IntSweMoDo Sweater #1 Completed!!

I completed my first sweater of the year the other day!





The pattern is the February Fitted Pullover by Amy Herzog, available on ravelry here.
It's based on the February Lady Sweater, which if you're on Ravelry, you'll have seen went totally viral as soon as it came up. I made one of those myself in purple, and I totally love it, so when I saw the pullover version come up, I had to put it in my queue.

I bought the yarn last year off of ebay. As soon as I saw the colour I knew it would look great in this pattern (it's Woolcraft Aran yarn, BTW.) It comes in 400g balls (875yards/800m), and I used nearly a whole ball making this sweater. I had a tiny little ball left at the end. I had bought two balls of it, just in case, so now I need to find something else to make using the other ball! :D

I saved the actual knitting of this sweater till after the new year, becauase I wanted it to be part of my IntSweMoDo2010 project. It's my first sweater out of (hopefully!) at least 12 this year. It knit up very fast, and the pattern was very easy to follow. I had to do a bit of thinking around the shoulder and neck area to keep the lace pattern going, but it wasn't too hard to figure out, actually.

The top photo is actually one of my project365 photos as well as one of my photos for self portrait Tuesday, and 52 weeks of self portraits! I'm such a multi-tasker ;)

I really like this sweater. I think it looks very cute, and with the shirt underneath, it's really warm. Just right for this weather, lol!

Oh, and the top picture also shows my new glasses! I decided to get my eyes tested since my right eye was really getting quite blurry. Turns out I have an astigmatism in that eye, so it's a funny shape, and that's why my vision in that eye is blurry. The left eye is nearly perfect, it's practically plain glass in that side! But it's great being able to see without squinting and straining my left eye. I was getting headaches from the strain of it trying to compensate, and it's fantastic not to have had any headaches for the past week or so! I can play my DS again, yay!!!

Project 365 1-7

Well, I started doing project 365 on New Years Day, which is where you take a picture every day for an entire year. I tried it before and only lasted for just over a month, I think, so hopefully this time I'll manage more. I've got a flickr set with all my photos here, and I'll post them here with a short description. To be honest, I think it'll be a bit easier this time around, because I went to a digital photography class last year, and I understand a bit more about cameras now. I can experiment with different settings on those days when inspiration is a bit harder to come by, and generally try different things out. So here's my first week of photos.


Jan 01

This is some tinsel really close up. I wanted something festive but not christmas-y, and the light was shining really nicely off of this tinsel. I have two standing lamps in my living room, and always wrap tinsel around the stands at Christmas time so the light shines directly down onto it, and it looks all pretty and stuff :)


Jan 02

This is my dog Tupac in the back garden while snow is falling. I think he's a bit confused here. He really likes to jump around in the snow, but hates it when rain or snow is falling onto him. I'll try not to make this a 365 of Tupac pictures, but he does look cute :)


Jan 03

A cat washing in the middle of the road. In the snow. This cat wasn't budging at all. This was his bit of snow and he was staying there till he'd finished doing what he was doing!!


Jan 04

This is Tupac in his more normal "snow mode". Running up and down the garden being completely mad!


Jan 05

Self portrait :) I'm trying to incorporate other projects into my 365. This is part of self-portrait Tuesday (there used to be a blog for that, but I think it's just a flickr group now, the blog is gone), and "52 weeks of self portraits"


Jan 06

This is my favourite so far. I was experimenting with longer shutter speeds in the dark. This is a fibre-optic lighty uppy thing from the pound shop that changes colour.


Jan 07

And number 7! I've noticed recently a whole lot of stupid notices and stuff on packaging. Like how to open a box, for example. Not kidding! The photo's on my flickr stream here. These are two Ariel bottles with apparantly different measurements of liquid inside. The older one on the left has 666ml of liquid, the newer one on the right has 667. Where did the extra ml come from? Is it even in the bottle, or are Ariel just pandering to somebody who complained? Anyway, I thought it was mildly amusing. I've decided to make a whole other flickr set for every stupid packaging label I see from now on. Sadly, I think it's going to fill up kinda fast...

