Damn, Knit & Blast It

Christmas is over and that means just one thing to me – The Bluewater John Lewis yarn sale!!

Most of my ridiculously obese stash can be blamed on the temptation of those wonderful reductions on Rowan yarns

Apparently, there is a sale in the rest of the store too but I’ve usually spent all my money before that actually dawns on me
In this year’s sale I was simultaneously very bad, very good and a bit disorganised.

The very bad first…

I bought more yarn even though I definitely don’t need it. Other years I have managed to be strong and not go to the sale. One year I even didn’t buy anything  – mainly because I got there several days into the sale and the good stuff had gone!

I weakened for Kidsilk Aura – You know how bad I am for Kidsilk Haze – I’m almost as bad for Aura!

First I riffled though the Kidsilk Aura collection book – this one…

From stash

And, given my recent success with fairisle, decided immediately on Liliana – the fairisle jumper….

From stash

I really liked the original colours and managed to find them all (red, cream, black and grey) in the sale except for the dark grey

Janice, our Rowan rep even was kind enough to rummage in the stock room for me but alas – it had been discontinued some time ago. I reluctantly bought a lighter grey that would be OK but not perfect.

I was sure I had the Kidsilk Aura book and didn’t buy it. After all, I bought some Aura for my stash last year didn’t I?? I must have it.

I went to the till and paid, had a look in the other shops and the non-yarn sales  – and actually didn’t buy anything either because it wasn’t that much of a bargain, there was nothing I liked or the queues to pay were stupidly long! Who in their right mind would wait an hour to pay for a £9 t-shirt???

Unfortunately, I had to walk through John Lewis again to return to my car….More badness.

Silky Tweed was also in the sale – I had used it and loved the yarn when making Catrin and promised myself more.

Most of what I saw in the sale was brownish shades, too similar to Catrin. Then I saw some very pretty green – the lady at the till said “oh you’re back again – more knitting??” Project to be decided 

Here it is…

From stash

Now the disorganised bit…

When I got home I checked my stash -I really must load a version of my stash onto my iPhone so I can check it when I’m out.

I was overjoyed!! I had the Grey shade I couldn’t  buy to make Liliana from a previous year’s yarn sale stash enhancement exercise!! But where was the Kidsilk Aura book??  Stupid, Stupid, Susan didn’t have it
Add a list of my knit books to things I should have on my iPhone!

All that did was give me an excuse to jump on the train the next day and head up to John Lewis Oxford street – they tend to have even more yarn than Bluewater!!

I bought the Kidsilk aura book and after a darned good rummage in all the yarn bins – decided to buy some brown Kidsilk aura to go with the recently rediscovered antique gold Kidsilk aura that’s already in my stash – I intend making Gelsey – lovely mottled cabley big warm jumper…

From Gelsey

And the “Very Good”? How can I possibly redeem myself after such a yarn splurge??

Well…I liked Gelsey so much that I also picked up the Kidsilk Aura in purple and lilac to make a second version The woolly mist of an uncontrolled yarn buying frenzy was closing in on me…

I carried the purple and lilac around the shop while I looked at other things on the other floors – for about an hour…my good sense was fighting to be heard,
“You might not like Gelsey when you’ve made it once”
“By the time you’ve made two Kidsilk Aura garments won’t you be bored with it? And it’ll be summer?”
“Your stash is big enough!”
“If you really decide you want it later – there’s plenty of places you could buy that yarn – this isn’t your last chance.”

So I was “Very Good” and put the purple and lilac back.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a distant ray of hope for a pathetic Stash Addict!

I started a new new role with work 3 weeks ago and it has stolen all my knitting time.

Well… the new role plus the horrendous commuting through the 14″ snow  stole my knitting time. I’m in an area where an inch of snow that stays two days is considered an ice age!!

More on the the product of my snowy “commuting knitting” in a moment….

“So is the new role at work the exciting news??” I hear you ask?

Noooo……

The exciting news is……

The lovely Ben proposed and I said, “Yes”.
We’re engaged!
It must have been the Second Chance Hat that finally did it!

Wanna see the ring???

From Ring!

I’m so thrilled with it 

The plan is to get married in the Summer…It’ll be a small wedding and I definitely will NOT be knitting the dress

Sorry! I know it’s a knitting blog and that’s  not knitting but I had to share

So back to the snowy commuting knitting…
You could say I’m being unfaithful to Ben – Gasp! Shock! Horror!
I have been knitting for another man!

