It started with a new pair of shoes.
A beautiful pair of green canvas wedges, in the Hobbs sale…
I had loved them from afar all summer and stalked them until sale time – 70% off 😀
Happy, Happy, Happy.
The problem was, I didn’t have anything that colour in my wardrobe to wear with them. This isn’t one of this year’s trendy colours so there’s not much of it in the shops.
A couple more highly focused shopping trips (The news report might have read, “Green obsessed woman raids Bluewater!) yielded a matching white and green spotty shirt (Hobbs), a green vest (Debenhams) and a green belt (Next).
It all matched and looked great for less formal day in the office….
except…..
….except……
I was a bit cold with the aircon on 🙁
I knew from my obsessive searching of the shops there were no matching jumpers out there….
Then a friend said, “have you seen Rowan Studio 16? It’s fabulous….”
This book…
“Oh, I like the one on the cover”, I drooled.
A slightly better piccy here…
As I’ve said before, I have a weakness for knitting the design on the cover of books.
The cover is “Cheer” knitted in Rowan handknit cotton…
…and it’s shown in just the shade of green I need…
…I went to my LYS
……I picked up the yarn to make Cheer….then put it back and bought something else 😯
Then I went back the next day and bought the yarn for Cheer that I kicked myself for not buying the first time!
Cheer is proving to be a quick and easy knit – plain stocking stitch, no real shaping and an easy basketweave pattern around the bottom, front edges and collar. Hopefully the basketweave will stop any potential for curly unpleasantness.
So far I’ve done most of the back and half the left front – split between commuting knitting and home knitting in case you’re wondering why I have 2 parts on the go at once.
Here’s a progress shot…
Won’t be long before this is done!
All this green is lovely! You knit so fast and so much, I’m always in awe of your knitting.
yummy shoes, no wonder you had to buy a matching outfit!
Susan and her blog have inspired me to stop knitting baby/kid things and afghans and knit something for myself. I started on Rowan Studio 2 Martha, which can be seen at this link: http://www.englishyarns.co.uk/rowan_studio_issue_2.html
I picked a lovely brown/gold shade of Rowan Felted Tweed called Gilt.
I can’t possibly hope to knit as fast as Susan but my aim is to have it done for the November 10th Bruce Springsteen concert.
It would also serve me to adopt Susan’s policy of working on one thing at a time. I have several items started and I work on different ones depending on my mood.
Love your blog, Susan, particularly how you assess the difficulty of projects and problems you encounter. I may end up making Iris down the road. I would also appreciate any suggestions you may have for knitting Hildegard from currently available yarns. I looked a bit online and was having difficulty finding a cotton that meets the gauge.
Keep on knitting and blogging!
Hi Susan, I often pop in to read your blog as you have so much lovely knitting to view – I guess that makes me a lurker?! I have several questions I need you to answer though:
1. How much time per day do you spend knitting?
2. How on earth do you fit this in with working and other boring stuff?
3. How do you manage to knit everything so quickly – are you super super fast?
4. Continental or English? (it might give me an excuse for being slow).
5. Finally (and most importantly) do you always swatch?
I hope you don’t mind me asking but everything you make always looks so professional and fab. I’m too scared actual garments will go wrong and look rubbish so I always seem to stick to socks. Less financial investment I suppose.
Yours in stunned admiration.
Allison x
Hi Alison
Gosh! Thanks for the praise 🙂
To answer your questions….
1. About an hour a day while commuting (sitting on the train – walking, on escalators, the tube etc) plus an hour or so in the evenings either watching TV or when Ben is playing “Alien shooting” XBOX360 games. 2 hours dedicated knitting on a Sunday morning with my knitting group and sometimes I sit in Starbucks or the park of a lunchtime knitting too!
2. I’m very organised, I have a cleaner, I have the lovely Ben who helps with the boring stuff and I don’t have children to look after.
3. I’m not superfast at all! I just knit in all those otherwise wasted moments.
4. I knit classic English style – which is supposed to be the most inefficient!
5. Swatch? Nope, I very rarely swatch! I do check my tension when I’m half way up the back though. I’m lucky to usually knit bang on the required tension and I’ve knit enough to be able to judge if it feels right.
As for looking professional (thank you!) the biggest help was when I took a finishing techniques course with Jane Crowfoot at my local John Lewis branch. I know she still runs these. It was the best money I ever spent and improved my knitting immensely. The absolute MUSTs to learn are
* mattress stitch <-learn this if nothing else
* shortrow shaping for shoulders
* what decreases to use to give neat sleeve shaping and neck shaping (I should do a blog post on that!)
It also helps that from childhood my Mum drilled it into me that it didn't matter how beautifully knitted a garment was, you could really "bugger it up" by rushing and bodging the sewing up!
As for that leap to making garments – you could try a child's jumper? The construction is the same and less outlay?? Either that or an aran jumper grows quickly 🙂
Good luck with your knitting and keep reading and commenting! I love to hear from my readers.
Thank you
Susan
Question for Susan or others reading this blog. I’m working on my first sweater for myself. Normally I knit baby/kid things and on these I do the armhole shaping (i.e., decreases) right on the first 2 stitches. I’ve tried keeping one selvedge stitch and then decreasing but I think the resulting line of slanted stitches are ugly. It hasn’t been a problem attaching the sleeves because the baby stuff is so small. But I should keep a selvedge stitch on my own sweater for easier seaming? Or should I reverse the decreases for a decorative effect (i.e, at beg of row K2 tog and at end of row SSK)? This is what Bouton D’Or kids patterns seem to do and it looks good in the patterns. Any advice so I actually end up liking my sweater and wearing it? I’m super critical and picky.
Maybe the shoes weren’t such a bargain after all. Still you have got a lovely outfit and the knitting looks fab so I’m sure you are delighted.
Susan and her blog have inspired me to stop knitting baby/kid things and afghans and knit something for myself. I started on Rowan Studio 2 Martha, which can be seen at this link: http://www.englishyarns.co.uk/rowan_studio_issue_2.html
I picked a lovely brown/gold shade of Rowan Felted Tweed called Gilt.
I can't possibly hope to knit as fast as Susan but my aim is to have it done for the November 10th Bruce Springsteen concert.
It would also serve me to adopt Susan's policy of working on one thing at a time. I have sdveral items started and I work on different ones depending on my mood.
Love your blog, Susan, particularly how you assess the difficulty of projects and problems you encounter. I may end up making Iris down the road. I would also appreciate any suggestions you may have for knitting Hildegard from currently available yarns. I looked a bit online and was having difficulty finding a cotton that meets 6he gauge.
Keep on knitting and blogging!;