Zarah's Cotton Candy Swirl Set

Quite a late update from me today, but I've finally been able to steal away some time to show you all this weeks FOs!

So, this week is all about the baby knit. I've not only been knitting them, I've been thinking up new designs too, which I can't wait to work on. Due to me being very up and down with my M.E this week, I've been working on very simple knits. My first project was the Basic Baby Hat by Heather Tucker. Now, this pattern calls for DK yarn & 4mm needles, but as my friend has just had a baby girl I decided to use my leftovers of Yummy Worsted in Cotton Candy Swirl by (the awesome) Candy Skein. As I was using worsted I dropped to 3.75mm needles, although in retrospect perhaps I should have used  3.5mm DPNs.

The project was lovely and simple, and the pattern was perfect :) I knitted the newborn size, although I believe it is more towards the 6 month size. Enough chat though, here it is!

I love the starfish decrease!

I thought I'd give baby Zarah a pair of mittens as well, so I chose the pattern Fast Baby Mittens by Lucy H. Lee. I used some pink DK Rizzle found in the bottom of her drawer, I am hazarding a guess that it is Stylecraft Special DK in Fondant, but don't hold me to that. The mittens didn't knit up as fast as I'd like, but that might be due to the fact I was knitting at a snail's pace. When I did finish though, I added an i-cord to keep them both together.

Next time I knit this pattern (and I will I assure you) I will make a longer i-cord, but other than that I wouldn't change a thing! :)

I've set aside baby Jack's footie set the moment, as my Knit Pro Spectra Flair tips arrived today so I am finaaaaaaaaaally able to get some work on the Seven Seas Blanket. But I will be taking the hat with me when I go away next weekend (allll by myself - so excited!) so I should get it finished then! :)

For now though, head on over to Tami's to check out more FOs for this week! I hope you all have a lovely weekend x

WIP Wednesday, on a Thursday?!

I didn't get chance to blog yesterday due to things happening at home, so today I'm going to share with you my rather late WIP Wednesday post :)

I've been getting problem after problem with my Seven Seas Blanket. First, I felt as if I was going to drown in Moss Stitch. Second, my brand new circular needle snapped. And if that wasn't enough, I went and ordered the wrong cable for my interchangeable needles.

Last year my Nan very kindly gave me her Addi Click Lace interchangeable needle set, as she never used them now she had the Knit Pro Symfonie Wood interchangeable needle set. So when my cable needle broke, I decided to just buy a single cable for my interchangeable needle set, as then I could use them with any of my tips in the future. I didn't check which set I owned until after the cable arrived, which was a really stupid thing to do. I'd only gone and ordered a Knit Pro cable rather than an Addi one! I let out a long UUUUUGHBLAAAAAAH! and looked on the Meadow Yarn website to see if I could exchange the cable.

Turns out you can't buy a 150cm cable for Addi sets (on that particular website anyway, I didn't bother to check anywhere else). So, I decided to see how much the Knit Pro 4mm tips I needed for my cable, would cost. You can buy the Knit Pro Spectra Flair Acrylic tips (4mm)  for £2.50! The coolest part is they come in a funky colour - bright pink! (although in the picture they look purple) I made the decision to buy the Knit Pro tips, as I can slowly build up my own set over time.

As I've been put on bed rest I chose 2nd class delivery, so that I wouldn't have the temptation of working on the blanket. The tips should be here sometime tomorrow, and by then I should be well enough to get a decent amount of work done on the blanket.

Meanwhile I have been whipping up baby knits! You all know too well that I have mini-obsessions, and at the moment it is in the form of ickle baby knits. I've knitted a simple hat, a pair of fast mittens (complete with i-cord), and I am now working on a cabled hat!

I don't know about you, but sometimes I just have a desire to work with a particular colour. After I saw Susan's Sweet Dreams Shawl, I have been dieing to knit a black project. I didn't have enough black yarn to make an awesome shawl, or cardigan. I just had enough for a small project, so I decided to combine my current mini-obsession with my black desire, and make a black baby hat.

I chose to knit the hat from the Cabled Baby Hat & Mittens set by Paulina Chin, as it looked like a fun, quick project. I felt that an all-black hat would be too much, so I made the brim white, just to lighten it all up a bit.

