Snippets of progress

The news in brief:

• Went with Frax and Kauket to see Brenda Dayne knitting on the fourth plinth on Saturday, and then went to the pub with aforementioned plus a load of other knitters who had come for the same reason. F, K and I were by chance all knitting Coriolis, and we all made decent progress, and I made the acquaintance of an Oxford knitter who knows lots of the same people I do.


• On the same trip, went to iKnit, and bought a Zauberball in shades of reds. Have made plans for a flame-patterned scarf.


• Ella is finished and soaking, in preparation for my first ever excursion into blocking. It's very three-dimensional at the moment, so I'm eagerly awaiting the lace-blocking miracle that's reputed to happen.

More double knitting

This is the state of the Selbu Modern:





Since doing a stitch count spreadsheet for Wisteria, I seem to be hooked - I've done another one for this, and it's serving the dual purpose of being a place to note which row of the chart I've finished, and telling me how far through I am (currently 36%).

Now I've got enough of it done to get a proper look at it, I've more-or-less decided that I prefer the dark band, and the light base colour for the pattern. Luckily, these are on the same side of the hat ;-) Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind later, which is why I'm glad I've made this as double knitting instead of stranded. It's loads of fun to knit, as well - I prefer double knitting to stranding anyway - and now I'm over some early clumsiness with the pattern, I'm sailing along and only needing to look at the chart occasionally. I still need to look at my knitting most of the time, which is a bit of a pain because it limits what I can do at the same time, but it's fun enough on its own that I mostly don't mind.

One off, one on (the needles)

Having finished Wisteria, even though I'm enjoying both of my other projects and finding both of them easy, interesting and quick, I started getting the urge to cast on something else. The stranded knitting on the starry kimono, and the double-knit-esque hem on Wisteria reminded me of my intention to make some non-sock thing in two-handed knitting, so I stand some chance of finishing it before I get fed up with the fiddliness of the technique. My new short hair and excursions into red in my wardrobe suggested a red hat, and after some Ravelring, I decided upon Selbu Modern. I'm double knitting this, rather than stranding it, because I couldn't decide which way round the colours should be. Hence this two-sided swatch:




That's only a little bit of the pattern, obviously. Just enough to measure gauge and make adjustments for the looser gauge of double knitting compared with stranded, and for the fact that the needles I wanted to use are larger than those the pattern calls for, so technically I suppose this is 7/8 of a Selbu Modern :-)

Project promiscuity (Ella)

This is what Ella looks like at the moment (photo taken without flash to better capture the texture):



It's crazily three-dimensional, with squarish bobbles that pop up or down, and I keep having to stretch it out to reassure myself that it will probably block flat:



I'm only a few rows away from the point where the back splits into the two fronts, which is good going, especially since I've been knitting most of this in the same timeframe as Wisteria.

Project promiscuity (swimming Coriolis)

While knitting Wisteria, I've also done some other knitting...


After I'd finished the heel (eye of partridge, which looks gorgeous with this yarn) of the first sock, I weighed the remaining yarn, and discovered that it's not going to be enough for two full socks, so I immediately put the live stitches on waste yarn and cast on for the second sock with the other end of the ball. These will have contrast legs, but I haven't decided on yarn for them yet. The available one that goes best is the dark red Dream in Colour Smooshy that went with this yarn for the push-me-pull-you socks, but there's more of that leftover - probably actually enough for a whole pair - so I'm reluctant to use it. None of my other sock yarn goes as well, so these might end up being very short socks. On the other hand, the DiC is a suspect in a hat-in-planning I'm thinking about, which would probably leave enough to finish off these socks...

Wisteria: fibre to FO in a month

It turns out that there were a couple of errors in the stitch-count calculations for Wisteria that I was talking about in my last post. It further turns out that I shortened the body length on the fly (the stated length might have nearly reached my knees!), and that when I double-checked the weight of fibre, it was even more generous than I had thought. The upshot of this is rather than needing to buy more fibre to finish, I've actually got about 110g leftover - enough for a pair of socks, or a hat, or a laceweight scarf. The leftovers might end up being my first attempt at dyeing fibre, but in the meantime I present my finished Wisteria!



Apart from the body length, I made two other mods: my first ever short row bust shaping, which has worked well, and a split double-faced hem in place of the hem cables. I wasn't keen on a horizontal band of cables around the widest part of me, and I like split hems for fit, and I'm very pleased with how it's worked. I came up with about four different ways of working the hem, swatched a couple, and decided on this...

I put the back stitches on a spare needle, and worked across the front, knitting into the front and back of each stitch, doubling the stitch count. Then I worked back across the wrong side, knitting each stitch that was created on the previous row, and slipping the 'original' stitches with the yarn in front. Then back to the right side, I knit the 'original' stitches, and slipped the 'new' ones with the yarn in front. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The effect is like double knitting, takes a bit longer, but is less fiddly because it only needs one end of yarn at a time. It creates sealed sides as well, which gives it bonus points over just knitting the hem flat and folding it. I used a standard cast off, except with k2togs for each pair of stitches instead of plain knit, thus attaching the front and the back to each other and making a pretty chain of stitches along the bottom.

The other I'm-so-pleased-with-myself idea in the hem is that the yarn is made from the same singles as the main yarn, but in two-ply instead of three, so the hem is barely any thicker than the main body of the jumper, while not looking and different.

I'm wearing the finished item as I type, and loving it :-)