Monster post

It's gotta be. Nearly 5 months since my last post, and let me tell you I have not been idle.

The first report is of the Bob The Builder jumper, last seen almost two years ago. Hallelujah, it's done. Good job I was making a big size - he's still got room to grow into it! Forgive the look of misery on his face - I was committing the cardinal sin of interrupting his viewing of Ben 10...


So what else? Ah Christmas. Scarves and smoke ring kind of things, mittens that I stupidly didn't photograph before they were handed over. Ah well. We went to Ireland for two weeks over Easter, giving Tiny Husband's HR person heart failure at taking so much time off so early in the financial year. Several gauge-swatch bunnies, Ava's pink hoodie and Adam's Trellis cardi were finally given to their intended victims - or not in the latter case, as it was not originally intended for Adam... I'm just too much of a flibbertygibbet with crafts. But I suppose it makes up for being so staid and dull everywhere else.

The Mighty Offspring also benefitted from a Fat Controller hat. This is the top hat worn by Sir Topham Hatt, the eponymous director of trains on Sodor Island and Thomas the Tank Engine's boss. I made this by laying out cash money - yes! coin of the realm! - for Dark Twist's Miniature Top Hat pattern, then promptly ignoring most of it. I used Rowan Big Wool rather than a worsted, because, well, I didn't really want a miniature, just a little'un for a little'un. I think there was some mad nonsense about felting it by boiling it, then plunging it into freezing cold water too, but I am here to tell you - do not waste your time on this pish. Throwing it in the washing machine on a boil wash cycle with a pair of jeans that have got a bit saggy in the arse is yer only man. All I got for that boiling and freezing nonsense is frizzy hair and chilblains, and the Offspring hiding in a corner with his fingers in his ears until Daddy came home. In a way, I'm sorry I didn't just leave it the size it was, because he looks so cute in it, an Artful Dodger - which fits his personality a lot better these days. The remaining yarn was made into a pair of felted slippers, which spend too much time on the run to be snapped on camera!

Two more pairs of socks, one a green and beige on-the-fly Fair Isle (and I must get a pic of these on him), the other a Spidey pair. I'm really becoming quite inured to arachnids, as I also made him a pair of my Mitts-to-Mittens with the Spidey pattern - though Gordon knows where they are now. Probably in his special superhero chest, wherever and whatever that is this week. The Spidey socks were the last pair I made using the 52st pattern, as I've noticed they're a bit baggy even on MO's feet. The green and beige were made using a 48st version, which is quite snug. At that point I kind of stopped with the socks, partly because he really had enough for now, and partly due to a misunderstanding. I did buy some socks (they were cheap), big enough for his feet which of course meant they came up over his knees. Not too long after, we were having this little chat about socks and shoes, and he told me he didn't like the socks I made him. Now, I didn't at first factor in that 'buy' and 'make' probably mean much the same thing to a highly-verbal three-year-old who nonetheless only has a three-year-old's understanding of the magical ways in which goods and services appear in his world. He has about ten lyrically-described birthdays a week - doesn't mean he's getting cake every day. Turns out he doesn't like the long socks, only the Mommy socks... I have started again, as I see some of his socks are a bit small now. More of which anon.

I also made him a woolly sweater, Crab Apple, based on Blue Garter's Twisted Tree Pullover - with the usually mods for not having the right yarn in the right weight, etc., etc. - do I really have to say this? The pic does not do this justice - it is one of the things I am most proud of making - utterly gorgeous, beautiful stitch definition. I dread the day when he's too big for it. In fact, I'm plotting how I can lengthen the sleeves and such to get a bit more wear out of it...

But the interesting bit is the yarn. I bought it out of the bargain bin at this market stall I go to. I'd seen other yarn like it before - similar weird rolled-up looking balls - but they didn't appeal. Many of the colours were drab, and they looked like they were the work of a particularly ham-fisted beginning spinner: I've done a bit of spinning so I know whereof I speak here - all twisty and lumpy and bumpy, only singles and the fibre looked rank - nasty old ropy cottony looking stuff. However, this one day, there were 2 balls whose colour just demanded to come home with me, a beautiful vivid sap green. And at 69p for 2 balls in the sale, I wasn't going to fight over it. Sadly, I had to get the brown because there was no more green, and I needed 3 balls in total, though I must say, it came together well in the end.

