Damn, Knit & Blast It

I’ve had my attention diverted by cat toys. And string.

Why on earth would cat toys be of interest to me when I don’t have a cat. Not since last year when Thug, and in February,  Mewsley succumbed to old age?

Could it be that we have adopted new cats??!!

I would like to introduce Ziggy and Kitty.

From Kitty & Ziggy

Ben could not stand seeing me so miserable without my furries – all made worse by being made redundant shortly after Mewsley died. I felt I had suddenly lost so much all at once (except the lovely Ben, of course!)

We decided we could give a really good home to a rescue cat (or two) and after falling in love with their pictures on the Battersea Cats Home web site, we became the proud owners of Ziggy and Kitty. Ziggy and Kitty are mother and daughter tortoise shell, aged 7 & 6. Ziggy is brave, fearless and loves to have human company. Kitty  is terribly timid and spend a lot of her time hiding under the bed. Kitty is slowly learning to trust us and not run in terror at every noise and Ziggy is slowly learning that she won’t get fed every time we go in the kitchen! Especially since the vet called her a fattie-cattie and suggested we renamed her to “Piggy” !!

The day after we bought Kitty and Ziggy home – I was offered a new job (I start Thursday!!) Obviously these are lucky cats

Ziggy (renamed to Ziggy because Ben is a David Bowie fan and she has a stripe down her face like Ziggy Stardust) and Kitty are settling in but have tons of energy! We have been used to having very old cats snoozing on the sofa all day. Ziggy and Kitty pounced, batted and killed every toy we gave them – much to our delight

My good friend Judie came over to meet them and bought a lovely, handknitted gift of two catnip filled whales made with oddments of merino wool. I’m ashamed to say that my new kitties had no respect for Judie’s workmanship and set about destroying her work immediately. The merino yarn was no match for enthusiastic teeth and claws authough they thoroughly enjoyed the “killing”. (Thanks Judie!)

Judie had used the Whale Cat Toy pattern, free on the Simple Knits blog or as a free Ravelry download.

Hmmmm….What do I have in my stash that’s tough enough to match those claws?

String!

I had bought 10 balls of the finest B&Q value string at the bargainous price of 50p a ball with the (long abandoned)idea to make a messenger bag from it.

From Kitty & Ziggy

Hmmm- looks a bit “hard on the hands” doesn’t it?

Good Grief! iIf anyone every says to you, “Knitting with blah blah yarn is like knitting with string”, I would challenge them to really try and knit with string. It’s horrible! I had blisters after an hour just from where in ran though my hands!

But, for the love of my new cats, I was brave and persevered. The pattern is simple, elegant and well written. Unfortunately, I misread the instruction to increase to “a total of 19 stitches”to be “19 stitches either side of the central stitch” (slaps forehead and has a small tantrum at the knitting group). So I ended up with a giant sized whale….and a normal sized whale…and a whale with a picot edge tail (just because I could!)

From Kitty & Ziggy

Each whale has a hastily sewn pouch of catnip leaves and some toy stuffing inside…

From Kitty & Ziggy

And do Ziggy and Kitty like them? Oh yes! They are regularly savaged, kicked chewed and batted. Unfortunately though, neither Kitty or Ziggy realize that they are expected to pose with my knitting in return for their board and lodging yet. Give me time to train them – I did snap an action shot of Ziggy with the toys  though…

From Kitty & Ziggy

I am guilty of one of the seven deadly sins…Envy.

Ever since I made Ben his Man-Scarf, I have been secretly coveting it…

As I didn’t want to” endanger my mortal soul” I took steps to alleviate my envy.

Did I steal Ben’s scarf and wear it in secret?

Ummm, No. -that would be silly! I resolved to make an even better scarf for myself.

I rummaged in my stash and came up with some of the yarn left from my Purple Flower Blanket – I have always loved those three colours together.

Remember the flower blanket?

From

A couple of evenings knitting garter stitch on those 320 stitches and I have my own beautiful Envy Scarf

From Scarf Envy

I even like the reverse side where the colour breaks …

From Scarf Envy

I now have my own lovely stripy scarf. So is that enough? Am I now contented?

Hmmmmmm….

