I can’t believe it has been nearly three months since I last posted. I have been to three workshops since then, all of which have been very interesting and I will write more about them soon. Unfortunately also work has been very busy and I have been over-doing it rather and have been very tired which is my excuse for the lack of blogging. My shoulder and neck which were a problem back during the knitting Olympics (no I still haven’t finished! I’m afraid I got a bit side-tracked) has got worse and I have been going to physio, which has improved it a bit but it is still a problem and can make knitting for long periods a bit painful. It’s not so much the knitting which is the problem as the sitting.

On a more jolly note, I had a nice outing to the newly opened Stash Yarns in Putney this morning which was very good fun. Nice staff, lovely yarns, great magazines and books, air conditioning, what more could a knitter ask for? I was really very restrained and only bought the following, and some magazines.

Here we have some lovely royal blue Koigu, some Colourmart cashmere in Kingfisher (which is going to become the Icarus shawl in the Summer Interweave Knits I think), and two balls of Meilenweit mega boots stretch.

It was lovely to actually see a lot of the yarns I have only heard people on knitting lists talk about, or seen on the internet. For some reason I hadn’t realised that Mission Falls cotton was so textured, it wasn’t quite my thing but I think my Mum would like it. She is actually down visiting my sister at the moment but as my sister is getting married tomorrow she couldn’t really spare Mummy for a knitting trip today – maybe next visit. I really liked the Blue Sky Alpaca yarn and the Handmaiden Seasilk which everyone has been raving about. I will have to have a little think about what I can do with it before I go in to get some. I drooled over the South West Trading Bamboo again too, I absolutely love the purplexed colourway, but I still haven’t had any ideas what to make it into, answers on a postcard please!

Just a quick post today before I go back to trying to make the house presentable for my parents who will be arriving soon to stay til Sunday.

I seem to have been knitting these socks for a long time, but they are finally finished!

And now for a better picture of the patterned leg:

The pattern is the Broadripple socks pattern from Knitty, well actually it is the version written for sock weight yarn which I’m sure was on Rob’s (the designer) website but I can’t seem to find it at the moment. Also I twiddled a little since I like plain feet on my socks so that I can wear my shoes comfortably, and I like a short row heel. The yarn is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in the Get Knitted colourway. Interestingly I knitted a scarf from the worsted weight version of this yarn in the same colourway but the colours are completely different – the worsted weight is a lot brighter. I’ll get round to taking a picture of the scarf and socks next to each other soon.

The pattern was a bit of a departure for me as I haven’t knitted lace socks before but it was good fun. I have a whole stack of interesting sock patterns which I am slowly working my way through.

Anyway, better get back to the tidying. One of the reasons for the parental visit is that Mummy and I are going to a workshop with Horst Schulz on Thursday! I still haven’t finished the patchwork jumper I started for the Knitting Olympics but I am hoping to take along what I have done so far anyway.

Sorry for not posting for such a long time (I am beginning to feel like a stuck record, since every time I post I seem to start like this!). Work has been busy and I have just been really tired. I actually got to the point the other night where I had to cast on something new just to have something mindless enough to knit while we watched a recorded Poirot because everything I was in the middle of required too much thought!

Anyway, work has calmed down, I have had a couple of nice long nights sleep and am a bit nicer to be with 🙂

I shall distract you from the lack of knitting progress on the projects-on-the-go in the last couple of weeks with pictures from the Rowan workshop I went to on Thursday. The title was Knitting with Colour, and it was held at John Lewis in Kingston (upon Thames that is rather than one of the other many Kingstons). In typical Heather fashion this was the first Rowan workshop I have ever been to, and I decided to sign up a year after I stopped being a Rowan subscriber (having been one for several years) so I didn’t get the 5% member discount. Never mind.

The workshop itself was good fun, it was held from 10 til 2 which seemed about right time-wise, long enough to really get into things, but not so long that you just became boggled by it all. There were 6 attendees, plus the tutor, and the new Rowan consultant from Peter Jones in Sloane Square who had come along to pick up tips on running a workshop. A really nice number since it was small and friendly and we could all sit round one table, and the tutor had enough time to really see how people were doing and give help and suggestions as were needed.

We covered fairisle type two colour stranding, and intarsia. The tutor mentioned that she had also planned to do a bit of Swiss darning (duplicate stitch) but we didn’t have time in the end, not a great loss to me as that wasn’t really my particular interest in this workshop. We started off with the stranding, using a method similar to that used by Philosopher’s Wool where you weave in your carrying yarn every stitch. It was really interesting for me to see a real-life demonstration of knitting with two colours since all of my colourwork so far has been a mixture of learning from books and making it up as I go along. I really wanted to have a go at two handed fairisle where you hold one yarn in each hand, and it was good fun. Unfortunately I am not as dextrous as I would like to be and my left hand required a bit of persuasion and staring at to make it do what my brain was telling it, but I think it should get better with practice. I think I shall watch my Knitting Glossary DVD a few more times to see Continental knitting demonstrated and try to pick up some tips.

