Basket o'cotton

Well actually I lie, it's a basket of cotton and cotton blends, all DK. I think there will be some modular tops made with this for the summer.

From the top


">From the side

Son of Stitch & Bitch

(Amazon.com link) Son of a Stitch 'n Bitch (Amazon.co.uk link) Bookdepository Link Ravelry Link

Types of patterns: Accessories and garments for men

Number of Patterns: 45

Split of patterns: Men

Size Range: 40"-58" (not in all garments)

Colour/Black & White : Mostly colour, most of the charts are colour too

Schematics: For the Garments

Target Audience: Mostly intermediate makes.

How to knit guide: No, some guides for some of the advanced issues

Experimental/Classical/Modern: pretty modern stuff.

Comments: It's a book for quite a younger set of men. I wasn't quite impressed with a lot of it. There are both crochet and knitted patterns in this. Though the knitted patterns are far more numerous.

All Pattern links are to Ravelry

Skull Isle Hat and Mittens - knitted pattern. For the guy who likes skulls, not bad if that's what you're into

Lidsville - Crocheted hat with a peak.

Uncle Argyle Scarves, Double knitted scarves, interesting

Celtic Beanie - also double knitted, celtic knotwork.

Brooklyn Bridge Scarf - for the architect or NY fan, double knit

Half-Pipe Hat - a crossover between a watchcap and a baseball cap. Basically a baseball cap with a smaller peak - knitted

Antlers scarf - Knitted scarf with antler style cabling.

Ski Beanie - knit flat cap with a contrast trim

Naughty/Nice Scarf - Illusion knitting of a pole dancer.

Beer Gloves - fingerless gloves knitted with some cabling and with some seed stitching to help grip, specifically for opening beer bottles.

Swelligant Scarf - reversible cables, knit with a fine silk and wool yarn

Roll-Ups - Crocheted scarves that roll up to form either a smilley face or a sushi roll.

Cable Guy - raglan knitted jumper with large cables.

Cobra - zibbered neck with collar and contrast stripes to break up the miles of knitting.

Mr Stripey - knitted Slip stitch pattern with three colours.

Pub Crawler - knitted Cable stitch and celtic armband faux-tattoo colourwork piece. Body done in one colour and Sleeves and neck done in another with the colourwork taking the main colour.

Love - knit v-neck tank cop with contrast edging in two colours and cablework, tennis or cricket echoes.

Blueprint: Crocheted waistcoat with a zippered front and colour detail.

Anchors Aweigh - knitted v-neck tank top in fair-isle with anchor motifs.

Smokin' - Smoking jacket style knitted in chunky yarn. This is worked in one piece to the armholes with a shawl collar.

Mixology - Knitted with two yarns together in the round from the bottom up. The sample uses Noro Silk Garden as the contrast yarn giving it striping without a lot of effort. THe black background colour tones it down nicely.

High-Top Hoodie - body knit plain with contrast sleeves and hood. Stripes on the hood and sleeves in a third colour. Raglan sleeves

High Fidelity : Fair isle strips across the middle would break the knitting nicely. the pattern is of a 45 record adapter, a nice nod to modern designs

Biker Boy - Zipped cardigan knit with skull motif on a shoulder the skull is swiss darned on afterwards to add wear protection for someone who wears a messenger bag. The collar has two colour contrast lining.

Hacky Sack Hoodie - Plain knitted hoodie broken with Noro stripes. Pocket to the front.

Ernie Sweater - horizontal stripe jumper knitted, echoes Ernie of Muppet fame's jumper with four colours.

Retropolitan Cardigan - Three colour stripes on this raglan sleeved knitted cardigan designed with large buttons. V-necked.

Checks and Balances - boxy knitted jumper with round neck, dropped sleeves and knit details

Gatsby - Crocheted jumper with some stitch detail and a polo neck.

Speed Racer - Saddle shoulder with a stripe, round neck jumper, knitted

Hangover Helpers - Cushions shaped like drink bottles with "Jefferson Irish Whiskey" and "Beermeister" stitched on. Yes they look somewhat like Jameson and Budweiser bottles.

Look Sharp Socks - Entrelac forms diamonds for these knitted socks in two colours, stitch details on the squares.

DJ Bag - messenger style bag with a cassette in colourwork, designed to be big enough for vinyl records. Knitted

Threads - Knitted socks with some cable detail.

Tubey- Knitted athletic style socks with contrast cuffs.

