january reading

A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire - the third volume in the Wicked Years series, not my favourite so far but still a great read.
Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah - an entertaining and often amusing read, seems to be very biographical, about a sixteen-year old and aimed at a similar age group. Needed better editing as it was just that bit too long.

the magic flute

A change in tempo, have added some colourful notes:

There's some very fetching pale pink to follow then dark blue, light blue (with a texture change too) and then some more green. It's fun to see the colours coming together and the effect that each new stripe has on the whole (as it always is with colourwork) but really, I would like it to be over already.

Am also thinking about what I might like to do in the centre there - I don't much like that flat dark blue disk effect. It might be fun to crochet a covered button in one of the brighter colours and affix that in the centre.

i hear a flamingo fluting *

My knitting/crocheting is all over the place at the moment. I am desperate to finish something, just anything, so I keep casting on small (and not so small) projects, looking for quick satisfaction. Which is, of course, not forthcoming as everything gets stalled, or I get distracted or ... what was I talking about?

This is the beginning of the Pretty Fluted Cushion in Crochet by Madame Weigel. It's a vintage pattern and certainly doesn't make sense on row 4 and the colour progression in the illustration doesn't match that in the pattern and that lovely fluted effect is the result of there already being 252 stitches on the very first row of the vandykes (as they are referred to; that is, each spiky petal). Fortunately, the stitch count doesn't increase for some 16 rows and then by not much but that gentle progression from a few cast-on stitches to many hundreds is certainly missing. And the whole thing is done in double crochet (single crochet in the New World), not treble (translate: double crochet) as I thought so it's pretty laborious hooking. Anyway, I've since done another row of dark blue and one of red and it's looking simply smashing if I may say so myself. Is that suitable 1930s terminology?

(And it's using up a lot of stash yarn in which dear Babette, bless her heart, barely made a dint.)

 * fluting in my ear - we love the Bill Martin Jnr/Eric Carle collaborations.

family portrait

Mother and baby, reunited!

Exactly the same pattern but mama was knit with two strands held together of Moda Vera Husky and baby Pachelbel just the one.

solar flare

It's been sunny here lately.

The Vital Statistics
Pattern: Crochet Flower Hot Pad by FreeCraft Unlimited, free (thank you!).
Size: One size. 
Yarn: Sugar'n Cream Solids & Denim by Lily (100 per cent cotton), colours 1109 (yellow) and 18046 (rose pink); about 0.15 of a skein each.
Crochet hook: 4mm.
Start to finish: 9 January to 11 January 2013.
Stash/recycle content: Yes, from stash. I have blue somewhere too that I would have preferred to use with the yellow but no matter.

Comments: This was a case of 'new house, need new crochet hot pad', actually, just need crochet hot pad altogether. This sits on top of the oven and is the resting place for my Michael Graves designer kettle. The incongruity of this does not escape me. This is a well written pattern, fun to crochet and can actually look quite chic and graphic in one solid colour with a contrasting trim.
Verdict: I wonder if Alessi would consider doing them in black and white? black and grey? grey and white?

monster doily from the deep

Ok, we're halfway through January and I feel as though I am catching up with myself a bit. So, a huge chunk of 2012 for us was taken up with moving - moving house, moving country, moving time zone - and that took up a lot of mental space and time and effort.

We are now nicely settled in a rental property in Hampton East in Melbourne and the decorating challenge is just how much homemade stuff is required, possible or appropriate. Hence the bathmats.

The Vital Statistics
Pattern: Liz Snella's Heirloom Doily by Vintage from Yarn Over free (thank you!)  
Size: Just the one size and mine ended up huge, 60cm (23.5") across. I omitted the loopy crochet cast off. 
Yarn: This time I used Moda Vera Bamboo/Cotton (70 per cent bamboo, 30 per cent cotton) in colourway indigo; 7.5 skeins.
Needles: 7mm. 
Start to finish: 24 December 2012 to 7 January 2013. 
Stash/recycle content: No.


