Category Archives: Knitting

And Just Like That…

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… I’m done.

My two theory sections of my RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticulture are done. I did one batch of exams on the hottest day of the year thus far and the second and last batch the following day, when we had tropical thunderstorms all afternoon.

I’m kind of sad that it’s all over for now, because there are quite a number of people I will miss. Fortunately, two of the people that I will miss are coming back to do the Practical Horticulture course with me in September so I’ll get to see them again. The three of us are trying to bully a fourth one of us to come along, so it could get merrier. I will also miss Tessa, my Plants lecturer, and her no-nonsense come-all-weathers attitude to everything. I won’t miss my Science lecturer for very long because she’ll be teaching the Practical, so that’s all good.

But I’m also glad it’s all over, because I can have my life back for a bit. The lead-up to the exams put me in such a state that I was little good to anyone or anything apart from the exams. I barely did anything for myself or registered anything else that might have been important. The only other human being I’d seen for over two weeks was Nick. And the only other thing I did apart from revise and panic was to finish this:

More on this when I have more photos.

Immediately, on Wednesday, the day after my exams, I pretty much threw Nick out of the flat, declaring that now that I’m free, I want the flat to myself; please piss off to work, thankyouverymuch. I knitted, I read, and later in the afternoon I went to meet with Nora for a frozen yoghurt at Canary Wharf. A human being that I knew that wasn’t Nick! Fantastic!

And later that evening, Nick found me asleep on the sofa sitting upright, with an XBox controller in my hand, my puzzle game waiting for me onscreen. He said he hadn’t seen me do that in weeks, which must mean I’m finally relaxing again.

The bizarre thing is, the last thing I want to do is relax. I’m geared now. I want to do all the stuff I’ve been wanting to do for weeks but have had to set aside. I have a huge stack of magazines to read, lots of gym to catch up with – I’d been sedentary for so long my legs and feet were actually seizing from being so stiff – and yes, more knitting:

Godiva, by the fantastically talented Ruth.

Although I did sort of had a niggling feeling in the back of my head about something and decided to check Ravelry about it, and there it was.

Le Tour de Fleece starts on Saturday. Saturday. Day after tomorrow.

So tomorrow, I probably ought to be oiling my wheel, and picking out fibres to spin. Lord knows I have plenty to choose from…

A Couple of FOs: Keeping Warm

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I have been a rubbish blogger already this year, what with only one post thus far, and more so as I’ve had a few finished objects that I haven’t blogged about!

Let’s start with this one:

Pattern: Shur’tugal by Alice Yu (Ravelry link)
Yarn: Socktopus Sokkusu-O
Needles: 2.5mm

Now, let’s start with the pattern. Shur’tugal is a pattern I have knitted loads of times. The first time I knitted them was for my lovely old housemate, Zaa, from Southampton days. We lived together for four years and therefore she was absolutely entitled to asking for a pair of socks from me. She says she wears them to football matches, and is gently hinting for another pair.

While I was knitting Zaa’s socks, whose feet were bigger than mine, I needed to borrow a pair of feet to check that the fit was okay. Ruth was with me one afternoon so I borrowed her foot. The sock fit very nicely indeed. So nicely in fact that I dug around for a bright skein of happy yarn and made a pair for her, too.

This pair, at last, is for me.

The genius of this pattern is that it is remarkably simple but so satisfying. It looks great in all kinds of yarns – I’ve knitted it with a yarn that pooled, a yarn that was semi-solid, and now this yarn, a most remarkable yarn indeed.

Why? Because Alice, who designed the sock, also dyed the yarn.

The yarn is called Sokkusu-O, which means Original, and feels quite similar to Blue Moon Fibre Arts‘ Socks That Rock, except I feel I like this more. It is bouncy and strong and feels wonderful on the needles and on my feet. Also, I love the name of the yarn. When Alice first announced what she was going to call it, I had to say it out loud in a sumo-wrestler type voice. And then giggle.

