The Knitter of the Woeful Figure

Rainy day fibre

2010-01-30T17:35:00.002Z

I've been hanging on to this incredible fibre from Limegreenjelly for ages, stroking it gently and demanding that passers-by admire it. If I stroked it much more it was going to felt, so I've started a 3-ply that should mix all the colours up surprisingly.

The photos wash it out a lot, as usual. It's got just about every colour I can think of somewhere in it but they all look perfectly suited in real life. If I tried dyeing anything like that it would end up muddy brown, but these spots of colour only blend together in interesting ways where they meet. Limegreenjelly is a genius and I MUST HAVE MORE.

Now that I'm spinning up the cashmere/merino/silk, the top petting fibre spot is taken by a precious 20g of Vicuna. It was Wingham Wool Work's subscriber offer this month and I couldn't resist seeing what it was like. It feels barely-there and buttery like cashmere, but more solid at the same time. Yum!

What has happened to me?

2009-12-11T14:19:00.000Z

As the year of reluctantly-non-selfish knitting draws to a close, I'm very happily knitting a Christmas present for my brother. This is not like me at all - deadline knitting! - but it's something I've been wanting to make for years, and I'm absolutely loving it so far. When you notice that an idea you've toyed with for ages perfectly matches yarn you happen to have lying around, you might as well give up and cast on. I've lost my camera so no photies yet, but it's a very, very silly hat to add to the silly hat collection that the male members of my family cultivate. It involves various fair isle patterns combined to represent my brother's (and my father's) favourite things, and the landscape around the family home. Some wavy, sea-like bits are near the brim, followed by a section of prancing people, then some trees, then some mountains at the top. I imagine a pompom or three might be called for.

Mmmmmoebius

2009-11-06T13:04:00.000Z

I'm facing another long dark weekend of the soul (why did I ever think a PhD sounded fun?) but I'm knitting a handspun cashmere moebius, so all is well.

Temptation

2009-10-21T00:38:00.002+01:00

My PhD is at one of those pivotal moments when I could finish it in a frenzied whirl of activity punctuated only by a minor nervous breakdown, or meander halfheartedly along indefinitely, losing the will to live. Therefore, as every second with both hands on the keyboard is vital, I am utterly consumed with the desire to knit. Or spin. Or continue my very important research into looms.

I finally finished and handed over the gloves that nearly put me off knitting entirely, failing completely to photograph them beforehand. Next time I see the guy I will insist on the full photoshoot. I'm now a few rows from finishing a pair of socks I foolishly promised a friend, so the freedom to make whatever the hell I like is beckoning. To my surprise, what I want to knit is a pattern! I've started the Ysolde's Damson shawl in handspun and it's heaven. The pattern is just perfect, and though I wasn't at all happy with the yarn, it's knitting up into something much prettier than the skein. If I ever see daylight again I'll snap it while I can.

The above picture is some merino/silk from World of Wool in their Virgo colourway that I made into a bouncy 2-ply to keep me sane amidst the structured knitting. A guy who just finished his PhD (called Gordon Ramsey, much nicer than the chef) thought of a great definition of work he told us the other day: 'Work is playing by someone else's rules'. So true of knitting!

Yarnharlot scarf

2009-08-27T18:17:00.003+01:00

This is the one row handspun scarf made from the purple cashmere in the last post, with its ends still waiting to be woven in as usual. It's satisfyingly long and swingy, and was great fun to knit. The pattern is perfect for out-and-about or TV knitting.

Exhibit B

2009-08-24T19:17:00.008+01:00

I spun up the fibre club purple cashmere. I love the subtly wavering colours (in between the two photos as usual), but the fibre had somehow got a bit mangled, either in the dyeing process or due to less-than-perfect storage conditions since I got it. It was extremely difficult to draft at first, so I recarded it with hand cards. This made it spinnable, but I don't have fine enough cards to do a good job on cashmere, so it was still a challenge, and the singles were pretty dodgy in places. It came in two seperate bags, so 2-ply was the obvious choice.

I've just finished knitting it up into Yarnharlot's One Row Handspun Scarf, which is waiting to be blocked into readiness for its close-up. This pattern was perfect for the unintentionally irregular yarn, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. I'm amused that I've produced something that will be worn to death out of yarn I wasn't thrilled about, while more successful handspun has sat on my shelves for months waiting for an appropriately perfect project. It's nice to have a couple of skeins in reserve for when a knitting treat is called for, like always having a pile of unread books in case of emergency, but I'll have to start using them before it gets cold enough to swaddle one's extremities in exotic fibres.

The loom obsession is only getting worse. I'm leaning toward the 20" Schacht Flip this week ;)

Exhibit A

2009-08-24T18:54:00.003+01:00

I gave up on locating my charger and bought bad batteries to produce some evidence of stuff being made into other stuff.

I bought some Posy Toes Bamboo Sock fibre from a fellow Raveller. It was exactly my colours in person, deep blue and green and magenta-ish purple. It came in three identical batts, perfect for 3-ply. This is one of them:

I tried a fractal-ish technique, spinning one single with short colour repeats and two with long ones. When I plied them together it was obvious that it would take much more exact spinning than mine to make a perfect repeating pattern this way in a 3-ply, but I love the way it turned out. It's nice round solid yarn, and too pretty to be worn out by my feet, so I think it will end up as fingerless gloves eventually.

Ahem

2009-08-18T12:41:00.000+01:00

I've been knitting and spinning my arse off, but without much in the way of documentation. I just can't seem to get a camera, batteries, natural light and yarniness in the same place at the same time. Two developments need recording, however:

* I am never knitting anything for anyone else ever again (with exceptions for babies and unsolicited surprises - and one unwisely promised pair of socks). I am reaffirming my Selfish Knitter status because an uncharacteristic run of knitting stuff for other people (from patterns!) has given me a chilling glimpse of what it would be like to be put off knitting completely. I'm a messer, not a planner, and I need a bit of greed and a lot of curiosity to get me going.

* It's finally happened. I was pottering about on Ebay the other day, and found myself idly looking at looms. This led to a little foray into the rigid heddle group on Ravelry, and the gradual admission that I would like to learn to weave. I suspected this would happen one day but I never had the slightest interest before - it's like some crafty version of the fabled biological clock. The Ashford Knitters' Loom looks like somewhere to start. Santa Claus might chip in...

2009-06-18T12:38:00.003+01:00

With days to go to the big scary deadline, and an inconveniently unmissable gig to fit in before then, I just couldn't resist plying the pink cashmere I finished spinning last week.

I think this is the happiest I have been with my plying so far. I was afraid I was putting in far too much twist, but cashmere's so short it really needs it, and after some hot soapy abuse it turned out just how I wanted it. As usual, my camera is not cooperating with anything vaguely red. It's actually more salmon and less Barbie.

