The commonality of Knitters' New Year's Resolutions

Each January the knitting blogs and tweets are full of woolly New Year's resolutions, top of the lists, To Complete All Those Unfinished Objects. And coming in at a very close second place, Knit From Stash.   I am no different.  In September last year I took this beautiful Juno Fibre Arts, Buffy in Grassland on holiday with me.

Juno among the pelagoniums

After the tricky task of winding a skein into a ball without swift or wool winder (yes I did have JTH but he hates holding skeins, I always get exasperated and its much better if I tackle it alone) I knitted a large swatch incorporating all the stitches in the pattern

swatch in the sun under the plumbago

I am making the Princess Twinset Cardigan from Susan Crawford's book Coronation Knits.  Although the yarn the pattern calls for is 4 ply and so is the Juno no two makes of yarn are the same. You know I am not a very good swatcher (if truth be told I hate it and avoid when ever I can) but I do swatch when I am diverging from the pattern instructions, and that includes testing any pattern stitches.  

The project was an all round stash buster, I bought the yarn at a Unravel at the Farnham Maltings earlier in the year (the next Unravel is 21-13 Feb) and the pattern book while on a knitting day out with friends in Oxford in the summer.

While we were away in September I cast on.

first button hole at 6 rows in

Anyone who is a regular reader will know that I avoid sewing up as much as I can by one piece knitting wherever possible.   In this case I cast on the fronts and back in one piece knitting up to the armholes then dividing and knitting the three pieces separately.  The front bands are knitted in the twisted stitch pattern (I love the way the button holes sit neatly in the centre of the twists).  The twisted pattern features on the shoulders, cuffs and in a large panel on the back

cabled bar code

I reached the underarm while still on holiday and then stopped...  Family stuff and Christmas knitting intervened so it was put away in The Knitting Black Hole, under a table that sits beside our sofa.

And so it became no1 on my list of UFOs to finish in 2014.  Despite the little diversion into vintage knitting patterns (and that's not over yet) I am making good progress.  I am very grateful for the warning in the instructions for the fronts that the knitter should read to the end of the instructions before embarking on the front shaping.  

It seemed confusing at first, "cast off this and that at the armhole  at the same time the other on the front edge then all change to a different rate of decreasing".  Lots of changes and lots of row counting.  Then I hit on the idea of marking the place at which the decreases end - so all I had to do was forge ahead decreasing both ends of the row on the fronts until I hit the markers.  That way I could also check the stitch count in advance.  Is there nothing worse than  getting to the end of the decreases (so you think!) and have the wrong number of stitches.

PM to mark end of decs

 I finished the back and fronts at knitting group last night

the body all done

And cast on the sleeves.  This is rather more tricky as continuing my non-seaming technique I am knitting both sleeves at the same time, much in the way you would for top down two at a time socks.  

two at a time tangled sleeves

It's a bit tangled at the moment but it should straighten out as the knitting lengthens.  

Now I know I usually only blog about items I have finished (in fact I apologise if I give the impression of being 'more knitterly than thou' ) and this is far from finished but given that I can knit a pair of socks in two weeks and sleeves are roughly similar in work involved (take away heel turning and add length and width)  I am hoping to have the cardi done by the end of January, fingers crossed.

xx

C

PS do you have a knitting black hole (or several)?  If you do please do tell in the comments

juno

Vintage explorations

At the weekend a post on my local knitting group's Ravelry forum reminded me about the Southampton University Vintage Knitting Pattern library.  I then spent several happy hours reading the patterns, including entire books of knitting talk, all on free access.  Then I had a little light bulb moment -  that to truly appreciate the patterns I should knit one up.

I have made a mitten (just one for now but the second is on its way)

I have a large collection of 3 and 4ply pure wool yarn in loads of colours, I chose shades which are closest to the ones suggested in the pattern, which states black, white and magenta (I have black, beige and scarlet)

.

My yarn is about 50 years old and although the pattern book was published in 1876 it is broadly similar to the yarn a lady would have bought at her local shop to make herself a pair of warm mittens.  Note these were made for wearing indoors, houses were very chilly in those days!

The patterns of this era are written without the standard terminology we are used today.  The style is more narrative, in this pattern increases are called 'raises' and purl 'seam'. But by reading the pattern straight through and, where instructed, referring back to details in other patterns it is easy to follow and my first mitten, cast on on Sunday afternoon was cast off this morning

stripes in K2P2 rib

a neat thumb gusset worked exactly according to the pattern

TA-DAA!

