50th Post Free Pattern! The Sparkle Scarf!

My 50th post! And so I thought I'd put up a free pattern. The Sparkle Scarf!

I came up with this pattern in between Mystery Stoles, while looking for something quick and easy to make. This certainly is easy - only one line to memorize. Here's a close-up of the stitch pattern:



Materials:

I used a spare ball of mohair I had lying around (on 6.5mm needles) - the yarn looked almost grey all wound up, but as it knitted into the pattern, it suddenly seemed much brighter, and well . . . sparkly, hence the name.

Finished Size: Mine is only 7.5 inches wide by 3.5 feet long, I'd normally knit it longer, but that was all the yarn I had. I like it anyway. Of course, you can knit this pattern as long as you want, and it'd probably look good in a variety of yarns. Anyway, enough waffling, here's the pattern:

Cast on an odd number of stitches so that it's as wide as you want. I cast on 29 sts, which gave me the 7.5 inches. Your own gague will depend on the yarn and needles you use.
Row 1: *K2tog, YO* rpt till last st, K1
And rpt till the scarf is as long as you want it or you've almost run out of yarn.
Cast off.

Hope you like it!

More Mystery Stole-ing

Yep, I'm making another. I know I said I was going to start the print o' the wave stole, but I figured I really should get a start on xmas knitting. So I'm making another stole just the same as my own for my gran. I could have given her the other one, but I'm horribly selfish, and figured I could make another one just for her. It'll be better anyway, since I'm used to this pattern now. So here's the new stole at the end of clue 1:



I'm using a different yarn for this one. It's almost the same thickness, but when knitted up it feels a little more solid. It has a red and greenish strand twisted round each other, and I quite like it. Yet another charity shop buy. The colours in this picture are pretty accurate.



This one is knitting up really fast. I've been working on it for 3 days, and I'm on chart E. I'll just do the same as for the other one - work up to the end of chart F then graft them together. I'll try not to whine about this one so much though. At least I know what'll work for blocking this type of yarn now though.

I've also been playing on Ravelry. I haven't added any of my FO's just yet - I still have to upload them to Flickr. I had to set up an account there. But I have uploaded some of the books I have (the others weren't in Ravelry yet). It's really cool how you can click on the book you have and see the things people have made from it. It's made me look at some of the patterns in a new way. And I've become obsessed with the page where you can see the new patterns people have uploaded. I keep checking back just to see what else there is! Definite time eater.

Happy Happy! FO's

Yay! The mystery stole is blocked and complete!





After leaving it for a while, I finally felt up to trying to block it again. Pinning it out wet didn't seem to work, so I tried ironing it. And it worked immediatly! I'm not entirely sure why, but if it works, it works. And who am I to question it?

I'm so happy it's finally worked out. The seam where I grafted is still wonky - there's nothing I can do about that now - but it actually looks like a piece of fabric now, and I'm very pleased with it. (I'm working hard to ignore the seam, it is my first lace item, after all)

In fact I'm feeling so pleased with it, I'm going to try some more lace - Eunny Jang's Print o' The Wave Stole. I'm going to stick with rectangular stoles for a while before I venture into the world of triangular shawls.

Oh, I finished my boyfriend's sweater too - it's being washed just now to pull out the ribbing, so I'll get some pics tomorrow. I'm glad that's finished too - it's only been a year!

These two projects have been things I've learned from. I'm now better at sweater necks - his head can actually go through this one! - and I'm feeling a bit more confident about lace (although I'm sure just cos I wrote that I'm going to get smited somehow!) Grafting is still scary though - I need more practice at that!

Oh, and I got my invite to Ravelry! Yay! I'm on as Yarndancer if anyone wants to come say hi. I can see it's going to eat up a lot of time - but that's not a bad thing. :)

Cleaning Up

Wow, what a whiny post last time! I'm kinda embarrassed. I had just finished grafting the pieces together, and wasn't feeling very happy about it. Looking back at the stole, I suppose the grafting isn't TOO bad. Only another knitter or someone who was looking very closely would be able to see that it's a bit uneven in places. So I'm not feeling too bad about that just now. I haven't even attempted to block it again though yet. I've just been letting it sit there. It's a lovely pattern though, it's just my lack of abilities that I think I was upset over. I like to be good at things first time lol. But in a couple of days, I'll set it out to block again, see if I can stop it curling. Lol, where's the starch?!

I've not really done any knitting recently, since my bout of finishing things off. I've set up a couple of things, I ripped out the rasta blankie as the crochet was using up far too much yarn. I'm going to do something else with it, that I'm quite excited about, but I'll make a full post on that later. I also ripped out the neck of a jumper that I was knitting for my bf. I was actually knitting it about a year ago, but I made the neck too tight, and it wouldn't even go over a child's head! So it's been sitting there, and I finally dragged it out to work on it again. It doesn't need much work, just the top of the front and back. What I did wrong last time was picking up the neck stitches, then knitting them. It wasn't till I read a post by Grumperina, I think it was, explaining that it worked better if you picked up and knitted a stich at a time. I've done it on other sweaters since then, and it definitely does work better that way, so I'm going to try it on this one. Lol, it's been so long since I looked at this, that I had to swatch again to find out what size needles I used! (2.75 with 4 ply yarn in case you're interested lol)

Oh, and I've been cleaning! I got a new Dyson, and I love it!



It's the bestest hoover ever! I love to just watch all the dirt swirling around. I know, weird. You don't need to say anything. I know. But it's so cool! My dog leaves a lot of hair lying around - a LOT! - and this thing is brilliant. My carpet is actually cream, not gray! Who knew? ;)

(Not that carpet though - that's the horrible kitchen carpet. Ignore it.)

It's No Mystery . . .