It was brutal to work with. I imagine knitting Brillo pad fibre would be easier on the hands. I switched from index to middle to ring finger flicking as blisters rose and fell, and even to my shame did the odd row Continental. I went through many times that 69p's worth of Norwegian hand liniment. My hands turned green - the dye just seemed to brush off the yarn! and every dozen or so stitches I'd have to stop, grab the ball, and dangle the knitting from it to de-tangle it - it was horrifically overspun. Then I began to notice it was FELTING. Well, sort of getting that another-go-at-90deg look about it, at least. Then there was the quantities of hay I had to dig out of it... Finally, when I wet it to block it, it looked like the dye was just going to leave it completely - it absolutely gulched out of it for ages. The odd thing is, the colour wasn't really affected - there's a few white flecks that weren't there before, but otherwise, it's the same sap green that drew me in the first place.

Then I went to UK Ravelry Day in Coventry a few weeks ago - a grand day out which I will make mention of - but anyhoo, I was tootling around the rain-soaked stalls, mindful of my budget* but determined at least to beard Jamieson & Smith in their, er, stall, and cop a feel of a few fibres that shall remain nameless (dirty, dirty qivuit), when I just ceas'd all motion. I posed myself a few searching questions and ascertained that something had caught my surveillance attention out of my peripheral visual field. There was a little hurried conferring with longterm memory, with visual memory loudly denying all knowledge and blaming everyone else, and then finally reading comprehension and categoric memory kicked in with a few facts that hitherto had not been going to the same parties, all whilst, unbeknownst to the cerebrum, the legs had wafted me towards a stall I had just passed.

And there by the hokey were some balls with the same odd rolled-up shape to them. Same godawful ropy stuff, in glowing colours - multi-coloured in this case, but I was too stunned to hold that against them. Ye see, all that mental conferring and confabulating - putting of straw and blisters together with dye runs and felting, and marrying that to a chance flicker in the corner of my eye on a rainy Saturday in Coventry - had already told me what I would see written on the gracefully hand-painted sign beside them...

Noro Silk Garden
£13.99

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Aha.

But it doesn't end there... I have poured over Yarndex and online Noro sites, asked questions on fan forums, gone to yarn shops and looked and asked, and I'm no further forward. Noro's not cornflakes - they don't make yarn for anyone else, and no one else makes yarn for them. It looks like it might be Maiko 105 colourwise - but Maiko is a new range, and I bought this yarn before Maiko became available! Anyway, Maiko's also supposed to be plied, not single. I've bought more in the interim (yes, even before UK Rav Day!) which has a different structure - 2 plies, evenly spun - but in colours that are closer to Cash Iroha, which is a single (not plied) yarn... So I don't know what to think - and neither does anyone I've asked. It looks like it should be, but it's not quite right... There's only a few 'solid' Noro ranges, and the colours I'm finding are oh so close - but the weight and the construction is wrong, even for discontinued colours. Quality control reject? Pre-production run that didn't get past the design stage? Did someone hit the saki too hard at the office party, and do the yarn factory equivalent of photocopying their bum? Or is it something completely different, that just happens to bear certain remarkable similarities? Employees trying to make a bit of extra cash on the side? Industrial espionage? Wool piracy?

Akk. I'm not used to putting in this much detective work and getting nowhere. Answers on a postcard?



TTFN
K

* I was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack in May! It wasn't - I have the heart of a GOD - but the health insurance policy gave me some free money for the two-day stay in hospital, which was my UK Rav budget...

Momma gotta brand new bag!

I do! I will!

I've been having a go at dyeing wool, using Kool-Aid (right, top) and food colouring and vinegar (right, bottom). I have loads of undyed 4ply which I am probably never going to use up otherwise. The plan is to double-ply it and knit and full (felt) myself a bag. I love Clarice Cliff so I just had to get a copy of Melinda Coss's Art Deco Knits when it came up on eBay. I've had it for a while but the designs are so 80s that I'll never knit anything from it. However, it would be a pity not to make something. So I thought bags. The first one with be a straightforward knit-up of a sleeve, but if/when I do more, I might try to mimic the shapes of Clarice Cliff's pottery as well.

