I've run out of knitting!

Well not really, but my ball of wool for my cardigan is very nearly gone so this is what I'm doing for the evening:

(Yes, I've put an Instagram-type effect on the photo because I took it with my laptop's low-quality in-built webcam and it wouldn't be very nice otherwise.)

I'm winding wool by hand. It is a boring, monotonous job, but I have a few knitting podcasts at the ready to keep me company. And I might need a few, because this is no average-sized ball of wool. It's a whole 250g of Cascade Eco +. ("Less ends to weave in at the end," I keep reminding myself.)

I've given up on centre-pull balls of wool. They keep falling apart at the end, and I'm rarely in the mood to spend my knitting time untangling knots.

On the bright side, wearing the wool like this has made me realise it'd be oh so warm and pretty and comfy knitted into a squishy green cowl. And I might even have enough left over after I finish my Aidez cardigan. We shall see...

Wool-free crafting

I read a blog post about DIY satsuma candles earlier this year and I love making them. I think they're the easiest DIY project I have ever seen! I make them every time I find easy-to-peel oranges, and decided that this time I should take pictures.

I think they're so clever and look really pretty as well. The original blog post with instructions can be found here.

Yummy Self-Patterning Socks

I have a new Work-in Progress I'm very excited about!

I've wanted some self-striping or self-patterning sock wool since I first saw it in Germany a few months after I started knitting. I didn't pick some up then because for some silly reason I thought I didn't need more sock yarn, at least not until I knitted a successful pair of socks.

Then I came home, and suddenly realised what a mistake it was that I didn't bring home a suitcase full of it. Self-patterning sock wool costs about €6 ($7.76 or £4.84) in Germany, and comes in a huge range of colours, even in the tiniest of wool shops. In Ireland however, I struggled to find a shop which stocks it, and of the two I've found, both of them had only two balls of a single colourway. Oh, and it costs €11 here ($14.22/£8.87).

So I've been putting off buying it for a while. Instead, I just had a look around the only LYS in the city. The shop is called This is Knit, and it's a very pretty shop in a gorgeous little shopping centre. It's run by a very friendly mother-daughter team, which adds to its charm. I feel bad going in when I know I can't afford anything there, so I haven't been very often.

And then one of my Knit-Pro (same as KnitPicks for you Americans) needles broke. This is Knit is the only shop I know of which stocks them so, lucky for me, I could get it replaced without any huge effort on my part. And the lady there was so helpful. When she realised I would be without a needle until the order arrived, she let me borrow one of her own.

I picked up my new needle this week. I felt I should buy something small to show them my gratitude so I picked up a ball of Opal Fairies and Elves in a navy and blue colourway. I was so excited to get started on a pair of quick-to-knit, plain stockinette socks that the next day I went to buy some circular needles. (All of mine already have a WIP on them, oops!) I went to two shops near my house, the type that sells mostly acrylic yarn, but neither of them sold circs smaller than 3.75mm! 

I didn't make it to This is Knit to see if they had them (I'm sure they do); instead I went home and put a pair of socks in time out to free up the needles. And now I have the beginnings of what are hopefully going to be a speedy pair of socks:

I really love the wool, I love how the colours change, and I love the prospect of these socks lasting forever because they're made with Opal yarn. And I've come to the conclusion that sometimes I will be so much happier paying a bit more for wool that I'm excited about knitting with.

This whole experience has taught me that sock wool and sock-sized circular needles are extremely hard to come by in Ireland, even in the capital city. Why is it that Irish people don't like to knit socks? My mum has told me of her stressful experiences as a little girl being taught how to knit in primary school, when she struggled to learn how to turn the heel. I'm glad I was never forced to knit in school, and that I only learned when I really wanted to. Maybe the entire nation had traumatic sock-knitting experiences back when knitting was a compulsory subject (for girls).

Or maybe Ireland is just slow to catch up with the advances in knitting. Circular needles and magic loop make sock knitting easier and more portable (at least compared to my own experience with DPNs), and we have a ton of information on the internet which makes sock-knitting less daunting. I'm knitting these socks using Knitty.com's Sock-Building Template, and the whole process is so straightforward. I hope Ireland catches on to a sock revolution some time soon, but in the meantime I'll probably have to make do with finding my sock supplies online.

Back in Action!

It's hard to believe my last blog post was a whole six months ago!

My blogging break started off when I came home from France and was spending time with my family and friends again, and it continued because I got into the habit of not taking pictures of my knitting. I do enjoy documenting what I've knit though, and I would hope to be able to look back at projects and remember everything I've given to friends. It's also very nice to be able to read what I liked and disliked about certain projects long after I've forgotten what it was like to knit them.

So a lot of this blog is for my own benefit, but I'll try my best to make it interesting for you other readers as well!

Here's a look at what's on the needles at the moment:

Red Herring by Cookie A

This is the second of a pair of socks which have been sitting in my knitting bag for a little too long now. The beige wool is from Aldi and the red wool is a hand-dyed. I attempted to knit a lacy sock in the red wool, but it didn't show off the lace pattern at all so I decided to add in the beige and see what happened.

