Finished!!!!

Yes, Mum's shawl is finally finished. I abandoned my stitch-markers and read my knitting as I went along instead - and whizzed through the last 10 rows. I think there is a moral here: I should pay more attention to what I'm doing, instead of relying on other things - stitch-markers especially - to do my thinking for me!

It's off now to my dear friend Rosie, to be washed and blocked. I'll post a final photo when it returns. (Thanks again, Rosie!)

All my Christmas knitting is now done, but I can't blog about anything else as all the recipients may read the blog! If you haven't finished yours yet, then good luck, and I wish you peace and quiet to get on with it....

Doing the Border Shuffle

The border on Mum's Eliina shawl is 32 rows deep. When I knitted mine, I had one small problem, which I fudged, and sailed through the rest. Thanks to Mad October, the same is not true of this one...

It started well. I was up to row 23 by the beginning of October. Then I made the mistake of knitting when tired, and had to frog to row 14.

I compounded this by picking up the newly fixed row 14 and finding another mistake, dropping down a stitch to fix it - and failing to pick it back up again in pattern. That time it got frogged to row 6, and I took the opportunity of it being off the needles to get it photographed:

Merlin decided what it really needed for scale was a large black cat....

Anyway, I got that picked up, went up to row 19 - and messed up again.

Finally, last week, I got it all the way to the start of row 23, perfectly correct. It has only taken me 7 weeks to get back to where I was in the first place.

And now.... I have a rogue extra stitch and can't find it.

sob

That Darn Cat

(Anybody else remember that film? I'm sure it's to blame for my lifelong fascination with Siamese...)

A couple of weeks ago, one of my carers took off her fleecy gloves when she came in, and left them on the sofa. When it came time to leave, they were gone. She had to catch a bus, so just told me to hang on to them when I found them - and laughingly suggested that Merlin, with his love for all things woolly, had run off with them.

Half an hour later, Merlin appeared. He was dragging one of the gloves, and growled when we tried to take it from him.

We did eventually find the pair. One was undamaged - but one was missing a finger, as neatly excised as if he had used scissors.

So - anyone got any good glove patterns??

Fluffbuster Scarf

Ever wonder what you could do with that odd ball of bizarrely-coloured fluff that you bought on a whim? Wonder no more....

The Fluffbuster Scarf

The amounts are pretty flexible, depending on what length you want - this is more of a recipe than a pattern.

For a 150cm (five feet/60 inches) scarf, you need:

approx 90 metres (100 yards) of ribbon yarn (or any smooth yarn)
one ball of fluff (eyelash yarn)
6mm (US size 10) needles
8mm (US size 11) needles for casting on and off - optional

This scarf is worked lengthways, so you may find it easier to work back and forth on a circular needle than on a straight one.

Divide your yarn (nothing heavier than DK/worsted) into two equal balls.

Look on the ball band to see how many stitches are supposed to be in 10cm/4 inches. With the first ball and the 8mm/11 needles, cast on 10 times as many stitches as this - for example, a tension of 22 stitches per 10cm/4 inches would give a cast-on figure of 220 stitches.

Change to the 6mm/10 needles and work the following stitch pattern until you run out of the first ball of yarn:

Row 1: (K1, yo) to last stitch, K1.
Row 2: (K1, drop YO from previous row) to last stitch, K1.

Now change to the eyelash yarn, and knit every row until it is used up.

Take the second ball of smooth yarn and resume the stitch pattern above until you are nearly out of yarn, then cast off using the 8mm/11 needles.

Weave in ends.

You can make the scarf any length you like, using the proportions above as a guide. The red scarf above, for example, is nearly ten feet long, and the blue one below is seven feet long.

You could also substitute any ball of novelty yarn, or an odd ball of any kind of pretty yarn, for the ball of eyelash yarn.

I would not recommend using a heavier yarn than DK/worsted, as it would be too heavy for the eyelash yarn.

What a month!!

Well, October turned out to be the most stressful month I've had for ages. Unfortunately nice stress tires me out as much as nasty stress, so even the good stuff just made me more tired. It has been one of those times when everything that could happen, did happen - and I ended up not getting a proper afternoon rest till almost the end of the month (instead of almost every afternoon), which meant my night-time sleep was disturbed, too.

That meant I began having nightmares. Initially they were things like still being married to my alcoholic ex, but eventually they morphed into the standard scary monster nightmare. (One was that Daleks had invaded Earth - and banned knitting!!!! Terrifying....)

