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| Fairytale Tarot (Hunt) |
No, not a post about birds (which I'm not overkeen on) and not yet the 4th day of Christmas, but 4 more completed gifts ready to go forth and engage in deadly dalliance with the dangers of hot machine washes and dastardly tumble dryers.
Yes, I like alliteration - why do you ask ?
Down to business, as I still have at least 2 hats to make by the end of the weekend so can't waste my time here chinwagging with you all ...
Here are Susie Rogers' Reading Mitts in James C.Brett Aria, pale powder blue with sparkly sequins; the hint of mohair is just enough to give a nice halo effect without any of the itchiness that can come with mohair:
I had to put this pose in, as Mini Diva liked it:
And here is the first Penselwood Hat, from the lovely Jennifer Arnall-Culliford, also made from the James C.Brett Aria:
The pattern was so good I made it again straightaway:
This time I used Stylecraft Vision DK in the 'Lagoon' colorway; it has long color changes that give a nice fat stripey effect. The colors are much brighter than in my photos ....
These mitts are the Easy Peasy Fingerless Mitts. And they were, too. The ribbed twisted stitches give them enough stretch to fit an adult hand, firmly and snugly, but if I made them another time I would most likely make them just a smidge bigger by casting on extra stitches at the beginning.
I am finding it impossible to ignore the siren call of those 2 hats that I must make, so why don't you go over and check out more beautiful things at Tami's Amis ...
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| Crystal Visions Tarot |
A week and a half left to go, and I am just beginning to allow myself to contemplate the idea that all the last-minute Xmas knitting might just maybe possibly get done in time for the last mail. Unless I sit here tempting Providence again by even permitting the germ of that thought to enter my head.
I am being very disciplined, and really truly have only 1 WIP on my needles - Susie Rogers' Reading Mitts:
As you can see, I am well on my way to not just mastering, but thoroughly trouncing the Magic Loop technique for small diameter knitting; and I am still loving the James C.Brett Aria yarn.
No, I am not listening. I cannot see you gesticulating. I refuse to hear your sneaky whispers of sock passion.
I will confess instead that to make the above mitts, I need a pair of 3.75mm circular needles; I found the empty packet, so I knew they must be lying around somewhere. The somewhere turned out to be in another long-term WIP, Lily's Slice of Pi Shawl, which I started on the 6th March this year (oh the shame) and has been hibernating for a while. So I signed the 'fession and admit to us both that this will not get made, in this yarn anyway, and pulled the needles out to use for the mitts.
I can almost see a New Year's resolution taking shape as I type ....
Pop on over to Tami's Amis to see how everyone else is faring ...
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| Labyrinth Tarot |
Talk about working your fingers to the bone ! Well, OK, I don't call what I do work - I like it too much - but I am busy, and then there is all that Xmas knitting I suddenly had inspirations for: why I couldn't have had all these ideas in June, who knows. You do know, actually - it is because it is The Law.
I bought these two balls of lovely Artesano Hummingbird Alpaca 4-ply a little while ago:
I realized I had the perfect person for this colorway, so I bought a pattern - yes, actually spent money on it - and started clicking away:
I feel terribly grumpy and cheated; this colorway looks great in the ball, and as with all Artesano alpaca, it is of a softness that the gods would drool over, but I am not at all loving how the colors are pooling in the shawl, it looks so randomly messy and unplanned that I have put it on the naughty step while I contemplate its future ie. while we sulk at each other for not meeting expectations.
As you know, a shedload of people who need to be knitted for seem to have appeared out of the gloomy darkness of my memory suddenly, so I just cracked on with other stuff - like using the James C.Brett 'Aria' that I found at my little LYS, which is mohair, wool, acrylic and polyester with SEQUINS. I know, I am all about class.
But you can see it is a lovely shade of pastel blue Brett (again) imaginatively calls 'Z3' and it is very beautifully amazingly soft and squooshy and I loves it. And at £3.50 (approx.$5.64) for 215m/235yds, it is not bad value for a hat. So there.
And I even paid for the hat pattern too - it is the Penselwood Hat by Jen Arnall-Culliford; I chose it because it is a little lacy and knitted flat: I'm in too much of a hurry now to mess around with Magic Loops and stuff. And she is approachable, friendly, and on Twitter: which made it easy to ask her about some modifications I wanted to make for a slouchier fit.
And when I am feeling like a challenge, I knit on this Seekret Project (which is deffo not for you this time Alison, I don't love you nearly enough to knit in black for you):
There is intarsia to come on this (imagine that vocalized in a portentous booming voice like that of James Earl Jones) so this won't be completed in any kind of rush, je vous assure.
And much as I love gassing with you all ? This stuff isn't going to knit itself, you know. You need to stop distracting me. While I am hard at it, pop on over to Tami's Amis to see how everyone else is doing ....
