Minions at Dundee Comics Day and cabling

In the afternoon yesterday we went to the Starblazers Dundee Comics Day workshop at the DCA, a

Minion hat from the At Home With the Lunchbox Guru

combination of two of Caitlin's all time favourite things and I'm not not keen either!  She spent a happy 2 hours creating Doctor Who monsters, meeting real artists and blethering her head off and having some original artwork drawn for her.  I sat on the sofa surrounded by comic artist greats and began knitting a minion hat for my friend's little girl, unfortunately I'm fairly sure it's going to be too small but it's been an education, mostly in how challenging (but fun!) it is to knit intarsia in the round.  Just lets say I have a LOT of ends to knit in!  The pattern has been straightforward and effective, thanks to Juanita McLellan for her generous free Despicable Me Minion Hat on Ravelry.  She has lots of minion patterns and I don't think this will be the last I make.

And I am finally getting on with that tunic, it is slow because you're knitting the entire thing in a

Front of tunic, yoke done with sleeve stiches on holders

single piece but I'm down beyond the yoke and on to the waist decreases.  I went back to my Wensleydale as I realised what I'd done wrong, I was trying to follow the cable patterns back and forth as you would for a pattern knitted on straight needles instead of always backwards as you do for in the round.  If you knit this kind of stuff you'll understand, if not that will be gibberish but basically it meant I was twisting loads of my cables the wrong way and the panels inbetween were wrong to an epic degree.  Almost two balls in this already!  I am really enjoying it, I realise now I need something complex like cabling, fair isle or small fiddly work when I'm knitting, I think actually, in any of my crafting, I get a little bored with plain knit.  Caitlin and I inherited her great grandmother's stash of wool including an unmade-up bear body and Val Pierce's sweet book Knitted Bears from Search Press' 20 to make series, so that's been made and we're working on an outfit, teaching Caitlin how to do increases has been challenging fun.  No, not that loop...

Catching up!

Well, I haven't stopped being busy, just posting.  So this is a catch up on the things I've been creating.

Firstly I was dead pleased with my beautiful DROPS studio waistcoat, photograph to the left.  The pattern is now called Misty Vines and was easy to knit in one way because it's done in the round, this means that the sides and the back are knitted as one piece up to the armholes then it splits and the only seams are on the shoulders.   The tricky bit was the leaf patterning, I eventually had to note everything down carefully so I knew exactly what I was doing on each round.

DROPS studio are a Norwegian company that produces beautiful Nordic style designs.  They produce their own wool but I used Jarold Heritage DK wool #132, a wool I've used before for a pair of lovely soft navy flipover gloves that I put down somewhere and failed to pick up again.  Bah!  The buttons came from Austria, from the dressmaking shop in St Johann im Tirol that I visit every time we go to Soll.

They were also the designers for what turned out to be two beautiful hats, both using the Halifax pattern.  The story is that these are fairisle stranded knitting which tends to be thicker, so between me measuring Scott's head for the hat, deciding on the Medium / Large size and me knitting it it didn't fit.  So that hat is now shared between me and Caitlin and I went back to knitting, this time the Large / XLarge.  Both were knitted in Sirdar Country Style 4ply black and Rico Design Superba Chinee #008 green, a variegated yarn which knitted to a soft mottled effect.  Luckily I like a challenge, fairisle is a bit fiddly and I probably would be a lot faster if I learned to carry my wools across my fingers right but I'm happy with my plodding pace.  These were an easy introduction to fairisle and are good for beginners to the technique as there are only two colours involved. 

Then, since I'd lost my glittens I made a new third pair in the variegated silver grey / charcoal Fingerless Gloves / Glittens coloured dk yarn James C Brett Woodlander L4, I don't know how many times I've used thispattern by Dawn Beck and I haven't tired of it yet.  The combination of fingerless gloves, actual gloves rather than the handwarmers which don't have the individual fingers, and flipover part make them ideal for me as I bike a lot and have terrible circulation, here in Scotland they are still in use in what passes for May.

And I'm knitting for my sister, well, for her new baby, it's a surprise but I don't reckon she'll ever look at this so that's fine!   I was originally creating an afghan from squares but it looked amateurish, then I found this pattern called The Fish - return! on the Knitting Arrows.  I can do about 3 fish in a night and am sewing them together as I go along.  I'm using various baby wools, although the blue is causing a problem as it's thicker than the others.  Oh well.  I'm actually using double pointed needles rather than knitting needles as they're shorter, at its longest the fish are only 23 stitches wide and that's just as you're about to cast off.  The colours of the picture are a bit off, the lighter blue is a soft aqua.

DUFC hat #2

Skull flap hat by Carolyn

Finally sat down in my kitchen and finished off my second attempt at a hat in Dundee United colours, it's big but really comfy.  Another lovely pattern from Ravelry. My only real issue was keeping the stitches on my dpns, much swearing while picking up lost stitches and recounting how many I had on each needle.  Sat down on a Sunday morning while my husband and child were busy beating each other up and got some peace.

DUFC hat #1

Well, I encountered my first catastrophic failure, I'm sure it was me not the pattern but I did a fantastic ear flap hat in orange and black, the colours of my husband and daughter's favourite football team, and by proxy mine, Dundee United, my English team being Cambridge United...  It had these great mad skulls on the side that were really my kind of thing. I don't know what I did wrong, but it was too small for any of us, and wouldn't even fit my daughter's doll.  Oh well, now starting another, you live and learn...

Knitting: turning a necessity into a pleasure

Knit1 Slip1's Boyfriend Hat

Christmas with my husband's parents was lovely, nothing like taking the edge off an overexcited 7 year old like being able to hand her over to her grandparents, however, I left my lovingly knitted glittens (gloves that have a mitten bit that flips over) and my hat in Turriff so got busy knitted two gloves from the wonderful Ravelry site which offers thousands of great free patterns that do really work.  So I made a slouchy hat which will match with the gloves when I get them back, knitted in Creative Yarns DK Rainbow Multi #0343 Jumping Castle from HCS Crafts.

Witch cats hat by Christine de Savoie

And this is the second hat I made, which was a bit fiddly but enjoyable, in general I prefer something that challenges me and this really did.  I made it with cheap DK just to see how it knitted up and I think I wouldn't do all the top cat rows next time, but it does look rather good. I had to learn how to carry the colours across the back, called stranding, where you catch the colour you're carrying across in the back of the knitted stitches, and end up in a horrible tangle at several points if you're me.