xmas knitting

Well, this year really shows how far I’ve come with my knitting! Last year I wouldn’t have dreamed of giving anyone anything I’ve knitted (except maybe a scarf), but this year I gave loads of knitted gifts, to greater or lesser degrees of success – OK so this was mainly because I was unemployed and couldn’t afford to buy anything ‘proper’, but I’m so glad I have a useful backup skill like this, so that I didn’t feel like the world’s stingiest santa!

Firstly, a tale of woe. My first big disaster, and Dad’s main present, was a jumper I have been knitting for him since about July (!). I measured him, did all the maths and stuff as I was supposed to according to The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, yet for some reason, as I was seaming the bastard thing up, I realised I utterly cocked it up. It was about 4 inches too short on the body, and a bit too short on the arms too. He gamely tried it on, but unless he has grown up quite a lot since I measured him (doubtful!) it’s something to do with my sums… I was too upset even to do anything but sigh lots and stuff the whole lot in a bag, awaiting inspiration – I will either frog it & start again *cry* or try & figure out some way to *add* length to the bottom. I may even post a request on Ravelry asking for help, as it’s currently beyond my knitterly skills – anyway, for now, it is sitting in the naughty cupboard!

Here are the bits awaiting seaming:

Here is the mostly-seamed misfit jumper lounging on my best chair and taunting me with its mockery of my maths:

He had also specifically said he hated scarves, but I figured with all his long blustery walks he needed something to keep his neck warm, so he also got a neckwarmer. I just made up a pattern for this, based on a scarf I did a while back, and used 1 skein of Rowan Big Wool held with a strand of fluffy aran stuff left over from Jen’s Gretel hat.

My sister Jen got the Gretel hat, some purple armwarmers, some felted slippers, and a Drops grey knitted bag. I think these were moderately successful – she wore the hat a lot, but also claimed it was because she hadn’t bothered washing her hair, so when she gets back to normal who knows if it’ll get an outing! She seemed to like the slippers too, though to my self-judgmental eye they were a bit big & could have done with some more shrinking. Don’t think she liked the armwarmers much, which is a shame as they are gorgeous Rowan Cashsoft 4-ply and very shlinky. Ah well! She also wants to change the strap on the bag to a handle of some kind – am sure she can manage this without making an arse of it, so wasn’t toooo disappointed (though I might have been, if I’d spent ages doing the knitted strap I was supposed to have done!).

grey bag based on Drops pattern – the main change I made was adding a suede-y strap as I thought it looked nicer than the garter stitch one on the bag.

felted slippers, from another Drops pattern,

feather and fan armwarmers, my own made up pattern (didn’t get a pic of them being worn, unfortunately!),

Gretel hat, above, and being worn by she-of-the-dirty-hair, below:

Oh – and I forgot – I also made her a carrier bag holder for her new kitchen, in some ace retro 50s material I had off eBay ages ago, of well-dressed ladies doing kitchen stuff. Just a sewn up tube with a drawstring at the top to stuff bags into, and an elasticated hole at the bottom to pull bags out of – voila:

Right – so that leaves Dad’s partner Pam, and her son Martin, as mentioned in previous blog post, pretty much unknown quantities, certainly as far as gift-giving goes. So I was a bit scared about what to make them, yet they seemed to actually like their gifts – hurrah! Either that or because I was looking so grumpy the whole time they decided to get spectacularly ass-kissy about it all

Martin got a Saartjes Noro Hat but in charcoal Cascade 220, as 1. it’s what I had in and B. I thought it was less controversial for a boy. I also modded it as in my own Noro Hat so that it doesn’t go all pointy at the top & is more of a beanie. He seemed pleased! He’s studying Politics at Uni – the boy will go far with that much diplomacy!

I was running out of knitting time/ideas now, and getting RSI from hell, so Pam got a tote bag:

Actually, I was really pleased with how the bag turned out. It’s some really lovely Amy Butler fabric, teamed with my seemingly never-ending stash of fake suede upholstery fabric – nice & hardwearing.

Anyway, that’s the Xmas pressies over & done with, I think. One last thing to mention – I made my first ever trip to Get Knitted on Xmas Eve, courtesy of lovelyDad(tm) (who didn’t swear once on the way there) and I came out with goodies! One’s for my CPaAG swap pal, so I won’t show it here till she sees it, and one was some more cream Cascade 220 for his bastard sweater from hell xmas jumper, but here are two I got just for me!