I was still harboring some resentment that Ben wasn’t interested in matching gloves and hat (and optional underpants) to match his enviable man-scarf…..
Clearly, the best was to dispel these negative thoughts, would be to make myself the matching gloves and hat (but I decided I  could live without the underpants!)

I rummaged and found a fave old hat pattern That I used for one of the hats I made my sister when she had a “Hat Need”…

Remember this one?

From

I Loved, loved, loved the way the shaping worked on this hat – it’s a basic bobble hat but very versatile.

From Scarf Envy

Do you like the version I came up with to match the new scarf??

From Scarf Envy

All that left were the gloves…

I used a pattern from Louisa Harding’s Hat, Scarf Gloves book – This one…

From

It was OK but it was knit on two needles – the method where you sew up each finger before you knit the next one. I struggled to get the seams neat and had to sew up lots of gappy holes at the base of the fingers. This was made worse by me insisting on taking the grey stripe up into the first few rows of the finger to keep the stripe progression correct ( It’s not always fun being a perfectionist!)

Another time I’d try and find a 4 needle pattern or convert this one. But I think they tuned out OK??

From

So all that’s left is to show you some goofy pictures of me getting carried away with the modelling of the whole set And finally cured of my Scarf Envy.

From Scarf Envy

From Scarf Envy

From Scarf Envy

From Scarf Envy

So what do I knit after declaring so loudly that I don’t like variegated yarn?

Hmmmm…..

Something in Rowan Colourscape maybe? A chunky variegated yarn?

It wasn’t my fault! Ben made me do it!

After the success of Ben’s Man scarf, I was keen to keep the momentum going and swathe Ben in more knitted loveliness. Ben was duly dragged  to the Oxford Street John Lewis at sale time (acheived only with the promise of lunch at Wagamamas if he played nice) and flung headlong into heaps of lovely sale yarns to see if he liked anything to make a pattern he had seen and actually liked.

After I waved several promising yarns at him, he quite firmly attached himself to this yarn, Rowan Colourscape in shade 439 – Storm. A really good combo of steely greys and teals….actually not that different to the colours Ben chose for his man scarf!

From

To be fair – colourscape knits up in large colour blocks rather than the messy little splodges of colour that make a garment look busy and put me off variegated yarns.

So what was this pattern that the lovely Ben liked?

It was this…

From Ben Hoodie

The Hooded Sweatshirt from Knits Men Want by Bruce Weinstein ===>Click here to see this great book on Amazon

This is a super book – only £7.66 too   All the patterns are graded so you can knit in a number of different sizes AND DIFFERENT GAUGE YARNS! I’ve never seen that before The only problem I had was that the charts in the book don’t have a key to say what those numbers down the right hand side mean… (It’s actually stitches per inch – most yarns show gauge in stitches to 4 inches or 10 cm so easy to do the arithmetic) Just circle your chosen size and gauge and off you go…

From Ben Hoodie

The book is quite a funny read too – each chapter has an explanation about why men might or might not like a certain element of your knitting that you are trying to foist on him – my fave was Not All Men are Worthy of Cashmere”  in which a boyfriend, on receiving a fine gauge cashmere hat, promptly used it to clear up some cat sick then innocently said, “but it’ll wash won’t it??”….

So, how was it to knit? Did Ben like it? Has Ben worn it?

The pattern was very straight forward and easy to follow once I had got used to being faced with a huge array of numbers for each instruction (I knit the 44″ chest on 3.5 stitches gauge so there really is only one number to look at in each array) . The hard part for me was trying to make the huge blocks of colour in the Colourscape kinda match up. I really didn’t want the shading to jar when I changed ball or for one sleeve to be teal and the other grey.  There was a fair bit of rewinding of skeins on my ball winder to get to just the right point in a blob of colour.

So what do you think? Did I match it up OK?

From Ben Hoodie

Here’s a close up of the neck….

From Ben Hoodie

and the nice 2 x 1 rib, repeated around the neck and hood and all knitted as you go – no nasty picking up stitches

From Ben Hoodie

And a back view, showing the hood…

From Ben Hoodie

Hmmm, Yes. About that hood. I think it’s a bit pointy but Ben says he likes it…What do you think?

