princessdeia

July 18th 2007
Filed under General, Stash Enhancement, Sweaters

July 5th 2007
Filed under General, Stash Enhancement, Summer of Socks, Sweaters

I have spent the last few days stuck at home looking like a hamster with toothache. I am on horrid tablets, and have been warned to stay away from alcohol for the next few weeks. (I will come out in a rash ). Luckily hiding out in my bedroom has given me the perfect opportunity to knit! I decided to cast on my Pure Silk Shrug – originally, I started out swatching and I was going to practice the lace pattern before jumping into the actual shrug.

However, when I realized the sides only started with 18 stitches (I am making the medium size), I jumped straight in, and night and mornings worth of knitting and I am on the second side. I thought I should do the back last when I was more confident about the lace and cables.

Stupidly, I could have used this time to finish off the socks I have on the needles and then I could post some FO (I think my lack of knitting this year is embarrassing).

Still to the yarn goddess is around to cheer me up and my Knit Picks order arrived look at all the goodies. Most of this is planned for future projects, Central Park Hoodie, Fetching, Coronet and maybe a River Stole.

1. Undamaged Box, 2. Shimmer in Turquoise Splendor, 3. Shimmer in Morning Mist, 4. Shimmer in Stained Glass, 5. Andean Silk in Navy, 6. Wool of the Andes in Arctic Pool Heather , 7. Palette in Brindle Heather, 8. Palette in Navy

May 16th 2007
Filed under General, Sockapalooza, Socks, Stash Enhancement, Summer of Socks, Sweaters

I have been taking advantage of Rule 2.a in the guidelines for Knit from Your Stash and have ordered several hanks of Natural Dye Studio yarn. I first brought this yarn for my One Skein Secret Pal, last year and of course, I had to buy some for myself. However the yarn has sat in the drawer since the summer, when I signed up for Superfluous Sock Yarn Swap, I decided to send this yarn to my spoilee.

The thought of being separated from this yarn, drew my right back to eBay. My plan was to buy some yarn to make my sockapalooza sock, my pal is from America and loves colour, so I thought a hand dyed British socks would be perfect. The colour is Lilac Sun, as for the pattern, I am thinking something like Lacy Scallops (pdf) or Razor Shell (pdf).

Of course, I couldn’t bid on just one lot and ended up buying four different colours – and there was me thinking the Superfluous Sock Yarn Swap, was designed to help stash-bust not to encourage me to buy more yarn!

As I am knitting from my stash I have already decided what socks I am going to make. I am going to jump on the Cookie A bandwagon, the Lipstick (bright pink) is going to become Hedera, the Regency (pink/lilac )is going to become some Pomatomus and I guess if you are going to knit some Cookie A socks you have to make some Monkey socks which will be the Midnight Ice (blue/white).

To help encourage me to knit these socks, I have signed up to the Summer of Socks KAL, I doubt I will be able to knit four pairs of socks this summer – I am sure SSS will set in but you never know. I guess I should finish the my jaywalkers.

I am trying to convince myself that buying yarn from Knit Picks is benefiting numerous knitters therefore it doesn’t matter that I am breaking the rules of Knit from your Stash, I could place an order entirely of sock yarn – but I have been thinking about patterns I love, like Central Park Hoodie and Fetching and have been buying to make those projects.

October 19th 2006
Filed under General, Socks, Stash Enhancement

For a while now I have been thinking that knitting and the Internet work so well together. Ever since I started knitting again nearly two years ago, the Internet has been my crafting buddy. I started knitting again to relax and unwind the evenings, I picked up some yarn and Vintage Knits in John Lewis one Sunday afternoon, came home found my old needles and two weeks later had made a lace vest.

One day whilst bored at work, where I was wishing I had my knitting with me, I started hunting around on Livejournal for knitting communities. There I found several devoted to the Stitch ‘n Bitch Handbook. I fell in love with the new interesting patterns – I adored the idea of an iPod cozy (my other new obsession at the time was my iPod). I was straight on to Amazon to order the book (again the Internet was there to help my obsession).

