Central Park Hoodie

This is my latest project. Father Christmas kindly supplied the Cascade 220 in duck egg blue from Pavi Yarns , and Interweave Press supplied the pattern - the now almost infamous Central Park Hoodie! After checking out the thousands of these on ravelry and reading the message boards about the sizing, I have gone for a larger size than I normally would as everyone was saying that this knits up small. They are right. I'm doing a 40", to get a 36" and I'm not sure it is even going to be that big. Very stretchy though so it will be fine - she says with fingers crossed! This is my first experience with Cascade 220 and I'm already considering getting more. I'll wear the hoodie for a while though to see what the pilling is like.

I am almost half way up the back.

The cables are very simple but effective, and I'm doing them without a cable needle - that's 3 stitches in mid air at a time to keep track of!!

The colour is lovely but I think I ought to keep it away from Becca when it is finished!!

Happy New Year to everyone for tomorrow. I am considering a blog revamp for the new year and may even go over to wordpress. I'll keep you informed.

Shrug

I actually finished this shrug a couple of weeks ago but didn't get it seamed in time for the knit group Christmas meal. As I have a big new project lined up for after Christmas (Santa will hopefully be popping the yarn down the chimney on Friday) I got on and finished the seaming this weekend and got daylight photos.

Pattern: Silk Shrug from Classic by Erika Knight
Yarn: Rowan Purelife British Sheep Breeds DK
Needles: 3.25 and 3.75mm
Mods: made longer sleeves by casting on 66 sts, increasing every 10 rows to 80 sts and following pattern from there.

I think it needs something to hold it together otherwise it pings open. I am happy with the sleeves but would be happier if they were slightly narrower, but I did wing it with those!

For anyone concerned about the welfare of the penguin at no. 17, he'll be getting a little something in a couple of days!

Twisty and Fidget

Ok, I got my photographer on the case and can now show you my two FOs.

The first one is a little neckwarmer. I started this while I was procrastinating over the seaming (not that there is much) on Twisty. It is a very quick little knit and the buttons I got from John Lewis are perfect.

Pattern: The Fidget by Robin Dodge
Length: 23cm
Yarn: Garnstudio Drops Classic Alpaca - colour 3806m - 2 strands held together - used under two balls.
Needles: 5.5mm KnitPro Harmony circulars
Mods: none

The second FO is my Drops jumper/vest thing. Yesterday evening was very warm and it was not comfortable wearing this for the photos. It is going to be lovely and toasty for the winter for work though.

Pattern: Drops 115-24
Size: small
Yarn: Garnstudio Drops Eskimo - colour 49m - 7.2 balls (the pattern says 6 but this is incorrect)
Needles: 9mm KnitPro Harmony circulars
Mods: none

I decided not to go for the Titania top in the previous post, but instead have made a start on another Drops pattern (there are hundreds of them and they are ALL free). This one is pattern number 100-2 which I am calling Red Rib. Strangely, looking at the measurements, I need to make a large in this design(?). I don't mind if it is a bit big in the end, it will be a great snuggly cardi for the winter, as it buttons right up to the neck.


I am using DK yarn rather than aran, so have had to swatch and go up a couple of needle sizes.

Serenity cardigan

Serenity is finished, blocked and modelled! I really like the little collar, even though it was a pain having to sew it on and then pick up stitches along the edge through TWO layers of knitting. I think I made a pretty good job of it though.



Pattern : Serenity from Rowan Studio 15
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton - 5 balls with inches to spare!
Size: 10
Needles: KnitPicks Harmony circ -5.5mm and 4.5mm (pattern called for 5mm and 4mm but as I didn't use the recommended yarn these are the needles I got gauge on.)
Modifications: I added 8 rows of stocking stitch to the length of the sleeves.

I'm sure someone clever could adapt this to be knit top down in one piece, I could have done without all the mattress stitch, but at least in a cropped cardi they are shortish seams!

Trafford Centre

Colin decided it was time he had a day off so yesterday we decided to go over to The Trafford Centre as we both needed clothes. Now, I have mentioned before that I hate clothes shopping so I wasn't holding out much hope of coming home with anything to be honest but it turned out to be not too bad.

