Thursday 30 October 2008

Dwarven Battle Bonnet- pattern update

Just a quick note for anyone currently knitting the version of this with the red beard. I've just had it flagged up that there is a pattern glitch at row 36- it asks you to cast off 26st, we think its meant to be 40. I'm away from my knitting supplies for a few days so I can't reknit this section and triple check it until then, but if you are doing this version, please bear this in mind and prepare to look at your hat and do a few more cast offs! 

I'm very sorry about this, I thought we'd ironed any glitches out in testing but looks like this snuck through- I'll re-issue the updated pattern to everone who has it as soon as we've got this sorted out!

I'm always grateful to hear of any problems with any of my patterns, I do my best to send them out ready for action but sometimes daft errors escape and it helps so much to hear about them when they show up

Monday 27 October 2008

Adventures with my sock machine

Just been having another go at doing toe up socks on my CSM. I had a go at doing it this way up a couple of years ago, but I was using silk and it got very snarled up.  Todays attempt in wool was rather more successful, so here it is step by step:

Start by joining in your sock yarn and go straight into making a toe by the usual method (white yarn is waste, cream is the sock yarn)














Then, drop the remaining toe stitches onto the relevant 
needles- this is the bit I was finding hard- wool is indeed much easier but its still a bit of a stretch on my 84 cylinder:











then you just crank on until its time to do the heel, you 
 can just see the line of waste yarn where you would normally have to kitchiner- that can be ripped out once the sock is off the machine.









and finally, more for
 comedy value than anything else, the sock on the machine once the waste is ripped off:

Friday 3 October 2008

I can knit a Rainbow


As an excercise in reading a lace pattern I've spent a few evenings working on the Zetor Scarf. I used some extremely vintage yarn which sadly had a few weak spots, and this put me off making the scarf more than a very small headscarf size, I also managed to repeat a couple of rows in two places, which threw the pattern out, but I decided not to frog back as this was very much a learning excercise. 

Overall, I liked the pattern a lot and intend to make it again with a bit more concentration.

I've also been working on historic hats for the next Living History Fair, and much as I try to use up my stash, more yarn keeps coming in from swaps- oops!