As I have mentioned I taught myself to knit in order to make a nighttime nappy cover for Isabelle. I had no one to teach me so I googled “knitting video”, possibly with some extra words in there too (this did happen 6 months or so ago) and blessed be the google gods, I found just what I needed. To be honest I found learning to knit from video pretty easy and off I went. I knit my nappy cover with stripes because I thought it would look better and also because it helped me count the rows (I had no idea you could get row counters).

All was well until I got to the finishing. The pattern suggeted i corchet on a shell edging. No instructions were forthcoming as to how to achieve this shell edging so I googled some more. I found more videos and frankly I was terrified. I had already given up the idea of actually using this cover by the time I finished it so I put it aside and got on with moving states (did I mention we did this twice in two weeks - there and back again?).

Now that I am knitting again the thought of an unfinished project has been bothering me. Having realised I must do at least a little crochet in order to knit the projects I want to it seemed only fitting that I learn to crochet in order to complete the project for which I learned to knit. Remembering the horror of those crochet videos I tried getting a book from the library and it worked! I can now crochet, at least a little. I stil have a horrible time trying to learn knitting techniques from photos or diagrams, I definitely prefer video but for crochet this book rocks!

The good news is my big bad baby blanket is officially off the needles. The bad news is that weaving the ends is NOT going well. The purple ends disappeared into the moss stitch nicely but all the ends that need to go into the body I simply cannot make disappear. I feel depressed. I have consulted all the books I own (not that many) and none of their suggestions work for something where the “back” is going to be seen. I don’t know what to do next.

We went to town today. Those of you with toddlers will understand why not going has been easy despite the ever growing list of things that would be best achieved in a major shopping area. My impending moss stitch casting off experience is what made me stop procrastinating and do it. I decided I needed a more in-depth knitting book badly enough to go to town and do all the other things I needed to do too.

So I printed off my amazon wish list and off we went. I sent Jesse to the aquarium with Isabelle while I did the stuff only I needed to be present for and I did well:

Book in hand, I went and bought some rust proof pins, a needle gauge, a pair of “knitters needles” and a new purse (for half the price I had budgetted no less). After such a happy retail experience I was feeling so good I recklessly strayed into the ladies underwear section of a major department store and that was the end of my shopping success story. When I departed an hour later with no further purchases, I was significantly less happy than I went in, close to tears in fact. At least I got the book and despite the outrageous amount of time I wasted trying to get a new bra (or three) Jesse still managed to get himself one new shirt too. The rest of the clothes shopping will have to wait for another day.

So by now you may be wondering what all this has to do with knitting tools… I did buy the needle gauge, pins and knitters needle today, and yesterday I got these in the post (shown with todays purchases for good measure):

All the needles I need for Isabelle’s Jacket with Moss Stitch Bands, the Phildar Jacket and Reverse Bloom Washcloths. There were supposed to be needles for Kate too but they somehow didn’t make it into the packet. To add to my parcel opening excitement Janette from Styk included this lovely little stitch holder sample.

I know, I know, its all a ploy to make me spend more money - well it’s working. I expect I will order 3 more when they are available in mid october.

She was walking down the hall. Slowly. And she was saying “sorry”, “sorry”, “sorry” in a small, sad little voice. She didn’t look at me as she handed me what she was carrying and when I saw what was in her hands I cried.

Call me compulsive but I was unable to sit and knit while the construction of the blog about the knitting I have not been doing was incomplete. This is probably why I am destined to be a one-big-project-at-a-time knitter. I have to resolve things RIGHT NOW. Especially code problems. I can’t sleep with code dancing in my head. The last few days have been a raging war between my old career as a web developer and my new passion for knitting. The blog may have won the first few battles but I would say that knitting has won the war because I am off to knit…. The final section of the site, the gallery, is now working - so now I must knit something to put in it. I have absolutely no plans to do anything more to the site anytime soon… except perhaps design a better header one day…

My big bad baby blanket is nearly done so I should have something for the gallery soon!

So how did I fix it? I ripped it out! But only the edges. And I left the intarsia intact.

Then I grabbed me some straights and started carefully knitting back up the side

As you can imagine I was maniacly measuring every few rows to make sure I was maintaining a steady gauge. I was NOT going to repeat this process - other than for the second side that is; because now they don’t match.

