I started this shawl in May 2010 at Chris Williams’s lace knitting class at Fleet Library. It languished for a while after the small leaves section while I tried to work out how I wanted the rest of the shawl to go.

It halted again for a while towards the end of the beaded leaves while I thought about how to finish it off.

In the end I went for a simple sideways knitted garter stitch edging so that it wouldn’t detract from the rest of the shawl.

I used 3mm needles and 2ply machine knitting soft cotton from Uppingham Yarns. The beads are CC180F – TOHO BEADS 3MM TRANSPARENT RAINBOW FROSTED OLIVINE from E-beads, and I used about 30g altogether. The beads are added using a crochet hook so you add them as you go rather than having to thread them all on the yarn before you start. I managed to lose my 1mm crochet hook while waiting for a dancing class while I was working on this shawl. It was a bit irritating as this hook was part of a set I have had for ages, but luckily I managed to find a replacement fairly quickly which is not a bad fit for the set too.

I need to create more occaisions to wear shawls now

It has been my dedicated bottom of the bag knitting that only gets worked on when I am out and about and haven’t brought any other knitting, which explains why it took quite so long.

I’m glad I have finished now and can be wearing it, it is lovely and snuggly and warm, just in time too as the weather has been getting colder.

The yarn is DK weight cashmere from Devon Fine Fibres – it was rather fun to be working on something where I had actually met the animals that produced the fibre! I used 4mm needles and a very simple combination of stocking stitch, reverse stocking stitch and 3×3 rib.

I had some grey yarn left over from when I knitted my niece Jenny a blanket last Christmas, and though that it would be nice to have make her a hat for this Christmas.

The pattern is Limpetiole by Woolly Wormhead. It was a very enjoyable pattern to knit.

The yarn is Knit Picks Swish DK, 100% superwash merino wool, and I used 3.75mm needles. I made the smallest size, and it only took one ball of yarn.

It is now all wrapped up and put in the pile of presents. Hopefully she is still young enough that she is not going to see it here before Christmas (she is only one).

She very kindly took its photo as I had managed to post it to her before I remembered to photograph it.

I used 4ply weight acrylic machine knitting yarn, and 3.25mm needles. The pattern I used is here, but I made it in the round so I didn’t have to do a seam, and also did a provisional cast on so that I could easily pick the stitches up to work the back. I think if I made another one I would alter the rate of decreases on the back as the fabric did pucker a bit, but overall it was good fun and will hopefully be useful.

Here is the first side of his stocking:

And here the second:

The yarn used was Hobbycraft double knitting acrylic for the white, and Hayfield Bonus DK acrylic for the other colours. I found the Hobbycraft yarn a bit thin and am not sure I would use it again, but the Hayfield seemed more robust. I used 3mm needles even though this is a DK weight yarn so that the stocking would be firm enough not to stretch too much, and so that presents wouldn’t poke through. I also wove in the colour not in use every other stitch so there would not be long floats on the inside to get caught on little fingers or on the corners of presents.

It is now winging its way to its new owner and hopefully will reach there in time for Father Christmas to do his job

I allowed myself a week and a half off from knitting on my current City and Guilds project (a large circular lace shawl) to whip her up a birthday cardi and two matching hats.

The cardi is the Seamless Infant Kimono by Carina Spencer, and I used Knit Picks Swish Worsted (100% superwash merino wool) in Sunshine, with Bok Choy edging. I used 5mm needles for the main body and 4mm for the edgings. I made the 12 – 18 month size, with the tapered sleeve option, and am hoping it will fit her at some point when the weather is suitable for it!

I had some yarn left over after the cardi and so decided to knit a pair of hats to go with the cardi, one in each of the colours.

I used the Elfin pattern by Woolly Wormhead for both hats. It is a lovely elastic pattern so hopefully should fit for a while. I used 5mm needles and made the large size for both hats.

I experimented with different invisible cast ons for both hats. The one on the green hat came out a bit frilly, it is almost like a picot edge. It is quite pretty, but I think for most things I prefer the version on the yellow hat.

I posted them last week but they haven’t arrived yet, hopefully they will turn up soon.

