Yikes, it’s been a while. Things have been a little busy and distracting lately, but I’m here today to show off my recently finished Poisoned Apple Top by Lily Kate France. I managed to get some photos in yesterday before I lost the sunlight completely.
I think the top is ‘darling’ and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of puff sleeves. The yarn was purchased with a gift voucher from my Melbourne siblings for last year’s birthday. It is La Bien Aimee’s DK and Kumo. The Kumo is an alpaca/silk blend. I thought the alpaca would make it less itchy than the usual mohair/silk blends going around, but I have my suspicions that it is not. It hasn’t had a proper wear test yet, I’m a little afraid.
Not a ton of knitting has been done lately, but I have started swatching for the Celeste jumper my knitting group is making for the Sheep Show this year. I wasn’t going to do a colour swatch, but my friend Nikhil inspired me.
And now I think I need to swap out one of the colours… I’ve placed another order for an alternative colour for one of the pinks. Hopefully I’ll receive the yarn by next weekend for more swatching.
This week, progress has been good on my Poisoned Apple top. I do feel I’m playing yarn chicken though, but it’s still too close to tell.
The yarn is La Bien Aimee Merino DK. Too expensive to buy an extra skein until I’m sure. So for now, I’m going to knit faster and trust the pattern designer. But what if I want my top to be longer? … then faster I will knit!
D and I celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary this weekend. We went to Kyneton yesterday and had dinner at Midnight Starling, one of our favourite restaurants. The food was delicious as always; we love coming here.
It’s been a very navy blue week, I’ve also been spinning the singles for a sock project and the fibre is a beautiful blend of navy blues. I’ll have a photo for you next week!
January has been busy and focussed. I had some extra time off over the holiday period and most of the time was spent at home knitting(!) and socialising.
My first FO for the year were these ribbed socks by Summer Lee. Super simple, and great for Japanese BBQ knitting, which happened quite frequently over the break, much to Damian’s delight. The yarn is by my favourite local self-striping yarn dyer Danni of Halfbaked hand dyed. It might have been a one-of-a-kind colourway and I think it’s super cool. These socks are for me, but I think the next few pairs might be for others. The sock drawer is pretty packed.
I also dabbled in spinning and working on ‘the Queen’ in my break. I would have done more, but the Queen’s hair is going to take a while I think, so I put it aside to knit through my EXP sweater.
I finished knitting my EXP sweater and have sewn in the last ends this evening. It’s currently having a bath, I think it’s going to dry pretty quickly because it got to (or close to) 45 degrees in Melbourne today. I’ll tell you all about the EXP this weekend when hopefully it will be cool enough to take some photos of me wearing it, at least for 5 minutes.
Hip hip hooray! My Vintage Flannel sweater by Anna Johanna is finally finished… and I love it 🙂 It turned out just how I wanted it to, but I must admit, it was touch and go when it came to the end. Like ALL of those ends, that I had to sew in
The number of ends is all my own fault of course. When purchasing the yarn for this project, I wanted my contrast colour to be varigated. I couldn’t find any yarn at the Sheep Show that would do this in 5ply. So… I used 3 different colours to create the varigation, which meant I needed to change colours every 3 rounds or so.
But before all of that, the other hurdle I faced was, as I cast off my second sleeve, I realised I had knit my second sleeve on needles that were .25mm larger than the rest of the sweater. True story.
The completed sweater before blockingCorrect needle used for the 1st sleeve, gridlines line up with the body2nd sleeve, gridlines are further apart with .25mm larger needle
Luckily upon wearing, I can honestly not tell the difference in the sleeve length. So this is our little secret.
With the end of the year approaching, I’m now eyeing off all of my unfinished projects to see what is going to make it into this years completed projects. Spoiler alert, I have cast on a new sweater. There’s also 2 pairs of socks and a blanket to complete. Seems unlikely doesn’t it?!
The Richmond Knitters, the Knitting group I began 18 years ago has celebrated it’s birthday this past weekend! Whilst there isn’t an exact ‘birthdate’ as such, it was fun to mark this milestone with a bit of a party.
There were party favours, cake/s and an enormous pass-the-parcel, the hallmarks of any good birthday party.
It was so lovely for everyone to come together to celebrate.
It all went swimmingly well I think!
It’s hard to believe the group has been going for so long, it does ‘age’ me quite a bit, haha. But I still feel like a young person (totally), and being amongst such fun people helps.
The Knitting group began, because I wanted to attend a Knitting Group that met on Monday nights, every Monday night. None exisited in Melbourne at the time, so I had to start the Richmond Knitters. I’ve learnt so much from everyone over the years and it has made me a better knitter. I love the knowledge shared and the ‘enabling’ that occurs on Monday nights. I also love having so many knitting friends, many have become life-long friends.
Just this week, I’ve done my very first Italian bind-off ::gasp:: it’s been around for years, but it seems everyone is talking about it now. So when my pattern called for an Italian bind-off, and newer knitters were already doing it; I felt as though I needed to do it as well. After a few false starts (and feeling pretty dumb(!) about it) I finally found a great video tutorial and matching written instructions that clicked for me. I highly recommend this one by Brooklyn Tweed.
How pretty is this? I’m afraid I’m going to need to do this (very time-consuming) bind-off for everything I knit in 1×1 rib from now on, it looks so good. Now onto the sleeves 🙂
The TAFTA Geelong Fibre Forum has been running for around 30 years. A very long time ago, 2007 to be exact I attended my final Fibre Forum workshop until this year. Prior to this I attended the forum for 7 consecutive years. Whilst the order of worshops undertaken are sketchy, the classes themselves have always been wonderful and worthwhile. On top of that, the experience of being at the Fibre Forum has been incredible. Last week I was reminded of that again, being surrounded by so many women (over a hundered, 150? and just a couple of men), it was so enlightening (and weird at the same time).
