Perkins 

Arans

This is Israel wearing his new present. He wasn't happy with the gray one I presented him done to his requests so he found this one that had never been worn and carted it off. It was from a Candace Strick pattern in an older Knit n style magazine. Yarn used was some Paton's (Canadian) classic wool. I think he looks really nice in it so I told him he can keep it as he was feeling guilty about it later. Meanwhile I'm hard at work on my winter wips as winter is nearly done around here but I have lots of cooler wips waiting to come out and play.

Candace Strick aran 

leftovers scarf 

Another crocheted scarf

Just finished another crocheted scarf using leftovers. I did a simple dc with some sc in white and had enough of the last blue to sc all around. This is so long I could wear it also as a hat and a scarf at the same time! I also finished the first sleeve on the Kaffe Fassett grid sweater. I bought two kits so each child will get one and whenever they turn up, they have to be measured. Looks like my daughter will get this first one as the armhole needs to be longer for my son. Or if I wanted to give it to him, I could just cut out part of the armhole at the bottom to enlarge it and then make the sleeves longer and wider. But winter is almost over here and I still have so many wips to finish.
It was a nice surprise yesterday to get a phonecall from my son. Earlier this week he called from London and Paris and when he suggested yesterday we meet up for coffee, I was really surprised. He's heading soon to his new job in Singapore so he could make a few days stopover on his way. I will give him Dayana's mail as they will most likely meet somewhere before I reach her.
Non knit and non crochet: This week I stopped into a fabric store in the next town to ask where beading stores were and my eye was held by a lovely leftover piece in pretty blues. Cost me about $2 and this will be sewn into two simple scarves. I will try to crochet something in white on the edges to make it fancier. These could be lovely presents as summertime scarves.
I joined my second bead class this week as the first one had to close due to lack of students. I'm on the same level as the other students and it seems to be a very nice place being an arts' center. WE are learning to do Dutch spiral which is fun and easy also.
I'm also reading a mystery in Hebrew which is written in easy enough Hebrew to make it a pleasure. Some of the translated mysteries in Hebrew are written in such a high level Hebrew that it really annoys me, especially when the English was not so difficult. I had to borrow this one from the local library as I think I did buy it once, but someone must have borrowed it. Anyway, the librarian was also in my bead class so she doesn't bother me with overdues.
Turns out my family doctor is also a beader and she says it's good therapy.

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 

blue scarf 
Blue mohair scarf in leftovers.

Annie Maloney 

Annie Maloney book

A really great book arrived this week. Annie Maloney's "Cable knitting handbook". self published in 2004 and available from a few Canadian bookshops online. Just Google for them. Needlearts bookshopis one.

This is her third book and there's a 4th coming soon. The bulk of the book are 101 new original aran patterns she designed. They are arranged by number of stitches starting with 8 and reaching to 44. Each pattern is charted and written out with a good photo of the blocked swatch alongside.

There are lots of ideas, tips and suggestions for designing and making up new designs too.

The book has a good spiral binding and is 93 pages. Cost is about $25 with postage more or less.

I regard it as one of the best books that I own on arans and I have gone ahead and ordered her first two and will also order the next one.

fairisle scarf

When you get hooked by fairisle you really can't stop. I spent all day (it was raining anyway) working on this pattern. It's from an excellent Japanese book full of great fairisle patterns using J&S yarns. The authoress is Yukiko kuro and her book came out in 2003. ISBN4-529-03887-4. I bought my copy from Amazon.jp by just entering the ISBN # into the search section. My 3 knitting pals in Hongkong are also doing this one. I am using stash shetland yarns and the dark blue instead of dark gray is really not contrasting enough with the dark brown with which it's paired. I can just hear Ann Feitelson complaining that I ought to rip it out or stitch over it or something, but I'm too lazy.
There don't seem to be many fairisle scarf patterns and I probably own all of them anyway!
None of the patterns I own do a steek so that means that the yarn ends have to be sewn or woven in as otherwise the beg edge will be rather ugly. I tried knitting this on one circ but it was too tight so then I used two of my new Chinese dps with a third for knitting but that wasn't very good either. Finally I tried using two small circs and that proved to be the right move. The pattern has 68 sts on each row and half go to each side. There are 13 of these pattern repeats although the front and the back have different ones. I seem to be on gauge.

fi scarf 

klaralund in front of our red baby 

Klaralund finished

One quick project was the Klaralund because the Noro silk garden knits up quickly in a plain st st pattern. I started it following the pattern by Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton in Noro book two with the garter stitch bottom and reading what others had done, I began to realize it wouldn't be good for me as I always like warm necks when the yarn is warm. Also people were saying that the sleeves were not fitting well so I changed it to a raglan using Jackie Fee's book the Sweater workshop. I have now done about 4 or so raglans her way but I still go back to read the relevant sections. I like her book so much I have both editions! I felt the new edition was worth buying with the extra material. But the basic material is still the same so when I need her book, I use either edition!
Now that my sweater is done, I think I made it too big. And that's before the blocking. It seems to be too wide unless I want to wear it as an over sweater. So this one may go to one of my favorite recipients if she plays her cards right!
The color is the same one as in the picture in the book. I found it on the fifth floor of a LYS on Nathan Rd in Hongkong and paid $85 for 14 balls and I still have 4 balls left for a scarf or two.
I really do like this yarn and will probably look for more in a different colorway.
The pattern for this sweater asks for a rather loose gauge which was easy to get and made the knitting just that much faster. But that might be the reason the sweater is enlarging with the washing.
As for my 3 week cold with cough. Two pills of a mild antibiotic seem to have stopped it completely but of course, have to complete the full 7 days. However, I have decided to drop the swimming pool as they just aren't keeping it warm enough these days. Well, more money for yarns!

aran with beads

I don't care to post without photos so that's why there's been a timelapse although I've been busy finishing some wips. Also fighting off a cold. Finally after 3 weeks, I've decided to take some antibiotics. Enough already!
Anyway, this aran ran into lots of problems. It's the Szabo Teddy and I used Hayfield traditional pure wool dk. Probably been discontinued for years by now. The pattern gave me problems as I didn't understand the instructions when it came to doing the sleeves. I also didn't want to knit the body in the round as I prefer to knit arans back and forth. I also didn't care for the pattern on the sides so I changed it to rev st st which was a major mistake when I reached the sleeves. I was forced to do practically all purling on both sleeves which is why it took forever to finish it.
But it fits and feels nice so why not add some pearl beads? Took me some time to figure out how to do it as with all my new books on beading I wanted to try out various ways. But in the end I went back to sewing thread with a sharp needle and just went up the line sewing on each bead by itself. I bought the beads in Hongkong.
a word on bobbles: the bobbles in this pattern were done as written but not all of them came through to the right side so I took yarn and needle and did a sort of daisy stitch to strangle each one and then tied it down on the rev side. Now all the bobbles are correct.

aran with beads