Blanket of Death!

When I tell people about my 'Blanket of Death' project, they often tell me, 'You can't call it that!' or 'That's not a nice name'. To that, I say, 'I can' and 'It is'. It was named after a song called 'Angel of Death' by the Thrash Metal band, Slayer (Of course! Thrash metal and knitting go together like...Tasmanian Devils and kittens). Besides, if I called it something else then I would no longer be able to do this:

This young man is doing a lovely rendition of Slayer's 'Angel of Death'

in order to relieve my frustration and, let's face it, there's plenty of that during the 'creative process'. Think of of it as a form of catharsis: I get all 'roaring like a big, hairy man' so that I don't have to stab people with my hooks and needles, thereby doing humanity a huge favour. No, no, please, don't thank me, it's all in the name of philanthropy.

It's taken me a while to decide on colour combinations but the the top picture shows my final choice for the main square and border colours. The orangey one is actually a bit more 'pale coral' than 'worrying vomit' in reality - don't you just love how weird colours can be on screen? I decided to choose Oaty and Scrummy Plum for the border:

When I knitted the brown square, it took every single ounce of effort not to eat it because it resembled Cadburys chocolate in its purple wrapping. If I'm rushed into hospital one day for a 'yarnectomy', you'll know why.

The squares are knitted diagonally and then I've crocheted the same type of border as the Doggy Blanket  from my last post. I'm pretty happy with the results, although the teal one was a practise and so it looks like it's got a bad hangover (you know, the kind where you can only open one eye at a squint) These have not yet been properly finished - you can see some fuzzy ends sticking out here and there. They also need to be blocked, so they will be beautifully square and lovely in the end.

Going back to 'Things that make you want to scream like Satan with a stubbed toe', check out my progress with the 'Brioche Stitch Cowl of Woe':

The observant amongst you will notice that there is a lifeline (you thread some yarn through the stitches you have on your needle, so you can rip back to there if needs be) just above a very wonky looking row. Yeah. Major lesson learnt: do a life line before you balls up. I had to rip back quite a number of rows because I made a mistake and then had a HELL of a time trying to get the stitches back onto the needle the right way round.

Didn't work. That's why it looks like it's gone on a bit of a wander before getting its arse back to where it should be. Never mind, it will be all bunched up when it's worn and no one will notice and I won't care anyway and why are you looking at me like that is there something WRONG WITH MY SCARF?!

Deeeeeeep, breathe...might need to check out that screaming video again...

My next task is to look up a simple crochet pattern for Rob's hat. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Ravelry I go!

Doggy Blanket: Knit & Crochet

Last time, I showed you a picture of the moss stitch neck-warmer that my son hijacked to become a Doggy Blanket. I made vague threats to crochet a border around it but have had little time and energy to devote to handicrafts owing to bogging family illness over the Easter break.

I was not thwarted for long! We were going to Hobby Craft for storage boxes and I thought I must be able to pick up a basic hook because I don't have any. I was fairly impressed that there's something of a decent knitting/crochet section there since the last time I visited: Pony needles, Rowan and Sirdar yarns, lots of patterns and magazines. They didn't have any 5mm hooks, so I grabbed a 4.5mm. I figured this would make the stitches a little tighter but this didn't really matter for this little project.

Here's what I started with, which was me just doing moss stitch in Sirdar Supersoft Aran until it was big enough to cover the beloved Doggy:

I borrowed some Poppy and Tangerine Sirdar Supersoft Aran from my Blanket of Death project and followed a You Tube video by Liat Gat on how to crochet a border around a knitted square. The first row came up a bit squiffy because the yarn in the blanket had become very fuzzy in places (note to self: crochet borders before giving blankets to toddlers who will inevitably chew, rub and generally abuse them). It was hard to see precisely where I should insert the crochet hook in a lot of places.

This is how it looked after the first row:

I found that the wonderful thing about crochet is its flexibility: it's easy to see what you're doing, where you've gone wrong, how to correct and to kind of patch it up a bit. By the time I'd crocheted three borders, the mistakes of the first where much less pronounced. I will freely confess that there is little method here but this didn't seem to matter. I confess, I really rather enjoy the madcap freedom of crochet compared to the seeming rigidity of knitting. There, I said it.