From Ben Hoodie

I think he likes it because he can muck about and pretend to be an “evil druid”!…

From Ben Hoodie

I suppose the acid test is, “Does Ben wear it?”…this action shot shows that the odds are looking quite favorable

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I spent most of the last week under a duvet, fighting a horrible cold. Could my week get any worse?

It did, however, give me the perfect opportunity to finally finish off sewing up my last outstanding WIP – Beatriz in the Louisa Harding Silkwool. I also managed to knit another entire garment but that’s for another post!

I blogged about the lovely, bargainous yarn purchase of the Silkwool here - Irresistible Yarn

• I’ve finished her.
• She fits.
• The yarn is soft and lovely to work with.
• I had just enough yarn (2 meters left!).
• The pattern is well written and worked well with the yarn.

So whats wrong??

I just don’t like variegated yarns when they are knit up! And I really don’t like this one on me

Wanna see?

From Beatriz Silkwool

I think Ben summed it up. He said it looked like “partially flayed flesh”! It does look a bit “raw meat” doesn’t it?

There is nothing essentially wrong with this garment but nothing that says “WOW!” to me either.

I think there is a really big lesson for me here – not to be seduced by how lovely hand dyed yarns look in the skein, even if they are a fabulous bargain, because I don’t like the effect when they are knit up! I guess it doesn’t help that I’m quite petite too. I start to disappear behind all that extra visual “noise” – I’m not one for wearing busy patterns either…

Beatriz is actually a very nice pattern, well written, easy to follow and with a pretty eyelet detail in the neckband…

From Beatriz Silkwool

The back is straight forward (I always feel I have to show you!) and looks unsurprisingly similar to the front!

From Beatriz Silkwool

I’m going to fold my Silky Beatriz up and put her away in the back of the wardrobe until the weather is warmer and I haven’t had such a horrible week. I may just change my mind…

Mewsley needed a treat. A big knitted treat…

What I haven’t shared with you yet is that Mewsley has been poorly. The day before we got back from honeymoon, she went blind.. We came down from the joy of the honeymoon pretty fast, I can tell you. Thug coped really well with being blind, Mewsley was another story – she’s much older than Thug was when he went blind. She was distraught and depressed – heartbreaking. But don’t fret – there is a happy outcome.

Vets appointments, diagnosis of retinal detachment due to  high blood pressure, drugs, cuddles, prayers and a mighty large bill and I’m happy to say her retinas have BOTH reattached and she can see again She’s still too skinny and a little fragile but very well in herself. We’re mightily relived.

So what do you knit a recovering, vintage cat??

Well, she loves to curl up on the sofa on a cushion with us in the evenings and frankly, my old knitted cushions were well past their best.

I decided on a Debbie Bliss pattern from her Winter 2011 Magazine…

This one..

No, not the tiger’s head! That would scare her! (And I think it would look a bit naff in my house…and I don’t want THAT much intarsia!!)

I’ve made her the one on the left – the giant paw print. It’s supposed to be a tiger paw print but all I saw was Mewsley’s little pink paddy paws – awww.

I chose Mewsley-fur grey for the main colour and pink for the paw.

You want to see it don’t you??

The cushion is in aran weight so it’s nice and quick. The back is two slightly overlapping flaps with buttons to hold it shut and the whole thing is knit in one peice with a reverse stocking stitch row where you fold. Very neat and easy.

This is the edge…

And I found the perfect buttons for a cat cushion in my button box (I think I got them at hobbycraft)…

The intarsia of the paw print was fun. (Yes, I used “intarsia” and “fun” in the same sentance!) They are nice big blobbs of colour but at one point you do have 9 bobbins on the go when you’re working all 4 toe pads…

The nice part about this intarsia is that you don’t have to be 100% accurate – paws vary! That was actually quite fortunate as the chart in the magazine was pretty poorly printed – you couldn’t count the squares. Fortunately, I found a PDF of the chart on the Debbie Bliss Facebook page – Here if you need a copy –> Paw Chart

So did Mewsley like it? She is a cat and it’s cat-law to ignore anything special made or bought for you…..

But my lovely Mewsley ignored that She was on it the second I finished….you can see that from the pin tin and the trimmings in the photo!!

