Skirting the year's-end

The daughter had a recent growth spurt and needs new clothes. She’s at the in-between stage, no longer a little girl, but not quite a big girl yet, so it is difficult to find clothes that fit. I promised to try and whip out something. Here’s the trial run, first attempt. She chose some navy and checked fabric from the stash. We worked out a simple design that I could sew. I drafted an A-line paper pattern with her hip and length measurements. As is usual for me, I had to re-draft the front piece because I got the length wrong. I used the zig zag stitch for the first time on the edges of the seams. It has an elastic waist because I haven't conquered the sewing of zippers. She requested some embroidery or applique. I found these butterflies in one of my Japanese magazines and added the felt flower. The embroidery was so fun, I'll have to look for other things to embroider. So anyway, here it is. I'm glad it fits and does not look too bad, so I can use this pattern again. And Joy, you were right, the scarves were not my last FOs after all. I thought I wouldn’t be able to finish any more knitting in just a few days, I completely forgot that I was sewing this skirt.

2005 has been a good knityear for me. I want to thank all of you for opening up a whole new world of knitting and crafting for me, for sharing your beautiful creations and being such an inspiration. I wish you all a Good Knityear in 2006. There’s so much more to knit, sew and learn.

Last FOs for 2005

Baked these pecan butter cookies from Everyday Foods. Yum! Tastiest cookies I've ever made. The best part was the kids didn't like the pecans, so I ate most of the cookies all by myself. Thank goodness the recipe did not provide the number of calories per cookie!

Here's where I knit at home. I usually sit on the floor, but lately I have been sitting in that chair. It is in the corner of the room which we call the TV room. The TV stopped working a few years ago, but we still call it the TV room although there's no tv watching anymore. The sofa next to the chair is the son's favourite jumping ground. I am always in fear that he will fall on my knitting needles while excuting one of his jumps. Everyone likes to sit, lie or sleep on the sofa, but no one wants that corner chair because there isn't enough room to lounge or jump in it. And that is the reason why the chair is all mine (like the cookies).

I have finally finished the scarves. Not the best photos, but scarves are impossible to photograph, they just bunch up when worn. The edges of the maroon scarf rolls, so note to self: one edge stitch is never enough. The horseshoe lace was my first encounter with mindless lace knitting.


Grey Scarf 5" by 66"

Yarn: cleckheaton merino supreme 4 balls

Needle size: 5.5 mm

Pattern: Cashmere scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts

Maroon Scarf 6" by 70"

Yarn: Victor yarn 2 balls

Needle size: 4mm

Pattern: horseshoe lace pattern from sister scarves grafted in the middle

Have a joyful christmas

This crocheted cross represents what Christmas means to me and family.

A celebration of the birth of Christ.

Wishing all my knitting friends a God-Blessed Christmas

Trying to stay focussed

I borrowed my kids' Buzz Lightyear bucket. Mouseover the photo to see what's inside. Cool techy technique from Nona.

I am knitting the last 2 gift scarves for the year. Scarves are deceptive. You think they are quick knits because they take only a couple of balls of yarn. But somewhere along the way, they take forever to knit, because it starts to get boring. To break the monotony, I knit a couple of rows of the maroon lace scarf seen above and then switch to knit the other one below. Next to the scarf below is a book that has projects you can make from old jeans. Mouseover to see inside the book. The daughter recently had a growth spurt and outgrew a few denim skirts. I just need to pysche myself up to do some cutting and sewing. I find that there are many of us who are nervous about cutting fabric because there is hardly any room for error. And wrestling with the sewing is also something that isn't so fun. Someone should invent a machine that sews like a dream and make my projects look great.

I'm staying focussed on finishing the scarves even though I'm terribly tempted by this - I was reminded of how much I like this cardigan by Lois. Sort of like an Anthropologie sweater I once saw online. I checked my stash. I have just enough Jaeger extra fine merino aran to knit it. Serendipitious. (Just in case you are wondering, I still have stash yarn that has not been photographed yet. Too tedious to bring them down from the highest shelf in the cupboard and then stack them back.)

