Unravel - avoiding temptation

I avoided temptation

After I had finished the workshop at Unravel I looked to look at each stand (several times) and I didn't buy any yarn.  My resolution held firm.  However, when I made this resolution, nothing was said about patterns, or buttons.

The Textile Garden stand had me hyperventilating with the absolute wondrousness of their buttons.  I bought a silver coloured kilt pin for the next ribbed waistcoat I plan to make.

At Ida's House stand I succumbed to a Bakelite pin box, some buttons and a buckle.

The buckle - I love the styling and the crazed effect

Old plastic buttons, a pale lilac that doesn't show well on screen
In need of a bit of a scrub

I bought five of these tiny 8mm buttons. 
They look almost as if they will burst into life.

Susan Crawford

Swatching the stitch we looked at with Susan Crawford

I am on a yarn fast.  One of my 2012 objectives is not to buy yarn until some of the stash has been used.  So, I made sure to book myself on a course at Unravel therefore minimising the time I would have to be led astray among the wonderful stalls of colour and squishiness.  I figured even with the course fee it would be cheaper. 

I booked myself onto 'Interpreting and Working from Vintage Patterns' with Susan Crawford.  What a knowledgeable lady, not only about knitting, but about social history and all things vintage.  And although we all got too interested in home front issues of the war and the austerity period just after, and we all talked too much and ran out of time to knit, I learned a lot.

I came home and straight away swatched the stitch from the vintage pattern Susan shared with us.  She showed us how to dissect the pattern, look at what it tells you and what it doesn't and all the pitfalls and assumptions you shouldn't make.  I had several attempts before I mastered the stitch.  All down to terminology I think.  If you strictly interpret the yfwd printed in the pattern as a yfwd, you run into trouble and suddenly lose about 5 stitches.  I learned a lot just from battling with that.

Susan helped me understand a few things one of which is that I'm not far off in the way I look at vintage patterns.  I just needed someone with her experience to articulate a few things I hadn't quite grasped.  I had a good time and am inspired to start to use my collection in a practical way.  Susan gave me confidence.

Try the link to Susan's blog to see how she gets her inspiration for her knits and her books and the wonderful things she creates.
Susan Crawford's Blog

Unravel at Farnham, Surrey

Arriving for Unravel at Farnham, Surrey

It was that weekend in February when the wonderful Unravel show takes place at the Maltings in Farnham, Surrey, a pretty little town with a lot of history.  I knew Farnham throughout my childhood, we lived in a nearby village and it has many happy memories for me.  As I arrived for Unravel on Sunday the bells of St. Andrew's Church were ringing and the sky was a springtime blue.  I wandered the little cobble streets for a while listening to the bells and studying the little cottages clustered around the church.

In the car park and approaching the bridge to the Maltings, the clever Unravel people build up your anticipation by decorating the Victorian lamp posts with some rather fetching knits. 

Decorating the street furniture

Outside the Maltings the lovely people at Well Manor Farm had penned a Gotland ewe and her lambs to greet the visitors to the show.  The ewe was so tame and friendly that her lambs were completely unstressed by the whole experience.  They appeared to be rather enjoying all the attention.

Bright eyed and soooo pretty

All of this made me happy before I even got into the show.  More posts planned about what I saw inside.

Finished the first stash item of 2012

First stash item 2012 - the camera doesn't show the true 'redness' of this

I've long wanted to knit this aran waistcoat from the Third Sublime Aran book.  I have some very precious yarn in mind for it, but just wanted to check it out in something a bit less precious, so used a bright red, not wonderful acrylic that I had 'in the heap.'

Glad I did this and didn't go into my precious yarn straight away.  The things  I learned from this are :

1).   If you are doing a knit 3 purl 2 rib, it will always be twelve rows later when you find the place where you knitted when you should have purled.
2).  I can recover the above situation by laddering back to the error, correcting the stitch with a crochet hook and then using the crochet hook to complete all the stitches above.  It works fine as long as you don't twist any of the stitches.
3).  There is no armhole band.  The knitting just stops.  That's fine if your knitting stitches look neat at the ends of rows.  Not all mine do and so I'm going to have to experiment with my first and last row stitches to get a neat edge.  There is no advice on this in the pattern and this is one of the things I had my doubts about when I started, which is why I used cheap yarn first.  I edged the armholes with a little blanket stitch to tidy up.
4).  Rib stretches out when you cast off and so the seam at the top of the arm sticks out a bit.  I need to find a way to counteract that. 
5).  Although I have used a rather cheap, not great quailty yarn I have achieved a wearable, durable, knit that I'm rather pleased with.
6).  I can wear it with the shawl pin placed there for a whole day without stabbing myself in the stomach.

Second completed WIP of 2012

I finished my second completed WIP of 2012 (aiming for six).  This was a large tunic for my mother in Sirdar Indie (Navajo colourway) on size 12mm needles.  I did not love this object, I hate knitting on large needles and it's impossible to photograph.

Mum started it and couldn't finish.  She suffered a severe stroke in 2000, fell and broke her hip a couple of years ago which further impaired her mobility and she now has symptoms of Parkinsons disease.  The great love of her life is knitting and only in the last few months has she stopped.  Right until then she battled on, taking hours to complete a row.  Her patience is phenomenal. 

Mum (on the left) and her sister Lily in the 1980's
both wearing black handknit sweaters made by mum

Mum still takes pleasure from knitting.  Her monthly knitting magazines are read over and over, I have made a catalogue of her stash in a hard cover notebook so she can match patterns to yarn and daydream.  She still buys mountains of yarn at every chance.  She taught me to knit and has an eye for colour second to none.  I feel so grateful that we have this shared delight and can talk this language together.