Found you!
I think tomorrow will be the day. With the help of Dawn I have set up a flickr account, and already managed to use up 63% of the uploads allowed this month for a free account.
Speaking of tomorrow, I am going to the Stitch and Creative Crafts Show at Sandown Park. Anyone else going?
In an earlier post I mentioned that part of the reason for knitting the stranded hat was as a practice for knitting Henry VIII. What I didn’t own up to was that I have already started. In fact I started some time ago, knitted about 3 inches and then put him aside to do other things, and he has been languishing in a pile on the lounge floor ever since. He has been there so long that I actually had to vacuum him before his little photo shoot.
Here he is in all his glory, looking not-quite-as-dusty as before:
The yarn I am using is 4ply weight Shetland from Uppingham Yarns. This knits to a slightly tighter tension than the pattern recommends, and this along with the fact that I am between the two sizes written means I am making a few alterations. Also I am picky about how patterns match as the sleeve joins the body at the shoulder so I am not keen on this being a drop shoulder. The current plan is to make it a raglan – but I still have a bit of working out on graph paper to figure out how to achieve a nice flowing pattern up the yoke. I have plenty of time before I get far enough along with the knitting to need to worry about the shoulders!
To add insult to injury for poor old Henry, during his sojourn on the floor my Dad accidentally put a chair leg on his needles and sat on the chair. For those who haven’t met my Dad, he is not a small man, and is frequently mistaken for Father Christmas by small children (particularly in December) – the occupational hazard of having a white beard and looking jolly. The photo below doesn’t show it particularly well, but Henry’s needles got rather bent during the chair episode.
Henry has now been rescued from the floor and is currently enjoying the change of perspective afforded him by viewing the room from the arm of the settee. I haven’t actually got round to finding him a new needle and started the knitting yet but I feel his time is nearly nigh. One has to work up to these things.
One of these days I will own up to the project neglect being suffered by the beaded dress (I think 7 years and counting) but I need a few more cups of tea first.
You probably all know that I am the technical editor for Yarn Forward Magazine. Kerrie has been very busy and hasn’t had time to put the corrections I have been sending her for Issue 1 up on the Yarn Forward website yet, so as an interim measure I have set up a page here where you can download a pdf of the corrections so far. Please let people know if they are interested. I haven’t read Issue 2 properly yet but hopefully will get corrections for it up soon.
Mother and I spent a very enjoyable day yesterday at the Knitting and Stitching Show at the NEC near Birmingham. I didn’t go to this show last year when it started so this was my first time, and it wasn’t quite what I expected. I had been expecting basically the same exhibitors as go to Ally Pally and so was initially rather disapointed by the noticeable lack of some exhibitors, particularly Get Knitted and Jamieson’s who I had on my list of people I wanted to visit. All was not lost however, I discovered some new-to-me gems, and some old favourites, and had an unexpected opportunity to catch up with friends who I hadn’t realised were going to be there. All in all a very good day 🙂
Now onto the important subject of what did I buy 🙂 First up the books and magazines:
From left to right we have: Knitted Lace by Sonja Esbensen and Anna Rasmussen bought from The Home Workshop. This is a book of lace doilies, but I thought that knitted up in thicker yarn on larger needles they would make very nice shawls. Next is Designing Worksheets: Presentation Techniques for Textile Students by Jan Messent, bought from a company I now can’t remember the name of – something like Yorkshire Book Company (apologies to them for my utter lack of brain). This is to help with my City & Guilds course – presentation is something I find very difficult. Next along is the April 2005 edition of Lace, the magazine of the Lace Guild. They were giving away old issues for free and this one had photographs of the most fantastic knitted lace in it. They also had the original lace framed on the walls of the booth – very beautiful. Lastly on the right I finally have my copy of issue 2 of Yarn Forward Magazine.
Next up the yarn:
The packet of white yarn underneath is Spree by Sirdar (chunky weight, 60% cotton, 40% acrylic). This is going to be a surprise for a friend of mine. I’m not sure that she reads the blog but just to be on the safe side it is going to stay a secret for a while. I had a lovely discussion about this project with a very nice Irish lady and her daughter, and have got some good ideas that I need to try out now. The bottles at the back have nozzles and I thought I would get them to play with dyeing some yarn, they are from Art Van Go. The cone and the skein are both from Riverside Spinning (he doesn’t have a website as he doesn’t actually exist between the shows 🙂 ). The skein is undyed and is going to be part of my dyeing experiment, it is 100% wool and in thickness somewhere between a 4ply and a DK weight. Apologies for the darkness of the photo – it has been rather grey here today, this was the best of the photos I took. The rather dark cone is 100% wool, 4ply in shades of dark green. He had two cones so me and mother had one each.
