It was a dark and stormy knit….

 

Happy Monday! It’s a bit dank and miserable out there today isn’t it. Just makes me what to either stay in bed OR drink copious mugs of tea and knit.

Alas, its just the tea drinking bit for me until I finish work.

But what better way to spend a tea drinking rainy afternoon than reading a book, especially when it involves knitting and murder! For the last few months I’ve been tearing my way through my little library of knitting fiction (Yes, this is an actual thing) and solving the murders alongside the characters.

I like to pick a series and read them in their entirely before I move onto the next one. So first on the list was the Black Sheep Knitting mysteries.

So the Black Sheep are a group of friends who all like to hang out in Maggie’s yarn shop, The Black Sheep.  The characters are interesting, from a wide range of backgrounds, vary in ages and knitting abilities just like a real knitting group.  There’s 8 books in this series and well worth a read.  Only one thing irked me though, and it a very minor thing….. one of the characters kids names kept changing lol. Its like the author couldn’t remember what she was called so chopped and changed from Alexa to Natalie and back again lol.

Next on the list in The Knit and Nibble mysteries.

Unlike Black Sheep which involved all the main characters to solve the case, Knit & Nibble mainly focuses on the characters of Pamela and Bettina. Bit of a dynamic duo these two! I started reading the first one and thought it sounded familiar, turns out I read it a few years ago and there were now 2 copies in the house! So far there’s 5 books in the series, the last one is about to be cracked open.

Waiting in the wings are 2 more series –  The Knitting Mystery, Tangled Web  and The Seaside Mysteries books. To say that there were a million books in the Knitting Mystery series would only be a slight exaggeration (there’s 16) and a fair few in the Seaside Mysteries too (11 so far) so plenty to keep me going for the rest of the year.

Its not just knitting you know, there’s mysteries out there for all crafts –  crochet, patchwork, quilting! Have a google and see what you can find to tickle your fancy.

Lockdown

Seems the end of Lockdown is in sight.

I did not lose weight.

I did not learn a new language.

I did not learn a new skill.

I did not bake.

I did, however, spend a lot of time knitting. (You knew I was going to say that!)

My major lockdown project has been waiting at least 4 years to be started. My plan was to knit 4 mini balls a day so taking a fortnight to knit (50 balls total) but I went slightly over.

Couldn’t get a photo without my “helpers” walking and playing on it. If you want to make you own, you can get the kit for £36 over at BlacksheepWools. My kit was 50 aran mini balls but the new kit is 58 sport mini balls.  Although it’s a garter stitch pattern, some knitters have used moss stitch for it and it looks amazing. Check out the Blacksheepwools make along group on Facebook. This group can be dangerous though, you see lovely projects and then you start a 101 new things!

Pre-lockdown, I saw a few things in a copy of Let’s Knit that I quite fancied, the first being bunting. So I bought the yarn and made rainbow bunting for my living room.

This led to a glut of mini balls coming into the house and joining the stash. I’m going to bunting the life out of my house!

Another Let’s Knit project was something I hadn’t tried before –  mitred squares. Now mitred squares was something I had put off for YEARS because it looked scary. Did I ever read a mitred square pattern? No. If I had, I would have realised that it’s the simplest thing in the world….. so I made a few mitred square cushions.

I accidentally knitted a square that reminded me of Snow White, so a whole cushion was created inspired by Disney Princesses – Snow White, Aurora, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Alice, Moana and Elsa.

I’m now working my way through 3 projects. I knit my bunting when I’m at the weekly SNB Zoom chat because counting to 4 is all the skill that’s required. Anything else and mistakes ensure. This bunting will be in shades of blue/green. I think one of the knitters hinted not too subtly that she’d like one lol.

I’ve a flax on the go for a Christmas present. I bought the yarn for this a few years ago with the intention of knitting everyone a jumper/cardigan for Christmas. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I know I really shouldn’t mention the C word but come on, it’s taken me 6 weeks to get to the sleeves! We had a mini knit along for this as it was Meriel’s first jumper, first garment and first large project! She, unlike me, has the ability to work on one project at a time, so has been wearing it for ages now.