I fixed my wheel! Finally! I worked out a way to undo my own stupidity. I had not-entirely-intentionally superglued my folding Lendrum upright, and couldn't work out a way to get the acetone which would dissolve the glue behind the wooden knob into the depths of the metal embedded screw. Just a few months of thinking, some cotton wool, nail varnish remover and cursing later, it's all working perfectly and I feel marginally less of an idiot. Yay!

Any excuse!

2009-06-15T22:47:00.002+01:00

I'm going to do the Tour de Fleece this year, to move some of the spinning stash into the knitting stash and try out some new things. I want to experiment with cabled yarn, coils, corespun and general tomfoolery, but I have a hunch I'll revert to fingering weight 2 or 3 ply as soon as my mind wanders.

Knitting-wise, I'm doing another uncharacteristic gift project. Its uncharacteristic-ness is probably why it's taking so long. It's blue and yellow and fine, but not quite my cup of tea, and I'm just not good at knitting things I don't urgently want. Especially as my whole thesis needs to be drafted by a date so close that I won't even type it because seeing it written down gives me the screaming abdabs. Whimper.

I am being tormented by thoughts of a second spinning wheel. I chose the Lendrum three years ago mainly because it seemed versatile enough to do just about anything, so that I'd never need another wheel. That's pretty much true, but I didn't realise then how much I would want one. Imagine being able to have two projects on the go at once, without messing about with bobbins and fliers all the time! Surely a wee secondhand something or other wouldn't hurt?

Tons of fibre, too little time

2009-06-02T15:21:00.003+01:00

This month's utterly fabulous Fyberspates fibre club arrived today, 'Scrumptious' merino/silk seen above on the left, beside the last two months' packages, space dyed silk and cashmere. All so gorgeous that I can't bring myself to spin any of them until I can really sit and spin all day. I love this club so much!

It's been startlingly good weather here (Sunshine! For several whole consecutive days!) which is worse than wasted on me. I've been trapped indoors by my urgent need to spend 16 hours a day fretting about my PhD, interspersed with a few moments' meaningful work on it. I've also, typically, come out in a fairly unsightly and extremely beeping irritating rash all over my face and neck, which means avoiding sunlight and waiting patiently for it to go away until next time I come into contact with whatever of the million possible substances set it off. In short, I'm in a foul mood. So I've been dyeing.

Above: 100g humbug Shetland, dyed in plain red, to give a marled effect.
Below: the same Shetland, stuck in the leftover dye stock with some blue mixed in.

This is some of the wonderful cashmere I got for Christmas, which I recklessly stuck in the third-hand leftover dyestock. (It is Make Do and Mend season, after all!) I'm delighted with the coral colour it turned out, a serendipitous surprise.

Finished the plain socks, with wedge toes, flap heels, and picot bind-off.

Tea, fish, feet, fluff and Florence

2009-05-19T13:38:00.002+01:00

I've been knitting loads, but not finishing or photographing very much. Unusually for me, I've been working on a couple of things for other people. I finally finished a wee thing I promised a friend an embarrassingly long time ago. I used some of the grey Donegal Tweed with multicolour flecks, held double, to make a restrained, pompom-free teacosy. She's an understated sort of woman, so my natural tendencies towards the day-glo, froufrou end of things were reined in! I'll have to photograph it in situ next time I visit.

I've also been collaborating with a new knitter and soon to be new mother on a tessellating fish baby blanket, using the Recipe for Fish version from Knitting Arrows (http://knittingarrows.blogspot.com/2006/04/fish-return.html). She's doing amazingly well! It's not the easiest first project but it's so cute, and I think making one little fish at a time is more satisfying than plugging away for years of your life on an endless garter stitch scarf. My friend picked out really beautiful colours for it, so I can't wait to see it completed - which should make the sewing up part (!) less annoying.

I'm nearly finished some plain, easy, knitting-in-the-office-while-trawling-JSTOR socks for myself in orange variegated Trekking. They've put me in a sockish mood again, which I've just fuelled with this lovely stuff from Gaiety Girl (http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5148486):

I can't wait to get started on it! I might do something a bit more swanky with this - I love cables in semi-solids.

There has also been a fair amount of spinning and drumcarder related shenannigans going on. Unfortunately, it seems that my nonexistent camera skills and bogstandard camera are just not up to the job of photographing batts. The images don't look like anything to do with the originals at all! If you kind of squint at these two you can almost get a vague idea of what some of the resulting handspun is like, but the colours are completely off. Really, it's an overall deep purple made up of rich navy, charcoal grey and magenta-ish purple, with the odd tiny sprinkle of green carded in. It's got everything but the kitchen sink in it. Merino, alpaca (normal and baby), mohair, silk and sparkle.

Sadly, I will not be going to Woolfest this year after all, because I've got a place on a summer school in political anthropology...in Italy! Obviously I'm researching wool shops in Florence. Slightly scared by just how hot it's likely to be there in July, but it should be an adventure.

Drum carder

2009-03-29T23:38:00.003+01:00

Ta da! After much deliberating, I went for a second-hand Louet from an Ebay seller in Holland. I'm chuffed with it, not least because I think even I should have a hard time breaking this thing.

I'm still in the early stages of working out what the hell one does with it, but I can see the bulk of my fibre stash being batted in no time.

After spinning lots of commercially combed top, spinning from batts is taking a bit of retraining, but it's starting to feel OK. I'm booked into the 'using a drum carder' class at Woolfest, which should be fun.

Fyberspates mohair, 2 ply

2009-03-29T23:13:00.004+01:00

I ended up with about 600m of this:

Given the amount of time it took me to work that rough number out, I should really devise a better system than measuring my niddy-noddy and then counting 490ish strands of yarn.

I got 100g onto each bobbin, so I was delighted to have the plying head and be able to make one great big joinless skein.

I'm not sure what to do with it. An open, fluffy rectangular shawl in a simple lace pattern seems the obvious thing to do, but I'm having reckless thoughts of something more garmenty. A fluffy boobholder (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/minisweater---boobholder)would be several steps too far on me, but a fluffy shrug type thing might be ok.

Fyberspates mohair, roving to singles

2009-03-29T22:49:00.003+01:00

The March installment of the Fyberspates luxury fibre club was soft, soft mohair. Jen generously doubled up the quantity because it was posted a bit late, which meant 200g of gorgeousness arrived.

I'd never spun mohair before, apart from a few locks I experimented with fairly unsuccessfully ages ago. This stuff felt much less stiff, and after trying out a few samples I ended up spinning it with a short forward draw, letting the twist into the drafting area, which makes it...consults Judith McKenzie McCuin...semi-woolen. This meant making a weird rolling motion with my thumb and forefinger every time I treadled, which was great fun for the first 150gm or so. After that, the appeal of longdraw became irritatingly apparent. It was a lovely spin overall, though, because the fibre felt great and the colour changes were hypnotic. The colours were far more delicate than anything I would have picked myself, but to my surprise, I fell in obsessive love with them as I spun. This is evident from the ridiculous number of pictures I took of this yarn at all stages. Here is a small selection of the 'singles' pictures:

Perfect knitting bag for £7.99!