Whether this glorious sense of freedom is a genuine feature peculiar to crochet or I'll trip up further down the line because I wasn't conscientious enough to learn properly remains to be seen. For now though, here is a happy boy with his faithful canine companion, who has a natty new blanket for sofa snuggles:

(Yes, he has several of them. We thought we were canny buying a few - one in the wash, one at my parents', one for emergencies - but we didn't count on the uber-canniness of a toddler who notices absolutely everything all the time. In short, we were rumbled and he now sleeps up against the wall in bed)

A Tale of Two Stitches

This picture is me getting on really well with a brioche stitch cowl in Debbie Bliss Paloma yarn. I got the yarn in a sale (along with a couple of others, which I have plans for already and will roll out for you at some point) at the Jelly Knit Night:

It's baby alpaca and merino and therefore very bouncy and I-will-squeeze-it-to-death! soft. I knew it wanted to keep its squashy, airy character and so I found a great, simple cowl pattern here, got Knit Pro Nova  needle tips to go with my interchangeable set from Meadow Yarn (you can use straight needles but I love the ease and lightness of these babies) and got ready to learn brioche stitch. I was very excited about this project because I love the feel and colour of the yarn (I'm going with the orange and saving the pink for later), enjoy knitting big, chunky things and wanted to try rib stitch, of which brioche is an interesting variety. The advantage of brioche over the usual knit/purl combo is that this will end up being the same on both sides.

It looked an unholy mess after a couple of rows but, as if by magic, the distinctive cornrows of a rib stitch started to emerge. A miracle! I was really enjoying how quickly this was producing a very light but incredibly warm, springy and snugly fabric. I cannot extol the virtues of this stitch enough: it is delightful and the Paloma yarn seems made for it.

What I didn't bank on was the price of having a cowl with identical sides.

Shortly after the top photo was taken, I had completed about 10" of cowl and used most of my 50g ball of yarn (yup, this stitch is a hungry beast but worth it) when I suddenly realised I was faced with a stitch that I needed to slip but I had just slipped the last one, so I should've been on a knit two together. Oh dear. I studied the row and tried to work out what I'd done wrong but couldn't see how to rectify it. Feck. I tried ripping back a couple of rows but then couldn't get the stitches back on to the needle correctly. Feckity, feckity feck!

*kicks the living arse out of her knitting bag and makes noises like a possessed weasel*

*cough* That's better. Brioche stitch is pretty easy once you get going but it's complicated to fix if you get it wrong. The online advice I found wasn't very helpful and I think I probably need a better grasp of how stitches work to be able to problem solve. So, I decided to undo the whole thing, order a couple of 'sewing bible' type books to help my knowledge and start again. No point sulking, let's move on...

Having ballsed that up, I set upon completing the moss stitch neck-warmer from my last blog post. In the intervening couple of weeks it had been transformed into a 'doggy blanket' at the insistence of my three-year old (besides, I'd made a few mistakes in it and found a yarn that was much more 'me' in colour and feel - see Brioche Cowl tale of woe above). So here is the Doggy Blanket:

Moss stitch is good fun and, like brioche, looks unsightly for a few rows before the little springy tufts start appearing and you find yourself exclaiming, 'So that's why they call it 'moss'...' while your husband looks askance at you with an expression that lets you know just how much of a grip on reality you have: 'Great, she's talking to herself about the knitting now'. You just have to keep your brain in the 'knit, purl, knit, purl' zone and you'll be fine. It's the kind of thing you can whip up while having The Antiques Roadshow on (yeah, I know, I'm one rocking chair away from Googling for bed jackets and calling people 'Dearie').

I think I should crochet a border around this in some nice, bright colours (this crapifying weather has given me a temporary allergy to the muted and mottled) and I think that little journey will be a blog post for the future. In the meantime, I can use the stalled Brioche Cowl as an opportunity to demonstrate how to wind a ball of yarn from a hank (necessary if you're not going to sacrifice more sanity to the gods of knots and snags) and possibly how to troubleshoot when trying brioche stitch.