Afghan stitch scarf 

Crocheting scarves

I spent hours today on a wip in one of my closets. This turned out to be the beginning of a scarf using Cleckheaton Flowerdale which is 50% mohair, 30% wool, 20% nylon. I had bought it 3 years ago in Sydney on sale and the color is a bit bright but it is a lovely soft yarn nice to work with. So I had started doing a swatch in the regular Tunisan or Afghan stitch but on measuring today I found the width to be 8" which is great for a scarf so I kept on with it. I kept searching for a decent hook. The best I had was a Boye afghan hook in the smaller length size of G. I would have preferred F for this yarn but my collection just didn't have it. Instead I found several really small long ones, a few with hooks at both ends, one that had a hook and a regular knitting needle tip at the other end and also a large wooden one.
Looking at this scarf I am possessed with the idea of adding beads because this stitch takes embroidery of all kinds very well so why not try beads?

man's aran from Knitting the new classics 

problem

I am having a hard time deciding what to do. My good friend saw me wearing this gorgeous aran sweater in Rowan Magpie I made a few years ago and he asked me for it. Truth, it fits him better than me as it was meant to be for my two children but it was too small for them. And also, the neckline was way too big so I had to figure out how to fix it which I did; but it is gorgeous and took a lot of knitting hours and as we know, Magpie is no longer being made and is a great aran.

Now this man always is asking me for knitted stuff and I have made him a few things most of them were not that successful on him. For example, recently I used some Jaeger dk to make him a v-neck cardigan with pockets and after he got it, he decided he preferred a higher neck. I was unable to adjust it as I had run out of the yarn which is no longer available.

I could use some opinions on what to tell him. Should I give him the sweater? thanks.

blogging

I enjoy Jean Miles' blog very much and was delighted when I saw her mention of my own. thanks Jean. I also helped my bead teacher to get her own blog on blogspot: tamibeads. She does fantastic jewellry and is really a very creative lady. I hope she will be able to use the internet to sell some of her creations.

wiseman sweaters 

Waverley woolen mills

Yesterday I got my order from Waverley woolen mills in Australia which took 8 days in all to reach me and was quite reasonable. I ordered 4 colors which you can see in my swatch above. I'm just swatching and haven't decided what it will be yet. The pattern though is from the Nancy Wiseman Knitted sweaters... on p.33. There's an error in the pattern too. Row 2: you should be slipping the sts with the yarn in front. If you do it with the yarn in back, then my swatch shows you on the green and red area at the top, what that looks like. Nothing like her sweater. Amazon as a fantastic price right now for this book.

Tracking it down, I found instructions in the Barbara Walker 2nd anthology for Chessboard. Interesting is that Wiseman made other changes which are quite nice. Instead of the Walker 2 colors, Nancy uses 4 and she also has each pattern in 14 rows instead of Walker's 16 rows.

Anyway, I now am planning more swatches. One I like from the Jamiesons and is also a slip stitch pattern with 4 colors.

I am now blocking my Koigu one skein scarf with beads. No picture yet, but I think this will make a great gift so plan on doing several more.

Wiseman mosaic  

beading

I'm very interested in using beads in my projects so I am enrolled in a local course taught by a lovely woman who makes beautiful jewellry. She told me about a good course in a summer school north of London so I managed today to enroll for a week of beading and I'm so pleased. The course is for beginners or for more advanced students and the place, Missenden Abbey, looks like it will be great fun and a nice area around to explore maybe by bike. Meanwhile the mail continues despite the heavy rain we're getting. Yesterday more bead books showed up plus the Noble book called Lavish lace . All the projects are for scarves or for shawls (large scarves) and all the stitches are shetland lace that seem relatively easy to do. The yarns called for are handdyed by Potter and I will never be using them but that's not a problem. There seems to be a lot of explanations, maybe too much as it reads like a lace textbook. I'm comparing it to Annie Maloney's lace book which also arrived lately and that book is eons past the Lavish lace as it also explains how to design lace patterns among many other topics.

Lingerbay

Would you believe the girl in the picture is me? nope? oh well, I can try. This is the sweater I want to finish this season. Lingerbay by Starmore from "In the Hebrides". Intarsia style in Jamiesons Scottish heather and expensive. I bought it back in 1995 or 6 and it was expensive then too. I'm making the larger size and have e nough yarn and I think afterthought pockets would be good. It's for Dayana. She didn't get to see it as it was lying on the floor when she wandered through.
She did help me choose some red wooden beads to do on the Pascal Shapely shawlette in the red merino I bought in Beiijing earlier this year. That is only scheduled for later when it's warmer.
I also showed her the new chevron necklace we learned to do last night in bead class. AFter that part is done we do some more stuff from Varvara's "Coraling technique". I own this book and I explained to the other students why it's important to buy American books when they are published. For some reason American publishers have no backlists, probably due to taxes. Most other civilized countries keep backlists so the students thought I was a bit daft.

AS Lingerbay