Reveal the contents of your handbag.

A perennial chick magazine topic is the alleged investigation of the contents of a celebrity's handbag. These handbags only ever have a brand new lipstick, some keys and a smart phone inside, but I am pretty sure this is not what most people have in their handbag.

Mine always has quite a bit of beaten up useful stuff, and a partially completed sock -unless there is a partially completed glove, but a sock is much more usual. Socks are portable and by now, I can knit one without a pattern, and not looking very often - not something I can say about a fancy cardigan with lace or cables, much as I enjoy knitting these - It is nice to be accomplished at some sort of garment!
I don't show socks here much because, I admit, they are not very exciting to look at.

I was reminded of this when Lynne commented that making socks could be considered the same sort of strange behavious as knitting a hand towel. Some commercial socks are relatively inexpensive - although somewhat limited in colour and design, and rarely made of wool. Lynne makes socks, so understands these things. Knitting socks requires a different approach to the world.

 I don't see any other swimming mothers making anything useful during hour long pool side waits, and the people hanging around miserably at the doctor's are usually picking up new germs reading ancient magazines rather than producing 10% of a sock.

Watching telly is, in my opinion, merely an opportunity to get some knitting done. Why would you just sit there?

Plain knitting socks, my own plain sock pattern.



Excitingly self stripey Kaffe Fassett sock yarn

Warm feet.
Better than doing nothing.

Wash cloth and hand towel - Strange knitting?

When I first started knitting, it would never have occurred to me to knit something that is readily available in the shops, and not particularly expensive in its most modest versions.
However, my brain has been addled altered by knitting exposure, and when it was getting a bit hot around here to knit woolly things in the middle of the day, somehow I started knitting handtowels to match my bathroom. I am really pleased with them







Doesn't everyone happen to have stray balls of yarn wandering into the bathroom so that you can see how well they co-ordinate with the bath?
Maybe I shouldn't ask that question ;)

I do have a pattern for a washcloth and towel, in Jo Sharp Knit 2, but this pattern book was not in my vicinity when the urge to knit these overcame me, so I had to make it up with a vague recollection of the picture. I think I came pretty close.

The washers are all moss stitch, and the hand towels have a  moss stitch border and a stocking stitch middle.

The yarns I have used are Jo Sharp Desert Garden Aran, 10ply cotton with microfibre.

This yarn makes a lovely absorbent towel or washer after the first wash through the washing machine. However, the Chamba (dark maroon) did run a little for the first week or so, although never enough to stain the pale yarn Solstice permanently, nor to mark the skin.

Having made these humble items, I find them incredibly luxurious to use. They are certainly on the list for my knitting-in-front-of-the-telly projects.

Raglan rib jumper, in Crofter Chunky

A friend of mine wanted to knit her teenage daughter a jumper in Crofter Chunky, having made a few scarves from this lovely soft yarn.
My go-to scarf pattern for Crofter is a 2x2 rib, on generous 7.0mm needles, to give a loose and drapey, snuggly scarf.
Naturally a jumper needs a firmer tension, so it won't fall apart with wear, so we went looking for a pattern.
There were none in the Crofter pattern books in 2x 2 rib.
There were a few on Ravelry in 2x2 rib, but none in smaller sizes that we could discover, and none were quite right - with raglan sleeves and a loose polo neck, as requested, so I made one up.

Sorry, you can't see much jumper here, so I will show you again.

I knit this for my own teenage daughter (size 6-8 in Australian women's sizes), using a much tried technique known as winging it.

I knit from the bottom up, in seperate pieces, to take advantage of the self patterning effect of the Crofter yarn. The repeats are not particularly long in this yarn, and if there are two many stitches to a row/round, the self patterning effect turns into an all-over colourful, non patterned look, which is quite appealing in its own way, but not what I had in mind. I wanted stripes.

Unfortunately, I mislaid the last 3 balls of this colourway (Misty Moor 61) and so did not have enough yarn to keep breaking the ball and winding on during the sleeves in order to make the stripes continuous across the front and back yoke. ( I later found the balls in a scarf kit, with rather annoying timing!)