It has been very nice to do a bit of knitting which actually grows as you watch it (it grows even faster if you are actually knitting while you are watching – ha ha). The City and Guilds project is in lace weight yarn on 3mm needles, at something like 4 rows to the centimetre, and at its worst had more than a thousand stitches on each round. I would knit and knit and knit and knit, and it would look exactly the same. I am onto the edging now (128 pattern repeats, more than 2000 rows, but at least each row is relatively short), and although there is a lot of it I can now actually see measurable progress. It’s a good job it is nice yarn and an enjoyable pattern

The other excitement round here this week (apart from us actually finished boarding the loft – hooray!) has been the arrival of some lovely fibre from World of Wool. I had a play with their new custom blend tool to make this 75% merino, 25% silk blend:

Yum yum! I have a kilo, and am planning a jumper, though that is about as detailed as my plans have got so far. I am really looking forward to spinning it, and knitting with it, and am very pleased with how the colours have come out. There are actually three different shades of green of merino in there, and I love the way they work together.

I also bought some dyed blueface leicester fibre.

300g of purple, and 100g each of royal blue and black. I am planning to blend these together somehow – I’m a little vague on the details at the moment, I think I will have to do some experimenting, and then make the Lanesplitter skirt, I think I will probably spin a 3ply rather than a 2ply to try and make it a bit more hard-wearing.

They were having a special offer at the time so I also got a hessian shopping bag, and a bag of all sorts of little bits of interesting looking fibre with my order.

Back to the shawl now, the end is nearly in sight!

The pattern is by Steve Plummer and Pat Ashforth, and it is done in shadow knitting, a cunning combination of knits and purls which means when you look at the knitting straight on it just looks like stripes, and you only see the pattern when you view it from an oblique angle. It is a bit of a devil to photograph, as you can see I haven’t done terribly well. It is supposed to be a tiger’s head, but you might have to use your imagination.

To get the illusion to show you need to create a fairly firm fabric. So I used 3.5mm needles and DK weight yarn. The yarn is Knit Picks Swish DK, a superwash merino wool yarn, the orange colour is called Persimmon Heather, and the grey is called Marble Heather.

It wasn’t the easiest pattern in the world to knit because it is pictorial so there is no rhythmn to get into and you have to refer to the chart on every row. The pattern is well written and clear though which definitely helps.

Jenny is doing pretty well in the blanket stakes, she also has this lovely one with farmyard animals Swiss-embroidered onto it, made by my mum, Jenny’s grandmother.

Christmas also brought some wonderful new books for me. These are from Anna, a school friend, it was lovely to be able to catch up with her while we were both staying with our parents:

And these from Paul’s parents:

Lots of great inspiration!

Here is one side:

And here the other:

The snowflake is a traditional Scandinavian pattern:

The reindeer came from a free Drops pattern, but I’m afraid I can’t remember which one:

And the letters and the tree came out of my head:

Here it is full of presents (provided by her parents) on Christmas Eve after she had gone to bed.

The yarn is Cascade 220 which Annie and Mummy bought at Knitty City, Annie’s local yarn shop in New York, and I used 3mm needles. The yarn is an American worsted weight, which is a bit thicker than our DK weight, but thinner than our Aran weight, so the needles I used are very small for the thickness of yarn. This makes a nice firm fabric that will hold its shape hopefully through years of wear, and the presents wont poke out.

Again Chris designed a sampler scarf for us to knit to try out a variety of lace patterns. This one was a bit more complicated than the last one and included patterns where you had lace stitches on every row, not just every other row.

It was a fun project, I enjoyed trying out the different patterns. It is surprising how some patterns look very much like their charts, and others are quite different.

Here is the end of the scarf:

And the next section up:

And the middle:

After this the same patterns as before are used but in reverse order til you get to the end.

Apologies about the weird colours, I’m not sure what I did when I was taking the photos. The yarn is actually grey shetland 4ply from Uppingham Yarns, and I used 4mm needles.

The pattern is a fairly traditional Shetland hap pattern from Chris Williams’s Lace Class. The inside square is garter stitch knitted on the bias. There is then a border of feather and fan pattern, and then a sideways knitted simple garter stitch lace edging.

It was very enjoyable to knit, and although Jenny is a little young to be expressing an opinion on these things her parents seem to like it

I used 6 x 50g of Sirdar Snuggly 4ply, 55% nylon, 45% acrylic, and 4mm needles.

The blocking was slightly scary. Being nylon and acrylic you have to be a bit careful with blocking if you use steam. However if you pin out your blanket and steam it very gently it will actually set the stitches so that it wont need blocking after subsequent washing. The careful part is key here since you have to be very careful not to totally melt your yarn! As you hover with the steam you can actually see the stitches relaxing (permanently!). A lie down in a darkened room is recommended after you do this.

It all went ok though, and hopefully this will save the blanket from needing to be reblocked while still being easily washable.