In the interests of scientific discovery (really there is no hope for me, I’m obsessive but at least I know it 🙂 ) I then had to do the same sample again but this time holding both yarns in my right hand (at the same time that is, rather than drop and pick up). It was really interesting to observe the differences.

The lower part of the swatch is two-handed, the upper part is with both yarns in my right hand (I think both yarns in my left hand would lead to lots of frustration so I haven’t attempted it yet, learn to walk before you run and all that). I found the two handed knitting much slower and had trouble making my left hand co-operate when it was its turn to do some knitting, but the weaving in part was actually not too difficult. With both yarns in my right hand I zipped along on the knitting part but the weaving was much more of a problem, I think I would get along better with holding both yarns in the same hand if I was just stranding the carrying yarn along the back of the work. However even though I usually knit with the yarn in my right hand and so you would have thought I would be more used to it, I think the tension with the right-handed part of the swatch is not nearly so nice and even as the two-handed part of the swatch. I much prefer the look of the two-handed, and it is a lot square-er (is that a word?), which would make some designs easier to work out. I will definitely have more of a go at the two-handed lark when I pick up the languishing Henry VIII. Languishing partly because I am fiddling with the pattern slightly so that it will be wide enough, and turning it into a raglan, and also there are more than 400 stitches in each round so it is somewhat time consuming!

After the fairisle we moved on to intarsia (see the top of the swatch) which was all useful stuff too, particularly the reminder to look at where on the row above you will need the yarn again, so that you can weave the yarn to the right place and are prepared and don’t have pulling across the back of the work.

The car is going in for its MOT tomorrow so that will be a nice bit of knitting time while they get that done. I am hoping that it will sail through with no expensive things needing doing since I have my eye on some rather nice looking Peruvian yarn at Elann.

Well I still haven’t finished my Knitting Olympics project so I am definitely not among the medal winners. However Emma pointed out that the Paralympics start on March 10th so I am now re-naming this project to include both Olympic competitions 🙂

You will be pleased to know that my jumper has at least grown a bit since last time:

Sorry these aren’t great photos, the chair wasn’t really big enough and the ground is still rather damp.

I have at last joined it into a circle and am plodding away working upwards, I think I might start the sleeves soon and then I can get more of an idea of how they should fit together. The big difficulty with photographing this is because of the small modules I find myself thinking “I’ll just do another square and then I’ll photograph it” and then another becomes yet another, and then it is too dark to get a decent picture, and I think I will photograph it in the morning, and then we go round again! I really will try harder from now on.

Apart from the knitting I have been making an effort to get a bit more organised. I have built two Ikea bookcases this week, and we have a couple of sets of shelves from B&Q to fix to the wall when we are feeling brave (I’m not a big fan of the drill, it requires a fair bit of psyching up). I have also got another two plastic storage boxes for the yarn, and am going to get another couple more. I would like to get the yarn into a more coherent organisation within the boxes too, and all this sorting is quite good for being able to get out all the lovely yarn I had completely forgotten I had got and admire it all over again!

Well my exit from the starting blocks was more of a crawl than a sprint, but I have picked up a bit of speed now.

Here is my progress as of Tuesday lunchtime:

and here where I am up to now:
It is coming along, but there is still quite a long way to go, at the current rate I am not sure I am going to be a medal contender.

I also seem to be having trouble with my neck, back and shoulders which isn’t helping, although the knitting doesn’t seem to be particularly agravating it. At least I haven’t had to be airlifted to hospital, another advantage of the Knitting Olympics over the ones in Torino!

Anyway, back to the grind stone, I shall try and update progress a bit more frequently.

8mm needles and chunky yarn certainly makes for a quick knit!

I finished the scarf for my Dad last night while catching up on things on the TV I had taped but not got round to watching.

In real life the colour is more navy blue and less purple than the photograph.

It is a nice change to sometimes have projects which don’t take forever to do.

Anyway, I had better go and measure my swatch for my Olympic project, the festivities start on BBC2 in only an hour and a quarter …

In preparation for my Olympic project I have been busy finishing off a few things which have been languishing on the needles for a long time (OK I haven’t actually got to the jumper which I have been knitting for about a year, or the dress I have been knitting for about 6 years yet, but you have to start somewhere).

