Design it, knit it, wear it!

I found this beauty in a charity shop on my way home from Loop. What will my next project be? A cool hat and scarf? Funky leg warmers? A lace shawl? I haven't opened the box yet so I'm not sure if the fuzzy pink and purple yarn is still in the kit, I'm hoping it isn't. My plan, if I can get the thing working is see if I can make some simple dolls and toys for charities who give knitted toys to orphaned kids in African countries.

As for Loop, my equivalent of a crack den, well, I had a splurge. I figured I don't smoke, I wear what I make for myself and I need more socks. I finally got an op date so will need hand knit socks post op as they don't dig in to swollen tissue.

Here's the latest addition to my stash, got clean needles too. OK, enough with the drug analogies, The Wire is on every night and I think it's seeping into my consciousness.

Check out the Zauberballs from Schoppel Wolle, I can't wait to get started with these. There's yet more Misti Alpaca sock yarn, some Scottish 4ply from Rennies, and some new Knit Pro needle tips for my interchangable cable needle set. Sorted!

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Champagne Bubbles

We went for a stroll this afternoon along the Seine where my MIL lives to work off the champagne and cheese from New Year celebrations and build up an appetite for our postponed Christmas meal. It was a good opportunity to take some photos of my latest FO, Bubbles hat by Woolly Wormhead . Compulsory Catalogue Pose I've met Woolly at several shows over the summer and we sat together at several meal times at the infamous Knit Camp as well as getting tipsy at Knit Nation. She's ace and also a great designer. She leads a pretty interesting life, living in a converted double decker bus in Italy. Take a look at her blog which is a good mixture of her day to day life on the bus with her partner and young son and loads of great knitting tips. The Bubbles pattern was great fun to knit and worked up pretty quickly, the cables providing just enough interest to make this a great knit while watching Agatha Christie mysteries on TV in between eating festive leftovers. I used Araucan...

Just beet it - part II

Here it is. The beetroot dye experiment results. I had read that beetroot turns a disappointing orange colour when the dye is set. The most saturated end turned a beautiful burnished orange however the far end of the skein, which had been a delicate shade of pale pink before cooking was a mucky yellow. The cream/mucky yellow colour dominated the skein and wasn't as graduated as I'd hoped for. I decided to redye the cream section, leaving a small section of the Naples Yellow (mucky yellow) for contrast (I actually like the colour in small amounts and looked up a nicer name in my Artists Colour Manual). I added a few drops of pink food colouring to the beetroot vinegar just to see what happened and over dyed the mid portion of orange with more beetroot vinegar with a few drops of red food colouring. This is how it looked while drying... ...ta dah ! Here it is reskeined . Well half the skein anyway. I was in a rush as I wanted to enter it in a dip dyeing competition on Ravelry w...

Double trouble continental style!!!

Or why all my fingers feel like thumbs. I want to make my BIL an Uncle Argyle Scarf for Christmas which uses a technique called double knitting, where two sides of fabric are knitted at the same time. Trouble is I don't own Stitch and Bitch Nation and as the scarf is the only thing I'd knit from it I'm not forking out £11 for one pattern. Using the magic of the interweb I found a couple of tutorials for Double Knitting . It's a great video but the continental knitting style looks much easier for double knitting. I sort of got the hand of knitting continental when I tried my hand at fairisle but I had one hand doing the familiar english style so I only had to concentrate on one hand. With this I'm trying to do something unfamiliar with both hands and two stands of yarn. Following the example pattern I've sketched out a smaller pattern for a small facecloth which can be a stocking filler if it turns out OK.

Ginger Knits UK

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