Bliss

Well, not really (more like a run-of-the-mill show and tell), but this one is a Debbie Bliss pattern, which I had an urge to make and providentially a CAT PAC arrived with some suitable yarn in it. I cast on almost as soon as I opened the package.

Here’s my Ravelry project page.

Yarn: Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice. Another Red Heart Supersaver clone. Nothing to recommend it especially. I used about a skein and a half for this project.

Needles: Size 4.00mm (US 6) for the ribbed button band and 6.00mm (US 10) for the body of the sweater.

Pattern: Ribbed Baby Jacket by Debbie Bliss. (Ravelry link here). It is also available free here.

Time: Over two weeks. I think I took a while to weave in ends (so what else is new?), but otherwise it is a simple enough knit.

Size: 26″in the chest x 10.5″long

Extra #1 The stockinette does make it curve in at the bottom and cuffs, but I’m letting it be.

#2 Another reckless and pointless knit for me, no babies targetted, but I was compelled to make this one. I don’t know what it is about baby sweaters and me, but they draw me like a moth to the flame. You can learn new techniques without having to spend the rest of your life knitting on something. Also, they have no shaping, usually, and will fit some baby at some point. Now all I have to do is find some babies. (I’m happy to say I gave away my February sweater to my maid, who wanted it for her great-nephew. What use they will find for it in tropical Kerala, I do not know. But it lessens my baby sweater inventory by one).

#3 I’m happiest about the way I picked up stitches for the button band. Rather than picking them up in the last stitch of the exposed rows, I went behind them and picked up the stitches from the inner column. It made for a very neat finish, especially because I had a chain selvage (slip the first stitch of every row knitwise, knit the last stitch). So that was the learning from this thing. I wasn’t very happy about the picking up around the neck (instead of binding off as the pattern advised, I held the stitches on a spare circular). The whole “pick up evenly” thing continues to baffle me and reduce me to scrambling for closure. Otherwise the whole thing is an average project, nothing to write home about.

So why blog about it? Partly because my other projects are test ones which I cannot yet blog about. And partly to squeeze in another post before the end of this month.

I realise my blog has become rather dull and monotonous. Where’s the wit and variety gone, you must be wondering. Perhaps it’s just old age. Or something.

I stopped blogging about books, because I realised no one appears to share my taste in them/find anything new in what I say. And I really don’t feel the need to journal all the books I read. Which pretty much leaves me with only craft to write about. And since I usually don’t like showing works in progress, all you get nowadays are staccato essays following a rigid and predictable structure.

Which makes me grateful for the people who do continue to read. Thank you! I can’t describe the thrill I get out of seeing comments from you. Please continue to visit

Beads and lace: Melusine

I’ve never added beads to a knit project before, and definitely not without pre-stringing them. Plus for some reason I really liked this scarf as soon as I saw it, so I volunteered to test the pattern for Wendi when she posted about it on Ravelry. I had a really fun time knitting it. The pattern repeat is about 40 rows long, but the wrong side rows are all purl rows, besides which the scarf is only 29 stitches wide. I’m afraid the photos don’t do it justice, but I tried, my friends, I tried.

Here’s my Ravelry project page.

Yarn: Patons Kroy Sock, just over a 192 yard skein in Chelsea Tweed. I don’t know how, but the other sock yarn I have is also a similar dark colourway. Never seen any of those fancy handpainted/hand-dyed ones. But then always with variegated yarns, I’m often more enamoured of the yarn/thread in the skein rather than in a project worked up. I’d probably croon over the multi-hued sock yarn and then relegate it to the back of my stash, where I can no longer hear its jeers.

Andrea had suggested I could use sock yarns for scarves, and I’d forgotten that I’d indeed done so, for my Boteh (also Patons Kroy, but in a livelier colour). Plus there’s a UFO somewhere in the depths of my cupboards, started with Wildfoote Luxury. So now I can potentially make 3 scarves and free myself from the guilt of trying to make socks and failing miserably. Yay!

Needles: Size 4.00mm (US 6). That was the recommended size, I think.

Pattern: Melusine by Wendi Dunlap. (Ravelry link here).

Time: 6 days or less. I treated myself to one pattern repeat every evening and finished off with 2 and the ends on the final day.