Adding the stripe of white was a bit of a silly idea, as the colour change is really messy, but other than that I quite like how it is turning out! When the hat is finished I'll also make the matching mittens! I'm naming my project Footie Set, as the colours remind me of a football (soccer ball) :)

I should finish this today, so remember to come on by tomorrow for FO Friday, where I should have 3 FOs to share with you! :D

Oh, Bother

Yesterday I showed you the beginning of the Seven Seas Blanket, and last night I finally started to get into it. Typically, just as I get into something, it goes wrong. I was happily knitting away, supping my wine, when I noticed the stitches weren't moving. I looked closer and realised the cable had almost snapped, just hanging on by a small piece of plastic!

 

Not really knowing what to do (only ever broken 2 straight needles), I wrapped it in sellotape, hoping that it would hold up. It did, for a little while. The moment I put weight on it though, it snapped completely...

I posted a photograph on Instagram, and here are the comments...

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was a little annoyed! I'll have to email the seller on eBay & ask for a refund, as they shouldn't be bust within a few hours of using them.

Mother is going to Launceston tomorrow so I rang up the yarn shop there to see if they have the needle I needed, unfortunately they didn't so it meant another look on the internet. I found what I wanted on Loops, but they were going to charger over £3 for delivery! Which is too expensive, so I was forced to look elsewhere. It then dawned on me that I had an Knit Pro interchangeable needle set my Nan gave me! Don't know why I didn't think of it before! 

So, I have ordered a 150cm cable from Meadow Yarn. Postage was a good price, and looking around the shop they seem to have a lot of lovely things! I've always wanted a skein of Zauberball in Coconuts, it has a big yardage and would make an awesome shawl, or a couple of pair of socks!

So, the cable will be here tomorrow (hopefully, I paid for 1st class, but it could be like my Deramores order and take a few days). Meanwhile, I think I'll work on the Cotton Candy Baby Hat for little Zarah, my friend's new baby :)

I'm using leftovers of my Yummy Worsted in Cotton Candy Swirl, by Candy Skein. It won't take me long to finish, so I might whip up a hat for my friend's daughter, Isabelle, using the same pattern as Daisy's hat.

Pop back tomorrow for WIP Wednesday, hopefully I'll be able to show you some progress on the Seven Seas Blanket :)

Black Horse & the Cherry Tree

I've had the Swirl Hat by Mandie Harrington in my queue for well over a year now, so when I was compiling my Year of Projects list for this year, I decided that it was finally time to knit the Swirl Hat and added it to the list.

I'd ordered the yarn for Mother's humongous blanket/throw thing that will eat me alive, on Wednesday evening, so as usual I was expecting it to be sent the next day and I'd receive it sometime on Friday (because the only option is First Class on Deramores, so you expect First Class delivery)... but it never turned up. The needles that I'd ordered from eBay, had arrived, just no yarn. So last night I was without a project, and you know I can never sit still without my knitting, as a result I decided to cast on a small project, and that small project was the Swirl Hat.

I'd already made my eldest niece, Tilly, a fair isle hat for this winter, which left her little sister, Daisy, without one. I didn't like the idea of knitting this in one colour, as I thought it would fall quite flat and feel one dimensional. So for this particular knit, I knew I wanted to be rather daring with my colour choices, which meant that pastels were completely out of the question. A quick hunt through my stash produced a ball of black DK. Now, I rarely ever see black used in baby knits, which made it quite a risk, but one I was willing to take. I decided to team it up with Raspberry Special DK (which seems like a never-ending skein of yarn!).

I knitted the 2x2 rib brim in black, and the body of the hat in Raspberry. The body of the hat only consists of  a one row repeat, making it a quick knit! When I was finished it felt as if it needed a little extra something, so I had a look through previous projects of the Swirl Hat and came across ashleybobbi who added a bow to her's. I stole the idea and whipped up a bow in black, to match the rim of the hat.

Without further ado, here is Daisy's Swirl Hat!

The colours for this hat remind me of the song, Black Horse & the Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall, so that is why both the project and post have a rather strange title!

I have put the directions for the bow on my Ravelry project page, if you are interested :)

That's another YOP project ticked off the list, wahoo! Come back tomorrow for not one, but two more finished YOP knits :D 

If you want to find out more about Year of Projects, head on over to the Ravelry group, Come Blog-a-Long, where I am a moderator :) There you can also find more finished projects, but if you're not on Ravelry type YOP1213 into Google to find YOP blog posts :D