Which style do I knit?

A friend of mine posted in her Livejournal that she found out from knittinghelp.com (from one of the tutorial videos, I found after some searching) that she knits continental style. This made me think about which way I knit. I'm left handed, which has always made learning a little more tricky - most videos are done by right handed people, and asking my grandma is hard when she's 4000 miles away - but I've managed. However, it's always made identifying whether I knit in Continental or English style more difficult.

I'd always thought that Continental knitters knitted with their left hands, and English knitters with their right.  I'm not sure why I thought that, but it's really not right. Continental knitters seem to knit from the back, or something, while English knitters go into the stitch from the front. I've got this from the videos on the site. That would make me an English knitter. Glee :)

My introduction to the wonderful world of yarn fairs

Yeah, this one is going to be picture heavy.

There was a yarn show I found out about a few months ago which was going to be held in Birmingham, which is closer to me than London, and a great deal cheaper. Since most of the big shows are held in London, I thought this would be the perfect time to get my feet wet and attend a smaller one - not in the least because I knew a day out would exhaust me, never mind the weekend that most people take for the bigger ones. So I duly bought my train ticket and entrance ticket and set about saving a sum of money to spend.

Yesterday was the show, called Fibre Flurry, which I got to via train, another train, and a bus, minus the help of a stupid bus driver who told me my stop wasn't on his route (which it was, as I found out when I got there and saw the bus stop listing the number of the bus I tried to take) and plus the help of some locals who were headed to the show as well and knew the way. Being a sensible person, I took plenty of money, telling myself I wasn't allowed to splurge too much and spend too much on any one skein, as well as the fact that I didn't have to spend it all. Well, I did pretty well with buying nice yarn at a decent price, but I spent all but a few pounds. Ah well. :) Some gems:

On the left is a limited edition called Trick or Treat! made for Halloween. I got all four skeins made. On the right is a wool spun from a British sheep called North Ronaldsay. They are found on the northernmost Orkney island, and were pushed out to the coastline when people first settled there. They adapted to eat seaweed! Below that picture is another 100% wool from the same booth. It was a good price and I liked the colour, so I got two skeins of it, both of somewhat different colours.

Possibly my favourite booth there was the Natural Dye Studio. I had checked out their website once and wasn't impressed, but seeing their yarn in the flesh, as it were, was really an eye opener. Dyes can and are often chemical, giving yarn a brilliant hue which lasts through the wash. Natural dyes from roots and other parts of plants (you can tell I don't know much about dyeing, can't you?) are not only better for the environment, but this husband-wife team has proved they can make brilliant colours out of them as well. I got 2 skeins of a silk and 2 skeins of a merino silk blend, both of which (thanks to the silk) show off the colours amazingly. Phoenix is the merino silk blend. They also use pure wool, which has colours I've never seen in wool before. This last little gem on the right is actually about the size it really is. It's only 80 or so yards, but I loved the feel and the smooshiness and the colour, and there are some surprisingly nice things you can make with something that small, so I got it. To be honest, I'm not sure I want to use it. I just want it to sit and be felt and look nice. :D

While some of the booths sold yarn from major companies such as Noro, Debbie Bliss, and Schoppel-Woolle, most booths were selling things hand made by the people running them. Yarn hand dyed and/or hand spun, stitch markers hand beaded, and needle holders hand sewn were everywhere. These independents are at the heart and soul of the industry, and I love not only seeing what they have, but supporting them as well. They're not even really more expensive than the yarn from the major companies, so supporting them is easy. But they're mostly online, so seeing their wares, getting to touch them, and getting an idea of the true colour of something, is a great experience. 

Trouble With Hats

I've been having trouble making a hat which fits me. The first time I tried it, I measured my head, got a 22" measurement, and proceeded to make a lovely black lacy beret in that size. It was too big. "Fair enough," thinks I, "I'll just make another one smaller next time."

So I had this pattern, and was using it to make a hat for a friend. She has a small head too, so I made the 20" size, which turned out lovely. I tried it on, and found that it, too didn't fit me, but since it wasn't for me, it didn't matter too much. I was going to make one for myself, though, so I went for the next size up - 22". Different type of yarn, you never know, right?

