Some More Noro Kureyon

I have finally finished the jacket I have been making.  I am not sure that the collar is exactly how Debbie Bliss intended it to be but I am happy with it.  I find that knitted garments fall into 2 categories – either I finish them and wear them immediately or I put them in a drawer and never wear them at all.  I finished the jacket on Tuesday morning and then wore it immediately.  

I went to Oxford to visit Oxford Yarn Store, and owner - Karen Draisey took a photo of me wearing it. 

Karen’s shop was full of beautiful yarn and it was lucky that I knew what I wanted (more Kureyon) so I just tried hard to concentrate on that.  It would have been very easy to buy something else as well that I hadn’t intended!

You may have seen the “Hearts” throw that was in Issue 5 of the Noro Magazine (Fall/Winter 2014) –when I saw it I liked it but instead of knitting hearts - I have decided to have a go at knitting poppies.  I have done a little chart on graph paper which I have altered several times.  My first sample is shown below.

I think I am going to take it out and make it a bit narrower.  I originally intended the squares to have more background and less poppy – but I quite like a fairly large poppy.  It is odd that this square looks much smaller than the garter stitch squares I was knitting last week but in fact they are a very similar size.

Another Odd-ball Throw

I am supposed to have finished my Kureyon jacket and I have bought the new yarn for a shawl, but instead of finishing the jacket or starting the shawl, I have started knitting another odd-ball throw. The first square of which is shown below.

I had the idea and I wanted to try it.  I intend to knit 54 squares using 2 colours for each square, trying to avoid having any 2 squares the same.  The yarn is all double knitting and I am using 5mm needles and garter stitch.  I have cast on 71sts for each square, 35 + 1+ 35.

You can see how stressed I have been this week because instead of doing knitting that required any kind of thinking – I have just been knitting garter stitch squares!

Even while I have been knitting these squares, I have been thinking of other designs that will help me use up all the odd bits of yarn in my stash.  When I have finished this throw I will give it to charity.

I still hope to finish off the jacket off this week when I get to a shop to buy some buttons  but I had better keep my eyes shut as I pass all the new yarns!

Going out to buy Buttons

On Tuesday I decided to go out to buy some buttons for my jacket.  I have almost finished it.  I have knitted the button-band and was just about to start the button-hole band and then all that is left is sort out the length of the sleeves.  I have short arms so I usually need to make them shorter than the pattern suggests.  It is odd but most pattern writers seem to think that your arms get longer, the larger the size you are – but this is not the case – if you are large – you may need wider sleeves, but not necessarily longer ones.  After knitting for my mother and sister, I have found out that short arms is a family characteristic.

I normally buy buttons from Banbury Sewing Centre – and I went in there, but I got distracted by the new yarns that they have got in.  I did eventually get to the buttons at the back of the shop – but I couldn’t decide what to buy – I think I will have to finish the jacket first and then take it in and place various buttons on it to see which ones look right.

I didn’t manage to leave without buying some more yarn!

I particularly like the Stylecraft Cabaret.  I think I have seen it advertised in one of the magazines.  I want to make a triangular shawl out of one large module – and so I decided to choose some yarns for this project.  The Sirdar Divine that I used for my wrap was particularly lovely – so I have chosen 2 more shades of that to try – a red and a green. 

Wasn’t I supposed to be finishing those jackets on my spare bed?!

Noro Kureyon Jacket – Progress Report

I am still knitting the Noro Kureyon jacket that I started last week.  I have knitted the back and the 2 fronts and I am now working on the sleeves.

I decided to knit both sleeves at the same time so that I can make sure that they end up similar.  I was going to say “the same” – but that is very difficult to achieve with this yarn – I just want to make sure that each sleeve has a similar number of stripes and that the colour changes on approximately the same row.

With Noro yarn you can either try to achieve a match or you can go completely the other way and make sure the sleeves and fronts of a jacket are not similar at all.

I am glad that I had so much yarn because I have found that several balls have knots in them.  This wouldn’t matter so much if the ball then continued with the same colour but it doesn’t.  I can understand that the yarn might break in production but I don’t understand why it isn’t knotted at that point instead of attaching a completely different colour.

I want to try to finish this jacket before I get bored and start something else.  I still have 3 partly-finished jackets on the bed in my spare room – I don’t want this to be another one.

I read in the latest issue of Simply Knitting magazine that designer Rita Taylor likes to knit while listening to sport on the radio.  This week I have been doing the same.  If the sport is on the radio – it is being described to you and so you can concentrate on your knitting without having to look at the screen!

Noro Kureyon Jacket

About 3 years ago I bought 22 balls of Noro Kureyon in Shade 242 – which is black, grey, red, green and brown.

I intended to use the yarn for a coat using a Sally Melville pattern.  However, I didn’t start it and now I think I probably wouldn’t wear it – so I have found another pattern for a jacket instead.  It is a Debbie Bliss pattern from her book called Home.  I was surprised to find garments in this book – as the title suggests cushions and throws etc.  It does have those as well, but it has a few clothes.

I have started the back.  It is double moss stitch and I may take it out yet, but at the moment I am happy with it.  I was a bit worried about the sizes – I was going to do the middle size of 3, but I have decided to make it a couple of inches smaller – and so I am now doing a size which is larger than the smallest size, but not so large as the middle size!  This means I will have to alter the fronts correspondingly.  I am terrible – I can’t leave a pattern alone. 

Shell-Shaped Modular Wrap – Finished Version

This week I have finally finished my shell-shaped modular wrap. 

To recap – this wrap was knitted in Sirdar Divine and was based on a pattern for a baby’s blanket which I found in a booklet that was free with Simply Knitting magazine.

In the end I used slightly more than 4 balls of the yarn.  I knitted 4 rows of garter stitch at each end of the wrap to finish it off. I did think about adding an edging to the sides because the irregularity of the yarn makes them a bit wiggly – but in the end I decided that an edging wouldn’t improve them.

Knitting Mysteries by Maggie Sefton

I love yarn, I love knitting, but I also love books.  This week I have been reading the latest of Maggie Sefton’s knitting mysteries that is available in paperback: Yarn Over Murder.

I quite enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as good as some of her other books as there was not enough knitting in it for my liking!

When I finished it – I went back to the beginning of the series and started re-reading some of the early books in the series.  The first one is Knit One, Kill Two which is excellent.

Some of the books have great titles.  I think Maggie Sefton ran a competition to come up with suggestions for future book titles.

In the stories, the heroine: Kelly, lives in a cottage just across the street from a yarn store – wouldn’t that be wonderful?

I am still knitting my wrap, but it is nearly finished – I know I said I would have finished it by now but this week I seem to have been reading about knitting instead of doing it!!