Comments: I knit this with 4 strands held together (and again, way too small needles for the job to get a dense fabric). Knitting a doily pattern as a bathmat is a great reason to do some very textural lace. I was a little concerned that the bamboo/cotton mix might be too slippery on the floor but it's fine (speaking of which, our house has the original bathroom and it's fabulous - the original floor tile, pink bath and blue tiles with some burgundy accents on there and round windows in the doors. It's awesome.)

I should perhaps have cast off purlwise (instead of knitwise) but there's no way that I'm wrestling with this knitting again - it was unwieldy - and while I was working on it, the love just wasn't there. And the ends could have been better dealtwith. Getting it off the needles was a pleasant surprise because ...

Verdict: I'm very happy with it.

pachelbel

I love the name Pachelbel but it's not one you get to use often, unless you're a music buff naming a toy pachiderm.

The Vital Statistics
Pattern: Elephant by Bonnie Gosse and Jill Allerton from the great first knitting book, aptly named A First Book of Knitting for Children.  
Size: The pattern only provides for one size so it depends on what weight yarn you use. 
Yarn: Moda Vera Husky (100 per cent baby alpaca) in colourway 5 'dark grey'; 1 skein. 
Needles: It's a bulky yarn but I knit it with 2.75mm needles to get a really solid fabric so that the stuffing wouldn't show or leak through.

Start to finish: 15 December to 23 December 2012.

Stash/recycle content: Alas, no. Oh actually, a tiny little bit. The embroidery wool for the eyes was bought at the op shop!

Comments: I actually knit two elephants, this baby one and a larger one using two strands at once and a 4mm needle. Unfortunately, I was so excited with the finished product that I gave it away to the happy recipient without even taking a photo. I'll try to get one at a later date.

I knit only 12 rows for head and decreased 1 st at beg of the last 2 rows for the ears. I then sewed the ears on with tail of the cast on, starting at the side of the body and working up toward the crown of the head. Then I used from the cast off end to gather up the side of the ear. Both elephants were stuffed with wool roving.

Verdict: Adorable, but certainly hard on the hands to knit.

chunky crochet

One of these is still catching up with 2012, the other I just completed today.

 

The Vital Statistics

Pattern: By your bed/Bathmat/Doormat Rug - Free Crochet Pattern by Ooty Yaacobi  and

African Flower Hexagon Crochet Tutorial by Heidi Bears.

Size: One size; the bathmat you could make larger by working extra rounds.

Yarn: Moda Vera Beetle (50 per cent cotton, 50 per cent acrylic) in a particularly unpleasant shade of pink, eight strands held together, used five skeins; and off-white recycled cotton/acrylic, 2 strands held together.

Hook: 15mm and 10mm, respectively.

Start to finish: 16 December to 23 December 2012; 9 January to 10 January 2013.

Stash/recycle content: The African Flower motif was made from yarn recycled from a Perry Ellis sweater that I bought at Sacred Heart Mission Op Shop for $5.

Comments: I decided that we needed some bathmats, and because it's quick, I opted to try a couple out in crochet, and in a cotton/acrylic mix because I thought that it would dry and wear better. These are two free patterns so the quality of the instruction is a bit uneven.  The Ooty pattern is not very sophisticated (doesn't include instructions for turning chains) and the African Flower pattern goes into so much (extraneous) detail that it's almost confusing (clearly for absolute beginner or very nervous crocheter).

Verdict: Not great successes. The pink one has already met its demise (rubbish bin; couldn't stand the colour and shouldn't have worked with it in the first place but it was the best of a poor selection) and I will probably unravel the off-white motif in order to knit with it instead. There are many gorgeous examples of the African Flower motif out there, I think that doing it in an assortment of colours really helps.

