A grand week

Tags

Anna Gratton, craft market, Fibre Alive, Happy go Knitty, Knitting, Little Wool Co., New Zealand wool, Verandah Yarns, Wellington, Wellington Underground Market, Wonders of Wool, Wool

Wonders of Wool was great!!

This is some of my haul:

The rest of what you don’t see is a super amount of naturally coloured 100% wool  from Anna Gratton’s Little Wool Co.  For gorgeous sweaters that will keep me and my family warm.  You’ll see more of it when I start to knit it shortly.

Let us examine some of this yarny happiness in more detail shall we?

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you may remember the sad day when I told you that James of Fibre Alive had decided to stop dyeing yarn.  So yes, your eyes do not deceive you – I was so happy to see James at the market!!

After a break and a rest, James has decided to make a return to his love of dyeing, albeit in a smaller scale.  He has also added another base to his yarn selections!  And as of today, he has reopened his online store!!  Woohoo!!!  Happy jigs happening at this end.  I’m so happy I can once again enjoy his wonderful talent.

Of course, I had to replenish my stock of Happy-go-knitty yarn.  Especially self-striping loveliness!

I also was delighted to finally meet Sally of Verandah Yarns in person, and to acquire some of her gorgeous colourways.  So pretty, I’m thinking I should do a shawl with the yarn and not socks.  She manages to achieve a striking depth to her colours.  Quite masterful.

And finally, more lovelies from Anna Gratton.  I think I could have bought ALL her stock… but one must spread the budget around, and share nicely with other knitters…

The colour transitions in this hank of Little Wool Co. merino/mohair make my heart go bumpty-bump extra fast.

Alice made me buy this one (hehe, blame the co-shopper!)  Actually, I’ve had Lime lust for a while, especially after I saw her Wholehearted shawl in the same colourway.  

I didn’t think that a week could get much better when it was topped and tailed with a woolfest at each end.

What I didn’t count on was the wonderful people I would catch up with and meet, who turned the events not just into an occasion to add to my stash but something very special indeed.  We often talk about how knitting brings people together.  This week was very much an illustration of that point for me.

I’m going to be smiling for a while.  

The seagull

Tags

Anna Gratton, free pattern, Happy go Knitty, hat, Knitting, ribbed beanie, Wellington Underground Market, Wonders of Wool

“Skee!  Skeeee!”  screamed the seagull.

“Oh, look Eric, the seagull is eyeing your sausage!” I remarked.

“Where!??”

“Look up there!”  I pointed, to a seagull hovering close overhead with its beady eye fixed on his lunch.

“Aaargh!  It’s not getting my food!!” he wailed, covering his lunch and running from the hovering bird.

“Has it gone yet?  Where is it?”

Eric remembered the story I told him of the seagull snatching his aunt’s hamburger right out of her hands when she lived in Sydney.   I don’t think New Zealand seagulls are quite as aggressive, but you never know…

“I think we need to go home now.  Can we go yet?  I don’t like that seagull!”

I found the situation rather amusing (bad mummy).  The seagull soon gave up and went away, but someone’s nerve had been shattered, and all he wanted to do was eat his lunch in peace, away from the greedy eyes of hungry seagulls.

Why were we on the beach?  I was trying(!) to get a photo of the hat.  It’s a small revamp of an existing pattern to take into account new yarn, and new sizing (small and medium/large) so that the hat can be used as a family pattern for all of dad, mum and kid.  Eric’s wearing the medium/large in case you’re wondering.

It’s knitted in Anna Gratton’s Little Wool Co. 100% wool naturals in 12 ply in Peat.  The pattern is available for free dowload here and on my “free patterns” page as well as in hard copy at Anna Gratton’s stall at the Wellington Underground Wonders of Wool market this Saturday.  Anna has wound special 100g hanks of 12 ply, 100% naturally coloured wool yarn that are just the right size for one hat (with a little left over).  The hard copy pattern will be free with yarn purchase.

Oh, and in case you are coming, do pop over here for a chance of a free skein of yarn from Happy-go-knitty!

Hope to see you there!

Play day

Tags

fair isle, FO, Happy go Knitty, Knitsch, Knitting, New Zealand yarn, socks, WIP

Today, for the first time in ages, I woke up without the weight of a deadline hanging over my head.  It felt so good.

I decided that with some free time on a rainy day, this would be a good opportunity to make further investigations into some projects that I’ve been eyeing recently.

But first, let me show you this!

They are done!  I love them so much.  They’re at once very “Alice in Wonderland” and “Wicked Witch of the West” don’t you think? I’m looking forward to refreshing my stocks of Happy-go-knitty next Saturday at the Wellington Underground annual “Wonders of Wool” market.  More, pretty stripy socks coming my way!  Funny how we knitters talk about yarn in terms of a finished project.

