I’ve been having a play around with the template of the blog and now have pictures to link to my finished projects! Its so much fun!

It got me to thinking about photographing some of my older knitting too so I thought I would start with my big knit from last year, my wedding dress:

Paul and Heather

In case you hadn’t guessed I am the one on the right 🙂 The other one is the long suffering husband. We got married on May 15th at Leatherhead Register Office.

I designed the dress myself, it is knitted top down on circular needles and turned me into a total convert to that method of knitting, it really helps when attempting to get a good fit to be able to try on the knitting as you go. It is knitted using Jaeger Cadiz, 50% silk and 50% viscose, and the colour is Malachite. According to the ball band this is an aran weight yarn but after I knitted a few sample pieces I decided I liked the fabric best when knitted using 3.5mm needles. It is mostly stocking stitch, with 2×2 cables. I got so paranoid when buying yarn for this, since in typical Heather fashion I only discovered it after it had become discontinued! (although it did mean most of the yarn was on sale), that I bought so much yarn that I have enough left over for a matching cardigan, which I will get round to some time. The dress is really heavy but it doesn’t seem to have stretched and is very comfy to wear. I wore it again this February with a black cardigan to go to another friend’s wedding.

In other knitting I haven’t done much on the purple felted bag, hopefully I’ll get back to it soon. The latest hat for Nanny is coming along though, I have just started the shaping for the crown. Its a lovely day here today so I will get the camera out later and take a picture of it.

I heard back from Kangaroo and unfortunately they don’t have all the colourways for the Mermaid, and they wont do yarn snippets of the colours they do have. They referred me to Hanne Falkenberg’s website but that unfortunately doesn’t solve the problem of my monitor possibly not displaying the colours properly. It seems quite a lot of money for a kit which I am not quite sure that the colours will be what I expect. This bugs me a little about Hanne’s designs, that you can’t buy the pattern separately and then select your own colours from a source where you can actually go and see them and make sure they are all colours you like.

OK, you can take your hands off your ears now, I’ve finished ranting 🙂 I think I shall go and knit some more hat now.

I’ve finished the second hat for Nanny’s birthday, same pattern as before (the Braid-edged Cap by Judy Gibson), and also same yarn (Schachenmayr Princess, 72% acrylic, 28% viscose) but in a different colour.

2nd hat for Nanny

It actually used less yarn than I had thought so I have embarked on a stripy hat with the yarn I have left over. I have done three stripes so far and will hopefully take a picture of it in progress soon.

The purple felted bag is coming along, I am onto the strap now so the end is in sight. The black and red bag has had a couple of outings already and has proved to be a good size. Thanks for the comment Jocelyn, I am hoping to carry the idea of shading colours a bit further with the next bag which is purple and black, and entirely in my head at the moment!

The new edition of Knitting arrived a couple of days ago and I am part way through it. Seeing the ads from the various UK online knitting shops always inspires me to go and see what they have got in at the moment, never a good plan for the poor beleaguered credit-card. Anyway, to cut a long story short (too late!) I see that Get Knitted has got a whole load of lovely looking sock yarns in colours I don’t have yet, even though I need new sock yarn like I need a hole in the head. Also to add insult to injury I have fallen in love with the new Hanne Falkenberg kit, Mermaid. The only dilemma is the colour, I am in an agony of indecision over colour 4, blue, turquoise, and green, or colour 5, black, dark green, and kingfisher. I am worried that my monitor doesn’t always display colours very accurately and that colour 4 might be paler than I think, or that the colour is accurate and colour 5 is rather dingy. I might email them and see if they could send me a little snippet of the appropriate colours. Unfortunately I think I see a rather large credit card bill in my future …

I’ve finally finished my felted knitted bag! I used 4 strands held together of 2ply lambswool from Uppingham Yarns and 8mm needles. The after finishing and sewing together I put it through the wash twice at 40 degrees on a cottons wash with my towels. This is what it looks like:

Felted knitted bag

And this is it with the fold over flap lifted up so you can see the colour variation better.

Felted knitted bag

I think when I sewed it up I made the flap over a little long and consequently the bag a little short, but you live and learn 🙂 I have started another one in purple now, and have plans to make a shaded purple and black one after that. Felted bags are such a great use for all those beautiful buttons you find but can’t work out what to do with!

At knitting group on Wednesday we had an open session where people knit on whatever they like rather than a workshop on a particular technique, so I started another hat for Nanny, same pattern as before but in a mauve-y coloured yarn. I just checked my diary and discovered that though I was convinced Nanny’s birthday was the middle of June, actually it is the middle of July so I have a bit longer for her hats.

In other news, the other half organised all his wiring and computer bits in the bedroom and you can now actually see the floor – shock horror! He now keeps looking at the pile of my wool in the computer room in the hope that I will organise it soon. I am getting there, some has moved, I am just a rather slow knitter! Not much blogging or knitting requiring brain got done last week as I have a nasty gnat bite on the foot and the antihistamines have a tendency to knock me out rather. I’m back in the land of the living now though, lots of things to catch up with.

Yep you guessed it, the felted bag has been languishing on the settee while I cast on for the hat for Nanny. The yarn was fun to work with though it took a bit of getting used to not stabbing the needle through the yarn (Schachenmayr Princess, 72% acrylic, 28% viscose) by accident. It was knitted on 4.5mm needles so zipped along quite quickly, and here are some piccies:

Hat for Nanny

This one shows up the cable around the bottom well but the colour didn’t come out at all realistically, so the following one is a much better colour match, but unfortunately you can’t really see the texture detail.