Both projects were reasonably quick to make but the actual mechanics of working with such bulky yarn doesn't make for an enjoyable crafting experience and there's just not enough definition in chunky crochet (or maybe it's the cotton/acrylic mix). Won't be trying this again.

time warp

I've decided to put the new year off until next month. Is that ok?

So, to round the year out with something familiar:

The Vital Statistics

Pattern: Cladonia by Kristen Kapur of Through the Loops. Wonderful, gorgeous shawl. 

Size: The pattern only comes in one size but I increased the size and depth of mine - details below. 
Yarn: Brooklyn Tweed Loft in 'truffle hunt' (my absolute favourite), 'old world' and 'blanket fort'. I love that one speck of red in the 'old world'.

Needles: 4mm. 
Start to finish: 27 June to 19 December 2012. 
Recycle/stash content: Well, it's all recycled from the first Cladonia that I knit but I don't think that really counts ... 

Comments:  I made considerable changes to this pattern to achieve a shawl that was both deeper and larger (that is, just more surface area altogether). The increase in depth was achieved by making the body increases every sixth instead of every fourth row. If you are making a striped version, this means that the increase will occur on alternating main colour and contrast colour rows (whereas in the regular version the increases are always on a main colour row). These increases all occur on right side rows.

To also make the shawl larger you need to effectively add some segments to the shawl (pattern provides for eight segments, mine has ten and I've seen that some people have increased it to eleven). To achieve the two extra segments, I made twice as many edge increases, half of which occur on wrong side rows; that is, you increase every sixth row for depth but every third at the edge. result is that the first and last of the eight segments are double the size (making effectively 10 segments) and the finished shawl thus four lace repeats wider along the border.

You can see here the elongated first and last segments and overall altered shape here (and that we don't much bother to rake up our leaves):

In order to make these two changes, you also need to make some changes when you cast on. To make the shawl wider/larger, you need to have 2 extra set-up stitches. Knit garter tab as per instructions (10 stitches on the needles: 3 for the garter stitch edge, 4 for the body of the shawl, 3 for the garter stitch edge); then work kfbf into first and last of the shawl body stitches (instead of just kfb) and kfb into the 2 intervening stitches (16 stitches on needles instead of 14).

Lastly, on this version I didn't do the contrast colour row in the edging; didn't feel that it was necessary now that I got the colours in better balance. 

Verdict: I think that this is going to work for me now. I am delighted with the finished product and just need to wait for some cooler weather, or stand in the shade.

december reading

Phantom by  Jo Nesbø- indeed, can't get enough of these books, although (fortunately?) I will have to take a break and read something else now as this is the most recent in the series. I love the way these Harry hole narratives weave around, how the threads of stories overlap to no effect than other to demonstrate how life does that. Great reading, heart-rending ending.

october and november reading

The Redeemer, The Snowman and The Leopard, all by  Jo Nesbø - The escapism continues; the last two got a bit ridiculous actually but still loving reading them.
Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire - Oh, that this series would go on forever. As it is, I am half-way through and both longing to and dreading reading the next volume as it would take me that much closer to the end. These books are wonderful reading.
The Schopenhauer Cure by Irvin Yalom - Didactic, a bit contrived, good reading.

hello dear blog

Hello dear blog readers (blog readers? anyone out there still?). It has been a while, change of country, change of time zone, change of residence - moving has quite taken it out of me. But I'm back to get the ball of yarn rolling because knitting continues, no matter what!

My Cladonia (remodelled) is currently blocking (and my fingertips are nigh bleeding after pinning out every one of those blasted little picots - ouch!). It is indeed much larger than the first one I knit, certainly wider but perhaps not quite as deep as I might have liked.

I have just realised that the first version was actually my first finished knit this year. I hope that it won't be my last; there are still 12 days left and I have some elephants coming along nicely.

blanket fort

I didn't knit this cowl.

But, oh knitting gods forgive me, I did unravel it.

