Starbuck's Mandala Hat

This is the second of the two hats that I made as a trade for the beautiful artwork created by this lovely lady (the first hat being Ma Cobb's Firefly Hat). This one continues the science fiction theme and is based on the beatutiful mandala mural that Starbuck (of Battlestar Galactica, of course) had painted on the wall in his quarters. The pattern was designed by quirkyknitgirl and lives here. It's a really great pattern - beautiful colours, gorgeous yarn and a simple but striking basic lace pattern, which shows up beautifully in the Cascade 220 yarn (which I sourced from the lovely people at PaviYarns).

I've not come across Cascade before, which is surprising given what a lovely range of yarns they make - and I'm really impressed with Cascade 220: the colours are stunning and it holds the pattern well without being too fiddly. The lace pattern is so simple and so effective - a basic moving 6-1 pattern - and very satisfying since it looks way more complicated than it actually is. Originally it was written as a circular needle pattern but I have problems with circs when it comes to maintaining an even tension, so I decided to work it on dpns, since I'm much more confident with them. It's a great hat pattern for someone who's mastered either dpns or circ's and wants to try something slightly more complicated, or someone who's mastered flat basic lace and wants to try something three-dimensional.

It's a brilliant hat and was great fun to knit - and another work-in-progress ticked of my list! Thanks again to Limlight for agreeing to draw my characters for me and challenging me to knit this hat!

Ma Cobb's Firefly Hat

So, it's been a while since I got around to posting on here. It's been a hell of a couple of months, let me tell you! As soon as I'd got into the swing of having a job, I lost it, so I'm back to being impoverished - but that doesn't mean I've not been busy, oh no. Not too long after that, we found out that we had to move house at short notice, which was pretty annoying since we'd just signed the new lease - landlords, I don't know - and it took us a while to find the new place. As you can imagine, crafting and blogging was rather put on a back burner, not least because all my crafty stuff was thereafter boxed up ready for the move.

Then, around three weeks ago, my stupendously awesome and wonderful Granddad passed away. One of those things that turns your life upside down. So in the middle of moving house - in fact, the very same week - I was in an entirely different county helping sort things in the house and organise the funeral and such. The Lovely Amanda and my Mr had to do all the moving themselves (which I still feel a bit guilty about).

Anyway, that's where I've been - hope it's been a bit less fraught for you lot *peers out of the screen*.

A while back I coralled all my partially done projects into a box and posted them here. The ones at the end of the list - but funnily enough with the highest priority - were a couple of sci-fi themed hats for my good friend Limlight (who has a home on Blogger here), in exchange for some of her beautiful artwork. She created two pieces for me, based on my Harry Potter fanfiction, Dreams and False Alarms: this one, of Hermione and my OC Amelia being all cousinly, and this one of Amelia, Lupin and Snape, upon whom she has something of an impact. You'll have to read it to find out what impact, of course *grins evilly*.

Right, the first of the two hats was based on the hat the formiddable Ma Cobb sends Jayne in the (amazing) sci-fi series Firefly - and if you havem't seen it, I'd highly recommend it. My Mr made himself one of these hats a few years back in slightly more muted colours (a picture can be seen in the WIP post above), and that turned out pretty well, so I knew it would be a blast. Limlight provided the pattern, which was created by Emisanboo over on Craftster, and it was really straightforward to follow.

The yarn (Alafoss Lopi), which I eventually tracked down here, initially felt quite scratchy for a hat, but it was surprisingly soft when I knitted it up. I used one skein of each of the following: Gold, Rust Red and Orange; Lopi are delightfully uninventive with their colourway naming, which was something of a relief after trying to hunt down some obscurely spelled laceweight, I can tell you. It knitted up beautifully, and showed off the stitches nicely without looking too neat - the idea being to match the rustic style of Ma Cobb. It was also fairly quick to work since the yarn was giant (well, giant considering I'm mostly using sock yarn at the moment).

The pompom proved tricky (which is why there's no image of the completed hat), mostly because pompoms are one area of craft that I have absolutely no clue about (I know they're supposed to be easy, everyone keeps telling me - I think I must have a pompom shaped mental block somewhere in my brain). Fortunately my Mr came to the rescue in flying colours - here he is, crafting said pompom and looking surprisingly gollum-like...

If you're a massive geek like me you'll love this hat - and it's such a satisfying make!

Pictures: Hat body: achieved!; Alafoss Lopi - I love this stuff!; My preciousssss pompomsssss.

Easter Knitting!

Hello crafters! Bones here! So, finally with the long Easter weekend, and the Royal Wedding/May Day Bank Holiday, I finally had some time to do some crafting!

With the sheer fact that I'm well aware that many of my friends are on the path to producing children in the near future, I decided that now was the time to learn how to follow patterns and make jumpers and hats! So, this was my first foray into such things. And I have to say, I'm rather impressed with how these turned out.

I started with the jumper.

This was a Sirdar pattern (Design 1220) made up using three 50g balls of Sirdar's Snuggly Stripes DK in shade 256. I planned to make this up for a 0-6 month old at first, before I realized that babies grow rather quickly, so 6-12 months would be better! It was the same amount of yarn etc. As a starter pattern it was fairly easy to follow - the trickiest parts being learning to pick up stitches for the neckband, working out what the pattern meant for the centre of the V-neck in the neckband, and learning how to sew seams. But once you work out exactly what you're doing, you're fine.

