

The pattern is a Ravelry download by Tin Can Knits - they have the most wonderful collection of patterns.  One of the great things about their collection of patterns is the vast size range - this one ranged from 0-6 months to adult sizes.  I think I'll be making one for my 8 year old for the Winter season! 

I used Rowan's newish yarn, softknit cotton, for 'Snowflake', it is (as the name implies) lovely and soft and contrary to a lot of other cotton yarns, is not like knitting with string!!  The whole garment is knitted in the round, even the sleeves, so there is no need for seaming at the end :-).

While knitting has been productive, sewing has been progressing slowly in comparison.  However, I do have an entire baby quilt cut out ready to piece and a FWQ block ready for sewing so I do hope I'll find some time this week to get them done.

Happy Monday!