Our Twitter buddy, Yaquaholic saw Ben’s  Second Chance Hat and desperately wanted one like it. He pleaded, grovelled, flattered and spun tales of woe and cold ears until I finally agreed to make him one.

Yaquaholic chose Rowan Felted Tweed in great shade called Carbon (colour 159)- a kinda slate grey with flecks of cream and brown – love the colour – I could be tempted to a garment in that myself – yum. Apparently it emulated a long lost beloved hat he had never been able to replace…<insert violins here>

The hat got finished yesterday – just as the snow here thawed – sorry Yaq!

So here it is – the product of a couple of weeks of snowy commuting….Yaq’s Hat (badly modelled by me…)

From yaqs hat

And a pic of it blocking over a bowl (Like I did for Ben’s hat) Showing the nice swirl…Although oddly – the Felted tweed didn’t go nearly as pointy as the pure wool version for Ben??

From yaqs hat

And one of it flat on the desk…I tell you – it’s impossible to get an exciting picture of a dark grey ribbed hat!

From yaqs hat

The last couple of weeks have been fun in the Knit-Room – more screwdriver action than knitting

I do have lots to show you though- Prepare for photo overload

New carpet is down and nice Mr Ikea has left me a huge pile of stuff to build.

All there was to do was to put the “stuff” in the room according to my cunning plan – you will remember this…

From Knit-Room

…surprisingly little went wrong – except for me forgetting that there were light switches and power sockets So every thing shuffled up a bit and I lost some space in the bottom left corner

First we got the Beddinge sofa bed and my my new Norden table in place.

From Knit-Room

Norden will be used for my sewing machine when it’s leaves are up and as somewhere to stand my coffee for the rest of the time! It weighs a ton  – Didn’t realise that when I bought it -so not so easy to move around – mainly because of all the really solid, cunningly concealed storage draws…

From Knit-Room

Thankfully, the table fits and makes a bedside table with the sofa bed open too! (You had me worried there, Jacqui!)

From Knit-Room

“Where’s the wool??”, I hear you cry!

Ok, Ok….

The yarn is in the wardrobes! We built them to have 8 big lidded pullout draws to hold yarn and some shelves for other stuff,  plus some hanging space in the middle for the occasional guest. The wardrobes are from the Ikea PAX range where you buy the frame and chose all your own fittings for the insides….

…And,Yes, I said “8″ draws for yarn…

From Knit-Room

I have been good though and only filled 7 of them!… and a big box of handknit cotton but I’m hiding that… One draw has been used for my fabric stash too – mostly left over from making curtains.

Wanna see?

From Knit-Room

From Knit-Room

When not in use, everything is neatly obscured behind frosted glass doors…

From Knit-Room

The draws have been filled roughly by gauge…

• a 4ply draw
• 2 x DK draws
• an Aran draw
• a Chunky draw
• a miscellaneous “wont fit anywhere else” stuff  draw
• and of course – an entire draw of my beloved KidSilk Haze…

From Knit-Room

By this point in the yarn sorting frenzy,  the men in my life were flaking out…

From Knit-Room

Thug wasn’t much help either….

From Knit-Room

He did have a chat with me about ornaments  though-

From Knit-Room

Thug recommended this display for the table made up of an old vase and my beautiful glass needles…(clever cat, that one!)

From Knit-Room

Last thing to show you for now are the books….

They have a new home in two Billy bookcases, complete with beautiful doors (I love those doors!!)

From Knit-Room

I also learnt something alarming about Billy bookcases. If you build them, then try to hang heavy doors on the front, they fall over onto you when you’re screwing the doors on! There was much squealing but no harm done. There is a good reason Ikea give you widgets to screw them to the walls  -take note!!

I took the opportunity to update my Ravelry library while I was putting all my books and mags away.

I was a little surprised to discover I own 85 books, 83 magazines, 51 booklets and 5 PDFs
Those of you on ravelry can see the true horror here -> Susan’s Ravelry Library

Here’s some random shots of the insides of the Billys (just in case you’re feeling nosey and want to see what’s inside;-) )

From Knit-Room

From Knit-Room

From Knit-Room

From Knit-Room

Even Boofle and Monkey have settled down on the window-sill -Well, they are both knitted!

From Knit-Room

I am so thrilled with the results of the Knit-Room.