2009-03-18T22:03:00.004Z

A couple of friends and I spent last Friday evening in IKEA. No amount of trolley-related humour could conceal how very, very old this made us feel. It was well worth the doomladen sense of approaching middle age, though, because I left with not only bedclothes even brighter than the last ones, a feat I'd thought impossible (They burn the early morning eyes! I love them!), but also my perfect knitting bag. It's a rigid thing presumably meant for cosmetics:

...and it has not only wee pockets...

...but elastic bits for needles! I might tack some of them down to make narrower loops for straights.

It's just the right size for a couple of skeins plus a small to medium project, and is hard enough to keep your work unsquished.

2009-03-06T15:29:00.003Z

I don't know why I've never tried spinning big and thick and thin before. It seemed like I should make the most of the jumbo/plying head, so I carded up some of the purple merino from the mixed colour bags I got from Wingham Wool Work. Unfortunately, I still find it all too easy to spin unevenly, but I'm terrible at spinning thick. No matter what I intend to do, my singles usually revert to a default setting of teeny. The jumbo head stopped this, and using the slowest whorl, I filled up the bobbin with big, fat, juicy, slubby yarn in what felt like about three seconds flat. It was so much fun! I now urgently need to do lots more of this.

I want to ply it with a contrastingly tiny, tightly-spun single though, so I got out the fast flyer and spun some of the dark purple roving from the end, on the fastest whorl, in a worsted one treadle/one draft style, which bores me to tears. I can't ply them together yet because I have a cunning plan involving some things to string onto the thin single, which are in the post. I'm desperate to get back to the big thick spinning, but I've only got one jumbo bobbin, which is full of the purple stuff, so I've just been carding up some more merino roving into rolags so that as soon as the postman does his stuff I can get right to it.

These bits of roving are becoming the rolags below. The book that can be seen is another reason I haven't left the house today. It's The Intentional Spinner by Judith McKenzie McCuin, and it's incredible. I also just received Deb Menz's Colour in Spinning, which is even better than everyone says it is. I'm dodging back and forth between the two books, getting more gobsmacked and awestruck each time. I do realise that spending today like this means spending Sunday up to my oxters in thesis, but I'm powerless to resist.

This is why I have to acquire a drum carder, even if it means eating nothing but Tesco 8p noodles for months. (Again...)

Steamin

2009-03-06T14:59:00.002Z

I got a cheap steamer off Ebay for dyeing. The stock pot works fine but I was tempted by the thought of three tiers. I wrapped three damp lumps of carded wool and silk from Wingham in clingfilm, with vinegar and acid dyes inside each parcel, stuck one on each level and steamed them for an hour. It worked OK, though next time I'll turn down the temperature or only do half an hour, as the results seemed a bit overcooked. I made one bit into this woolen-spun, fuzzy two-ply:

I wanted to practice chain-plying, so had a go with the green/blue bit:

I'm not sure how to chain-ply evenly. When I'm plying normally I count the treadles over a particular length of yarn, but when both my hands are moving about to pull each loop through the next I don't have a clear idea how much twist I'm putting in.

Free Wool!

2009-02-23T13:22:00.002Z

Two friends of my mother live in Donegal, near Kilcarra, where a certain Donegal Tweed is produced. They know that I knit, and by some mysterious means they have presented me with a huge goody bag of factory offcuts. I couldn't believe it when my mother handed it over. It arrived in various enormous balls, many with more than one colour in them, so I unwrapped each one and wound them separately. Thank God I just got a second-hand ball winder, because even with that, it took a while. I'm stunned by all the great colours. There's enough of at least the red, and maybe something else, to make a whole jumper for me, and there's a selection of sizeable bits of all sorts of colours that can be combined. I feel some experimentation coming on. It's all the same weight, aranish.

There is some of it I have to admit I'll never knit, due to my well documented beige-o-phobia, so it's free to whoever wants it. I can bring it to Stitch n Bitch on Wednesday if anyone's interested. It's really nice stuff, with subtle little flecks, but it would have a better home with someone whose taste runs more to Mason-Dixon Knitting and less towards Coco the Clown. There's a full carrier bag of it, in a brownish khaki, a couple of shades of grey, cream and a wee totey bit of black. There are quite a lot of joins in it, as these are remnants, but they're easily joined with a spit splice since it's wool.

Any takers?

A lost cause

2009-02-08T17:29:00.003Z

I have a terrifyingly huge amount of work to do this week. Today was a chance to make a tiny dent in it, but cashmere intervened. I finished a scarf in my handspun cashmere the other day. I now recognise that this gave me a window in which to Step Away From the Knitting. I did not. I cast on a fingerless glove in the remaining yarn. I was on a Stitch n Bitch trip to the Grand Opera House to see the ballet Sleeping Beauty, and it felt wrong - wrong, I tells ye! - to let the event pass without knitting anything. With reckless disregard for swatching, I cast on what looked like enough stitches to get round my knuckles and started 3 by 3 rib. Today I found that it fit, which unheard-of miracle meant that I owed the glove gods a gusset and thumb. Which meant I would be able to relax and get on with my life if only I finished the decreases across the palm and got down to the simple cuff. I've now done that, with zero frogging, and it all fits. Trying it on to make sure it fits, though, makes the completion of the cuff and the repetition of the whole process EXTREMELY URGENT. The feeling of hands surrounded in this stuff makes my dream of the cashmere body stocking seem like something Obama should be funding massive research into, never mind climate change, global skintness and multiple wars. Fibrous stimulus. Mmmm.

I'm now alternately hyperventilating about the ridiculous number of difficult things I need to make myself do, and petting my own right hand, which immediately conquers both stress and willpower. No good will come of this.

Yarn of Maximum Pinkness

2009-02-03T13:05:00.003Z

I try to avoid the classic knitblog cat shots. I know I live in a grotty attic with three resident felines and a spinning wheel. I prefer to allow the rest of the world to imagine otherwise. Pong, however, has other ideas, and he will not be denied. The merest whisper of a camera lens and he's out menacing the wool.

I resolve to work round him.

I give up.

I put the precious yarn in what I deludedly believe is a place of safety.

I think calm thoughts of Newcastle.

Maximum Pinkness

2009-01-24T13:30:00.002Z

My first Fyberspates Luxury Fibre Club parcel arrived, containing this wonderful stuff. It's called Nef and arrived in a long length of roving that explodes into this incredible pom-pommy fluff when you break it. Lovely. It's 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk and 10% cashmere, and it feels it. I'm spinning it quite fine with the slowest whorl of the fast flyer, using my standard half-assed extended/long draw.

