all sorts of everything

I finally bought a ball of cotton thread (which goes by the strangest name of Caron Mammy) and swatched the crochet paisley motifs for this cardigan. The pattern calls for a size 3/0 (3mm) Japanese crochet hook but I had to go down to size 0 (1.75mm) hook to get gauge. Above are 2 paisleys that are too big and wrongly crocheted. They turned out wrong because the chart in the magazine was too small and I couldn't see clearly (I have reached the stage where I truly need reading glasses because I am having problems threading needles), until my husband scanned it and enlarged it for me. Below is the correct swatch at 10cm X 6cm. I love this shade of red which is accurately captured in the photo below, but I'm feeling a teeny bit chicken about making the cardi in red after all.

It took me a few nights to finally get back into the begere defrance cardi pattern because it is in French and being the disorganised knitter that I am, my 'translation' consisted of a string of numbers, haphazardly jotted down, with no indication as to where they belonged - back, front or sleeve? All of which made very little sense after a lapse of so many months. Anyway, I managed to get back on track to finish the 2 fronts and I located the numbers for the sleeve increases and decreases. Here's the the body and the first sleeve, all in need of serious blocking. I am having trouble seaming the shoulders. I just can't get the purled parts to look right. And I haven't read the finishing instructions (the collar) yet, so I might still have some hurdles left to cross.

My wips have been very uninspiring lately. It has been down to sheer willpower to keep knitting my not-so-dreamy-anymore cardigan. I don't dislike my wips, I'm just not in the mood to knit them. I have been wondering whether it's the projects or whether it's me. Lately, I have been feeling too tired at night to knit and I end up sleeping much earlier then usual. Today, it finally dawned on me that my malady is due to the haze that has enveloped us for weeks. My eyes are smarting and tearing at the end of every day, probably causing my sleepiness and the dust triggered my sinus allergies and I had a sore throat and lost my voice 2 weeks ago. Fortunately the monsoon rains have finally cleared up the haze and we're back to safe air quality but the skies are still murky. When the sun comes back, that's when I think I will regain my cheery knitty self. Now I can understand how some people feel down in winter from lack of sun.

In fact my whiny fog lifted yesterday when I met up with Siow Chin and her family. Knitty company is really good for the soul. Not to mention these lovely presents that she brought. Thanks, Siow Chin, for brightening my day!

organising

I spent some time organising my fabric stash. It's only 2 bags full, not as bad as I had imagined. I like the plastic window that allows me to see inside. I think I should buy some of these bags for my yarn stash as well. Maybe if I organised all the stash yarn in one place I will see that it's not that much after all.

I rounded up all the stray wips, and put those that I want to complete in this organiser so that they won't be forgotten. There's my begere de france cardi, my print o wave shawl (in the lilac striped bag), my daughter's Jenny (in the light blue bag) and a crochet bag (in the denim bag). I found 3 other wips that I have to decide whether to frog.

I also did a check to see how well I have done in terms of knitting the stash. I knitted 8 items this year, out which 6 were knit out of stash yarn. I was feeling quite pleased with myself until I remembered that I had added a bit of yarn (7 projects worth, if I recall correctly) to the stash as well, which brings me back to square one, or worse! I thought I was doing quite well so it was quite a shock to me that I hadn't made ANY progress at knitting up the stash!! Not buying any yarn is impossible, as we all know. In fact I have a project in mind that would be perfect for some Rowan Tapestry that I saw at the lys last week. I think I just have to live longer, you know, outlive the yarn?

Shrugged

Yarn: Rowan 4 ply soft (2 plus balls)
Needles: lace body 4.2 mm (Clover size 7) and lace edging 3.75 mm circulars
Pattern: Richmore 92
Date started: 24 September 06
Date completed: 15 October 06

I didn't manage to block it smaller, so the pouchiness in the underarm is still there. You can see it from the back. Wool sure is warm, though, even when it is 4 ply and there are lots of holes in the knitting.

I would like to make a loose and roomy shrug next. Something like a swingy cardigan. But I have to finish my begere defrance cardigan first. I checked my blog archives to see when I had started it and I was surprised that I had started it in January. Where did all the knitting time go?

hiccups & priorities

Last week, I spent most of my evenings sleeping, so there was minimal progress on the shrug until the weekend. Anyway, after the third try knitting the lace edge, I decided to go with the reverse stockinette side. I re-knitted the other sleeve edging to match, seamed the sleeves, picked up 322 stitches on the body and knitted one row in the round before I realised that the stockinette side was showing right side up. I had to undo and pick up 322 stitches again in the opposite direction so that I can knit stockinette from the inside with the reverse side showing right side up. Finally, despite all the hiccups along the way, the shrug is finished and here's a photo of the first blocking.