I feel a very privileged knitter to have such a room

I’m desperately struggling not to rush out and buy little boxes and ornaments and general fripperies for my Knit-Room.

I need to build the furniture and start putting all the stuff away, decide what I need ( and have room for), THEN go shopping…Probably with Ben holding my credit card to prevent bankruptcy.

But, but……

I saw a super cute thing in Lakeland which some idiot thinks is a ring holder.

I decided that £5 was an extravagance I could stand if  it took the edge off my shopping urge…

I present you with my prediction for this year’s “must have” Knitterly Christmas Stocking filler….

From Knit-Room

A pewter cat, playing with a ball of wool…..Where else could I possibly store my jewelled stitch markers???

From Knit-Room

I have been very jealous since “Project ManCave”.

Project ManCave was where we took a nasty, grubby little bedroom full of boxes of Ben’s toys and general Geekery…

From Knit-Room

…redecorated, replaced the carpet (due to a leaking radiator incident)…

From Knit-Room

and created the perfect Gaming Geek room with shelving for games and a handknitted Sackboy...

From Knit-Room

Great for Ben…..What about ME??!!

For the last year, my Knitterly possessions have languished like this…

From Knit-Room

In an equally horrible environment in need of some love….

From Knit-Room

Time to create the Knit-Room Which also has to double as a guest room.  If you know me, you’ll know that being invited to share a room with my precious stash is indeed an honour. (It’s share with the stash or endure a night with Ben’s beautifully hand painted Games Workshop miniatures of Orcs, Trolls and monsters staring down at you all night!)

Hmmm….
……. Not sure about that name…”Knittery”? Yarnarium? Any better ideas out there for the Knit-Room??

All my “still packed up from the house move” yarn, books and equipment has been moved to another room while the Knit-Room was scrubbed, prepared and painted plain white.

Nothing too difficult or heartbreaking, huh?….

Painting done, we decided to whip the carpet cleaner over the carpet….

Oh Dear.

Once the carpet was moistened, we were aware that there were several patches of ancient cat wee on the carpet. ICK, ICK EWWW! (Definitely not Thug and Mewsley’s work!!)

After trying every trick on the internet to get rid of the smell (and actually making it much worse), it was obvious that  no yarn could be stored in the stinky room and we certainly couldn’t ask a guest to sleep in there – it was revolting.

One carpet, rapidly on the way to the dump.

I now have a clean, fragrant but rather empty room.

From Knit-Room

While waiting for the replacement carpet I have spent many happy hours planning the room layout so it can accommodate a sofa bed for me to sit and knit on (and maybe a guest to use), yarn storage, knit book storage and “other crafty things” storage.

Good old IKEA even had some inspiration for me in one of their Business catalogues…

From Knit-Room

(Click the picture to see it larger – that really is wool in the shelves and needles and yarn in vases as ornaments!! )

Hmmmm, looks pretty but the yarn would get dusty and moths would love it…My yarn needs doors! (And rather a lot of plastic bags )

So I have decided on this layout….

From Knit-Room

Beddinge (sofabed) and one wardrobe I already had, Billy is a bookcase and Norden is a gateleg table. I think you can guess who the ginger one is!

Nice Mr Ikea delivers tomorrow…the suspense is killing me…watch this space

I took a whole day off work last week, met up with 4 of the Guilty Knitters (Hello to Mel, Judie, Glaucia and Jeni ) and had a great day out at the Alexandra Palace Knitting and Stitching Show. (Or Ally Pally to anyone from this corner of the Globe)

We battled against signal failures on the trains (my 20 min journey took 1 hour and 10 mins!!) tube disruption (took  buses) and monstrously long queues for the courtesy bus (took the local bus) but still managed to arrive wound up, excited and yarn hungry. And in need of a loo and a coffee, strictly in that order.

Did I buy huge amounts of stuff? No!!

We are currently decorating and furnishing my new knit-room (more on that in another post ) and I have to face the fact that my stash is way too large and contains too much yarn that I “snapped up because it was a bargain”  – Kid Silk Haze is excluded from this statement of course. When you start looking at how many wardrobes you need to house yarn it’s hard to ignore the “problem”…

So the idea of the day was to have a fun day out with friend (TICK!), forget about work for the day (half a TICK - got phoned a couple of times), look at all the pretty and be inspired (BIG TICK - lots of beautiful sewing and quilting this year too ) and maybe buy some quality yarn NOT quantity.