Those of you with a long memory may remember that I cast on for a moebius scarf back in November. It is very convenient in that it fits into my handbag, and I can just knit a few stitches on it whenever I have to wait around anywhere. Unfortunately this method doesn’t make for a quick finish. However waiting for the car to be serviced gave me a nice long stretch of time on it and it is finally done.

It is rather longer than I had predicted, and because I just knitted until I ran out of yarn it is narrower than I had thought too. It is still perfectly wearable though and I shall incorporate these improvements into the next one. The cast on is along the spine and is very clever and from Cat Bordhi’s Treasury of Magical Knitting. However having had another look at the table in the book telling you how many stitches to cast on for different tensions and different lengths of scarf, the numbers just don’t add up, in future I think I shall rely on my own calculations.

The scarf was knitted using Peruvian Collection Baby Silk (80% Baby Alpaca, 20% Silk) from Elann, and I used a 3.5mm needle. The yarn feels absolutely gorgeous, which is handy as I bought two other colours too!

On the theme of scarves (and it being the appropriate weather for them) I have also finished another curly whirly:

and another view:
The yarn and pattern both came from Get Knitted, the yarn is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted, and the colour is Get Knitted. It is fantastic and bright and has had a lot of wear already despite having only been finished last Tuesday.

Despite all this finishing I’m afraid I have cast-on two new projects too, so I am not really making overall progress in the minimising of the pile of works-in-progress. We went up to see my parents for the weekend and part of last week, and my Dad announced on seeing my finished Moebius scarf that he would like one too. I found some nice King Cole chunky wool and acrylic yarn in french navy in Boyes and he managed to stand still long enough for me to measure his neck, so I cast-on for this scarf yesterday and it is going well. It is rather odd to be knitting on 8mm needles and thick yarn – quite a change from my other project I cast-on while staying with my parents, which is a pair of socks (2.5mm dpns and 4ply weight sock yarn).

On the Olympic project front, after the wash the swatch got a bit smaller which was slightly worrying, so I have knit another swatch with another couple of rows and stitches on it and it is drying now. I am hoping to measure it either this afternoon or tomorrow morning depending on how long it takes to dry.

Anyway, back to the scarf – not sure I can get it done before tomorrow but I shall give it a good shot! I still have 1100 emails from various knitting emails lists to catch up on after being away too!

CatsEye has made a team GB Olympic Knitting button in two sizes! I am really spoiled for choice now.

I finally sat down with the calculator this afternoon and did a swatch for the patchwork jumper:

I’m very pleased with it, I think the needle size is right and I like the colours together, and I think it is about the right size. I am planning to wash it before I get too carried away since I want to make sure it wont shrink in the wash. I am feeling very virtuous now, since I think that is pretty much all my training done and I still have time to spare before the start date! I still haven’t totally worked out how I am going to increase for the sleeves yet though, or worked out the joining of the sleeves to the body, I am hoping that these little details will either come to me in a dream or will make themselves obvious once the knitting has started – one can hope!

The finishing up of other bits and pieces is going quite well too. The car went in for its service on Friday so I had about 3 hours sitting around in the garage knitting. I will take some photos soon.

Katie put a link in her blog to some team buttons for the Knitting Olympics and they are just fantastic, designed by JenLa. The only difficulty is there are two different GB buttons, and they are both great.

So now the really difficult decision: which one to put on my sidebar?

I haven’t started my Olympic swatching yet. I thought it might be sensible to finish off a few bits and pieces first. I tend to get a bit overwhelmed when I have too many different projects on the needles at once, as I forget what I was doing with each of them. So I think the next couple of weeks will be spent in the tidy up before the serious swatching begins!

Stephanie has had the marvellous idea to host a Knitting Olympics, the idea being that you pick a project which will be a challenge to you, then cast on during the opening ceremony on February 10th and if you finish before the closing ceremony on February 26th then you get a shiny button for your blog.

I think I am just about crackers enough to try this, and it is the closest I shall ever come to being an Olympic anything, so I will be giving it a try.

My Olympic Project

I will be knitting a patchwork jumper (sweater for those on the other side of the pond) a la Horst Schulz, which I will be designing as I go along. It is the first time I have knitted a garment of that size and complexity using this technique. I have knitted a camisole before, but that didn’t require much shaping, and other than that I have only done samples.

The yarn I’m going to use has been sitting in my stash for a while. The background is cotton in different shades of blue, and the foreground is acrylic turquoise fluff 🙂

I am off to sign up now, and contemplate just how mad this is … I think a few swatches will definitely be in order before the start date.