Next, I have a finished object which I think is already my most-worn knitted item:Pattern: Eternity Scarf by Michele Wang (Ravelry link)
Yarn: Madelinetosh Vintage in Nutmeg
Needles: 5.5mm

A scarf that is just a loop long enough for me to wrap double around my neck, with no ends that flap about. Perfect for being active outdoors. When I get warm I just undo the second wrap and leave it hanging around my neck, and if I wanted to, I could even pull one loop up over my head. It is an awesome thing, and I love it so much I can’t wait for an excuse to make another one. It’s been brilliant in the supercold winter we’ve had.

I was skimming my friends page on Ravelry when I was reminded of this pattern – typically, it’d sat in my queue for, well, forever – and I thought, hey, that’d be a neat thing to have while I’m outside a lot and will be so neat and unfussy. I love scarves, but it’d be nice if they didn’t trail down or get caught in stuff, especially things like bushes.

And as you do, I checked to see what yarns people have used to knit this. Madelinetosh Vintage caught my eye for two reasons: a) they make gorgeous semi-solid colours and b) I knew exactly where to get the yarn.

And thus at Loop‘s very first Wollmeise Saturday, while everyone else bought skein after skein of Wollmeise, I came home with two skeins of this glorious golden yarn. It’s not really a colour I would normally pick, but the gold was rich enough that it didn’t render my skin sickly, and it went with just about everything I owned, which tended to be on the fuchsia/purple/deep pink side of things.

Hopefully there will be another FO before the month is out. I can’t wait to finish it, I can tell you that much!

FO: Aurantium in Sonne

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Over a year ago now, the very brilliant Alice had the equally brilliant idea of running a lace shawl knitalong via Twitter. We would get clues every so often to continue our progress and questions and sharing could all be done via the wonder that is Twitter.

I know some people have their Twitter feed running in a widget on their blogs, but I don’t really dare put mine up. Given an occasion I can swear several shades of Dulux colour card blue, so I thought it best that I maintain some degreee of decorum.

The knitalong ended last August. I was still knitting, because I am a slow sort. But also maybe because I wanted to enjoy the yarn I was using.

My first ever skein of Wollmeise. I won this skein at a charity bingo game that was hosted by Alice not long before she started the knitalong project and I recall not trying very hard to win anything else afterwards because I was so pleased with it. They’re not immediately my colours, but the shawl pattern was called Aurantium Blossom (Ravelry link), which referred to orange blossom, and I figured, clearly, it was meant to be.

I like lace knitting. I like reading charts, because to me it’s like running a program in my head. I’m married to a software engineer who codes all hours of the day, and he can read lace charts for that reason. It’s a bunch of symbols telling you what to do next. Ones and zeros. Binary. Lovely.

But again, I am the slow sort, and also the easily distracted sort. I abandoned the sunny, happy lace shawl for a while. I have no idea why. Eventually I got fed up of all the half-finished things I have lying about the place and decided to tackle them one by one.

Imagine how dumb I felt when upon pulling this shawl out again, I had all of 20 rows left to do. Twenty. Twenty rows with nearly or over 300 stitches on, but twenty rows nonetheless. Embarrassing, really.

It took me twenty minutes to read the chart, read the knitting, read the chart again, count some stitches and read the chart some more just to find out where the heck I was in the pattern. Once I worked it out, I was off again.

I sometimes write notes on my patterns, telling me alternative ways to execute something, or directional notes or so on. The trouble with leaving a project for so long is that I spent a lot of time looking at these notes and thinking, “What did my past self mean when she told me this?”

Sometimes I do expect to unearth a neglected project and find its pattern, scribbled with the words, “About bloody time, you idiot.”

In the end, those twenty rows took a mere couple of weeks, plus distractions. I cast it off. I waited for a warm day when there wasn’t a lot to do, and I washed and blocked it.

It was like pinning out the sun.

Pattern: Aurantium Blossom by Alice Yu
Yarn: Wollmeise 100% Merio Superwash in Sonne
Needles: 4.5mm

This is, above all, why I love lace knitting. A bundle of loops and stitches, all damp and lifeless after a bath, gets carefully pulled out, stretched and pinned, and suddenly every little detail comes to life. Orange blossoms near the top, orange flowers in the middle and finally edged with leaves.

