Second pair of knitted socks - done!

That's my second pair of socks made with Opal's 4 ply Sock Yarn done and dusted, this pair to go away for winter, though, given the current weather here in Scotland that won't be long.  The wool is Opal's Vincent Van Gogh range, a pretty orange and green striped variegated yarn (ombre) with purple and yellow flecks called Paul Gauguin's Armchair with Candle #5436, colours taken from the painting of the same name. 

I've enjoyed learning how to knit socks and now feel ready for the fair isle versions I've looked at with longing, I got a bit bored with this pair which is a good sign that I've got the technique down.  There's a lot going on, knitting in the round is straightforward and it's fun watching the colours change, it's a nice wool to knit with.  Short rows to create the heel flap, picking up the flap stitches and creating the gusset are challenging but the instructions that came with leaflet that came with Opal's ball of wool as part of Rainbow Silk's sock knitting kit are comprehensive and if followed with care give the right result.  I had to shorten the number of rows after the heel as I've got smallish but wide feet so I knitted only 35 rows before decreasing for the toe.  The kits are lovely, wool, needles, pattern and a set of adorable stitch markers.  And then finally decreasing down to a 20 stitch toe and kitchener stitch, sewing up the toe to give a dead neat finish.

Fishies blanket - finished!

All ready to go to Cambridge!

Finally finished the blanket for my sister's new baby and am glad to have it out of the way.  It has been fun to do but I can now get on with finishing my many UFOs without guilt! 

I created simple borders because this is for a new baby so no fringing or eyelets, just picking up the stitches along the top and bottom edges and then the sides.  I say just, but it is still a bit of a fiddle, some of those stitches did not want to be picked up!

To get the top and bottom straight I knitted half fishies but still ended up with a wavy edge, however, as the stripes go towards the edge they get straighter, the wonders of wool!  I think natural wool would be even more giving, this was inexpensive baby wool.

Quilters Guild Scottish Monthly Challenge

The Scottish area challenge for this year on the Yahoo group is a block per month using certain colours.  April was red, May is yellow, June will be blue.  And I've just finished my May block, in my defense I have been working on it and it's just time that ran out...  I don't think these will be completely the end, I was at Bank Street Gallery in Kirriemuir yesterday at Jenny Blair's wonderful exhibition, Jenny, I love your work!  I particularly loved two stitched art pieces, 'Queen of the trees' featuring those most irrepressable of birds, blue tits, and 'wondering' which just has a lovely feel.  So I will probably do more hand embroidery on both but the groundwork is done.

March was Red - the block warmer than the weather

I decided to use the theme of flowers and hand piecing, it's an economic stash busting technique!  I had loads of hexagon templates left over anyway from my Chinese Whispers Quilt (more on that one later!).

I like darker gothicky shades of colours but needed contrast, so the red poppy background was a piece I had from a Seattle Quilt Company sale a while ago.  The flowers and pots reds are from various bits of stash including the first ever fabric I brought for my first ever quilt (a Lynne Edwards cathedral window work) bit from my mum's stash, and the red satin I used to make the cloak for my daughter's Snow White costume.  Dressmakers I salute you!  I've quilted this one but am going to take it apart to do more embroidery on it.  The flowers are straighforward grandmother's flower garden pattern: 6 hexagons in a circle around one central one.

For May I had yellow fabrics but they were a bit peely wally, so I took a gold organza printed with

Why is it upside down?!!!  No idea

gerberas I bought in Austria a few years ago and bondawebbed it on top of a paler pastel yellow print.  The ribbony yellow strips are part of the organza.  It took a bit of patience and unsticking the iron as the glue came right though the organza but I'm happy with the result.  I pieced the daffodils from central hexagons surrounded by hexagons with one point extended, or alternatively diamonds with one point cut off, depending on how you look at it!  I embroidered over with threads from my stash, it's hand worked running stitch but the threads are a variety of machine embroidery thread and DMC cross stitch thread.  It needs more but it's a start.  The stems are chain stitched wool from my stash, a pretty variegated green called Rico Designa Superba Chinee 4ply in #008 green.  I toyed with crocheting and all sorts, thinking chain sitch would be too thin but with wool it works fine.  The yellow for the daffodils was the remnants of Evie's Quilt.

So onwards, just trying to get my sister's blanket finished off and I will feel better then!

Celebrating Scotland 2014

Like I haven't enough to do, I pledged to create a quilt for this exhibition for Loch Lomond Quilt Show for 2014, my Chinese Whispers quilt should hopefully be there now.  It is to reflect what I believe to be the best of Scotland and in the usual way I go about designing a quilt I'm kind of musing on it all the time, the thought is there at the back of my head.  These are my aimless wanderings so far. 

