Knits in Action

We have some modelling today, first of all by a boy and a bear. Felicity hat in Mirasol Miski, and ad libbed scarf in Kid Classic.

And now by two boys. Two Felicity hats in Mirasol Miski. These are very effective on the snowboard slopes, I understand.

Aren't they cool? All three of them. Jigsaws at the right (scroll down).

And yes, there has been rather a lot of playing with this, thanks to all of your ferocious enabling, for which I am eternally grateful (see comments, last-but-one post).

And yes, I did get iSteam, and I think it's been worth every penny of 59p.

I also got a knitting app, but it remains to be seen whether I will be any better at tapping than I am at clicking.

And I finished its little coat.


Comments
Thanks for the recommendation for French Girl Knits, Cinders. I'll keep an eye out for it. It looks too fiddly for me (I like fiddly shawls, but not fiddly garments: I think the anxiety about fit is too much to bear.)

Thank you, Amy - you're very kind. I'm glad to know you're there.

Thanks to everyone else who dropped in while I was thinking; you are appreciated.

I did try a Mallory, Joan - the first one. I always read books in order, which is tiresome of me but I can't help it. I enjoyed it but couldn't keep track of who was who: this might have been down to my brain fog rather than the author's abilities and I'll certainly read more.

Knitting Mags
I've given up looking so hard for The Knitter. If I come across one, well and good. It's interesting that they've put so much energy into distributing it in the US (Borders, and Barnes and Noble), but not got it into the chain that covers a lot of Scotand and is the largest chain in Britain. I check my local one every time I'm passing and although they have swathes of Knitting, Simply Knitting and on and on, there's no Knitter (can't someone think of more distinctive titles?). I expect Smith's have it, so I'll check next time I'm at the station. I hadn't realized it was monthly and I'm amazed that the UK market can bear as many monthly knitting mags as it does; presumably the same companies are advertising in all of them?

On the subject of distinctive titles, what about 'Designer Knitting', the new name for Vogue Knitting outside the U.S.? They must have been up all night thinking of that one, and the cover looks as if it was designed at gunpoint. I always get the sense that the people who produce VK do so under very difficult conditions, where they're not allowed to talk to each other and no-one has access to a computer. I don't mean that I think it's really like that, just that it seems that way, and there was all that strange business last year when the new editor was disappeared.


The webpage is full of bells and whistles, but is seldom up to date (the About Us page has the old editor's name!) - it doesn't have a direct link to Knit 1, or Knit Simple amongst other things (podcasts are hidden under Web Exclusives); the blog is intermittent to say the least, and the stuff they send out on their email distribution list is frankly poor. They seem to be really struggling and at times it's as if there's a Svengali working there, plotting its overthrow. Interweave Knits do it so much better, particularly the Knitting Daily stuff, which is frequent and lively.

The complication is that Conde Nast own the rights to the name 'Vogue' and Soho Publishing have to pay to use it, but that's not difficult to explain and they could try: perhaps the next issue will have an editorial which includes some effort to make readers outside the U.S. not feel as if they have been cast into the outside darkness. I hope so, and I hope they get their act together, because we can't afford to lose them.

Classes
If you're an Annie Modesitt fan and you're in the UK, you might be interested in this, which I spotted while I was wandering recently. I don't think Annie's mentioned them on her blog yet.

A Swift and Scathing Resumption

I did the lace club thing and parcelled up some yarn and patterns. I've marked one of them - Fyberspates yarn and the Adamas Shawl - with the number One, but the rest will be done randomly. One effect of this has been to bring home to me fully just how much lace yarn is lying about the place - this is far from all of it, just the stuff I want to knit first - and has caused some sharp braking on the spending front. Probably not a bad thing.

I finished two more Felicity hats. This one is Drops Classic Alpaca in 4434, used double, very soft and pretty.
This one is black Drops Karisma, which seems harder than the cream Karisma that I used for the Pinwheel but that may be an illusion of some sort. I did this one on two needles instead of four and seamed it up the back, and I think that's made the increases less obvious.The black one is the last one, not the last forever but the last of all the ones I decided to do over Christmas when I was thinking, 'Oh, I could make one for X and one for Y... ' ad infinitum.

Still in the world of accessories, here's a Harry Potter scarf for a teddy bear.












Here's the Sea Silk Forest Canopy blocking. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this one before.

I'm not too nuts about it. I didn't particularly enjoy the yarn, which I found floppy although that might be my fault for using needles that were on the large side (5mm), and the colourway is fairly dull. It's Ocean but it's only blue and grey, no greens at all.