I wound off approximately 2oz (50g), skeined it on the back of a chair and tied it loosely with waste acrylic yarn. I washed it in cool water with a little liquid soap, making up the dye bath while it soaked briefly. The Kool-Aid dye bath consisted of 2 sachets dissolved with cool water, in a microwaveable pot (I used a soon-for-the-bin micro pressure cooker) - except for the purple (top, far right) for which I used 4 sachets. The food-colouring dye bath was approximately half a bottle (20ml) of Supercook food-colouring and a good glug of Sarson's Distilled White Vinegar, in cool water. I didn't bother rinsing the wool clear of the soap - I read somewhere that it actually might help the dyeing process - and lowered it into the dye bath, adding more water to make sure it was completely covered. A good shuggle of the pot to mix it up, then into the microwave for 2-minute bursts - mine has a default setting of 750W - with 2mins rest between, when I poked it a bit with a whisk to keep it under the bath. For most, the dye bath was clear after about 4 or 5 bursts like this. I then left the wool in the depleted dye bath overnight to cool, though it only needs to reach room temperature. I washed the wool gently in cool water to remove any excess dye, and left it to dry on a radiator. I've double plied two already into pullcakes with my Daruma Home Twister (left).

The results of the dyeing were overall pretty fabulous, even if I do tootle me own flute. The colours on the whole are clear and vibrant, and I'm particularly pleased with the good, dense black, which I really didn't think would come out well at all. Instead, it's about the best of the bunch, much better than the pic shows. The food-colouring green is lovely too - a nice strong organic sagey colour. I'm very fond of the Kool-Aid turquoise (second from left), and the red (second from right) is lovely and pure too. The food-colouring blue is a huge disappointment though, all patchy. It was my first attempt at food-colouring dye: on some advice from tinterwebs, I soaked it overnight in the dye bath before zapping it. Damn you, tinterwebs! Once more you bring me wrongness! It was actually worse than it looks now: I cooled it, added more blue and, in a fit of poorly-remembered colour-theory madness, a splash of red and zapped it again. It's better, but it suffers from the madd colorz yet, poor fluff. Saying this, I could probably whip up a bidding frenzy of Wollmeisian proportions on Etsy with the foul stuff. Many's the fool would promise me their firstborn* for it...

Next time, I will make sure to loosen up the strands within the skein, and tie them VERY VERY LOOSELY indeed. So loosely indeed that they were virtually UN-tied. Even though I thought I'd got them loose enough, they still affected the dye penetration on the first batch. It doesn't matter much, since I'll be using them double-plied and then felting.

The Kool-Aid colours are, from left to right:
Orange and Lemonade (one sachet each) - light, bright orange
Berry Blue - turquoise
Lemon-Lime - bright sap green
Black Cherry - reddish-brown marroon
Watermelon Cherry - peachy pink
Tropical Punch - pure red
Grape - mid-purple. Not entirely successful.

Other craftiness: a forgotten pair of socks. Sue me. How many pairs have I done? These are claret, ribbed in the leg and down the top of the foot. And another pair, 5-row stripes in red and navy blue. And yet another: Tiny husband's Regia Bamboo socks are finally finished. And as if that wasn't enough, a dinky pair of ankle socks for Ickle Baby Cthulhu from the left-over Bamboo. The photos are crap. Don't know what's wrong with the camera.









I also made myself a fake Fair Isle tam. Not that I couldn't make a real one, but I saw the patterns and thought "Oooh!" and "An excuse to use some of that variegated Teddy Picasso** in the camouflage colourway that I unaccountably like so much, without people necessarily catching me out being hypocritical". So I went at it like a demented thing, so maddened by the promise of fiendish skultammery goodness that I didn't check stitch counts or anything, finished it in 24hrs - and promptly lost it to the offspring. Seriously. I spend ages working out significant and meaningful Aran symbols for a tam for him, and he won't touch it. I risk my mental health at the eight legs of monstrous yarn worshippers to make him a Spiderman hat that lies despised and cobwebbed in a corner until I give it to his friend Harryweb. Not to mention all the unbelievably cute little hats for which I don't even have photos, because they got chucked out of the pram! But let me even day-dream about a hat for someone else - TH's BS Johnson, my fake Isle tam, his Spiderman hat now that it's Harryweb's... - and he WANTS IT NOW. The bottom two pics are his response to mild suggestions that he give Mommy back her special hat.