I suck at sewing, grafting and blocking. Ug.

I've just grafted the two pieces of the mystery stole. Well, I say grafted. More like hacked the two pieces together with hardly an even set of yarn-overs next to each other, and a big line across the middle. Honestly, I was almost crying as I attempted to sew this thing together! It just wouldn't stay even. Then the yarn broke as I was pulling it through a stitch (luckily there was enough left to do the rest of the grafting, but still! It was an emotional moment). Then it all bunched together and I had to tease it open. It's just as well my house doesn't have a fireplace, because ceremonial burning sure seemed attractive at one point.

Eventually, I finished. I chose to graft it instead of doing a three needle bind off because I figured there wouldn't be a line across the middle. I mean, that's the main selling point of grafting, isn't it? That there's supposed to be no seam line. Well, mine has one. But now I'm thinking I should have just done the three needle thing, as it would have been a lot easier.

Plus, my blocking was crap. The two pieces looked so pretty all pinned out. But, as soon as I took the pins away, the edges just curled in along the line of YO's. I must have done something wrong with that too. I guess I'll have to try ironing it or something.

Ugh. I'm not happy. I put so much work in, and it's now a curly, seamy mess.

It's sitting in the spare room just now, out of sight. I'm not even going to post a picture, because the process of setting one up would be too much. It's just going to sit there, thinking about what it's done, till it decides to play nice, and block properly. (I think I can cope with the squiggly seaming if it blocks next time) It's weird though, the inside portion is blocked fine, the YO's are staying in place and everything. It's just that the edges are curling in on themselves. I'll have to figure out what went wrong. After a strong drink. :)

Finished Objects!

I haven't posted for a while, but I have been busy. I finished the bi-directional vest:



I like it. It has an interesting construction - you knit the centre panel first, then pick up and knit out to the sides. You do this for both front and back, so they're both the same, then pick up and knit round the neckline, hem, and armholes. It's all in straight lines, which is good. It knit up fast, and was good practice at picking up stitches. I had to rip out the side bits though and knit them in a smaller size cos I made it too big first time. I made it in the size I normally make, but it was too big so I had to make it a size smaller. Must be something about negative ease, or something, but I can't be bothered thinking too much about it just now. When I finally got it to the right size, I liked it. I did have to rip out the scarf I had made previously in that yarn though, cos I ran out, and just couldn't wait till I could find more.

I also made a hat:



I love it! It's from this pattern (I've been manically going through the crystal palace yarns free patterns page, in case you hadn't guessed!). The yarn is Sirdar Valentino, and it took a ball and a half. I made it a bit longer than the pattern called for, I must have a big head or something, knitted hat patterns always come out too short on me. I like hats to at least reach my ears, ideally to cover them. It gets cold here in winter! So instead of 7 inches like the pattern said, it was more like 9. I've been looking for a rolled brim pattern for this yarn for AGES, since I bought it. It just screamed out to me that it wanted to be a rolled brim hat, and this pattern was perfect for it. All the other patterns I could find were for different gauges, but this yarn substituted quite well for the one in the pattern.

And . . . the mystery stole is blocking!



At last. Tomorrow, I promise I will sew it together. No more procrastinating.

'Complete' Knitting

I read Grumperina's post yesterday about not feeling like a 'complete' knitter because she doesn't like knitting sweaters, and it got me thinking. What is a 'complete' knitter? Is there such a thing?

My first instinct on reading her post was one of disbelief. What? She doesn't classify herself as a complete knitter? Is she insane??? She knits such wonderful things, designs items the knitting world goes crazy over (is there anyone in the world who hasn't made a pair of jaywalkers, cos it sure doesn't seem so), knows about complicated techniques and more importantly, can explain them in language even I can understand. If I had had to make a list of complete knitters, she would have been right up there at the top.

In the comments, the general consensus seemed to be that it doesn't really matter what a person knits, so long as they enjoy it. Yep, I agree with that. There are items I'll probably never knit (I'm not a fan of knitted bags, for example. All that knitting, and it'll need lined anyway? I'd rather just sew a bag, once I learn to sew properly, that is). But it's not that that keeps me from feeling like I'm the best knitter I can be.

I'm more interested in processes recently. It was cables for a while - that was fun, and they'll definitely come back into my knitting. It'll be lace again, once the mystery stole is blocked and finished (yep, still not done), and I'm having great fun with the bi-directional vest. However, it usually takes me the full length of a sweater to feel like I've 'got' the process. Socks are OK to practice things, but not to learn them, and scarves can be just boring sometimes (I still seem to make a lot of them though. One day I'll show you them all). I find with a sweater there's enough variation in the shaping plus the front, back and sleeves are different, so there's always something to think about.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt that my own sense of 'completeness' is felt in mastering processes. It doesn't matter so much what I make, just so long as I'm making. And even then, 'completeness' isn't quite the right word. I feel in order to be a master knitter, I would need to learn every process, and try everything at least once. But I feel a sense of completeness whenever I'm making, whether it's knitting, crochet, dancing, writing, and I guess I would apply that to other people too. It doesn't matter what they're making or doing, so long as they feel happy, and hopefully even complete while doing it.

And is it possible ever to learn every single technique, in every possible permutation? I have never heard of any knitter who hasn't something new to learn. In fact, when reading letters sent into magazines, I'm often struck by how many older people write in saying they've been knitting for blah amount of years, and are still learning! And the enthusiasm that comes across in those letters is amazing. I kind of hope I never become a master 'complete' knitter, in case I lose the sense of excitement that comes with each new project. It's that excitement and wonder that completes knitting to me.

Anyway, thanks to Grumperina for her inspiring post. I'm sure I have lots more to say about it, but I've babbled on for long enough just now.