(Not a lot of) SNOW!

Isn't it nice that even a little snow can make something as mundane as my rotary washing line look quite poetic?

Happy Christmas Rebecca!

Happy Christmas Rebecca! If you’re reading this, then I guess you’ve opened your Christmas present by now...

Some months ago, your mum said you wanted to knit the gilet from ‘Simply Knitting’ magazine, but that it was quite expensive. I think that I have now managed to find a suitable substitute yarn, so in your parcel you should have found 8 balls of Wendy Foxy Lady – which is virtually identical to the original Sirdar Foxy - it has the same length of yarn (40 metres) to 50g, and also the same recommended tension of 12.5 stitches and 17 rows to 10cms on size 7mm needles. Holly and Emily helped me to choose the colour, and we hope that you will like it too.

At the same time, having looked at the original magazine pattern, I thought there might be a few problems in knitting it, so I thought about making a simpler pattern for you. I also thought it might be fun for you to think about the business of designing and working out your own patterns a bit, so here it is...

Before you start knitting, make sure you read all this several times. There are some general / technical bits and pieces first, before we get to the exciting stuff – please don't skip them, because I hope they will help you to understand what we are doing:

1) Furry and eyelash type yarns have a 'grain' - one way up they run smoothly through your fingers and the hairs smooth down against the inner 'core', and if you run them through your fingers the other way up, they fluff up instead. I find that the knitting is slightly easier if I work with them in the 'fluffed up' direction, and not quite so many hairs get caught up in the knitting. Test which end of the ball gives this effect, and THEN MAKE SURE that you use the same end for every ball that you use, this makes sure that your work looks the same throughout.

2) Please do a tension swatch, this is really important if you are going to have a go at designing your own patterns (and yes, I do know that they are boring - Tough! just do it, OK?) Also note that it's often best to measure length of the swatch with this type of yarn, when it's hanging from the needle, rather than flat.

3) Use a reasonably firm cast on, either the long-tail one, or the cable cast on, this helps to prevent the cast on edge from flaring out widthways. Firm is not the same as tight (at least, not in this context), so you may like to use a larger size needle for casting on. On the other hand, make sure that you cast off nice and loosely, and if necessary use a larger needle for this bit too. Slipping the first stitch of every row is also a good idea; it gives a really neat chain edge, which you may find easier when you come to pick up stitches for the edgings later on.

4) Joining in new yarns is often easier with this stuff. The best way to do it is to pull out the hairs from the last couple of inches of the 2 ends to be joined, then tie the core threads from the two ends neatly together with a reef knot (that’s right over left, and left over right), and trim the ends so that they're hidden amongst the 'fur'.

5) All fancy yarns seem to look better from the purl side of the work; for some odd reason the knots or hairs or tassels tend to fall through more naturally to that side of the work (don't know why, it's a mystery), so for this pattern the purl side of the work is going to be treated as the right side. Make sure that you use the same side of the work for all 3 pieces - the easiest way will be if you use a safety pin or something similar to mark it, the side that you pin it to is the 'right side'

6) Stocking stitch has a nasty tendency to curl at the edges (inwards towards the purl side at the side edges, and upwards/downwards towards the knit side at the cast on/cast off ones), which is why you need to use some sort of edging. Garter stitch (every row knit), reverse garter stitch (every row purl), moss stitch and ribbing are all good for this, but ribbing/moss stitch are not easy to do on this type of yarn, so I've stuck to garter stitch for edgings. You can also use a couple of rows of double crochet (UK; US equivalent is single crochet) for edgings if you prefer, and this might be nice if you want to use a plain contrasting yarn for a 'boho' look...

