Methera

I was intending to do one post a week when I started this - thankfully, I never said that, as it turns out this is the 4th post and we're 5 weeks into the year.

Happy Candlemas, everyone.

So - I crocheted (!) and I steeked.  (And did both at knitting group on Saturday.  People were very kind and let me wave the thing in their general direction, rather a lot.)

For those people who know me, the crochet was the scarier bit.  Every time I pick up a hook, it's a foreign object, and I take to it like a duck takes to football.  But I know I can do the double-crochet method Kate Davies favours, because I did it on a sample in a class with Jared Flood in 2010, and it worked this time.  Taking the scissors to the knitting after that was pretty easy.

Here's the front:



And because all the knitters here will want to see it, here's the back:



(I'll run that extra-long float in!)

And here's both, with a bit of the reinforcement thrown in.



I'm quite chuffed.

It's been a lovely week for meeting knitters I haven't seen for ages, too.  On Tuesday, Lixie and I met and went to the Murder in the Library exhibition at the BL, which is an A-Z history of crime fiction.



If you have half an hour to spare and you're in the King's Cross area, this is a wonderful way of spending time.  (We spent longer, but then we hadn't seen each other for 2-3 years and both review this sort of book quite a lot.) We both came out with a short reading list of unknown authors, and shared some we both enjoyed.

On Thursday, Knitdaisies  came to stay overnight before a conference in Cambridge on the Friday, and we stayed up way too late and ate soufflés and spelt risotto and giggled a lot.

And then on Saturday after knitting I bumped into SusieH and her family in the waiting room at Cambridge station, and had to haul out the new steek to show her...  I haven't forgotten we need to get together soon!

Tethera

Hadn't made a great deal of progress on this by the end of last weekend; and then managed to lose the battery-charger for the camera (which was exactly where I normally put it; I've been off work for 3 days with a stinking cold which left me completely unable to think for the first day and a half!).  So here's a photo of the blanket tonight:



One row of ewes to go before there's steeking...  eek.  Must check I have a 3mm crochet hook.

The first set of the second batch of ewes was... interesting.  Knitted them on Tuesday, with a temperature, and must have tinked as much as I knitted.  If a row of Fair Isle sheep turns out abstract, you know there's something going wrong...  Knitted along to iPlayer versions of Bake-Off for Comic Relief on Wednesday and Thursday and made more mistakes but corrected them.  There is something so compelling about watching people bake things on TV.  I'm really looking forward to Ed Byrne competing in the last one...  Anyway, back to the blanket.

I've been reading up on Ravelry, and a lot of people found the edging was quite wavy and loose before strenuous blocking.  Looking at the instructions, you need to pick up 1 st for every cast-on/cast-off stitch and nearly 1 st for every row, which seems a lot to me for a garter-stitch edging where I'd normally skip one stitch every few depending on the weight of the yarn.  I'm also aware that my tension/gauge was slightly out on casting on, so I'll already have used a little more of the yarn than intended, and the yarn's meant to make both the blanket and a hat.  So I think I'm going to stick to my usual thing with 4-ply yarn, picking up 4 of every 5, and that should save me a small amount of yarn; my garter-stitch tension will already be looser than my Fair Isle tension, so that might make up for it...

Tan

More progress on the Rams and Yowes Blanket in this second week - one row of rams from the end of the second section, and well over halfway through the Fair Isle portion of the blanket (the centre is marked by the row of diamonds).  Really enjoying this!  It really is too big to be carrying around now though, so any progress made will be in evenings and weekends when I don't have that much knitting time...

Already looking at other Fair Isle projects in my pattern books and Ravelry queue...

Yan

Nearly a week's worth of the New Year gone, and the Christmas decorations have come down, with regret as ever.  Tiny Clanger has gone back to the small felted coracle on top of the bookcase she usually shares with her male Clanger companion, and I'm clearing the top of the dining table in preparation for warping up the loom again.

But I have a New Year's Project, the Rams and Yowes Blanket by Kate Davies; the kit was a Christmas present from my parents.  It's knitting up surprisingly quickly so far! There are some long floats (12 st) there, but I think I've kept the tension pretty straight up to now, and the central section has less solid patterning...

I'm counting the posts for this project in (one of the many versions of) traditional shepherd's count style....

Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Mumph, Hither, Lither, Auver, Dauver, Dic, Yahndic, Tayndic, Tetherdic, Metherdic, Mumphit, Yahn a mumphit, Tayn a mumphit, Tethera mumphit, Methera mumphit, Jiggit.