Lady Irmelin

Pattern: Lady Irmelin by Marita Rolin for Artesano Yarns. It was featured in Let's Knit magazine issue 13, December 2008.

Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend. I used 4 x 100g hanks (approx 300 yds each) to knit a medium. I bought it in Stash in Chester as a Christmas present to myself! The colour is beautiful and the finished fabric drapes beautifully. As this is a hand-dyed yarn, there are no dyelots and there may be some differences in colour in each skein. The label recommends "knitting two rows from one skein and two rows from another to give an overall blended effect." I didn't at first as I couldn't see any colour difference until after I'd knitted both fronts and realised they were noticeably different. So I ripped them back and followed the instructions second time around!

When I got my Lady Irmelin out to finish off this morning, it turned out there really wasn't that much left to do. The sleeves went in nicely and I just happened to have a single button in my stash that was the perfect shade of purple. I don't remember buying it for a project so it must have been in a bargain bag from the market. What good luck!

This is a style I really love - bell sleeves, deep v-neck and empire line. The pattern really wasn't that complicated. The bottom section of the body and sleeves has a simple slip stitch pattern, and the top half is just plain stocking stitch. The edging is slightly scalloped - as I was knitting it, the edge was curling terribly. Blocking did little so I pressed it using a damp cloth which made all the difference. Can't wait to wear it!

WIPs everywhere!

Thought I'd better update the blog with some WIP pics as I have nothing actually finished to show you. There's the possibility of some extra freelance work coming my way, and strangely the knowledge that I'll have less time to knit for myself, has kick-started me to work on a few projects that have been languishing in the stash.

I've completed the June squares for my Debbie Abrahams mystery blanket club which means I have done 30 squares so far. I've been knitting them in strips - picking up the stitches for the next square through the cast off of the previous one. It saves on sewing up and now that there are two full strips completed, I've sewn them together and can start to see how the blanket is going to look when it's done.

I've done a little more on my Knitwitches silk lace shawl. This project lives in the cupboard by the sofa and I work a few pattern repeats when I feel alert enough to count stitches but not quite awake enough to start reading a new pattern. I really need to put in a new lifeline before I keep going. I have had to rip it back once and it is so much easier when there's a lifeline to save you!

I've started working on a little cardigan for my niece. It is easy, no-concentration knitting to keep my hands busy when there is good TV to watch. It will probably be a Christening present so I'm making a much bigger size than she needs right now. I'm using Sirdar Kisses yarn and a Sublime pattern called Lily the Pink which was featured in Let's Knit magazine issue 2.

At work, I've been working on this simple lace wrap. It uses 8mm needles and Kidsilk Haze. There's only one row of pattern to remember and every wrong side row is plain old purl so it is pretty easy to pick up and put down when I need to. My Lady Irmelin cardigan is knitted and blocking right now. The Manos del Uruguay silk blend is beautiful, soft and the knitted fabric is a stunning blend of pinks and purples. I only have to seam and attach the sleeves, and buy/find a button, so I'll wait to photograph that project. It shouldn't take too long before it is finished and being worn!

Thats it for now - but I think I have plenty to keep me busy!

Chaos continues

The general chaos of life has continued to keep me offline and away from crafting. I'm desperate to get out into the garden and plant some greenery but we are having messy work done at home (repairing and repainting the outside walls of the house) which has meant avoiding the garden. It hasn't been too conducive to crafting or photographing projects either, as some of the windows are masked up to protect them from paint splashes, making the house rather darker than usual. Hopefully things will be back to normal next week and I'll have a nice shiny house to show for it. To escape from the madness, we headed out to Chester zoo on Friday.

We went to the monkey house

watched the elephants playfighting

joined the giraffes for feeding time

made friends with a meercat

and found a camera-loving rhino (seriously, it trotted across the pen and struck a pose when the cameras came out)

This afternoon, I'm putting my feet up with a good movie and some knitting for a small respite, before the building work restarts on Monday!

Afternoon quilt

I'm pleased that the shrug made it safely to the recipient - and in time for her birthday! Unfortunately, life then took me away from the internet and crafting for a little while. So apart from knitting a few rows on a shawl I started last year, I thought I really didn't have that much that is new to show or post about. Until I remembered this...Just as I was thinking I couldn't come up with a decent post, I realised that I hadn't shared pics of a recent project - a quick and easy baby quilt, using a pre-printed panel. It really did take just one afternoon to complete.