7) Picking up stitches for edges - for horizontal edges like the back of the neck, pick up one stitch for every cast of one. For diagonal edges (like the shaping at the front of the neck), it's one stitch for every row involved. For stocking stitch vertical edges, use (as near as you can get it) the same ratio as you get for stitches to rows - in this example, if you get 12.5 stitches to 17 rows, that's about 2 stitches picked up for every 3 rows - have I mentioned before that there's lots of maths involved in knitting (great, isn't it ;) For vertical edges in garter stitch, pick up 1 stitch for every 2 rows (that's 1 'ridge')

8) Sewing up. You can use some of your yarn for this, but it can make quite bulky seams. It will probably be better to use a matching sewing thread, and on this occasion, oversew the edges together, only picking up the threads in the chain edge, rather than mattress stitching. It's possible in this kind of yarn for the seam to almost disappear if you're careful, but if you do find that a lot of hairs get trapped in the seam, use a blunt needle to carefully ease them out. For pinning everything together for sewing up purposes, safety pins are good.

9) Estimating yarn quantities needed - always a dodgy one, this ... Have a look at my how-to on the subject for this. I'm keeping this pretty simple, so I'm going to ask you to measure off some lengths of yarn for the edgings before you start work, and put these aside while you knit the back and fronts, that way you can concentrate on just knitting the 3 parts you need, and know that you will have enough left over for the edging.

10) I've assumed a 32 - 34 inch bust (ie UK size 8 - 10) for this pattern, but the finished work will measure 36 inches all round, and that's fine - furry yarn comes up thickly, so you need a bit of 'ease' around the body. Also you may want to wear it over a jumper, so this should allow you to do that too. I'm also allowing up to 20 inches for length. If you should want to do it in a different size, or later you want to do it in a different yarn, you will be able to do this by taking your desired width and length measurements in inches and multiplying these by the number of stitches and rows to that you get to 1 inch - in this yarn for example, you should get 3.125 stitches and 4.25 rows to the inch, so supposing you want to knit a cushion cover 12 inches by 12 inches, you would multiply 3.125 stitches by 12 to give you a cast on of 38 stitches (actually 37.5 stitches, but obviously you need to round up any fractions!), and work in stocking stitch for 4.25 rows times 12 (that's 51 rows altogether). If you take a look at this 'how-to' for a simple jacket, it explains a lot more about the steps you need to take when calculating patterns for your own designs.

11) Finally, shaping is not easy in furry / eyelash yarns, so I've kept it to the very minimum amount, which I think will help, and should be a bit simpler than the pattern in 'Simply Knitting' magazine, which has quite a lot of shaping over the length of the body...


And so to work...

You need:
8 Balls of Wendy Foxy Lady (or 8 balls Sirdar Foxy)
7mm knitting needles for the main part of the knitting (but see note about tension)
6mm knitting needles for the garter stitch edgings (if you have to change the size needed for the main part, you also need to change needle size needed for the garter stitch edging)
Scissors
Safety pins
A blunt needle for sewing up, and some matching sewing thread
Some small plastic bags (odd, I know - but you'll see why in a minute)
A tape measure

Tension:
12.5 stitches and 17 rows to 4 inches (10 cm) square. (Take the time to make a swatch! - On the larger needles, cast on 25 stitches, and work 17 rows in stocking stitch. This should be 8 inches wide and 4 inches long. If it's smaller than that, you need to use bigger needles, and if it's bigger than that, you need to use smaller needles.)

Before you start, divide up the balls of yarn for the back, fronts and edgings. The back should not take more than 3.5 balls, and the two fronts should not take more than 1.75 balls each. Take a ball, and measure / cut off 20 metres, put this into a little bag for the edging and label it appropriately. Take the rest of the ball, and put it put it in a plastic bag labelled ‘Back’ along with 3 more balls. Now take another ball of yarn, and measure out / cut off 10 metres. Add this 10 metre bit to the 'Edgings' bag, then put the remainder of the ball in a bag with one more ball of yarn, and label the bag 'Right Front'. Do exactly the same thing for the Left Front. So now you will have 4 little bags altogether.


Back
(This should make a rectangle measuring 18 inches wide by 20 inches long)
With the larger needles, cast on 56 stitches, using either the long tail method or the cable cast on method. Change to your smaller needles, and knit 8 rows. Change back to the larger needles, and starting with a purl row, work in stocking stitch until the piece is 20 inches long, or you have only about 2 yards of yarn left (whichever comes sooner!). Cast off loosely. Any leftover yarn can go into the edgings bag.


