Easter? Are you sure?

We awoke this morning to this:

Sadly all melted by the time we got back from Church but SNOW! at EASTER - surely this is the wrong way round!

I have compounded the error with a grotty cold which I hope will break tomorrow as we are due to be going to a wedding in the evening (yes, I think it's a funny time to have a wedding too).

All this leads to much time curled up knitting and a little quilting and generally following a strong urge to make blankets. I have two new Lizard Ridge squares

Can you tell the second one came from this ball?

And I finally added some buttons to the Baby Crocus and duly proclaim it finished.

One thing might suggest that it really is Easter:

Easter eggs!

Back on English Time

H and I have spent a wonderful week in a combination of Arran and Argyll time - very laid back, very chilled - pure bliss - it's a real bump back down to English time which revolves around trains and time recording.

We have many pictures, and many tales to tell so I'm leaping into part 1 of an epic three-parter: "what we did in Scotland".

Last Wednesday we loaded up the knitting and drove up to Edinburgh where H's brother and sister live - it was lovely to see them and my SIL managed to get the Thursday off work/university classes to spend the day with us, pootling around Edinburgh. We hit central Edinburgh midmorning and spent a good while trying to find buttons for this:

Finished (but for the buttons) on Wednesday night/ Thursday morning. All plans for multi-coloured stripes etc were blown out of the water by a slight yarn shortage - I tried corrugated ribbing in blue and pale blue but it just looked messy next to the solid colour blocks so blue and red it is. Unfortunately although I found a rather cute sheep button to add to the tin, we didn't find anything quite right so the search continues - it doesn't fit any of the babies I know at the moment (seeing as how they are all currently bumps) so there's no rush.

Time being such a valuable commodity it has to be one of the great pleasures to spend time with people that you love without feeling that you have to dash off and do something - so we had a very leisurely lunch and toddled up the hill to the castle for a view:































It really is quite a drop off either side and so nice to see it without scaffolding bleachers like last time.


















Having found one castle it seemed only right to make it the theme for the day, so we found another one:































And acted in a manner entirely consistent with our ages and position in society:


















The observant among you will notice that I am dangling a bag that if you look very carefully contains the magic word that makes all knitters' hearts leap at the thought: "yarn"

And the bag does not lie - Ysolda mentioned on her blog that K1 yarns had opened up in Edinburgh so we went in search and this is truly not a shop to be missed - tucked just around the corner from the castle it's bright and spacious and has all sorts of wonderful nuggets of potential, some of which may have come home with me. (It was at this point that we gave up on even the pretence of doing any culture and went shopping)

K1 stock a huge range of overseas knitting magazines and crazy yarn like Habu stainless steel yarn (loved the colours, couldn't for the life of me work out what I would knit with it) and this:

Fyberspates Scrumptious Blue Faced Leicester and Silk - my SIL appreciates and wears her knitwear with pride (she also once bought me yarn for Christmas) so this is to be a hat for her - something cabley I think - let me know if you have any pattern suggestions - it's aran ish weight.
I also acquired a couple of balls of Noro Kureyon, having not really put up much resistance to the idea of a full size Lizard Ridge blanket to snuggle under. I took my existing Noro to Scotland as it's a nice quick knit-while-you-chat type project and I made three squares while I was away north, one in each of my trio and each vaguely connected in colour to the place.

This is the Edinburgh square:

Green for all the grass, grey for the buildings and a flash of purple for all the thistle-shaped tartan tat.

In our next installment - we go to a place where it rains at least every 11 minutes.

Scalpel please

It turns out that Socktopus package was really good. So good in fact that the universe decreed that there should be a bit more balance back the other way.

Last night I finished the second sleeve on the Crocus cardigan. It looked like this:


Anyone see the problem yet?

How about now...


Yes, it is the truth universally acknowledged that whenyou have a bag full of cotton 4ply scraps all in mid to dark red you will inevitable put the wrong red in your sleeve and fail to notice all the time you finish the sleeve (including several re-dos) and finish the bottom of the cardigan and finish most of the second sleeve.

Now I like knitting this cardigan but not perhaps enough to want to reknit that particular bit again (as I said, many redos to decide on the cuff) so you know what's coming (please sit down if you are of a nervous disposition - this involves both scissors and kitchener)

Step 1: this is how the beautifully knitted but incorrectly coloured sleeve looked.

Step 2: at the colour change (the row of moss stitch) I snipped a maroon thread and unravelled back.

Then as even I realise that it is not clever to attempt terribly technical things after midnight I popped both ends onto DPNs and headed for the wooden hills to an easterly county.

