I Made Curtains!!

Well, a curtain :)



My bathroom faces due east, and is in such a position relative to my bedroom that in the morning, light just pours in. Not so good in the middle of the year like now, when the sun starts to rise at about 4am. I had a lacy white net curtain over the window, but that kept out none of the light at all. So I wanted something that would block out the majority of the light in the morning.

I got some fabric from my fabric stash - some sort of purple satin-y stuff - sorry to anyone who wants to know more, I'm such a beginning sewer that I don't even know what kind of fabric it is. It was given to me in a huge pile of fabric from a friend who was clearing out her own stash. It was long enough sideways to make a curtain the same width as the original net one, that was what I was bothered about yesterday :)

I laid the net curtain over it, and cut it down to the same width. It was a little longer, but I was going to hem it and anyway, it would just cut out more of the light if it was longer. So I folded over the sides and bottom to make a hem (I should really have taken pictures of all these steps, but I was concentrating too hard on getting them done. One thing about sewing, it's not like knitting where I'm happy to spend loads of time on the process. I just want it sewed up as fast as possible :)

I did an invisible stitch to sew in the hem (kind of like mattress stitch in knitting). I should probably mention here that I handsewed the curtain, not machine sewed. I'm still a little scared of my machine. Stupid, I know, but there it is. Then I folded over a much larger portion at the top to make a kind of slot for the pole the original curtain was on to go through, and I invisible-stitched that too. That invisible stitch probably has a proper name, I should look that up at some point!

And voila, I sewed a curtain!! It's more than a little lilac purple, which is not one of my most favouritest colours, but it's what fabric I had in my stash, and it works. I've decided not to buy any more fabric till I've used all or most of the fabric I have, and practiced on that.

I'm quite proud of this curtain, despite its glaring lilac-ness. It's rectangle-y with only one wonky corner, and the sewing is not too badly executed. That's probably just my perfectionism and tendancy to talk my own work down showing through though. It's a good curtain, for my very first one ever!!! I'll probably make a different one at some point, in a more suitable fabric, but this one definitely works for now. I wasn't woken up this morning by insane sunshine, or the dog getting overexcited by the fact that the sun is up, and demanding we get up too! So, yay!!

WIP Wednesday - Lacy Baktus

Hey, 3 weeks in a row blogging on a specific day!! Go me!! I never thought I could manage even 2 weeks in a row, not really, but it's actually been really motivating. Thinking "Right it's Wednesday, gotta take a photo and blog" has been really helpful for me (I know, it's only 3 weeks, but for me to maintain any kind of routine for any amount of time is pretty spectacular!) And even if I don't blog in between Wednesdays (like this week), it means that the poor blog doesn't get abandoned until I can find the time to take tons of photos of FOs.

So, this week my main project has been my Lacy Baktus:



The pattern is Lacy Baktus by Terhi Montonen. The ravelry pattern page is here. It's a triangular scarf knit side to side, based on the Baktus pattern by Strikkelise: ravelry pattern page for the Baktus scarf is here, with lacy stripes.

It's quite an easy knit, which is why it's been worked on so much this week. I cast it on only 3 days ago, and I've already knit half of it, and am onto the decreases. I'm using a heavier weight yarn than called for in the pattern, a DK yarn instead of a fingering weight yarn, and I'm also using more of it. You would normally get one skein of sock yarn and split it in half to knit the two sides, but I'm using 2 full 100g balls of Stylecraft Life DK Prints. It's 75% acrylic, 25%wool, 298m/326yds to a ball. I'm using colourway 2398 (pampas), which is green with red and blue flecks.



I was going to knit a plain Baktus out of this yarn. I got the two balls of heavier yarn because I knit one from sock yarn before, and I wanted a larger, cosier one this time. But then I was watching the Round The Twist video podcast, and Carin was making a lacy Baktus scarf from handspun, and I thought that the pattern would look really good with this yarn as well. So I cast on, and liked it :)

This WIP will probably become an FO before too long - it's knitting up really fast. The only thing I had to do was to put a safety pin in the side where I was doing the increases (you can just see the silver line of the pin at the bottom of the scarf running along the side, beside the needle in the photo). Before I did that, I was making a few mistakes as the scarf got larger - doing increases on the wrong row, or on the wrong side, but as soon as I put that pin in, I didn't make any more mistakes and it started going super fast. I'm enjoying knitting it very much, I may have to make more of these :)

WIP Wednesday - Spinning

I've written loads over the past few days about the knitting project I'm currently working on - the cedar leaf shawlette. That's coming along fine now, no more ripping back (fingers crossed!), so I figured there wasn't much point in writing more about that. The only other thing I've been *actively* working on the past week (apart from HPKCHC stuff, of course), is spinning.