My final WIP I put the blame squarely onto the shoulders of the Blacksheepwools Facebook group.  They were all knitting a scarf in 2 balls of 4ply, the Zickzack scarf. Easy, I thought. This won’t take long, I thought. Let’s have a knit along, I thought.  WRONG! It’s taking me forever to knit a row. Why? Because 5 is a difficult number lol. We started on 1^st June and I’m about half way through so hopefully another few weeks and it’ll be done.

From finger to needles in a week…. this will take forever!!

So, what have you created during lockdown? Did  you buy out the yarn shops in case you didn’t have enough yarn in your stash? Maybe that was just me…. You never know when there’ll be a yarn shortage!

Show me your lockdown beauties!

Planning

Happy New Year everyone!

Its been a bit quiet around here recently hasn’t it.

Well, in my infinite wisdom I declared months ago that I wasn’t making Christmas presents. And then I had an idea for my nephew….

These took ages to make. Not because they’re time consuming, but because I didn’t like sewing them up, lol. There was a cry of “knit it in the round” but that envoked murderous looks that soon shut them up.

 

The oldies weren’t left out you’ll be pleased to know

Not content to make an army, I also last minute decided to knit socks for a few people but they got one solitary sock on Christmas Day.

And my sisters boyfriend also received knitwear to match last years scarf.

I’m currently working on a blanket for my niece and thinking about my plans for 2020.  Do I knit my queue? Do I knit 4 jumpers? Do I try something new?

What plans have you made?

 

Some Thoughts on Project Bags — A Million Paper Stars

I’ve been making project bags for awhile now. I love to experiment with sizes and shapes, various openings and fixtures, and other little touches like extra pockets, patchwork or piping. Mostly I stick to a basic rule: they must fulfil their purpose. Which is a pretty easy rule, right? I mean, how do you make […]

via Some Thoughts on Project Bags — A Million Paper Stars

Ahhhhh!!

*waves* hello 🙂

Just a quick one this week as I’m up to my eyes in super hero body parts.

I thought it would be an excellent idea to knit my nephews Christmas present – little 7 inch versions of his favourite super hero’s. So far both Superman and the Hulk are armless, faceless and accessoryless (Yes, I just made that word up) and Spiderman is just 2 ankles and feet.

As for Black Widow and Iron man… well the yarn is out and the patterns printed.

It’s 44 days til Christmas… best get cracking!!!!

To Rip or Not to Rip?

That’s often the biggest question when it comes to a project that’s just not going to plan. In this case, it’s a pair of mitts. I bought the pattern on Ravelry and while I loved the original design, the measurements were never going to work with my (apparently) freakishly small hands. At its widest, the mitts hold a circumference of 68 stitches, but a little mathing showed that even with my smallest needles (2mm), knitting at my usual tension, anything over 54 stitches was going to be too big. And there’s no point knitting mitts that’ll just slide off your hands, right? Right.

So I did what any passionate, obsessive knitter would do and rewrote the whole pattern. This meant redrawing the image and rejigging the lettering and fixing the decreases and resizing the thumb hole and basically just starting all over.

Which I did.

But now I’m not crazy about my colour choices (big surprise there, I hear you say) because I feel there’s not enough contrast. And for all my careful math, I feel I could get away with a few more stitches in the circumference. Those floats make the mitts quite snug.

So. This means I’m faced with two options: knit on, or frog. I’m leaning towards frogging. I’ve yelled and raged and had a cry and now I’ve entered the final stage of acceptance and I think that means frogging the fucker and starting over. What would you do, O Blogverse? Ever had a project you worked so hard on only to end up frogging and starting over? C’mon, spill. Make me feel less incompetent and we can commiserate together.

(This is the first mitt, by the way, just before beginning the decreases.)

Lo! And behold!

Welcome back to the Rabbit Hole! I hope you had a lovely summer (despite the fact that it rained most of the time!)

It seems to have flown by this year for some reason. Summer makes me wish I was back in school for those 2 months off, of course back then I was bored  most of the time but now I’d have knitted up a storm!

So what delights have I created since we started our summer break? The short answer is not much.

I started a Wee Lima in August  and was happily working through it when I had a realisation. There was NO WAY that it was a size 0-3 months. Of course I had forgotten to bring a tape measure with me, so after some googling, I got the size of my phone and used that instead. 12-18 months. Yup, my tiny little baby knit it basically teenager sized! How did this happen? I didn’t check what weight my yarn was.