To give you an idea of what I mean, this all happened between October 1 and October 27:

1 theatre trip
1 trip to Quaker Quest - on the same day Richard was out all day,
travelling to Manchester and back to the funeral of one of his uni
housemates. It wasn't a good month for him, either.
4 visits from friends
3 visits from Richard's grandfather, who is very difficult to talk to
1 visit from both his grandparents
1 visit from Mum and my sister
3 visits from new carers
1 5-hour excursion to A&E at the eye hospital - I'm OK, so don't
worry, but apparently I'm starting to get cataracts :(
1 Quaker Meeting here
1 newsletter to write and send round, during which....
Our Broadband started falling over for hours at a time
1 failed delivery of necessary medical stuff
1 delivery of oxygen canisters
1 visit from Social Services
1 visit from a care company team leader
1 visit from the other care company's admin assistant (1.5 hours)
1 service of my oxygen machine
1 visit from the GP
2 visits from the District Nurse
1 blood test
1 flu jab (different day from the blood test)
1 visit from the Access Bus team to make sure my wheelchair will fit
on their minibus (then I can go shopping occasionally!)
....and then the clocks changed and completely mucked up my body clock, as usual....

As you see, it was a fun time :)

I'm not complaining one bit about the nice stuff - ever since I first got ill, I've had the view that nice stuff is worth recuperating from! But every day seemed to bring a fresh reason why I couldn't have a rest, and by the end of last weekend I was feeling quite desperate.

I'm happy to say that I have now had a week asleep, and I feel much better, so I hope to be a much better blogger again now.

Next week, as promised: a new pattern!

Excursions!

I'm not blogging this week, for a very nice reason. I am recovering from a trip to the theatre last week - my first time out of the house for over a year!

As always, I never do things by halves: this week I am speaking at our Quaker Quest evening on Quaker Worship. I was so pleased to be asked, and I am really looking forward to it. I know I will be shattered afterwards, so I'm announcing now that there will be no blog entry next week either.

Accounts of my expeditions will be forthcoming as soon as I can write them - plus a new pattern :)

A change for the better

Last week I wrote to all of the publications for which I have designed in the past, and confirmed that I will no longer be designing for print. I stopped submitting stuff a while ago, to see how it went, and now I know I will not be going back.

I have had a blast learning new techniques, and following other people's patterns. I'm getting more and more confident with my lace knitting, and now that I am choosing my own projects, I can knit what I want, when I want to - like my patch of garter stitch scarves a couple of weeks back.

Designing was interesting, and it was always a buzz to see my stuff in print, but working for magazines in that way is quite restrictive. You have to design what will sell in the mainstream, often using fibres and colours that have been chosen for you, and to a deadline. Then there's all the maths in the pattern-writing!

On the other hand, I've enjoyed putting patterns up here, and logging them into Ravelry, where I get instant feedback. I get so excited when someone favourites or queues one of my designs, and if one actually gets made, well - that makes my week!

I couldn't stop designing even if I wanted to. I get all kinds of ideas from the smallest of things. I've tried magazines, and it's been fascinating. But now I think I need a little more flexibility. There are lots of new projects in my head - so watch this space...

Progress!

This is actually an outdated photo - it shows the shawl as it was at around 30% done. It is now 58% done (row 147 completed, which makes 22,355 stitches in total).

I can't get over how quickly it's growing! As one of my friends said, things always seem to go quicker the second time you knit them, and of course I'm using a slightly bigger needle (5mm instead of 4.5mm).

I am now at the end of the variegated wool, and I have to wait for the plain, toning wool to be dyed. I need another 100g to complete the last few rows of the body, and the lace border.

The colours are actually brighter than they are in this photo. It's also difficult to see the shape, because it was taken mid-row (I'm using circs, working back and forth) - but I had to catch the Beamish Boy as he was passing, and ask him to take the shot before he got involved in something else!

Damned lies and statistics

Thanks to the shawl knitalong on the UK RAK group on Ravelry, I have started the shawl for Mum's Christmas present! By the time I had done half a dozen of the garter stitch scarves, I was just about ready for a sea of stocking stitch, which is handy, as that's what this shawl pattern starts with.

The beautiful green/blue/deep yellow wool is knitting up beautifully, as I would expect from a Yummy Yarn. If I remember, I must get the Beamish Boy to do a photo...

He's also done me a spiffy spreadsheet which shows, for each row, how many stitches I should have, how many stitches I have done in total so far, and what percentage of the way through the shawl I am. (I can't explain how to do one of these for yourself, because everything I once knew about Excel is now mush at the back of my brain, but the formulae will be quite simple.)

For example, I have just completed row 92. I have indeed got the correct number of stitches - 187 - and this means I have completed 8,934 stitches so far!

Sadly, it also means I have completed only 23%. Hmm. Maybe I was happier not knowing ;)

Slowly back to normal

After a couple of days in which I could not knit at all - aaagggghhhh! - I have spent the rest of the week recuperating and knitting endless garter stitch scarves.

I had promised some scarves to a charity that a friend works for, and they proved to be the exact thing I wanted to knit. There is something so calming about repetitive garter stitch, and it soothed me back to my usual self. I was just finishing the final one on Sunday when I felt myself start to feel positively about casting on my mother's Christmas shawl (I'm making her the same pattern as I used for my Raspberry Ruffles shawl, but in sea-greens and dull yellows - just beautiful yarn!).

It really gives me a boost to know that my bad turn has meant there will be six warm necks in Newcastle this winter :)