Right Front
(This will mainly be a rectangle 8 inches wide by 20 inches long, with a little bit of shaping for the neckline. Note that this is 1 inch narrower than half the width of the back, to allow for the edging at the centre opening)
With the larger needles, cast on 25 stitches, using the same method as you did for the back. Change to your smaller needles, and knit 8 rows. Change back to the larger needles, and starting with a purl row, work in stocking stitch until the work is shorter than the back by 4 inches, ending with a wrong side (knit) row. Next row cast off 7 stitches, and purl to end. Continuing to work in stocking stitch, decrease one further stitch on the next 2 right side rows, by purling 2 stitches together at the beginning of the row. You will have 16 stitches left. Continue in stocking stitch on these 16 stitches, until the work measures the same length as the back. Cast off. Any leftover yarn can go into the edgings bag.


Left Front
This will be similar to the right front, but you have to reverse the shaping - I've marked the differences in italics
With the larger needles, cast on 25 stitches as before. Change to your smaller needles, and knit 8 rows. Change back to the larger needles, and starting with a purl row, work in stocking stitch until the work is shorter than the back by 4 inches, ending with a right side (purl) row. Next row cast off 7 stitches, and knit to end. Continuing to work in stocking stitch, decrease one further stitch on the next 2 wrong side rows, by knitting 2 stitches together at the beginning of the row. You will have 16 stitches left. Continue in stocking stitch on these 16 stitches, until the work measures the same length as the back. Cast off. Again, any leftover yarn can go into the edgings bag.


Making up (first part)
With right sides of your work together, join the fronts to the back at the shoulder seam only (see the general notes above)


Armhole edgings.
Measure down from the shoulder seam 8 inches on the back and on the front, and mark each of these 2 points. With the right side of the work facing you, and your smaller size needles, pick up stitches for the edging - I think that you should be able to pick up about 50 stitches (see the notes above). Work 4 rows in garter stitch, and cast off loosely. Do the same thing for the other armhole.


Making up (second part)
With right sides together, join the fronts to the back at the side seams.


The front edgings
With right side facing, and your smaller size needles, you need to pick up sufficient stitches for each of the front bands. I think that about 50 stitches ought to do it (but this will depend on how long you made the gilet, see the note about how many stitches to pick up on a vertical edge). Work 6 rows in garter stitch, and cast off loosely. Do the same thing for the other front edge.


The neck edging
With right side facing, and the smaller needles, you need to pick up enough stitches for the neck. I think that you should be able to pick up about 72 stitches altogether. Work 6 rows in garter stitch, and cast off loosely.


Finally, darn in any loose ends neatly, and that's it ... Congratulations! Wear the gilet, and expect lots of compliments, you will deserve them all!! And by the way, I will want a photo to post here, so organise Dad with the digital camera, and send me a photo.


Any leftovers?
Suggestions - a mobile phone / mp3 player cover, a headband / earwarmers, wristbands, edgings on gloves / hats / accessories, card-making / scrap-booking. Use your imagination here, and see what you can come up with...


We all hope that you will enjoy the yarn, lots of love from us all, and hope to catch up with you in the New Year! xxxxx

Home for the Holidays!

It's been a busy week, and I haven't been near the computer since Monday ... I can't believe how many new postings my Bloglines subscriber showed up for all the other blogs I read, it's going to take DAYS to catch up

Have completed two little furry collars, which are based on the long V-collar on the Lion Brand website - only took about 90 metres of eyelash yarn each. I just have to sew on the ribbon ties, and wrap them (remembering to photograph them first!). Have also completed a scarf for my mother in Wendy Chic (2 balls only required) which is lovely in the dark brown/bronze colourway, and am halfway through a similar one in the sea green colour for John's mum. Photos will all go up once Christmas is officially here, and the recipients have 'oohed' and 'aahed' sufficiently...

