Pattern: Octagonal Swirl
Yarn: Heirloom Cotton in a pale lilac
Needles: 4mm Addi Bamboo DPNs, 4mm Tulip Bamboo circular

Picture me agonising over how best to get needles past airport security and then picture me working incredibly hard not to look both smug and guilty as I stood in front of them on the other side trying to shove my laptop back into my over stuffed bag. Hiding a pack of bamboo DPNs into a pocket already overflowing with pens and pencils works a treat. I guess future plane flights will be a good time to work on socks!

This is my last christmas wash cloth and I knit well over half of it on the flight to Adelaide. I finished the rest driving around to see people when we arrived and then cast off after dinner the same day. I seem to have knit the two stitches on the second or third needle in the wrong order in the first row causing a twist at the center. I choose to think of this as a feature not a bug.

I have been doing a lot of knitting, in fact I have so much knitting content I don’t know where to start. So instead I will start with where I am am:

That is the view I will be looking at for the next 4 days. I have been coming here my entire life and I will never get sick of looking at that water.

That is Jesse getting on the phone to work literally the minute we arrived here.

This is the first swim. I was too busy with the camera to actually swim, but I did get my ankles wet, which is quite a good effort for me.

Can you say “EEEeeeewwwwww!”? I can honestly say that I think jelly fish are stunning - as long as my child is not holding one up for me to see that is. Jelly fish belong in the water, not the hands. I’ll say it again, eeeewwww. You may also notice in this photo that Isabelle returned to the water after removing her togs, having a bath to remove the blue tinge from her lips and limbs, and putting her “Warm” clothes on….ah-hem.

I cast on for the base of the French Market bag at knitting class last night and finished it tonight. Working on 7mm Addis one skein of the tartan green produce enough rows to increase to 200 stitches and knit one row more. Had I read the pattern again 30 mins ago I when I was carefully measuring how much yarn I had left and calculating whether I would get to 200 stitches I would have stopped increasing before reaching 200 stitches and started knitting straight. I thought the pattern called for 3 rounds in the base colour after reaching 200 stitches and that one round was not too far off. It actually calls for 9 rows and my base is huge. Did I mention it was HUGE? Having ordered extra yarn to make sure the bag’s height is greater in proportion to the base than the original I don’t want to muck up the base/height ratio now, so I will rip back 8 rows tomorrow and knit straight from there.

Speaking of tomorrow, we are going home to Adelaide tomorrow and I probably won’t be posting much till early next week. In the meantime happy knitting to you, and keep your fingers crossed for me that I can sneak some needles and yarn on to the plane. I just have to figure out what projects to pack now…

ok so I have finished the other handle and as I sat back to look at what I had done I was not pleased. The pale green at one end seemed longer than the other. After much checking and double checking there is no question about it, the handles are wrong. Both of them. One more than the other.

The pattern calls for the handles to be knit in halves and grafted at the center rather than knit as one and grafted to the bag. Still the two halves are mirror images so it should have been simple enough to work out. Or so I thought, but apparently not. I knit the pale green until I had decreased to 17 stitches then changed on the next row to dark green. For the first handle once I passed the mid-line and started increasing to match my decreases I changed colour (back to the pale green) as soon as I had 17 stitches on the needle rather than at the end of the 17 stitch section (ie 3 rows early). The second bag I was clever enough to remember that the decrease to 17 stitches was worked in the pale green and then the switch to dark green was made. So for the second strap I changed to the pale green before increasing to 17 stitches, 4 rows early. Only one row earlier than the first handle, but it seems to have made the difference between noticing the mistake or not.

The question is, will anyone else notice? Jesse reckons they look fine. Felting will change things too. Should I unpick at the colour change, add a few rows of dark, remove a few of pale and graft it back together or should I just leave it well enough alone? So far I have made a habit of fixing almost every mistake I have noticed but I don’t know if this one is worth it, what do you think?

It’s a handle without a bag. After emailing Polly (the designer of the French Market Bag), who was gracious enough to send me a very helpful answer, I decided to order a fourth skein of the Cold Harbour Mill yarn so as to make a taller bag. Even with the extra skein my plan is to use every last scrap of yarn, so I am knitting the handles first and will then knit the body until there is no yarn left. I am finding this yarn quite easy to knit and the colours are lovely. I don’t see myself ordering it again because it doesn’t seem special enough to get from overseas when Jo Sharp yarn is available locally for the same price or less, but I will certainly enjoy using it this time.

Speaking of yarn from overseas reminds me that I never mentioned how much I LOVED using the Lambs Pride Worsted for my Booga Bag. I loved the feel of it and I really like both the colours I have received so far, particularly the Khaki that the guys at Thread Bear chose for me. There was something about the combination of the colour and texture of the Khaki that made it just so comforting to play with and knit up.

Pattern: Booga Bag
Yarn: Brown Sheep Company Lamb’s Pride Worsted. MC: Khaki, Contrast: Rasberry
Needles: 6.5mm/60cm Crystal Palace bamboo circular, 6.5mm Tulip bamboo DPNs

The upside of a heat wave is speedy drying of the felted object! I put this one through the washer yesterday morning and it was nearly dry by late afternoon - just in time for Jesse to point out that I had blocked it with the fabric twisted to one side. So I wet it again and it dried for a second time by late this afternoon.