Hat for Nanny

The pattern is the Braid-edged Cap by Judy Gibson, I used 4.5mm needles and slightly thinner yarn than specified because Nanny has quite a small head. Also instead of casting on and casting off and then sewing the edges together I cast on on waste yarn and grafted the beginning to the end since I didn’t want any seams. It was a fun knit, and I’m looking forward to doing another one in the mauve yarn I bought. I will hopefully borrow Annie to model it next week as my head is too big(!).

Much excitement here today as my parcel from Elann arrived this morning! (I ordered it surface mail so it took 6 weeks to get here) Here it is:

Parcel from Elann

Still in its bag! It is a ladder yarn, I think about aran weight, and 72% acrylic, 28% viscose, it feels lovely and soft. The pink and the mauve on the top right are going to be a pair of hats for Nanny for her birthday (she will be 92 next month!) since she doesn’t have much hair now and I thought this yarn might hopefully make a nice soft indoor hat. The navy blue is for me, but I haven’t quite worked out what it is going to be yet. I shall just stroke it as I pass by and I’m sure I shall work out what it would like to be soon.

I am dying to cast on for the first hat, but am rather torn as I feel I should really do some more on the felted bag first before I start yet another new thing. Oh the dilemmas! So little time, so much fun knitting!

The weather is miserable here today, lots of rain and rather grey, at least the high winds have stopped though.

My parents came to visit at the weekend which was lovely, and we had a nice meander around the shops in Kingston. Mummy and I stroked all the wool in John Lewis but were very restrained and didn’t buy any. Mummy brought down her cardigan she is currently knitting and it is looking very good so far. It is a pattern from a Rowan book I think and in a sort of orangey-red colour, the yarn is an alpaca and wool mix, and I think is Jaeger Luxury Tweed – though don’t quote me on that. The moss stitch edgings are really nice and have inspired me to do something in moss stitch soon, I just haven’t worked out what yet!

Yarn Forward are having a sale at the moment, 20% off if you spend more than £50 on yarn and kits. They have some lovely looking stuff, but I have decided I need to knit up more of what I have first before I buy anything new. All the yarn waiting to be made into things is getting a bit overwhelming, and I really need to streamline it a bit so I can get to everything.

The latest sock is jogging along, I have just turned the heel. I knitted a bit more on the bag to be felted today, 150 rows down, out of about 260 I reckon will make the bag the right size, so going well but still a fair way to go.

I’ve started on the next pair of socks. This time out of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in colour rainbow, bought from Cnyttan Patterns. This is the first time I have used this yarn, and it feels quite different to the sock yarns I have used before (Regia, Opal and Fortissima). It is very smooth and sort of shiny, whereas the other sock yarns I have come across have been more hairy. It is really nice to knit with, I was thinking it would make a nice T-shirt type top too, being so smooth.

I’ve just found out that Get Knitted not only sell lots of sock wool including Lorna’s Laces but they have their very own Get Knitted colourway in Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock, I am quite tempted 🙂

Here is a picture of the current sock so far …

Sock in progress

Well the felted knitted bag is coming along, but rather slowly. I think I am about 2/3 of the way up the main part of the bag, and after that is the miles and miles of strap to do. In the mean time though I have just finished another pair of socks! These ones are made out of Fortissima Colori bought from Web of Wool.

Fortissima Colori socks

I bought it because I just love the colour, and it is constructed in a different way to other sock yarns I have used. Instead of being one colour which has been painted, each of the individual threads which are twisted together are a different colour and they change gradually up the length of the yarn. Here is a close up of the knitting so hopefully you can see what I mean.

Sock detail

The June edition of Knitting arrived a couple of days ago but I haven’t had a chance to read it properly yet, hopefully soon.

Anyway, back to the grind stone. One reason for the lack of knitting is that I am attempting to write some more on my Plücker’s Mathematical Models write up, and rewrite what I have written so far into something more closely resembling English.

Saturday was my birthday, and Liz and Mike sent me this fabulous knitting card:

Birthday card

The sheep is purple, although is it a bit hard to tell due to my lack of skills with photography.

I had a lovely day, and got some wonderful pressies. My other half gave me The Pleasures of Knitting: Timeless Feminine Sweaters and my inlaws also gave me At Knit’s End by the yarn harlot. I have dipped into both but haven’t had a proper read yet, I think a nice cup of tea and a couple of the chocolates from my aunt and uncle and a nice read are what is called for this afternoon 🙂

I finished knitting my sample of lambswool to be felted, this is what it looked like before it went through the wash:

Felted knitting, before washing

And this is how it looks after it has been through the wash twice:

Felted knitting sample, after two washes

This seems to be a good density for a bag, so I shall work out how many stitches I need and cast on today I think.

I’ve just discovered KnitCast which is a podcast about knitting. There are the first 5 podcasts up on the site so far, and the interviews are really interesting – definitely worth a listen. I’ve even managed to get a bit knitted on the latest sock while listening.

In other knitting I have decided that I need a new felted bag. I have one I knitted last year which is dark green and my other half kindly says looks like a carpet tile. It is really useful though, as it has a long strap so I can wear it diagonally and have both hands free, and it is big enough to fit in bit of knitting, along with the obligatory purse and phone and other stuff I usually carry around. It is starting to pill a little now though, and I decided it would be nice to have one in another colour too, so I have set to on a sample swatch using 4 strands of 2ply lambswool from Uppingham Yarns and 8mm needles. It is coming along but isn’t great computing knitting as the yarn is oiled and so I tend to grease up the keys – not quite the desired effect. However the library is having a rent 3 DVDs for the price of 2 offer until the end of May so I have got a few things to watch while I knit my sample to be felted.