It was still painful to see those lovely, even stitches disappear even though I didn't make them myself. The yarn is, of course, Brooklyn Tweed Loft in 'blanket fort', the colourway that I refused to buy more of because I was determined, oh so stubbornly determined, to finish my Cladonia without. This cowl, given to me, yes given to me by the incredibly generous jnbrkly, for the express purpose of unravelling it so that I could use the yarn. Hooray!

It came home (to Australia) from home (in Seattle) with Tim last night. Double hooray! He had to go back to the US for a conference (in Seattle of all places, from which we had just packed up and moved) and it has been a very long week or so just me and the children, still in the throes of emotional jetlag and adjustment anxiety. It has been four weeks now since we arrived in Melbourne. On the one hand it feels like forever (I did grow up here, I have lived here forever on and off) and on the other as though it has just been a few days.

Ahh, nothing that a bit of knitting and actually finishing a long-suffering project won't fix though (that and the bottle of duty-free gin - ha ha! no, am saving that for a special occasion, truly).

knitting - encouragement required

Certainly one of the greatest dilemmas for any travelling knitter is - "what knitting to take?"

Yes, there is always the welcome opportunity, should the knitter in question tragically run out of knitting, to purchase more yarn, even just a single skein of something really nice. Actually, that's a good idea as a souvenir anytime but I digress. It's more of a dilemma when there is actual knitting to do but none of it is really inspiring.

I have tired a bit of my Betty Mouat Cowl, unsure whether it is really working out. It is actually working out exactly as I had envisioned and intended, I'm just feeling unsure whether I got that vision and intention right. I was very successful using Judy's Magic Cast-on for my 441 provisional stitches. I am getting just the effect that I desired of a pale band in the middle of the cowl, the colour progression to the dark hues is a little more abrupt than I had expected. I've just ... run out of ... steam a bit ....


And then to just add to the disenchantment - Cladonia. I love this shawl pattern, I love the yarn and colours that I have chosen but it is just not working out (again) and I cannot bear the thought of re-knitting it (a third time).

I am waiting for some yarn to arrive in the mail with which I will be able to finish off the triple-picot edge (not a prospect to relish) - yes, I know that I swore I was going to finish it with what I had but then I swore so much that I reconsidered. I didn't buy the yarn, a lovely fellow Raveller is giving it to me, a whole skein's worth!

So really, all the effort that I went to to laboriously unpick and laboriously reweave those two 'truffle hunt' rows was ... just laborious. And tedious. And in retrospect completely unnecessary. I am even tempted to rip back a good two thirds of it to rework the stripe sequence but now I dread not only knitting the lace again but also the striped rows with all the extra increases that I have introduced at the edges. Actually, scrap that notion altogether - I have so little of the 'old world' left over (and not to hand) that I couldn't risk re-knitting the stripes. Solved! When the yarn arrives, I will knit the picot edge, fix up a bit where I have started another unnecessary row of shawl surgery, block it and claim 'design choice' to explain any flaws.


Still, any encouragement on either of these projects would be greatly appreciated.

look what i found

At the op shop (yes, we're back in Australia):

Yes, the M2818 sewing pattern of my recent ill-fated dressmaking attempts. In my size too, for a dollar. I'm going to keep at it and it's good to have a spare on hand in case my current version gets too tattered.

In the last fortnight, I've also picked up:

- various decor and tupperware plastic storage containers
- a size 4 Country Road hooded sweatshirt for baby b
- a green Seed hooded sweatshirt, size 5/6, for baby b for later
- some unworn European leather shoes for baby b for later
- a pair of Ecco girls boots for a friend's daughter (not sure which friend yet, they're size 23 - give me a yell if you have a daughter)
- likewise for a pair of silver Tip Toey Joey slip-ons
- a Trenery blouse for myself
- great children's books of Aesop's fables, Hans Christian Andersen tales and tales of the Arabian Nights, all with wonderful illustrations
- a wooden circus game
- a linen dress to repurpose as a school uniform piece for miss bear
- a hat for school, also for miss bear
- an unopened packet of overnight nappies for baby b
- a t-shirt for baby b
- a black woollen skirt for myself
- trousers for Tim
- a mug, and I'm sure that's not all.

