Lamb's Pride basket

I didn't add the details for the basket in my last entry:

Lamb's Pride basket

Yarn: Lamb's Pride Bulky, wool 85%, mohair 15%, pale pink, pink, burgundy, blue, green, 500 gr
Needles: 6.5mm
Tension: 12 sts per 10 cm
Size: height 23 cm, diameter 30 cm
Pattern: Own after Mason-Dixon Knitted box pattern
Knitted 090211 - 240311

The basket is done

I finished the basket several weeks ago, and now it is in full use.  I was surprised that it turned out OK in the end.

I finished the knitting by doing several rows of garterstitch at the top, striped, so that I could use up all the wool.  I decreased a couple of stitches at each side to make it turn inwards slightly.  How do you knit garterstitch in the round?  You purl every other row - simple really.  Then I knitted handles, in different colours because that was what was left, in my first ever i-cord, and not even from a pattern but from what I remembered from reading a pattern.  I did one with four stitches and it is just the right thickness. only slightly unevenly knitted.

Then I took some pictures, with the basket stuffed with towels.

 

Now I got to the exciting part - I put it in the washing machine.  After reading about felting I decided that there was no need to try a 40 degree wash - I went straight for the 50 degree, but gentle wash.  The instructions said to add a pair of (old) jeans.  My Gap jeans can only take 30 degrees, so I used the next best thing - a couple of old towels.  I added a little bit of washing powder to get rid of any dust etc.  My machine does not like being tampered with, so I let it go through all the rinses although probably not necessary.

And this is how it came out:

The sides are bumpy in places, but it is sturdier than I expected.  The handles came out really well; all the unevenness has disappeared.  I had hoped that the colours in the moss stitch would blend together more, but it is fine as it is.  The garterstitch rows seem to have shrunk more.  The arrangement of the colours could easily be improved on.

All in all I'm very pleased with it.  It is something that I can use, a big basket to keep knitting and wool in.  The handles really make it into a cross between a basket and a bag.

Even so, I can't help wondering what would happen if I put it back in the washing machine, perhaps even for a 60 degree wash?  Perhaps one day...  At least this has got me interested in felting.  The Mason Dixon book goes on to do a rug - I have got plenty of chunky wool that would be suitable.

A floppy mess

I have not written for a while, because I have done no knitting to write about.  I continue knitting blanket #139 with pleasure.

I took a long time fastening the ends on blanket #138, but now it is done, and now I can turn to the basket again.  It was funny how reluctant I was to pick it up while I was still working on #138, and as soon as it was done I had no problem at all in continuing with the basket.

I knew there was only a few more rows to do.  I put half the stitches on another circular needle to check the shape.  It resembles a big floppy mess.  I started having doubts about the sides standing up, and I was right, of course they don't.  The question is if felting will improve it.  I will have to wait and see.  I checked the Mason-Dixon knitting book again, and there it says that their first attempts ended up as floppy baskets too.  The basket bit I have no problems with, the floppyness I do.  I should have read the book more carefully before I started.  They solved the problem by using the yarn doubled.  Too thick I thought, and not enough yarn for the size I wanted.  The size is another matter.  Now it is much bigger than I thought.  As I have got this far, I will continue and then I will felt and see how it ends up.  Perhaps useless.

Dark, dark

The new blanket #139 is dark.  I like dark colours, but they don't come out well in pictures.  I have knitted more than 30 cm now, but the picture is very similar to the one I posted last week.  The texture gives me pleasure every time I pick it up.  You can just about see the thick brown chenille cotton yarn, not the mohair.

The sweater I unpicked is hand knitted, in a 1980s picture sweater style, or from the early 1990s.  It is hand knitted, quite loosely, and it is large.  When I bought it I thought it was a man's sweater, but the flowery pattern made me rethink, and the smell of perfume.  It is large - 128 cm chest circumference.  It has not been washed - that is ideal for unpicking, because the yarn comes out nice and smooth after washing, as it did here.  I wondered afterwards if I really need black yarn for the blankets.  I preferred the way this blanket looked before I added the black.  It is a shame that the green and pink chenille yarns are acrylic, but I will use them anyway.  It was a pleasure unpicking it, despite having to unpick thorough fastening of ends and impossible side seams.  Sometimes it was done loosely, sometimes thoroughly.  The flowers are done in moss stitch, and the yellow middles are knitted, doubled in places.  The shoulders have been joined using three needle bind off and it was cast on using cable cast on, so it has been knitted by an experienced knitter.