The other thing the livejournal communities introduced me to was knitting blogs and knit-alongs.  The following spring I started sharing my craft with this knitting blog and signing up to several KAL’s. soon I had several daily reads and I started using the internet to find new patterns, (like Spring Fling and the OSW), learn new techniques (Socks 101 was a great help for my first pair of socks) and discovering new yarns (I am still dying to try Knit Picks Wool of the Andes). Of course this isn’t mentioning all the other knitters I have ‘met’ from various swaps and exchanges.

This weekend, I brought some Sirdar’s Blur yarn to make a scarf as a birthday present. Instead of looking in my knitting books I headed straight online to find a pattern. The silly thing is I have no idea what kind of pattern of wanted. To me this yarn is the thicker version of Kidsilk Spray, so I was thought of looking for a pattern involving this yarn, however all I found was lacy patterns, and the yarn is too thick for this.

So I never did find a pattern – but whilst hunting on the Rowan website, I found this book. It only has six patterns but all of them are amazing. This is the knitting magazine I have been dreaming about. Recently I have been obsessed with grey yarn (I think it started as I had trouble finding grey cotton this summer), I am already making my dress, but I have plans for a cardigan and capelet. I had an idea what I wanted them to look like and intended to just make up the pattern. But they were Kelly and Harvey.

Feeling good about my new discovery, I turned to bloglines to catch up on my daily reading (see what you all have been up to over the weekend). And there on Lolly’s blog were images of there My So Called Scarf – the perfect pattern for my Sirdar Blur.

This month, is meant to be about Socks – and I have done very little updating. For me one of my greatest knitting pleasures is shown right here. One completed sock all ready for grafting.

I am still amazing when I look at the toe of a hand knitted sock and the grafted stitches – Kitchener stitch is fabulous – even an someone who is awful at sewing (e.g. Me!), can end up with neat, smart looking socks.

I should add I learned to do kitchener stitch via a tutorial on knitty.com – as I said the Knitting and Internet perfect companions.

August 1st 2006
Filed under General, Project Spectrum, Stash Enhancement, Sweaters

As I have been concentrating on OSSP, I seem to have neglected Project Spectrum, I received this lovely card for Claudia over the weekend, hidden in the mosaic is eye which has been staring back whilst I type this.

I also invested in some Double Top Cotton in brown, from Texere. Which I am going to turn into the mohair stripe sweater from Vintage Knits. I have some left over Destiny Mohair (also from Texere), from my Wavy Gravy Scarf I made last year. 

Now I have a little confession – even since I started knitting again, and invested in Stitch ‘n’ Bitch, I have thought about trying some of the techniques like kool aid dying and felting – but have never actually ventured outside of my normal knitting.

Last month, I decided to dive in and make a felted stash-busting bag and also the felted clutch from One Skein. This is the stash-busting bag – pre-felt and my Clutch is blocking at the moment, I just need to add some crocheted flowers.

June 18th 2006
Filed under General, Project Spectrum, Stash Enhancement

I am doing a pretty bad job of avoiding the World Cup, the idea of meeting up with everyone in the pub to watch the game or staying in and watching crap television isn’t really a fair contest, especially when there is cold beer involved! I watched the England game in the pub on Thursday, and although my knitting was in my bag, the pub was too crowded and the idea of knitting in the smokey atmosphere did not appeal.

My stash has also been enhanced with some Cascade 220, when I started knitting again two years ago, Stitch ‘n’ Bitch became my bible and the Internet was a constant source of patterns, amazingly a large amount of pattern (especially felted patterned) called for Cascade 220 or Lamb’s Pride Bulky, and these yarns where impossible to get hold of – now Get Knitted has started selling both these yarns so I had to check them out – now all we need is got Knit Picks to export to the UK and I will be able to find out what all the fuss is about.

Luckily I am not on a yarn diet, as I brought more yarn on Friday afternoon, when I was meant to be shopping for my Secret Pals when I invested in some Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran for me – I think I will turn it into a summer scarf.

Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to knit much this weekend, as we saw the Foo Fighters in Hyde Park yesterday – undoubtedly a gig I will tell my children about, gorgeously hot day, one of the London’s most famous landmarks, 85, 000 people and members of Queen performing the encore – my only complaint was the set was too short!

Today, I have completed a Blue Square for knit-a-river.

February 22nd 2006
Filed under General, Project Spectrum, Socks, Stash Enhancement, Sweaters

One of the problems with not blogging regularly is I didn’t get a chance to flash the latest additions to my stash. Most of this was purchased in the January sales.

