Knitting by Zen

This is the cutest thing which is funny given that they are (and to me as a child were!) scary as all get up!

Have a look here for more information.  

It’s been a long month, so here’s some top headlines:

1. YARN FOR SALE!! I have 11 8 skeins of yarn for sale at the moment, and in fact at least one of them is a double up, so if you bid on it you may end up getting a skein anyway.

2. I am getting the dye pot out tomorrow hopefully. It’s exciting to have orders to dye for, and plans for colours. I have a heap of REALLY exotic yarns (cashmere, mohair, silk etc) to dye up and sell and I’m excited to see how they go.

3. I knat a scarf for someone! She says she loves it too:

The scarf is knit for 45cm in cables, and then the remaining 100cm in a very simple "lace" stitch… To do the scarf, cast on 54 st (I used 8ply wool on 6mm needles) and knit 3 rows, then k3, (k1p1) 8 times, C16F, (k1p1) 8 times, k3. Knit another 7 rows. Then k3, C16F, (k1p1) 8 times, C16F, k3. Repeat until you are sick to death of cabling and wishing it wasn’t 30C when you were trying to knit it.

At this point you, like me, may decide to do something a tad more sensible than continue with the cables as it is about to get a lot warmer here. So the idea is that there is enough cabling to go around the neck, and then the lofty lacy part to get the length up, but without making your neck melt! To do this, I did a double decrease (slip 1, k2tog, psso), with a single decrease in the middle stitches of the row because there are 54 stitches in the row, which is not divisible by three! I then switched to 12mm needles (hah! You thought it was something exciting!!!) and I continued on my merry way.

The white splotch is a fantastic "From the knitting needles of Em" lable from a previous swap pal by the way.

4. I am now a Tupperware demonstrator. I think that makes me insane.

5. Some of my yarn has sold at One Planet Yarns! I am so excited about this for two reasons - firstly, I have $$ coming to me (which makes a big change for my student-inspired budget) and because it means people love my yarns!

6. I forget sometimes that knitters are people too. I know knitters from lots of walks of life, knitters who are older than me and even a few that are younger than me. I am surprised though when I come across knitters who are bigoted, racist, sexist or just plain obnoxious. I sometimes forget that being a knitter doesn’t *always* make you a nice person.

7. I’ve been dyeing yarn for my friend Mel as well:

For a change, these photos are crap. They were taken on an ugly table under false lights and don’t do the yarn justice in the slightest! The top yarn for example is emerald green, not a shade of blah. *sigh* 

8. I’m knitting another scarf:

It’s the Dayflower Scarf pattern and it’s lovely!

Last of all - Zaria says "I has a flava"

One exam down, one to go… I’m taking today to wind all of my tasty new yarns into skeins for sale. Very pretty yarns!

I mentioned earlier that I’d seen someone wonderful with a scarf made out of my sock yarn and I actually found it today! It’s over here at Bell’s Knits!! 

Dashing! I participated in a "Choose 3 for a 1 skein swap" swap with a knitting group that I’m part of, and my partner said that she liked pinks and purples, and wanted either a bag, fingerless gloves or socks. I had been meaning to try Dashing so I got some lovely wool out of my stash that Morgan dyed:

The one at the back there, all purple and pink, and turned it into:

The first three photos are of the first pair I knit for my pal Kate. The last photo on black is the pair I knit for me. I loved them so much I knit the darn pattern *4* times!

The first pair are near identical copies of each other, which is very cool! The second pair are pretty and lovely and all mine and highly coveted by lots of people. I have made plans *mwahahaha* to make some as gifts for friends as well. And my housemate has asked me to make some on commission for him!

I worked out after the first one that the cast off is not for me because it curls up! The way I fixed the curling over of the top of the glove was the funk-ify my cast off. I simply turned my knitting around, and cast off the opposite way to what I’d been knitting, but I knit where the stitch looked like a purl, and I purled where the stitch looked like a knit. So, with the pattern as k4 p1 on the right side, I turned and slipped the first stitch (looking like a knit), then knit and cast off 4 (looking like a purl) as I went, then p1 (that looked like a knit) and cast off, then k and cast off the next 4 (which looked like purls), then discarded the needle and continued around the top of the glove. When I got back to the starting point, my cast off was now 2 rows above the start of the row, so I picked up, k and the co a stitch from below, then picked up and knit and cast off another one, then picked up one randomly below all the knitting and knit and then cast off, then broke off the yarn and pulled the yarn through the last loop.

I guess what that does is turn the cast off into a garter stitch one rather than a stockinette one. Woo. 

The Sun tells us: 

"THOUSANDS of rich women were conned by a firm into believing LAMBS were valuable miniature POODLES.

Entire flocks were imported to Japan from the UK and Australia then sold by the internet company as the latest “must have” pet.

The bizarre scam was rumbled when Japanese movie star Maiko Kawakami complained on a talk show that her new poodle refused to bark or eat dog food."

Or not. But amusing all the same!