Wanna see how that worked out??

First I bought some Frilly novelty “Can Can” yarn! Definitely not “Quality” but I can’t resist a bit of fun and I think my Mum will enjoy a play too…

From Ally Pally 2010

It’s supposed to turn out like this…

From Ally Pally 2010

Then I spent a long time at the Jamieson‘s stand “Ohhing and Ahhing” over this book of Felted Handbags (Which I bought)…

From Ally Pally 2010

I was all set to start a yarn buying frenzy to make one or more of the bags when my good friend Judie stopped me,

” Are you going to start it right away? No.”
” Is the yarn the same price online and quickly and easily delivered when you need it? Yes.”
“Do you want to be carrying that yarn around all day? No.”

Thank you Judie for saving me from yarn purchases with your inescapable logic! (I suspect she is related to Mr Spock somewhere along the line…)

I did buy a small kit from Jamieson’s though – this was adorable and irresistible although I rarely drink tea and don’t remember the last time I used a tea pot!

From Ally Pally 2010

I spent a happy 40 mins trying to choose what colours to make the tea pot cosy! This should nicely hone my fairisle skills and, for the handle and spout, introduce me to the most scary word in knitting … STEEK!

Lastly, I couldn’t leave without one over indulgent purchase. I hadn’t spent very much of the budget I had saved up all year so I felt justified…
“Quality not Quantity” was the day’s mantra…..

I got this – Buffalo Gold!

From Ally Pally 2010

It’s 100% bison down from the winter undercoat – Apparently the fibres are smooth and don’t have the scales of sheep’s wool so it won’t felt and it’s very strong making it great for gloves that can be machine washed and generally abused….They even had machine knit pairs there for fishermen!

Read all about it…

From Ally Pally 2010

How much? A stupidly expensive £50 for one skein – but that was my reward for not going crazyand buying packs of half price Rowan!

I was disappointed by the bag they gave me the yarn in though – a thin poly bag which made my luxurious purchase look uncomfortable like I had just walked the dog and picked up the droppings!

From Ally Pally 2010

As I’ve said, I’ve been busy – knitting, work, driving to Bristol and back.

Imagine my delight when I was welcomed home from a long drive by this…

From iPhone

The lovely Ben had prepared a delicious meal of Fajitas, all the trimmings and a hand crafted Margarita

You’ll remember that this lovely man had been put firmly in the dog house a couple of years ago (and has been there ever since in knitterly terms) after loosing a hat I had made him. Not just loosing it – but loosing it after only a couple of outings and before I’d properly photographed and blogged it!!

I had only managed this silly snap of the hat on Thug to use on the “APB for a Lost Hat” blog post...

From

The Margaritas did it, I have finally forgiven him enough to make him another hat

(I also need a commuting project but don’t tell Ben I said that!)

Ben had said he liked the Jacques Cousteau hat by Lalla Pohjanpalo – It’s a free pattern I found on Ravelry

(You can CLICK HERE to find the pattern on Lalla’s blog if you’re not on Ravelry).

Ben loved this picture..

From Ben Hat

And said it reminded him of the “Morph Ball” in Metroid Other M – a game he has just finished playing on the Wii…

From Ben Hat

So at the Iknit Weekender, I was questing to find the perfect yarn to make him this hat.

I went a little crazy at the Blackerdesigns stand - their wool is to die for. Their yarns are not only beautiful but British made and pure fibres. I get the strong impression that if you really wanted to know, they could tell you the names of each of the sheep your yarn came from!

I decided Ben should have this wonderfully soft and squishy Jacob wool with 50% mohair. Anyone who bleats “Wool is itchy”, Wool is rough”, “I can only wear thing so over-processed and  soft they may as well be synthetic” should have a good long fondle of this yarn – it is lovely. You might have gathered – I get a little frustrated with the precious, spoilt, trying to out do each other on how sensitive they are,  “it’s scratchy” brigade! (*thinks* opps, that’s probably alienated half my readers – gulp!)

Enough ranting – here’s the yarn!

From Ben Hat

I have got this far with the hat, after casting on 140 stitches with the Twisted German cast on I learnt in the Lopi course – just to make sure I remembered how!

From Ben Hat

I also bought some light as a feather organic Corridale from Blackerdesigns for a scarflette for me

From Ben Hat

And possibly the most Knit-nerdy book I have ever seen!