So the first week of my 365 project went OK. I'm still motivated, and still have plenty of ideas. I think incorporating other projects like the self portrait thing will make it easier by adding a bit of structure.

Oh, and I've noticed quite a lot of people are doing project365 this year in the blogs I read. If you're doing one, let me know so I can come look at your photos!!

The Obligatory New Year's Resolutions Post

Well, it's that time of year again, when we all start to think about what we want to acheive in the coming year, and when new goals and resolutions are born :) Some die pretty quickly (last year's quest to lose weight? Yeah, not so much!) but I still feel obliged to make these goals. I figure in the pursuit of them, something will happen that will be good. I'll at least be a little closer to what I wanted to achieve.

Last year I resolved to learn to knit colourwork, and I did. I can now do stranded knitting and double knitting. I didn't do as much of it as I thought I would at the beginning of the year, and that first fair isle sweater is still some way off, but I'm happy with what I did manage to achieve.

This year, I've joined the IntSweMoDo2010 group on Ravelry, which has the goal of making 12 sweaters in 2010 (InstSweMoDo stands for International Sweater a Month Dodecathon). So that's the first goal, to knit or crochet 12 sweaters. I think that should be do-able, so long as I don't have a big knitting flump in the summer like last year.

Secondly, I want to knit my way through all the socks in the book Favorite Socks (rav link) This one is just me, no group behind it, I just love all those patterns so much! This one is probably do-able, but I'm not sure about it all being done in a year. But hey, even if I only make a few, I'll still have some pretty cool socks!

That's it for the knitting goals. There's the usual lose weight, get fit, dance more type of resolutions. The bf's giving up smoking, so that should be fun over the next few days!!

Oh, and I also want to do project 365 this year, and take a photo every day for a year. I've managed the three days so far, go me!! (I'll do a seperate post for that) I've joined the project 365 flickr group, and the project 365 ers group on ravelry, so hopefully that should keep me motivated.

So I'm definitely going to be busy over the next year! It'll be interesting to see how far I get with each of these goals!

Happy New Year!!!!!

I hope you all had a wonderful time over the holidays!

My Christmas was very nice. On Christmas Day we had the bf's family over. That was good, it meant everyone was there all at the one time, the living room was stuffed full of people! The bf had a cold so I had to make the dinner "so he wouldn't spread his germs" :D I got him to stand behind me and tell me what to do though - he's totally the chef round here, not me! But I made roast beef and potatoes with onions and mustard, and it all went well, and tasted pretty good, if I do say so myself!

I got lots of lovely things for Christmas. I got two games for my DS - Professor Layton and pandora's Box, and Chrono Trigger. I really enjoyed the last Professor Layton game that I got last year, and I really like old style RPGs like Chrono Trigger. I also ordered Harvest Moon - Island of Happiness with some money I got for Christmas :)

I got two bellydance belts:




and I also got lots of warm things to snuggle up in, which turned out to be just the thing I needed in this weather! I got pyjamas, slippers that look like bunnies, and a slanket!! I am now officially a slanket owner! ;)

Those turned out to be doubly useful since I caught the bf's cold just after Christmas. I spend most of the time between Christmas and New Year sniffling and feeling sorry for myself. Honestly, it was such a bad cold! I went totally man-flu on my bf and moaned at him the entire time. Poor him! I spend the actual New Year's night in my bed, because my nose would not stop running, and I just felt awful. So I texted everyone early, switched my phone off and went to sleep. I woke up for a while when some fireworks went off, but there weren't as many this year as last year. The snow must have been too much!

Speaking of which, we got another two inches here overnight!! This is what it was like at my parents on Boxing Day:



and this is it here now:



I'm feeling a lot better now, whatever bug it was seems to have pretty much sorted itself out, and I actually feel human again, if a little sniffy and coughy. But I can't tell you how great it feels to be able to breathe out of my nose again!! Such a little thing, but it makes so much of a difference!



I hope 2010 is a great year for everyone out there! Happy New Year!!

Borders UK in Administation :(

Probably most of you know of this already, but the book store Borders has gone into administration (at least, the UK division has, I don't know about other countries) :( Another casualty of the recession, I suppose.