Still, I hope the recipient likes it. It's for my goddaughter and it's intended to introduce her to the idea that might like a shawl or stole for her wedding day. Or indeed a veil. I was thinking about a Pi Shawl veil but I have fallen totally for the Queen Anne's Lace circular shawl, which could be worn as a veil. In fact, I have fallen so hard that I just want to knit it anyway and I don't really care if she wears it or not. She can have it as a doily for her hall table if she likes. It has a mixture of lace and mathematics which makes my heart beat faster. The pattern (I mean the actual recipe, not the design) is interesting in that it's been written by someone who hasn't read many patterns so it does terrifying things like leaving out the plain rows (look at the numbers up the side of the chart) but innovative things like printing the word-by-word instructions side-by-side with the chart. (Is that innovative? I haven't seen it before.)

If I knew whether she was going to wear white or ivory, I would probably have bought the silk and cast on by now, although finding silk that's fine enough might have slowed me down. I want something plied (or do I mean 'thrown'?) for the flexibility: I think I will have to get my head around NMs, which sound a bit too much like NOMs for me to keep a straight face.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Of course I could just knit and then dye it if it wasn't the right shade, couldn't I? Couldn't I? The trouble is that natural silk isn't white so that could be risky.

My back did that thing that it does sometimes and I had to go to the osteopath. She's always very good about fitting me in quickly so I thought I'd do her an FC, this time in Kidsilk Haze. She's pale with black hair so she really suits those shades which can look a bit drab on the wrong person. This is a nice dark bark.


I started this on a bamboo Addi circ, but the joins were annoying me so I switched to an Addi lace circ. It's much better, although I have noticed quite a lot of dropped stitches - not a problem with KSH of course and very easy to detect with this pattern.

This arrived last Saturday. Simple Style by Ann Budd.
When I ordered it from Amazon it had a publication date of June, but it must have arrived early. I ordered it without seeing it because I like the sweater on the cover, and you can't really go wrong with Ann Budd, and I thought it would save me dithering in June.


The only complaint I have about it is that not all the patterns go up to my size; since they're all simple, would it have hurt to do a few more sums and work out the larger sizes?




I know I could do the sums, but there's not much point in buying a book with the word 'simple' in the title and then having to do a lot of sums, is there?

I was wandering around Etsy one night recently and came across these. Aren't they cute? They're from Paper and Yarn, and she dyes wool as well.
















She sent me this as a little extra.











More later. Not least, I still have to bring you up to date on Law and Order: UK, which I have been watching diligently on your behalf, and to catch up on comments.

Knits in Wear

I've got some more interesting shots of recent FOs, being worn by the people for whom they were made.

This is Micah, wearing his new blanket while he has a nap in the supermarket queue.

Photo by Pops.

And this is Calum in his Felicity hat.

And in profile.
You can really see the colours here, and the halo from the possum (New Zealand possum, not American). It's Cherry Tree Hill merino and possum, which they don't do any more, in the shade River Run. The small pink person beside him wouldn't put on the hat and scarf that I made for her with Felted Tweed and Kidsilk Haze because, allegedly, it is scratchy. Hmmm.

I ran out of yarn on the edging for the Pinwheel blankie and started meanwhile on a shawl. It's the trial shawl for my goddaughter to decide if she wants a wedding shawl and before I could splurge on some silk yarn, I remembered that I had this Hand Maiden Sea Silk.

I think the colour is Ocean.
The pattern is, of course, the Forest Canopy, which I chose partly because well, because, but also because it doesn't use so much yarn as some shawl patterns and I only have one skein.

The music which alarmed some visitors to my previous post was coming from the Playlist in the sidebar above the jigsaws. I've changed the settings now so that it doesn't come on automatically: you have to click on Play.

I went to the optician today for a routine eye test and discovered that I don't need new glasses. I think this is the first time since I was about 10 years old that my sight has stayed the same for two years, hurrah. I haven't worn them out by knitting and watching films at the same time.

Broadcast News was on television the other night. I hadn't seen it since it came out and I still felt the same way about the characters, which surprised me because I usually find if I see a film twenty years later that as well as feeling different about the film, I often relate to the characters differently too. I still think the Albert Brooks character is too much of a dork although he has a lot of good lines (and now he makes me think of George Costanza too, which he couldn't in 1987), I still identify a bit with the Holly Hunter character while not sharing her presence of mind, and although my critical faculties tend to abandon me when I'm faced with a tall strawberry blond, I still think William Hurt plays the shallow-but-he-knows-it anchorman with depth and subtlety. I don't think the characters would be so honest with one another nowadays, but maybe that's just me. I'd forgotten that Jack Nicholson was in it, playing one of his demonic roles with the specially sharpened eyebrows and it was good to see him. It has a lot of good lines, very sharp script.