It was just too damned interesting to resist

From Ben Hat

So, the Kidsilk Haze workshop was a day of playing, experimentation and fluffy indulgence.

The following day I was busy because I played in a Netball tournament for a work team – I’ve played once since school and that was last year’s tournament! A huge amount of fun but not much knitting there!

Following Netball, with unbelievably aching muscles there had to be the promise of something good to drag me out of bed early on Saturday…

Hmmm – A day the Iknit Weekender and a course on Icelandic Lopi Knitting  with Ragga Eirikdottir was enough to get me out of bed!

I wanted to learn something new and have a bit of a challenge – exactly what I got!

Ragga told us some of the history of Icelandic knitting and about Lopi yarn – its a kinda “pre-wool” – unspun, light and fluffy and breaks easily

There’s lots of info on the Knitting Iceland site if you want to know more. Definitely worth a look!

Then we got to make a mini Lopaypeysa.

So cute!

From Little Lopi

This is what people always think of as the traditional Icelandic, thick, patterned yoke jumper. Although we learnt from Ragga that this has only been “traditional” since the 1950s!

So what did I learn?

Firstly – German Twisted cast on to start off with – I’d done Long Tail Cast On before  but this is even better – very stretchy and doesn’t have an ugly wrong side either…

From Little Lopi

Try learning it!! ( Lots on Google for Twisted German Cast On)

Lopaypeysa are all knit in the round. Sleeves, body, yoke – the lot. So  I learnt to do magic loop with one circular.

I know!! Every one has been doing that for AGES! I’m normally happy on DPNs and have avoided magic loop. All that shuffling of stitches up and down the needle seemed way too much faffing about for me. But  I gave myself a little kick and decided I was there to learn new things, put away my DPNS and got to grips with it.

I made two tiny sleeves…

…and there was colourwork with two colours (could do that already- phew!)

……and there was joining the sleeves to the body…

Hmmmm

That really stumped me

I’m really not sure what the picture was in my head but I could not visualise how this worked…

Fortunately, I was sitting next to Marianne( excellent shawl knitter and the impossibly neat  hand winder of balls of laceweight yarn) who helped me – Thank you!

I tried to describe how the sleeve join but came out with a long confusing ramble…basically, leave stitches at armpit on sleeve and body on waste yarn and knit back, front and over the top of both sleeves like this…

From Little Lopi

The armpit is kitchener stitched later when you’re done.

A few rounds of  colour work with some nifty decreasing , a ribbed collar and I was done.

From Little Lopi

I had a great time – hard to keep up, learning new things and inspired to find out a whole lot more about…

From Little Lopi

What a busy week – and most of it knitting related

I have a back-log (back-blog? blog-log?) of blog posts for you – I just need the time to photograph and write them up – this beats struggling to find something interesting to say about purple square no.93!

Part of my busy week has been taking TWO knitting workshops! I’ll tell you about the first one today….

On Thursday, I took the Creative Kidsilk Haze workshop at John Lewis, Bluewater with Sarah Hazell.

I had booked this nearly 6 months ago as a day out for Guilty Knitters Mel, Anita, Judie and I – we were as excited as 6 year olds going to the circus

Sarah showed us sample of lots of different techniques with KSH and gave us patterns to try them out. We were then let loose on a multicoloured heap of the lovely fluffy, kitten-belly soft yarn to see what we could come up with. It was playtime….

I was wowed by the notion of combing the colour wash technique, used in my Earthstripe wrap (That’s where you hold 2 strands of KSH together and change the colour of one of the strands to blend colours together) AND moss stitch.

I grabbed a beautiful aubergine colour and a slickly green that I would never normally choose and my favourite “Jelly” green.

I was rather thrilled with how good they looked – note to self – colours you don’t like much can look great with other colours!

Must do something with this…

From kidsilk haze day

Then I played with combining Rowan Siena with KSH (I have lots of Jaeger Siena in my stash too )

Like this too!

From kidsilk haze day

And then there was the less successful trial with huge needles and an eyelet pattern…

From kidsilk haze day

Lastly, several of us played with the corsage pattern – it was very sweet…

Anita and Mel’s corsages…

From kidsilk haze day

And my attempt!

From kidsilk haze day

It was a lovely day out, playing and immersed in KSH.

Yes, I could have done a lot of that at home with my extensive stash but somehow I never quite find the time….