So I repeated the above process for the other side and ta-da:

So this is two nights running now with no knitting - I am too busy playing with the blog! But I really want to document the making of my first big project before it’s done - the Big Bad Baby Blanket (BBBB) from Stitch’N'Bitch. I wasn’t brave enough to order Koigu from the US for my very first serious project and I wasn’t keen to knit the blanket in a single plain yarn so I chose to do the blanket in three colours of Jo Sharp Silk Road Aran:

As I got into the body of the blanket I realised that I had a bit of a tension problem with my purl rows being looser than my knit. The result being that the intarisa on the side joins was lovely, but the central intarsia join was loose. This meant I had to spread the slack from the first stitch in the new colour for each and every row. Here is the centre join post fix, still not great:

It was a bit of a pain, but what really scared me was reversing the pattern when I got to the centre of the blanket. I was also hating the needles I had purchased at my LYS (nice yarn, crap needles) and the centre line of the blanket seemed like a good place to switch to nicer once. So with the midpoint looming I ordered my first pair of addis and waited patiently for this moment:

I changed my needles and I (very happily) knit on, hoping for the best. Six rows in I found that I had forgotten to knit the entire first row of the colour change and now had a yarn join line on the wrong side of the blanket. I had to rip it out. Six rows was quite enough to prove my tension fears were well founded. The second half of the blanket had a nice firm centre seam and the edges had gone all sloppy. Ripping it out once made me brave and on the advice of Alsion I changed my knitting style. I LOVE combined knitting! I was a little obsessed with checking for gauge changes but it all seemed fine:

Without further ado I knit my way to the end of the body of the blanket. With only the final edge to go I sat back to admire (and photograph) my work and - DISASTER!

The squares really are very similar, any differences will block out I am sure… the edging on the other hand is 30% smaller at the top than the bottom. Ooops! check out the cinching in the top half in particular:

The problem started when I changed balls on the edge colour a few inches into the body. I got panicky about getting a loose stitch on the edge and started deliberately increasing the tension on the edges - tighter and Tighter and TIGHTER - more and more worried about that edge stitch by the looks of things.

Stay tuned for the story of my crazy repair job!

This is my very first blog post, ever. how exciting. This blog is also my first web project in a long, long time. Even more exciting. And this blog is going to be about my new obsession - knitting. I am really excited. can you tell?

On the topic of excitement I am officially growing a little stash of my very own. I got goodies in the post today, two back issues of interweave knits and yummy yarn for an Isabelle sized cardy.

This forms my infant stash, this and the lovely redness I purchased during a visit to the dentist on the weekend (no really, we honestly did drive all that way to get to the dentist, it wasn’t the lure of lovely yarn or the amazing gourmet deli at all). Of course now that we KNOW about the fantastic bread at the afore-mentioned amazing deli across the road from the yarn store that turned out to be worth the LONG drive we won’t be waiting for another dentist appointment to make a return visit. So back to that redness:

This is destined to become the jacket on the front cover of Phildar Layette 5. A gift for a cousin’s 2nd babe, due this christmas.

Soon after I started my big bad baby blanket and discovered that with four balls of wool on the go it was strictly an evenings only project I saw Clara’s bunny and got inspired. A square of plain stocking stitch seemed like a good stolen moment knitting project, I could used up the ball of yarn I wasted trying to do the failed Debbie Bliss Garter Stitch Blanket and I could try my hand at making a toy for Isabelle. I expect I will try another one at some point and I would hope for it to be a bit better than this one, but Isabelle loves her bunny and that is what counts. It is what counts, right?

You can get the free pattern here and make your own.

I taught myself to knit in order to make Isabelle a woolen nappy cover for night time use. I did this despite my better judgement regarding the possible ick factor of the whole evaporate-the-wee off principle behind wool covers for real nappies. I loved knitting and for a first project my nappy cover went pretty well. It will never be used, due to the afore-mentioned ick factor getting the better of me (that and a small sizing issue). It has yet to be finished, due to a deep seated fear of crochet (soon to be remedied). But this post is not about that nappy cover, it is, in fact, about what happend a few months later (an interlude that was mostly pre-occupied with moving states twice for no reason) when I decided that I really liked knitting and wanted to do more.

It turned out my friend Amber wanted to knit too. This was a very good thing because being the sensible sort that she is she went straight to the local library where she found this:

Amber also found our local yarn store and before I knew it she had made herself a gorgeous mini scarf (choker??), complete with button holes. By the time I caught up with this fact she had moved on to the Garter Stitch Blanket from baby knits for beginnners.

I am very original, so I got myself some Jo Sharp Silk Road Aran too (in different colours) and embarked on the same project. Things did not go well. I had some serious gauge issues. Each square was coming out a size all of its very own. I quickly realised that I was wasting very fine yarn on a project that was going nowhere fast. So I gave up.

I put away the lovely Silk Road and instead I pulled out the left over yarn from the nappy cover, embarking on a far more modestly sized (and priced) dolly blanket to go with Isabelle’s very first dolly which we were intending to give her as a weaning present. I finished it the night before the party by biting the bullet and making use of the first few squares where the gauge was still not that great. Never the less the blanket was a big hit (so was the dolly), she played all day and she played all night: