How long does it take to knit a sleeve?

Thankyou all so much for the Birthday wishes.

Miss B loved the idea that you were all thinking about her and wishing her such a great day.



The kitchen did survive and no the birthday girl did not have to clean up.

Luckily for me she didn't make as much mess as I had been dreading.



As for the title of this post, I have only just finished the second sleeve of the Ribby Pullover.

It took me 2 weeks. Can you tell I really don't enjoy the DPN/ ribbing combination???



Actually it's not that bad once you settle into it and I did have some help in diverting my attention away from the sleeve.



Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows insisted on being read and......



after seeing it knit up over at Donna's this yarn insisted on coming out to play.

Miss B is 14 today!!!

The last couple of years we have bought birthday cakes, but this year Miss B wants to make her own.

She has some idea of decorating it with an Emilystrange theme.
I am not sure what she is envisioning, I just know that it requires green lollies.
Lots and lots of green lollies.

So tonight there will be

1 teenager
1 mixer
Bowls
Spoons
1 Oven
1 Cake
Cream
Icing
& Assorted lollies in my kitchen.

Most of the lollies will be eaten before the cake even makes it into the oven I am sure.

All I know is that she was one happy teenager this morning after opening presents that feed her Emilystrange addiction, and after all that sugar tonight she will be even happier.

Ravelry got me.

Just in time to go back to classes I get my Ravelry invite.

I'll be playing as

yarnsticksbooks

Ribby Pullover

Here is the start of the Ribby Pullover.





Ok so it's half done and I am already thinking grey wasn't such a good idea colour wise.

It is nice after the brightness of the cleckheaton country silk, but depending on the lighting this looks grey/ muddy brown.



Remind me that it really wouldn't hurt to make myself a jumper in black.



I loved knitting the body in the round. The sleeves not so much.
Ribbing and DPN's is a combination that I can manipulate easily enough. I just don't like to, therefore sleeves progress very slowly.

I am considering buying a small circular to do the other sleeve on.

This is something I probably should avoid; I can envision the different sized sleeves already.

Early morning happenings

Miss B went to her Nanna's last night and so wasn't here for our evening meal. Chicken Schnitzel, mashed potato, corn on the cob , carrot, brocoli, beans and gravy.

Yay! Extra mashed potato for me.

I then spent the night dreaming about eating the extra piece of schnitzel for breakfast.

As those of you with teenagers in your households know, this is a big deal.
There are never leftovers after a meal and if by some miracle there are, they are quickly claimed by the constantly hungry teenager.
(If teenagers don't claim the leftovers, the cats are next in line.)

I got up this morning thinking about schnitzel, put on some socks cause it's cold and started walking out to the kitchen.

I get to the doorway of my bedroom and UGH!!!
Slushy. Wet. Sock.
During the night Lucy somehow picked up on my breakfast plans and decided to let me know she didn't approve.

I am not hungry now, I have odd socks on and Lucy is sleeping with a big grin on her face.






I think I'll go and knit.

Holidays

I am loving this lot of holidays, just enjoying the break from deadlines and having to be places at certain times.

I have been spending a lot of time doing a lot of not much. Sitting in the sunshine, playing with the cats and guilt free knitting.

Catching up on blog lines and drinking way too many cups of tea.

Shopping for yarn with Tigers, and convincing ourselves that the yarn we bought in the first store doesn't resemble the yarn we bought in the second store in any way.
The fact that both of my purchases were of the same brand means nothing.
Actually it may mean that I end up with knitted items that I can wear together for once. Or not.



Miss B is happy, her cap is done.




Cabled Newsboy Cap from Stitch and Bitch Nation.
5mm and 6mm needles
Cleckheaton Country 12 ply in Black.

Now that hers is done I am thinking I'd like a black one too. Me who doesn't wear hats. I just want one, same as I want a beret that I wont wear either.



To make Chris happy and show that I do have arms, although most days I could do with a couple of extra ones.......




Cleckheaton Country Silk raglan sleeve roll neck jumper.

Cleckheaton Country Silk 13 balls
Colour Overly bright berry
4mm needles

I added 5cm extra to the length meaning I worked 40cm of the body before starting shaping for the arms.
I am still undecided about how this looks but I love how it feels.
It is comfortable and warm and I'd like another jumper that fits like this but in something not so bright. The sleeves could be about 1cm longer too.

It's Done...

The Cleckheaton Country Silk roll neck jumper is done.

Finally. All finished.

And I'm still not sure if I like it or not.

It is warm and comfortable, it's just bright. And bitsy.

I am happy to have it done and off the list of WIP's.

I forgot to get Tigers to take a picture for me, hence you only get to see part of it.

In other knitting news, I gave in, I started Miss B's Black Newboy Cap.

C has put in requests for black knits also.

I have put in a request for black yarn to be purchased by someone other than me.

Let's see what happens.

Is it holidays yet???

I feel as though the most I have seen of any knitting lately has been to wash a bathtub full of knits and have them sitting all over the house taking their time to dry.

If I am not going to get much knitting time I can at least have some new yarn to look at.
Sock yarn found in Lincraft yesterday in a sneaky visit on the way home.




June's Project Spectrum projects, Irish Hiking Scarf and Mittens.

Both made using cleckheaton Country 12 ply, % balls for the scarf, two for the mittens.





The hat in the middle is the Newsboy cap made in Paton's Jet.
Miss B is trying to claim this. She hasn't succeeded so far so has put in her demand, uh, request for one in black.

Mittens Schmittens.......

After finishing the Irish Hiking Scarf I wanted some mittens to go with it.
Sounds logical, even sounds pretty simple.

So why did I spend the weekend knitting a pair of ginormous mittens?

Something to do with ladies mittens not being big enough to not squash fingernails and me totally underestimating how much bigger mens mittens are.

No wonder I like Fetchings so much.........

Letting go

Sometimes a knit just isn't working, you know it but you keep trying anyway. You knit a couple of rows here and a couple of rows there. But the whole time you really aren't enjoying it.
You don't like the look of it, you don't like how it feels and working on it has become a chore.

Yet if you put it aside and work on things you enjoy, you feel guilt. You know it really wouldn't take long to finish if you just worked on it.

The knit has become more than a chore, it has become a burden.
Something that sits quietly in it's basket niggling at you and taking away the pleasure of knitting.

Realistically this is only my own expectations of what I should make, should finish and how long something should take me to do that is niggling at me.

Yes, I could work on that scarf, I could finish it and it probably wouldn't take that long.
But I am not enjoying it and knitting is meant to be fun.
I really don't know why I have so much trouble admitting when something isn't working, why I have to keep trying and trying.

Yarn can be un knitted.
It can be rewound.
It goes back in the stash all too easily. Once you start. Bye Bye lace scarf.


So winding and placing yarn back into the stash happened yesterday creating space for something I want to work on. Something I have wanted to make since I first discovered blogland.

The Irish Hiking Scarf.

UFO Update

I seem to have gotten over the sniffly cold just in time for C to share his viral thingy with me.

Blah, there are times when sharing is NOT a good thing.

To distract myself from feeling crappy I went through the knitting basket and had a look at the UFO's.

Mistake ridden shawl which I just don't want to knit anymore = May's Frogged Project

Next up is the lace scarf.
C keeps making comments about this looking like his Nanna's curtains.

I already have doubts about this scarf. It was gfoing to be for someone else but I am really not loving it and I don't know that they will.
This may become June's frogged project.
What do you think?

Back to where I started from.....

A few more little projects that snuck their way on to my list.

A grey beanie for C.
Odd decrease placement, but it fits.
This was knit in Liza Leo, which is an alpaca, linen, wool blend.
It sounds nice but is is horrible to work with and seems to go out of shape as you knit it.
I have some more of this yarn but I have a feeling it will be returned to the store.




Something I am much happier with is how well Miss B's Mittens turned out.
Made with Totem yarn that I snaffled for $1 a ball. Sometimes it pays to look under the clearance table.

And now, maybe I can pay some attention to the cleckheaton jumper.

Or maybe something else will jump out and distract me.............

Unravelling

Unravelling is what you spend your time doing once you go back and look at any knitting you did while you had a cold.

The cleckheaton counrty silk jumper was almost done. Front, back and both sleeves were knit.

I got ready to seam and looked at the pieces again. Something was wrong.
It looked a little........... short.

Yep, I had forgotten to add the extra length I normally add to anything I want to actually wear. With my head all clogged up I had blindly followed the pattern and was left with something that would probably even have been too short for Miss B.

So riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip it went, back to the armhole shaping.


Casting on isn't such a great idea when your head is all clogged up either. It involves counting........

So last night I cast on, yet again.
This time it is mittens for Miss B.

I had planned........

Last week

I had planned on having the Country Silk jumper all knitted, seamed and finished over the weekend.

I had planned on posting a project spectrum related post.

I had planned on answering Katie's tag for 7 random things.

I had planned on finishing that another sneaky beanie that made it to the list.

I had planned on starting a new project.

What happened instead was

I ended up with a lovely snotty cold type of thing with bonus nausea that makes you feel crappy and unable to think properly.

Miss B spent several days exhibiting teenage behaviour in ways that seemed to take enormous amounts of time and effort to work through. Just what you need when you are already feeling crappy.

I spent a crazy amount of time searching the internet for tafe related purposes, (I swear they hide these things on purpose). Knitting related activities are so much easier to find.

I did manage to cast on a new project. Yep that's it. Cast on is all I did.

Sneaky little things

Just when I thought I had the WIP list under control a few sneaky little things jumped in front of the que.



First was C's Brown Beanie.



This is the second one of theese I have made for him and somehow I made this one a little too short. ( Avoiding ribbing......... no not me........)



So now it is fixed.



Next was another beanie, this time for Miss B.

I figured if she is going to run off with my scarf she may aswell have a beanie to go with it.

Only thing is, now thats it's done, it really doesn't go with the scarf. Ah well.
At least it will be warm.




Back to my knitting




The start of the roll neck jumper







using Cleckeaton Country Silk in the berry colour.

I can't decide if I like this or not. Some days I really like the brightness and other days I have no idea what I was thinking.
The bits throughout are bigger than I was envisioning and I tend to think it looks a bit worn out and 'bitsy' without even being finished.

On the upside it is really nice to knit with and I have someone waiting to claim it if I hate it when it's done.

Isn't mum nice? She is making a blanket just for meeeeeeeeee.

More FO's

My So Called scarf is done amd I love it. Unfortuantely so does Miss B.

The only good thing about her liking it is that I have an excuse to make another one for myself.
That would involve buying more yarn, what a pity.




Also done are Dashing.

These I'm not so sure about.
I think it's the extra length on the arms , it feels weird.



Slowly my WIP list is going down and it feels good to not have so many projects hanging over my head.
As much as it was fun to cast on the second I found something I wanted to make, having so many projects going at once became a burden.
I felt pressure to work on this, and then, no I should be working on that.
It just took all the fun out of knitting and I found that really hard to accept.
For me knitting has always been fun and when it wasn't....... I felt a bit lost.

So for now I will keep working on those WIP's and add a frogpond item to the rotation every now and again.

Although I really, really would like to cast on for the Ribby Pullover.................

Interview Meme

Last week I read Nat's Interview meme. I really liked meme as it's a chance to get to know a little bit more about the people on the other side of the screen. I never knew she chased her husband........ go Nat!

I asked her to interview me.....

1. How long have you been knitting?

My Mum taught me to knit when I was about 8.
Chunky plastic needles, red acrylic yarn, 2 garter stitch rectangles sewn together to become a vest.
I remember being disappointed that my knitting didn’t look anything like Mum’s knitting and it took me sooooooo much longer to do.
I don’t remember if I wore the vest once it was done or not, I just remember those never ending garter stitch rectangles.

I played about with knitting here and there while growing up but really didn’t focus on it, I was much happier to spend my time curled up with a book.
Then Feathers came along; and I made a few scarves. I got bored with that pretty quickly and went on to beanies.
It probably would have dropped off again there as I wasn’t ready to jump in and tackle anything bigger, but then I discovered knitting blogs.
I also discovered bloggers’ fascination with knitting socks.
Some loved it, some hated it and many said turning heels was really hard.
That was the bit that got me, how could so many bloggers love making socks if it was so hard? So I had to try it, to figure out what was so great about it and to see if it really was that hard.

I bought a pattern, some sock yarn and a set of dpn’s. I took forever making those socks, procrastinating to avoid the heel.
I gave up trying to read ahead in the pattern, it just didn’t make any sense to me.
I stuck to one step at a time and it worked, I had socks.Then I wore those socks, and I liked it. They were so warm. I also found I liked wool much, much more than acrylic.
Damn…. There began the addiction.

