Miragamo Handbag... and onwards!

I decided awhile ago that I needed a handbag which would hold all my stuff, including medical stuff and "just in case" stuff. I searched around for a bit before I found a pattern I liked and which looked like it would be suitable. From what I gather, it's based on a designer handbag that someone wanted to knit, and now there are a few patterns floating around out there in internet land. This one happened to be free and use the kind of yarn I had on hand, so I jumped on it. It's called the Miragamo bag, and is a bunch of triangles knitted with a kind of lace pattern followed by straight stockinette stitch, then gathered at the end into one stitch by combining 11 stitches into one. Believe me, it was tricky, but not as tricky as you might think. The effect in the end is of rather funky diamonds. It could even be made larger or smaller by doing only some of the rows of diamonds, but I found what the pattern called for adequate to my needs.
I had an old purple skirt which no longer fit, and decided to use that for the lining. It took a bit of doing, since I've never lined a bag before, but I did it pretty well, and then proceeded to cut up another old skirt for the pockets, which I don't have a picture of. I prefer my handbags to go over one shoulder and across my chest instead of hanging from a shoulder and falling off every 5 seconds, so I scoured the internet in search of a long strap. This nice leather one was the result. The finishing touches were some of those metal closures you can get which I've sewed onto the pockets and the inside of the top of the bag in order to keep the things I want in the pockets - in the pockets, and the bag itself closed. I just got the closures Saturday, and have done that all up today, so now it's finally finished.

I have been using it since I finished the knitting and lining though, and it's really great. I'm extraordinarily pleased to have been able to make something that will hopefully last awhile and be of such an invaluable use to me on a day to day basis,

After I finished the Miragamo, I found myself at a loose end. There were a few large projects I wanted to start, since I have a LOT of yarn to be getting through right now, and a fair bit of it is yarn for large projects. I have plans to make a vest and a wrap this winter, and probably another cardigan or jumper as well, not to mention all the small things - a hat, since I gave my old one away, and some more comfortable armwarmers, since the ones I have are of the decidedly scratchy kind of wool. But the thing that hovers in a knitters mind come the middle of September or the beginning of October is Christmas present.

The middle of August, when I finished the bag, was probably a little early to be thinking about Christmas. But I wanted to get a bit of a head start to make sure I got done all the projects I wanted to make for gifts for various people. With my whole family to knit for (Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, sister, brother-in-law, other sister, and brother) plus the husband and father-in-law, there was a lot to do, and I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to make. Now, with Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, sister and  brother-in-law finished, and the thing I'm making for father-in-law and brother easy, I've decided I really did start too early, and have cast on three new things for myself. I got some Rowan Kidsilk Haze which is mohair and silk - divine to touch, but a little tender to work with. It has a reputation for being impossible to rip back, and I want to make something that requires beads with it, so I thought I would do a dress rehearsal with the yarn to figure out it's quirks, and make a scarf that doesn't have beads. So I've started that.

I also started a waistcoat with this Mistral, which is this lovely chunky stuff that has an interesting variegated pattern, with purple going into white over a long distance. I then found that the waistcoat is a bit of a challenge, and requires close looking at each individual stitch, which is something I find very challenging given the light in our living room and the fact that winter is coming on with sunlight getting rarer. I can work on it during the day, but my brain doesn't work very well then, so complicated patterns usually have to wait for evening. So I might have to shelve that until spring or find a better light.
Instead of the waistcoat, I've decided to work on a wrap which is going to be made from Sublime Organic Merino. I cast it on tonight and did 15 rows, and this stuff is lovely to work with, pretty much as nice as the Malabrigo was. It's a rather unassuming colour, but I figure it will go with anything, and it was on sale; the colour selection wasn't great, but the price was, at £15 for 10 skeins of the stuff.

I'm still working on Christmas present in between, of course, and anticipate a speedy finish to the rest of them. My family read this, so I can't post pics of what I've already made, but they're on my Ravelry page if anyone wants to have a look. :)

Where does the time go?

I have been really remiss in not posting. I think I just got excited about some projects, and then a visit from a friend, and then a short holiday, and forgot about this blog. Happily, I am back now. My most recently completed project was done over a three week period in the middle of July. What did I make? Legwarmers. Because, of course, you make legwarmers in the middle of summer. But this gives me a jump start on winter, and the cold weather that is likely to come with it.

