Ebaying some MK stuff

If you are on the look-out for MK mags, or some Knitmaster handy punch sets and lace punchcards, please check out my auctions on http://www.ebay.co.uk/, my username is steelbreeze23. Two boxes of books and mags, everything going for a song, and most of the sales are in aid of Cancer Research/MacMillan, some leftovers from the estate sale I did last year.

Plenty of watchers but no bids so far (but it's early days). I hope to do Mrs L's family proud. Looks like I will have a DL100 linker (similar to the Hague) for sale soon, again for Mrs L. Will have to be UK only to keep postage costs down.

Troubleshooting tips for machine knitters

Have started a new page for troubleshooting knitting machines - take a look! It's a work in progress.

Now, going offline, because I feel stressed, grumpy, unappreciated, clumsy - you would not believe the stunts I have pulled today but they included banging my head on a cupboard door, incurring a £35 charge for a typo in a holiday booking, standing on the points of an electric plug, dropping a jar of pickled beetroot and having to wipe up pink paw prints. My laptop is now trying to melt my legs so it's time to step away from the keyboard....

Making up is hard to do...

Hoorah! Located the rest of G's jumper (stuffed it all into a big bag of swatches when I was having a tidy up). Couldn't remember the tension I'd used, and had written it down somewhere and lost it. Oops. Sleeve came out the right length (ie pretty similar to the other one). Result! Serves me right for not making them at the same time!

So, it needs a shoulder seam, a neckband, and then sewing up.

Got all the pieces of Nina Miklin's M64 casual wrap draped all over the passap - made a point of looking for the garment at Croydon on Saturday, so at least now I know how it goes together. It needs blocking/steaming, and I haven't felt much like that lately, what with the hot/muggy weather.

Making myself little lists of things to do and ticking them off gradually. Makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere!

Almost FO: Ballet wrap

Ballet wrap
Originally uploaded by steel breeze

It is finished, technically - but I'm not happy with the bands, I used the recommended handknitting needle size, but the rest of it was machine knit, and the bands pull in a lot. So I'm gonna have to frog those bits and figure out how I sewed it together, ha!

Elephants, fixed

The row tripper was up! On the chunky machine, the knitleader has to trip twice per row! Otherwise, double-length knitting! I did noticed I'd used rather a lot of yarn for just one front. Doh!

I have made two fronts and a back already. Woohoo! So much faster than handknitting them!

Knitting for elephants

So I've got a hk pattern (sirdar) for a ballet wrap, and couldn't face all those rows of stocking stitch. Charted the pattern up in CAD (my job has its uses!). Knitted a front up last night.
Well, the stitch count is fine, because it came out the right width. But the row count? It reached past my knees, people! The Cog was laughing his head off when I came down in a sulk! Apparently I am now knitting for elephants! :S
I checked my tension, and I had programmed 11.6cm instead of 11.1cm (because I realised about halfway up that the overhead tension mast was too loose). However, for a garment that's supposed to be waist length, I can't believe 0.5cm would make THAT much difference!? It was double the length I was expecting!
Am I supposed to set the tripper differently for the chunky machine? I've used it before on this machine with no problems. The manual isn't very detailed on this. I thought I remembered it tripping twice per row, but perhaps I was mistaken!
Oh, the joys of machine knitting. When we screw up, we just screw up faster!

Frogging and dithering...

Good weekend. Saturday we visited "Beers of Europe" near King's Lynn - excellent selection of Belgian beers, spent about £75 each. I favour the fruit beers - banana, mango, peach, cherry, coconut, chocolate, honey - whilst the Cog prefers Westmalle Tripel and "proper" ales - he likes the English ones with silly names.

Then we drove up to Hunstanton beach. Us Midlanders get precious little sea air, and I love the seaside, so jumped at the chance to get a bit of sunbathing in, plus two rounds of Crazy Golf! However, owing to me being a total klutz when it comes to timing and geography, we left the beach too late and hit traffic, to pop in to see Knitman. I dunno why, I thought he was nearer the coast than he is. Sorry about that, will try and sort out a proper date!