2. What is your ultimate project?

This one changes depending on my mood, but usually involves something that involves

(a)lots of concentration (Diamond Fantasy Shawl: I know this doesn’t require much effort for others, but I have a talent for losing yarn overs).

(b) being rather large(Cabled Afghan: if it requires more than a jumpers worth of yarn I will be attacked by startitis and never get back to it).

(c) being beyond my budget and so luxurious that I would never wear/use the item due to fear of ruining it.

3. What are your pet knitting/ blogging dislikes?

Knitting dislikes

: Ribbing
: Ribbing
: Ribbing (Mum, look at your socks: Yes, I really, really love you :)
: all the really nice yarn lives in another country
: all the really nice yarn costs a lot
: my child insists that yarn fumes are not food
: I knit faster in my head than I do in reality. Very disappointing when I want something finished.

Blogging dislikes

: Wanting to blog and remembering I haven’t taken a picture yet. Always happens when it’s dark and cold.
: Wanting to blog but having no knitting progress and nothing to say.
: Wanting an update on someone’s blog….. and they haven’t blogged yet. Yes I am impatient.

4. Favourite memory of your child

Hmmmmmmm, this one is hard. What to share? What to share?

Miss B draws a lot and I try and keep up with the constant supply of paper, pencils and pens she seems to go through.
At Mum’s she was given a workbench to create on and exterior paint to play with. She spent the day happily explaining to Mum what she was doing and what colours she wanted next.
I’m not sure what she loved more, Mum’s total trust in her abilities to create something appealing or the chance to express her creativity in a medium other than pencil and paper.
It could have been just the chance to get messy. Either way she was glowing.

Watching your Mum and your child get messy creating something together is definitely memorable. ( Mum managed to get much messier than Miss B)

It’s even better when you don’t have to clean up the mess.

5. Favourite comfort food/ item (can be yarn...)

Chocolate!!!

As much as I love yarn, if I am craving comfort I tend to gravitate to pattern books and magazines.
Deciding what I’d like to make next is much more comforting than untangling yarn or frogging.


DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explaination and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

A Meme

I did end up posting Mum's socks, Express Post, so hopefully she got them yesterday. I am hoping they dropped them off in her letterbox and didn't leave that annoying little red and white card that means you have to run to the post office. If that happened she may not get them until Monday or later.
I should have just held on to them.

Here's a meme, just because I was curious about what I have or haven't done.

Here's the key: Bold for stuff I've done, italics for stuff I plan to do one day, and normal for stuff I'm not planning on doing.

Afghan/Blanket
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Top-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Slippers
Graffiti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)
Continental knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns (incl. Aran)
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book
Scarf
American/English knitting (as opposed to continental)
Knitting to make money
Button holes
Knitting with alpaca
Fair Isle knitting
Norwegian knitting
Dyeing with plant colors
Knitting items for a wedding
KnitHousehold items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cozies…)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars
Olympic knitting
Knitting with someone else’s handspun yarn
Knitting with DPNs
Holiday related knitting
Teaching a male how to knit
Bobbles
Knitting for a living
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dyeing yarn
Steeks
Knitting art
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting
KitchenerBO
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
Long Tail CO
EntrelacKnitting
purling backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with self-patterning/self-striping/variegating yarn
Stuffed toys
Baby items
Knitting with cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
IntarsiaKnitting
Tubular CO
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mitts/arm warmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Rug
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public

Mum's socks are done!!!

I would love to say that these were finished and gifted on the weekend in time for Mum's birthday, but they weren't. I finished grafting the toes and sewing in ends just now.

Kit pretending she wasn't about to sit on the socks

Throw some ribbing into my knitting and it slows me down a lot.
3X1 rib in Cleckheaton Marino Bambino. Soft and machine washable.



Now the dilemma is do I post them and hope they get to her tomorrow?

Remember this is Australia Post we are talking about.



Or do I hold onto them so I can give them to her in person if we manage to catch up this weekend.



I have visions of her dropping in and me having nothing to give her because I posted it.



Blah!.

Another Finished Object!!!

Kneewarmers are done.

They are funny looking things, all bumpy and odd shaped.
I feel kind of weird sending these off to Great Grandma,



they look so odd, yet they are what she asked for.