Tomorrow will be mainly a tidying-up day (must get the stash under control, or at least into some sort of order, or at least not strewn everywhere), and a collect the order from the butcher day, and a put the Christmas tree up day (we never do it before Christmas Eve), and my mum and sister are taking the little darlings to see Harry Potter, so also a 'no children underfoot' day (result!), which will also give me a chance to wrap their presents up unnoticed. Christmas Day is also Holly's Birthday, so I must remember to buy birthday cards and suitable wrapping paper. The M&S caterpillar cake, (our birthday cake of choice, accept no substitute!) is already obtained, so that's 1 thing less to do tomorrow.

In other news (as they say), got home from work this evening to find a letter from the OU to say that I can accept the ordinary BSc now based on the courses completed since 1999 to date, and I will still be eligible for the Honours part when (if) I complete the last course next year. WOW! This means that I am finally a GRADUATE! Also, the laptop is finally going in for repair - it's the LCD screen - and John has agreed to pay for this, so that's my proper pressie sorted (I have missed my little laptop), and the OU letter is a spot of icing on the Christmas Cake.

Guess it only remains for me to wish you all a very very Happy Christmas!! There will be a posting on Christmas Day for John's niece Rebecca, as the pattern part of her Christmas present, and of course the rest of you are welcome to 'eavesdrop' (don't know what the blog equivalent of this is ... any suggestions?)

Wha-hay!

Got my results on Friday - I have passed my exams for this year, though only just in the case of the Statistics paper! - and here's the really good bit, ONLY 1 LEFT TO DO!!!

The cardi is going well, though I had to do a bit of frogging when I realised that there was a missing colour in the Ornaghi Farfalla yarn - no yellow, so the balance of the colours was not coming out as I'd envisaged - but as I also had a couple of balls in shade 5 (which does contain the yellow shades), the yoke is now being re-kniited in stripes of all 3 yarns, and the additional yarn seems to have redressed the colour balance a bit. Am going to have to stop doing that until Christmas, and do some scarves this week, though I may just have been let off a bit as my sister tells me that my brother's girlfriend needs an i-pod/mobile phone holder ...

Photos of the cardi as soon as I can get round to doing some anyway - hopefully later today.

Nothing much

Has been fairly quiet this week. I am working on a yoke-necked cardi with the aid of Ann Budd (saves me having to do the calculations -and I can't see the point in re-inventing the wheel here!) in the lovely Adriafil Globe Multicolore (shade 40, green multicolour) which I brought back from Belgium. I'm not sure why I like this random yarn when I didn't like the Louisa Harding angora, but I think it has to do with the fact that the colours are much more the same tone, so I'm not getting light and dark patches. I plan to use up some of the Ornaghi Farfalla Stampato (shade 7) which I bought in Andorra as garter stitch stripes on the yoke (rather similar to Holly's scarf) - some of the balls I bought have exactly the same colours as the Globe yarn, just brighter because of the shinier viscose-like texture. As I have the whole rainbow to choose from for the buttons then I will probably choose one of each colour ... starting to sound very Per Una isn't it?

Am still thinking about doing some Christmas knitting, but it will probably be loopy and luscious scarves from knitty, which are quick to do - I have some nice odd balls of various types to use up, so I just need to get some fine mohair in a dark grey or brown. Apart from that, two magazines today - found the latest Simply Knitting during my lunch break, and got home to find the latest Interweave Knits waiting for me - lots of gorgeous cables in this issue ...

We are warm again ...

The radiator is fixed - YAY! Go John! - now I just have to clean up the hall carpet which suffered a bit from the mucky water that leaked ...

Meanwhile, a photo of Holly's scarf - I think on reflection that it would have been better to knit this as a frilly one rather than a spiral because angora is a little too floppy for the spiral shape. No matter, Holly is thrilled with it anyway, and I have learnt something from the experience.

Cold!

No heating in the house today - a pipe leading to one of our radiators seems to have a slight leak, so John is going to attempt to fix it ... the children have been told that they're about to find out what it was like back in the Dark Ages (aka 'When Mummy & Daddy Were Little Children'), when central heating in british homes was not the norm. I can hear my father's cry echoing down a couple of decades, "If you're cold, put on another jumper ...!" - it still haunts me, I often used to end up looking rather like a woolly onion, I had so many layers on!