I'm spinning this fibre to make colourwork mittens. I've already knit, and am waiting to block a pair of Galileos by Laura Chau (but I haven't written about them yet, so it hasn't really happened yet, lol). This fibre (Corriedale, I think, need to doublecheck that at the shop next week) is going to become a pair of Deep In The Forest mittens. The light turquoise is going to be the trees and the dark jewel tone green that I'm spinning now is going to be the background.

My default spinning size seems to be perfect for mittens. When plied, it seems to be a large sock weight. My wraps per inch means that my yarn is fingering weight according to the charts out there, but it seems a bit larger than normal sock yarn. But it's so perfect for mittens. My Gailileos are so lovely... but that's another post!

I've got 100g of each fibre, and what I do is to split it up into 4 equal amounts, spin them into singles, then ply them together to make 2 equal amounts of approx 50g. That seems to be what my spindle will hold without falling to the ground every second, and it works out well for knowing where the halfway point in my yarn is - just knit till one ball is finished and the other will be roughly the same :)

I'm enjoying spinning this. I just do a little at a time, whenever I have a moment. It's so portable and pick-up-able that it's easy to just spin a little amount at a time. And before you know it, those little bits have added up into a whole big bit :) I love spinning :)

Some HPKCHC FOs

I rejoined the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup on Ravelry :)

I love this group, but I'd dropped out for a few "terms". Then I head Rachel on the KnitCents podcast talking about it, and it reminded me of how much I'd enjoyed it last time, so as soon as the new term was about to begin, I signed up.

In this group, they have "classes" where you get a task - kind of like an inspiration idea, some loose idea, and you craft something that's connected to that idea. This month I did Defence Against The Dark Arts, Astronomy, and Ancient Runes.

Ancient Runes: The task was to craft something that would enable or aid communication. I made some top-(fingers)-down fingerless mitts to "help keep my hands warm when I was texting or phoning my muggle friends on the tellyfone" :D





Defence Against The Dark Arts: This task was to craft something you would wear to the beach. I made a poncho/coverup using Cindy Kamps' Medallion Poncho pattern.



Astronomy: The task was to create something irregular (based on the asteroid belt) I made a cowl using chunky yarn, just going round and round in SC/DC (depending on what country you're in and what terminology you're using), and working bobbles randomly, just whenever I wanted to make one. I think the final effect turned out quite asteroid-y :D It looks quite interesting as a hat/head-covering as well as around the neck (actually I think it looks better that way!)











I turned them all in today (the last day of the month), so I could get my points for Ravenclaw. I'm in Ravenclaw, my favourite house, BTW!! Last minute as usual, it's just like when I really was at school, lol!

More Ripping Back

More progress, then ripping of the Cedar Leaf Shawlette. I managed, with the help of markers, to finish the main body of the shawl. This time, I placed a marker just after each wrap when I worked it, then I wouldn't go past it, and rework it. This worked, and it was much easier to just knit, without having to look down at my work every few minutes to see if I was at the next wrap yet.

I started the leaves around the border, and actually did 13 out of 30. But something was niggling at me. The pattern has you join the stitch of the border to the body, then knit it again on the next row. But it was looking kind of untidy. I checked the picture in the pattern, and mine did look the same as the detail picture, so I was obviously doing it right, but it didn't look right. I tried ignoring it, but with each leaf it bothered me more, and I eventually figured I wouldn't be happy if I just left it.

So I did an experiment, and decided to slip the first stitch on the RS rows for one leaf to see how it looked.



Forgive the crappy picture, it was half past two in the morning, only electric light, and photoshop can only brighten it so much. The colour is actually a rich dark green, less gray than in the photo.

But you can see how on the last leaf, it looks much tidier where the leaf joins the body. That row of knit stitches lies much straighter, and doesn't wibble about so much. The stitches are less squashed together too, and just lie much nicer against the body.

So I ripped out all of my leaves and started again. This time I wasn't so bothered by ripping out though, because it was a choice that I'd made, and not a huge mistake. And those leaves are really fun to knit!

I'll be much happier with the shawlette now. I've knit three of the leaves already, and it's looking much, much nicer. I don't finish every leaf and think how wonky it's looking, which is very nice :)

Negative Knitting

(in the sense of negative growth, not whinyness...)

