A month in knitting: June 2015

It's been a while, sorry! Being back at work has completely thrown me. I've been doing lots of swatching for submissions, and ploughing on with baby blankets, but once I've spent half a day at a computer for work, and the other half of the day trying to keep the family and house in order I barely have time to breathe, let alone blog. So here, belatedly, is my yarny summary for June.

Finished

Hitchhiker

A very enjoyable project, perfect for a single skein of pretty sock yarn.

 

Dinosaur blanket

A present for a friend's new baby. I finished it about half an hour after the baby arrived. And I've left writing this post so long that I can even show you a picture as I have met the lovely little baby and he has recieved the blanket.

 

WIPs

Hermione's everyday socks

The socks of the broken needles. I cast these on for May's SKA Sockdown challenge and have obviously failed to finish them on time.

Whale blanket

I might be up to about five squares now. The baby is due at the end of July, so I'd better get knitting.

Socks for my husband

They have heels, but the feet are taking ages!

Charity mitred blanket

Using up the leftovers from the dinosaur blanket (I over-bought by a bit. Quite a bit).

A cardigan for my daughter

A new pattern I'm working on. It's looking pretty so far.

Ruffle skirt for a friend's daughter

The second one of these that I've made, it'll be going to a friend's daughter for her third birthday. I thought it was finally time to use up some of the ruffle yarn from the stash.

Yarn in

200g Doctor Who yarn from The Yarn Tree

A little disappointing as yarn parcels go

 

400g sock yarn from eBay

Lovely stripy sock yarn, and it's thicker than usual, so I should be able to make some slightly speedier socks than sometimes

150g 4ply for swatching for a submission

50g more 4ply for a swatching for a submission when I decided the original colour wasn't quite right!

And I ran out of time to make the actual swatch...

100g to swatch another idea

Thicker yarn, so I got this swatch done!

200g ruffle yarn

No, I don't learn!

Yarn out

119g Hitchhiker

564g dinosaur blanket

 

+367g. I don't learn, do I?

Plans for July

Get the WIP list down a bit. Six projects on the go is too many.

My first Hitchhiker

In May I cast on my first Hitchhiker scarf. It's a pattern that has been on my radar for a long time, both through my assorted knitting groups and Ravelry. It's regarded as an excellent pattern for variegated yarns as the row lengths are constantly changing, which avoids pooling, so I cast it on with some of my Mother's Day yarn when I needed a straightforward project.

The scarf was a delight to knit. I could knit it whilst paying virtually no attention while at knitting groups or when I was the passenger in a car, or I could relax and watch the colours emerge in quieter moments. I didn't even mind when the rows got longer and longer, with each 'tooth' taking longer to emerge. I knitted the final two teeth while on a car journey to Somerset, and was a bit sad when I cast it off and was out of knitting.

Now it's done I just need to wait for some colder weather so I can wear it. I'll definitely be making more of these! Having knitted this one I know that one 400m ball of sock yarn will make 39 and three quarter teeth, which is a pretty good size for the scarf. It's always nice to have another suggestion for those balls and skeins of sock yarn that seem to just keep appearing around my house.

I *had* to cast on something new

Last Monday afternoon I was packing my bag for Monday evening's knitting group and looking through the available projects, only to conclude that none of them were suitable. On my needles were:

1. A baby blanket that I had got to the border of. Large pieces of fabric do not work well in the pub
2. A pair of socks that had reached the critical 5 rows before the heel step, and I was planning a heel I hadn't done before. Far too much concentration required to work on whilst chatting
3. A baby cardigan with just the sleeves to go. Perfect, apart from the my not being certain I'd have enough yarn to make both sleeves full length, so the yarn would need weighing every few rows to make sure I can make both sleeves the same length, and I wasn't taking the scales to the pub, which made this project another no go

So what's a girl to do? Cast on a new project of course!

I needed something easy enough to do whilst chatting, but something interesting enough that I would also want to finish knitting it later. I opted for the Htichhiker scarf, currently the most popular pattern on Ravelry, with over 19,000 projects! The scarf has been in my queue for a long time, and has recently been promoted with my acquisition of rather a lot of hand painted sock yarn - the combination of garter stitch and constantly changing row lengths makes this pattern perfect for such yarn. 

I wound one skein of my Mother's Day yarn into a ball and threw it in my bag along with a pair of 2.75 mm needles (gauge isn't too critical for this pattern, and these needles should get me pretty close to the tension specified). I cast on in the pub, and immediately liked my pattern selection: the pattern is really well written, with some nice details; the pattern repeat is only 8 rows, so easy to memorise; the yarn is a pleasure to work with, soft, squishy and I'm enjoying watching the pools of colour emerge. I knitted 8 'teeth' in the pub, and have now done 14; I'm really looking forward to knitting the remaining 28!