I've finished the LOL assortment, with a big skein of DKish two-ply. It's slightly over-plied - the hank wants to do a quarter turn - but I don't mind that because I much prefer the look of two-ply that teeters on the brink of overplying anyway. Which may be a sign I should do a nice round three-ply for a change...

Another parcel arrived from Wingham Wool Work, full of exciting stuff, but I can't photograph it at the moment as some activities are just incompatible with cats, and festooning the room with dozens of intriguing little bits of roving is asking for trouble.

My new favourite graffiti

2009-01-21T13:31:00.001Z

Ravelry rocks! (As if we didn't know...)

2009-01-15T17:49:00.007Z

I got a surprising message on Ravelry the other day from someone I don't know, now living in Germany. She had come across my profile while looking for a friend of hers and saw that I was doing research on the Gaeltacht Quarter in Belfast, so she messaged me to say that she'd visited the area I work on and was interested as she speaks Scottish gaelic. It was really cool to see the Scottish version written down - the extreme similarity is much more obvious to me when the two types of gaelic are written, rather than spoken. I love it when the whole internet seems like such a small world! I wasn't expecting to have a tiny bit of fieldwork pop up in my knitting universe. The knitted thesis rides again!

I was equally stunned with Ravelry's eerie tendency to coalesce all my favourite things when I realised that the Crossword Junkies group I belong to has a thread about murder mysteries, full of people who love knitting, and cryptic crosswords, and mystery stories, even more, potentially, than I do. That's a niche. I was trying to explain the existence of this thread within a group within a knitting-centric social networking site to my mother and ended up exclaiming 'I'm a subset of a subset of a niche', to which she replied with maternal weariness 'I know.'

Still fooling about with the LOL roving, having great fun making it do different stuff. I don't know what I'll end up making from it, something with lots of textures anyway. The colours change in ways I can't currently predict according to how it's spun and plied. I really need to get Deb Menz's book on Colour in Spinning to find out why. I'm terrible for book buying at the moment. It always feels more virtuous than other crafty expenditure.

LOL

2009-01-13T19:01:00.003Z

I got the carders out for the first time in ages last night, and had a go at something intentionally thick and thin for a change. I had some commercially dyed purple merino, some of which I'd already spun into a thin, tightly spun worsted single. I also had a length of merino tops I'd dyed bright orangey red, and another I'd dyed yellow. I love combinations of purple and orange - my friend points out that I should join the Orange Order - so I carded up the red and purple together, and the red and yellow together, and spun a very slubby single alternating them. I plied this with the thin purple single I already had. I love the bubbliness! This picture is from before I dunked it to set the twist, so once it dries it'll probably be a bit more subdued.

I was so chuffed with the colours I carded up the rest in the same way until I ran out of red.

I want to make small amounts of two or three different kinds of yarn from this, so now I'm spinning a more traditional, woolen-spun single, but trying to keep it a bit thicker than i usually spin because I want the colours to show up clearly. I'm not sure how I'll ply it - I may or may not have enough purple merino left. I've got some purple and some orange shiny thread that could work as well.

Yesterday I stumbled into Craftworld and bought various wee beads, bells and so on that might end up being spun into yarn. I've been looking through all the weird bits of sewing stuff I've had in my room since my Granny died, and finally seeing a use for some of the random bits of lace, trimming and fancy buttons. I've just cut the pad of my thumb quite badly on a tin can, though, so there will be an enforced pause in the spinning frenzy, which might be a good thing for my PhD! A classmate always jokes that I'm going to hand in my thesis in knitted form. I can just see my supervisor's stricken face as I proudly hand him a pile of ornate textiles...

Good Goat!

2009-01-11T14:24:00.002Z

This is desperately camera-shy yarn, which objects to being shoved into the tiny spot of natural light my attic room contains. Really, it's the colours of blackcurrant jam on toast, with little flashes of lighter strawberryish pink. The fibre emerged from the dyepot (my mother's old slowcooker) darker than I'd been aiming for, but I quite like it. In fact, it being cashmere, I want to fill a room with it and just roll around for a few days. Were I somehow to win the lottery I never enter, as soon as I'd done the good deeds and the sensible stuff, I'd be on the phone ordering a lorryload of cashmere for wallowing purposes. Mmm.

Jammy Divil

2009-01-10T20:52:00.004Z

Cashmere singles in jammy colours, waiting to be plied:

I'm knitting some SWTC bamboo yarn that's been long-term stash. Looks like some of it will remain so, because the yardage on this stuff is insane. I'm guessing a cardigan will take about 3.5 balls at this rate, and I've got at least eight. The top-down raglan construction from Barbara Walker's Knitting From the Top is comfortably familiar, but I'm having a wee wrangle with a lace pattern I want to make spread from the panel down the back.

I'm knitting in odd moments while I should be working, but I can't stop thinking about spinning for a second! Lexi Boeger's Intertwined just arrived in the post and my mind is officially blown. This might explain why my thesis-writing abilities have plummeted over the Christmas break. I've also successfully fixed a wobble in my Lendrum by taking the wheel off and putting it on again, the spinning version of the classic IT tech advice. This makes the wheel extra tempting,as well as giving me a totally unjustified sense of competence.

I'm making a valiant effort to safeguard the future of handspinning-related industries in these doomladen days by spending the grocery money on merino and niddy-noddys. There should be an exciting parcel from Wingham Wool Works in a few days...

Blogurrection!

2009-01-07T15:53:00.002Z

I hereby declare this blog revived. My room is knee-deep in various processes and projects, and I need to keep track of the tides of dye and fibre and yarn on something I can't lose or accidentally put through the wash.

I got the best Christmas present ever this year: a surprise 500g of dehaired cashmere tops in the post. 'Surprise' is an understatement. How the donor, uninitiated in the weird world of fibre, managed to track down the right stuff is a miracle for which I am truly grateful. The stuff is sex in a bag. It's kept me busy ever since.

My resolution for 2009 is one carried over, shamefully, from 2008. I need to get to the bloody spinning guild! Getting to Cultra with my wheel on a bus is impossible (extra impossible since I had a slight mishap with some superglue, of which more later) but I can take a spindle. It's just such a pain in the ass getting about on our craptastic public transport system, which operates on the assumption that all decent people are in bed by nine and there's no call for anyone to go anywhere but their mum's house for lunch and laundry on Sundays. I need to learn from real people though, and that's where they are, so Cultra it is.

Heaven

2008-08-04T13:50:00.003+01:00

In February I spent two days at Wingham Wool Works, which was so inspiring I didn't do anything (including this blog) but spin for several months. I just came across this photo on my computer and remembered why:

Ahhhhh.