Now, all this - lovely pattern resource, a yarn stash of 1950s 3 ply and breaking vintage knitting code led to an idea.... A knit-a-long! (with a difference)

Here is what I suggest

1. Choose any of the patterns on the Southampton website (including the mittens here)

2. Knit in your own yarn (anything suitable) post as a project on ravelry with the tag chopkinsvintageKAL  or upload to my flickr group

And that's all there is to it!  Except...  with the permission of those who join in and post photographs I would like to let the department at the university know about the project.  I may also have the opportunity to display some of the knitted articles (or photographs) at a local knitting event later in the year.  I can't say any more about this at the moment so you will just have to keep an eye on the blog for more information on that.  But if you join in and live in the UK perhaps you might consider whether you might lend me your FOs to put on show.

Although I have only made one mitten so far, I fully intend to knit the other and other items from the pattern library, some stockings perhaps, or a hat.  I have plenty of fine yarn in other colours - see here!

I look forward to hearing from you!

xx

c

PS (following Sally's comment)  There is no time limit if you just want to join in the fun, knit up one of the patterns and tag it on Ravelry or upload to flickr.  But if you would like to lend your knitting to me (or have some photographs of your work included in)  the display I am hoping to set up as part of the Big Knit project in our town's Summer festival I will need to know by mid May.  More details about the display once I have liaised with both the Art school and our festival committee.   

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas everyone and thank you so much for reading my blog over the year (currently at the rate of 1,500 hits a month!).  If you read my last post you will realise why it's been a bit quiet on the blogging front here at chopkinsknits for the past couple of months.  However, despite a big chunk of sadness we have been working hard to decorate the house, wrap presents and bake Christmas goodies and so I think we are now ready

AND, still I had time for some jolly Christmas knitting.  Most of it is wrapped up under the tree but I can tell you about one very frivolous item.  At the beginning of November DD2 casually asked if I could knit her a Christmas sweater for 'wear a novelty jumper to school day' at the end of term.  I should say DD2 is not a student she is an art teacher.  So it goes without saying that she needed something, while not tasteful certainly not even on the cheeky side of rude but it needed to make a splash.  

Well my friend Alli suggested something based on a Primark sweater and involving lots of felt, pompoms, glitter and a glue gun.  But I just couldn't bring myself NOT to knit.  So with little delay I found this pattern on ravelry that uses super chunky Drops Eskimo.

so easy to order on-line

I added a few more decorations

reindeers around the yoke

red noses added later

caption as requested by DD2

and a little extra sparkle added on the day

By all accounts the sweater was well received (and the batteries in the lights lasted all day!).

Now I'm off for mince pies with a glass of good wine and wish you all...

A very Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year.

xx

c

Reflections

This is a first for me, a blog that is mainly words with a single photograph I did not take.  Although November was a 'month and a half'  I managed the odd bit of writing and quite a lot of knitting much of it beside my father's hospital bed.   Tomorrow is his funeral.

After 88 years and six weeks he decided that it was time to leave.  In some ways it felt right but in another I wish he had shared his intention with me, then I would not have spent most of his last weeks encouraging him to eat, drink and generally take an interest in life.  If I say this was a waste of time I don't mean that the time I spent with him in his last few weeks was time wasted but I could have talked about something else.  We could have spoken about his life, the things we shared in common and how, despite the ups and downs of our relationship (and there were plenty of those) we could at the end confirm that we parted friends.

Born in 1925 to parents who were true Victorians,  his happy prosperous childhood ended abruptly one winter's evening in 1941.  His father, who had survived the whole of the first world war serving in the army on the Somme, was killed in what was probably the only air raid on a civilian area of Newcastle Upon Tyne.  The end of his street was hit by a stray bomb as he stood talking to a friend, the friend survived.  Instead of remaining at school and moving on to university to read engineering my father, the elder son in a family of two girls and two boys, left school to work in a reserved occupation. His choice an alternative to active service to save his mother suffering further bereavement.

As children we were amused by his stories of life working on producing brittle metals suitable for bomb casings and the distinctly unsafe 'testing' (basically finding an open piece of land south of the river Tyne and blowing things up).  And his life as the youngest soldier in the Home guard ('Dad were you like Pike??')