This morning, Step 3, it looked like this:


Slightly drafty around the elbow for the small child wearing it and possibly painful if you got your DNS muddled. So I reknit the dark red stripe and the colour change into the blue.

Step 4: I kitchenered all the way around the elbow (on a decrease row as well - I need my head seeing to!)

Step 5: Back where we started!

And now it all matches.

I think the neckband is going to be red rib (possibly going into orange if I run out of red) and the current choices for the button bands are either intarsia rib (following each colour out into the rib) with a button hole in each segment and a different coloured button for each, or possibly corrugated ribbing (maybe in the two blue colours). In the end it will probably come down to how much yarn is left over but I do like the idea of contrasting buttons - only time will tell.

Decisions decisions - please help

The Baby not-Tulip-but-Crocus sweater has been missing from the blog for a while (mainly while I knit other things that will fit babies this year rather then when they can speak) but I've been plugging away on it in spare moments, pretty much picking out the next colour stripe according to mood.

Sunday afternoon it looked like this:

And after it got dark I finished off the bottom by completing the blue stripe and then adding more 1x1 rib in bright red. All I have to knit now is the sleeve (pretty straightforward, just copy the other one) and do something about the neck and front bands. The original inspiration has a few rows of moss stitch and then i-cord ties but I think that moss stitch bands would look odd given the rib on the cuffs, and I subbed the rib for the moss stitch because it was too bulky and rather rough to the touch in 4ply cotton.

So here is my question for you - so I do a ribbed neckline and ordinary cardigan button bands, ribbing and then the i-cord ties, or something totally new and original (lots of i-cord ties!). I think that size wise I'm looking at 18 months to 2 years so I worry that i-cord ties are too easily fiddled with. Let me know what you think.

Meanwhile in the "knitting for mothers" category the Monkeys are coming along nicely for the MIL and I've started swatching for the Quarterpint Cardigan. All this swatching and cardigan construction is bringing out the latent engineer in my husband - he has declared that "we" need a stitch dictionary so that he can check that I'm making the nicest possibly cardigan for Mum. I may be wielding the needles but structural decisions apparently need joint input.

A cure for the winter blues

I should hasten to add that today has been yet another peerless crisp clear blue winter's day - the sun has shone, the laundry has dried, the daffodils outside the front door still threaten to bloom through the frost, I felt sufficiently joyful to wash the kitchen floor etc etc. I have had sufficient sunlight and green things exposure that I cannot claim the blues as a need to hibernate in a corner with my knitting, fiercly waiting for better weather.

However, if you are still surrounded by grey clouds, deep damp chill and, dare I add it, SNOW, well first of all please send some of the snow to me. Please carefully parcelwrap the snow - after all I do live in England and therefore I know what rain looks like - and send it to:

The I-wanted-to-be-a-polar-but-now-I'm-just-grisly Bear
Wannabe-in-an-Igloo House
The least snowy village in Warwickshire
Warwickshire
UK

All damp offerings gratefully received.

Getting back to the point - I may just have the thing to brighten up your winter days - imagine yourself a little bit of Jazz, a little bit of dancing, a carnival even; maybe a Jitterbug?



That is side 1 of the start of H's socks and this is side 2:

They're toe-up (obviously!) and I'm going to put in a short row heel at the appropriate point so when I get there H will choose which side he wants on the top of his foot. At the moment that's the side with the blue and pink strip but as all the colours are doing a slow spiral around the foot at the moment we'll just have to wait and see.

It's funny that neither of my other pairs of Jitterbug socks have spiralled but I have smaller feet. It seems that a Mardi Gras spiral starts at 68sts with loosish gauge!

Of course had I started making them the Tuesday before last it would all be terribly appropriate but you can't win them all!

Although my deep and unrelenting passion for green knitwear remains - well, deep and unrelenting, it appears that the rainbow is creeping into a few other little bits and bobs.

This is part of what I can only describe as an interpretive dance of a relatively well known pattern; my version being made out of remains of Rowan cotton glace and 4ply cotton found in the stash. I was aiming for large baby sized as a possibly gift for the early April baby with the idea that it would fit over the summer but I think I'm verging on substantial toddler.

All I know is that:

1, babies grow;
2, one day this will fit a child;
3, that state of affairs will admittedly last only for about 30 mins before he or she grows out of it;
4, the yarn came from the stash and is mostly remainders of my Smoulder cardigan in a different order. This means that by extrapolation Kaffe Fasset chose the colours!
5, I'm enjoying making it - and that's really all that matters