I made them with leftover yarn from the Gentle Rose cardigan. Someone once said that you never need as much yarn as the pattern makes out, and that really proved true in this case: I had two whole skeins (240 yards of the stuff) left over. These legwarmers wanted 200 yards, and I think I used a little more than that, but they did turn out well and are lovely to wear. There are three increases, and the top was too wide, so I did a decrease in the last two rows to make sure they wouldn't just slide right back down my legs again. They match my cardigan as well, since they're from the same yarn and have cable and ribbing very similar to that of the cardigan. I was just finishing the last bit on the second one of these when a friend came to visit from Denmark. I had decided I wanted to make her something, kind of as a keepsake of our visit, but I had no idea of what she might like. So when she got here, I asked her. We thought of a few things, but she when she saw my legwarmers, she decided she wanted a pair for herself. I picked the yarn, she picked the colour: a neutral beige. The yarn is RYC Cashsoft Aran by Rowan, and is absolutely wonderful. It's very soft - microfibre, cashmere, and merino wool, making it just as yummy to work with as the Malabingo.  This yarn is plied, unlike the Malabingo, and I'm beginning to think that all plied yarns a little bit splitty, simply because there is more than one strand and they tend to come unwound from themselves. It's making doing the cables a bit of a challenge, since I have to be sure to get all the strands off the needle and back on it again, but going a little slower makes sure I do it right.

It seems all yarns really have a good side and a bad side: the Malabingo and other yarns like it are liable to pill, while novelty yarns have their own challenges, mohair is impossible to rip back, and plied are splitty. I can't actually say much bad about the Debbie Bliss Pure Silk I'm making some gloves with though. It was a little, well, fuzzy at the beginning, but that's where the yarn had been exposed to everything after I put it in balls. It's a DK weight, and so not too light, and I find it really smooth and easy to work with. If you're too sloppy with the needle, you can catch it and getting a little fat slub, but it's not a big deal. Probably the worst yarn I've found for splitting is actually cotton. I used cotton on the dream scarf, and that was tricky, and now I've got some Sublime organic cotton that I'm using to make a handbag. It's not as bad as the other cotton, but it does separate at a glance and splicing ends together when the ball runs out has proven to be a bit challenging. Part of my problem is that I'm making the handbag by double stranding the yarn, so I have two strands of cotton, both of which want to split. Otherwise, it would be a lot easier to work with.

I haven't put many pictures in this one, since I've only finished one thing since my last post, but I'll leave you with a photo of a half finished glove.

Instant Gratification

Buoyed by my recently completion of Gentle Rose, I continued knitting like a mad thing today. I've been meaning to make Biscuit a new toy since he eviscerated the old one. This time, I have proper stuffing, so was able to use that instead of bits of yarn which he might eat and get sick. I still put catnip in it, since it seems to keep him coming back to play with it.

The pattern I like using for his toy is a bumblebee, and I made the first one entirely blue, mostly because I wasn't comfortable with striping. Other than that, I didn't change the first pattern, putting wings and an icord on it so we could dangle it. He had the wings off inside a week, and I found and threw them out promptly in case he would eat those and get sick. The icord stayed on - a testament to my sewing - but I chose to leave that off as well this time round. Consequently, I made a bee - without wings, and no way to dangle it. I may yet make an icord, but I'm not sure. They're very tedious to make and I'll be making a big wide long one for my handbag.
This was my first foray into striped knitting, and I had to do a little research first. I wasn't even sure if I was supposed to cast on with both colours or not, but quickly discovered exactly what to do. I used the fair isle technique, modified a bit because I was knitting in the round and fair isle seems to be back and forth. Holding the two strands of yarn proved very difficult, so I didn't really do it much. I think I'll not be knitting proper fair isle for awhile. Having said that, I'm addicted to lace and cables, so I've got plenty to work on. All in all, I'm very pleased with my striped bee, for all it's the wrong colours (Ok, I used blue and red instead of black and yellow. I won't use good yarn on my cat - and those were the acrylics I had to hand.)

The bee only takes a few hours. I took a (long) nap in between, but I was still done by early evening, and wanted to work on something else. I was going through my projects on the needles, since I didn't have the right size needles to start the handbag I'm planning to make next, and stumbled across the Dream Scarf. It had a tiny bit of yarn balled up at the end, and was about 2 feet long. "Hmm," thinks I, "this won't take that long to finish, if I only use the one ball of yarn." I have three in total of the same colour yarn, and could have gone on knitting this scarf for years, but it was really screaming at me that it was long enough, would never be a proper warm scarf anyway as it's thin and Dutch lace (holes in it really wouldn't keep the cold out) and is really a showcase for my talent more than anything else. So I decided to use up the last little bit of yarn and finish it off. The cotton silk blend I used is mostly cotton, so it really doesn't need blocking to show the beauty of the design. I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out.

Finished with my first cardigan!

It's done. Three months of work, albeit pleasant work, of a lot of learning, and it's done. I'm really not sure whether to be happy or sad - but at least I have other things to work on. And now I have a nice new fuzzy cardigan, and two skeins of the yarn left to make something else with. The current plan is to make a hat, but I'm pretty sure that'll only take one skein, so I'm not sure what to do with the other. I'm sure something will come along.

