More Yuletide Crafting

E. did open her parcel before Christmas. I received a rather excited text as a result. I made her a pair of bangles as I knew she'd love the combination of fashion and knitting. No pattern, but this is what I did:  I bought two large-ish bangles from a well-known high street shop. I used some bulky pure wool which I knitted to a very, very tight tension on 3.5mm needles (this is rather hard on the hands, I should add, but the result is great).

I experimented with how many stitches to cast on but settled on 14 stitches before knitting away rather happily. Throughout I measured the length of my knitted strip against the bangle - I wanted a snug fit, so I kept pulling at it. I cast off using my usual lace cast-off method which allows for elasticity.

Then I sewed it all together: cast-in/off edges first and then the long edges with the bangle inside. The sewing-up was hard on the hands, but I found using a safety pin helped me enormously by keeping the edges pinned together as I worked around the bangle.

There are some rather amazing jewellery patterns on Ravelry, actually. I spent a lot of time this month looking for inspiration and quick-yet-substantial knits. Some of my favourites include Bevy of Bangles (felted and embellished), Knitter's Brooch (which I have seen retail for up to £10 at craft fairs!), Blooming Rose (utilising the natural curl of stocking stitch), and Braided Cable necklace.

I have one more handmade Christmas present up my sleeve - except I forgot to take a photo of it before I dispatched it to .. er .. somewhere else. Meanwhile there are five pressies in my living room all wrapped in "woolly wishes!" wrapping paper. I think that means they are for me! Ooh, the excitement!

Today is Winter Solstice and while you can take a girl out of Scandinavia, a Scandinavian girl will always love her pre-Christian pagan holiday traditions. So, I'm off to light some candles and pet my straw yule goat (julebuk). The days are getting longer, finally!

Christmas Crafting

This holiday season I was not going to make anything for anybody - bar that quilt for my mother which didn't happen. Then someone suggested a small crafty Christmas exchange within a tiny circle of friends - and how could I resist making things for people who appreciate handmade things and who knows how much love and work go into every single stitch? And I ended up making some things that I well and truly love.

A Christmas pudding pin cushion for L.

The pattern is by Freddie Patmore, but I do not think it is available outside Rowan Christmas workshops? I used oddments of Rowan Pure Wool DK for this one. I used toy stuffing for the top and added a tiny bag filled with rice for a bit of added weight at the bottom.

The construction of the holly leaves is really clever, by the way.

I never thought I'd be one to knit novelty Christmas puddings, but we learn new things about ourselves all the time, don't we? This was actually so much fun to make that I also made one for myself using Rowan Fine Tweed! I'll try to get a photo of that later..

I made three Christmas baubles for P.

I used Balls Up! by General Hogbuffer (this may be a pseudonym!) as a template, but I did deviate quite a bit as the styrofoam balls I used were significantly smaller than the ones used in the pattern.

The yarn? Oddments of sheepy Shetland type 4ply. Needles? 2.5mm.

The first bauble took an evening to make as I had to figure out my own modifications rather than work straight from the pattern. The next two baubles took significantly less time, although I was still using colourful language towards the end when the styrofoam ball was inside the work-in-progress and I had to work decreases on tiny needles. Again, hands did suffer in the making of these objects!

I absolutely love these - I think they look amazing - and if I had had any more styrofoam baubles, everyone would have received these. I think this is something I'll make again - possibly for my mother next year and definitely for myself.

(Of course taking these photographs was another eye-opener for any neighbours who had forgotten my quirky ways: "Look, dear, the lady from next door is off the rails again. She's kneeling in the snow with her camera fixed at something knitted." They will learn someday.)

I also made something for E. but she refused to open her gift before Christmas Day..

Kastanie

Dear Father Christmas,

I have been a very good girl this year. Well, I have been a very good girl most of the year. Okay, I was a very good girl until last night. I hope we are still cool about me getting a floppy-eared puppy with big paws?

Love, Karie x

Last night I cast on for a project that has nothing to do with work nor is it one of my own designs. In fact, it is a completely frivolous project that I only cast on because - gasp - I wanted to knit it. I don't think I have done that for a very, very long time (and typing that makes me feel a bit sad, actually). Kastanie is going to be a jumper. I bought the first issue of knit.wear a couple of months ago because I loved the simple, wearable Wendy Bernard pattern. Of course it transpires that the pattern is a re-branded Riverstone Boatneck jumper which makes me very angry as a consumer. Pay $5.50 to get the one pattern or pay £10 for a magazine? I know which one I would have preferred.

Anyway. In my stash I had two large skeins of New Lanark Aran in a one-off colourway that I bought on a visit to the Mill back in 2009. The colour is a gorgeous heathery chestnut ('Kastanie' is Danish for chestnut) and I am loving up it works up with the stitch pattern. I reckon I have maybe 600g of yarn which may or may not be enough for the jumper, but we shall see. The jumper is a bog-standard, easily-modified top-down raglan so I can play around with fit and yardage. All in all, this is not an earth-shatteringly new direction for my knitting but I just really want a cosy winter jumper that I can knit up fairly quickly and without too much stress.

Speaking of stress, I use WordPress to power this site and sadly their new update makes it incredibly cumbersome for me to blog. This entry has been entirely hand-coded, for instance, and while I do like coding, I am not particularly keen on handcoding every single blog post. It takes too much time. I'm off to find a solution. If you want to see another photo of Kastanie, please visit its project page on Ravelry. No link because that would require about three different windows open and additional handcoding. You get my drift.

