Obsession

Sometimes there's a project you love to knit over and over again. Sometimes there's a yarn that you just have to buy every time you see (and do some online stalking to make sure you get it)

For me, my obsession seems to be sock yarn. I love it. There are so many brands out there to choose from -  Sirdar Heart & Sole, Regia, my favourite Opal and the new sock yarn from Stylecraft called Head over Heels (which I may or may not have in the post....)

See, I've a sock problem. I've got sock yarn spanning a decade now because someone told me that "sock yarn doesn't count". Yeah right!! I've more sock yarn than anything in my stash at the minute (and another ball en route)

So, what draws me to sock yarn?  It has to be the colours. If the colour doesn't grab my attention then nothing else will and I think that's the case for most people.  Secondly, if its a yarn I haven't used before then chances are I'll buy it (the Head Over Heels is a perfect example. The Eiger colourway grabbed me and its a new yarn so I was sold!)

Many years ago in a yarn shop in Berlin I stocked up with Trekking XXL. I had 4 colourways, a red/black, a orange/cream, a green/cream and a black/green. Last August (that's August 2015) I cast on a pair of socks with the green/black with the intention of giving them to my brother for his birthday in October........they were only finished in August this year. Yes, they sat on the needles for a FULL YEAR!

Rye socks

I think this project suffered for two reasons. Firstly, I thought it would be a great idea to knit a pattern into the sock....it takes me an AGE to knit patterned socks. I get bored. I know, its strange that most people find plain socks boring, but I think they go very quickly whereas the pattern slows me down. Secondly, I found the yarn to be quite thin for a 4ply. It wasn't as soft as I was expecting, but then again the yarn had been in my stash for years and it looked like it was starting to felt.  I would like to try a newly made ball of Trekking to see if they've changed the recipe or maybe I just got a strange ball.   I did knit up one of the other balls 7 years ago for my dad. He didn't wear them for long as my brother stole them....that boy likes his handknitted socks and still wears them!!!

                                                                                                                            Now, the Sirdar is a nice yarn and I really enjoyed working with it.  The yarn was soft, springy and knitted up really nicely. Usually I'm not a Sirdar fan but look at the colours! Don't the just sing SUMMER at you!  The big chunky colour blocks are good too (you know when you're knitting and someone wants you to do something? "Just wait til I finish this colour" and away you go) I've worn these socks a few times and they wash well too...a nice all rounder type sock yarn.

Sock yarn is great if you want to get your moneies worth out of a yarn. Its hours of knitting for relatively little. Most yarns I buy seem to be around £8 a ball and they keep me going when I'm out and about. Great project for travelling or commuting to and from work.

So, time for some finished socks then. Some are new and some are very old.....but I'm working on a new pair and have some new to be sock yarns lined up to try - Knit Picks Felici, Lion Brand Sock Ease and Debbie Bliss Rialto Sock Yarn.

If you've never knitted a pair of socks, give it a go! You won't be disappointed.

3 yarns in these- black opal, bright Regia and pale opal

Sunshine Sirdar

Trekking XXL

Stolen pair of Trekking XXL socks

Funky Opal socks

Summer's gone

Well that was a long summer break I took by accident. I didn't mean to abandon the blog for so long but time seemed to get away from me. But at least the month off has provided me with lots of blog fodder so that'll keep us going for ages!!

The last time I was here I was frantically knitting away on Echo Beach for the wedding. Well, it was cast off and blocked on the Thursday night, and here it is artfully draped over the dress:

Ready to roll!

What can I say about it? Its a lovely wrap, the yarn is delicious and the patterns not too scary once you get started. However, its too short. Now I put 2.5 skeins of the alpaca silk into it, and it was a bit awkward to wear. BUT all is not lost!

I was sitting in a hotel in Donegal, mulling over the fate of echo beach and coming to terms with the fact that I wasn't 100% happy with it, when, all of a sudden I had a flash of inspiration. I could lengthen it!

After a discussion with the knitters, it was decided that adding a few repeats was indeed the best option. Now to source the yarn which was going to be a problem as Artesano are no longer trading. I tried the place when I got the emergency skein - no luck. I tried ravelry, no luck there either.

In a moment of desperation, I placed an APB on the Stitch n Bitch Facebook group and my search was successful! Andrea was willing to part with 2 skeins that she had and now.....now I'm just waiting on the time to rip the cast off and a chart back and carry on.

So you'll see a lot more of echo beach in the future!

Echo Beach

For the past few weeks I've been working on what I once upon a time would have classed as a scary pattern. It has charts, yarn overs and dropping stitches!


I'm talking about Echo Beach. Its designed for a laceweight yarn but I had seen a beautiful sample of it knitted in Artesano in The Constant Knitter in Dublin 2 years ago. It was always in my mind and I had decided to knit it for my cousins wedding....which is in 10 days time. I think I started it a bit later than I should have BUT I'm over halfway there!

I had gotten a dress last August and wanted to pick the teal out...so I ordered some yarn from Artesano and picked the Alpaca Silk in the Drake colourway. Isn't it lovely!

Its a really nice yarn to work with. Its a 50g skein but has a good yardage in it (219yds) and the wee skein seems to last forever. I don't think I can say anything bad about this yarn....except that the alpaca does make me sneeze sometimes, lol.

So I was knitting away quite merrily, dropping stitches every now and then just to mix things up, when I had a rather disturbing thought.... I've nearly 6 repeats of the chart done but I don't think its going to be wide enough!

Sunday afternoon was spend hunting though ALL the online yarn shops trying to find another skein in the Drake colourway so I could have it on hand just in case...and emergency skein if you will. Well, said skein arrived today so I can breathe easy for another while, just the ticking clock to worry me now.