"Ye can tak awa ma dignity, but ye'll nivver tak ma tam!!!".***

TTFN
K

P.S. I treated myself to a spinning workshop for my birthday!! Now, once I get a proper spindle...

* - What, precisely, is the attraction of the firstborn? Why does everyone want them? Why the elaborate schemes to get their mitts on them? I say this as a firstborn myself. Though perhaps the fact that no cannibalistic witches/wrathful gods/strange little spinning men wanted me makes me bitter. And envious.

** - This is the DK version of the chunky Teddy Colourama for IBC's 'special jacket'.

*** - Sunday Post Translation Services, Inc.

Foot Loose! Fibonacci

Yet another pair of socks for my mightily hoofed offspring. Ye gods I am bored with this sock business. The only thing they have going for them is that they are handy bus projects for my 10-minute commute. But I shall persevere until he has a reasonable supply - by which time he'll probably need bigger socks - because today, for the first time EVAR, he has been willing, nay, demanding to wear something I've made him - yes, these socks. Ripped from my hands as I tried to finish weaving in the ends, which is nice because it's not my favourite task, with shouts of "Mommy, put a socks on!" Guess they won't get blocked for a while then. He pootled around the house until bedtime, when he adamantly refused to have them taken off. Half an hour after we put him to bed, I looked in on him. He was sitting on the floor, facing the window, chatting to his socks...
Again based on the Lion Brand pattern but modified for gauge as described previously, these are the Fibonacci socks I mentioned. So what's Fibonacci when it's at home? Well, HE discovered a sequence of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers, hence 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, etc. So what? So, most flowers have a ‘Fibonacci’ number of petals. Fibonacci numbers also show up in the shapes of coastlines and clouds and other natural phenomena. Also, if you divide each number by the previous number, you get a result that is very close to the Golden Number/Section/Phi/Divine Proportion (1.618), whereby all sorts of The Weird And The Wonderful… ~Cue Twilight Zone music~. It's all terribly amazing until you realise that mathematics exists to describe the universe. So it's not exactly surprising when the universe just happens to conform with the maths, is it?

It is a little sad that this glorious stuff is too complicated to explain to kids who think maths is boring.

I have also - in two days! - completed a Valkyrie helmet for my cousin's daughter Anna, who is a cute chubby little Brunhilde. It's based on a Viking Girl Hat I saw on Ravelry. However the thought of forking over $24.50 for a kit had the predictable effect on my bowels, so I reverse-engineered it from the photos. I couldn't tell for sure if there were horns or wings on it in the photos, but as a Viking re-enactor, I couldn't in conscience put horns on it so wings they are.

I wanted a smooth, helm-like shape with no obvious decreases. To get this, I phase-shifted the decreases on each round (i.e., starting at the 1st stitch on one dec round, and on the 7th, 5th, 3rd stitch on the alternate dec round). The plaits are i-corded, though I thought about French-knitting them. In the end, though, I had the dpns in my hand, but the bobbins were somewhere in my knitting boxes...

(Modelled by my vintage fully-working Oopsie Daisy, with original outfit, for those interested in such things.)

TTFN
K

BS Johnson, socks, and a hoodie

What a boring title.
This afternoon was British Summer Time, so I forced my significant Creature of the Night out of his tenebrous cellar, blinking and meeping, into the lacklustre light to model his Bloody Stupid Johnson hat. But it was worth it: despite his wailing and chittering, and his frequent swinges into the shadows to check for tell-tale signs of ash forming on his pallid skin from the influence of the evil Day Star, the cables showed up well.
As for him - anyone would think I'd asked him to bathe, for sheeshs' sake. Honestly.









