FO: Cabled Mitts

It's been so long since I actually finished these mittens. The yarn was bought for this pattern two Christmases ago with the intention of a quick gift knit. Now that they're done I'm not sure I have anyone to give them to!

As I discovered knitting the first pair, this yarn is pretty scratchy to knit with and masks nearly all of the pattern. That aside, they're quite nice mitts (I quite like the colour changes in this yarn).

Pattern: Cabley Mitties by Allison Clayton.
Yarn: Stylecraft Brushstrokes Chunky.
Mods: Nothing significant.
Project: online on Ravelry.

FO: Bandana Cowl

Finished with near perfect timing - the bandana cowl (pictured here with my Verity hat, finished at a this time last year):


This was a super-quick travel project: cast on during a flight to Germany. Having arrived, it was colder than expected but a 3 hour lecture slot provided the perfect opportunity to bind off and weave in ends - done!

It doesn't look like anything special but this pattern is a real winner for me. All the warmth of a scarf with no ends to dangle in puddles when I tie my shoelaces. Small enough to stuff in a bag 'just in case' too.

Pattern: Bandana Cowl by Purl Soho.
Yarn: Malabrigo Twist in colourway Olive (leftovers from my Verity hat, also pictured).
Mods: None.
Project: online on Ravelry.

There's just a smidge of this yarn left, I'm wondering if it's enough for a Calorimetry.

FO: One of a Pair

Knitting on a deadline, part 1 (the completed part) of 2:


I finally cast on the second of these last night, if I don't finish Santa won't be able to leave me any presents :(

Pattern: Falling Snow Stocking by Jennifer Hoel.
Yarn: Stylecraft Life/Special Chunky (I can't remember which right now).
Mods: Upped the pattern from 64 to 80 stitches (this thing is huge) and added an extra chart for the name. Modified the colour transition on the toe slightly.
Project: online on Ravelry.

Well-Travelled

A quick look at my geocaching statistics tells a nice little story:

Four caches, four countries:

• My most-Northerly find is The Mackintosh Church in Glasgow, Scotland and was actually found very recently as it was the venue for the Glasgow School of Yarn where I took classes with Amy Singer and Stephen West. That was, sadly, the only cache I found that trip, as I just wasn't feeling motivated to go out.


• My most-Southerly find is the Maryland Municipal League Geotrail - Annapolis in Annapolis (Maryland), United States. I found that cache in February 2010 when attending HotMobile, a computing conference. I seem to remember nearly running out of time looking for that cache - it was (as always) just slightly further away than I though.


• My most-Easterly find is Not On Rocky Ground (Yuanmingyuan) in Beijing, China. Again a recent find on another conference trip. This was the only cache I found on that trip.


• My most-Westerly find is Blue Hoosier in Vancouver, Canada. This was a honeymoon find, we really loved this side of Canada.

GSoY: Colour play the Westknits Way

It's been a while, but my last post was the first of three about classes at the Glasgow School of Yarn, the first birthday celebrations of The Yarn Cake - Scotland's only dedicated knitting cafe. Of the many classes/workshops on offer I picked three (a 'Hermione Granger'-inspired time turner would have come in rather useful for getting to try some of the others). Friday afternoon's workshop was...

'Colour Play, the Westknits Way'

What made me pick this one...? I love the way colour can be used in knitting projects but when it comes down to it I tend to pick simple one-colour projects. If I ever combine colours I go looking for a combination someone else has done and do my best to match it. Boring... I'm also pretty unfamiliar with most colour-related techniques. I played with stripes for a bit in 2009:

And also tried my first stranded project in the same year:
The next stranded project was quite a bit simpler (I'd learnt something) in 2010:
To be honest I still feel like a complete beginner with stranding - I have another project on the go and I've learnt a couple of things this time around. Here's hoping it'll improve still more in the future.