I'm knitting the Cedar Leaf Shawlette by Alana Dakos. I'm using Sirdar Sublime 100% merino (so lovely!!) It's been going along fine, until I got to the end of the short row section yesterday. I counted the stitches inbetween my wraps - I had the correct number, but I'd just finished a RS row, not a WS row. So I decided to count my wraps.

18 on the left side (the side I was now at), and only 17 on the right side. I puzzled over it for a while. The pattern is so well written that it couldn't be an error, could it? I'd knit the shawlette once before, but I couldn't remember if I'd had any problems that time. So I counted again, in the vain hope that I'd counted wrong the first time.

Nope, still uneven. And I couldn't really fudge it without the shaping being completely uneven. Instead of lovely crescent shape, it would be a wonky banana shape. And nobody wants a wonky banana shawl, do they. (Or do they? I'm sensing a design opportunity here, lol) Anyway, I didn't want this shawl to be a wonky banana. So I counted and recounted.

The only thing I could think of was that I had missed a wrap on the right side of the shawl. But all my wraps had the correct amount of stitches between them. I peered and counted at my wraps, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

Then I saw it.

One of my stitches had two wraps around it.

The fourth wrap in...

I hadn't been using any sort of markers, just looking to see where the previous wrap was and working from there. So I'd evidently knit past a wrap, not seeing it because I was on the purl side, and reworked that stitch.

Sigh. There was nothing for it but ripping. Ripping back about 14 sets of wrap and turns with up to 200sts between each one. I think my heart broke just a little as I pulled the stitches off the needle.

I only pulled off the stitches in between the wraps that were correct, so I would only(!) have to rework those middle 200sts again (for another 14 sets of wrap and turn rows!) So in one fell swoop, all the knitting I'd done that day (about three hours) disappeared and so did most of my work from the day before. :(

Oh well. Enough time has passed now I can look on the bright side. I get to spend more time knitting the lovely Sublime yarn. There's always a positive :)

WIP Wednesday - Willow Scarf

I've seen this idea on a few blogs recently - WIP Wednesday, where you talk/write about something that you're working on. And since I only seem to write about projects when they're done now, I decided to try to implement it on my own blog. I kind of miss tracking the progress of large projects, and it's somehow less satisfying to only have one post saying "look, here's a sweater" and that's it.

This week's WIP is the Willow Scarf. This is a pattern (found on ravelry here) by Vikki Harding of Wild Fire Fibres. It's a rectangular scarf with a repeating lace pattern.



I'm using 2 cones of lace/cobweb-weight yarn held together to make more of a fingering weight yarn, on 4mm straight needles (yes, I've resurrected my straights for this, and I'm quite enjoying it!) It's making a nice fabric, not to thin or flyaway, which it definitely would be with one strand of yarn.

It's acrylic, but the lace is still showing well, and I've used this yarn and needle combination before, so I know it'll look even better when it's steam-blocked.



Lots of people think you can't block acrylic, but steam-blocking does open it up and make it look a lot nicer. You just won't get the big size increase that you can get by blocking wool. Whatever the knit size is, that's the size it's going to stay. But you can still make it look really nice with steam-blocking.

To block acrylic, I just lay the scarf out flat and hold my iron a few inches over it (NEVER directly on the fabric!!!) then I press the steam button. I get the fabric nice and saturated with steam then take the iron away and lay it to the side (VERY important, I always take time to think during this process, and make sure it's away, I don't want to burn myself!) then I flatten the scarf out a bit with both of my hands, stretching the lace out so the holes open up.

This scarf is about 3/4 done. My rule of thumb with scarves is to hold it between both hands across my body so it'll be about the size of my wingspan (the same height as me, I understand, though I've never actually measured myself and tested that theory) I don't tend to measure it out very often. I used to religiously measure out 60" or whatever the pattern said with a tape measure, but really, does it matter if it's an inch or two or even ten off? If I can hold it out between both hands without folding my wrists or elbows in, then it's done to me. I'm either more lazy or easygoing about this stuff now, I'm not entirely sure which, lol!

This project is my couch knitting. Because I'm using the two cones together, it has to be beside and slightly beneath me or the cones fall about everywhere, so I've got them in a paper bag beside the couch, and I pull the yarn up from there. It means it's less portable, but I can get a repeat or so done at a time and I can see progress.

I've technically memorised the pattern, but I still get halfway through the repeat and need to check the chart. It doesn't seem to matter what half I finish, the first or second, I still need to verify where I am with the chart. But since it's not one of my portable projects, that doesn't really matter, I suppose.

I'm enjoying working on this in my piecemeal fashion, doing a few rows at a time whenever I can sit down long enough. I started this back in March, so it's one of my more longer projects, but I'm enjoying it very much.