Not tacky but old style - grace and balace.  Colours - soft purple, green, blue, grey, gold - heather, moss/grass, sea sky (grey), granite, sun/barley.
Piecing - shetland fairisle patterns
Pictoral - Tay Bridge, Shanwell Woods, Glenisla, Bellrock,
Embroidered birds that I love - blackbird, goldfinch, blue tit, great tit, housemartin, geese, oyster catchers, rooks, herons, buzzards
Otters, red squirrels, seals, wildcats, deer, sheep (soay, North Ronaldsay), cows (Aberdeen Angus, highland), highland pony. 
Rowan, scots pine - alba

First fabrics brought from The Sewing Station in Broughty Ferry along with 2 I already had.  Goodness fabric is expensive.  Maybe this is why I paper piece, it uses every last scrap!

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.

Margaret's socks

Margaret's socks

Stitch markers

Finally finished my first pair of socks, knitting for my husband's grandmother.  Margaret is a very much beloved matriarch in her 90s, 3 children, 7 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren and another on the way.  But what do you buy for someone who really doesn't need anything else?!  Margaret was once an avid knitter, our daughter has the most beautiful cardigans from birth right up until now, but it's now too much for her.  Last year it was a quilt, so this year was socks.  It combined my wish to try the unknown, knitting my first pair of socks, with the need to give her something knitted with the love we all have for her.  One of my favourite online shops, Rainbow Silks, does scrumptions Opal sock knitting kits which provide you with a set of 5 double pointed 2.5mm needles, the loveliest stitch markers I think I've ever seen, full easy to follow instructions and a ball of yarn.   The yarn is patterned so the pattern is about as simple as a pair of socks can be, a bit of double rib round the top with the rest in stocking stitch.  I ordered my kit with Opal's Schafpate IV #5483 which is spun from the wool of rare breed German Schafpate sheep and ordered a second ball for myself of Opal's Vincent Van Gogh in #5436: Gauguin's Stuhl (mit Kerze), or, in English, Paul Gaugin's Armchair With Candle.  If you look at the yarns you'll realise why it too me simply hours to choose!  Despite my worries I turned my first heel and hope she loves them as much as I do.  £7.99 sounds a lot but you only need one ball per set and there's some left over.  And they feel lovely.  Now darling child wants a pair...

Chakras and my voice

I have two friends who are dead into Reiki,  I don't understand how or why it works but it does.  When I acted as guinea pig (with no reluctance at all!) a few weeks ago they found that my throat chakra was blocked but my crown chakra was wide open.  I've had time to reflect on this and it does correspond with my current feelings of frustration.  Sahasrara, the crown chakra, is concerned with connectedness to the universe, the mystical chakra connected to higher consciousness.  Basically I'm wired in to the universe, that figures.  On the other hand Vishuddha, the throat chakra, is to do with communication, fluent thought, growth through expression.  The block here means I am connected to the universe and have the vision I want but am unable to express it, and this is I am very well aware the source of a lot of my rage, fear and frustration.  To be able to see and not speak what I can see, to always be mediated through others who can speak it better than I can.  To be a ghost in my own life.  The only remedy is to do in the face of the difficult feelings is to keep keeping on and to embrace them.  My fear is my teacher.

I will create my book.  This will be a book collecting my journey, part diary.  I currently have a desk diary which I write in daily and staple in newspaper clippings, write in knitting patterns, but IT ISN'T WHAT I WANTED TO SAY!  I have so many words, what I think about the newspaper articles, why they mean something to me.  What I am knitting, stitching, seeing, how it feels to be doing that.  I want to speak of my train of thought, of events of the day without feeling self conscious and pretentious, oh, look at me, I think I'm Samuel Pepys, like what I have to say is important enough for everyone to hear.  I'm not a king or queen, I just need to speak, to hear my own voice.

My grandmother once gave me a book she'd created.  It is very simple.  The cover is two pieces of card joined by a spine of webbing, white paper glued over the inside of the end boards.  The pages consist of cut up pieces of lined paper with two holes punched in one side.  A lace is threaded through the holes and through eyelets punched through the back cover, so these can be tied and the pages easily added to.  My original thought had been to create a side bound book the same as Jan Messent's Celtic Influences book from her beautiful and inspiring Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Embroidery, a collection of illustrations of her multimedia books exploring different types of ancient British embroidery.  She uses four eyelets punched through the front and back of the book, but my grandmother's mean's the lacing doesn't show on the front.  Mine will be bigger, A4 in landscape.  So let's go...