Knitting Bricks

I've been obsessed with red brick recently. This is handy, because Belfast is full of it, so I am often to be spotted loitering around the Springfield Road taking crap photos of walls. Knitting one seems like the only sensible thing to do, so I've gone through the whole Get Knitted website looking for vaguely brickish, worsted weight wool. The dark, mottled skein is a shade of Cascade 220 Paints that made me squee in an empty house due to its worn-cement-like properties. Having measured several bricks I've gone with 9" by 3" oblongs, which I will knit in between other projects in various non-curling stitch patterns. By next winter I should have enough for either a blanket sized wall, or a wall sized blanket.

Big Bang Bag

Finished! I'm surprised how well this turned out. The only glitches were when I forgot to pay attention to the direction of the print, and when I completely ignored one step of the instructions in the mistaken belief that I could do it at a later stage. All fixable or bodgeable, and I won't do that again. The tutorial is by gloriana, at http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=91070.0. I added an extra inch of width to the straps because they looked cuter that way. The bag feels sturdy and I'm wondering how the pattern might be adapted to make a knitting bag...

Not Knitting

My room has nearly as much sewing stuff in it as knitting stuff, though I've never been a sewer. When my granny died I inherited not only her vast haystack of knitting needles and the family button collection but two large wooden sewing boxes, full of things that are bound to come in handy at some point and things whose original meanings are too mysterious for me to ever get rid of them. The way unexpected objects (like a dried flower, a tiny photo of a round tower, a retirement card and rosary beads, to give a small sample) are scattered through all the zips and lace and spools of thread, as well as the dangerous-looking cigarette burns which adorn everything, are too characteristic of their original owner to be appreciated by anyone else, and there is no way I could chuck them out. They do take up quite a lot of precious space, though, which is annoying in something I never use. So...I started getting an unfamiliar urge to sew. I found myself amassing material, with no idea what to do with it. I think the thought of fabric you don't have to construct from scratch gains a certain appeal for knitters and spinners after a while. And with no-one else in the house, there is plenty of space for me to play with my favourite charity shop purchase ever, my Vickers hand-operated sewing machine. I do have Granny's modern one, but I can't find the cable, and it's just so much more fun working with this.


Isn't it gorgeous? It's in far from perfect condition, with lots of wear and tear to the case, but it works perfectly. These were produced in the inter-war years in Britain (copying a German firm's design, apparently) by the company better known for making the Spitfire.

It's got a draper's label on it, so it must have been used pretty heavily. I'm really impressed with how smooth and easy it is to use. I'm making a reversible tote bag from a tutorial I found on craftster. It's taking ages, partly because as a knitter I'm not used to making irreversible decisions and I have to do a lot of checking and pondering between stages. I've just got the straps and bottom to sew up. I say 'just'...yes, I will be up all night. And the 'using the sewing stuff' plan seems to have turned into an 'acquire more sewing stuff' mission. Oh well.

Yum

I finally got a set of the Knitpicks Harmony Wood Options needles which I've been slavering over for months. They are so pretty I can't resist swatching something suitably colourful, leaving my boring black project languishing with just a few rows to go.

I can't believe that some of my yarn is the handspun fix of the week at www.yarnmuseum.com. I know they don't refuse submissions, but it seems crazy that among all those fantastic photos of incredible yarn made by people with loads of expertise is my dodgy snap of my Christmas spinning, done with more enthusiasm than skill. Yay!

Blocking the (Pi)ney Path shawl

Over Christmas I finished the bloody great leafy lacy Pi shawl I first began a couple of years ago. Finished knitting it, that is. I'd never thought much about blocking it. I'd never made anything this big and lacy before, so it had never come to my attention that blocking pins/wires are unobtainable in Ireland and hugely expensive elsewhere. It had also never occurred to me quite what a pain in the ass the whole process could be. I don't know how much easier the proper equipment would have made it - not very, probably, given that the shawl is A) circular and B) bordered with approximately one billion little leaves. I made a trip to my parents' house, as mine doesn't have a big enough patch of carpet, and spent an evening knee deep in pins. It was not fun. It did work, just about, though I would give the border leaves a wee steam with an iron if I could be arsed.