Ten minutes later I had inserted the cushion pad and a certain grey cat was very happily curled up….. Awwww

The long awaited Ben scarf was all over in 3 days

I really enjoyed the mindless long rows of knit and the regular gratification of finishing a stripe.

I cast off with a 4.5mm needle (was knit on 4mm) and made sure it wasn’t too tight (I used a cable cast on BTW – in case you were wondering!) and it didn’t even seem to need blocking once I was done.

I promised to let you know about yarn usage – I used less than one ball of each colour! I have no idea why the pattern implys, with it’s ambiguous wording, 3x 50g  balls of each colour?? So now you know what to knit to use up some of those odd balls from your stash

I did try and persuade Ben that I should use the excess to make him matching gloves, hat and possibly underpants but that was a step too far. He wasn’t interested , strangely, so I’ll have to be pleased if he wears the scarf. The excess yarn has now been returned to the shop and I feel virtuous for doing a little “unshopping”.

So here’s close up of the scarf and all it’s stripy glory…

From Ben Scarf

Ben did his best “Grumpy Ben doesn’t want a pooie old scarf!” routine for the photo shoot at first..

From Ben Scarf

Then I caught him admiring himself and arranging his new scarf 2 mins later (He wasn’t really grumpy)

From Ben Scarf

So here’s a happy Ben who is actually quite pleased with his scarf!

From Ben Scarf

…And a shot of it under his big winter coat…

From Ben Scarf

And lastly a shot of it flung over the banister, waiting for the weather to be cold enough for him to wear it!

From Ben Scarf

Do you remember Liliana?

This is the picture from the pattern book…

From Lilianna

I had finished knitting her and just had the neckband and sewing up to do last February when I was overwhelmed by my beautiful furry ginger boy, Thug dying.  I couldn’t face the fiddly sewing up and Liliana was flug to one side and forgotten. Poor Liliana…

I’m now in a,

” I want to start new things and get all the old WIPS out of the way!“

kind of mood so Liliana has had the finishing treatment and actually – I wish I’d finished her sooner – she’s rather a warm and snuzzley success!

So without further ado – I present the finished Liliana…

From Lilianna

A shot of the back (you can see where it’s quite fitted and a little snug – probably because of Christmas excesses!)…

From Lilianna

And a close up of the neck band – which is a thin strip of rib, sewn on sideways and tied in a bow….not sure I’d do that again – gapes a bit but I think it looks ok??

From Lilianna

She is a very warm jumper although the Aura is a little irritating on my skin if I’m honest – and I’m not usually that sensitive to itchy yarns.

There were lots of previous blog posts talking about Liliana so I’ll just give you the completed knit report containg the list of previous posts and leave you to click away if wish
Happy reading!

I’ve said before how Ben doesn’t feel the cold.  He rarely wears a jumper and only wears gloves, and hats when it’s several degrees below freezing. Pretty frustrating for a knitter

We’ve had several conversations like this over the years,

Me: “Ohhh, look at this lovely man-scarf pattern. Can I knit it for you?”

Ben: “No thanks, I don’t wear scarves. “

Me: “But you were cold when it snowed and borrowed my black one??”

Ben: “It’s not cold now”

Me: “But, but…It’ll be cold by the time I’ve knitted it….” <imagine eyes tearing up>

Ben: “I wouldn’t wear it. I don’t like them. I’d probably lose it and I’ve never seen a man wearing a scarf.”  <Ben stamps foot>

Several train trips later, after I diligently (and annoyingly) point out every  man who was wearing a scarf (and in some cases matching hats and gloves!) Ben conceded that men do wear scarves when they are cold. And not all of them are Hipster idiots!

So the great day has arrived. Ben has graciously allowed me to knit him a scarf. Some people might think he should gratefully accept my generous offer to hand craft him a custom made, beautiful garment. Made with great skill and love but , after 10 years of trying, I’ll take what I can get!

So what scarf?

He didn’t want cables or complicated stitch patterns (curses!) so we quickly came down to Erika Knight’s Garter Stitch Scarf, from her Men’s Knits book.

This book and this scarf….