Why you should always follow the written pattern and not try to change it

I haven't posted in awhile because I really felt like I had nothing to post about. I'm still hard at work on the Gentle Rose, despite plans to be finished by now. It came of trying to knit the sleeves in the round, and finding that I really wasn't liking the result: the decorative rib wasn't turning out right, and I tried to lengthen it first, and then looking at the dimensions, to shorten it. Then I made a mistake just at the beginning of the rib, doing two K instead of a K-P, giving the rib a decidedly funny look in one spot. Added to the fact that the sleeve would have fit both my arms in it, I just couldn't in good conscience keep it as it was. I wanted to take it off the needles and start with less stitches, to make it less like a circus tent and more like a sleeve, and also fix that bit with the funny rib, when I had an insight. 

In this particular pattern, the rib builds up from 2 to 4 to 6 and so forth, until the whole row is ribbed. It makes a nice pattern on the sleeve when it's sewn together. You're supposed to increase the rib every right side row, which I hadn't been doing since I wanted to shorten it. It looked really sloppy though, and I was a bit unsure that I was actually doing it right, since translating things from flat to round is not my strong point. So I decided to do it  on flat needles, like it called for. I probably could have stuck it out and recast in the round, but I want this cardigan done, not sitting around waiting for me to muddle through it and frog all over the place. 

I'm really pleased I switched. It's looking great, and I feel like I have a lot more control over the work than I did in the round. I'm still not sure about the size of the sleeve when it's closed up, but I have used a smaller size, so hopefully I'll be able to make it work. Now it won't sit on the sofa anymore taunting me with how bad it's looking, and I feel like I'm back on course, so it should be done in a few more weeks. I've given three months to this thing near enough, and while I'm loving knitting it, I can't wait to wear it.

Knitting labels

I haven't gotten much knitting done in the past week. It's been very hot, so I did next to nothing on my Gentle Rose, since it's wool. I did a little work instead on the Dream scarf, since it's cotton and a little cooler to work with. Then I turned my ankle, took a tumble down a few stairs in the process, and jarred my wrist. At least, I assume the fall jarred my wrist, since it's been hurting since about that time. Given my condition, it could have just decided to start hurting on its own - it has done so before. At any rate, it's made knitting extremely difficult, so I've had a break for a few days.

I had decided to donate a hat I made which turned out to be too large to a fund-raiser that some friends of mine are holding. Their daughter has congenital muscular dystrophy, and is wheelchair bound. They're constantly trying to raise money to get her better equipment and things to make her life better. (If you want to check it out for yourself.) I was ready to send it out when I decided I wanted something marking it as made by me, and recalled those personalised labels you can get. A little research on the net found me 36 for £10, which seemed to be the best price going. Buying from America would have possibly been the same, but S&H would have pushed the price up. Anyway, I got them yesterday, and am thrilled with the result. You get to pick your own colours, have a choice of little icons (I chose the ball of yarn with needles sticking out, and there was another similar) and what to put on the second line. "From the Knitting needles of" comes as the template. Oh, and the script - there are about 5 to choose from. I got them at http://www.wovenlabelsuk.com/. Best pleased. :)

Learning curve

I've been hard at work on my Gentle Rose, and have finished the back now. I have learned several things from what seems to be an easy bit of work: 

• Purling can be more tricky than it appears. Sometimes, if you're not watching, the yarn will refuse to slide properly and you're left with an unworked stitch. This leads to holes. It is wise to fix these as you notice them, instead of waiting and then deciding you don't want a back full of holes and ripping out 19 rows at once.
• Ripping is big and clever, until the yarn decides it likes sticking together. This makes ripping harder, leads to pilling, and is a pain. 
• This yarn has a reputation for pilling. I may be picking little bits off it for the rest of the life of the cardigan. Lesson: check on the yarn you're going to use before you buy 7 skeins of it!
• Moss stitch and seed stitch are the same thing. This stitch is also very similar to rib, so be careful you don't rib instead of moss stitch! 
• Ribbing is not awful to knit, but undoing it a stitch at a time is. 
• I can now "read" the row below so I know whether I need to do a knit or a purl stitch to keep the pattern right. 
• Casting off during rib is tricky and requires writing down what exactly you've done.

Having learned all this, I plowed ahead into the front of the cardi.  There are cables going all the way up the edges of both sides of the front, and around the collar, so this is where I had to start cabling. You know, everyone who's said it's easy is right. I wouldn't want to design something with cables (at least, not yet) but they're quite easy to work. I've got a few rows under my belt now,and the pattern is beginning to look really good. You can see the moss stitch in the pattern, along with the stocking stitch that follows it (above). On the right is the cable pattern. I've put in a little stitch marker to mark where the chart kicks in for each row - it saves me counting 11 stitches each time I get near the bottom.

This isn't my first big project, but it is my first cardigan/sweater/jumper, so I'm really quite pleased with what I've done so far, and how fast it's going. I look forward to being able to wear it soon!