More yarn:
At the back we have a ball of Fortissima Colori Socka Color, colour: 2419, 75% wool, 25% polyamide, 4ply weight. This was from Web of Wool and will probably become socks. As will the two balls on the right, they are Admiral degrade by Schoppel Wolle, 75% wool, 25% polyamide, 4ply weight. The colours are 1309 and 1352 and they are from Knit ‘n’ Caboodle. You may have noticed that this yarn is suspiciously similar to Trekking sock yarn, and that is because it is made in the same factory and is to all intents and purposes the same (but not at the same price 🙂 ). Knit ‘n’ Caboodle were a company I hadn’t come across before and I am very glad I found them! Lovely helpful people and some very nice yarn – I am already composing my next order. The final yarn at the front left is Pura Lana Ecologica from Uppingham Yarns. This is an aran weight 100% organic wool yarn, the colours I got are called Mushroom and Earth which makes them sound not nearly as desirable as they actually are! This yarn is beautifully soft and cuddly, I got two balls of each colour and think I am going to make a nice cosy hat for the winter. At £2.00 for a 50g ball this seemed a very good buy.
I am also glad I found Knitting 4 Fun. Unfortunately by the time we got to them I was rather tired and incapable of making a decision. They had some absolutely beautiful Wool / Silk yarn but I couldn’t decide between the Kingfisher or the Teal Green, or decide how much I needed to buy. Luckily she sells online so I can work it all out in the comfort of home. Bev the owner was a delight to talk to and had a beautifully displayed stand – with a great view of the art at the entrance of the exhibition.
I found the whole show very inspiring, and the temptation to cast on for about 300 new projects is very great. I have managed to restrain myself so far but it is only a matter of time! I will be good and finish off my City and Guilds homework for Sunday first though – I have been putting off the drawing part of the homework but need to just bite the bullet and get on with it.
This simple beaded bracelet, based on garter stitch (knit every row), is quick and easy to work up, and an excellent introduction to knitting with beads. The beads added on every row give a three-dimensional quality to the piece.
Skills needed
Materials
Yarn substitutions
Any other crochet cotton of a similar thickness would be appropriate. A non-stretchy yarn works best for this design since otherwise the weight of the beads would distort the bracelet.
Finished size
The finished bracelet measures 18cm long, not including the button or loop, and is 2cm wide at the widest point.
Tension (gauge)
Approximately 7 stitches and 10 rows to 1cm in garter stitch (knit every row) using 1.25mm needles.
The tension (gauge) for this pattern is not critical since plain knit rows can easily be added in. Add more rows immediately after the cast on before the pattern begins, and add a similar number of rows immediately before the cast off. If the bracelet is coming out too long, simply omit 2 rows (or 4 if it is going to be really long) from each section of the pattern.
This pattern is sold as an electronic file in PDF format. File size is 232 KB. The pattern has 4 pages. Once payment is received a link to a personalised website will be emailed to you for you to download your copy of the pattern. Please note this link will expire.
Price: £2.00 
(This button will take you to a Ravelry page where you can buy the pattern, but you don’t need to be a Ravelry member for it to work)
Copyright Notice
All rights reserved. This pattern is for personal use only. This pattern, items made from this pattern or any portion of pattern or item may not be resold, or otherwise used for profit without express permission from the designer. This pattern may also not be distributed for free by any individual or shop without permission.
I’m afraid I have been overdoing it again, I had hoped to post more frequently now on the shiny new blog but this last week or so has rather worn me out. I shall hope to be at least a little more coherent here than I have been in general the past few days – I hope you know what I mean to write even if I don’t quite manage to articulate it as well as I would wish. Despite my best efforts I haven’t managed to wedge any extra hours in the day yet. Also I am having to reluctantly admit that not sleeping in an attempt to gain more time for other things isn’t a particularly good long term solution. I am working on it!
The stranded hat is crawling along – when I find those extra hours in the day I am going to use them for knitting. I have got to the second crown now so I feel the end is in sight.
The two-handed knitting is definitely starting to feel a lot more natural and I am looking forward to finishing this and branching out into something a bit more complex. Talking of new techniques, I learned out to knit back backwards at the Reading knitting group on Saturday – good fun and I’m sure it will come in useful, although after my last brush with entrelac (a very large very green coat knitted a very long time ago and now relegated to camping due to its vast size) I am still feeling a little scarred.
I can’t think of a clever way of changing topic now, so I will just wave my arms around and you can fill in a witty and intelligent segue in the conversation. The subject being that I am going to be at the Knitting and Stitching show at the NECÂ on Thursday with my Mum. Anyone else going? I can’t make Ally Pally this year so we thought we would try the NEC and see what it is like.
And on that note, given that I have irrevocably proved that I am way too tired to write a sensible blog post I am going to go to sleep.