look what my mother knit

She made this for my daughter ages ago, but I've only just got round to showing it off. That's a 3.5 x 7 ft blanket, on about 6mm needles out of mohair/wool/acrylic blends that I got for almost nothing at a charity shop.

My daughter loves it, even though it's a bit itchy and insists on dragging it about the house and sleeping under it and carrying it through mud puddles in the garden.

My mother doesn't care if it gets abused, as long as it's used and not put away as something precious. So they are both happy.

ooooops, I did it again......

I bought more rag. Well, at that price I can't really say no to it. There's about 60 balls in there altogether. enough for a few more bags.

Another pair finished.

Another nice, colourful pair of socks are done. I think I might have made them a little short, but doing much more rib was going to kill me.

I also think I need to stop photographing my hairy legs to show off my socks.









I've already chosen a yarn and a pattern for pair number 3. However, it has a short row toe and I'm about to start screaming at double wraps. i can't for the life of me work out how to pick up wraps without making a mess.

One nice thing today. A friend knocked on my door to give me a nessage and her kid was wearing the hat I knit him for chrimble. It fits him well, pulled right over his ears and he looked nice and warm.

My next non sock project will be caliometry. Possibly followed by hexed from the lovely woolly wormhead. She apparently gets lots of unkind comments about her designs, I've seen a few, she commented about others on the UK hand knitters yahoo group. Well, she won't get them from me. Lots of scrummy and weirdly shaped hat patterns. I can't see everyone wearing them, but there's a few I would like for myself.

Oh well

At least I know now that when my washing machine claims that it has a wool wash gentle enough to machine wash untreated wool, they are telling the truth.

I found my fuzzi feet under my daughter's bed, stuck themn in a pillow case and stuck them in the machine on the wool wash cycle, to see if I could get a start on felting them, try and predict how to get them toe right size. No felting at all. i probably still won't trust the machine with some of my more complex stuff, but now I know that a lot of my knit stuff can safely go in the machine.

I'ts now running on a 50c cycle to see what happens.

pattern: recycle

I knit this bag pattern out of the very cheap R2 rag that I bought, but it could almost as easily be knit out of bias cut strips of material that were sewn, glued or tied together onto one long, yarn like strip.

Although this bag was made out of bought yarn, I've got plans to use up some bits of charity shop and sale material that I've acquired over the last few years.

it also needs a very chunky set of needles, 18-20mm are about the right size as well as a more commonly found, 10mm set. Now these can be quite pricey and will rarely be used by most knitters, however, they can also be made relatively cheaply out of dowel rod, shaped into a point at one end with a drawer knob attached to the other.






You also need to either buy or make the bias strips necessary for knitting. To make these, you need to make repeated cuts along the diagonal of a strip of material. Cut strips about 12mm wide.


When these strips are cut, they need to be attached together into one long strip. About 160 yards of material is needed to make a bag of the size shown here. While these can be sewn, or knotted together. I prefer for the sake of complete laziness to use Copydex, a flexible latex glue. A dollop about the size of a split pea is enough to hold 2 strips together. Glue tem end to end with about a 1cm overlap.






so onto the pattern:


material: bias strips as described above.

needles:
1 set 10mm US 15,
1 set 20mm US 36.
1 sewing needle, blunt with a very wide eye.
a sharp pair of material scissors

Cost: hopefully nothing, the idea is to recycle what you already have

knitability level: beginner.


to knit body:

cast on 30 stitches onto the 10mm needle. Knit 5 rows in garter stitch.

change to 20mm needle, knit in stocking stitch until the bag measures about 2 foot in length

change to 10mm needles, knit 5 rows

cast off loosely

handles (make 2):

cast on 25 stitches onto 10mm needle
knit one row
cast off loosely

To finish:

sew up sides of bag. to secure the end of the strop used to sew, it should be knotted. Although this is not normally good knitting practice, it is necessary to ensure that the seam is held securely.

lay bag flat, measure points at 1/3 and 2/3 along the top edges and attach handles at these points using the yarn tails from the handles. weave the yarn tail through a complete stitch on 2 different rows, then tie securely in a knot.

the yarn tails can then be woven in for a few stitches, cut off level with the fabric of the bag and the ends held in lace with a bit more of that fabric glue.


you can make bags of different sizes by altering the number of stitches cast on, and the length you knit before switching back to 10mm needles to do the second edge. The body of this bag gives is about 32 cm long, by 45cm wide at the top (the base is wider) the handle is about 50cm long once the bad has been used and it has stretched.

nero investigates

Nero investigates a large pile of R2 rag that was on sale at Hobbycraft. I know I've bitched a lot about how strange R2 was, but I can't resist a bargain and this should make some nice shopping bags. I may pop back and get some more tomorrow, if the dear other half will cough up more yarn money.

I'm just going to do a very basic stocking stitch bag, on 15mm needles with a garter stitch edge and handle. As long as it can hold apples and a few other bits without collapsing, it will do, and I think shopping bags are a fitting end for a 'designer' yarn.

wtf

what happens when you let a 3 year old near unfelted fuzzi feet?

My second socks in progress

I saw this yarn at Ally pally from getknitted and just fell in love with it. So it is in the process of becoming modified widdershins from knitty. Modified because I didn't think my second pair was quite the place to start tiny cables and the cable itself was really weird. So I left out the cable and just did it as ribbing. I also skipped the slip stitch on the heel flap because I didn't like the way it looked in the pictures.

I should be able to finish them this evening. Started them on Saturday, not bad for a complete project, and I now know why people who knit on breaks and commutes like socks, they are very, very easy to shove in a pocket. I think I shall endeavour to keep at least one sock project on the go all the time so I've got a transportable project.

I've also been a naughty girl and ordered more yarn, this time from elann. Even adding the shipping costs, it is still half the price of the cheapest sock yarn that is easily available in the UK. And dammit, if they can ship, why can't Knitpicks. it doesn't look like the nicest self patterning yarn I've ever looked at, but ti is a very good price and is definitely tradable when it gets here if i realy don't like it.

Legwarmers

Well, I had to find a gift that would suit a friend who insists she cannot ever wear trousers, even when we are camping. I got fed up with her complaining that she has cold legs and constantly trying to pull her socks up further than they actually go.

They look ghastly, don't they. I figure if you are going to knit an item as deadly to fashionability as legwarmers, then you need to do it in some sort of style and bas taste is about the best you can get at that point.

So now I have to finish them off, then you will get a pattern for them.

Knitty yankee swap

I got my package through from the lovely cpurl17 today. A scrummy red silk bag, some really cute stitch markers and not the one skein i was expecting, but two skeins of Socks that Rock. Thast is definitely going into my stash until I'm a bit better at sock knitting. I think I'll stick to under £20 per pair on wool until after I've made more than one pair.

Himself also found the docking port for my camera, it means I can just sit the camera in it's port and recharge it while I load photos onto the computer. However, I now need to find the cable that attaches it to the computer. Since he took the card reader I was using, I now need to wait until we find this cable to post more photos. So photos of this scrummy package, the yarn I've dyed, and my fuzzi feet in progress will just have to wait.

Found the cable, it was plugged in behind the computer and all I had to do was move it 2 feet.