From Ben Scarf

You’d think I could knit that from stash wouldn’t you? But the pattern seemed to suggest I needed 3 balls of yarn in each colour?? I didn’t have that volume of the same yarn in colours Ben would like (lilac and pink maybe but for some reason he didn’t like that idea!) That seemed a lot of yarn. How would you interpret this wording…

“3 x 50g balls of DK weight yarn, such as Rowan Baby Alpaca DK in each of grey, light grey and blue”

To me that says three balls of each colour – yardage isn’t great on the baby alpaca either – 100 meters per ball, but 900meters of yarn and a scarf weighing 450g??

I dragged Ben into a yarn shop,pointed him at the DK yarns and told him to choose three colours he liked in yarn that soft enough he’d be happy to have wrapped around his neck.

He really liked the colours of the Sirdar Country Style range. It’s a Wool/Nylon/Acrylic blend that’s machine washable and tumble dryable – not that scarves need a lot of washing but practical is best for men’s stuff! The yardage is very good on this yarn too – 155 meters x 50g. For some reason, I still bought 3 balls of each colour. Interestingly, Sirdar have recently upped the wool content from 15% to 30% in the Country Style. I can be a yarn snob but I remember growing up with this yarn – and I know it’s a good reliable workhorse. It is knitting up beautifully and feels soft too.

So what colours? Not massively different from the pattern but it has to be Ben’s choice to have a fighting chance of being worn.

These are the colours….

From

So how is it going?
Well, the pattern calls for you to cast on 220 stitches to make a 110cm scarf. This I did. Then I though – that’s a bit short!

I pinned a scarf of min up to 110cm and flung it around Ben’s neck. “Longer!” was the response so I restarted and I’m now knitting 320 stitches which should give a 160cm long scarf (2 stitch per cm length)

Wanna progress shot?

From Ben Scarf

It’s very plain knitting but there is something quite zen and pleasing about long rows of knit. A change from complicated patterns and shaping.

10 rows of each colour then onto the next stripe…

From Ben Scarf

So far each stripe has used about half a ball – that’s with 100 extra stitches!
I’ll keep you posted on the yarn useage….

….and if he wears it!

I think I’ve finally broken that Kim Hargreaves curse of mine! Still is finished and I’m very pleased.

How did I manage to finish so quickly?? That would be because I’ve been off from work since Tuesday after a small operation on my foot.

OK,OK so the foot isn’t exactly broken – but I did have a huge boney lump chiseled from the top of it. The lump was pressing a nerve and giving me serious pain with shoes. I was only in hospital for the day but came out with a Popeye type bandage…

From Still

…which has now thankfully been removed leaving stitches and a huge plaster (you really don’t want to see that!)

I seem to be healing fast, but must keep my foot “elevated” for at least another week until the stitches come out. Hmmmm…what to do when I can’t go anywhere, can’t stand, can’t walk and cant drive and must pretty much sit on the sofa with my foot up…. KNIT!!

So after a couple of days of knitting like fury, I am delighted (as you can see!) to present the finished Still…

From Still

I like that piccy but here’s a better couple of shots where you can see more of the garment…

From Still

From Still

And the back view…

From Still

Still has been a quick and easy knit, the pattern was well written and there were some very cute details incorporated.

The horizontal rib was worked sideways for the cuff, then stitches picked up down one side to start the main sleeve. Very neat and pretty – so much better than normal ribbing…

From Still

And the neck line – that is terrific

From Still

The shaping is achieved by keeping the horizontal rib pattern going over 6 stitches for the neck band while increasing in the stocking stitch part every few rows. You then cast off the shoulders and continue the neck band for a few centimeters to slip stitch onto the back of the neck. it all makes an easy, neat construction without all that annoying picking up of stitches (have I told you a dislike picking up stitches? I did? Oh good…. )

From Still

All very effective

You may be wondering what Mewsley has been doing to help? “Matron Mewsley” has been making sure I stay on the sofa by sitting on my lap to pin me down a great deal. Then she did a stirling job of keeping an eye on the trimmed off yarn ends when I was sewing up…

From Still

But she is elderly….once she was sure I was on the mend she let herself have a little 6 hour nap in the knitting equipment!

From Still