Also forthcoming, more pics of the Ba's socks. Not a lot to say here - they're based on Lion Brand's Child's Solid Socks pattern (you might have to register to look, though it is a freebie). Not having Woolease within several thousand miles, I've been using what I have to hand - DK in the case of the beige ones in the previous post (Robin DK) and the dark brown (Patons Fab) and red (mystery) pairs here, and 2-ply pure wool, double-stranded, for the striped pair. Even in the DK pairs, there have had to be slight alterations as none of the yarns are the same gauge - brown and beige were 24st per 4in, close enough that I could use the pattern sizes given, but the red yarn was 26st/4in, so I had to go up to 44st cast-on.

At this point I unvented a 50-50% rule for turning the heel - half the stitches are used to work the heel, short-rowed down to a quarter overall. It may not be pretty, or anthropometrically accurate, but it works. The blue and yellow striped pair had a gauge of 32st/4in, even with the yarn doubled, and follow this rule. I have a Fibonacci striped pair on the needles right now, blue and yellow in alternating 1,2,3,5, and 8-row paired stripes, with the final 8-row split across the heel in the other colour, then 5,3,2, and 1-row paired stripes down to the toe - though I've had to do 4 rows of alternating-stitch colour changes to make the footbed long enough.

That turned out to be more than I thought. I'm planning to make a few more pairs.

I also got round to making His Wee Nibs' Sirdar Bigga weskit. I've called it the Bookem Dano, as it is the Hawaii colourway (groan!). It took almost 2 balls. I hadn't intended to put buttons on it, but I think I might try a duffle set, with a loop instead of buttonholes. I've unplied the remaining yarn and am hoping it will be enough for the Berroco Kap with a bit of fudging. It's like the hat worn by Grandad Tumble, from the Mr Tumble series on cBeebies, which HWN loves, and I'm hoping he'll like a Grandad Tumble hat...

One last thing: my niece Ava's Little Pink Riding Hoodie, from Drops Design, using that weird pink mystery yarn I got in the Bull-ring. Quite a quick knit really, slowed down by my crappity attitude towards the sewing (~shudder~). The first pic shows it right side out, the second inside out, and the third is a close-up of the hairiest part of the sewing (~shudder~) around the armhole. Just to show that, actually, I am not such a crapilicious seamstress* as I fear myself to be. Go on, find a stitch. Yeah, you. See any? Do ya? DO YA? No.


That is not half bad for an awkward seam in a bulky, 6wpi yarn. I kind of mattress-stitched it from the right side, using a nylon-y fibre with cellophane strips which I unplied from the yarn itself. Y'see, I really can sew. I know all the moves. I know lingerie techniques lost before La Revolution. My homies called me Madame St Cyr down le 'Ood. I used to have a little notebook with beautifully stitched and pinked samples of my needlework. Exquisite, it was. Of course, for every charming little gingham sampliaire in it, there were twenty blood- and tear-stain'd rejects, pin-rusted and spraying pulled threads, lying in a bin somewhere...

Now I just have to screw my courage to the sticking place and line the blasted thing.

Ta-Ta
K

* - Having started the post with the Terry Pratchett-inspired hat, I feel I should probably point out that when I say 'seamstress', I do mean the female personages wot sew, not the ladies of negotiable affection...

ETA: I have Kool-Aid! w00t!

Mistah Death and the Aran Blankie

A while back I mentioned a rush job for Halloween, and then totally forgot to post about it.

Here it is! Based on Knitty's Jackyll & Hide pattern.

Hubby's workplace does a lot of charity work - in fact they're set up as a non-profit-making charity. He's done a 30-mile walk for charity with workmates, including the CEO who lent him suitable socks; once a fortnight he spends an afternoon of worktime helping in the Birmingham Children's Hospital school, and was their Santa this year; and he participates regularly and enthusiastically in their fancy dress / dress-down charity Fridays, as you can see to the right.

The cloak is borrowed, and the plastic scythe came from a charity shop. I didn't bother with the mouth as a) I had no time, b) it involves ~shudder~ embroidery, and c) hubby promised to do it then wimped out.
The yarn used (Ben Nevis Aran 25% Wool) is a bit rubbish* - very furry with no density to it - so I used it doubled on 6mm dpns and circulars. I had it in with the idea of making an heirloom Aran bedspread, over a long period, using 12in x12in 'swatches' whereon I would practice various Aran stitches that took my fancy - swatch 1, to the right, is a rather dense honeycomb pattern from a stitch dictionary which doesn't exist according to its ISBN. I reckon it would take about 42 such swatches - 6' wide x 7' long - for our double bed, maybe 63 or 72 for a more luxuriant look. Though a major part of the appeal of this is that it should be machine-washable, so I may have to sacrifice opulence for being able to fit it in the machine...
TTFN
K

'* - Cheap, and available in VAST quantities.