The easier of the two I have to say was the hat.

This T-bag hat is again Sirdar Snuggly Stripes DK in shade 252. I made this up for a 6-12 month old, which required two balls. Aside from the large amount of 2x2 rib (which got rather tiring after a while!) this was a very simple thing to knit. Making it up was simple in itself, making sure that half of the 2x2 rib band is sewn up the other way around to ensure that the seam is on the inside of the turn-up. The seam is sewn straight up the side, and then placed centrally at the back of the hat, before sewing across the crown. A few hours, some dedicated knitting, and a couple of seams later, and voila! One pretty baby hat!

I have more projects on the go (including more baby things, and a jumper not dissimilar to the baby one for myself) so I'll update you on the progress of those as I get around to finishing them!

Knitted Sweetheart Neck Sweater (aka, the big green jumper of awesome)

I've been working on the big green jumper of awesome for a while now, in between writing masters projects, attending trials and finding work; the first year of life of this jumper has been quite a year. One of my big problems when it comes to craft is that I have a tendency to get bored part way through a project and get absorbed into another - i'm working on this, it would be nice to get more stuff finished instead of having bags of half finished projects around.

Still, the jumper's finished now, and I love it - just in time for the first really warm day of the year, naturally - but because of the sweetheart neck it's perfect for those chilly evenings that take you by surprise after the first throes of summer. I got the pattern from a tiny knitting shop in Stafford (Knits and Needles) way back when I was still a placement student (which is a slightly horrificly long time ago now) and therefore the last time I was paid for work before this part-time thing at a soap shop I'm working on. It was in Twilleys Freedom Yarn too, which I've always wanted to work with and not had an excuse to - it knits up beautifully, as it turns out, and the varigation looks lovely. I remember thinking, 'I'll put this away for when I'm poor and don't have a project going', and it worked :) last christmas I found it in a blanket chest at home and was delighted at my own ingenuity (I had completely forgotten about it). I dug out my bits and pieces, as shown below, and got to it.

Now the early part of last year was complete hell, which I won't go into here, but having a juicy jumper project at my fingertips was a big help, and I managed to get the back done fairly quickly, but when it came to the front I managed to thoroughly confuse myself. It was no fault of the pattern, which I've since realised makes perfect sense, but my own ability to tangle my brain up into knots. I got to the point where I had to put it away for a while. A long while, as it turned out, partly because of the massive amount of work I was doing for the masters, and partly because we moved house and it went to live in the blanket chest again. I rediscovered it in early March and figured out that I was being dim about the front (which turned out to be so much easier than I thought *facepalm*). I've been working on it on and off (in between trying to write novels and fanfiction) in the evenings and this weekend I finally got it done - though I'm still not entirely sure I got the neckline right, but I like the way it turned out, even if I'm wrong. That's part of the joy of crafting :D

I'm dead impressed with myself, particularly as my only other jumper was a bit pants. There was a bit of a saga with the blocking and making up, partly because I've never blocked before (actually, I still haven't, taking my mother's advice of "who has the space / time?". Seems ok *shrugs*.) and partly because all the sewing up guides I found had very useful diagrams for sewing together everything except two diagonals. I eventually raided my ancient and much loved copy of The Marshall Cavendish Complete Guide to Needlecraft, which I rescued out of a skip at the back of the old textiles department in second year (I mean, really! Throwing out a book!), where I was advised to back stitch any seams that weren't overtly listed. I should really have looked there first, seeing as it's my craft bible, but it currently lives with the rest of my craft library under my printer and is therefore a bit of maul to get at.

Anyway, after a year of not really getting much done (you know, except the masters and moving house and finding a job) it was a wonderful feeling to finally finish something off - and have it turn out so nicely. Which it did, don't you think?

Spring Scarf

So, I ventured into the wool shop one day with my Mum who wanted to get a pattern and some wool to do a project with when I saw this wool. 100% Bamboo and in various shades. And so the idea of doing a scarf was born! I've never done something so simple and so quick in my life. Honest!

After about 4 days I had this. It's about 82 inches long and only 4 inches wide (when unrolled).

So what do you need? Well this!

Three 50g balls of Wendy Pure 100% Bamboo (or whatever you fancy using)
5 . 5mm knitting needles


Step 1. Start by casting on 20 stitches.

Step 2. Knit your first row.

Step 3. Knit the first two stitches, then purl until the last two stitches, knit last two stitches.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have the desired length! Simple!

Two and a bit balls of the Wendy's wool makes the scarf up to be 82 inches, which on my 5' 7" frame is to my belt. It also means I can wind the scarf once or twice depending on my mood. But really you could make this shorter, wider, different colours, whatever you feel like really!

I had this lilac colour wool which is Sirdar Just Bamboo already, and I've decided to do a similar thing here. With this I'm also doing a thin scarf, but becuase it is a block colour (not colour changing like the Wendy) I'm doing a 3x3 rib to gice it a bit of texture.

For this, simply cast on 21 stitches then work in a knit 3, purl 3 pattern for your first row, and purl 3, knit 3 for your second row, repeating until the desired length is required.

Just remember - whatever yarn you use, whether it's colour changing or a block colour, check that the dye lot numbers are the same!