gimme a "J"!!!!

Hi all: here is my January project completed!




My new skill was learning to knit cables without a cable needle. This was fun and easier than I thought it would be... and I think I did OK at it! :-)



For more information, check out my blog.

Cheers and good luck to everyone else!

cabling without a cable needle

Look ma, no hands!!



This is a detail from the Gathered Pullover I am making... I tried a technique of making cables without a cable needle. It's great! (and I highly recommend the pattern, which is simple knitting yet I think will look very good when done, hopefully by tomorrow).

More photos to come when it's done.

First Finished cabled hat/project...

The Gianna hat from SWTC made for a good friend as a Christmas gift was a fairly quit knit and my first finished project involving cables!

I was desperately hoping to get a chance to do mittens and a scarf to match but with Christmas being only days away as I finished the hat and so many other non-knitting, non-crocheting things on the burner, it never happened.

Ah! Maybe an after-Christmas special or for her birthday!

Wishing you all the best for a wonderful New Year!
See you soon!

Jaye

Phew!

It is way past my bedtime. But my Sugar On Snow has been 90% finished for over a week now. The whole hat part was knit, I just needed to make the I-cord and pom poms. Holidays/life and I confess, a fair amount of procrastination kept me from finishing it until tonight. But it would be such a shame to come that close and not make the deadline. So I sat my butt down and finished, though I really wasn't feeling like it. =) Because of the cables that pull in, this is one of those projects that looks WAY better when it's actually on the body, as apposed to lying in a tight squished up blob. My daughter is not available at this hour to model it, so I borrowed her Barbie make over doll.

I'll be putting together a more detailed post about this project with better photos on my blog Monday or Tuesday, if anyone is interested. Goodnight. =)

Two Birds With One Stone

I need a project for November. My daughter needs a new hat. I've never knit cables before. Problem solved:

My November project is Sugar On Snow from the Fall 2006 Knitty. I'm going to try to make time to swatch in the next day or so.

My August project is finished

My first try ever to knit cables. I´m not satisfied with the result, but I liked cable knitting, and will do it again soon. I guess that`s the pattern I don`t really like, the don`t fit very well. Now I´ll go on with my September project instead, which I really have been looking forward to.

Hello from Jess in Australia!

Hello, how are you all?

My name's Jess, and I'm hailing you from the Wintry Southernmost Australian state of Tasmania, with a mug of hot chocolate in my hand and a warm dog asleep on my toes :-)
Well, this is my first KAL, and it's fun :-)
What to knit, hmmm.... I have already changed my plans several times, which is why something like a KAL is so good for me - it will force me to actually stick with something ;-)

Basically, over the next few months I'd like to do four new things:
~ Knit a pair of socks for my nearly-2-year-old son Liam (I've never knitted socks before!)
~ Repair and complete a Celtic cabled vest for Liam, which is the first pattern I've made up... I need to undo the cast on row and knit downwards to make it longer, which I've never done!
~ Make a jumper for Liam using wool I dyed myself.
~ Knit and Felt a pair of pixie or medieval boots. I got this idea from a free pattern online, Old World Booties, by the Sanguine Gryphon. They would be for (you guessed it) Liam.

...Perhaps at some point a "new" thing I can do is to knit something for myself! But it's more fun to make things for other people, and it uses a lot less wool and time to knit for children than for grown-ups! Where I live it's quite cold in the winter (which is now), and Liam keeps growing out of his old warm clothes :-)

To get myself started, I've taken some pictures of my projects...

These are the socks I began for this KAL, while I was eagerly awaiting my invitation :-) They're based on the Opal Kids Socks, but I'm knitting them on two needles. I'm happy with the shape so far, the colours turned out a bit more overwhelming than I thought, but Liam will like them I'm sure! I'm using Cleckheaton Merino Bambino in their latest multi colour-way.







This is the Celtic vest I have yet to complete, I love it but it's tricky because I made the pattern up (except the central motif, which is traditional) and I'm trying to get the collar cables to tie in with the central panel. I'll add a border on the bottom and link those cables to the central panel too!
I'll have to undo the cast on row and work another repeat of the main body, as Liam has grown since I started this vest! Then it just may fit him for a little longer... I'll have to concentrate hard on the right cable crossings when I'm working "backwards" (downwards?), I've never tried it but I hope it'll work!
A few firsts for this vest then :-)



Here's the jumper I started with the wool I hand-painted. The colours are a bit darker than you can see here, with little dashes of purple to warm it up. I'm knitting it on circular needles. Originally I started it in the round, but the colours were pooling strangely so I switched to knitting the front and back separately. The wool I dyed was white Patons Jet (30% alpaca, 70% wool), my favourite wool for keeping Liam warm! That's what the Celtic Cable vest is made from as well.

And these are my first attempts at felting - 3 mini-swatches to see how much the wool would shrink. The two white squares are Jet, and the centre is Cleckheaton Tapestry. I just wanted to make small swatches to measure how much the finished boots will shrink. The Jet reduced by a whole third, and became very stiff and strong - perhaps too stiff? The tapestry yarn didn't felt very well at all, though it's a pretty colour ;-) The 2nd picture shows the swatches after 3 cycles of hand-felting. I think I'll make the boots from Jet and then dye them a rich summery green afterwards. Or is it better to dye the wool first? The two white swatches were on different sized needles - one the recommended size and one 3 sizes smaller, but it made no difference to the end result. I wonder how I could get a thinner finished felt? By using needle sizes larger? I'll have to keep swatching ;-)

Thanks to everyone for sharing your projects, I'm really enjoying this :-)
Kind regards,
Jess