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!

The sock continues… I turned the heel ok I think and now am working on the gusset shaping.

But here’s a recent finished project.

This was my second felting project and it was a lot easier than last time.  The pattern was from a recent issue of Let’s Knit magazine and the felting wool was from Knitting4fun.com

Knit on 10mm needles, it was quick to knit and turned out huge.  I wasn’t sure how much it would shrink when felted, but it shrank to just the right size.  I felted it by simply sticking it in the washing machine at 40 deg C.  I might line it with some pink fabric when I get time.  It was supposed to have a flap to do it up, but  I didn’t have enough fushia pink wool left to do it – the only draw back of the pattern and its yarn requirements.

Yay! I’ve finally finished something. The passionflower top is done and I love it! It fits really well and is probably the best item of clothing I’ve knitted so far.

The yarn was Sublime Soya Cotton DK in pomegranate. It’s a nice yarn to work with but I have a feeling that there will be quite a lot of dye coming out when I wash it. My fingers had a red tinge to the them as I was knitting!

The pattern, which was featured in the August issue of Knitting magazine, was very straight-forward and it knitted up quite quickly – I only started this a couple of weeks ago. Initially I didn’t swatch and used a whole ball of yarn before I realised that it was turning out a bit bigger than it should, so I had to undo it all and start again on smaller needles. I think I also made a mistake in the number of rows I did in reverse stocking stitch on one side. Both the back and front came out to the right measurements and holding them together they were the same length, but the point where you switch from reverse to normal stocking stitch wasn’t quite in the same place. Whoops! Didn’t matter too much though as I was able to ease it together correctly when I seaming.

I also learnt the proper way to do mattress stitch on two pieces of reverse stocking stitch. (The Knitter’s Bible book to the rescue.)

I would quite happily make this top again.

Now… time to finish the blanket.

Yay! I’ve finally finished something. The bag is done and it didn’t turn out too bad. In fact I’ve been using it for the past couple of days.

I guess it took me so long because I was putting off the sewing side. I had to line it and also put in some stiffening around the gusset. I’m not very confident on a sewing machine, but fortunately my Mum is amazing and guided me through it.

I’ve now started my brother’s jacket and enjoying it so far.