All You Knit is Love

2008-03-25T00:48:00.004Z

I've just spent a week in Barcelona, which makes Belfast seem especially dull and cold. Thanks to some internet research, I found the wool shop All You Knit is Love, on Placa Llana (Llana means wool!), which is marked with this:

I like Barcelona.

The shop had lovely yarn I could have bought much more of, lots of inviting armchairs, friendly proprietors and two gorgeous little girls. If they hadn't shut for Easter I would have gone back for a third day running before we left, so it was probably just as well...

Knitting Bricks

2008-02-26T11:32:00.004Z

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

2008-02-22T14:00:00.005Z

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

2008-02-19T14:59:00.010Z

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

2008-02-10T15:59:00.001Z

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

2008-02-03T18:36:00.000Z

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.

Yarn Party

2008-01-31T13:14:00.000Z

The purple handspun has turned out as a real party yarn, with lots of sparkle, the kind of colour changes I just can't get my camera to capture, and the slight wonkiness that comes of being an inexperienced spinner but gives gorgeous textures when knitted up. I can't wait to knit this. I was about to cast on yet another scarf, but someone at Stitch 'n' Bitch suggested a wee short shrug, which would be much more appropriately festive.

Carders!

2008-01-28T15:24:00.000Z

I got my first carders a couple of weeks ago, and the possibilities for experimentation have been keeping me very busy. I'm using a purple merino, mixing some with mohair locks in navy, purple, pink and white, some with alpaca in blue or charcoal, and sprinkling some of all these mixtures with various sorts of angelina. I'm aiming for a 3-ply, to mix the colours up some more, and I've only got one single left to spin. The variation in fibres is keeping my fingers on their toes.

Flickr hates me

2008-01-28T14:38:00.000Z

I finally got a digital camera to replace the one that was burgled in the autumn, so I've been photographing like mad to update my notebook on Ravelry. Flickr, however, has decided it doesn't recognise any of the email addresses I'm aware I have, and since passwords and usernames can be resent or changed, but the tech support people are not going to send out an email address, I have no idea why. Without access to my Flickr account I can't get any pictures on Ravelry, so I'm sticking them on here instead.

I knitted from an actual pattern for once! For the first time since the Broad Street Mittens, in fact. I made the Urchin cap from Knitty, using some wonky old handspun and some gorgeous Colinette mohair. I noticed that all the different colours in these two yarns shaded into each other beautifully, so I held the mohair alongside the handspun during the short row bumpy sections of the hat and used the handspun on its own for the rest of it, including the border. With the pinks and reds it looks more like a sea anemone than a sea urchin, I reckon.

The hat from above and below, and me laughing at the friend I roped in to play photographer. It's hard to explain to a non-knitter why the hat is the focus of the photo, not the person.

Brrrr

2008-01-16T14:17:00.000Z

After a lot of experimentation, it became clear that the Christmas yarn wanted to be a round, bouncy 3-ply. This was a change from the rather stringy, worsted-ish 2-ply that I'd got used to spinning, and I'm pleased with the result, whose colours, as usual, don't really show in the photos. The fibre is a custom blend of 5 colours (greens and blues) of merino with a shot of white tencel, from Wingham Wool Work. It's begging to be knitted but I've no idea what to make, as the colour is a wee bit too harsh for me to wear near my face without looking both anaemic and jaundiced, which rules out a scarf or hat, at least for myself.

I also rustled up a hot water bottle cover while I was at home for Christmas. This has got plenty of use since, as we're having complicated problems with our oil tank, the simple upshot of which is that it's freezing in the house.

Santy Claws

2007-12-28T14:22:00.000Z

The scarf was not lost after all. It was buried in the mouldering mess of what is now my old house. I've moved to a room in a new house, shared with two nice women and two insanely cute cats. Unfortunately, these cats were plainly sheepdogs in a previous life, and they love nothing better than hunting down and interfering with wool.

Santa Claus brought me, as requested, loads of spinnable stuff from Wingham Wool Work. Here it is, and here am I, feeling just returning to my toes after the traditional Christmas day swim down by the harbour, which was every bit as cold as it sounds.

It turns out that Wingham Wool Work is only half an hour up the road from where my wee brother now lives, so I will be dropping in some time in the spring.

We was robbed

2007-09-25T10:37:00.000+01:00

We've been burgled, and the little so-and-sos took my digital camera, so no knitting pictures for some time. This is sad. However, I don't mind the camera being stolen half so much as I mind losing the Patons Jet multicoloured, garterlac scarf I had JUST FINISHED before I took it shopping and apparently abandoned it somewhere. I hope that some appreciative shop assistant or passer-by is wearing it, and it's not languishing, discarded in an alley. It was so pretty! Trying to be stoical about it, because the alternative is running round Belfast screaming 'Where's my scarf?'.

If alpaca grew out of my arse, I'd look snooty too

2007-08-25T19:00:00.000+01:00

Blogger does video! All is forgiven.

I'm almost halfway through the border of the piney path shawl. It's the most enjoyable knitting I've done in ages. Seeing each leaf appear is a little triumph, even when it's also time to think 'twenty down, fifty-one to go'. Now that some of the circle is off the needles, I'm starting to worry about whether it's big enough, but only blocking will tell.

Woolfest, Ravelry and Masochistic Knitting

2007-08-18T14:58:00.000+01:00

I realised as an obsessively diary-keeping child that there is nothing more boring to read than apologies for not having written in a while, so I won't bother with any of that. I have been spinning my ass off, and the gunmetal grey Gotland I got at Woolfest is looking very much like real yarn, which I am determined to knit rather than add to the pile of little handspun bundles of potential. As Dylan Moran says, stay away from your potential (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439553/).

So, Woolfest! It was thrilling. There were people doing all sorts of things I had only seen on the internet, so I am now at last convinced that there are real fibre people out there and the whole thing isn't an elaborate web-based hoax. Not only were there people, there were animals, including alpacas, the funkiest beasts on the planet. Their disdainful chewing motion was so funny I took loads of video of them. Blogger won't let me post it here, so a couple of randomly placed stills will have to do. Bugger Blogger.

The wonderful people at Ravelry have got through enough of the waiting list to let me in, and it is really impressive. I love being able to search for patterns and see so many finished creations, even though I'm a mostly patternless knitter. Being able to search so much blog material so easily makes a huge difference, and there are far more knitters near me than I thought, which is exciting. I've been very lazy about entering my projects, and I doubt I'll ever get round to them all. The one I've so far put in my notebook shows why - I get carried away when I start explaining why I made something the way I did, because I have my reasons and they are weird. They look even more weird when I write them down, so I need to explain more and more, and end up revealing far more about the workings of my mind than any description of EZ's brilliantly simple Pi shawl should really demand.

