Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Hola! y los peligros del cine de tejer ...

or rather, Hello! and the perils of cinema knitting… and apologies for my butchering of the Spanish language! Any Spanish speakers out there care to correct? My command of Spanish isn’t particularly great.

©http://elephant-juice.blogspot.com/Ferrol Harbour, minutes before a downpour!

I can’t believe it’s been 2 weeks since my last post! The primary culprit has been a brief sojourn in the Galician city of Ferrol, in North Western Spain. It’s a little off the beaten tourist track so there isn’t a whole lot to do there other than people watch and drink some seriously good coffee, but considering how bloody cold and awful the weather in the UK is at the moment I am seriously missing the heat!

We got back home on Saturday night and enjoyed a pretty chilled Bank Holiday weekend, and although I had intended to bash out a post on Monday, I’ve managed to pick up some kind of stomach flu so haven’t really felt like doing anything other than lying in bed under a blanket feeling sorry for myself (and wishing that good old Blighty wasn’t so damn cold)! I still feel pretty rough, but a little better than the past couple of days, and I’ve progressed to sitting under a blanket in front of the computer! Happy days.

In knitting news, there hasn’t been a lot of progress. Newcastle Airport rather ridiculously doesn’t allow you to bring knitting needles in your hand luggage, so I was without my knitting for the whole trip(although I did find a knitting shop in Ferrol!). Only my vanilla socks have shown any kind of advancement, thanks to some cinema knitting before we left the UK.©http://elephant-juice.blogspot.com/

I managed to get a good 21/2 inches inches done whilst watching Super 8 (enjoyable but somewhat underwhelming) at the Tyneside Cinema, but when the lights came up I discovered a tiny little mistake had crept in in the dark.

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A sneaky little yarn over at one of the magic loop row ends!

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If so many rows hadn’t been worked after this little mistake I wouldn’t have hesitated in dropping the extra stitch back down and leaving it to the magic of blocking to even everything out. As it is, I think I’ll just do a sneaky little decrease to get of that pesky extra stitch, and then sew up the little hole later on. Ah, the joys of fudging!

As always, head on over to Tami’s Amis for other WIP Wednesday posts.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

tangled

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A couple of days ago I decided to overdye some hideous variegated yarn that I first dyed last year. I mustn’t have checked the ties properly, because tangle city has arrived!

I was hoping to cast on for a new pair of socks with this yarn this week, but I think it’s going to take a while to sort out this mess! Thankfully I’m one of those strange people who quite enjoys untangling stuff.

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I finally finished the second cuff of my Vanilla socks. These are moving quite slowly because I keep forgetting about them (sign of too many WIPs perhaps?!), but they’re background knitting so that’s ok. I might be heading to the Tyneside Cinema tonight, and if I do these will most probably be accompanying me.

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Speaking of lingering knits, I’m finally up to the border on my Boneyard shawl. I fear I might have gotten a bit carried away with this one because it is a bit of a behemoth of a shawl and I’m almost certain that it’ll grow even more after blocking… yikes. Too lazy to frog back though, so onward I plod. This one has stalled for a few days because I’ve been lazy in seeking out another ball of the gingery yarn. Anyone else hate cracking into a new ball of yarn just for the sake of a few more rows of knitting? It’s one of my pet peeves, and probably another reason why I’ve been stalling on finishing this off.

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And finally, my nails have been uncharacteristically naked for a couple of weeks but I finally pulled out the polish again yesterday. It’s been so cold in my little North-Easterly corner of the UK that I couldn’t face any bright polishes, so I went for Chinchilly by Essie. I’ve owned this for a while, but this is the first time I’ve used it, and I’m now a big fan. I’m a sucker for any of those beige/greige/dirty/muted colours so this is smack bang in the middle of my comfort zone! Love it!

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Sunday, August 14, 2011

Of necklaces and felted beads.

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One of the Other Crafts I spoke of on Friday was this merino wool felted ball necklace.