Guess what else I finally found - free wireless internet (at home, not at the op shop).

ps. There is a spinning wheel in the window at Cheltenham Salvo's (or at least there was a few days ago).

september reading

Stressed much? Overdose on complex, multi-layered, can't-put-down Norwegian crime thrillers by  Jo Nesbø:The Redbreast, Nemesis, The Devil's Star. I probably would have finished off The Redeemer as well but the removalists packed my half-read book.

1974

Was a very good year for design as it turns out and and as this Playmobil figure illustrates. Oh dear, the nostalgia - I'm 38.

change

They say that change is good (not sure which 'they', the conceptual unembodied 'they' I guess). It gets you out of a rut, introduces you to new people, places, challenges, etcetera.

Hmm, I think it depends on just how much change, whether it's a piddly five cents worth of change, that you don't even realise is in your pocket. Or one of those big, heavy, multi-sided fifty-cents worth of change. Not surprisingly, we're embarking on the latter. See you on Thursday on the other side (of the world).

... .-- ..-..

Translation: swf

The Vital Statistics

Pattern: Attabi Wrap by Laura Chau, but all modifications are based on robbyracoon's delightful 'morse code' version (and modeled by our equally delightful babysitter, Nadia).

Yarn: Classic Elite Yarns MountainTop Vista (50 per cent wool, 50 per cent alpaca) in shade 6076, 4.8 skeins; Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend (70 per cent merino, 30 per cent silk) in shade 3073, 0.28 skeins.
Needles: 5mm.

Start to finish: 28 June to 17 September 2012. Actual knitting was finished in July ...

Stash/recycle content: Alas, no.

Comments: I must repeat that this project is an unabashed copy of robbyraccoon's 'morse code'; joining the wrap into a cowl, leaving a notch at the border, the colour scheme, everything.

Reproducing this cowl was a great design and thinking challenge for me - initially I purchased (online) the exact same main colour yarn but found that in the wool it wasn't really the colour I was wanting. I really had to analyse what textures and what quality of yarn I needed to recreate the object of my obsession.  The trick was to pair something rustic with a bit of halo (MountainTop Vista, comes in great natural shades) and something smooth with sheen (silk content in the Malabrigo made it perfect and I love the way it moves ever so subtly from gold to amber to pink).

I didn't weave in the contrast thread Malabrigo as I knit: tedious. Instead I knit the entire round and then wove the contrast thread in as I slipped the stitches purlwise: still tedious but slightly less so. I also used a separate strand of contrast thread on every row, instead of one long strand. To finish them, I trimmed and spit felted the ends together so there was no weaving in of ends.

I did a provisional cast on for the i-cord bind off and grafted the stitches together after completing the bind off. This worked well but I think would have been better if I had cut the yarn after finishing the body of the cowl and started with a fresh piece of yarn, instead of striving to avoid two ends and making it a bit messy.

Verdict: Oh, so many variations that you could do with this pattern; the mind boggles. I'm very happy with this version and it has made a wonderful gift to a wonderful friend (I've made something for everyone in our fantastic neighbour family across the road now, hooray!)

spacing out

That would be me. Transition back into the school year has been more consuming than I expected. Anyway, having lived here for more than four years, we finally went up the Space Needle. We have had amazingly sunny weather here in Seattle for an almost record number of days, but come Sunday it clouded over for us. So, an authentic Seattle experience.

It was a pretty cool thing to do, and I think knowing the city actually made it a richer experience because I knew what I was seeing from that new perspective, could pick buildings out, follow the lay of the land. Then afterwards we went for a ride on a duck (also pretty cool although I wouldn't admit that to anyone).