Sunday I made an attempt to start another Nina Miklin garment, this is a v-neck jacket in pink mohair. Alas, it requires all 200 of the needles for my size, and the Brother 950i I bought (badly packed) on Ebay has a problem with the last 8 or so needles on the left hand end. It works fine for a while, and then jams on every row. I've already swapped all of the needles so I suspect there must be some internal bed damage as that end of the casing is out of shape enough to render the knitleader useless. Need to see if it can be repaired, and if it is financially worth doing. I have a Brother 860 I can use, of course - it's just not set up at the moment.

I did attempt the sleeve, but I think it needs the first part knitted, so I had to give up. Thus thwarted, I turned my attention to frogging a few failed projects - the Rowan Bamboo and a sideways knitted skirt I made from Noro Silk Garden ages ago. In both cases, I have learnt that just because the pattern goes up to (or can be scaled up to) a large size, does not necessarily mean that the finished garment is anything you might want to wear - not unless you have lots of muscles and a penchant for heavy knitwear! One of my fellow knitters expressed an interest in the bamboo. I will reuse the precious Noro for a jumper or cardigan I think. At least having knitted it up once already, most of the chaff will be removed from the yarn. Got a Noro pattern book somewhere... dammit I really need a proper filing system!

Still working on the raglan increases of Picovoli - trying to resist the urge to cast anything else on now until the WIP list has gone down a bit.

To do:

* Finish earflap hat
* Pick up dropped stitch and add closure to peg bag
* Glue loose ends on Cinnabar
* Weave in ends on Carmen
* Steam and make up casual wrap

Hunstanton

hunstanton
Originally uploaded by steel breeze

Then we went up to Hunstanton and sunbathed for a bit. It was a lovely change from the usual busy-ness of Saturdays!

The beer 'fridge

100_3261
Originally uploaded by steel breeze

This was what we went to get on saturday - supplies from "Beers of Europe". The fruit ones are all mine, haha!

In progress: Picovoli

100_3268
Originally uploaded by steel breeze

Happy blogiversary to me!

I actually missed this, because I was doing chores and relaxing on Sunday. On the 4th July this blog was five years old! So, happy blogiversary to me!

There have been a few times in the last few years when I've thought about making this blog members-only or private. Not that I post anything very personal here (I have a friends-only blog for that, although I hardly ever post to it). It's amazing how entrenched the "if you knit you must either be pregnant or a granny" attitude is, amongst the muggles, which is very sad. Nobody critiques an artist or a cook for doing something creative that pleases them.

Whatever. When I start caring what people think of me, I'll let ya know! I used to worry about such things, but I am happy and comfortable enough in myself now that I don't feel the need to conform to some artificial norm :)

On the last full ball of bamboo, so the end of Cameo is in sight, if I can just ignore the distractions of all the other UFOs hanging around the house!

Current mood: happy

Alpaca

I'm about two-thirds of the way through a machine-knit charcoal grey wrap in alpaca. I think it's M64, Casual Wrap by Nina Miklin - haven't got around to putting it into Rav yet because I want to make sure I have the right number and name. The photograph, quite small, is of a similar colour wrap, which is a pity, because it's not obvious how it goes together. There are two methods of seaming the sleeves - straight, or gathered down the upper seam. Tempted to go for gathered, I think it will be a bit different.

I've also cast on Grumperina's Picovilo - I need a handknitting project that I can work on whilst in the car (as a passenger!) - I can't crochet in the car because I have to look at it, and after a while I get a bit car-sick! Yeah, didn't get very far on the ballet wrap, despite the self-patterning yarn. Very tempted to swatch it and make it on the chunky machine instead.

Had a fun (but tiring) day at this year's Godiva festival, hoping I can snaffle some pics from Christina or Linda as I forgot to take any as per usual. The CSM was a big hit with everyone, especially the kids!

Not much knitting...

...but there IS some crochet going on at the moment. I've been trying to figure out how to decrease in a shell pattern (Cameo). I had a break-through late last night, after trying it on a test swatch, although I might also switch to a smaller hook size too.