2011: A Year in Knitting

Although we are only halfway through December, I am ready to look back at my knitting year. I found a New Year's Resolution post I made on Ravelry on January 3, 2011:

• Sort out the unwieldy stash
• Eleven hats in 2011 (or preferably more...)
• Knit up a lot of the random balls scattered throughout the stash
• Finish more than 2.75 garments within a year.
• Relax with my knitting. It shouldn't feel like a chore

And how did I do? I did relatively badly.

I managed to organise the stash but it became rather disorganised in October when we had to get the spare bed out of storage, thus upsetting my stacks of yarn boxes in the process. Eleven hats? No. I managed three. I still need hats, so I will aim to knit some more with some of the random balls still in my stash. I did knit one cardigan and finished another one which had languished in my knitting basket. I turned a third garment into a shrug and I'm halfway through a fourth garment. Mild success? It doesn't feel like it.

As for relaxing with my knitting? Here is where I have to come clean. I work within the knitting industry. Although it is the best job in the world, knitting is still work and as such it can feel like a chore at times. Most of my knitting time is spent swatching and I rarely get to finish things. I am not complaining because I am one of the lucky ones who has managed to turn a hobby into a career, but I am now realising that sometimes knitting will not feel relaxing and that is okay.

So, 2011. What did I do and what were my favourites?

• I exhibited knitted art at The Tramway Art Gallery. Yikes.
• One of my go-to- FOs was the Silkwood Cowl which felt like a really carefree project and subsequently has been living around my neck most of the year.
• My other go-to FO has been my Red Cardigan of Doom which took me forever to finish and which I thought looked awful on me. I have practically lived in it ever since. I have to knit a proper long-sleeved cardigan out of Rowan Baby Alpaca because it makes the softest, warmest fabric I have ever worn. I am always cold - except when I wear this cardigan.
• I released a couple of patterns - some free and some not so free. My favourites? Karise was released in July and has just been the subject of a Ravelry knit-along. Tornved was released this month to a quite overwhelming response (gosh). I also did a couple of patterns for a store which I have not yet added to Ravelry.
• I tried a lot of new yarns. I loved working with Old Maiden Aunt merino/silk. It was a lovely heavy and drapey yarn just perfect for shawls. However, it is fair to say that 2011 was the year of knitting Kidsilk Haze. I used that a lot.

So. 2012. What do I spy in the crystal ball and what do I hope for?

• I'm already working on more patterns. I have sketchbook filled with what is essentially 2-and-a-half collections worth of patterns. Hopefully I will be able to devote more time to this in 2012.
• I'd really love to knit a few garments in 2012. Quality over quantity.
• And I still need more hats.
• Keeping on top of the stash. I cannot promise 'more yarn out than in' but at least I won't do the 'oh, I fancy a ball of that' thing because that way madness lies. I am getting far better at curating my stash already. May it continue.
• More conscious allocation of my knitting time: what is 'work' knitting and what is 'me' knitting?

Of course I have a list of things I want to knit, but as 2011 has shown me: I had better not plan too far ahead.

Gift-Buying Guide For Knitters

So, you want to buy a great gift for the knitter in your life? And you haven't a clue where to start? I have written this gift-buying guide for people just like you.

Pattern: Tornved

My heart sank when I woke up this morning. It was another classic Glasgow early-winter morning: overcast, rainy and dreich. And I meant to do a photo shoot today, rats. Yes, boys and girls, I finished designing and writing another pattern. Remember the Old Maiden Aunt knitalong? I set myself the challenge of designing a shawl pattern during the KAL (oh, and knitting the sample and writing the pattern too).

I had the idea very early on that I wanted to design a shawl with my childhood in mind. I spent my summers in Tornved, a tiny hamlet in rural Denmark, where my great-grandmother. Lily, lived in a cottage. Her cottage looked out on farmland and I thought I wanted to put that into writing knitting. So, there you have it: birds chasing seeds and flying over unworked soil. I find it oddly poetic.

And on a practical note, I love small shawls with a solid stocking stitch middle but I find them quite dull to knit, so I wanted a lace pattern that would break up the monotony of stocking stitch but remain fairly solid.

Anyway, I eventually decided to take some photos inside one of the glass house in the nearby Botanic Gardens. Some of the statues kindly volunteered to be wrapped up in wool which gave my shawl a faint Gothic feel. Maybe those are not birds, but hearts..Hmm..

I am still unsure about the amount of light, but things are not going to get any brighter for a few weeks (yay, solstice!). Also, the grand prize in the Old Maiden Aunt November knitalong is a complete Tornved kit, so I needed to wrap things up.

Tornved took me three weeks to chart (because charts kept being stupid and big and difficult to knit) and less than four days to knit (when I finally cracked the chart thing). This speed-knitting adventure can possibly be the reason why I'm struggling with a wonky wrist now. Don't try this at home, kids. And it was an oddly emotional knit (and I don't do emotions) because I sat there thinking about ways to incorporate memories into a knit without being too specific.

You can purchase Tornved on Ravelry, if you so desire. I used 390 yards of Old Maiden Aunt Merino 4ply in the colour Berry Good and knitted it on 4mm circs. I did not bead this shawl, but I have included several beading tips for all you bling-lovers.

And that is that, I guess. I have lived with this shawl design for a month and now it is leaving the nest. Aww..