The shawl lies in a crumpled heap beside my laptop, being tinked for the millionth and, I vow, the last time. The thing is, I've frogged and tinked and sworn at this thing so many times that some strange part of me has started to enjoy it! I still hate the part when you are working out whether or not you need to rip it back, what you have done wrong and whether you can live with it. Once you've made the decision, though, there's a perverse pleasure in unravelling your mistake, however much time you spent making it, and setting off again towards the perfect completed object. That said, whatever I next cast on will be plain and straightforward. It will probably also bore me so much I never finish it.

2007-06-26T12:44:00.000+01:00

Lots of our stuff is still in boxes, but the dyeing and spinning equipment is out, and as Himself is away for a fortnight, the house is festooned with dripping roving. I've got hardly any left to dye, but that's perfect timing, as next weekend is Woolfest! (www.woolfest.com) It's still uncertain how I will get there, but any mode of transport should leave me enough money to buy some roving.

The idea of seeing other people spinning at last is extremely exciting. For all I know, I've been doing it all wrong. I am told by email lists that, as in knitting, the thing to remember is that there are no spinning police, but I'm hoping there's a spinning St John's Ambulance, ready to offer advice and assistance in emergencies.

Dyeing is so much fun I tend to get carried away. I'm slowly learning to restrain myself from chucking umpteen contrasting colours onto one small bit of roving, mainly by hissing under my breath It will turn out brown...It will turn out brown...

I've started experimenting with the hot pour method outlined in The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook, which is much less complicated than the cold pour technique I began with, and results in more interesting transitions between colours. I still get carried away, though - for instance, after spinning up the green single at the top, I needed something to ply it with, so started dyeing a grey/black potful of wool. However, simply adding different concentrations of black dye was too boring, so I ended up with the pink/purple/blue/grey single in the foreground above. Which would look crap against the green, so I had to dye and spin the slightly darker version of the same combination below. I still have that green to deal with, but I can't wait to ply these two together.

Wonky wool works!

2007-05-30T08:59:00.000+01:00

The Lendrum and I have been getting to know each other. We've reached a compromise where I get very gradually better, while the Lendrum throws up a sudden shock every now and again to keep me on my toes. I'm having to restrain myself from getting the dyeing equipment out and making a big dripping mess, because we are moving house (finally!) the day after tomorrow, and if I add to the resulting chaos any more, I may have to move alone.

Here's some hard-to-photograph handspun, random blues and greens with the odd bit of purple, because a length of roving without a bit of purple seems like a waste to me. This is the first handspun I've ever actually knitted into something. All the rest seemed too precious; now I know I can make more, and better. A lot better! Knitting it really shows you how it needs to be different - in this case, it could do with being plied about half as much again, at least.

Still, it works. Its lumpiness looks pretty good in the intentional lumpiness of a garter feather and fan stitch scarf. The random colours are fun to knit, too, especially when you should really be packing and cleaning.

Come live with me and be my Lendrum

2007-04-18T13:59:00.000+01:00

...and we will all the pleasures prove. It's here! It got here on Wednesday, 11/04/07, so it shares my father's birthday. I am totally in love with it, which is just as well - buying the most expensive item of your life, then waiting four months for it to arrive, is nervewracking. I'd never even seen a spinning wheel 'in the flesh' before. Would it cooperate with my cackhanded efforts? Would it turn into a three-foot wooden reproach, lurking in the living room, festooned with woolly tangles and mocking my recklessness in the pursuit of craft? Nah.

It's amazing. It's so much fun the rest of my life is threatening to disappear into a whirling vortex of wheel. Every stage of the process is so pretty. The things that happen to colours when you spin them with other colours are beautiful and always surprising. The camera has of course run out of batteries, so the parade of ever-less-lumpen skeins will have to wait. The wheel makes roving disappear really fast when you're used to a spindle. I'll have to get dying again.

Fungus the Bogeyman

2007-04-01T14:31:00.000+01:00

Filth, filth, filth. Fungus the Bogeyman may have left too deep an impression on my infant mind. We are trying to get up the momentum to move house, which means digging ourselves out of our filthy flat and rendering it fit for inspection by landlords and their minions. We are a pair of mucky pups, and much of the mess is due to our minimal cleaning regime, but the level of stomach-churning squalor around us is also due to the sponge-like quality of this building, which is why we are leaving. There are some things that just should not be inside. Such as these:

Wheeeee!

2007-03-07T20:40:00.000Z

The big green cardigan is finished. It fits, I love it and I may never, ever take it off. Everything else around me is in squalid wool-strewn confusion, after my week-long wrestling match with the button band from hell, but the jumper is as close to perfect as I'm likely to get. (Note to self - next time you pick up large numbers of stitches in a visible place, do it the right way round so it doesn't create an inappropriate purl row.) I can't believe it's actually finished, because the finishing process took so long - the bulk of the actual knitting was done in a couple of weeks. I'm flushed with success, flu-related fever and the fact that I'm wearing a bloody great woolly cardigan with the hood up. Now to slump in front of the TV knitting a sock and dreaming up the next jumper.

And the Spring Knitty is finally here! O frabtious day.

New wool, woo hoo, mess

2007-02-28T11:34:00.000Z

I wandered into a half price sale in the single local wool shop the other day, and actually found some stuff I wanted. Ended up with 550gm Patons Fusion in a red/pink/purple colourway, and 100gm of the same stuff in blueish mixtures. It's 45% acrylic, 55% wool, which is more acrylic than I'd usually buy but for 1.50 a ball it's pretty damn good. I'm thinking of a sideways-knit sleeveless jumper with the red stuff, and a bag or hot-water-bottle cover with the blue.

Also, I got 300gm of this 70% wool, 30% alpaca multicoloured stuff which is fabulous! I've no idea what it will be, but I love it.

Now I've got to find somewhere to put it. I used to feel quite smug about the STABLE (Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy) people whose garages and attics are lined with vacuum bags and storage boxes of unused yarn, as being a wool snob with no money I never had a problem with space. However, what with spinning, dyeing, Ebay, and funding, my poor boyfriend has to live with this:

Urrgh.

Radioactive-snot-coloured cardigan

2007-02-26T16:55:00.000Z

This is nearly a cardigan, the first fruit of my new year's resolution to make this the year I finish jumpers. This is becoming urgent, as I find myself not buying knitted jumpers because they're not up to knitterly standards, but not producing them myself either, and in our freezing flat you need a lot of woolly layers.

I did little cables up the middle of the front, back and sleeves, and along the raglan decrease lines. With a bit of tinkering these end up in a 4 by 2 rib pattern, which continues up into what's going to be the hood.
The violently green shade of Rowanspun Aran, with little specks of darker green and orange, looks like the product of some very ill person's sinuses, but in a good way... Radioactive snot colour is surprisingly fetching on pasty redheads.

