Picking up where I left off

Do you get more motivated to knit after you finish a certain project?

I always do. I think it's the feeling of accomplishment that pushes me towards the finish line on projects which are taking longer.

Last week, after I finished my cosy red cowl, I picked up where I left off on my Aidez cardigan. This is an absolutely beautiful cardigan, and I'm knitting it with really nice wool. It's Cascade Eco + in a gorgeous shade of green with flecks of blue and yellow, and I love how it looks so far.

But it's cabled, and cables take me so long to knit and it felt like my progress was very slow, so I took a break. I knit the back and front panels already, so all that's left to knit is the two sleeves, which I cast on yesterday morning.

I'm knitting them in the round so that I'll have less seaming to do at the end, and so far I've knit about 14 inches of the first sleeve. It's knitting up much faster than I thought it would. Maybe by this time next week I'll have a whole new cardigan!

Here's a picture of my progress:

As for the cowl, I've worn it every day since I finished it, and it feels like it gets softer the more I wear it! It's so snuggly and warm, and I've got loads of compliments on it. I haven't enlisted anyone to take a picture of me wearing it yet because I keep forgetting to bring my camera to college, but I'm hoping to do that some time soon.

Finito

I've surprised myself!

Writing about my cowl seems to have given me the motivation I needed to finish it. I think I may have done more in the past 24 hours than I had done all week!

So here is a quick picture. My room is dark so I've tried to brighten it up a little. Hopefully I'll get some better ones in the morning.

What a great end to the weekend :)

Possibly my favourite knit yet!

It's been such a long time since I've had a minute to sit down and write a blog post! I had deadline after deadline this term in college, and this weekend is the first chance I'm getting to catch my breath.

Not only have I been too busy to make time for my blog, I haven't even had much time for knitting. I think I might have to train myself to knit while reading to help me get through the next few months of college work!

The worst part might just be that I didn't get to show you my birthday wool! I haven't photographed it all, so I will get round to that and show it off over the next few posts.

The first, and most exciting thing I'll show you is my Mirasol Tuhu. It is a DK weight yarn in a llama, merino and angora blend, and I think it might just be the softest wool I've ever felt! It makes it all the sweeter that I got it at 50% off with free shipping. I bought it in the Cranberry colourway, and my, my, it's gorgeous!

There has been some pretty chilly weather here in Ireland of late, so I knew I wanted some sort of soft, cosy cowl to keep me warm. I loved this one from Purl Soho, but I was worried it might be so simple I'd find it boring. How wrong I was. I love simple! Simple means I can knit in the dark and it still feels like no work at all.

I also thought that simple would mean it'd knit up in about two minutes, but I don't get a chance to knit every day so the cowl is taking its time. Here it is a few days ago:

If it looks as lovely as Purl Soho's when it's finished, this cowl has the potential to be my favourite project yet. So soft, so comfy, so cosy and so simple, I don't think I could ask for anything more!

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!