The next blanket

 

The next blanket, #161, turned out to be white yellow green.  The green does not show at all in the pictures, but it looks nice.  The yellow comes from the Greenock yellow DK wool that appears very bright next to the other wool, but does not look so bad in the blanket.  There is still more to be used but I feel better about it now.  It was a bit too much in #159.  I am getting relaxed about using white as well - there is so much still in the yarn store that I will never get rid of it.

The first sweater that I unravelled had nothing to do with the colours in this blanket.  It was the next one on the list.  I like having the list - it means that I can avoid making decisions and nothing gets left out.  I bought it at the same time as the sweater in #160, so it was obviously by the same knitter, also never used.  This used several shades of nice mohair wool and some DK.  It was easy to unravel, and the yarn so lovely.

I bought the second, a Susan Bristol cardigan, because I wanted the clasps.  Not for any particular purpose now, but because they may come in useful, and new ones are expensive.  It is an American brand, knitted to a traditional Norwegian design.  Unlike the Norwegian ones I see - and there are a lot of Dale of Norway ones around - the armholes in this one are not cut, so it was easy to unravel.  The yarn is thicker than I feared, easily up to 4 ply weight.



And the third was another Marks and Spencer cashmere cardigan.  I tried wearing it for a while, and although the style was comfortable I could not get on with the pale blue colour.  So it went.  Blogger refuses to add the picture now.

The next blanket

The next blanket was a dark one, this one with blues and greens.  It is very similar to the last dark green one, #154, because the yarns are much the same.  I unravelled three sweaters to add more yarn, to continue using the ones in the yarn store.

The first one was hand knitted, from very good quality double knitting wool, some blended with mohair.  This sweater looks as if it has never been worn, so it seems such a shame, that it was given to a charity shop and that it ended up unravelled.  It is well knitted too, the shoulders joined by three needle cast off and the intarsia faultlessly done.  The yarn is so lovely.

The second was an Abercrombie and Fitch shetland sweater.  I bought this, intending it to be used in one of my crochet blanket, but the colour was too dark.  Here it is perfect.  I do like this kind of shetland yarn, and it is shame I don't buy more of it.  I suspect I think it is boring - no fun to unravel, ordinary yarn.

The third was a Per Una cashmere sweater, brown v-neck.  I wore this for several years, but the style seems dated now, and I don't wear waist length sweaters any more.  Lovely yarn.

I am getting no further with my backlog of blankets to be finished.  That is, I keep up - for each blanket I finish I add another one to the backlog.  Four remain.

The next blanket

The next blanket, #159, turned out to be very bright.  I wanted to use up the yellow coloured double knitting Greenock wool, and I added bright greens and orange.  I think it is a good idea to put all the bright colours together, but it does taking used to.  I enjoyed knitting it after all.  There will still be some yellow left, more than enough for another blanket.  And green and orange.

Despite what I said about ribbed Jigsaw sweaters I allowed myself to buy one more.  They provide such useful background colour.  And soon afterwards I found this one in beige.  I would have preferred a darker colour, but it goes very well here.  That is you can hardly see it, but I think it adds to the uniformity.

The second garment to unravel was this cardigan by Jamie and Jesse Seaton.  It does not appear in their book, but I saw it in an Ehrman catalogue from the early 1990s.  It was available as a kit or as ready knitted.  I hope this one was knitted from a kit.  The first front and sleeve were difficult to unravel.  There were lots of tight knots, unnecessary short lengths and in places yarn seemed to have swiss darned on top of a previous row, and sometimes a row or two sewn.  I really don't understand how it was done.  The other three parts were better

knitted and easier to unravel.  Had the knitting been better I would have felt worse about unravelling it.  The yarn was Rowan soft 4 ply cotton I think.

The third was a Marks and Spencer orange cashmere scarf.  The colour fitted right in.

My yarn diet is not going too well.  I do stick to items on the list of allowed items, but as it is so broad it is easy to find things that fit.  I have found one thing.  I should look at colour first, and if it is bright, or white or black, I don't buy.  That works so easily.

So bright

This blanket C13 was my bus knitting over a year ago.  I have now managed to finish it.  I knitted it as diagonal blocks as many times before.  Some call them bias blocks, so perhaps I will too.

It started with the Jaeger yarn from charity shops.  First I found the bright blue merino wool.  It was so nice and soft that I could not resist it, despite the awkward colour.  Next came the white, just as nice and just as difficult.

I thought I would knit a sweater from the red white self striping Schoeller and Stahl sock wool Mexico Limbo Color, but, really, I could never wear anything bright red and white.  So I thought it a good idea to put the three together for one blanket.  All very nice quality wool, all machine washable, and there was enough for one blanket.

The knitting was lovely.  Two rows per colour made it easy to count the rows before I needed to switch from increasing to decreasing.  The sock wool patterning added interest.  And then I found two more balls in the same Mexico Limbo patterning in black blue white.

The knitting occupied me very happily for eight months.  Then I put the blocks aside waiting for their turn to be finished.  I thought I should join them using three needle bind off.  I had some blue wool left, but I didn't know how much it would take so I went out and bought five balls of Wendy Merino double knitting in a more subdued blue.  It took just over four balls.  I was pleased to see that the bright blue is apparently no longer in fashion because I couldn't find it in any brand.