Huge Post

I've got lots to catch up on. I'll leave the knitting till last.

What have I been doing during the silence? Well one thing that took up an undue amount of time was playing with Tiltshift. Tiltshift is a program that changes a photograph of something so that it looks like a photograph of a model of the same thing. Why would you want to do that? I'm not sure, but once you start, it gets very addictive. Most of my photographs are of people or knitting, neither of which are very responsive to this, but here's an example that works better than most.

This is a photograph I took last year at Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow.

Here it is after Tiltshifting.
Go on, try one.

I also got a bit sidetracked by Ada Lovelace Day, and plan to do a post on 24 March. You can too. Ada Lovelace was Byron's legitimate, non-incestuous daughter which would almost be interesting enough in itself given what tragic souls his other daughters were, but she was also an oustanding scientist and is often described as the first computer programmer.

Still on the technical front, when I bought that big Hewlett Packard desktop last year, it came with a keyboard that I've never liked: the keys are wide and flat so that every time I hit the A KEY I TURN THE CAPS LOCK ON, and the space bar is so soggy that I have to keep goingbacktoputspacesbetweenthewords.

So I bought one of these and I love it to pieces (sorry for blurry pic, but I am unable to overcome the problems presented by photographing something illuminated in the dark).


I can now see to type in the dark, which at this time of year is during most of the day as well as at night. The mouse keeps changing colour too, woohoo. This is what it looks like in a (slightly) better photo.

I have made a couple of attempts to find The Knitter, the new British knitting mag, but without success. The place I tried had the latest issues of four other British knitting titles, but not that one. Somebody must reckon there's a lot of money to be made from selling advertising space about knitting.

While I was trying to find a copy of The Knitter, I actually laid hands on a copy of Knitting Goes Large, and although I think I'll get it eventually it didn't really make my heart beat faster.

It has different covers in the UK and the US.

The photos are odd: there is a little introduction saying that the models are size 16-18 (that's US sizes 14-16) which is barely Plus, but the garments seem to be too big for them. The patterns go up to a 48" bust. I wonder if the garments were knitted in real Plus sizes and then they chickened out about using models who fitted them? Or if they photographed them first on size 24 models and lost their nerve when they saw the photos? We have our eye so trained by magazine photography that they maybe thought nobody would buy the book if the models resembled the buyers. I'm really getting tired of the way they write these books, and the way they're reviewed, as if being a size 22 were an embarrassing topic, rivalled only by female incontinence or bad breath.

It's very difficult to find pix from this book online, as if everyone found them too boring to reproduce, or maybe they were embarrassed by photos of fat girls, but until I buy a copy and can take some snaps myself, you'll have to take my word for it that one of the photos, a whole-page shot of a jacket, shows the back of the collar sitting at a very bad angle; so bad that I immediately decided not to knit it. You have to wonder if there was a knitter present when the photography was done.

Having said all that, the patterns aren't all bad and the supporting text is good, and as I say I will probably buy it some time, but I think this was much better done by Big Girl Knits and its successor, and by Dawn French a long time ago: you can still get Big Knits and Great Big Knits for peanuts off eBay or Amazon marketplace, and I knitted sweaters from those when I was a size 12. And they look as if they're having fun in the photos, not apologizing for themselves.

So, to the knitting. This is the secret knitting I was doing before Christmas.
It's the Ruffle and Rib Fingerless Glove pattern, but I added a ruffle at the finger ends as well.

The recipient has much smaller hands than I do (I have huge stranglers' paws) so they will look daintier on her. The yarn is the Old Maiden Aunt sock that I bought when I went to the Japanese pattern class, and at some point I will make a frothy scarf with the leftovers.


I made two more Felicity hats in Mirasol Miski, one in a terracotta shade and another in navy, like the first one. These are for two of my younger relations and I hope they pass the cool test.



I also made one for myself, in the Debbie Bliss Pure Cashmere that I bought to make a Drifting Pleats scarf. The colour is softer than the photo, the sweetest duck egg blue, which is my favouritest colour in the whole world.

I wore it when I went out last week looking for The Knitter, during the day. Anyone who knows me will realize how extraordinary this is because I only wear a hat when two conditions are fulfilled: 1) it has to be dark, and 2) everyone present has to sign a confidentiality agreement. I was perfectly happy in it and am looking forward to wearing it again, even amongst strangers.

