Pride sock KAL

June is pride month, and I’m joining some of my bloggy friends in knitting a pair of rainbow socks to show the LGBTQIA+ community that we stand with them.

The vast majority of my yarn stash is DK or thicker, and none of my sock yarn is rainbow-y, so I’ll be making some chunky bed socks instead.

Here are my two options:

Almost-rainbow chunky

Or these two not quite matching cakes.

The orange, yellow, green and blue are the same in both, but one has red and purple and the other has hot pink.

I think I could work mismatched socks, but the chunky looks like it would be more regular with the colour changes.

What do you think?

Hannah

xXx

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No sports

Current WIP count: 7

Oops that count is sneaking up again. I really must keep an eye on it.

I am utterly LOVING how fast this Flax is knitting up, at least by my standards. I’ve already finished the raglan increases and now it’s stockinette for a few inches until I split the sleeve stitches off. Easy.

Hooray for worsted weight yarn!

Speaking of yarn weight, did you know that we don’t really have sport weight yarn in the UK? I’m dithering over joining in the Arachne KAL, but a filter of my Excel spreadsheet told me I don’t have a single scrap of sport weight in my stash. So I jumped across to Hobbycraft’s website and found that sport isn’t a filter option; they don’t have any either. Mothy and the Squid – no. Siobhan’s Crafts – no. Sealy MacWheely – nope. It’s just not a thing over here.

This is not helping the dithering. It should make it easier, right? I refuse to add to my ridiculous stash mountain, so no sport weight = no KAL for me. Especially considering I know nothing about fiddling with gauge for different yarns.

But I wanna!

I first saw the Arachne pattern at some point last year and I wanted to make it IMMEDIATELY, and that feeling hasn’t gone away after all this time. There must be something I can do.

Any suggestions would be welcome, but in the meantime I shall just plug away at this Flax, and dream about fancy cobwebby jumpers.

Hannah

xXx

FO Friday 12.04.19

Last weekend I took a wee break from all my massive projects to make something teeny tiny.

It’s a llama!

The pattern is by Ravencraft Designs, who I follow on Instagram. I followed along with every post as Jess worked out the process, and as soon as I saw that the pattern was released I jumped over to Ravelry and bought a copy. Then I made a start with a little scrap ball that just happened to be in front of me at the time.

I can’t get over how small she is, and I’m the one who made her!

The number of ends created a bit of a mess when it came to sewing the legs together, but maybe that was only an issue because I made mine so small, using a thin DK yarn instead of worsted. What a shame, I’ll have to make another one in a thicker yarn and see if I get the same result.

What do you think I should call my little llama? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

xXx

FO Friday 29.03.19

I never posted about the second baby blanket my mum commissioned, so here we go. It’s another Irish Wave blanket, this time using Sirdar Snuggly Baby Crofter DK in the colourway Hazel. I followed the pattern right up to the end, when the amount of yarn leftover was just the wrong side of useless. I added two rows of sc and that used up every last scrap.

It came out a bit of an interesting shape, but by the time I realised it wouldn’t be the normal rectangular shape I didn’t have enough time to start again with a shorter chain. Next time I just need to remember what a yarn-muncher it is!

There probably will be a next time, as I love the shapes and it seems to work with all kinds of yarn.

Plus here’s another photo of the lego blanket, because I’m just so proud of it!

Now I’m going to enjoy a weekend of working on every single WIP I have, just because I can! What’s everyone else up to this weekend? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

xXx

WIP Wednesday 27.02.19

Current WIP count: 7

Wasn’t yesterday just the most beautiful day? Properly warm after what feels like 300 days of winter. And I was off work too – perfect!

I feel the WIP pressure is off now I’ve finished one of my baby blankets. I’m using the same pattern for the second blanket, but with DK yarn rather than super chunky, and it’s amazing how different that looks.

This is about 2/3 done and it grows pretty quickly so it should be ready for Saturday.

I’ve been unable to completely ignore my Flax so now I’m just a few rounds from putting the sleeve stitches onto waste yarn and casting on some more for the body. I’ve never done that before so we’ll see how it goes!

What’s everyone else working on? Enjoying the unusually sunny weather? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

xXx

WIP Wednesday 14.03.18

 

Current WIP count: 6

I need to stop saying that things will be simple or won’t take me long.

Here are just a few of my attempts at the soles for these baby bootees

 

I tried to just follow this pattern from Bonita Patterns, my usual, and the soles turned out absolutely perfect! But it turns out the lilac ‘dk’ yarn is about half the thickness of the grey ‘dk’. No idea which is correct, I just know that the two of them weren’t working together that way.

Then I tried some darker purple yarn with a different pattern. I like the sole, but the yarn didn’t feel that nice and it just didn’t go as well with the grey.

Then I tried doubling up the lilac with that rounded sole. Gorgeous, but preemie size.

So I tweaked the pattern a little to make it bigger, and I finally have a workable sole that looks okay with a grey upper.

Phew!

I’ve also worked a few more rows on my rainbow Tunisian jumper, I’m now up to the red and orange colour combo. Just red and burgundy to go and that’ll be my first ever sleeve finished.

So that’s my week so far. Anyone else having yarn trouble? Got some WIPs to share? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

xXx

Birthday goodies

It was my birthday last week so I have *lots* of new presents to enjoy (I am ridiculously easy to buy for), and I thought I’d share some that will more than likely end up in my shop.

First up, I got this wee phone cosy kit from Hobbycraft

The yarn that came in the kit was a bit ‘sticky’, but in total it still only took me a few hours to make this up. With some other yarn these will definitely be shop stock soon.

Of course, I couldn’t just leave it simple like that and I’m already planning a dragon scale version!

I also got a copy of Simply Crochet magazine, because it came with a free Tunisian hook

The jumper pattern using the hook looks really good, and I’m looking forward to trying out some of the other patterns in there as well.

This is my first experience with a crochet magazine since I really know what I’m doing, and it is vastly different to picking up that first magazine on a whim and wondering why it was all written in code. Ah the memories.  This time I’m just excited to try all these new things, because I know just fine that I can make them.

And finally, the enormous gold-plated cherry on top:

That is 35 skeins of yarn. There’s cotton, DK, chunky, noodles, acrylic, alpaca…it would take ages to list it all. So instead I just keep taking it out and staring lovingly at it.

Isn’t it beautiful

Do you like the phone cosy? Any ideas what to make with my bumper stash? Let me know in the comments!

Hannah

xXx

A first!

**ANNOUNCEMENT**

I’ve received my first ever commission (from my sister, for a friend of the family, but shush – it still counts!) for a crocheted baby blanket.

After wanting to make a star blanket for months, now I get to make two at once as I’m still finishing off my Caron Cake star blanket and my sister liked it so much she asked me to use that pattern for the baby blanket.

Almost finished my first star blanket

I’m not sure whether we don’t know yet if it will be a boy or a girl, or my sister knows that I hate the whole ‘pink for girls, blue for boys’ thing, but the end result is that I’m using green and pale yellow baby merino DK.  The green is a wee bit brighter than it looked online, but the yellow is nice and subtle so I don’t think it’s too garish a combination. I do love working with Spring colours as Glasgow is dragged kicking and screaming into warmer weather.

Look at the lovely colours

So far I’m only on round 7 because it’s been such a busy week I’ve had to squeeze in a few stitches whenever I got a minute to myself.  It keeps peeking out of my bag and giving me the eye, so this weekend I’ll make sure to spend a good chunk of time working on it.

Stop looking at me in that tone of voice

I’m so excited to make something I know will definitely be wanted and go to a good home! 

Hannah

xXx