Vanilla

I am nothing if not consistent. After showing you my last two completed pairs of socks (stockinette), I now present to you.... a pair of stockinette socks.

My Mum gave me this yarn a while ago as a souvenir from a trip my parents took to Germany so I thought it would be nice to knit her a pair of socks from it. So I did. In about two days (a slight exaggeration but I timed myself when I knit the first sock and know that it took approximately 8hours of knitting from cast on to kitchener.) I didn't use a pattern, more a tried and tested recipe that I keep in my head at all times so a simple well fitting sock. I hope she like (and wears) them!

Pattern Notes: See ravelry for a rough sketch.
Yarn: Opal Hundertwasser Cotton 48% Cotton 39% New Wool 13% Polyamide (nylon). Knots a plenty. I'm now the proud owner of about four mini-balls of yarn from where the adjoining piece of yarn was tied on with no regard to colour sequence.
Needles: US2 for the cast on only, US0 for the rest of it.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the feel of the yarn (the colours are not really my thing) and I'm guessing that they will hold up very well. In fact I was so impressed that when it came to casting on for another sock I purposefully reached for my other cotton-wool blend yarn, Plymouth sockotta. That sock is coming on at a fairly fine clip too....

Green Sewing

I found something else to sew!

Chante mentioned in the comments that she'd made a shopping bag that folded into itself which lead me on a google search to craftster and to this tutorial. While I can deconstruct a knitting pattern at twenty paces I'm not so good at envisaging where to put seams and such to make something neat and tidy. This tutorial was really clear and the end product is very professional looking if I do say so myself.

The bag has already had its inaugural run to the supermarket and it held up well to a loaf of bread, a bag of carrots, frozen blueberries, strawberries and raspberries, and finally a couple of kiwis. Unfortunately I still came home with two plastic bags. So I immediately made myself another one :)

And the knit goes on

After what seemed like a decade of K2P2 the main body of sunshine is finished. Now to knit the sleeves, the front flap and the collar... and then I can block it because boy-howdy does this yarn need blocking! I've actually worn a friction burn around the ring/tension finger on my left hand from this twine yarn and OMG is it dusty! I've never wanted to wash a knit so badly.

Sewing for the Knitter

Part of the reason why I've been on a sewing binge is that I wrote a list. And as one is want to do with lists, I have been slowly but surely crossing things off. The last item on my agenda was a dpn roll. I can't be alone in having scattered fifths of a set of dpns all over my home, knitting bag, knitting box etc etc so I thought I could whip myself up a storage solution.

I made the pattern up based on things I'd seen floating around the internet which I'm often guilty of. Measuring? Marking? Pinning?! No, cut sew and make do!

If I had been just a little bit smarter and less gung-ho, I would have sewn a flap at the top to keep the dpns inside the roll. As it is they will fall out very easily but hey, learning curve! As a toting-device this may fall short but as a "keep everything in one place"- device it works just fine.

Now I've come to the end of my "To Sew" list I'm a little bit stumped. What to sew next? Really it's what do I want to sew next since I've pretty much finished what I needed to sew. Hmm... fabric grocery bags, anyone?!

Resolute Knitting

After the bedbugs made my underbed yarn storage non-viable I spent rather a lot of money coming up with a storage alternative. A seven foot tall storage alternative.

Not all those baskets are full to the brim with yarn but let's just say that seven feet was not excessive. But then what to do with my ever growing fabric stash? And the sewing notions? And the sewing machine?! More storage arrived in the form of a leather bench/ottoman, but it's still not enough, so my resolution is to knit at least one full basket worth of yarn by the end of the year so that my fabric can move into the bookcase. It should be doable as long as
a) I don't buy any more yarn, and
b) I knit a sweater or three.

Saturday night I knit a little gauge swatch with Rowan Yorkshire Tweed...

Swatching and washing was necessary for this yarn (normally I'd just knit, measure, rip and cast on) because it felt scratchy and stiff as if there was still a lot of spinning oil or something in it. Although washing didn't change gauge it did make the fabric much fluffier and softer so I was happy to cast on for this:

The Sunshine sweater by Auntie Amanda Knits (rav). Being a doofus I misread the pattern and have stockinette between the lace panels instead of garter (here's to not casting on a pattern at midnight after a full weekend in lab!) but by the time I noticed my mistake I was too far in to rip and as such, the mistake is now a design feature. I may put garter in the front panel but I'll make that decision when I get to it. Right now I'm just about ready to start the waist shaping so this thing should be finished in no time!