My daughter did not even notice this stripe mismatch.

I will be trying out this pattern again in a different yarn, I think it has real possiblites. This is just as well, as my friend went home and looked through some magazines, and found just the pattern she was looking for - only about 3 sizes too big. I guess we will be sitting down with a calculator some day soon in order to convert it.

Peggy Sue in Bamboo

I love this pattern, Peggy Sue by Linda Wilgus (free download on ravelry).



I've made it in Sirdar Baby Bamboo (80% bamboo, 20% wool DK) for my daughter, in the size XS with a few judicious additions and operator errors alternate design decisions. It took only 5 balls, with mere centimetres of yarn left over, so I am feeling very thrifty about it all.



Most of my changes were at the back. This cardigan is knitted from the top down, and as written has a very straight neckline. In order for the neckline to sit higher at the back than at the front, I added 10 short rows, tapering at the sleeve increases at the back.



I also found the cardigan to be a little tight for my daughter across the back (the advantage of knitting from the top down is trying-on opportunities), so added a few stitches here also.

In the pattern, the waist cabling starts at the bottom of the ribs. I was knitting away merrily in stocking stitch on automatic pilot and failed to refer adequately to my pattern at a crucial moment. This means that I had knit nearly 9 inches of stocking stitch instead of about 9 cm, so my waist cabling is a little shallow, due to a dislike of frogging perfectly good knitting.

This does not bother me particularly, as I still think the cardigan looks great - with jeans, shorts or even with office clothes.

 

The Slightly Slouchy Beanie

I made this hat as a thank you gift for a friend who loves the outdoors. She hikes, and cycles all the time , does a lot of travelling, and does not wear anything fluffy or frilly – or, as far as I can tell, patterned .I wanted a hat that fit her practical needs, including being light and small to pack, but did not look like something only a bloke would wear.

 Fortunately for me, she not only said all the right things when I gave it to her, but a few weeks later told me how much she had been wearing it, so either I have been successful with my pattern, or she is very kind and has extremely good manners – or both. Even better, it was relatively quick to knit, and was a good use for some of my large stash of sock yarn. 
I used Heirloom Jigsaw sock yarn and Patonyle sock yarn for the contrast brim. The self patterning Jigsaw yarn  makes a nice non repeating variegated yarn as a beanie.

I am planning on putting this pattern up for free on Ravelry  - once I have some test knitting done. 

The Green Vest

This vest started out as a version of the DK vest from Jo Sharp Knit, issue 10, but unfortunately, I was only a few rows into the garter stitch rib, when I succumbed to the pleas of a customer and sold her my shop copy, after a rush on the magazine caught us all sold out.

 I quite fancy the garter stitch rib, which is simple to knit, looks pretty, but lacks the recovery of a more standard 2x2 rib.
 At this point, the vest construction started to deviate from my memory of the pattern The vest was looking rather big and boxy, so I added some more of the garter stitch ribbing to the sides in an attempt to add some shaping.
 
In retrospect, I should have added some more ribbing, or used regular 2x2 ribbing, as the vest is still a bit boxy.

By the time I came to the neck, I had decided on a v neck, rather than the round neck in the pattern, thinking I would like to wear it over a blouse with a stand and collar. I was quite happy with how this turned out.
Unfortunately, finishing the vest caused a little problem. I asked my daughter to model it for the blog, and now she won't give it back.
 Classic Double Knit Wool in shade 002, Pistachio. At least this will give me a chance to do some fitting tweaks on the next one.

The Anita Cable Wrap

It has been so cold and frosty here lately. I have been wearing this snuggly wrap nearly every morning, and remembered today that I had somehow forgotten to write a post about it. This wrap is an updated version of my Anita Wrap pattern. I have added a simple cable to the wide rib panels, and used the more budget friendly, but still luscious, Aslan Trends Guanaco, with a little Japanese variegated mohair to enliven the tassels. As Guanaco is 12ply, this knits up relatively quickly. I might need another one in a different colour.