He moved South in the early 1950s and met and married our mother.  The rest is our shared history.  He loved walking and exploring the Lake District as well as his beloved Northumberland.  On foot of course and, it seemed to me, in the rain.  A naturally cautious man I remember many rows as I developed a sense of adventure.  I suspect he did not sleep for three weeks when aged 19 I travelled around Europe alone on one of the first Inter-Rail tickets.  We had lots of the other sort of argument too, the intellectually stimulating sort, on politics and the economy,  we shared a social democratic view point but could still find a line of argument

He was always said to be 'not good' with children but my elder daughter said the other day how she remembered he was funny, larking about with them when they were little.  He did like the company of women and though faithfully married to my mother for 58 years, the last two caring for her as she succumbed to Altzheimers, he certainly could flirt!  

Why am I saying all this, to you, readers of my knitting meanderings?  We are friends in a shared bond of loving all things woolly but I don't usually share personal stuff like this.  Well it's because,  life with elderly parents in their last years is something a lot of us have in common and I have been helped by reading other's blogs; so perhaps some readers will share common ground with me.

Despite 87 good years the last one was not good and  as much as he found it hard, so did we his family.  Despite reassurance from his doctor and family he became obsessed with his health which he was convinced was failing.  Until last year he had played badminton twice a week and on other days walked briskly around his village, 'to keep fit'.  As he did less and less he could not accept that finally his age was catching up with him, constantly seeking some miracle cure to restore him to his former level of fitness.  It was hard to be sympathetic when, despite his age he was still driving his car (quite safely)  doing all his own shopping and cooking, refusing our offers of internet shopping, attending discussion groups and many social occasions.  It was hard not to feel irritated when our weekly visits and regular phone calls were considered not enough and to hear constant complaint about feeling lonely (with local friends and activities we often thought he had a busier life than we had).  

And when he was finally truly ill it was hard to watch him just turn his face to the wall, refusing to eat, drink or even to get out of bed till eventually he succumbed to pneumonia.  He continued to welcome friends to his hospital bedside, someone visited every day, with a big smile and a huge effort to make conversation, but his reaction to the almost daily visits from my brother or I was met with little effort to talk or listen.  I loaded some of his favourite music (Vaughan Williams) on my i-Pod and plugged him in, talked a little or just sat, but I don't know if it  pleased him.

At the last we were with him, my brother and I, our spouses too, and I hope that gave him some comfort.  We felt sad, we cried a little but we also felt relieved that a life that had become intolerable had come to a close.  Inevitably I also felt guilty, could I have been more of a comfort, should I not have encouraged him so much to 'make an effort'?  I don't know but I think he did make his own choices to the end and 87 good years out of 88 is not a bad tally

A life well lived (mostly) RIP

My father aged three and a half in 1929

xx

C

The Steek Challenge

Now I know I made a promise on twitter that I would chat a little on buttons this week but I haven't got there quite yet.  My eternal problem is I get diverted and last week a bunch of us at knitting group  agreed to try steeking, we would knit something suitable, bring it (and our scissors) to Monday knitting group and plunge in with the scissors all together.

Here we are, on Monday night

Scissors poised

And so we went...

Cut

Cut

Cutting

The idea began with Cathie finding a suitable pattern (on Ravelry of course) Steek this coffee cozy  Now, if I had paid proper notice of the instructions, instead of rushing off on a frolic of my own, I might have avoided problems later on.  But I got so involved in the looks of the thing I forgot to check up on the technicalities.   I decided to make a cosy for my cafetierre rather than a mug-hug and last week just happened across this lovely mitten pattern by Mary Scott Huff - perfect!   All went well at first, I charted the design

And got knitting

Found a vase suitable for blocking

And then it came to the stage of reinforcing the steek (that's where you cut).  The trick is to crochet two rows of reinforcement catching in two stitch halves where there should be knitted parallel vertical lines, one of each colour.  Just like Claire has here (the original pattern has detailed instructions)

That way you will have secured one stitch of each colour firmly to the other.   I realised I had failed to do this but, fingers crossed, all seemed well as I cut.  Then, disaster, as I put extra strain on the stitches, picking up the stitches to knit the overlapping opening, one or two of the grey stitches pulled out

All a bit messy

But with a little bit of sleight of hand and some firm back stitching along the line of stitch pick ups it is holding steady now.

inside lined with felt to add extra insulation

some fancy buttons and...

All done

xxx

C

PS after the nerves some smiley faces

Growing Pains

Before I embarked on the Right as Rainbow KAL I measured the intended wearer very carefully.  Chest, back neck length and arms.  When it was finished I proudly announced to The Little Model's mother that THIS TIME I hoped the knitted object would not be too small, having measured her so carefully.  To which TLM's mother replied 'But she has grown an inch while you have been away'.  !!!!! You will recall that JTH and I spent the whole of September on a beautiful Greek Island where the knitting (and blogging) took place, alas all that time back in the UK someone was growing very fast.

