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An FO

At last I've finished my yellow Oxford Kitchen Yarn socks, which I started way back last summer. Although I say I've finished them, I've obviously not darned in the ends yet. Less obvious are the appallingly badly grafted toes, which I need to redo. Memo to self: grafting toes at 12.30 a.m. after a Burns Night supper is not a good idea...

 

I therefore gave myself permission to start a new pair, and I've been wanting to knit argyle socks for a long time. Suddenly I could wait no longer. After a couple of false starts, here they are. It's intarsia, so you have to do the leg flat and sew a seam. It is possible to do proper intarsia in the round and I have managed it before, but I don't think it's worth the fiddle. The main yarn here is Wildfoot (Brown Sheep).

 

On Saturday I went with some Ravelry spinnng friends to P & M Woolcraft near Milton Keynes to look at spinning wheels and I've decided which one to get: a Louet Julia. I bought some fibre, including some lovely natural grey merino, and here's my sample mini skein.

EZ baby cardigan

It's done, and I'm very pleased with it. I bought the buttons yesterday in Brighton and sewed them on earlier today.

 

The pattern is  Elizabeth Zimmermann's 'February Baby Cardigan' from her Knitter's Almanac. The yarn is Koigu PPM, undyed. The yarn has made a lovely soft, stretchy cardigan. I can just imagine a cosy baby dressed up in it!

I bought the buttons while on a grand day out with Sue to visit Jan in Brighton. Despite being offered storms and gales we had a dry day and enjoyed a leisurely walk all along the front to Hove and then back again through the town to the station. That and lunch and a couple of shops filled the day very happily.

I'm currently doing more on several long-neglected projects: two half pairs of socks and my sock yarn blanket. I'm in the mood to finish things and will probably manage to get the socks done but will almost certainly put the blanket aside again after a few more squares. That's OK - I'm prepared for that to be a slow-cooking enterprise. I have another new project on the go as well which I'll reveal soon.

EZ baby cardigan

I love knitting this cardigan with the undyed Koigu. Unfortunately I keep going wrong! I had a false start because naughty Elizabeth Zimmerman committed the ultimate sin of pattern writers, along the lines of  'continue pattern for 4 inches AT THE SAME TIME making buttonholes every eight ridges...'. I know I should have read on, and should have wondered how the buttonholes were going to make themselves, but even so!

So I started again. Then I messed up the gull stitch pattern and ripped back a few inches. Then I messed up the gull stitch pattern again and tried to work down and correct it. It's not working, so I've got to take out another few rows.

Never mind, the baby's not due for another couple of months. She is expected to be a girl and I did think of using some pink bamboo and wool sock wool. In fact I did start another pattern using it, but didn't like the way the variegation was working out. I was relieved yesterday when Karen says she doesn't like pink and has asked her relatives not to give her pink things for the baby!

I've been doing some more family tree research. I think I've managed to tie up some loose ends, which means I've traced another great grandfather. I've sent off for some birth and marriage certificates/records to make sure. The 1911 census has just been published and 80% of England is searchable online. I've got the census record for my grandmother, who was a hotel proprietress in Bristol, in the hotel with the guests listed as well (all commercial travellers - one in something that looks like needle point fishing tackle!)*. I've also managed to find a photo of the hotel, in Victoria Street, Bristol (now completely redeveloped).

ETA * I looked again and it's Needle, Pin and Fishing Tackle

Colour

I went to the Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern today. It finishes on 1 February, but if you haven't managed to get there I wouldn't worry too much. Tate Modern has the nucleus of the exhibition on permanent display anyway (I didn't know that).

I wanted to visit the exhibition because I am interested in learning about colour. I even thought I might lift some ideas for knitting or spinning! It's ironic, then, that the selection of paintings on show uses a very limited palette: black, grey, cream, red, brown, orange. I'm not sure what I thought of the paintings overall. I wasn't transported into any trancendental state and I didn't gain a deeper understanding of  life itself. I did like the big red ones and two or three of them definitely 'had something', but I'm not sure what it was.

In contrast to all the colour knitting I've been doing recently, I'm presently making the EZ February baby cardigan (I refuse to call it a sweater) out of cream (undyed) Koigu KPPM. I'm enjoying it so much and I think I've got to knit and spin more with natural wool. It's very satisfying and elegant.

Finished mittens

I started these before Christmas as part of my mitten knitting drive for a couple of fund-raising events I was connected with. I didn't manage to finish this pair in time (I did get four done) and so they're for George, now at university in cold East Anglia. They're drying in this picture, which is why they look a bit stretched and floppy. The yarn is Araucania (red) and ancient Silk Touch (grey tweed). I used my favourite mitten pattern from Robin Hansen's Favourite Mittens. As with most things I make, spot the not-so-deliberate mistake!

Here are three out of four of the pairs that got sold off - raising £20. Two more pairs of striped mittens:

   

and a pair of Newfoundland mitts

 

3-ply spinning

I have spun up the bluefaced leicester top that I dyed a little while ago. Here it is unspun.

 

I spun it on Sue's Ashford Traditional wheel. The first, smaller, skein is more tightly spun and plyed than the second one. I navajo-plyed both of them, which is a way of plying where you keep the colours together rather than blending them. It was quite scary at first, with loops all over the place and the whole thing twisting back on itself, but I got into a rhythm and was quite pleased with the second skein. There's only 50g here altogether, so I'll have to think of a nice little project for the yarn.

Mittens not knitted by me

 

My father bought this pair of mittens in an eastern European country, but I'm not sure which one. It could be former Yugoslavia or Romania. They're very densely knitted and are full of character.

 

I would guess that they are knitted in some eastern crossed technique.

Some progress

Yes, I have assembled the five Billy units. Yes, I have done three out of five wrong and yes, for the moment, they're going to stay that way! I'll go back to IKEA soon and buy some baskets to store the yarn in. It's fun to get the stash out and rearrange it. This isn't all of it, I have to admit. For full disclosure I must admit to five tubs of Shetland 2-ply,  a storage  box under my bed and yet more yarn in my Welsh chest. Some of that will fit in here, of course. Is it any wonder I'm thinking about a ban on buying more yarn for a few months at least?

Not resolutions, exactly

I meant to post yesterday. I had a not-resolution (the only real New Year's resolution I've ever kept was to have more fun) to post every day this month, so I'm already a day behind on a resolution that I didn't really make.

The big project of the moment is my yarn room:

 

Yes, well. The plan is to erect a series of IKEA shelf units (Billy) along the left-hand wall. There are already some wall-hung bookshelves there (out of photo) that we had put up when this was my son's bedroom. The IKEA units should fill the rest of the wall and when they're full I think it'll look more or less like a homogeneous whole. I've done two of the five units so far.

Sue has lent me her Ashford Traditional spinning wheel to try out and I'm having a great time learning on it. I even managed to Navajo ply a small skein last night. I'm off work till the 13th, so I'm hoping to get quite a bit of spinning under my belt over then.

The green and pink fair isle gloves haven't progressed, but a pair of stripey mittens is nearly finished.