Now for some non-knitting ramblings. Once in a while, I buy fashion magazines to look at and discover how outdated my dressing is. I recently bought a copy of the November issue of the Japanese MORE magazine. Thus inspired, I decided to update my wardrobe with something I have not worn in years. I bought jeans, boot leg cut jeans. These jeans sure look way better than the jeans I wore in the 70s/80s. For that matter everything I wore back then were fashion nightmares - the Dallas shoulder padded stuff and pleated pants! Pleated pants make your bottom look 10 times larger. Does anyone out there remember wearing shapeless Japanese inspired outfits? They were so shapeless, I sewed them myself - maybe that's why I looked so bad. And I had permed hair. I even had a beehive perm by mistake. When I turned up in college the day after, some of the boys stood outside the lecture theatre and sang that song from Grease after Olivia Newton John transformed into that curly hairdo. Never mind if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably too young to have watched Grease. I had the curls cut off, those were the days before hair straightening. And I looked wierd for a long time until my hair grew back straight. Any way, back to the jeans. I haven't worn jeans since I was pregnant with the son - and he's 5 already. The mysterious thing is that I'm wearing a size smaller than when I was in my 20s although I weigh a few kilos more now. There can only be 2 reasons. First, they are making jeans sizes larger. Second, the extra kilos have re-distributed themselves to other parts of my anatomy. Never mind, whatever, I like the idea of being a size smaller.

Magazine in which Ruffley Scarf appears

There has been a number of queries about the Japanese magazine in which this scarf apttern appears, so here it is. It is from the Let's Knit Series Autumn & Winter 2004-2005 ISBN4-529-04050-X

Have a good weekend!

Back from holiday

Last Saturday, I finished knitting a hat and wrist warmers for the daughter from the happy yarn, just in time for our trip to Hong Kong. Like a good crazy knitter, I was weaving in the ends, at midnite, just hours before our morning flight. It is interesting to note how the pooling pattern continues from one wrist warmer to the other.

The son wore his zippy cardigan, but he kept taking it off and running around in his T shirt. He loves the cold. He must have a very high metabolic rate or something. In future, I should knit him a sweater, he can't take that off so easily. By the way, if you look closely at the photo, you can see he's missing 2 front teeth, one of which fell out while we were in Hong Kong. The daughter on the other hand, was all bundled up in scarf, hat and wrist warmers. Definitely someone to knit for. And, that's me, finally getting the chance to wear my ruffley scarf.

We had a good time. We loved the food, especially the dim sum and crispy skin roast pork. We enjoyed the cold weather. It was a welcome change from perspiring all day. Of course the kids loved Disneyland - the son's favourite ride was Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. We all went on the Space Mountain ride too, by mistake. Haha, we didn't realise it was a roller coaster ride. When we came out, the husband asked the son if it was scary and he said, "totally scary!" We also visited some cousins and enjoyed the beautiful night view of Hong Kong from their apartment on Old Peak Road. I managed to visit one yarn shop. I wouldn't have found it if not for Jeanne's excellent HK yarn shop guide. Even the yarn shop owner was surprised that I had found her shop. She had exactly what I was looking for: Noro Silk Garden in Shade 88 and some Addi needles. Her shop was very crowded and knitters were taking queue numbers to consult the "sifu" (teacher) who appeared to be a man. In Hong Kong, I saw something I have not seen before. I saw ladies knitting on the go. One was walking while knitting a scarf and another was waiting for someone in the doorway of a shop early in the morning and standing, knitting a sweater. Wow, there are some serious knitters out there.

It seems that people in Hong Kong hardly sleep. On our last night there, we went to the street market after dinner, and there was so much to see that we didn't realise how late it was (past 11 pm) because it was still so crowded. The shopping was incredible, look at the goodies the kids brought home.

There was something else that seemed to have made an impression on the son - all the Cantonese being spoken and how everything was written in Chinese. He is now very interested in learning Cantonese and Chinese.

A pointy edged shawl of my very, very own

My maiden blocking attempt

Pattern: Flower Basket Shawl

48 inches width 24 inches length

Yarn: Katia Austral (less than 2 balls)
Needle size: 4.5 mm

I’ve wanted one of these pointy edged shawls for a long time. The strange thing is that I don’t like to wear triangle shawls, but I can’t resist the pointy edged ones. I like the way it looks over a crisp white shirt. It turned out to be the size I wanted, accessory size. But I wish I had used a larger needle as I wanted a more airy look for the lace.

