Owlet Jumper

I have been waiting to publish this post but the recipients mummy reads this blog and I wanted it to be a surprise.

I've travelled to Finland again this week with work and I am of course staying with my lovely and generous best friend from University, who's son is my one and only best godson in the whole universe - the jumper is for him, the first in this winters wardrobe from me.

The pattern is almost unbearably cute and I love it, the whole sweater was knit in one weekend, owlet by Kate Davies. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran in the colour mango, lovely and soft to work with, I hope it will keep nicely and not pill like other DB yarns - the twist seems fairly tight.

I made a few tweaks to the pattern as I progressed but that was personal preference and not any problem with the pattern.

Sewing on the buttons for eyes was the only annoying bit - 32 eyes since you asked! The buttons are from the Cloth House in Soho - they have a pretty good selection of trims and buttons as well as lovely fabric.

If I were to knit this again I would change the decreases on the arms as a personal preference I am less fond of the sharp decrease at the end of the sleeve and prefer gradual decreases down the whole length.

The green opalescence seems to glow with the yellow back ground. MMmmmm pretty! It's quite interesting how very slight variations in the knit and the way the eyes are sewn give the owls different facial expressions, third full owl from the left is the most intelligent looking whilst his two next door neighbors have wider set eyes and appear more gormless, fifth from the lefts eyes are lower giving him a more bookish appearance, athropomorphism in knitted owls.

Pattern: Owlet by Kate Davies

Size: Largest of the baby sizes

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran in Mango 5 balls

Needles: 4.5mm, 6mm and 6.5mm

Birthday socks - part 2

Well it has taken a while to publish this post! I knit these socks for my mothers birthday in May - you've already seen the socks for Grannies birthday and hers is the day after Mums.

These are the ever fabulous Monkey socks by Cookie A and I feel like the last knitter in the world to actually make these. The yarn was intended for the lovely Over the Garden Wall socks from the Socktopus club and came as part of the club kit, I will be knitting these socks but the yarn was perfect for Mum and I knew she would not wear something with the lacey toes like the Over the Garden Wall socks. So I bought another skein of the same yarn and used the first to knit these.

The yarn was as predicted absolutely delicious, from my latest favourite dyer Artists Palette Yarns her colours are very clever and subtle and the yarns are gorgeous.

The pooling in this picture looks really obvious but in person it is more muted. These were a super quick knit only a couple of days for each sock and not spending that long per day knitting, it must be the easily memorised pattern. I want a pair of these for myself, I tried these on and need to add an extra repeat to the foot pattern to fit my slightly bigger tootsies.

Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A

Yarn: Sweet Feet from the Artists Palette colour way Socktopus March 2009 club

Needles: Size 2.25mm Lantern Moon sock sticks in ebony wood.

A dunga-dunga-dunga rees

I made these on a clapped out sewing machine - don't look too closely at the seams. They are being proudly modeled by my godson and seriously brightening up Helsinki, even though it is nearly mid-summer and the sun is actually shinning there! His mummy tells me that he gets stares on the tram and in the park when wearing them.

A clothkits kit again - should have been predictable that a '70's classic would excite me. They were really easy apart from the sewing machine issue and the straps. The strap difficulties came because I thought I knew better and didn't follow the pattern, this would have put a couple of lines of stitches down the middle of the strap all the way through which would have made them less pretty. I decided to sew a tube and then turn them the right way round - the material is quite stiff and hard wearing making my 'smart idea' a mistake, it took 4 hours to turn them back around while I broke all my nails, stuck myself a dozen or more times with the knitting needle I used to help me (ouch!) and threw them accross the room in annoyance. If they hadn't been for this little bod I would have given up, but he looks so cute I am glad I did it.

Cookie news flash

I mentioned before that I went on a Cookie A workshop. Well I only took pictures of famous socks (monkey, pomatomus) and me touching them. Thankfully Alice had the brains to take pictures and look - I'm sitting next to Cookie at lunch. In case you're wondering, I did not behave like a starstruck Muppet (unlike accidentally stalking John Torrode or doing impressions of a koi carp at Nigel Slater) and we had an interesting conversation about having a colourway named after you (Cookie - cookie next door - STR, sadly discontinued) and having a sock named after you (Me - Bex - in Cookies new book - you all know that is a lie and it was just coincidence)

Birthday socks - part 1

I am off to Denmark for my Mother and Mormors (Grandmothers) birthdays, I thought I would knit both of them pairs of socks as part of their presents.