I plan to knit a black Felicity for someone who won't countenance any other colour, and then another, possibly purple, but meanwhile I am ploughing round and round on another Pinwheel blanket, for the cousin of the baby who got the last one. Cousins do often go in pairs, don't they? I'm a week older than one of my cousins. I wonder if anyone has done research on that.

This Pinwheel is plain natural, in Drops Karisma Superwash. The exchange rate being what it is, this baby couldn't have Lorna's Laces, but this is nice and I found a British supplier, Scandinavian Knitting Design. I'm now on the fourth ball, of six. I'm going to do the sawtooth design which didn't work on the variegated yarn, which should look good in this. The baby has arrived and is a girl, so that should all be all right.

I must say after all these Felicities and Pinwheels, I am yearning to knit something in gossamer yarn with lots of YOs and counting. I might do a sample silk shawl for my god-daughter, who is going to be an October bride, just to give her some ideas and to give me a treat. A Forest Canopy in some hand-dyed 100% silk (she's allergic to everything else), perhaps - what a wonderful excuse to buy some yarn.

Happy New Year

That sore throat hasn't quite gone yet, but the last couple of days I've been feeling a lot better. Christmas was a bit of a bummer - I actually stopped knitting for five days, that's how bad it was - but we won't dwell on that.

On the first day of the year I went up in this - no, I don't know why either, but it got the year off to an exciting start. If I don't do much else in 2009, at least I did this. If that link doesn't work, try this one.

I finished another Felicity hat, in terracotta Miski.


I did take a photograph of one of the Felicity hats I've made actually on a head but - insert long story here about camera batteries - you'll have to wait a little while to see it.

Meanwhile, a Happy and Healthy New Year to you all, and much knitting.

Hoarse Greetings of the Season

I had intended to leave a seasonal greeting here sooner, but I have been felled by one of the worst sore throats I've ever had. I can remember sitting in a hospital waiting room and asking my mother what E.N.T. DEPARTMENT meant, and she explained that it was the department for Ear, Nose and Throat conditions, so I go a long way back with these. I was one of those honking adenoidal children; when I wasn't honking, I was barking, and it's been like that again this week. Yesterday I sneezed so hard that I bit my tongue. Three times.

However, one of the comforts of these things is that you know they're just going to work through themselves and once the requisite number of days is past, it will be gone. I am recovering my appetite, which, given the date, is the main thing.

The Angora Triangle has been blocked and sent on its way. It's 12 repeats, 48 inches by 22.


I didn't dare block it very rigorously because the fibres pull apart quite easily, but it's very pretty.
I knitted a Felicity Hat. You know how you think you're sort of keeping abreast of what is going on on the knitweb, and then you click on something you've never seen before and discover that Everybody has been knitting it? That happened to me with Felicity. Now I've done a navy blue one with some of the Mirasol Miski that Spinning Fishwife led me to in November;

I've done a bluey greeny brown one with some Cherry Tree Hill Possum Paints Worsted;
I've started another in some terracotta Miski;
(why, yes, one of my dpns is a very long circ - have you never done that?) and I plan to do another dark blue Miski one.

I plan to do a black one and a purple one too. It's excellent Christmas knitting, because if you're talking, or watching films, or drinking, it doesn't matter too much if the odd stitch or row is missed or added. It's a wonderful shape: the only thing I would say is to use much larger needles than the pattern suggests and, if you're in any doubt at all about the size, add 7 stitches to the cast on. I used 4.5mm and 5.5mm for the first one, and 5mm and 6mm for all the subsequent ones.

I hope I can get photos of some of these on heads after everyone's opened their presents.

Jean and I managed to get together last week for lunch in between my sucumbing to this and that. We went to Vittoria, which is one of my favourite places ever - it's like going to Italy for lunch. I usually go there with one or another small children, who get made a great fuss of, and get spag bol everywhere, so it was bit strange to go with another adult and not get beamed at. The last time I went there with a small person, she ordered macaroni and cheese and when the waitress bought it she pointed at the broccoli garnish and said, 'I don't want that', to which the waitress said, 'Nobody ever does.' Jean and I ate everything on our plates, however, and drank everything in our cups and glasses. Model diners.

I've changed my blog photo, from one of me yelling my head off in my pram in Pilrig Park to one of me carefully choosing the right word on my Dad's typewriter. The biscuits, for those who need to know, are digestives and a Tunnock's Caramel Wafer.

I've been watching out for a seasonal LOLCAT to leave you with and this is my fave.



Merry Christmas to all of my readers, or any other sort of seasonal wish which makes sense to you, and I hope the next few days bring you good company and good cheer - or as much good cheer as is reasonable to expect in these changing times.