I have been a subscriber to the TAFTA e-newsletter since the magazine ended (yes, there used to be a magazine!). So when Jo Hamilton’s Crochet Portraiture workshop was announced, I just knew I had to return.
The Fibre Forum is hosted at Geelong Grammar School, whilst the kids are on school holidays. The Dining Hall is just like being at Hogwarts. I lived-in for the whole week, and was served breakfast, lunch and dinner (and morning tea) each day. It was Heaven.
For my workshop, I decided to do a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. I brought along an Ikea bag of yarn in colours that I thought would work for the image I was going to crochet.
For a novice, the technique is very slow going (for the experienced it would also be slow!), with lots of trial and error (learning) along the way. Jo is a fantastic teacher, with great patience. I wish I had gotten more done, but I feel as though I can continue on and complete the portrait on my own. It’s only my first portrait, and it is a bit wonky, as to be expected. Jo has been using this technique for around 20 years and her work is spectacular.
Whilst recovering and coming down from the high that was the week, I’ve picked up my hook and filled in some more areas since Friday.
Whilst working on the portrait, a lot of the time is spent looking and checking to make sure the stitches you’ve put in are correct.
Here’s a photo of my class and some of their creations, click on the first image to make them larger.
Wednesday night was Party Night! The theme this year was: Black and White with a touch of … Now in my memory of the Forum, the dress-up theme was always wild; there have been some super wacky costumes, mostly worn by the former organiser Janet De Boer. So I came dressed as Wednesday… with a touch of severed Thing.
I might have been overdressed, ha ha. I hope to attend again in the future and I hope it’s sooner than 18 years. I’ll be back to my regular schedule of knitting soon. I almost got no knitting done this week!
I’ve cast on for Vintage Flannel a sweater by Anna Johanna and I’m obsessed! It is bringing me so much joy, I’ve wanted to make this for such a long time and it’s now coming to fruition. The yarn is by My Creative Garage, who is well known for her beautiful pinks and I love everything she dyes. The contrast colour is actually 3 colours, a speckled yarn and 2 solid colours that I’m alternating through every few rows. This was Vanessa’s idea after I showed her my inspiration…
I was inspired by test knitter: Purlific Knitter’s project she always makes beautiful projects, I love seeing what she’s knitting over on Ravelry.
As the yarn I’m using is superwash (I will not be beaten this time!), I’m going to knit my collar by picking up stitches later, rather than first up. I’ll also keep an eye on the length of the body and sleeves, this pattern is kind of cropped so I don’t think I’ll be in danger of it being too long, but nonetheless, I’m paying attention!
I’ve also adjusted the amount of short rows at the back neck. Highlighted by a few knitters on Ravelry, there is an extreme amount of short rows in the pattern, so rather than ending up with a blob at the back of my neck, I’ve done a normal amount of short rows. But… this has meant that I’ve had to adjust where the vertical rows of the colourwork pattern landed to compensate for the increases that hadn’t occurred yet. It’s a bit hard to explain. Needless to say, this is NOT Knit Night knitting!
This is my current Knit Night knit, Colourblocked Rib socks by Summer Lee, from her book The Sock Project. Once again the yarn is by Danni of Halfbaked Hand dyed, and is a one-off colourway.
Last weekend I visited the Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild of Vic, to see an exhibition they were hosting for Annette Finton Instagram link aka Nini & Wink Facebook link. She is a Melbourne Fibre Artist and I’ve loved seeing her artwork around Melbourne (a lot of it outside!) for many years.
Pretty cool huh? If you click on one of these images, it will take you through a gallery of larger images.
Very excitingly, my Fragmentation Cardigan is finished, with sewn on buttons and all! I’m so glad I made the amendments to this cardigan, to give me a better fit/length, the extra effort was/is worth it. I now have a cardigan I will wear and it won’t be languishing in the wardrobe. Yay!
The final clue for Stephen West’s mystery sock knit-along also dropped this week. Whilst the final clue wasn’t a lot of knitting for some. It seems my row gauge was tighter than most, so I got to do ALL of the final patterning for the foot before the toe. Which is okay, because I would have been disappointed to have missed out on the fun basket weave rows at the end!
But I am so glad it’s now done! Another bright and fun project for the books. I’ve also done a bit of swatching this week for my next sweater project, it’s been a long time since my last sweater cast-on and I can’t wait to start.
This week’s clue, for Stephen West’s Mystery sock-along, was much shorter as it was just the heel flap and turn instructions. I completed this clue for both socks on Thursday night. Which was kind of nice after the intense knitting of the first clue.
The heel flap is made up of ‘wedges’ and after completing mine, I saw that a few people flipped the wedges on their second sock, I wish I’d thought of that!
So with all this ‘free’ knitting time until the next clue drops on Tuesday night (my time), I’ve knit a little on my Marlene sock. Which I’m starting to feel the love for again.
And then, I ripped the band-aid off on my Fragmentation cardigan surgery.
Before:
During:
I began by re-knitting the collar. As the cardigan is top-down to begin with, I had to cut the original collar off. I then picked up the stitches and knit in the opposite direction. I went down in needle size and I also knit a double collar before doing a 3 needle bind off on the inside. The smaller needle size and the structure of the bind-off has helped cinch it in quite a bit, and it sits really nicely now. Once it’s reblocked, the garter stitches around the collar should also settle down.
I’m now working on the ribbing at the bottom, after ripping out 36 body rows or 3 of the side colour tabs. I’m really excited about this now. Depending on how complex the next sock clue is, I hope to have this on the blocking mats next weekend. Oh, and I still need to get buttons.