I thought it was going to take wing and fly away, back into the sun.

I wear this a lot now. I like that when I’m on the tube or the train, reflected in the windows would be duller, flatter colours that get swallowed up by the tinting on the windows. But not this shawl. Oh no. It defies that sort of thing. It feels like nothing could swallow up these colours.

It is only matched by a carpet of varieties South African daisies, and that makes me incredibly happy.

FO: Big Bad Baby Blanket

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I did say I had a finished object, and now that it has been washed, blocked and dried, I can show it to you.


Pattern: Big Bad Baby Blanket by Lisa Shobhana Mason
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM in P436 SS33
Needles: 5.5mm

It took me far too long to knit this thing, considering that a) I’ve knitted it before and b) it’s just stocking stitch, garter stitch and moss stitch. I really didn’t need a brain to do this. And yet it took me five months. I have no excuse.

This is for my osteopaths’ new baby, except by now she’s not so new anymore because she was born back in February, I think. It’s quite big, so hopefully it’ll be useful for a good while yet. Certainly not right now, when I’m on the verge of melting all the time. I mean, if I’m unhappy, I can only imagine how unhappy a small baby would be.

I like the idea that despite the delays and imperfections, I’ve made something from my hands to look after their baby, when their hands have looked after me these last couple of years. I think I’d still be walking in pain if it weren’t for Kate and Alex, so I can’t wait to get this gift to them.

The Knitting

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Some time in May 2007, I lost my job.

My reaction to this was: screw it, I’m gonna learn how to crochet.

To the people who know me: Yes, crochet. Not knit. For some reason, my odd little mind figured that one hook in one hand would be easier to handle than two sticks, one in each hand. And in a way, I was right. And not necessarily wrong.

I enjoyed crochet, and largely took it up because I envied the king-sized crocheted bedcover that my mum-in-law had in their bedroom, which she said she crocheted while she was doing her revision while at university, to keep herself from snacking. It seemed like a good way to forget that I was unemployed.

Despite not quite mastering crocheting, and in the end, not quite favouring it as much, I decided to try knitting as well. One hook in one hand was pretty good; let’s see what this two-stick malarkey is all about. And so:

Yeah. Well.

Things did get better pretty quickly. That had a lot to do with finding a really wonderful yarn shop – which I eventually worked for right up until it closed down – with really lovely people who then helped me meet lots of other lovely people and so on. Which brings me to the most important thing about knitting. Well, apart from the fact that after nearly three years I can now knit things like this:

But the most important thing about the knitting is the people I’ve come to meet, the people who have become my friends.

Nick and I moved to London in late 2006 not really knowing anyone. All our friends were spread out around the country and neither of us were very good at making new ones. Hell, the first real friend I ever made in London was my driving instructor. But thanks to knitting, I met new people, who then told me about knit nights. Who, some of them, organized their own knit nights. Sometimes we made road trips to wool festivals, like Wonderwool Wales. One of my friends, the awesome Alice, is organizing her own massive knitting event, Knit Nation 2010. You can see how this works.

And the amazing thing is, we’re not all simply brought together by the craft we share. Theses are people who knit for others: when new babies arrive, when people wed, when there is a loss to share. These are people who lend sympathetic ears and give some of the best hugs in the world. These are some of the funniest, wittiest people I know.

So even though the knitting itself is pretty awesome – it keeps me out of trouble as much as it gets me into trouble, I get to make things for myself and for others, I  learn something  just about every time I start a new project, and I am now a person of some skill in this craft – it is ultimately about the company I get to keep. That is the best thing about this craft.

Which should lead me to this disclaimer: if you ever spot me at a knit night, and yet I am not knitting, it’s not that I forgot to bring something to knit, or that I don’t feel like knitting or don’t enjoy it. I am simply basking in the warmth of the company I keep. And that is good enough for me.