Before:

 After:

I'm very happy with how the two colours go together, and of course Cookie A's pattern is really pretty. Unlike Cookie, I continued the herringbone pattern all the way down the foot of the sock. It takes a lot more time, but it will be worth it for the lovely socks at the end!

Quick and Pretty Headband:

Headbands are everywhere these days! They've got the benefit of keeping your ears and forehead warm without the disadvantage of messing up your hair like a hat might. For a knitter, it takes very little wool and very little time to whip one up, and the versions in the shops seem to be easy to copy. This project is for a friend who gave me two balls of this wool, I think it's time I gave it back to her in the form of a pretty headband.

 Aidez:

I have been eyeing this cardigan up for ages now, and I'm so glad I finally started it! It's taking me a while to get through it (I'm slow at cables), but I can see it's going to be gorgeous when it's finished! Hopefully I'll get it done before the end of the winter so it can keep me nice and toasty.

This colour is very difficult to capture, the above picture is the closest I could get. It's a deep emerald green with flecks of yellow and blue. I have no idea why it comes out so grey below!

That's all I'm working on at the moment. The few projects I have finished will be online soon. I'm looking forward to regularly updating and hopefully being a bit more productive in my knitting in future!

Woldwide Knit in Public Day

Worldwide Knit in Public day was on Saturday, and I was delighted to find out that there was a public knitting group organised in Strasbourg. I'm a bit shy about going to these things on my own, so when a friend asked if I wanted to meet up on Saturday I suggested we go to the park where the knitting was happening. She then said she had learned a few stitches over Christmas and had already knit a garter stitch scarf, but gave up soon after that. So I brought her a pair of needles and she got to work!

Because I'm shy, we decided to sit on a bench at first and watch the group to suss out if they all knew each other or if they were welcoming newbies as well. We were working up the courage to go over when a girl approached us and asked in English if we'd like to join. Somebody had heard my friend and I speaking English as they passed and the group got a girl who studies English to ask us to join. It was so nice how they went out of their way like that to include us.

So we sat down and chatted for a few hours. It makes such a difference to have company while you knit. I don't have friends who knit so I usually do it on my own in front of a knitting podcast or an episode of White Collar. I maybe should have brought something simpler than my colourwork socks: I got distracted from the pattern a lot, and ended up making more mistakes while chatting than I ever did on my own!

I was a great day out and the ladies from the Strasknitting group are so friendly! I'm disappointed I only joined them a few days before I leave for good, but I'm so glad I found out how nice it is to be part of a knitting group. I'll be much less shy to join one in Dublin!

I forgot to bring my camera, but I took a few photos with my phone:

As I said, I won't be able to join them at their next meeting as my time in Strasbourg is coming to an end. Today I will be packing, tonight my dad and brother arrive and tomorrow we'll set off through the Black Forest region (and Paris on the way home).

Ribbit!

Sometimes we have to frog a project we're currently working on. A lot of the time it's a very hard thing to do - when it's a project you can't wait to finish or have invested a lot of time into. Other times it's not so hard.


Today, for the first time ever, I was excited to frog a project. From the very start I was unsure of what I wanted to do with the yarn. It was my first variegated sock yarn and I couldn't decide on a way to show off the yarn and the pattern at the same time. 

I picked a lacy pattern and got to work, only to find that the colours were hidden by the pattern and the pattern was hidden by the colours! I could tell it wasn't going to work shortly after starting, so I took some pictures and decided to sleep on it before frogging.

I knew this pattern wasn't right for the yarn, but I had no idea which pattern would be. Little did I know my answer would come to me that night. In my dreams I was knitting colourwork socks! I could not believe it, my subconscious had helped me out of my knitting dilemma. Colourwork socks would be perfect! Why not pair the red yarn up with another colour and knit a pattern which will both show off the colours of the yarn and break up any pooling which might have occurred?


I got to work straight away and remembered a pattern I had been wanting to knit for a while. And so I present to you the very beginnings of my new favourite socks: Red Herring by Cookie A

The Harry Potter House Cup

In my last post I mentioned the Harry Potter House Cup on Ravelry, but the post was already so long I couldn't really go into detail about why I signed up, what I'm making or how it's going so far.


I can't remember how I found out about the House Cup, but I know it was right before sign-ups for this term began. Each term is three months long, and every student must turn in at least one finished item per month. As I'm spending the summer at home while most of my friends will be abroad, I figured I'd have plenty of free time to contribute to my team's efforts.


May was my exam month so I didn't have a lot of time for knitting. I did manage to finish a pair of socks just in time to submit them and I'm delighted with how they turned out.

I could only spend half an hour knitting here and there during exams, so the first sock took me three weeks to finish. After my exams I had one week left to knit an entire sock, and to my surprise, I managed to finish it just in time.

For the next two months, I imagine I'll have a lot more free time to knit, and I'd like to turn in more than just one project per month.