Big pink sock

2007-02-25T18:53:00.000Z

Me and the man went to Amsterdam for a few blissful days. I couldn't face going without knitting, but neither could I face lugging around 700gm of cardigan, so it was out with the Christmas present sock yarn (Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Bittersweet) and on with some travel knitting.

Here's a short row toe, nestling beside a glass of tea.

I now realise that, meaning to take holiday photos with knitting in them, I've actually taken photos of my knitting and left Amsterdam out of shot! It's like my dad taking millions of photos of deserted mountainsides that mean nothing to non-climbers.

This is my first afterthought heel.

Next time I do these I'll try decreasing more slowly, to make a deeper heel. This one fits OK but I prefer the heel part to cover more of my foot, and I think it would wear better that way, too.

I did the leg in a double eyelet rib, which makes the finished sock stay up really well, finished off with a bit of plainer rib at the top.

I had the usual trouble casting off loosely enough, but after a few attempts with different techniques and needles, the sock no longer threatens my circulation.

Yay! Halfway there, but back to the cardigan...

I am not the only knitter of things other than pastel baby clothes in Northern Ireland

2007-02-22T15:48:00.000Z

This is something I tell myself a lot, in moments when my beloved's sweet but unconvincing attempts at enthusiasm about my latest masterpiece/experiment/discovery are not enough. Usually, I tell myself 'I am not the only knitter of things other than pastel baby clothes in Northern Ireland. There's Anna as well, and she's bolshie enough to count for a few'. Now, however, I am spinning round the office on my twirly chair with excitement, for not only does yarnmonkey (http://yarn-monkey.blogspot.com) live in Belfast, she is part of a Stitch n Bitch-type knitting group that just started here. So our only-gay-in-the-village days may be over.

Dye Happy

2007-02-09T15:50:00.000Z

I have roving dyed in my kitchen that doesn't look too mangled, and a digital camera that works! My cup runneth over.

This is some of the Bluefaced Leicester I got for Christmas, after some encounters with Jacquard acid dyes. There's 45gm of the first one, which came out in colours I didn't mean to use at all, but I like surprises! I doubt I'll ever know enough about dyeing to get more than semi-predictable results, but seeing how it comes out is the most exciting part so I'm happy to muddle along serendipitously.

There's 95gm of this one, which is beautiful. I have to put it somewhere out of the way before I pet it to death. The greens are stronger and bluer than in the photo. I can't wait to spin it, but I don't want to start it until the Bosworth arrives. I might ply it with a plain purple single.

By the time the Bosworth gets here, something even more exciting might have arrived. I did it...I ordered a Lendrum. As soon as a long, inefficient chain of postal fairies do their mysterious work, which may take months, I will have a wheel. Right now, I just have the fast flyer that goes with it, sitting on my desk looking enticing.

Spinning and Stench

2007-01-10T15:17:00.000Z

I would never have believed spinning could be this addictive. Until recently I thought of it as an interesting, but not very important, adjunct to knitting. Now I'm sitting in the office I'm meant to be doing Big Girl's Work in, unable to concentrate on the pile of books in front of me because in my mind, I'm drafting. ALL THE TIME.

A professor recently asked me where in the world I would like to do research, if I could go anywhere. "Somewhere in the Andes" sounded like a sensible anthropologist's answer, until I explained that the attraction was the spinning and knitting. What a dream job that would be.

I dyed roving for the first time last night. It was so much fun, like fingerpainting in primary school. I did it in the microwave because I didn't have the right equipment for other methods. The colours came out much better than I expected, but there is one huge drawback...this roving STINKS. I don't know if it's an unavoidable side-effect of acid dyes, or whether it's to do with the microwave technique, but I now have two beautiful bits of fibre that give off a pungent, lingering chemical stench, like the smell of depilatory cream but more potent. Bad.

It has been Christmas! It will be New Year!

2006-12-30T21:40:00.000Z

Santa brought me a great big bag of fluff. It was intended to be used in conjunction with a Bosworth Midi spindle, but the supplier emailed days before Christmas to say they wouldn't actually have any until the middle of January. This would not have been so bad if I had thought to bring my wee crap plywood-and-cup-hook spindle down to my parents' house, but as it was I found myself fibre-rich and spindleless, a situation whose horror no-one unfamiliar with the addictive qualities of fluff-related activities can appreciate. The itching fingers, the wandering mind, the endless poignant twirling of the hair...

But enough of that. Since I got home I've been banishing the traumatic memory in a tornado of Bluefaced Leicester. Lovely. I got some acid dyes for Christmas too, but they will have to wait until I have a minute and a usable kitchen.

I should be packing. I should also be scraping the mold off the microwave and otherwise preparing our damp and filthy hovel to fend for itself for a few days. Mr Me is already in Glasgow and tomorrow, God and Stena Sealink willing, I will join him. The fast ferry has already been cancelled, so the slow boat had better make it or I'll spend New Year's Eve hanging around a ferry terminal. Such an apt word, 'terminal', for places so redolent of death. It's something about the lighting; together with the hassle of travelling, it makes everyone look like zombies. I'm very excited about going to Glasgow. We used to live there and always have a wild time when we go back. This trip will also reunite me with the pair of adapted Broadstreet fingerless gloves/mittens (pattern on Knitty) that I left at our friends' place months ago. Then I might have something worth photographing! A spindle full of cream single would only come out as a white blur on our camera, even if the camera wasn't lost in a mound of mess.

It's time to clean. Or spin...

Blue sky in the morning, knitter's warning

2006-11-27T10:48:00.000Z

This morning I can see some pale, misty blue in the sky. After last week this is cause for leaping out the door singing 'The Sun Has Got His Hat On', which I will be doing as soon as I've dealt with this very important business, the uploading of fuzzy knitting pictures. The weather has been so dull around here that I don't want to emphasise 'dull' by italicizing it or putting it in bold because that would be too exhilarating. I don't mind storms and lashing rain for weeks on end: that's fun to walk in and leads to all indoor spaces smelling of wet tent, the ultimate childhood smell for me. What I really hate is the feeling of spending your life inside a gigantic upended Tupperware box, with the sky about six inches above your head and dusky at noon. This meteorological rant is not just my way of howling at the gods, it's also my way of explaining my recent knitting exploits. I am craving colour even more than, in our freezing flat, I am craving heat. So it's a pity that my camera is not as keen on the eye-poppingly orange cardigan I am knitting as I am, though I don't blame it. In real life, this thing is so orange I don't know if I'll be able to wear it without first alerting my local fire station.

It's in a shade of the sadly discontinued (why?) Rowan Cotton Tape called Sun Burst, and already small nearby items are being pulled into its orbit.