Size: 6″ x 84″

Extra #1 I really enjoyed using a crochet hook to put on the beads while knitting, and not having to worry about stringing all of them beforehand and then getting the yarn all tangled up. Wendi suggested a tutorial found here for the technique.

#2 I’m wondering if there’s much point in becoming addicted to knitting scarves when (a) I don’t know if I can bear to give them away and (b) whether I know enough people who’d wear them. Would you, Dear Reader? More specifically, would you wear this scarf? (I mean this version, knit by me).

Drewl!

Drop everything now. Your hooks, needles, thread, yarn, and run over to Drew’s blog. His gorgeous, gorgeous lacy stole is available as a free download now and it’s what I’ve been waiting for. Only, look at Drew’s version first, not the picture on the pattern page. His appears to be made of a lighter, thinner yarn, while the modelled one looks much lumpier thicker, and not as appealing. I don’t know what the story is behind that, but my vote goes to the one on The Crochet Dude’s blog. I’m swatching madly.

It was easy after all

Yes, my dears. That up there, looking so familiar, is the crocheted version of the Baby Surprise Jacket. I did it. The entire credit goes to James G Davis (Pandaman) who worked out a stockinette version, upon which mine is totally based. The stockinette gauge is closer to the sc gauge than garter, so Mr Davis’ version was perfect for this. I don’t know why I didn’t do it this way the first time. All I had to do was use sc for every stitch and decide how I wanted to make my increases and decreases. I chose to increase by doing 2 sc in two stitches (an increase of 2), and my decreases by sc3tog (hook through next stitch, yo, pull loop through 3 times, yo and pull loop through all 4 loops on hook). Next time I might change my increases to 3 sc in one stitch. And use some interesting colours instead of this pale pink.

I don’t know why, but I always seem to gravitate towards the same colours for babies. Sigh. It could also be that these are the only colours there are, so it’s not as if I’m faced with a wide choice, not if I don’t want to produce glow-in-the-dark baby clothes. Which I don’t.

Here are the particulars (here’s my Ravelry page):

Yarn: Standard issue baby acrylic, about 150gm or so.

Hook: Size 5.00mm (US H). I went up a size or two from my first attempt, in order to conquer the obvious gauge problem. I made a conscious effort to make the starting chain loose (mine usually tends to be tight) and was immediately rewarded by a gratifyingly right-angled beginning.

Pattern: Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Baby Surprise Jacket (link to knitwiki article), aided and abetted by Pandaman’s Stockinette modifications.

Time: I began my first attempt a while ago, as you will remember, and actually started this one a few days ago. Then I got caught up in testing a couple of patterns, doing some work (my job) and distracted by other things, so the project languished a bit. I finally told myself off and picked it up again and resolved not to be distracted this time. The endless rows of sc do begin to pall after a while, which sort of explains why I’d like to do it in a different sort of yarn the next time. And when I grow up, I’d like to try manipulating the gauge for other stitches, starting with dc perhaps. A couple of evenings to finish this normally.

Size: 22″ around.

Extra #1 What can I say? It’s a bit anti-climactic, realising the solution was easy after all, I just had been overthinking things a bit.

#2 I must have counted every stitch on every inc/dec row. I didn’t use markers (because I find stitch markers in crochet to be tedious) and spreading the increases out over 2 stitches made it a bit more tiresome than it needed to be. I don’t know why, when I’d been sc3tog-ing for a decrease, it didn’t occur to me to do 3sc in 1 for an increase! I was fooled by the knitting, where it’s usual to only increase one stitch at a time (unless you’re yo-ing or casting on, and end up with holes). Took me until I was writing down my notes to realise it doesn’t have to be that way, crochet is so much more flexible in that sense.

#3 I added some length to the sleeves after finishing the main part, because they were looking really stubby. I went to the edges and did a few rows of sc on the other side of the starting chain, then decreased stitches twice before ending off.

#4 Not entirely happy with the collar (it could still be added to, but I don’t think I will).

#5 There isn’t a girl baby in sight who’d require warm clothing, but I do have one earlier victim who’s a bit small despite being a year old. She’ll do.

