Remember Jabba?
Jabba on his couch…
Here he is installed on Eric’s sofa. He takes most of it up!
I had all of these grand plans for the Christmas break. I was going to knit all the things and read and watch all the things, too. Of course the reality is that I was only able to knit, read and watch some things. I do seem to go in phases of knitting certain accessories. Berets have been a favourite recently but cowls are my current obsession.
Burnished Leaves Cowl
I bought this Mini Mochi yarn in shade 102 a couple of years or so ago from The Sock Yarn Shop. I’d had various ideas for it but I finally settled on the Burnished Leaves Cowl by Chrissy Prange. Somehow I managed to accidentally skip the several rows of garter stitch at the beginning, I plan to pick up stitches after I finish and add them then. A little of this yarn appears to go a long way. I think it’ll take under one 50g ball to finish this so I hope to make some coordinating finger less mitts to g with it.
This began life as a cowl inspired by one I’d seen on Ravelry. The original didn’t have details of the pattern so I made my own.
Looks like rib but it isn’t…
It was from some Rico Designs Creative Poems yarn that I’d bought in a sale. But as I knit, although I loved the pattern and the softness of the yarn, I didn’t love the colours. They seemed too dark for me, they were more manly colours really. So I asked Eric if he’d like it instead but as a scarf, not a cowl. I’ve knit two balls but I think it could do with being a fraction longer so it’s currently on a stitch holder while I see if I can find another skein in the store. One more would do it. I’ll post the pattern here soon.
Charlie and Billie are well but I came home on Saturday to a catastrophe. They’d broken my kettle! They knocked it off the counter top onto the hard kitchen floor tiles. It didn’t enjoy its encounter with the floor and refused to work any more. I’d hoped I’d be able to fix it but it was too far gone. Fortunately I picked up a cheaper kettle in the Argos sale. It’s not as good as my lovely Bosch one which could heat water to several temperatures for different tea types, but it’s a kettle and it helps make tea and tea is an essential in my house.
I’ve been knitting for thirteen years now but in recent years I’ve been quite curious about crochet. But aside from being able to badly make a chain for a temporary cast on when knitting socks, I’ve never been able to fully get to grips with it. I tried learning last year at a crochet club meeting at St Fagans and that didn’t work out well. It wasn’t the fault of the tutor, just that I couldn’t seem to grasp it. Learning a new skill can be harder than it looks and I really struggled. Holding the yarn was one of the hardest things, I’m so used to holding in a certain way for knitting that t feels unnatural to hold it any other way. But I’ve been falling in love with Attic 24… Lucy makes lovely things and she has such a fantastic sense of colour. If you’ve never seen her blog before go and check it out right now.
I went to a crochet workshop on Saturday and it was still a bit of a struggle for me but I understand more about the stitches now. My work’s quite messy but then I remember my first project when I returned to knitting in 2001. It was a scarf and I picked up so many stitches knitting it that it looked more like a weird sleeve at the end of it! I couldn’t even frog it as I split the yarn or something.
I started the yellow Granny square during the workshop and I began the multicoloured one yesterday. I don’t think I’ve joined the colours properly and my tension is awful but hopefully if I do enough of it eventually it’ll begin to click! I’m going to try and persevere and do a bit of crochet every day.