I think it helped that the place was virtually empty. The credit crunch was certainly evident, either that or no-one wanted to go out in case they caught swine flu! So at least I didn't have to try to squeeze past people in narrow gaps between clothes displays, or queue for changing rooms. I didn't actually try much on, and came home with a pair of trousers, a cardi and 3 tops (one of which is going back because it is too small). Add to that the 6 t-shirt type tops I got in M&S on Saturday and that's me done for probably another 12 months!

While we were there I popped in to John Lewis as I needed a red button for my Serenity cardi - just the seaming and the collar to go now, should be done over the weekend - but as usual I didn't really know what size to get. I got a selection and I ended up with these.

Wow some buttons can be expensive! The six matching ones weren't too bad at 30p each but the other two! The larger one is glass I think, and was £1.30 for one! The other I think is also glass and that one was £1.45! Yikes. Good job i didn't need 6 of each of those. So now I will choose which to use and keep the others for something else. I'm bound to make something else in red another time.

I had a quick look at the knitting yarns, specifically at more of the Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton that I am currently using for the cardi. I was shocked. I bought mine for £1.99 a ball in Stash, John Lewis were selling it for £2.90. Is that allowed? (Edit: Hmmm, just looked at Stash's website and they have it for £2.90 too. Odd!)

An anniversary present to myself!

Becca and I eventually got to meet up for a chat today. She was on a late and didn't need to start work until 12 so we met in town in Starbucks at 9 o'clock for a coffee and a natter - mostly about knitting. Then we decided to go off to Stash and have another natter with Anne. Of course it would be rude to go in there and natter for over an hour and not buy so I found this cute pattern in the new Rowan Studio 15. It is called Serenity (but I can't see it on ravelry yet!). It will be ideal for over the top I got in Zara which is sleeveless!


The top is red so the cardi has to be red! I didn't really like the Rowan Summer Tweed, it feels a bit rough so I bought 6 balls of Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton for £1.99 a ball. I'm a bit wary of cotton after my disaster with the jumper for Colin but this should be okay as it is short and won't be all heavy and shapeless (fingers crossed). Of course now I want to start it straight away!

I haven't got too far to go on the second Monkey sock so if I finish that tonight I'll start the cardi tomorrow.

Even though it is our wedding anniversary - 15 years- today we are going to go out tomorrow night.

Puddin' and pie

Yay, how cool, I have 3 followers already!

Just a quick FO to show today. This is the cardi I made for George. I'm not sure whether to just leave it open or add one button as it says in the pattern.




I'm not sure what to do now. I can't do any more on the mystery sock and the other WIPs I have are just not inspiring me. They are at stages where something fiddly has to happen and I can't be bothered with them at the moment. But I want to knit this evening. I don't want to start Ice Queen because I can't work out the provisional cast on and I don't want to cast on 164 stitches that I can't get to later on. I think I'll go back to the Glacier Lake socks. I started them but ripped them out because they were too wide on the 2.5mm needles. I have 2mm ones now so I think I'll start those.

Of course I could always have a think about what my 50,000 word novel is going to be about, after all it is only 14 days to the kick off!!

Follow me.........

See that new thingy under the NaNoWriMo button on the left there? You can add yourself to it so I know who is reading my blog. And you can put one on your blog too so you know who is reading yours. It's new in the "customise layout" section of blogger.

I've also added a photo to the "about me " section so you can all see my ugly mug!!

Mystery Sock clue 3 came out today and I've finished it already! It was just the heel flap and heel turn so I managed it in a couple of hours. Which meant I could concentrate on the baby cardigan I am making for little George. I have almost finished it, just one arm to do. It is knitted from the top down so no seaming, hooray. I did have a bit of a mishap with it though. The needle sizes on the pattern were US sizes and when I looked at my needle gauge to work out the metric equivalents I accidentally looked at the imperial sizes. So I used 5.5mm and 4.5mm when I should have used 4.5mm and 3.75mm. Hence the cardi is bigger than expected. At least babies "grow into" things.

The waistcoat is in the "naughty corner" at the mo, I'm not entirely happy with my picking up of stitches around the bottom, but I'll do a bit of fudging at some point and it'll be fine.

Drops 88-4 finished

Here is a dodgy ole photo of me in the finished Drops 88-4 cardigan. I had literally just finished sewing on the sleeves. It is a bit gapey across the fronts so I'm going to pin it out and block it within an inch of its life to try to stretch it out. Hopefully it will dry by tomorrow evening.