Knitting in the sunshine

The heatwave continues.  As does the stash busting.  Using up small amounts of 4ply yarn to make a couple of Little Sister's Dresses.

And some purple aran to make a Baby Sophisticate cardigan.

And, I have cast on a blanket (reverse pinwheel).  Which I actually brought yarn for.  To try to justify buying yarn, well it was on offer...

Knitting blankets in this heat summer seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do!  Although I have some way to go before this blanket is covering my lap.  I've just realised when uploading these photos that I seem to be having a purple knitting phase, this is not necessarily intentional! In between the knitting, I also cycled up to Loch Lomond to have a very well deserved ice-cream.

Where this black headed gull (that really has a chocolate coloured head) very kindly posed for me.

Adventures in cables...

 I had been wanting to knit more items with cables, however not being particularly proficient with cable needles, and not having quite as many arms as an octopus, I decided to start somewhere simple.  I picked Blue Blanket by LondonLeo for a friend's new arrival.

This pattern has blocks of cable, moss stitch and garter stitch, which together look very impressive, although is actually quite simple to do.  It is a two row repeat, with a cable needle required every tenth row, and you just knit until you are finished (or run out of yarn).  This project also uses a K1B stitch, that is to knit a stitch into the stitch below (essentially dropping a stitch).  This results is quite a prominent line either side of the cable section.

I am quite happy with how this turned out, and this has given me confidence to try some more adventurous cable patterns.  The ravelry details with yarn info are here.  Does anyone have any suggestions of easy cable patterns to try next?

My weather apology...

I'm sorry, I think I might have been responsible for the cold weather we have been having recently.

You see, I cast on my ten-stitch blanket just before New Year.  My aim was to use up all the DK stash that I had.  And well, it took three months.

During this time, the knitting gods must have been in discussion with the weather gods, so that the continued chilly nights would encourage me to continue to work on the blanket. After all, you don't want to be working on a blanket in warm weather!

So you will be relieved to know that the blanket is finally finished.

The knitting gods have sent an email to the weather gods, and they will be working on bringing you Spring soon!

Stitches...

This has been a quiet month on the blog front.

In the background I have been making many, many stitches.

Including an icord border.

And some pretty cable.

Finished items to share soon.

On the needles...

The ten stitch blanket is getting dangerously close to being finished.

Plus I am also knitting a bonsai tree.

This is for the Botanica Mathematica project; combining nature, knitting and numbers. Also whilst walking home I noticed that this mysterious owl has appeared on a wall nearby and is brightening up the area.

How cute!

Where is the bear?

Back in November I had a try at illusion knitting.  I had thought it was going to be very complex, but was much easier that I thought.  That is thanks to the excellent tutorial from Woolly Thoughts and some stitch markets (stitch markers are your friend in illusion knitting).  I chose a teddy bear pattern from Woolly Thoughts for a friends baby, some Sirdar Snuggly, and got to work.

The blanket took about 3 weeks, including the border.  Full details on how I did the border my ravelry project page.  The blanket is very cute, who would have thought that knit and purl could create such a great illusion.  And the bear will be perfectly seen from a baby's-eye-view.  I had a little yarn spare, so added a simple baby hat by Allison Williams, with added teddy bear ears (obviously!).

And also some cute booties.  These are Seamless Baby Booties by Laura Yarnthrower.

These were all good fun to knit, and I would certainly like to try more illusion knits.  Ps) Apologies for the dull lighting in the photographs, roll on Spring!

Ten stitch...

My ten stitch blanket is now just over a metre wide, and I still have a lot of yarn to destatsh.  

I have been enjoying some of the yarn labels.

The very 70s looking sugar and spice.

The twee superstar DK.

And the cute cool as cotton.  I've always thought of yarn labels as informative rather than decorative.  Maybe I will start to pay a little more attention!

Progress...

Repetitive movements are slowly making the blanket bigger, and my lap warmer.