As for my project, she's getting lots of love and attention at the minute:

I'm not sure if its the phones camera, or the new laptop, but the colour doesn't show up properly on the screen (you'll need to see this on the Artesano website, its a beautiful colour)  So here we have the dropped stitches.

In the pattern there are two options for the dropped stitches,1 or 2. I went for 1 and it looks alright to me. The 2 dropped stitches just makes the pattern stand out a bit more I think.

See my cute little stitches, they're so soft and smooth I can't help but rub my face in it lol. As I said above, its just a lovely yarn and really quite reasonably priced. Without the emergency skein, the whole shawl/wrap would only have cost £10 to make....you couldn't buy one for that amount of money!

Here's a shot of what I had knitted so far on Sunday night, you can see how the whole thing will look when its done. If you look closely, you'll see Buzz Lightyear and Jessie from Toy Story on the stitch markers.... the project lives in a Toy Story project bag at the minute too, lol. Have to let the inner kid have some fun you know!

For project bags and things, check out slippedstitchstudios.com but you might get hit with the customs charges. For a more locally made project bag of any size/design, my good friend Jaele   would be willing to discuss your requirements and make you the project bag of your dreams. I've a few of her creations.... I must hunt them out and take snaps to show you.(the rubber duckie one and the my little pony ones are my favourite!)

Can't stay here all night chatting, back to the knitting!                               

Silence is golden

For the past few weeks we've had 2 visitors here at Stash HQ....my sister and her Westie.

My sister only knits in my presence so that I stop nagging her about how great a hobby it is, how you can make the item you see in your head exactly as you imagine it etc. So in the above photo, she's keeping me happy by knitting a mitt. 

She actually finished them, and was rather chuffed with herself (as you would be) so she started another pair. The yarn she used was Stylecraft Cabaret in Rainbow and they're really pretty.  The yarn has a strand of metallic thread running though it which makes them shiny...thats probably what drew her attention to them in the first place actually.

As for the pattern, it had to be something easy that she could follow without too many complicated stitches and no purling! So one pattern sprung to mind - Ysolde's garter stitch mitts.

Even I managed to rustle up a pair or two of these. There are 2 pairs of these, honest. For his I used Adriafil Knitcol and knitted the pattern up as written. For mine, well I've a thick wrist so I made the mitt a repeat wider and it fits well. As for the yarn, well I received this skein in the Christmas swap a while ago and thought that it would make perfect mitts - its Fine Fish Yarns DK in a lovely blue called Innis.

The gruesome twosome left on Wednesday and Friday, so the house has been very quiet without them. Himself keeps looking for Gibbs and is a bit disappointed when he remembers that he's gone home (seems he was a bit mopey which is a victory for us, lol) and I've a mitt to fix for the sister.....but I am getting loads done on my shawl.

I did get new yarn this week, all the way from Australia, but I'll leave that for another day.

Max

A few weeks ago, in the looming days before World Wide Knit in Public Day, the hubby and I took a little trip on the Stenaline from Belfast to Cairnryan. I had gotten very cheap seats in the St Patrick’s Day sale (and, with hindsight, I should have bought a few more seats) so it was a very cheap day out.

He packed his book and I, obviously, packed my knitting - there were still a lot of creatures to create for the WWKIPD!

While on the trip we got upgraded to the very posh Stenaplus all because the captain couldn’t let us on the bridge (It’s a long story)!

So, we’re sitting in Stenplus in our big swirly leather chairs drinking the free wine (well, he was, I wasn’t) when something happened

From my needles a little ladybug was born!

 

This is Max.

Max is rather a shy little ladybug.

Shy but with a curiosity about the world around him. He stared out the window trying to work out where he was.

All that looking and staring didn't help him, go he tried logging into the ships computer....

But that didn't work. It drove him to drink!

And donuts

Ahhh! Tartan biscuits! Scotland must be involved!

He wondered if this magazine would help

Ah, he could see land! But he still didn't know where he was.

Luckily Max met two other ladybugs, Marcus and Marian. They told Max that he was born on the journey home from Scotland 

And that he would now be living in Northern Ireland!!

Max, Marcus and Marian moved into our house after that journey. I would like to say 'and they all lived happily ever after' but alas that's not true.

Marcus and Marian went to our World Wide Knitting in Public Day and spent the day playing games with the children...and they never came home. 

Max likes to think that they're having fun playing every day....maybe one day he'll see them again.

Rather hectic

It's been rather crazy around here for the last two weeks or so, all in preparation for worldwide knitting in public day

We had a brilliant day, and Jaele wrote a great blog post about our day over on our group blog down the crafting rabbit hole

Hopefully this will give you an inkling of the amount of work Jaele's put into organising it all.

And what have I been doing?  I'm media management. I'm the one gearing everyone up on Facebook, learning how to use twitter and being snap happy on instagram.

It doesn't end there! Jaele and I were on radio last week promoting wwkipd and the week before that I was in the paper!

Wanna read it?

Feel the burn

Our world wide knitting in public event is quickly approaching and on Sunday I realised that I had a lot of work ahead of me.

While I had managed to knit all the bits for creatures while at Clanabogan House, I hadn't actually sewn anything up.

First was the easiest... the butterflies

Then it was Margarets turn to be finished

After Margarets debut, I spent forever footering with ears, tails and debates about whiskers. Eventually Basil was ready

After Margaret, Arthur has to be my favourite. He's from an issue of Let's Knit magazine which came out a few months ago

Each creature was knitted using the acrylic which comes with magazines,  you know the stuff I mean, "knit this toy tonight" type stuff. I don't knit toys cuz I'm rubbish at faces so I managed to find a good use for it all. 

I do have 3 more mice to put together and I'll think about some more ladybirds. The knitting is the quickest bit, all the stuffing and sewing takes forever.