• Debbie Bliss Maya (half price in the John Lewis sale), which I am using for my circular shrug.
• Some cheap pink acrylic sock yarn, I think I will make some Jaywalkers with this.
• Paton’s Essences in the bright pink, probably with become the Anthropologie Capelet from Craftster.

Having spent the majority of the last week waiting for news from the hospital, I have managed to knit away; the twin set is almost complete. After about 3 months I have finally blocked the sweater, I was concerned that the cardigan would look too plain also in stocking stitch so I added a little pattern – based on the diamond stitch pattern from diamond sweater also in Vintage Knits.

The body and sleeve of the cardigan are done and being blocked. All I just need to do is knit the button band however, I think this is going to be like Lucky and take me the most time to complete. I would like to have this completed by this week before Project Spectrum begins.

As a distraction, I started this circular shrug, this is my unofficial Knitting Olympics project (I didn’t think I would finish it in time), this pattern knits up really quickly, two nights worth of knitting and I have completed 7 inches – I guess I could have finished it in the 16 days. Especially, as I can’t wait to wear this project.

September 5th 2005
Filed under General, Stash Enhancement, Swaps

The Kidsilk Haze I got from Tracy in my final Secret Pal present, is prefect for branching out, after starting my own version over the weekend I decided I had to make more as Christmas Presents, when I used the wool before, I found it really awakward to knit with (it is just too thin), but I think now as a slightly more experienced knitted I am finding it a little easier.

So armed with a plan I went to John Lewis in Kingston on Saturday and brought 10 balls of Kidsilk wool ready to make scarves. I brought 6 balls of the Haze – all in neutral colours and then 3 balls of the Kidsilk Spray which I think will look amazing as Airy Scarves from Last Minute Gifts (but I think I will make longer versions). Finally, I had to get some of the Kidsilk Night – I am unsure what to do with this, I am hunting around online for a nice lacy pattern, that I can turn into a scarf.

July 26th 2005
Filed under General, Stash Enhancement, Sweaters

All my orders from the weekend arrived this morning – I love post
So I have a nice stash enhancement – luckily all the wool is earmarked for projects.
My orders included:

• Good Fortune Cotton in Wine.
• Destiny Mohair in Petrol
• Hipknits Silk in Surf

The cotton is going to be turned into a twin set – I think the one from Vintage Knits. I brought the mohair for a scarf for me – I am planning on making scarves as Christmas presents – yes I am thinking that far ahead), I was going to use Rowan Kidsilk Haze, but thought I would try this out as an alternative. I adore the colour, the shade was petrol – but it’s a dark turquoise, and in a certain light a jade green.

I got so excited about the Hipknit Silk – I have seen so many other people in blogland use this wool and I was so eager to start knitting with it – I rolled into into balls by hand and what I read is true it does shred, It is really hard to see in this photo, but it is shades of sky blue, mint green and a pale turquoise I am pretty sure it will become an Arabella.

I have done about 12 inches of Marco – I wanted the jumper to look really chunky (even though it is in cotton), so I did the rib in 3 stitches of purl and knit.

I think I need a a session in front of the TV watching some cheesy show or a DVD, so I can just relax knit… oh it would be even more perfect, if I could convince Jason to bring home a bottle of wine.

July 25th 2005
Filed under General, Stash Enhancement

I have been busy working on my Dad’s jumper at the moment. I have done pretty well and have finished about half the back – I am looking forward to starting the decreases for the arms – as knitting straight stocking stitch is starting to get on my nerves.

I like to have two projects going on at once, on different size needles – just to exercise my hands. Normally, the project on the 3.75mm needles would be the smaller needles – but this time – they are the large needles and I am using 1.25mm (US 0000) needles as my other project, the Maryella cuff (which is nearly finished).

Not much else to post about the weekend – my sister went to Brussels (so now I am pigging out on chocolate), I did do some hunting online placed a few orders, I finally got some of the silk from Hipknits, in Surf. This wool is perfect for a OSW, however, I think I want to knit a summer top with it. I also brought some cotton from Texere, in wine and chocolate (for a border for my mini-sweater). I got a few bits for my secret pal too – but I am not going to post that here in case she is reading .