Art Deco Scarf

When we went to New Zealand, I promised my mum I'd make her a scarf with some yummy possum/merino/silk yarn I bought there. I managed to do it without her seeing it (although the blocking part had me EXTREMELY nervous, luckily it was warm weather and only took one night). It ended up really nice and I'm sure she'll get a lot of use out of it once the weather cools down. I ended up with two left over balls so eventually I might make myself some fingerless gloves or mittens maybe.

It's an art deco scarf because we went to Napier in New Zealand, which is an art deco town, and zig-zags are a common motif in Art Deco style.

The pattern is Isobel, knitted with Supreme Possum Merino with Silk. Took about a month and a half of surreptitious knitting.

Garterlac Dishcloth

Another dishcloth! I've found the couple I've done are a good way to have a go of a new stitch without starting a massive, overwhelming project.



Made with Peaches and Creme in Pink Lemonade, and the pattern is from here.

A real dish(cloth)

A fellow raveller in the Australian Knitters Group on ravelry was doing a peaches and creme order so I thought I might order some. I ordered a pack of twelve balls and two grab bags which had loads of stuff in. This is made from a partial ball in one of the grab bags and I ended up with just enough to finish it. Yay!



The pattern is the Round Dishcloth and it was pretty easy in the end.

Made with Peaches and Creme in Winterberry.

Hat and Scarf Set

It's one of my nieces birthday soon (her first one in Australia), so what better to celebrate the 'wonderful' weather in Melbourne (they're from the UK) than a beanie and scarf, although they're fairly light ones.



The beanie is the Divine Hat which is a lovely pattern that I've been looking for an excuse to make.



The scarf is the Double Drop Stitch Scarf which was a pretty quick knit and the drop stitches were a bit of fun to do.

Both were made with Aria by Lang Yarns. The beanie would have taken one night and the scarf maybe two or three.

Seed Stitch Scarf

It was my brother-in-laws birthday recently and as I'd noticed him wearing scarves around it gave me an excuse to knit one. I did start crocheting one, but I was using pretty chunky yarn and it ended up a bit solid. So I decided to knit my first scarf. I did it in seed stitch and because the yarn was so chunky it went pretty quickly. I also think it's my first knitting project without mistakes. Yay! And I used some stash yarn. Double yay!




It's very thick, warm, soft and squishy.

Finished Socks (Oh yeah!)

Finally finished my socks. Only realised into the foot of the second one that I've been twisting my knit stitches. Oops. But I learned something from it!

WIP Wednesday: socks

Yes, I'm making socks, and I'm pretty proud of myself too! The finished one is fairly dodgy and has some real laddering issues, particularly at the top. The second one is looking ok so far but I'm definitely going to have to do a better job of grafting the toe at the end.

Completed Wisp

Hooray, I've finished my Wisp. Once I got into it, the knitting wasn't too bad, so I'm probably going to try and knit some more projects in the future.

It's from the Knitty pattern Wisp, made with some random mohairy like op-shop yarn which I think is acrylic.
Here's a picture of it all spread out blocking on my new blocking mat.

WIP Wednesday: Wisp

I thought I should start posting some of my WIPs to keep me motivated and also put some pretty pictures on the blog.



This is Wisp from the Summer 2007 Knitty, and it's part of me extending myself with craft, by knitting (because I find it a lot more work than crochet). It's made with some random yarn I bought from the op-shop. I'm not sure how it's going to block, but hopefully I can stretch it out a bit once I'm done (eventually)

Anthropologie Inspired Shrug

I must say, Ravelry is fantastic, but I can see that with all the wonderful project galleries that I may end up with lots more WIPs and UFOs as I jump from one project to another due to the overload of inspiration.

Anyway, it has got me to retry knitting and although I've ended up with a successful project, I don't think I can call myself a knitter and I still love crochet much more.

There are a couple of mistakes in it, the most obvious is in one row of the stockingette stitch one the back where I've knitted where I should have pearled,or vice versa, but after all the times I frogged it I wasn't going back 5 rows, which is how far I'd come before I discovered the mistake.

These are all the attempts I made:
1. Thought I was doing moss stitch instead of 1X1 rib. Got past the ribbing and added 5 stitch markers instead of four. Frogged to start.
2. Got to the third row and realised my stitch count was off. Frogged to start.
3. Knitted first row with tail end of yarn before running out of yarn. Frogged to start.
4. Got 3 rows in, realised I was doing garter stitch and still wasn't actually pearling properly. Frogged to start, put the whole thing down and did some gauge squares, learning knit, pearl, stockingette, 1X1 rib and some cast off techniques.
5. Did the ribbing fine (and put some yarn through the stitches) did the raglan increases etc well (with a small bit of knitting in one pearl section - oops, sure no one will notice) then stuffed up the bottom ribbing and frogged that bit three times (but not back to the start). Finally finished the ribbing, and then the sleeves (with no mistakes there).

It's made with Bendigo Woollen Mills Rustic 8 Ply in Peppercorn.

I can knit!

I have finally stepped up to challenge one of my crafting phobias - knitting.

I've tried to knit a number of times since I was a little kid and my granny tried to teach me. Every time (ok maybe twice) I would try, my creations (generally something simple like a scarf) would enlarge in size until they were trapezoid rather than rectangular at which point I'd generally stop working on them. I'm not sure what happened to them after that. I imagine my mum probably threw them out.

Anyway, I decided that I should try again. Over the last year or so my crafting skills have developed from making an occasional card to spending much of my spare time (which I need more of) crafting, so I decided I should develop my skills further into the area of knitting, and I didn't fail. Although, even if I had my mum bought the needles a couple of years ago and I was using scrap yarn, so it wouldn't have been a big investment of time or money (what did I have to lose?).

So here is my new neckwarmer (as we've had a 34*C day this week I don't know that it's going to get a lot of use in the near future).




It's done in garter stitch and even has a button hole (which I made too big for the button I had so I then made a crochet flower which gets stuffed through the hole - it works quite well).

I'm very happy that I've managed to do something which I always thought I couldn't.