Damn, Knit & Blast It

I chose Eveleen to slow me down a bit…..

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!!) I’m really enjoying the lace pattern and have got quite quick at it!

I’ve now done enough repeats so I can look at the pattern at the beginning of a RS row then memorize it all the way to the end of the row without looking back at the pattern. The WS rows I have in my head now (mainly because they are easy knits and purls with no “funny” lace stuff…)

A big improvement on the “knit 2 stitches ,look at the pattern, get lost where I was, count the stitches, look at the pattern, knit 2 more stitches” way Eveleen started.

Here’s how far I’ve got with the back….

Yup! I’ve finished the lace section up to the bust

I thought, “I can can carry on with the plain part or stop here and do the front’s lace section while I have the pattern (partially) lodged in my head”. So, I’ve put this back on a spare needle and I’m this far up the front…

I am so pleased!!

The lace is even prettier now I have a larger amount of it dangling off the needle and I can spread it out better…

So much for slowing me down, huh?

I’m now racing through it so I can get onto the intarsia fun!

So, continuing the story of Click…

Click has been through the washing machine with a couple of towels at 60 degrees -the pattern says 50 but whose machine has 50 degrees? Mine only has 40 or 60…..

When it came out, my fears about curling were founded. I had also rather overdone the the felting..

It was stiff and the curly edges had completely felted together. Emergency surgery was required.

I dunked Click into some warm water with a squirt of hair conditioner to hopefully lubricate the fibres and help me remould it. The curly edges were carefully peeled back with the aid of a very sharp craft knife at the point they felted to the main body. It was then blocked in the sun using my very useful metal garden table which has a lattice design (furniture for knitters….there’s an idea )
After much slicing, snipping, swearing, pulling and tugging I’ve ended up with this….

You can see down the sides just how much I had to trim to get the sides to unroll - it’s left bald bits!

It’s still a little damp and it’s still very “chunky” when rolled up. I think it can be saved with some clever finishing and maybe some more brute force bullying!

So what’s the other project?

After having a little OCD session and organising my needles meticulously in my nice new shiny Namaste needle bag I realised that the needles for current projects just kicked around in the bottom of my knitting bag - at best they got wrapped in this spare piece of fabric! I am ashamed to say - I hadn’t even hemmed the edges or sewn a seam. Just grabbed from the fabric stash, wrapped it round the needles and tied an old piece of ribbon round it.

Not something to feel proud of when you whip it out of the bag What I needed was something similar but fabulous and knitted…..

Enter the Click needle wrap from the Rowan Felted Collection

This is what it’s supposed to look like when done (on the right)….

I didn’t want it as wide as this one - I only wanted to put 2 or three sets of needles in it. So I cast on 60 stitches instead of the 103 in the pattern.

It was what should have been the most boring knit in the world. 86cm of straight stocking stitch with 2 rows of purl (for the fold lines) thrown in for excitement.

It was however, strangely soothing and compulsive. Watching the stripes form in the lovely tapestry was enough to keep me amused. (Anyone who says “doesn’t take much then!” gets a 4mm thrown at them…. )

If you’re looking for the perfect project to do at a knitting circle where there is frantic gossiping, counting, looking at each other’s work and pattern books, this is the one.

Unfortunately, what with feeling poorly and being pretty exhausted from decorating in the evenings, I kinda kept on picking up Click instead on Eveleen and ….wellll….sort of finished it

This is the finished Click, with needle pockets sewn in, ready for the washing machine…

I was pretty concerned about the curly edges - not much to do about that…. and I had read on the Rowan forum that the pockets had a tendency to felt together. So I cut strips of Sainsbury’s carrier bag and poked them loosely into the pockets - can you believe I actually sat there thinking, “what can I use to poke this down to the bottom of the pocket???” before grabbing a trusty old metal needle - sometimes my brain fails me

It’s chugging away in the machine now….

OK… I’ve teased you long enough ……

I’ll tell you about my next project……

In fact I have two projects started!!

Normally I like to keep just one WIP on the go as you know, but this next project is what I promised when I signed off my last post about Orford- really hard and slowing me down!

Difficult pattern + decorating the bedroom + building new flatpack wardrobes + being a sick girl taking sausage sized antibiotics = very slow progress!
Here’s the book picture…

It’s Eveleen from Rowan 40 by Lois Daykin.

This is the cover of Rowan 40 (I can’t remember which book is which from the numbers so I’m assuming you all have that trouble too!!)

When I got Rowan 40 - I remember looking at this one and thinking, “hmm flowery intarsia and not much else. I really won’t be knitting that!” Then, when I did my wonderful finishing course
at John Lewis, I saw the garment made up. It was fabulous! I bought the yarn then and there with my 10% discount voucher.

What the picture shows badly (as is often the case with Rowan’s photography) is the detail and the lace pattern. Yep, there is a lace pattern from the bust down. There are also bands of Lurex Shimmer (very sparkly yarn for those who haven’t memorised the entire Rowan range) at the cast on edges, around the neck and along the bust line either side of a ribbon detail. The intarsia is a clever mixture of textures too. Three colours of fuzzy Kidsilk Haze and the same 3 colours (or as close as you could hope to get) in matt textured Rowan 4 ply Soft.

So why is it so hard?

Have a look at this…(photographed against my Petunias!)

The lace pattern is scallop shells with a lacy “arc” pattern in between with the stitches “lashed” together to bunch them at the meeting point of the scallopy ribs.

This one might show the scallops better…

See the Lurex shimmer edging too? Well actually I used Twilley’s goldfingering as Lurex Shimmer has been discontinued - I’m assured this is a perfect substitute.

Casting on and straight into lace using a black sparkly yarn was not a smart choice. I had no idea what the stitches were doing and had to rely on frantic counting and holding my breath until the end of the row - then doing a little dance when I had the right number of stitches at the end of the row!

The pattern repeat is 14 rows. I had to count, tink and swear through every one of them without a clue if the stitches were falling in the right place - a close-up of the stitch detail would have helped SOOOOOOOOoooo much Rowan! Once I’d bludgeoned my way through one repeat the pattern has started to make a little sense. I’m starting to see little “phrases” of stitches in the pattern and can look away from the book occasionally now. Hopefully after a couple more pattern repeats I’ll be seeing whole sentences and be able to whizz through whole rows without looking at the book - I can dream!

After criticising Rowan’s photography, I had a hard time photographing this! Here’s just one more close up…

And my second project - that’s a really easy one for when I can’t face Eveleen….I’ll tell you about that next time!