It’s cooler today, but the fear of tomorrow’s weather had us off to the shops to buy a wading pool. As it happens we already had a wading pool but it was so enormous that after 20 mins pumping with the foot pump the first ridge was less than half full. I spent that 20 mins considering whether it was morally acceptable to waste enough water to fill such a large area even 4 inches deep and what a hassel such a big pool would be in our tiny yard. So off to the shops we went to get a pool that could be fully inflated in 10-15 mins and use FAR less water to cool and entertain my little fish.

Isabelle had a ball and I got to assemble the Booga Bag during daylight hours - daylight knitting is a novelty round here. Making holes big enough to get the strap through was nigh on impossible and involved forcing two 7mm DPNs through each hole at the same time (not easy) and then attaching the strap to a stitch holder and using that to pull it through the holes. I think I will actually knit some holes into the fabric next time…

I hope the intended recipient likes it, if they don’t Isabelle is hoping they will give it to her.

Look at that - a Booga bag ready to felt! I started this on Tuesday night, knit the base and about 7 rows of the body of the bag. Wednesday I spent working on the Phildar Hoodie. I finished the body of the bag Thursday and Friday nights apart from the icord bind off which I added this afternoon. Tonight I spent a very long time knitting a very long icord, six feet to be exact (btw it is exactly the same colour as the bag, just bad light in the photo).

Quick and easy - apart from a small problem with that icord bind off. On the left is my first attempt at joining the two ends of the icord, I was trying to convince myself that it would be ok when I took this photo. What is it about a photo that makes you see that it won’t be alright at all? I took it back to the couch, prepared to rip the whole thing off if I had to, unpicked the join and somehow it just came together the second time round, nice and neat, certainly neat enough for felting.

I received an sms on Wednesday morning to let me know that my cousin Michelle has had her baby - a little boy by the name of William Isaac, who is to be known as Will. I took a moment to be grateful that mother and baby are both well and then went into a finishing frenzy. Buttons were purchased, trim was applied and here you have it - one Phildar baby hoodie.

Pattern: Pattern #10 “Paletot” from Phildar Magazine #413 - Layette Autumn/Winter 2004/05
Yarn: Heirloom 8 ply “Merino Magic” in colour #202 (Red) and Heirloom 8 ply “Easy Care” in colour #765 (black)
Needles: 5.5mm Addi Turbos, 5.5mm Tulip babmboo circs
Gauge: 10cm = 18 stitches by 40 rows in Garter Stitch

This is my first sweater and I am quite pleased with it. It was all very straight forward and easy and though I didn’t love the Heirloom Merino Magic yarn to knit with, it is soft and I think the end result looks quite nice.

Pattern: Bella Bag
Yarn: Hawthorn Cottage 5 Ply in colour #15
Needles: 6.5mm/40cm Crystal Palace bamboo circular

Bella (and swatch) consumed 65g of my 100g hank. I think I am going to try to squeeze another, smaller, bag out of what is left. I am really very happy with how Bella turned out, although I wish I had twisted the handles a lot more. I was going to give her to Isabelle as soon as she was done, but now I am thinking my own little belle may need to wait until Christmas to see her Bella.

Recently Jesse came home with another one of those software development timeline rules of thumb. Something like “the last 10% of the project will take 90% of the effort”. This is not dissimilar to the “pick a number and triple it” rule. I think the 10/90 rule is actually more accurate and it obviously stuck in my mind. As I spent 2.5 hours making icords, grafting them on and weaving ends last night it came back to me. Where did the time go on this project?

Thursday: 20 mins choosing yarn, 2 people * 2hrs winding it into a ball, for a total of 4 hrs 20 mins choosing and preparing yarn

Friday: 1hr swatching and about the same measuring other bags and doing some maths, for a total of 2 hrs pattern preparation.

Saturday: 2.5 hrs knitting first half of the bag

Sunday: 2 hrs more knitting

Monday: 30 mins finishing the body of the bag 2.5 hours making icord, grafting, weaving, etc.

Tuesday: 30 mins felting & blocking.

Now making icord is not my idea of fun and as a result I have put it in the “finishing” category. Which gives me the following stats for this project:

Preparation: 6 hrs 20 mins (44%)
Actual Knitting: 5 hrs (35%)
Finishing: 3 hrs (21%)

Of course without the whole ball winding debacle the prep time would have been about 3 hours shorter giving us more like 5 hrs knitting to 6.5 hours prep and finishing (still more than half the time spent on the project)…. Deceptive isn’t it? The knitting may be quick but the rest takes time too… Here’s what Bella looked like pre felting:

Bella just came out of the washer and I am VERY pleased - no creases or funny patches to be seen. So my new ASKO frontloader felting recipe is: put item straight in the washer (no pillow slip) with a couple of nappies on super quick cycle at 75 degrees celsius, with a teaspoon of wool wash, no spin. I’ll post a picture once Isabelle is asleep and I can block the bag.