I didn't actually hear about it till last week, and I didn't actually believe it till I went down to my parents house and passed the Borders store in Glasgow and saw all the closing down sale signs. It made me feel really sad. Whenever I go to my parents house to visit, it involves a long bus journey, and I have to change at Glasgow. So I would always pop in when I passed, and more often than not, buy a book (usually a knittng book) or a magazine or two or three. ;)

I went in to look at the sale, and it was so sad to see all the half-empty shelves. I felt like a total vulture looking round them all. The knitting and crochet section, which is where I went first, was totally decimated.

I bought a couple of books in the Glasgow store: Favorite Socks from Interweave Press, and Wrapped in Crochet by Kristen Omdahl. I'd been very interested in Wrapped in Crochet for ages, but it hadn't actually been on the shelves in the Glasgow store till then (I'd been looking for it specifically). Favorite Socks, well that was a bit of a vulture purchase. I'd seen it before, but hadn't been that interested when I flicked through it. But I figured with 30% off, it would be worth it. Then I looked at it more in depth on the bus home.

OMG, I want to make everything in that book! Seriously. I think next year I'll be doing my own Favorite Socks KAL - I guess it's not really a knit-a-long if you're the only one doing it though ;) and knitting through all the patterns in this book. I think this is the first book where I've actually seen the potential in all the patterns. Even with Cookie A's book, I love most of the patterns but there are a few that I'm not so interested in, or just plain wouldn't wear. But with Favorite Socks, I think I would knit and wear all of them.

I went to the Dundee store with some friends as well, and bought some other books, but they're not knitting or dance related. One was about lighting in photography, something that I'm realising I need to understand much more in depth. One was a book with Japanese patterns, and one was a book on Japanese death poetry. I thought the bf would like that for his Christmas ;) Yep, he's almost as weird as myself!

Anyway, Borders shutting down made me think about how different the high street in the UK looks compared to ten or even five years ago. There are almost no cd or record stores now. There used to be about 3 in every town that I can think of. There was space for HMV, Our Price, Virgin and loads of others to compete. And the pattern of them closing and being replaced by online stores seems to be repeating with book stores. It's really sad. I know that online stores like amazon have a lot more choice, and cheaper prices in general, but it's still sad that the options for high street purchases are rapidly diminishing. Sometimes it's good to just go into a store and look about to see what catches your eye, but that's becoming ever more impossible. I think you can stumble across some really interesting things in brick and mortar stores, that you just wouldn't come across on the internet. Of course, that argument works both ways, you can come across interesting things on the internet that stores just wouldn't stock, but I think it's important to have choice.

I guess what I'm saying is: whenever you can afford it, please buy things from brick and mortar stores. I buy a lot of things online because prices are cheaper, some things are easier to find online, and it's convenient. But is convenience a good reason for encouraging losing choice? I'm beginning to re-evaluate my own shopping behaviour, and I think I'll be changing some of it soon. For instance, Woolworths used to be the main store to buy a lot of household items, and now that's gone, I find I need to buy a lot of small things from ebay sellers because they're just not in the stores. Sewing equipment for example. So whenever I see something online that I could buy from a local store, I'll be going to the local store, if I can afford the increased price at that time (and the increased price isn't too much more)

To be honest, I'm not sure if anything can slow down this trend of high street stores closing, or if it's just a natural consequence of the internet. Things do change in life, after all, and maybe this is just the way shopping in a capitalist culture is evolving. But I do know that I think choice is important, and I think I'll have to look at my own behaviour to see how I can encourage choice.

Yarn Review - Stylecraft Baby DK

This was the yarn I used for the socks I just wrote about in my last post, and I thought I'd write a little review of it, since some things came to mind when I was knitting with it. I used it to make the socks that I made my Mum for Christmas, and also made a pair for myself. I knit it pretty tight, on 2.75 needles (4mm are what are recommended on the ball band), to make a thicker fabric for the socks.



It knit up into the socks quite nicely. It's soft and comfortable against my feet, and they make a nice pair of house socks, being relatively thick. I don't know how they'd hold up in shoes, but my intention is just to have a thicker pair of socks for the house, to keep my feet warm in winter.

