New blog

New, updated blog, over at Wordpress: http://makingpurplethings.wordpress.com/, with some actual recent content, no less! Also, a new chart for the 'Votes for Women' socks, and other patterns forthcoming soon.

Breaking knitters' block

(Also bloggers' block, I suppose!)

I've been working on Arietta for nearly a year, and have been stalled on it for only slightly less time. Every time I pick it up I make a mistake, or get confused, and stop again in favour of patterns which require less attention.

But because of getting confused about quantities and washableness of Koigu when planning a present for a brand-new baby, I had a 50g skein of sock yarn in rather fetching reds and pinks, and decided to make a mini-Arietta with it, in the hope of finally getting the pattern.

And I think, cautiously, that it's worked. This is my mini-Arietta blocking:

It's 48" long and 14" wide at the widest point, which is plenty big enough for a small shawl or a scarf, and it's lovely. And now I'm working again on its red laceweight sibling...

New pattern: Lydia's mitts

My officemate Lydia complained that her hands were cold, typing in our sometimes-freezing office, so I offered to knit her some mittens. These are the result, knit from some handspun that I called 'Silk Cut (with merino)' because it reminds me of the colours of Silk Cut cigarette packets, and is made from one strand of merino plied with one of silk.

Lydia's mitts pattern available to download from Ravelry.

Blocking lace

This is Annis, pinned to the futon in my library, blocking. I added some more rows of plain stocking stitch with a row of eyelets just before the cast off edge (ribbon is threaded through them in the picture, although I haven't decided yet if I'll wear it with the ribbon or if it's just a blocking aid). I went round the cast on edge afterwards with a teen tiny crochet hook (three single crochet to each cast on loop) and added beads to each point.

This is to wear for a friend's wedding in a week and a bit, and I've been putting off finishing the edging before suddenly realising quite how soon it is!

Talking of things I've been putting off... the sheer weight of unblogged projects has been hanging over me and harshing my blog mojo, but I got fed up with it ;-) I might blog the unblogged stuff; I might not. For now, I'll just do a list of things I'm currently working on:

• Rogue - this is a reknit. I made the cardigan version years ago and it never quite worked, so I've unravelled and am reknitting as a jumper, with - I think - better gauge. I'm about 20 rows into the hood, so nearly finished, and very excited about it :-)


• Still knitting Henry for large-male-friend-R. About halfway through, and sort of hoping to be done for Christmas this year (and hoping/planning to make a hat for his daughter and mitts for his wife to accompany the gift).


• Space-invader-yoke cardigan for toddler-L (reknitting the star kimono and Tomten he's grown out of). I got a fair way into this before being seized with doubt about the sizes of toddlers, and after his mother had wielded the measuring tape, it was confirmed that the internet had lied to me, so I had to start again, and lost motivation.


• Oh god another reknit: the suffragette socks! The double-knit cuffs are great, but the first version of the sock body (so to speak) was too tight. I should know better! So I'm reknitting those, to be grafted to the cuffs. Eventually.


• And finally, not on the needles, but in planning: I made C a simple ribbed cowl for her birthday, and I really want one myself! I'm wearing pashminas-as-scarves a lot, but getting really fed up with the dangling ends. It only took an afternoon to knit C's, so all I need to do is choose yarn and find time...

Oh, and I knit yet another pair of baby Coriolis for the imminent arrival of T's baby, but despite finishing them ages ago, I have not yet posted them, and the baby was due a couple of days ago. Note to self: post socks.

Moved servers

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Suffragette socks in progress

These are the four faces of my first suffragette cuff. Naturally, I prefer the purple side :-)

There are some mistakes in the white side, although I've checked and they're mistakes in the knitting, not in the chart, so at some point soon I'll publish the both-sides-right-way chart to go with the simple one. (It's very exciting publishing a pattern on Ravelry and then watching people adding it to favourites and queue!)

I'm also planning some adjustments to the chart to suit a wider range of stitch counts - it should be fairly easy to narrow the pattern in several places. And I'm thinking about serifs...

Suffragette socks!

OK, I'm way behind on blogging. I've finished all kinds of things since I last posted, and started planning several more...

...One of which is planned enough to share the chart here. This the chart for my Suffragette socks, to be knit as the cuff of an otherwise-purple, 72-stitch sock. I'm planning to do it in double knitting, because I prefer it to stranded (and am more sure of my tension), but I'm currently working on how to write the chart so that the letters are the right way around on both sides, which involves non-symmetrical double knitting, which I haven't done before. I'll post that chart when it's finished, too.


Download the PDF (31KB).