I used a cable rib design, with two of the cables continuing up the middle to become the button band. The buttonholes are hidden within the twists of one of the cables. I am so impressed with myself for figuring out how to do this (I know it's probably well documented somewhere but I love working stuff out for myself) that I don't even mind that I suspect I put the buttonholes on the wrong - ok, unconventional - side.

I finished the purple scarf to go with the paws, and though it's not exactly photogenic I love it. It's about the easiest, fastest thing you could knit but it's something I use and enjoy every day. The reason it's so hard to photograph is that it's massive, hugely stretchy and uncontrollably bouncy. This makes it an excellent scarf/shawl/blanket/pillow, and I'm sure I'll find more uses for it in time. It's very soft and very, very purple.

Purse stitch: p1 * yf, p2tog, rep from * to last st, p1

Purple Paws

2006-11-21T11:42:00.000Z

It's proper winter at last, after an unnaturally warm couple of months that used to be autumn. Greenhouse gases are go! Now that it is finally cold, our heating is so ineffectual that we can see our breath in most of the flat, so I've been knitting warm things from Artesano Alpaca, in the damson colour. I love this yarn. It's slightly fluffy without being tickly, it keeps your extremities from freezing up, and it's really, really bouncy. There's probably a technical term for a yarn's ability to boing back into place, but whatever it is, it results in extra coziness in winter accessories.

First, I did these things (Wristlets? gauntlets? mitts? armwarmwers? So many names out there, I think I'll call them mittlets). I used ten repeats of a stitch pattern called Large Eyelet Rib from one of the Harmony Guides (450 knitting stitches, volume 2) and 3.5mm dpns. This made a really springy, quite dense fabric. I had strung a load of small metallic beads onto the wool before I started, using a loop of thread to pull the fuzzy wool through the tiny holes (a quicker process than you'd think). After some experimentation I placed the beads in a single row up towards my middle finger, with one bead above each eyelet hole, and knitted one plain round with a bead in each stitch before casting off. The thumb was made up as I went along, with two repeats separated from the hand stitches and a rudimentary gusset knitted between the thumb and hand. They fit well and are great for working at the computer for long, chilly periods.

NI Spinning Moan

2006-11-14T23:38:00.000Z

Over the last few months I have come to believe I need to learn to spin. During this time I've learnt quite a bit about spinning, thanks to the wonders of the internet and some excellent books. I've even made a wee bit of fairly knittable yarn on a basic handspindle. However, all my research and reading and messing about has just served to make it all the more frustrating that I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYONE SPIN. No matter how good the illustrations (even with the few short video clips available on the web), there is no substitute for seeing how all the bits of the process are meant to go together. This does not seem to be possible in Northern Ireland.

I had a particularly discouraging experience when my bemused parents gave me the weekend spinning course I had requested for my birthday. I turned up, containing my fibre-frenzied excitement, only to wander round the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (which is open-air and takes a while to cover on foot)for an hour and a half before any member of staff was able to confirm my hunch that the class had been cancelled. I later learned that only one other person had booked a place, and the teacher had no record of my application (Dodgy post? Muddled mother? Who can tell) so hadn't contacted me. I haven't been able to find any other classes, which isn't too surprising if only two people in this part of the world want to learn to spin. There is a spinning and weaving guild, which meets in the aforementioned museum, but this is a) not a class and b) populated, in my mind at any rate, by posh ladies from Cultraw of a certain respectably artsy bent that sends me running for philistine squalor. This may be unfair and untrue, but I would not be able to flee politely if it wasn't.

Northern Ireland is not a great place to be a knitter unless you specialise in pastel baby clothes. The entire fibre arts revolution seemed to leapfrog us as it rolled across the Atlantic to Britain, depositing only an apparently endless hunger for furry acrylic scarves. Pish. I'm going to extend my spinning search across the border - it's cheaper than getting to England.

Baby's First Socks

2006-10-24T13:31:00.000+01:00

I knitted my very first pair of socks recently, and am now a convert. How could I ever have doubted the wisdom of spending considerable time and money on something you can buy five of for two quid in Primark? These are a different article altogether from my drawer full of limp, defeated-looking Primark versions, which do nothing more than stop my shoes sticking to my feet. Socks that fit and keep me warm are a revelation! One problem is that I now resent wearing any others (better get knitting) and another is that I sound quite, quite mad when evangelising about handknitted socks. Which is why I'm doing it here, rather than further tormenting Mr L.

I started off using the 'Universal Toe-Up Sock Formula' from Knitty, and discovered how much fun short row toes are to knit. The way they make a little pouch of themselves is just so clever, and every time I use short rows for anything I seem to grasp a wee bit more firmly how knitted fabric works. I didn't want to do a short row heel, however, because I suspected that this might result in the sock bunching up at the front of the ankle, which would annoy me. (The socks in the Knitty photo do appear to have a little wrinkle at the top of the foot. It looks uncomfortable, but I'll have to give it a go some time and see.) I liked the look of the modified strong heel from 'Amy's Socks' (free pattern at

Sock Album

) so I adjusted it to the number of stitches I was using, which worked quite well. If I was doing it again I'd make a smaller pseudo-heelflap, because the heels are a bit too baggy, but that may be because the foot is an inch too long, due to inexpert fudging between patterns. These are still far and away the most comfortable socks I've ever worn. I love them. I even love handwashing the bastards - really they should be OK for a cool machine wash, but I'm paranoid and our washing machine's unreliable.

random scarf

2006-10-22T19:54:00.000+01:00

My beloved cohabitee gave me a great birthday present of a kilo of random wool samples from the Colinnette millshop. I immediately started throwing loads of them together in a much-needed scarf in a simple diagonal design. Then I lost the blue ball. The flat has been ransacked, other projects have been started and my neck has gotten ever chillier as this cursed scarf has sat in its bag, laughing at me.

It works!

2006-10-22T15:24:00.000+01:00

It's a pleasant, dull Sunday and I'm wrestling with my homage to 'elfin goth', the amazing improvised jumper by domiknitrix shown at
http://www.domiknitrix.com/prj/elfingoth.cfm. Mine's more 'rugged goth', being made from some vintage Emu Fiord chunky wool rather than the slinky green stuff domiknitrix uses for her lacy wonder. As she just gives general advice on the construction, I'm having fun working it out. I love short rows but the 3Dness they produce makes my brain hurt. Making up something like 'elfin goth' from scratch must require some serious thinking round corners.

By doing this I'm "notting", as my Granny said, in this case not crocheting a garter for my friend's wedding, using this pattern
www.onceuponapattern.com/custom/garter.html.

When lovely Mr Lorenzo gets home, I'll borrow his camera and work out how to post photos. He just rang from work and offered to bring home the Sunday paper, knowing that I spent my last few quid in an unscheduled pub visit last night and thus haven't had my weekly fix of the Everyman crossword. My hero!

Futhering about

2006-10-22T14:43:00.000+01:00

One, two...two...two. Testing...