I rinsed the shawl in water. The yarn bled slightly. I squeezed as much water out of it as I could. I used dressmakers pins (found at a bookshop) and blocked it on a towel on the mattress of the kids' old baby cot. I pinned the 3 corners first and then stretched a length of white yarn around the 2 bottom edges so that I could pin the pointy edges along the yarn line as a guide. Blocking is really not for the impatient. Ironing is much faster and more effective, but I wanted to try blocking. In my opinion, ironing achieves better results, but maybe that's because I need more practice with blocking.

We're going on holiday for a couple of days. Have a good week and I'll talk to you when I get back.

of ostriches, shawls and scarves

The kids had a good time at Kota Tinggi. They got to ride on an ostrich in an ostrich farm and see fireflies twinkling like Christmas lights on the trees along the river. I remember seeing fireflies in the garden when I was a little girl, but now my kids have to go so far to see them. I managed to knit a little, but on the bus ride back at night, it was too dark to knit, so I did the next best thing, I dozed off.

Knitwise, I’m finishing a flower basket shawl with the last 2 balls of my brinjal Katia Austral. I'm now knitting the edging. Would you believe that I counted my stitches at the end of every right side row so that I could catch my mistakes early and correct them right away? It worked. No frogging, no ripping. I don’t mind being slower, it is better than ripping. I am looking forward to blocking (ironing) it when I am done as this Katia yarn transforms into a drapey fabric. This yarn has incredible yardage too. With 10 balls, I managed to knit the Tudor Tasha shawl, a pair of gloves, a ribbed scarf and a flower basket shawl. The best thing is that I have more of this yarn in 2 other colours in the stash.

Which brings me to my stash. Since August, I have been knitting up my stash although I still buy the ocassional ball of yarn for small projects. Since then, I have discovered creative possibilities in the stash where I used to see only limitations. I had a sweater's worth of the brinjal Katia Austral, but I couldn't find any sweater pattern with the right gauge. I wanted to knit a shawl, and having no other suitable yarn, I used it and got a whole lot of mileage out of the leftovers. All this has made me stash happy instead of stash guilty. It is a luxury to have a stash to dive into when I am looking for something to knit.

Like now, when I'm planning to knit more gift scarves. This is the first year I am knitting presents. I used to think that no one would want these homemade things. I knitted the bulky yarn scarf for my niece because she and her family had just moved to Canada. The other day, her father (my cousin) e-mailed and jokingly asked why I was giving a scarf only to his daughter and not him. So now both he and his wife will be getting scarves too. I'm going to shop the stash for pattern and yarn.

Not the dream sweater

Last night, I sat down and sewed on the zip. It wasn't so bad, took me an hour and that's mainly because it was difficult to see what I was doing as I used black thread to match the black fabric of the zipper. I asked the son whether I could take a photo of him in the cardigan. His sweet reply was "no thanks, it's an itchy day". Ok, so this wasn't going to be easy. I managed to persuade him to put it on.

This photo on the left was the the first photo, he lay down just as I clicked. So I had to ask him to sit up. After a series of bad photos and to cut a long story short, here's the best one on the right. Please excuse the unsightly pose. He kept bouncing around all the time. He took off the cardigan and I went to have my bath.


Later, when I came back into the room, what did I see? The little guy was sitting at the computer wearing his not the dream sweater. He had put it on by himself, so there is hope that he may actually decide to wear it!! I think the secret lies in the zip - he likes the zip.


I am relieved that it fits. As I was knitting it, it really looked like it was going to turn out too short, but I plodded on and trusted the people at Berroco, that they knew what they were doing. I love raglan sweaters, knitting the mindless but beautiful raglan decreases and seaming the raglan sleeves, but until it is all put together, you never know how it is going to hang.

Not the Dream Sweater
Yarn: Cleckheation merino supreme 12 balls
Needle sizes: 4.5 mm and 5 mm
Gauge: 16 sts 22 rows

I have one more sweater’s worth of this yarn in pink that I bought to knit myself a zipped cardi too. I had this crazy vision of mother and son wearing a similar cardi in different colours. But I may have to use it for knitting other things instead. The reason is that the boy's sweater took 600g of yarn. If I make one in my size, I'll be wearing 1kg of yarn. Ok, I have never knitted a long sleeve cardigan for myself before - is a 1kg cardigan too heavy? I would really like to have a zip cardi in the pink yarn. Do let me know if you have any advice. Lesson learnt - take note of yarn yardage and weight.