Update

Not a lot to say, nothing completed.

TH's Gothic Aran proved trickier than anticipated - not disastrously so, not even challenging really, just fiddly around the collar. It worked in the round, which is good, but TH's broad shoulders and slender frame mean that while the front and back are completed to the base of the neck, I need to knit up the shoulders another inch/inch-and-a-half to reach the same point, nibbling off stitches from the front and back as I go. Oh yes - I decided late on to go for EZ's fake raglan method of reducing the yoke, which looks well, despite some very awkward fudging when the decreases started cutting into the moss-stitch panels. Now this shoulder problem is turning it into a combined EZ raglan/saddle sweater.

But this is what comes of taking a pattern for an aran, running it according to another intended for Fair Isle, then changing mind 3/4 of the way through and finishing via a third for a plain sweater, discovering that the final bit needs to be fudged via a fourth (also plain), all the while using an unidentifiable yarn and a needle size not recommended in any of the patterns - and therefore a totally different number of stitches. Hey ho - at least I did swatches this time. I do get TH to try it every so often on to check the fit (so far, perfect).

I do feel that I'm working in the true EZ spirit though, winging it and not being scared. And occasionally lying down in a darkened room to recover.

I have also made it through the ribbing and into the body of IBC's Bob the Builder sweater, and have done the charts - modified one of Bob's face to fit better on the sweater, and made another of the Bob logo, though I think some surface embroidery is going to be necessary to get the detail in on it. I'm also very taken with the idea of a knit or crotchet BtB 'hard' hat... Hmm. When am I going to get my stockings made, I ask you?

The Drops that broke the SIL's streak

This is the little set I made for my nephew. The only negative point my SIL made was that it was a pity it wasn't bigger because he'd grow out of it too fast. But look at the folds at the waist, and the cuffs are rolled up. Mind you, look at the socks. They must be four-year-old's socks, poor kid.

In the second photo, it looks like the collar's loose enough to go over his head without opening the buttons. The hat I made in a hurry, so I didn't put the pattern on it. I was already in Ireland, and had to make it overnight. It'd have taken a couple of days if I had put the pattern in. It's a long rectangle, seamed up the back and across the top. It should have pom-poms, but I made i-cord horns at the corners instead.

He's such a sweet child. He's very interactive - tries to get your attention and then burbles and babbles at you with a serious little expression on his face as if he's trying to hold a conversation. Mum says if you sing to him, he yodels and crows along until you stop!

Tiny Husband's sweater continues to knit up fast. The body and one sleeve are complete, and on a long circular needle ready for the EZ finish, and the second sleeve is well underway - 23r in, 100r to go. I laundered the two swatches I made from the yarn, one wash at 30deg only, one wash at 30 deg and tumble dry at 90deg. No effect, except maybe a very slight felting at the cast-off edge on the second, without shrinkage. Unfortunately this leaves me none the wiser as to fibre content. I was veering towards thinking it was wool again, as I read somewhere about one-plied wool that was intended for felting, but I doubt even superwash wool would survive being tumble-dried until, well, dry. Hey ho. So it is probably synthetic.

I just had another great idea for a sweater for my son. When I was pregnant we called him Ickle Baby Cthulhu (Destroyer of Waists, Bringer of the Nappies of the Elder Gods, etc.) or IBC for short. It was quite a theme. We even found a little line-drawing of a Cthulhu in a nappy, which I used as an icon on my pregnancy blog, and a plushie Cthulhu was the first toy we bought for him. So I spent most of the day making a Cthulhu chart for a little sweater... To add to the Bob the Builder (yarn purchased) and the Thomas the Tank Engine sweaters already planned.

And sod the baby socks. I want THESE. I've already fed my numbers through the Hourglass Knee-length Sockulator - though I'd rather have over the knee, maybe stockings? Something to scare the kids at school with...