Despite my best intentions, life keeps throwing me curveballs. I spent most of last Saturday either in waiting rooms or shopping. Went for an eyetest as the cataract in my left eye has become quite noticeable when I'm driving in full sunlight. Noticeable to me, that is - my eyes look fine to the casual observer. The optician's opinion is that, yes, I'm still legal to drive, but he'll refer me to a consultant if I think I need the op. At this point, the risk to my eyesight if there are complications, outweighs the problem, so I'm not sure I could convince a surgeon if I can't convince myself. Got another appointment in a year, and ordered some proper reactive Polaroid driving sunglasses, which were rather expensive.

Then I popped over to Autoglass to get my car checked out. I discovered last week that the rear window had become unstuck on one side. It was threatening to be a £114, not-covered-by-insurance reseal job. Luckily for me they'd had a no-show, so they started it there and then (whilst I popped around the corner in search of anything I could reasonably call lunch - ended up with chappatis, crisps, pop and some Indian sweets). When I got back, the chap in charge said the glass had fallen out completely as they'd taken the boot apart, and that it was now a full replacement which was covered on the insurance. So only £75 excess - even though I was now getting a new piece of glass as well as a new seal! It was only the radiator bracket that was holding the glass in place.

It's made quite a difference to the car, I can tell you. I can't, alas, prove how long the glass was unstuck, but I suspect I may have bought it like that. So it made a lot of noise over a pothole - and I reasoned that it was normal for my car, it is 7 years old after all. I'm quite lucky the glass survived a year as it is. The car is so much quieter now!

When I finally made it home around 3pm, we had to pop out and get the food shop (was kind of hoping the Cog'd take a hint and go without me, but no!). So Saturday was pretty much a bust, although we did at least get a few rounds in the real ale pub in town after dinner. Banana beer! Yum! It's just a pity we have to catch the last bus (6.30pm), which usually means I'll be pretty merry by 9pm and ready for bed. Hey, Belgian beer is stronger, ok? Came home and slept through the Dr Who finale, I really must watch it again.

Sunday we had a guest coming for a barbeque - ok, so it was only the Cog's brother, but I still ran around like a headless chicken, tidying the place up a bit. We had a laminate floor put in on Friday in the hallway, so there were leftover bits of wood and carpet everywhere too. The Cog managed to pull a muscle sweeping/scrubbing the patio. I kid you not. Managed to draw up and knit the peg bag - thank goodness for keeping a database of old swatch measurements - before the England/Germany game came on, so I was sewing up whilst the two blokes were ranting at the screen.

So - that was my weekend. I reckon I must have blinked, and missed it. I'm debating whether I should reorganize my stash a la Yarn Harlot, and place yarn in bags with the pattern it was bought for, so that I can "shop" and not have to spend an hour searching for the pattern. Hmm. Mind you, if I haven't time to knit, I haven't got time to reorganize, either. I've still got two tops to make, the yarns and patterns purchased at Nottingham in April. Luckily they are still in the shopping bag they were purchased in, so at least they're all together.

Picked up six massive sacks of coned yarn last night from a lady who lives near where I work, so spent about 90 minutes last night inventorying and photographing the lot. I've posted it up on Ravelry if you are in need of any coned yarn, haha! I'm only asking for postage. Made the inventory into a spreadsheet and stuck it on Google.

I'm going to be in the Lives and Times/Greenspace tent all day on Saturday, at the Coventry Godiva festival, so pop by and say hi if you're in the area. I'll be the one sweating over a knitting machine of some sort, no doubt.

I'm also teaching machine knitting to a lovely lady who is literally about 10 minutes drive from me, on Tuesday nights. So, personal knitting time is pretty scarce chez moi at the moment. Let's not even mention getting to grips with the weaving loom, the CSM or the sewing machine. Hmm.

I need some sort of time machine, to double the length of time in the evenings and halve it during the working weekday. Ha!

Last night I made a start on a Nina Miklin design, it's in a smoky grey alpaca. I had intended to finally finish the Cog's jumper, and discovered I don't know what I've done with it - I can only find the front. Oops! Well, that's one way of dealing with a UFO - lose most of it! :o)