The yarn comes in 200g (590m/645 yards) balls, which was enough to make 2 women's socks with approx 10" cuffs, and one with 8" of cuff. I bought another ball to finish making Mum's socks, but I'm going to use the rest for yet another pair of socks (but probably patterned this time).

I really liked working with this yarn. It's really quite soft, and if I was making something for a baby that had to be machine washable, I'd definitely consider using this yarn. I think it would be soft enough, and the lilac I used is a really pretty shade.

Actually, when I was knitting with it, I got this strange feeling that it didn't actually feel like acrylic. It just felt too soft, and shiny, like cotton. In fact, I actually felt this way so much that I had to check the ball band to see if there was any cotton in it. I was pretty sure it was 100% acrylic (which is turned out to be), but it just felt like cotton in my hands, you know? And it has a slight sheen, just like some cottons that I've come across. It is 100% acrylic, which is what I had thought when I picked it up in the shop, I just thought it was odd that in my hands, it felt like cotton. Not bad odd, in fact I really liked it. It might even be a nice yarn for a scarf or something. Being acrylic, it won't be as warm as a wool pair of socks, or scarf, but it feels nice against my skin. I think it would make a nice scarf for the spring season.

The stitch definition is very clear too, again, like cotton. You can see it in the photos of the socks.



One problem I had was that the yarn was a little splitty. I've had this problem with other Stylecraft yarns (Special and Life, which I mentioned in this post) It was probably exacerbated by the fact that I was using smaller than recommended needles, but overall, I think it's just the way Stylecraft yarns are spun. With the Baby DK though, it behaves so much like cotton, that any splitting is quite visible. In fact, the way that the yarn split and behaved was another thing that made me think it had some cotton in it.

Overall, I really like this yarn, and I think I'll defintely use it again. It's soft, and I think makes a nice alternative to cotton, because it behaves so much like it. Like I said, I think I would use it in a spring scarf, or a baby sweater or something. Next time I'm in the yarn store actually, I think I'll have a look and see what other colours they have ;)

The Obligatory Christmas Preparation Post

This year I hadn't really planned to do much Christmas knitting (kind of like last years actually), but I did a couple of things. Of course, for one of them, I didn't actually get the idea until December had already arrived (again, the same as last year!)



I thought I had posted about these when I made them, but evidently I didn't. I think I must have avoided it because I didn't want to upload the pics to Flickr as my sister is on there and can see my account. So I apparantly just uploaded the pics to ravelry. Now I'll have to upload them here directly. So anyway, they're socks for my sister. I made them waaaay back in June, and it was kind of an accidental Christmas present. I made a pair for myself out of the James C Brett Magi Knit DK



(on 2.5mm needles) (it took 68 sts to get the pattern to line up correctly) and when I was about half way through them I realised my sister might like them. Being very selfish, I didn't want to give those ones up, so I made another pair for her. So that was the first Christmas present out of the way, bought or made.



Mum is getting a pair of socks like these, but with slightly smaller (length ways) cuffs.



Mine (I had to made a pair for myself of course!) are 8" after 20 rows of ribbing, Mum's are 6" after the ribbing. I just made the feet the same for mine and hers (and my sister's) because we all have the same size feet. I hope they fit OK! :)

I knit these with Stylecraft Baby DK in lilac, with 2.75 needles. Just a plain sock with a heel flap, 68 stitches around so they're comfortable house socks and not too tight. Using the DK made a thicker fabric, so even though they're acrylic, they'll be quite warm in the winter.

And actually, that's all the Christmas knitting that's been done around here.

I've done most of my Christmas shopping as well. I only have one Christmas gift to buy, and a birthday gift. These people who have birthdays around Christmas!!! :D I was very organized this year, usually I'm rushing around the week before Christmas trying to find something. But this year, I ordered half of the stuff off the internet, and got the rest in 2 shopping trips. Not bad!! I still have to order the Christmas food off of Tesco's site for delivery, but other than that, Christmas here is organized! Yay!! Now if I can just wish hard enough for some snow it would be perfect! ;)