Pattern instructed that I used an aran weight, silly me lifted a bulky weight and trotted off on my holidays.

But, the good news is that I did actually manage to complete something.

Behold, the blanket:

I may have started it months ago, but I got bored after square 1 so put it aside. Its pretty quick once you get into it though and the nice yarn helped a lot. I have to be honest and admit that I had hoarded the yarn for a while (its KnitPicks Brava Worsted) but a new niece/nephew is worth it!

I used the following colourways –  avocado, marina, peacock, seraphim, cornflower, peapod and fairytale. I edged it in dove heather.

The yarn is really nice and soft, so much so that Im tempted to replenish the stock…

Hectic

Another week has rolled around and while summer holidays quickly approach, it seems that life has thrown the SNB bloggers a curve ball.

Instead of things starting to wind down we’ve got exams, work and relatives to try to add to our already busy days.

We’re so busy that no one was able to go to Starbucks last week! It’s been at least a year since that happened!

So, with this in mind, we’ve decided to take the summer off from the blog.   Don’t panic though, I’m sure I won’t be able to contain myself when I finally finish somethimg (other than a washcloth) so hopefully you’ll be hearing from me…

As for right now, I’m drinking tea and stuffing my face.

Bliss. 

WWKIP Day 2019

It’s that time of year again, when crafters get twitchy and start to make nuisances of themselves by coming out of the woodwork and flaunting their skills and beautiful wips under the noses of unsuspecting passers-by. That’s right, it’s World Wide Knit in Public Day.

As is typical for SnB, we included a range of crafts, not just knitting of course. And unusual for us, we actually went to a yarn shop/cafe. In the past, we’ve chosen some unlikely – but fun! – venues (check it out here and here), but this year we kept it casual.

Our destination of choice was the lovely Folklore Yarns in east Belfast, and owner Åsa (pronounced Oh-sa) and her daughter Hannah made us feel right at home. While we munched on a variety of baked treats and sandwiches, she kept the teapots filled and coffee brewing! We had a variety of crafts on display: knitting, crochet, fibre spinning, patchwork and embroidery. Perhaps best of all was Emma Whitehead ‘s tent: a 20+-year project that never fails to amaze crafters and non-crafters alike. It truly is a sight to behold.

There was some Pom-Pom making, cross-stitching, yarn squishing and yarn sniffing too! Some new friends were made, and old ones caught up. And a few skills were passed on too, because what’s the point of a fibre community if you can’t share the love?

Meriel’s first time spinning!

 

Happy WWKIP Day! 

Knitflix and Mankinis

 

A while past (perhaps two birthdays ago?) Jaele very kindly gifted me the Sencha shawl pattern as I fell in love with it the minute I saw Hutch’s sample on her Dye Candy stall at Yarnfolk. I’ve braved a few shawls to date and finally felt like this was something I could tackle, although I had no idea how on earth to knit zig zags.

The yarns I’ve chosen are both by the fabulous Ewemomma (online and B’n’M in the Buttermarket, Enniskillen). Sparkle sock in ‘Have you seen that wizard’ and ‘Judas’. I loved the glorious richness of Judas the moment I saw it and bought it with absolutely no plan for how to use it. We happened to be in Enniskillen for a day trip earlier this year and I had the chance to call in to Tracy’s shop where I saw the beautiful black sparkle and my colour combo for the Sencha pattern came into my head.

 

It’s coming on nicely and has given me the opportunity to knit whilst we blast a few box sets on Netflix due to its easy to remember four row pattern repeat once you pass the initial set up rows. We’ve watched “Dead to Me” and are currently on the second series of “Good Girls” (very enjoyable, definitely would recommend both). I’ve even taken to carrying it round in the car with me so I can knit whilst I wait to pick up my kids.

 

I have taken a bit of banter for the early project photo I posted on facebook though; being asked if I was knitting a pair of knickers is the funniest thing I’ve been asked for a while. This joke has now morphed into a knitted mankini for my old school friend Neil, although what he’ll make of the sparkle in it is anyone’s guess.

To be fair, it does look rather pantie-like!