Cascade 220 paints, in um… dunno, lost the band, but it’s all autumnal, with bits of purple too – this has actually already been knitted up into mittens for my mate Yvonne, and I totally forgot to take pics of them, so I will have to get her to bring them over for a photoshoot one day!

and – ta-daaa!!! – one precious skein of Koigu KPPM in some other yummy colourway I’ve forgotten.

*drool* *slobber*

The colours are just so vivid and beautiful! It’s destined to be mittens/armwarmers for me, when my hands recover from the Xmas knitting!

happy new year!

So – Happy New Year! I finally get to share my Xmas knitting. But first, my Xmas story – if you just want knitting and no introspective ramblings, then look away now. Maybe come back in a couple of days, there will be pics and everything.

This year was an odd Xmas for me (and probably the rest of the family too, but as this blog is just about me, I get to be as self-indulgent as I like!). Dad had announced just before Xmas that he was getting married to the woman he’s been seeing for the last 8/9 months, Pam, and that we were going to be spending Xmas at her house. Bearing in mind I’d met her twice at this point, for a sum total of about 5 hours, I felt a little peculiar about this. I didn’t doubt she was a nice person, but to suddenly change all our plans (we had up till then planned to go to my sister’s, until Dad’s life plans all changed – mine & Jen’s still hadn’t, and god knows we could do with a bit or proper rest/stability over the holidays). His theory was that he’d taken mine & Jen’s feelings into account and decided this would be best. As he’d ‘taken our feelings into account’ by not actually asking us what we felt, and deciding that ‘the best solution’ was just to do what he wanted to do anyway, I’m afraid I saw my arse over this one and flatly refused.

Anyway, after various tense phonecalls and a fair amount of crying, we ended up finding a middle ground by having it at his place – me, my sis, Dad, Pam and her son Martin (who I’d never met). The idea was they would stay Xmas Eve, Day, and Boxing Day at Dad’s, then he would go back with them to her place to be with the rest of her family. The couple of weeks running up to Xmas I spent utterly crapping my pants about what this would be like. I’ve absolutely nothing against Pam – I like her, and she makes Dad happy, which he is rightly entitled to, and it’s not like I’m ever going to live with them or anything, so I’m very happy for him. It’s just at that point I didn’t feel at all like I knew her, and her very existence is a constant reminder of the Absence Of Mum. It’s only just over 2 years since she died, so I don’t really think I’m being melodramatic by getting upset about it. However, staying upset about it just isn’t an option I want to pursue – even Mum would kick my butt over that one – so I just had to get on & deal with it.

The first couple of days/nights were extremely hard. Due to lack of funds for a train journey it was decided I would meet Pam (who was visiting her brother in London) on the 23rd for a lift back to the west country, and having been expecting to just get in the car & set off I was surprised to end up back at her brother’s house for a while to say her goodbyes to them (though thankfully it gave me a chance to go to the loo! Did I mention Aunt Flo had also decided to come along for the trip? Thanks for that, body, I really needed that). So I ended up also meeting her brother, his wife, their 2 kids, and her parents all in one fell swoop. Which was 100 kinds of weird. But her parents came across like proper grandparents, so it’ll be nice to experience grandparent types around who aren’t drunk/nasty/generally bastards. When we got to her place, Dad came & picked me up, with my sis, and we met Martin (20yo soon-to-be stepbrother) and had some dinner.

Anyway, when we finally got back to Dad’s I had had about as much emotional overload as I could cope with for one day. Had a bit of a sniffle in the car on the way back, but was in the back seat so hopefully no-one noticed, and when I finally got to bed cried for about an hour before getting to sleep. The proper ugly cry, just unstoppable and gutwrenching. None of it whatsoever to do with the people I was spending Xmas with, but rather the one I wasn’t – Mum – because I still miss her on occasion with the pain of 1000 molten needles being plunged into my eyeballs. I was not optimistic about the prospect of a Xmas spent feeling like this.

Xmas Eve, as Xmas Eves are, was long and tiring, though lovely Dad took me well out of his way to go to Get Knitted which would have made my year if I hadn’t been so poor, knackered and generally apprehensive about the next few days. As it was, it just made my day It was very handy over the rest of Xmas whenever I was stressed to open my Get Knitted bag and go ‘mmmm fresh yarrrrn’ – lol – what can I say, it’s a coping mechanism ;P

Xmas Day I was up at 6am as usual, because despite being allegedly a grownup, I am also still FIVE YEARS OLD when it comes to Xmas Day! Spent a couple of hours playing my DS before deciding it was probably safe to gently wake up the house without getting stabbed, so went down & made tea – on the basis that if you’re going to annoy the shit out of someone by waking them up earlier than they want & squealing ‘it’s XMAS!!!’ at them, as if they were unaware of the date, then the least you can do is make them a cup of tea for the shock. Also, equipping them with a mug of boiling liquid which could easily become a weapon encourages you to try to be less annoying than you otherwise might be.