Holly's curly scarf is done, and I will post pics later. Started looking at the Imperial Crown tea cosy pattern for my mother's christmas present, have never seen such a badly written pattern - no tension given, no measurements for finished item, the making up diagrams would not actually give the same result as the finished one in the photos ... looks like I'm going to have to do a complete re-write - maybe I should just knit her a scarf instead?

Trouble with tribbles ...

Finished James's wristwarmers on Monday night with just about a yard to spare in the end. Narrowly averted disaster when I realised about halfway through the second one that I wasn't going to have quite enough yarn, so I frogged the first one back to the same point as I'd got to with the second one, and shared the remaining yarn equally between the two. James has very long fingers (takes after me) but I just got there on one ball of Jaeger Matchmaker, so he was very pleased (and I was pretty relieved - PHEW!).

So to Holly's wristwarmers - she decided she wanted pink. That was easy enough on the face of it - but a frantic search through the stash pile proved I've got lots of pink DK, but only in some cheap acrylics that I had left over from some dolls, or some mixed fibre leftovers, and some mercerised cotton (not really ideal for warmth) - and Emily and James both got nice merino .... sooooooo, off to John Lewis in Oxford Street on Tuesday during my lunch break (any excuse, eh?)

John Lewis have a few irritating habits - if they've got the yarn you want, you can be sure they haven't got it in the shade you want, if they stock the spinner you want, then they won't have the particular yarn, I could go on - but there again, most London knitters will already be fully aware of this one, and I don't want to be boring about it - and in any case, I really ought to say that they've improved quite a lot recently (because it's true!) and they actually stock quite a large range (also true!), and their staff are pretty nice, even when they're busy (which they always are when it's lunch-time - truest of all)

Couldn't find Jaeger Matchmaker in the nice sugared almond pink that I wanted, only a rather lairy shade of Barbie pink (gruesome!) - but then I found a rather cheaper range of merino DK, by a company called Cygnet, in exactly the right colour. Grabbed a ball only to discover there wasn't a yardage on the label, but the nice lady assistant looked it up for me, and as it was only about 100 metres, compared with Jaeger Matchmaker 120 metres, I grabbed 2 to be on the safe side.

Then I wandered over to look at the Louisa Harding yarns - was just dribbling over the Kimono Ribbon and Angora in the pretty pink/purple/grey/black colourway when a lady came up to me, and admired my scarf ...! WOW - this has never happened to me before, at least not from a complete stranger! Honest to God, I was so THRILLED I nearly fell over, but at least I managed to have the presence of mind to tell her where she could find my pattern for it.

Can only put it down to over-excitement(!), but enough angora and ribbon for another Curly Whirly found it's way into my basket, along with the merino DK. Whizzed out of JL on cloud nine, and sprinted down to Borders, where I found a number of new knitting mags, including the latest edition of Knit.1 (the man issue, though I note they had a Curly Whirly pattern in there as well - I suspect they breed in dark corners, rather like Tribbles), and then back to the office ...

When I got home in the evening, Holly enquired about the JL bag (not much escapes her notice!) - and asked if the Curly Whirly was also for her. I wasn't thrilled 'cos I'd really intended it for me, but she pointed out (with perfect justice) that I already have one, and So Does Emily, which of course was the real clincher to the argument, and faced with this I gave in. Finished the wristwarmers in a single evening - must have got them off perfectly by now, and I only needed one ball, so I can knit another pair for niece Ellie whose birthday is next week, and who also likes pink.

I've embarked on the scarf, which I think I should have finished, either late this evening, or (more likely) tomorrow on the train ... and here's a Very Strange Thing - I don't actually like the yarn after all! The angora feels horrible to knit with (sort of slimy), I daren't pull it too firmly in case it snaps (following some recent comments on UK Handknitters) and the colour changes aren't long enough or subtle enough, so the overall effect is kind of spotty rather than graduated, as they appeared in the ball. Holly, however, is thrilled so I think I can manage to look as though I meant to do it for her all the way along, with an almost clear conscience ...

I see that I've had lots of new visitors over the last few days - don't be shy, stick a pin in the map (go on, you know you want to) - I'd LOVE to know who you all are!!