Other colour techniques.... I've played with slip stitches on a few sock projects this year (I really like the way this looks):

But (prior to this workshop) I've yet to try any intarsia (although I kind of played around with the idea a bit on a pair of mittens I made up last winter):

So, what did we get up to? In this workshop we played around with a two-colour sample. (We didn't talk about colour choices but I did get to see lots of fine examples of things that worked - maybe I'll get out some brave soon.) We started out with some simple garter stitch stripes, something that actually works really well, I'm not a huge fan of garter stitch, but adding some colour definately makes it worth a second thought. To the garter stripes we then added a couple of slipped stitches which then became traveling stitches moving across the sample.


Next stop, intarsia! This was actually pretty straightforward at this scale - I hear it gets a bit more fiddly with more colour transitions... I felt like I'd got to grips with that and so went on to experiment with cables. It's not often you see cables on stockinette and I can see that they might not show so well in a single colour but here it makes and interesting linking effect:


And that was that, the light was fading and that dark blue was increasingly feeling like a poor choice of colour - time to head back to the hostel (and to a lovely haggis and neeps at Stravaigin - eating our solo is often really quite weird but the whole thing was just really pleasant - great service, great food, really lovely atmosphere).

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PS - Stephen West was great too, he took plenty of time to talk us through his samples and to look at the swatches we were playing with. I wish I had his style...

PPS - Project online on Ravelry.

GSoY: Autopilot Socks

Last week was a relaxing pre-half-term chill-out with adventures to Birmingham and Glasgow. Presenting them in reverse order, I'm going to start with the end of Glasgow. And the final class I attended as part of Glasgow School of Yarn, the first birthday celebrations of The Yarn Cake - Scotland's only dedicated knitting cafe.

Glasgow School of Yarn was a two-day event including a selection of exciting classes/workshops. I attended three of the classes/workshops including....

'Autopilot Socks with Amy Singer'

This interested me mostly because I know Amy is allergic to wool and as someone not entirely skilled in making socks to fit people who aren't ever-present to try them on, I knit socks mostly for me and for the lovely Hobnob who is also allergic to wool.

The thing with non-wool socks is that they tend to fall down and/or fit less well in some areas than others. Wool is a very forgiving fabric which is happy to stretch over wider areas of the leg whilst still clinging reasonably closely to skinny ankles. Cotton is rather less forgiving and bamboo perhaps even less still. As beautiful as some of my non-wool socks have been I wondered if I could somehow improve that fit a bit - my hope was that this class might help.

And here's my output at the end of the class:

One baby sock (project online on Ravelry). The yarn is Kollage Luscious in colourway Berry Crush and the rest will become a pair of socks for me (Hobnob likes his socks colourful, but maybe not quite this colourful). I think I'll even give the recipe a try (although I might add a bit of interest to them somewhere, even if it's just a ribbed leg).

What I like:

• The reminder that Judy's magic cast on comes out better for me than a turkish cast on.
• Toe-up means I can try on as I go
• Japanese short rows - these really are great
• The extra stitch heel->gusset did a great job of preventing holes

Less sure about:

• The extra stitch gusset->heel seemed to just make holes - I eventually closed the gap with a lot of faffing and more extra stitches

I'm interested to see how the gusset construction works for improving fit. Partly, I think that just taking the time to think about making it fit will probably help though. (And yes, I'll also knit a pair for Hobnob, just not in this yarn!)

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PS - I really liked Amy, she seemed very laid-back and her teaching style seemed to really work. The class was held inside The Yarn Cake itself - sadly it was closed, maybe I'll visit again one day :)

FO: Crystalline Socks

In an ever-intense battle to free up the needles, here's another pair of SOCKDOWN socks, this pair the first of a new year (where said 'year' starts in September):

And the 'artsy' shot:

The way the colour works with this pattern makes me think of an oily puddle with all its little swirls of colour. Not an instant favourite but definitely not terrible.

Pattern: Crystalline Socks by Cailyn Meyer.
Yarn: Filcolana Arwetta Classic in colourway 509.
Mods: None.
Project: online on Ravelry.

Being a well-behaved me (for now), this is stashdown yarn - bought in Copenhagen last year - very soft, but variegated which means I have to be pushed to actually knit with it (I love variegated yarns in the skein but then they often don't work so well for the patterns I want to knit - I swear I'm learning something from this, the stash demands it).