Xmas Day was also the day when I got through all the sobbing and feeling upset, and started feeling grumpy and all hemmed in. Even when I tried to escape to the kitchen to cook Xmas dinner I had people wandering in and faffing around and generally getting in my way and trying to butt in when I needed some quiet time. I can cook on auto-pilot, so really wanted the time for thinking, but I guess they weren’t to know that. I really did my best to control my grumpiness though, as generally I was starting to get a good feeling about the future of having a new family like this. Also, it’s only a 2-bed house so there aren’t many other places to hang out! To be honest, I also know that my hemmed-in feeling is due to living & spending an great deal of time on my own, and my head just getting very ‘busy’ because I wasn’t used to it. We had a lovely Xmas dinner though, and soon after I finally started feeling the Xmas spirit, and Boxing Day was lovely. Dad & Pam & Martin headed back off to see their family and do the ‘we’re getting married’ announcement the day after, and I finally got to spend some time just letting the noise in my head subside and trying to work it all out.

My gut reaction, mid-December when all this was kicking off, was to spend my Xmas hiding under my duvet with the cat and going ‘la la laaa’ very loudly. But I’m no longer a child, and do have to take other people’s feelings into account, whilst also finally having the equipment to insist they don’t take mine for granted. And there is the inevitability of change, and so I had to get on with it. And I have to say, I’m really glad I did. Despite the icky first couple of days, I ended up having a good time, and it will be better in the future because of it. Pam really does seem to suit my dad very well, and they are very happy, and my stepbrother-to-be seems like an absolute sweetheart, one I’d pick from a list if I had to choose a stepbrother.

I’m sure the very start of this New Year is going to be a continuation of the annoyingness and upheaval of last year – what with an imminent move (hopefully!!), joblessness, and everything – but in general, I’d say things are starting to look up, and I’m feeling optimistic

happiness is wool-shaped

The last few days have been quite busy, and I suddenly have a few things to write about! My sister Jen came to stay from Friday-Monday and I had a belated birthday party on the Saturday night. Of course I managed to pick a weekend when people were away/ill/having Hallowe’en parties so it was a very small do – but we got to eat more and drink more as a result (good idea Sat night, Bad Idea come Sunday morning lol). And my lovely friend Bruno proved he knows exactly how to keep me happy by bringing me wool! Yum! 4 balls of Debbie Bliss SoHo in red – miraculously for a non-knitter he got me (more than) enough to make a huge scarf, and in exactly the colour I had been jonesing for. He must be psychic! I tried a few test knits with it to see to see which I liked, I wanted something lacy-ish rather than bulky, and in the end cast on for a scarf in Roman Stripe pattern which I found in an online stitch dictionary (here).

I also had a trip today to lovely Liberty’s … I’m so skint at the moment I haven’t had a shopping trip in months, but I still had £20 of Liberty vouchers left from earlier this year and decided to blow the lot in their wool shop. I’ve been saving this trip for when I really needed the wool and had a few projects lined up, and after Jen & I talked about what she might want for Xmas (I believe I said, “you can have anything you like, so long as it’s knitted”) we cooked up a plan for some stranded armwarmers – long fingerless gloves, basically. So I’ve started working on the pattern, but I already knew which colours I wanted to use, so that’s what I splurged the vouchers on – 5 balls of Rowan Pure Wool DK in contrasting greens, browns and a lovely burnty orange. And I got myself another ball of dark purple Cashsoft 4-ply (I already had 2) so that I think I now have enough for a small Leaf Lace Shawl – yay!

I’ve also started knitting a pair of mittens, heavily inspired by the DofN Dmask pattern, which I love. I reckon mittens are a small enough project to start with, and I also wanted to try a pair knitted flat, then seamed up the side – I SO hate my metal DPNs and can’t afford new ones I’ll knit flat till the decreases, then put onto waste yarn and seam up the sides, then move to DPNs for the top & decreases. It should work in principle, but I haven’t researched it anywhere to see if there’s anything really stupid about doing it that way or not. I’m nearing the decreases on the first mitten, anyway, so I’ll find out soon enough!

Anyway, that’s about it for now… there’s a load more stuff to write about but I want to go & watch Heroes!