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I made a few necklaces with felted yarn balls a while ago, but I strung the balls onto ribbon and I was never happy with how they turned out. This time I used some ridiculously soft cotton, and I love it so much more.

I think the hardest part was deciding what kind of clasp I wanted to use. I knew I didn’t want a bolt ring because I find them a little clunky and ugly (not to mention the fact they can be ridiculously fiddly) so I was looking into alternatives. Lobster clasps are a little better, but then it struck me that I already had all the materials to try and make my own clasps.

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I absolutely love how it turned out. The simplicity of the clasp and the necklace seem to really complement each other, and I think the handmade clasp adds a lovely extra touch.

In hindsight I wish I’d used the larger jump rings for both necklace ends, it would have looked more balanced. The larger ring is closed though, so I can’t add it on now but I have ordered a supply of open rings of the same size. I’m looking forward to them arriving so I can swap the smaller ring out and stop obsessing over how unbalanced it all looks!

 

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Friday, August 12, 2011

Not Knitting

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There hasn’t been much knitting this week because I have been playing with Other Crafts…

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39 little felted balls of colour on Wednesday.

(my palms still feel bruised.)

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Silver plated jewellery clasps today.

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I had a lot of fun making these clasps. I’m looking forward to making many many more!

More about what these bits and pieces are becoming at the weekend…

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Monday, August 08, 2011

a crafting disaster

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I love macarons, and I’m currently obsessed with the idea of sweet little macaron stitch markers. It’s been years since I played with Fimo and I was rather pleased with how cute and pretty my mini macarons looked when I’d finished modelling them. They do say that pride comes before a fall…

I popped them in my little toaster oven to bake, turned my back for few seconds to get some zip lock bags for the opened packets of clay, and when I turned back around I was greeted with a smoking toaster oven. Not good! It seems my trusty little toaster is hotter than I’d thought.

The pink ones went all bubbly and brown around the edges, but that’s nothing to how the blue ones fared…

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Yikes!

I still desperately want my little macaron stitch markers, but I think for now I’ll take a little break with some spinning and come back to them later. I’m too sad about this disaster at the moment!

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Wednesday, August 03, 2011

t.v. knitting

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I’m loving nice squishy simple stocking stitch at the moment. The Boneyard shawl is just perfect t.v./toss-in-my-bag-and-take-everywhere-with-me project.

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I started off using a random stripe generator for the stripes but I soon got sick of having to refer to the “chart”, so now I’m just making it up as I go along.

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I love how it’s working up, but although I’m not entirely convinced that the colours are very “me” they do remind me of Casey, who is the kitty cat that lives with my boyfriend’s parents, so I’ve become rather attached. He is such a sweetheart, but he’s sadly getting rather old and ill now.

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Back to what’s on the needles now, and the rabbit is now an ear-less head, as I’m procrastinating picking up the body stitches (this project is taking far longer than it should…).

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I finally picked up the socks that I’ve been designing since February, and managed to knit to the heel. I’m trying to write the pattern up as I knit because I know that if I leave it to the end to write up, I’ll never decipher my notes!

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And finally a WIP that’s very much not in progress right now. Once you get past the toe these socks start to require a bit of stitch shuffling, which is perfectly fine but makes knitting them two at a time on the same needle a bit of a mistake. I should really relegate one of the socks to a stitch holder or another pair of needles and get on with knitting them separately, but frankly these socks are taking up far too much mental energy at the moment. They don’t seem like a particularly difficult knit, but I feel like I’m tied to the pattern which is something which I really can’t be bothered with right now (currently in squishy simple stocking stitch mode!), so these socks are being retired until I feel like I can give them the concentration they seem to need from me.

Until I wrote this I was sorely tempted to frog them and use the yarn for the current Solid Socks mystery, but I think I’ll keep them on the needles for now and go stash diving for some yarn for the mystery instead (I peeked and saw cables. Yum.)

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And just for fun, the current nails. Which are now a little chipped.

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