I am not the only one in this house that likes to make (and bake) things. Isabelle is awfully fond of “baking” using the tray from the lovely PLASTIC tea set Jesse’s aunt Maris gave her. Today I helped her out by turning the oven on.
Needless to say I ended up not roasting that chook.
No, not exciting new needles. Sadly yesterday’s efforts in the car confirmed my fear that my new addi 5.5mms were not quite right. So today I wrapped them in bubble wrap and shipped them back. There will be no shaping of any armholes until the replacements arrive, probably on thursday.
Even if I did have my knitting on neeldes instead of stitch holders I would probably not be knitting tonight anwyay as my glands are doing very bad things and I rather expect I will be in bed not long after Isabelle.
I feel like I haven’t been doing a lot of knitting the last week, it seems like I have been constantly busy with something else but I made up for it today in the car. Jesse’s mother, Robyn, is in town and after spending the first two days of the weekend taking Isabelle out without me, so I could work, we all went for a day trip together. Hours and hours in the car made for good hooded jacket progress.
Isabelle thought all this knitting was very dull and she slept through it.
Jesse and Robyn were too interested in the scenery to pay attention to my knitting.
We had a great day - and it wasn’t just because i finally got to do some knitting.
Even with all that fun I did indeed make a lot of progress on the jacket - partly because Jesse, the designated driver, let me have a light on so I could keep knitting after darkness fell. In fact I made so much progress I had to stop knitting and wait to get home and get out my books. I am about to shape my very first armholes and I need to decide a) whether to bind off or hold live stitches and use them for seaming later, and b) if I bind off whether to bind off both sides on the same row and therefore rejoin yarn to keep going, or to bind off over two rows so I can keep using the same yarn. I hope to have this question (or two) resolved by tomorrow night. In the mean time here it is waiting for armhole shaping:
The brand new addi 5.5mm circs I am using for the red hooded jacket are rough at the join on one side. Every other row is like knitting with a rough fingernail. I am getting a similar feeling to being in a room with someone repeatedly dragging their nails down a blackboard. I have contacted Janette from styk and she says to send them back. I will knit a bit more before deciding that is definitely the needles as I will feel a fool if she finds nothing wrong with them.
As for the jacket it is coming along nicely, my gauge is spot on width wise, off a bit in the length but they give the instructions by cms not rows so I am feeling ok about that. I have a few loose stitches and it seems like that will be much harder to fix in garter stitch than it was in stocking stitch. I will post a photo tomorrow when I have some decent light to take it in.
Pattern: Big Bad Baby Blanket, Stitch ‘n’ Bitch
Yarn: Jo Sharp Silk Road Aran in Quartz, Alabaster and Ricepaper
Needles: 5mm Birch circ/5mm Addi Turbo
Gauge: 18 st/ 10cms
Here it is, my big bad baby blanket, blocked at last! It took ages to dry as we had no fan but I am very pleased with the result. And now it is packed away with a block of soap (grandma Mary’s technique for protecting her hand knits) in the hopes that we will one day have someone small to wrap in it.
As in a red swatch for a tiny hooded jacket. I love baby things. I forgot to take a photo of the swatch but I did make one, really I did. I almost got gauge too, at least in terms of stitches, but when I did the math on how much extra width my one extra stitch per 10cm was going to give me I found that I should get the exact measurements given in the pattern. On the other hand my calculator tells me that if I had perfect gauge I would actually have 1.5 cms more fabric than expected…I decide 1.5cms here or there wasn’t worth worrying about, the babe isn’t even born yet - who knows what shape it will be.
Having made noises about buying more of the styk stitch markers when they are ready come october, I found I will need markers before then. So I went out and bought some and they were UGLY. Not content to use ugly markers for a beautiful task I got busy and made my own.
For the price of about 4 of the styck markers (shown on its own at the top of the photo) I have made 12 of my own and have enough bits and pieces left over to make a gazillion more. Now that I know I can do it I will be on the look out for some truly beautiful beads…
Ever so carefully I typed the instructions for my next project into googles language tools and this is what it returned:
“Be 29 cm total height, to form encolure. in folding back the 6 meshs, power station then to continue, a side at the same time to fold back of it side encolure 2 row plus height 7 meshs”
I don’t intend to knit this jacket at the local power station so I am looking elsewhere for translation assistance at this time. Alison was kind enough to send me these very helpful links for translating knitting terms:
We are having manacotti for dinner tonight. Making manacotti involves a vast number of pancakes and a great deal of standing around waiting to flip those pancakes. The thing with pancakes is you can’t really leave them alone to do something else but really it’s pretty dull standing there watching them brown.
Can you hear the sounds of “One of these things is not like the others”? Hum it to yourself.
Why it’s a plaited drawstring for the nappy cover.