Note to self: it was a good idea not to weave the ends in yet because I had to stretch the sleeeve seam a bit to block it to size according to the pattern dimensions. I am re-blocking it as it turned out a bit too loose at the underarm so I'm trying to see if I can block it smaller. I wasn't sure how the edging would turn out because it looked like this before blocking.

Blocking has completely transformed the edging. Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the snug fit that I'm hoping to get. Will have to wait for it to dry and try it on again.

I have also been going through my wips and thinking about what I should try and get done first. Given that I have limited time for knitting and too many things that I want to knit, going about things in a haphazard way may not be the best way. So I tried prioritising, and my begere defrance dream cardi (the peachy pink cabled number below) came out on top of the wip pile. Now that I have picked it up again, I wonder why I had set it aside earlier. I am aiming to finish this by the end of the month, so I have 2 1/2 weeks to finish the 2 fronts and sleeves. I'm wondering if giving myself a deadline will help keep my mind on finishing, instead of being distracted by all the new designs that I want to knit.

baby quilt

Thanks so much for your encouraging words and advice about the ripping. You are right, sometimes patience is needed to work out the knitting hiccups. It was good to take a break from the shrug because it gave me a chance to get back to the sewing machine which I have not touched in a month.

I sewed my first, err ... I'm not sure if it should be called a quilt. I didn't quilt it for fear of messing up. I sandwiched batting between two fabric pieces and sewed a binding with mitred corders. I learned how to do the mitred corners from a quilting magazine. I used a 4 inch wide strip of fabric for the binding so that I would have one inch seam allowance and a foldover of an inch on each side. Here's how I did the mitred corners. Starting with the photo on the top left - when I reached the corner, I stopped sewing about one inch way from the edge. Top photo right - I folded the binding fabric up and back down (bottom photo left). I then continued sewing straight from the top down (bottom photo right).

Turn fabric right side out, voila, mitred corner! Just wondering - is this how you do your mitred corners too?

I enjoyed sewing this crib sized quilt for my friend's baby. I finished off the binding with hand sewing and I hope it holds up to wash and wear!

Moral of the story? Think before you rip

Were you expecting to see my shrug today? Oh, how I wish. To cut a 3,320 stitches long story short, I had finished it this morning but realised that my lace edging did not look like the edging in the magazine photo. Theirs looked like it was done in garter stitch and according to the pattern, was 18 rows but looked narrower. I did mine up to 10 rows only but it already looked much broader. So I ripped 3.320 stitches of the body edging. Why didn't I just frog the sleeve edging? Because I had seamed the sleeve up from the edging to the armhole. There was no way to just frog the sleeve edging without ripping the body edging. But it would still have been worth it if the garter stich version looks nicer, right? Wrong! My garter stitch edging looks worse, nothing like how it looks in the magazine photo. Words fail me ....

Garter stitch lace edging on the left and my first version of the lace edging on the right

To distract myself from my misery, I think I'll go and attack some fabric with my sewing machine before I tackle those 3,320 stitches all over again.

After dinner dessert

mooncake with a bit of decorative gold leaf

Inside - sweet lotus seed paste wrapped around a salted egg yolk and encased in a thin pastry

The savoury egg yolk complements the sweet lotus paste and goes well with Chinese tea. In fact I prefer them with double yolks - definitely not for the cholesterol wary! If you are not familiar with moon cakes, this is the only time of the year that it is available - in celebration of the mid-autumn festival.

Now for my knitting update. When I started knitting the second sleeve of my lace shrug, I found that the pattern would not align perfectly because the stitches are off by one when I picked up from the provisional cast on and knitted on the opposite side. You can see what I mean by looking at the the join between the 1st row of diamonds and the 3rd row - that's the provisional cast-on. Contrast with the join between diamond 2 and diamond 4. I don't really mind it because it is not that obvious from a distance, but I wonder if there was anything I could have done to avoid it ... perhaps there was something in the Japanese instructions that I cannot read.

I will have enough yarn after all, thanks to the amazing yardage of Rowan's 4 ply soft. I used about one ball for each side and now I have one entire ball left to knit the edging around the shrug. I like the way this design uses a lace edging instead of ribbing (modelled by my daughter above). I'm now going to pick up and knit the 300 plus stitches worth of this lace edging around the body. It's only 18 rows but I have a feeling that this will take much longer than I think.