Also, another happiness-making thing happened yesterday:

Seven glorious hanks of Knitsch Milky Way, for the knitting of the Southern Companion were ready for my pick-up!

At Holland Road Yarn Company, Tash was busy making final preparations for her stall at this weekend’s Creative Fibre Festival.  Oh my.  Such hanks of gloriousness I saw, to set the heart aflutter!  I hope there’s still some left when I turn up…

Now to what I did today.  This is what one’s living room ends up looking like in the middle of a creative frenzy:

What was this all about you ask?  I’ve been eyeing the below interesting cardigan all week:

It’s called Conifer  (designed by Rosee Woodland), and it’s in Issue 54 of The Knitter.

Several features attracted me to it:  the knitted-on fingerless gloves (very handy to keep those winds out of one’s sleeves) and the fact that it’s knitted in reverse stocking stitch.  The certain someone I’m knitting it for likes to wear her sweaters inside out because she prefers the smooth feeling of the stocking stitch instead of the purl bumps.  This would be perfect!  The final feature I liked was the unusual reverse fair isle.  I’ve been thinking about using reverse fair isle in a pattern, and this looked like a good opportunity to try it out.

I also had in mind a certain person’s comment about knits in the English town she lives in “Oh, fair isle is so common, everyone wears it, it’s not special to me any more.”  Perhaps an unusual take on fair isle might be good?

I thought that Knitsch would make a perfect medium for it, given it’s meant to be for a certain girl who dislikes itch.  So, diving into my precious hoard of Knitsch, I did a bit of a stocktake of possibilities:

Something colourful for the yoke perhaps?

However, as I was winding the balls, it occurred to me that while all those colours looked oh-so-pretty together, they might seem cartoonish all in one garment.

I pared it down to pretty purple shades with a touch of gold:

I’m not sure about that gold, but the purples looked good.  The only downside was that when I measured the swatch, the gauge was far too small.  Bother and horrors.  That swatch was a real brain-teaser to knit too!  Reverse fair isle is tricky until you figure out that you can’t knit it like normal fair isle!!

I sat there feeling annoyed.  Knitsch was very much what I wanted to use.  I didn’t really fancy knitting more swatches until I found a yarn that matched.  Besides, I don’t have any other yarn in my stash with that colour range.  Why didn’t it match?  They were both 4 ply after all!?  They felt the same thickness in the hand.  I decided that I would see how many wraps per inch the J&S was… 15 per inch.  Then I wrapped the Knitsch, I found that it’s more like 20 wraps per inch!  Ah.  It made sense now.  I should probably have done that first.  Doh.

I wondered how Zealana Kiwi Fingering would work out.  She likes that yarn too.  I wrapped it, and found that it is exactly 15 wraps per inch!  I was surprised, because Kiwi feels a lot thicker.  (J&S is springier and lighter, but the width of the strand is the same).  So… although I don’t have a large colour range in that yarn, I decided to do one more swatch to see if really was the right match:

I am pleased to say that it gives the exact gauge that I need for this pattern.

My concentration petered out in the final row and I messed up the swatch.  The young boy got bored and started to watch a video.  And with the invasion of irritating noise into the ears came the advent of a headache and the loss of all ability to concentrate.  I need a nice, quiet, cosy little cabin at the end of the garden in which to knit, far from loud, concentration-shattering noises…

So now I need to go shopping for colours. But I guess I should consult with a certain girl first to see what she’d like?  :-)

Getting there

Tags

Celestarium, Happy go Knitty, Knitting, socks, WIPs

Well, I had hoped that I’d have the day off today, and I’d be happily catching up on things knitting related, including laying out the pattern for “Bo” for you.  Unfortunately, work isn’t quite as quiet as I hoped it would be.  I’m hoping to get a day off next week.  I can’t keep putting in the hours like I am.  Rest is required.

Despite that, I have managed to snatch an hour of knitting in the evenings before sleep overtakes me, so some progress has been made:

Celestarium is coming along.  Just 25 more rows to go before the edging, and then it will be done!  Because it’s a circular shawl, and now very wide, and I’m just using a 100cm circular cable, I haven’t got the satisfaction of spreading it out to see its full beauty.  It’s so pretty even like this though!!

It’s very addictive to knit beads into this shawl.  You might notice that my beads stand out in relief on the shawl due to the fact that I strung the beads on to the yarn before beginning the knitting.  I’m glad I didn’t put each bead on individually using a crochet hook as I came to the space for it though.  My hands are not the steadiest, and I don’t have small hands.  I would have scattered beads everywhere and dropped them trying to fit them on to the yarn (as I did when I got to the end of the beads I had strung on and decided to try the other method just to say I had done it).

The other little project that is slowly happening is this:

One down, one to go.  I put it on (because I just can’t wait to see the effect!) and  have to say I found it is the cutest sock in the universe.  It makes me smile to think of wearing them.

I’m looking forward to that time off.