When TLM tried on the sweater the body was fine, but the sleeves?!  They were two inches too short and lengthening was not going to be a simple task.  The sleeves were knitted from the bottom up and I had no more of the Plum coloured yarn.

nothing but a few unravellings

But it's all right now because I used a cunning old trick to add  some extra stripes.

Slightly Grumpy  Little Model

Happier when encouraged to Be Silly

Perhaps those who remember the Make-Do-And-Mend war years or the 1950s when our parents could not kick the habit also remember how our mothers would lengthen our hand knitted sweaters, by 'pulling a thread'.  Here is how I did it (using some spare yarn in Pumpkin as the deep plum was too dark to show well in photographs)

Thread a life line in and out of the first row of stocking stitch
(I used strong linen thread)

Snip through a single purl bar on the last row of K2P2 rib

carefully pull out the yarn from the last rib row

the rib will fall away from the stocking stitch.
The stitches on the upper part will
be captured by the life line

pick up the stitches on the stocking stitch section,
use a finer needle if that is easier

Knit up the extra inches (I kept to the same pattern as the yoke)

Once the extra length is done re knit the rib

Finally, I have learned a new techy skill.  While I was away knitting and enjoying the Greek Island I made a slide show of my knitting and island pictures but it was not till this week I finally worked out how to incorporate it into a blog post!

I hope you enjoy it

xx

c

Sockage

Although I am beavering away at Secret Knitting Projects, I do have a few FOs to show you and this FO comes with an exciting announcement for future sock accumulation!

I have already mentioned (I know... quite a few times) The Small and the weekend knitting retreat that I helped organise.  In case you didn't see my post over on the blog, or don't want to click on the link here, I would just like to say two words - GOODY BAGS.  No knitting event would be complete without a bag of little somethings and here are some of the contents of the goody bags we gave to our guests at the Small Wool Gathering

For a proper explanation of all the contents I refer you to The Small blog, today I am going to chat about just the socks.  Well of course the socks did not come ready knitted in our bags - For what would be the use of that for knitters?  There is a huge amount of pleasure in wearing hand-made socks but equal amounts in the making - is that not so?

My tiny problem was that we handed out the bags with the skeins of beautiful merino/nylon sock yarn (Twist by indie dyer Linda of Kettle Yarns) about 5 minutes before the sock class (where we learned a new technique called Auto-Pilot Sock from Amy).  So... I barely had time to rush to the wool winder before casting on and knitting-like-the-wind and forgetting to take any photographs.

In no time I had finished the first sock (while a passenger in the car driving to a family party)

And! Lo! there was another opportunity to photograph yarn in the ball and work in progress but did I take it?  No, too busy clickety clacking (on my new carbon fibre DPNs, that may have had something to do with it, I love using new kit)

Consequently I can only show you the FOs

Amy's clever sock technique results in a very attractive three legged set of increases and decreases that sits over the ankle bone

I spent a little time today draping the socks over various pretty locations, eventually settling on using my jewellery box which is a 19th C work basket.

After I posted the picture of finished socks on The Small blog Linda and I had a bit of a chat.  Lots of encouragement took place, her yarn being so lovely to knit with and she being so kind about my socks and the pretty lace pattern I chose for the legs.  The upshot of this little mutual admiration society meeting was that early in the new year I am going to lead a Knit-A-Long on sock making using some of Linda's yarn.  I'm very excited about this and have already bought more Twist from Linda

Bright colours to banish winter blues of you not think?  I will be posting more details of the sock KAL early in January here on the blog (and in the Kettle yarn Ravelry forum) but briefly we plan a KAL for absolute sock virgins.  We will knit a tiny 'training sock' first to practice the basic technique then make a pair of grown up socks, perfect for keeping the winter chill at bay.

We will be knitting socks in one of two traditional ways, toe up or top down.  I will not be referring to Amy's new innovative Auto-Pilot sock.  This is not because I do not favour Amy's technique but because Auto-Pilot is new and Amy's idea.  Although ownership of knitting patterns and techniques is a slightly grey area (occasionally something new hits the knitting world that is more unvented rather than invented) I have no intention of even borrowing a technique from Amy who is currently teaching it at knitting events and yarn shops around N America and the UK

So please watch this space for some socking for beginners

xx

C

Ps I thought you might like to see a close up of the inlay on the top of my lovely box.  The inscription on the small sliver of mother-of-pearl is To Isabella 1851