The basic construction steps were:

I quilted the panel to a piece of fleece by sewing along the pre-printed lines. I machine-quilted the straight lines and hand-quilted the shapes.I then cut a co-ordinating piece of cotton as backing, and sewed it to the front panel and fleece with the right sides of the panel and backing together, leaving a small hole to turn the quilt right side out. It was super quick beacause I only had to worry about quilting through two layers and there was no binding to fiddle about with.

As it was a gift, I just rolled it up and tied it with a co-ordinating ribbon. So easy and ready to go!

Tackling ridiculous deadlines... and somehow succeeding

My friend asked me to knit her a shrug last year. I said I’d do it for her birthday, which gave me several months to complete it. Now I do tend to procrastinate until I can see a deadline approaching but this time I took it to a whole new level. I only ordered the yarn last week and cast on this week, giving myself a whole 2 days knitting time. I did have a moment where I thought I wouldn’t get it done - I even wrote an “I owe you one knitted shrug” letter to her in my head. However, by ignoring less important things like housework and sleep, I managed to get it finished at 1am last night, ready to be wrapped and posted first thing this morning.
The pattern is the Sumptuously Soft Shrug which appears in Jeanette Trotman's book Easy Beaded Knits. I knit it for myself last year. The UK Alpaca yarn - an Alpaca/silk blend- which I used last time isn't available at the moment so I decided to use their Alpaca Merino. I used 3 balls - although have most of the 3rd ball leftover. I chose the Buttermilk shade - a natural creamy colour which I thought would work best with the gold Rowan beads. I cannot say enough good things about UK Alpaca. I emailed them with questions and got a comprehensive response within a couple of days, I placed an order and my yarn was dispatched within 24 hours, and the product itself is totally scrummy. So soft, so warm, so lovely to work with. And since it is manufactured in the UK from Alpacas bred in the UK, I think it's got decent environmental credentials too.

Of course things couldn't got totally smoothly. The shrug was knitted, wrapped, and parcelled up ready for my early morning trip to the post office. But when the postmistress processed my parcel, she said she couldn't trace my friends address. She tried a couple of different searches and couldn't locate the address on the system. It took a trip home (to check my address book and an online postcode search) and then another trip back to the post office to discover I had 1 digit of the postcode wrong. I blame all the late night knitting. But my parcel is now safely on its way to the rght address. Still can’t believe I set myself such an unrealistic target and actually got it done. I think I need a lie down.

Sparkly Daisy cardigan

I almost forgot to post about this little jacket which I knitted last week. It was a super quick knit, completed in one evening - and it's already been washed, blocked, wrapped and sent off to its intended recipient! I used a Sublime pattern - Little Daisy cardigan - which was featured in Knitting magazine's August 2008 baby knits supplement. It also appears alongside a long sleeved version in the Third Little Sublime Hand Knit book. I used Sirdar Snuggly Pearls DK in pink - a machine washable yarn with a sparkly fibre running through it. Two balls gave me more than enough yarn to knit the second size and a matching little beanie hat. I was a bit worried that the sparkly fibre would be a bit scratchy. While it's definitely not as soft as other Snuggly yarns, the finished fabric felt softer once it was knitted up and washed. And this style is to be worn over a dress rather than directly next to baby's skin.
The pattern as written is a bit fiddly so to speed up the knitting, I made a few changes. The garter stitch bands are knitted separately from the fronts and sewn on afterwards. I knitted them at the same time as the fronts, using stitch markers to mark the change between stocking stitch and garter stitch - the garter stitch did pull up a little bit but not enough to matter.

Secondly, the pattern directs you to cast off the stitches on the back, front and sleeves, and then pick them back up for the garter stitch yoke. Instead I left all stitches on holders and just knit around when starting the yoke in order to eliminate the little ridge you sometimes get inside when you pick up stitches through a cast off. I know that casting off and picking up can give a garment strength and structure so wouldn’t have done this for an adult garment. But this is a tiny baby cardi which will probably be outgrown before it has time to get saggy.

This week kinda got away from me somehow...

...I planned lots of projects, bought the latest Burda mag, washed and ironed fabric but didn't actually start anything new.

I've finished knitting my Trillium sweater (from Rowan mag 45). In fact its been finished a few days but I just can't motivate myself to do the sewing up. I'm trying to do a little bit every day and I'll get there eventually.

For a bit of instant gratification sewing, I sewed up a quick Birdie cat pillow for the Amy Butler display at work. The pattern is available for free from Amy's website. I've never used the satin stitch/applique setting on my machine before so at least it gave me some practice!