I’m not resting on my laurels, having begun two other projects-one of them is yet again a baby sweater, and the other a dishcloth. And yes, I’ll name them among my FOs. That’s for Sara. If I didn’t count my small projects, I’d have no projects at all.

Quick and easy

Since Ravelry, I am not being strictly chronological with my posts of FOs, or even complete, sometimes. I just blog about whichever project takes my fancy, when I have the time and the inclination. This one happens to be my latest finished thing and I really am proud of it, so here it is.

I caught this on the patterns page at Ravelry (I look through the latest projects added every now and then) and saw it was a free pattern, and was in fact currently running as a KAL, with the designer posting installments on her blog. In browsing through my stash I’d turned up this yarn which I didn’t know what it was when I got it from Celtic Coyote in a Knitty swap many months ago. She didn’t remember either, but then Sara was working on a BSJ with similar yarn some time ago and I discovered it is actually Plymouth Encore Colorspun Worsted, plus I was able to find some colourway names on Yarndex as well. I had 6 half skeins or so, and for this project I used up about 3.5.

(Looking through the photos, I just realised I didn’t take a picture of the back, but seriously, I don’t think it matters. It matches the front up to the armholes, and then it’s mostly similar.)

Here are the particulars (here’s my Ravelry page):

Yarn: Plymouth Encore Colorspun Worsted in several colours and half skeins. It feels a bit dry and rough and I don’t know how it will feel in a colder climate or next to the skin. Perhaps it softens with washing? I liked watching the striping, mostly because the pattern is stockinette-dominated. Besides, each colour runs for a fairly long length. I usually love variegated yarn in the skein and despise it worked up. But this worked for a small diameter project. Having so many different colours also meant I could use different colourways without too much weirdness. (The sleeves don’t fully match, but I can live with that).

Needles: I used about 3-4 US #10 (6.00mm) circulars, and one US #8 (5.00mm). That was because I was too lazy to hunt up a stitch holder for the body. For the sleeves, I did both at the same time from different ends of the same ball, because I wanted them to largely match, which they wouldn’t if I had used two different balls. So that required two circulars at the same time, but not with both on one, if you see what I mean. I used one circular for one sleeve. I could possibly have simplified matters with only one circular to work both, but somehow that didn’t occur to me :-p Luckily I seem to have a surfeit of the 6.00 mm and nearby sizes.

Pattern: Waffles for Brunch by Jean Gifford. Here’s the Ravelry page. I probably might make this again.

Time: Over a week, but that was only because I took a break to (a) edit 15 files and (b) test 6 patterns (5 of which were small thread motifs). I got in on the KAL about halfway, but I was able to finish more or less quite quickly after the last instructions were posted. As I indicated, it’s a quick and easy knit.

Uh-oh. Thunder in the background. Hopefully the electricity won’t go.

Size: 19″at the chest, unstretched, 12″ long. As the designer says, it’ll fit some kid somewhere.

Extra #1 I loved doing this! Even loved the extra effort needed to match the stripes (or at least ensure they weren’t too odd/off). As usual, it a bit of on-the-edge knitting whether I’d have enough yarn (the other two half-skeins are pale pink and yellow, while these ones can still be useful for a boy, right?), but that was okay in the end.

#2 I’m very kicked with myself…I did a tubular cast on for this and even though that is usually recommended for 1×1 ribbing, it was okay for this one. It would be a problem with a more monochromatic yarn, though. I found this tutorial via Ravelry and it made the process very clear. I did try to match it with a tubular cast-off at the end of the sleeves, but couldn’t quite grasp it, besides which it involves grafting, which I’m not very good at. Also, the instructions were again for ribbing, not this 4×2 pattern.

#3 Very happy . I don’t exactly know who is going to be favoured with this, as most of my friends have young boys, but I don’t think this is too girly. Do you?

#4 I really am very happy with how the collar worked out, too. The designer (and/or the pattern) made it easy when it came to picking up stitches (none of the “pick up eleventy stitches evenly around the neck” business). It’s the first time I’ve worked a collar like this and I really am pleased with the outcome.

It’s raining now. I’ll leave you with a picture of the cast-on to admire. (There isn’t a particular reason i’m not replying individually to comments, just plain laziness. I might just go to my inbox and catch up now, so don’t be puzzled by any replies you get to comments you made when you were a good deal younger )