Thought I’d just show you a cushion that Mum has just finished making.  It’s like the St Ives Cushion I did recently, just in different colours.

It’s made with three balls of kidsilk haze, pink, yellow and green.  You knit with two strands at a time and by doing so you can use one strand in one colour, and the second strand in a different colour to achieve a blend or colour wash effect.  In this case Mum blended the yellow and green.

The back is a 50cm piece of Amy Butler fabric – this one’s called Happy Dots.

It’s been ages since I last blogged, but I have finished a couple of things in the interim, one of which is the St Ives Cushion.

The pattern is from Little Luxury Knits by Alison Crowther-Smith, and uses 3 balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze.  I’ve never knitted with Kidsilk Haze before and quite enjoyed it.  It’s not that easy to rip back though, so you need to be careful not to go drastically wrong.  

The clever thing about this pattern is the way the two shades of red are blended together.  You knit every row with two strands of yarn, but the two strands are not always the same.  What I mean is this: you start by knitting a few rows with two strands of blue.  Then a few rows with two strands of dark red, then a couple of rows with one strand dark red and one strand light red, then a few rows with two strands of light red.

I backed this cushion with a piece of Amy Butler fabric, called French Wallpaper in duck egg blue.  I love this fabric.  It’s such good quality and the pattern is so pretty.

Tomorrow is World Wide Knit in Public Day and there’s going to be a gathering in Plymouth which I’m planning to go along to. I think there’s a group planning to come up from Cornwall, but it will be nice to meet other knitters from Plymouth.  Maybe they’ll be interested in coming along to our Knit and Knatter group.  I hope it doesn’t rain!

On Wednesday I finished the cupcake cushion and it is exceedingly comfy. I have it on my bed and it is so soft to lie on whilst I read.

For those interested, it is a design from 25 Cushions to Knit by Debbie Bliss

The front panel is a combination of moss stitch and stocking stitch. Easy to do, although I did find that with the yarn I used – Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino – it was easy to put the needle through the strands of yarn, rather than the whole stitch. Not a big problem, just something to watch out for. The actual pattern calls for sewing buttons and beads on, but I decided it would make it uncomfortable to lie on if they were there.

This is the back, the pattern of which I modified quite a lot. Had I been using beads, I think it would have been ok as written, but when I started it just looked odd, so I added the vertical stripes instead and was very pleased that I even managed to knit this fair-isle style using both hands to hold the different colours. At least on the knit rows. Purling was impossible. I just couldn’t do it for some reason, so I sort of devised my own method of hooking the one of the colours around with my thumb, so that I didn’t have to completely drop the first colour. It works for me, so I guess that’s all that matters. Maybe I’ll try and video it sometime in case other people are having the same problem.

I went to John Lewis in Southampton yesterday and bought 8 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky and a Debbie Bliss book – Simply Living, which has a collection of nice patterns including cushions, slippers, jumpers, jackets, blankets and bags. Both yarn and book were half price, so it would have been rude not to buy them! Don’t know what I’ll use the yarn for yet.

I finished the first side of the cushion cover last night… finally!  It took ages.  It’s turned out OK and I think it will look pretty good once blocked.

I think I need a break from the cushion now. I haven’t worked on my brother’s cardi for ages, so I think I ought to get back to that this weekend.

Here’s another square I did this week:

Really, I have. In fact everyday last week I spent at least a couple of hours knitting. But the cushion cover seems to be taking forever to grow. I’m half way through the front piece now and it’s been relatively plain sailing. I did make a couple of small mistakes where I purled and should have knitted, but I was so chuffed that I was able to fix these odd stitches without having to undo entire rows. Mum showed me how to take the stitch off and pick it up again the correct way around.

Was bored with the cushion last night, so whilst watching It Takes Two, Holby City and Spooks (a great evening of TV!) I did a couple more blanket squares with balls of yarn that came with the magazine a few weeks ago. The patterns they suggested in those two issues, were boring – yet another plain garter stitch square, and another reverse stocking stitch square with a star embroidered on.

Boring, boring, boring…

So I picked out two new patterns from the stitch library pages that come each week as part of the magazine. From what I can tell, these patterns aren’t going to be used in later issues as part of the blanket pattern, so I thought it would be nice to include them.

Zigzag Stitch

Offsetting purl stitches creates this zigzag effect.

Rose Stitch

I chose this one because of the name really – Rose is my middle name and the name of my great, great grandmother, who was by all accounts a lovely lady.

Rope cable square

Needs blocking – I know.  But you get the idea.  I like cables.