So I picked up stitches alongside one block, turned it round and did the same in the adjacent one and bound off the stitches.  It took time.  Picking up the stitches from garter stitch rows was easy, one stitch per row, and the join looks nice and stretches along with the blocks.  The colour of the Wendy fits in really well; it picks up one of the shades in the blue sock wool.





I thought about doing an I cord edging, but mine turned out very rigid, and it didn't suit the stretchy blocks.  Perhaps I should have used a larger needle, or picked up stitches more frequently.  In the end I picked up stitches as the first row, turned round and knitted the next row, turned round again and did crochet bind off.  I think it looks fine, so I am happy with it.

Now it is ready.  The brightness of the contrast between the white and blue really hit me when I first laid the blocks out.  Then I got used to it, but it is really a bit too much.  I like how the sock yarn makes for irregularly coloured blocks.  Otherwise it is a nice serviceable blanket.  The size was determined by the amount of wool available.  Ideally it should have been slightly larger.

It is interesting to note that, although it is smaller than my standard blankets, it weighs more.  This is presumably due to the garter stitch.

Yarn:  Jaeger Baby Merino blue, Matchmaker white, Schoeller and Stahl Limbo Mexico Color, all 100% machine washable wool
Needles:  3.5 mm
Weight: 1 610 gr
Size: 1.75 * 1.25 m
Knitted: 27 July 2012 to 9 April 2013
Finished:  8 December 2013 to 1 February 2014

Account for 2013

I bought an awful lot of yarn in 2013.  So much that I dare not say it here.

During the last week in 2013 I had an idea - 2014 could be the year I didn't buy any yarn.  As I toyed with the idea it started to seem familiar, and looking back here I read that I went on a yarn diet in November 2012.  It did last several months; it was in April that I started buying more indiscriminately, and by and by I forgot all about the diet.

Now I realised that I really could not do without the pleasure of buying yarn.  I just need to restrict what I buy, and I must stick to the list I made up a year ago:

1.  I can buy yarn to add to my collections, and the list of my collections is quite fluid, so it gives me plenty of scope.

2.  I can buy yarn to add to existing plans for projects.  I must not buy anything that would involve new plans.  This can be tricky, if I find something I really want.

3.  I can buy yarn required for a project in progress or that I am about to start.

4.  I must look at colour of yarn, and avoid bright colours and white and black.  It is taken for granted that I will stick to yarn in natural fibres.

This leaves two groups of yarn:

Yarn for my standard blankets.  So far I have bought anything that I could conceivably use, and that is very extensive.  So, for the next year I will have more than enough without buying any more.  I will reassess in 2015.

Extra nice yarn.  By this I mean hand spun, hand dyed, expensive fibres.  You find this in individual balls, and I buy.  It is often too nice for the standard blankets, but what else do I do with it?

So it would be nice if I could avoid buying these.  That is all.  I think this can keep me happy.

As far as knitting is concerned, 2013 has been a bad year.  I thought I had finished little.  My friend's sweater set me back, because I stopped doing work on finishing blankets, and at this moment I have five blankets waiting to be finished.  I also have a number of unfinished garments.  I have always been proud not to have any UFOs, but counting them now I have one pair of socks, one sweater and three cardigans unfinished.  So I was surprised to find that adding up the few things that I did finish it came to 9.3 kg, proof that my speed of knitting has not slowed down.

And to finish, just because a picture is nice, a close up of blanket #158.

The next blanket

The next blanket, #158, was going to be white pink and yellow, but the Drops mohair introduced a shade of green as well.  It was worth it, because it made the blanket so soft.  Admittedly the much thicker pink mohair helped too.  I attempted to use up some of the yellow yarns, too, and I succeeded to some degree, but there is still a lot left.  It is a nice blanket, no jarring colours, thick and soft.

I unravelled a Marimekko cardigan.  The pure wool yarn is so soft, and so easy to unravel.  The shade is much too strong for this blanket, so it will have to wait for another one.

The other sweater was a man's alpaca sweater, brand name Sol.  The yarn is nice.  It is slightly awkward to knit with because it is too strands not plied together.  This one was easy to unpick, too.

The next blanket

 

For this dark blanket, #157, I wanted to use up the cyclamen mohair wool.  There is nothing wrong with it, except that it has been around for many years and it would be nice to see the end of it.  The colour is too bright for many things.  In the event, I didn't finish it this time.  It will be around for several more blankets.  So many of my blankets are ruined by me wanting to finish yarns.  And by my compulsion to use up every little scrap of yarn.  It is so difficult, if not impossible, to throw yarn away.

So I felt compelled to include this black blue thick-and-thin yarn that I obviously felt compelled to buy at some stage.  It is so obviously acrylic, but something in me liked it nevertheless.  It didn't work out so badly after all.  The thick blue portions sort of fit in with the rest, and the black bits just blend.  There is plenty more of this, but I don't think it will go into another blanket.

The first garment that I unravelled was this Marion Foale tunic in a mulberry colour.  It was nicely knitted in pure wool DK, and the yarn came out beautifully after washing.  The picture shows the stains on the front very well.  I quite often come across Marion Foale garments.  Some shops ask a lot for them, others are more reasonable.  I am tempted by the ones in 4 ply wool, not so much by the ones in cotton.

The second garment was this handknitted cardigan in a purple 4 ply wool.  It was very easy to unravel, totally unremarkable, and really the kind of yarn I want for my blankets.