February 2014

I laugh in the face of rainstorms, puddles and splashy cars. Hahahahaaa. At least I do now I've learnt to wear thickly knitted scarfs under my raincoat. You only need a puddles worth of water down the back of your neck once before you remember that lesson.

(I have just realised how much I talk about the weather on here. Partly it's because I'm British and that's sort of what we do. Also it's because I write these things when I've just spent an hour walking home from work. If the weather's bad it tends to stick with me until I dry out and warm up.)

17/02/2014

Reinventing the Pattern

That was not the straightforward pattern adaptation I was hoping for. To start with I couldn't find my original notes. Then I found I'd sewn up the flowers too tight to unravel them neatly (it's a destructive but useful way to work out a pattern). After several minutes squinting at miniature knitting I figured out that I'd made the flowers by increasing by multiples of five every round and slipping a lot of stitches to pull the petals into shape.

Here are the same twigs from the first picture repurposed to display blossom pattern attempt number two.

This time I started each flower by knitting a short length of i-cord in a different colour. It gave the flowers a coloured centre and raised them off the stick slightly.

I also had fun doing two tone French knot moss.

15/02/2014

Meh.

It's been dark and grey for so many weeks that I'm finding it really hard to get motivated. I've resorted to comfort knitting which, for me, means making things from existing patterns rather than inventing them from scratch.

Of course that's not much good for website updates. I don't have any finished patterns to hand that I haven't already uploaded. What I do have is a lot of partially finished patterns that I never quite perfected. For example last April I was working on a blossom covered twig. This is as far as I got:

I wrote up the twig pattern but I was never happy with the blossom design. I'm giving it a second try. I intend on simplifying the stamens and lifting the flowers away from the twig.

04/02/2014

What am I knitting at the moment?

Last month I knitted some geodes. I concentrated on making the centres sparkly and the edges flat. I liked the flat edges so much that I though about using the same technique (sewing cast off edges tightly together) to make wider edges in more layered colours. Then I thought about making agate geodes that were entirely edge. Then I thought about making just a slice of agate that was edge on both sides. So that's what I'm doing.

Basically I'm knitting one very, very long strip of garter stitch with a stocking stitch edge. As I go I'm sewing the sides tightly against what has gone before, round and round to built up the colours into a giant agate slice. It's not by any measure a quick technique but the result is satisfyingly dense. So dense that it would make a good mat or chair cushion – if it ever gets that big.

I am beginning to regret that my yarn stash is... well not exactly made up of the good stuff. Can you imagine if I made a giant agate slice out wool. I could sit on it or walk on it and maybe it would start to felt, or it could just get grubby and fall to bits. I'm excited by the possibilities.