Saturday 31 December 2011

Mama Marmelade


Seeing as I blogged about Dad's Christmas present, here is Mum's too (now that she's got it and I can't spoil the surprise by posting about it on here too soon).

This was ably modelled by my friend Pam. Thank you!

Here's a bit more of a close up:


I thought I did well on the size.  I had to guesstimate and thought that at six repeats it wouldn't remain too small.  Yeah right!  I had no idea that blocking would get it to this size:


I wanted a pattern with some stocking stitch in it and not just all-over lace. This is beautiful.  It is from a Finnish pattern that thankfully had charts.  So, how difficult can it be?

Well, the chart symbols were just fine.  But it turned out that I couldn't make head or tail of a sort of wheat sheaf symbol and had to improvise.  I still have the correct amount of stitches, so this 'own version' of mine isn't a problem. I would have liked to get it closer to the original though because this stitch would have added a slight gather or butterfly shape to the top of the rounded bit of the motifs.

Still, it seems well enough!


The colours in the above pictures are a touch too sugary pink.  There is a light purple/lilac and a soft pink in this.  The following pictures don't show the right shades either - but here it goes, just to show what it looked like unblocked.

A bit of a close-up:


And while it was very much a work in progress:



The yarn is by Krafty Koala and I got it from Knit Nation in summer 2011.  I loved the colours, I quite rightly thought my Mum would too, but I didn't take into account that this is a gossamer lace weight.  Whoops!

Turned out well though, thankfully!

Wednesday 14 December 2011

Recently finished project


Socks for Dad, Christmas present.


The yarn is XXL Trekking in the Deep Blue colourway 451.  There are bits of purple and very short bits of a darker blue in there too.  It is very subtle which I love.  I think the following photo shows the colours quite well.

I would like to believe that this yarn makes for very good men's socks.


I didn't want to add too much design.  So I thought that just a bit of a cable running down each side of the foot from the gusset/heel point upwards would do nicely.  It gives me something interesting to do and doesn't make the socks too fancy.  I don't see guys being into complicated patterns much.

I should add that I designed these myself, from scratch.  I thoroughly enjoy doing that!

The foot part is completely plain.  Even though the yarn is superwash (I checked before I ordered.  I can't see my Dad hand washing his socks.  Can you?)  I expect the part that will be inside the shoes to go a touch felted.  Probably not a lot, but just that little bit.


I really enjoyed making these and now I just hope that they'll fit.  I asked for his measurements and am fairly confident that I stuck to them - the only thing is that I am a little worried about  is that they are not long enough - you have to pull a bit to get the foot length.  I understand that you should make socks with a negative ease of ten per cent and that's what I did here. So fingers crossed I guess!

Now I just have to send them hopefully in time for Christmas!