First of all the socks for Mormor:

I picked a Cookie A pattern - I went to a class taught by her a few weeks ago, it was really inspirational and I learnt a great deal. Anyway the pattern is Trystero, beautiful, simple to knit and fits really well - I love the way the cables flow.

The yarn is Angel from the Natural Dye Studio, I think the colour was called cornflower and if it wasn't it should be, it almost glows with a etherial pale blue light, the alpaca and cashmere gives a beautiful halo, very soft and yummy. The yarn is quite thin and I perhaps should have used 2mm needles rather than the 2.25mm that I did use but I really don't like 2mm needles they make everything seem to take so much longer - it could be psychological though. The fabric feels quite delicate so I don't know how well it will stand up to hard wearing, these are intended as bed socks which means light wearing which shouldn't be a problem.

The verdict is that I want a pair of these socks for myself and I would definitely use the yarn again but not for socks - maybe a shawl.

Not a very new year.

Guiltless blogging - I will not feel bad about the infrequent blogging, I do this for enjoyment not to make a living!

Anyway - lots of knitting and spinning not so much to show for it, I seem to give things away before I photograph it.

I finally sewed my skirt from clothkits:

Lovely to wear but the colours are impossible to photograph (well by me anyway!), very easy and quick to make. Only problem was getting the seam at the bottom to be even when wearing it, this is because my front and back are not the same shape, the back looks shorter if you go by the printed pictures and pattern as a guide. If you do it by measuring from the ground up the space between the scallop print edge and the hem is faaarrrr more at the back - the difference will be less if you have a smaller bottom I suspect. Love the lining they supplied (Liberty print) but it really doesn't work with the colour and print of the skirt - thankfully it is only me that knows this when I am wearing it.

All in all a quick and easy project, I already have another two kits in the cupboard to make and requests from a couple of people to make others. Actually what I really want to do is to make the little birds cardigan to go with mine.

A little beauty and brightness

Life at the moment is getting harder for most of us and I could moan about the state of the ecconomy and the possibility of redundancy blah blah blah, but I won't.

I like to try and see little joyful moments in day to day life, I feel like a much richer and happier person for it.

• A few from current ones:
  The weather here has been simpley vile - cold rain, yet right now it is really sunny and I have the windows open for some fresh air.
  


• Weekend before last my little godson got his mother and I up early on a Saturday, I'm not a morning person and weekend mornings are for sleeping in. Getting up early did mean that we got to our favourite resturant when it opened for breakfast, we didn't have to queue for a table and our breakfasts were served quickly and cooked perfectly. We also had a trip to Loop while we were in Islington.



love the sky blue plate, the eg really does look like the sun against it

• Yesterday I worked late and on the way home I stopped by Buffy's beads in Kingly court. It was quiet and I very unusually had the shop to myself I ended up buying the most beautiful shell leaves and glass hearts that I will make into stitch markers for knitting friends and myself.

• Monday morning I missed my breakfast (it's a struggle to get out of bed at the moment) and went to a really long meeting so I didn't get any lunch. At 3 o'clock I felt very hungry, so I went round to the closest coffee shop to my office and had a very naughty brownie and a delicious mint tea - yum!
  
  

• I'm also spotting a trend for beauty in blogs so here are my top ten beautiful blogs (please point me in the direction of your top ten as well) I tried not to be too obvious about it as most people know about Brooklyntweed and the Yarnharlot and I often talk about others.

Elliphantom Knits

Inside A Black Apple

Ysolda

Chocolate and Zucchini

Jatta Soheltaa

HELLOmynameisHeather

Mustaa villa (black wool)

Dances with wool

Sixoneseven

Fig and Plum

And although it makes eleven I can't leave out Jane Brocket's new-ish blog - her images always make me smile.