Well, I screwed up the needle size. You start this hat on DPNs and then move to a circ when it gets bigger, and I started it on 4mm needles instead of the 4.5 I knew I should use. Then I couldn't find the 4.5 circ when I went to use that needle, and thought that I had decided I wasn't going to be using that size, but the size 5. It wasn't until I looked at the Ravelry notes for the first hat later on that I realised I probably should have used the 4.5mm needles throughout - but by this time I was pretty well into the project, and really, really didn't want to start over. The beginning of of this pattern is really tricky, since the stitches are very tight from making new stitches off them to increase the size of the hat.

To make a long story short, I made the hat on the 5mm needles, and it turned out huge. And I mean HUGE. It really does cover my whole head, but is a floppy beret, so it looks like some oversized nightcap with holes in it. On the plus side, it will keep my ears warm this winter.

Today's lesson? Always, always check you have the right needle size. I didn't have to gauge swatch this as making the other hat gave me a good idea of what I needed, but I allowed myself to be stupid enough to assume that because I couldn't find the right needle, that I had decided I didn't need it. I have to date made one thing too small by using smaller needles than called for, and now one thing too big. I'm tempted to give this one away as well, but it's got a fairly major mistake, with the icord that starts it on the inside instead of the out. Not exactly my proudest creation, but it will keep my head warm while I find another pattern to try again on.

Starry Night Afghan

Named because my sister said it was so. *Nods* This is knitted to the pattern of Cathedral Afghan from Interweave Holiday Gifts 2006. It uses chunky yarn and 9mm needles, so it knitted up really quickly. I could have knitted it in two weeks, but did it in three.

Most expensive yarn ever?

*Thunk*

Perusing a yarn website, I found a yarn called Karabella cashmere elite. It's a small ball - worsted weight 82 yards per 25g- and retails for £155.71 - that's 250 US Dollars. I'm in shock. Not even qiviut is that much. Having checked, the musk ox fibre sells for £56.05 - £56.05 per 218 yard, 28g skein. That's a lot more yarn, albeit laceweight, for a lot less money. And they say qiviut is the supreme luxury yarn.

Winter is coming!

The Christmas presents are done. Hooray! This means I have plenty of time to do some work for stuff for me before my trip to America in November, where I will be handing over most of the stuff I've made for others. The one exception to being finished is my husband's present, but since I have over 2 months, and have already started it, I feel justified in working on some selfish stuff.

The cold season is trying to start, and in true British fashion has yet to make up its mind. Nevertheless, I have got a start on some warm stuff which will serve me well in the months to come. I bought a lot of yarn for big things this year, and so have a lot of big projects on the table for the next several months. Already, I'm half done with an afghan that's knit up in bulky yarn: I chose Wendy Mistral. This particular colour is called Luna, which seems to fit; my sister thinks it looks like the night sky. It's especially effective because of the constant YOs in the pattern, giving a diamond appearance to the knit fabric. This picture shows one repeat of a 32 row chart; there are 6 repeats in total. It really looks stunning! With a wool/acrylic mix, it's also warm.

I'm also working on a new hat for myself, since the other one I made was too big and I gave it away. One thing I didn't like about the other one was that I made it in black, which didn't show off the lace pattern at all, so I've gone the other way this time and am making it in white. The name is Rose Red, and is depicted in red on the sample picture by the designer, but I thought roses could be a lot of colours, and don't really wear a lot of red. You can just see the pointed flower petals in between the six arms stretching around the hat. I've made one already, and the finished hat is the yellow one to the right and below. It incorporates a nice cable pattern as the stem. I loved knitting the first one, and I can't wait to finish the second. It's knit in a cotton /rayon/linen/silk mix, so is fairly lightweight. I figure it'll be ok for British winters and inside, but also for the summer.


Once I get a little further with these two projects, I have a few sweaters I want to get on the needles: the Scoop Pullover (Ravelry link) and the Meringue Yoke Cardigan (Ravelry link), both of which I have sourced from magazines I got on DVD. The scoop pullover I have lined up for some Sublime Organic Merino DK (the grey) I got on sale and the yoke cardigan I plan to make with some absolutely luscious Mirasol K'acha (the purple) I got from a few destashes. Win!

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. :)