My basket is progressing, but much more slowly than I expected.  It is just knitting round and round, and you don't notice any progress.  Now it resembles a large floppy hat.  The joins are hardly noticeable, and the reverse has come out very neatly, without trying.  I worry if the moss stitch sides will be solid enough to stand up.  In the pattern the sides were knitted in garter stitch and in doubled yarn.  I wanted to see what the three colour moss stitch would look like.  Now I have run out of the blue yarn, so I will have to work out when and how I add the burgundy yarn.

The basket

I did cast on for the Lamb's Pride Bulky basket last week.  With the green skein the bottom turned out a few cms shorter than the width, and that is fine.  I thought it was small, though.  Using all the yarn would mean a tall narrow basket, so I picked up stitches around the edges, increasing at each corner, to make a basket with rounded bottom.  I knitted this in plain blue garter stitch.  How do you knit garter stitch in the round?  You purl every other row.  The sides will have moss stitch stripes that create a nice dotted effect, even nicer when felted, I hope.

This morning I put the stitches on a second circular needle, to see how it looks.  I'm sure it will be too large, a low wide basket.  I did two rows with increases, so I have decided that I will unpick to the second increase.  This will make it smaller.  A good decision to take now, rather than several inches later, I think.

I started on blanket #139 too, and this is what it looks like.  I often wonder why I continue to put effort into these blankets, and then I look at this and I really like it.  I was going to say dark is my favourite, but they are all my favourites.

Starting something new

From reading knitting blogs I gather that quite a few knitters suffer from startitis - the tendency to start new projects before finishing current ones.  I seem to suffer from the opposite - a reluctance to start something new.  I have mountains of yarn in my yarn store, there are hundreds of patterns I'd like to knit, but I find it difficult to get the yarn out, do the calculations and cast on.

There is quite a bit of chunky yarn in the store, and it is too thick for my regular blankets.  To my delight I found the first Mason-Dixon book in a charity shop (in Belgravia of all places and the male assistant started telling me about the Herne Hill wool shop that I already knew about), and it has a pattern for three nested boxes.  I have read the Mason-Dixon blog ever since I first saw their column in the Knitter magazine.  Their fascination for miles of simple garter stitch mirrors mine for stocking stitch blankets, and it makes me want to knit log cabin blankets.  And I will, once I have finished the chunky yarns.  Their box pattern uses Lamb's Pride Bulky yarn, and luckily I had already found five skeins of it in another charity shop.  A box seemed to me excellent use of this yarn.  I only wanted one, slightly larger than the largest in the pattern.  This uses three skeins, so my five should be enough.

The skeins have been sitting on my coffee table for several weeks, and it was not until yesterday that I found the needles, 6.5 mm as per the band.  I see mine as a basket rather than a box, and the sides will be striped, so I wanted to do the bottom in the darkest colour.  True to my thorough nature I weighed the skeins first, and there is only half the weight in burgundy, the darkest.  I cast on anyway, but it turned out too small, so I put it away.  That is what I should have done in the first place.  When I hit a problem I should give myself time to think about it before I decide what to do.  That would save me a lot of effort.

Thinking about it overnight I decided to do the bottom in a different colour, green, my least favourite, and I cast on again with more stitches, and now it looks OK.  I have knitted 10 cms, and with my calculations there will be enough green yarn for a nearly square bottom, just what I wanted.  The corners will be rounded so I did two increases either side.  I call this a basket because I see it as a knitting basket. 

Now, this should of course be felted, my first venture into felting.  Naturally I abhor felting, for the obvious reason that once something is felted you can't unpick it and knit it into something else.  Because my reason for knitting chunky yarn is to get rid of it finally it does not matter that it can't be reused.  I am still apprehensive that it will turn out a failure and totally useless.

I have been knitting blanket #138 while I've been looking at the Lamb's Pride yarn, and enjoying it.  It is nearly done, but the last week I've been unravelling the sweater to go into the next one, and it is taking a lot longer than I thought.  This is what the sweater looks like.