Another free pattern? Really? Well, yes. Aeons ago, I designed and knitted this large piece of craziness:- I wanted to play with the idea of the mandala, subvert the medium a wee bit, so I knitted a picture of a mandala. The idea of writing up this monster as a pattern was then filed away in Volume XII of the Great To-Do List in the bottom left corner of my brain**, between ‘learn to speak Finnish’ and ‘organize my sock drawer’. But then a nudging comment on a recent post prompted me to Continue Reading
Knitted Mandala Picture… Finished!
(YES, THE SIGNED ARNE AND CARLOS GIVEAWAY IS COMING, NEXT POST!) Right now, my grin would make even the Cheshire cat look surly. I've finished the ****ing, ********ing, ******************************ing knitted mandala picture! Wa-hey! You know what? I gave up on the gold embroidery, because although it was lovely and glittery close-up, it just looked messy when viewed from across the room. So I unpicked it. But that meant that I'd, er, finished the mandala. At last. It's come a long Continue Reading
Blocking Your Knitting
Right. Before we begin, I just wanted to say that the (signed) Arne and Carlos giveaway is coming soon! As is a post about some rather gorgeously talented fellow bloggers and their amazing work. Meanwhile... Progress on the knitted mandala picture continues at a pace so slow that I was recently overtaken by a glacier whilst knitting. Having cut the steek to transform the mandala from a knitted-in-the-round tube to a flat piece, I decided to wash and block it, in order to enhance its Continue Reading
Tutorial: How To Steek
Steeking (aka setting your knitting up to be cut, in order to turn a knitted-in-the-round piece into a flat piece, for example to open up the front of a cardigan) tends to scare otherwise bold and courageous people. It feels vaguely wrong to take a pair of scissors to your knitting.Really, it shouldn't. Honestly. It used to scare me, until I tried it a few times, at which point I thought, "Is that all?" The secret is this: *whispers* Knitting doesn't especially mind being cut vertically. (Cut Continue Reading
Knitting Arne and Carlos
Oops, that was an especially ginormous gap. I have been here, at the brewery. And sometimes I've been knitting, but also I've been painting the living room (photies soon) and doing all sorts of other bits and pieces that sadly didn't involve yarn, such as doing final final edits on my MPhil in novel-writing degree coursework at three in the morning, and trying to remove rampant ivy (so dense that birds are nesting in it) from our tower, and digging the allotment, and seeing lots of patients Continue Reading
Watchin’ The Swatchin’
Yay! The swatch-of-randomness for the knitted mandala picture survived its experimental wash-and-block! (Bet you've been on the edge of your seats about that one. ;-) ) So. It IS possible to wash-and-block a mixture of rich, inky Fyberspates green, with an innocent little Wendy 5-ply cream. Looooooooook! Admittedly, the washing was brief and minimal and in cold water, with a Dylon 'colour-catcher' as a precaution. But there didn't seem to be any dye on the colour-catcher at the end, so Continue Reading
Mostly Outdoors
This summer, the toddler twinnage and I are spending lots of happy time (and a fair ol' portion of grumpy grizzly Mummy-I-Want-To-Go-Home-NOWWWWWW time) outdoors. Much of this hasn't been compatible with knitting/crochet, but the toddler twinnage seem to be under the impression that I should actively parent them. So we've been to say hello to the rescue donkeys (where we met a pig who, rather confusingly, kept saying 'woof')... ...and I knitted my way to a music Continue Reading
Flora, Mandalas.
Saturday evening staying-in indulgences: wine, knitting, and home-grown strawberries/raspberries. As I write this, please excuse the frequent pauses to take sips of wine. Also, the increasingly slurred writing as I proceed through this post... The Stoic Spouse is away for a few days visiting relatives, so I've been pottering about at home with the Toddler Twinnage, observing the garden:- Now I'm not someone who likes pink (sorry), or roses (sorry), but even I concede that the above is Continue Reading