Wheel on Fire - Steering wheel cosy. Knitted.

Lucky Socks - Inartasia worked socks, knit flat until after the inartasia and then knit in the round for the rest of the socks. Dice on the socks showing sevens in all directions. Afterthought heel.

Tie me Up, Tie me Down. Ties knitted in hemp, with skull and robot motifs.

Deadly Bear. Knit Teddy bear with pool of blood and bee on top.

Lucha Libre - Mexican Wrestling style balaclava. Knitted


Buy/Borrow: Borrow, if you're male check through to see if something grabs you, if you're female make sure that the man you're knitting for approves of the designs. Mine found nothing that grabbed him. It's also not really a crochet book, it's a knitting book that happens to have some crochet.

Where found: Dublin City Public Libraries has some copies, including the one I used for this review.

Two finished items

Several people I know are having children so I've started making a few baby gifts which are going to be stored until the time is right, here are two of them

Circular Baby Blanket


available free here I like the way it turned out, after knitting my way around I knit 2 rows of seed stitch then a k2tog yo row and then 2 more rows of seed stitch before abandoning knitting and crocheting 4 rows of trebles (doubles in US) leaving 2g of this yarn left.

and Ball

designed by Irish Designer Carol Feller and published in Knitty here Made from leftovers from the second Art of Knitting throw, a fun knit. I thought I had enough left of the two colour block to make it in one colour but I like how it worked, I also couldn't find the green colour for a while so there's an uneven number of squares of each colour but I reckon a kid will like it anyway.

Summer top

In the current Interweave Knits I spotted a top, the Betty's Tee(from Interweave Knits) Ravelry Link I had three hanks, one dark and two light. I knew that I would need more yarn and was thinking about changing texture for it but I may change colour again to a cream. The first ball of dark did the base blocks with a bit left over. There's about the same amount left over from the first body block.

Today was wonderfully sunny and for a while I was outside on one of the chairs knitting. I'm now finished the first body block but the photograph just caught the moment of sun and promise of summer so I felt a need to share.

My Project Notes on Ravelry made public!

The needles I'm working with are from La Laine in Berlin from a visit in about 2003; the dark yarn is from Jenners in Edinburgh, from about 5 years ago and the light yarn is from a sale in This is Knit, so as a commenter said on Twitter, very European!

New Socks

Just finished another pair of socks. They're the Chartes Chausettes (Ravelry Link) I had one of them almost finished but I lacked one thing, the instructions for a crocheted eyelet cast-off, as it turns out being left-handed didn't make it easy to do this so I de-constructed it and knit it.

For Mock Crocheted Eyelet Cast-off

K1, insert LH needle into stitch just stitched from the front and knit again. *k1, insert lh needle into front of last 2 stitches, k2tog, insert LH needle into front of stitch, k1 - repeat from * to last stitch, pick up stitch and slip last stitch over picked up stitch, fasten off.

These are the second pair of toe up socks I've knit. Not a bad pattern. I added half a repeat to the leg as I often wear ankle boots and need a longer leg. These only used 51g of the 100g ball!

Front and side shots



Fronts



The true colour is somewhere between the two shots more purple than pink, honest.

Spinning

About 2 years ago my aunt gave me some fleeces, last summer my dad washed it and we carded it with carders I picked up on holiday in Sweden (if you're ever in Sweden you really should visit Scansen). I learned how to spin with a drop spindle recently from Chicwithstix and brought it with me to Galway with the intention of trying some of it. I also brought some longer staple yarn to see if I could get one of the spinning wheels operating in the house. There's about 4 or so of them, built by my dad, my brothers and some of dad's students (who didn't want them at the end of the year), built for a variety of leaving certs and curiousity by my dad to reproduce some wheels that caught his interest. They have never really been used and I failed to get the first one to work this weekend.

Still I did get some of the shorter staple yarn from my aunt spun, and plied!


It led to a near blister and it's not perfect, but for a beginner it wasn't bad. More practice when I go back again.

My little brother has a bag of my longer staple Leicester to play with, as he is determined to make the spinning wheel work and he has some time on his hands.

Scandanavian Throw

I collected the Art of Knitting Magazine and made the first throw a while ago.

Last night, late I finished the second throw.



I'm so happy that it's finally finished. It took a little under a single ball to do the last round of crochet, having picked up a stitch for every cast on/cast off stitch and a stitch for every two along the edges. I used approximately 2 balls of the 25g balls yarn for every 3 squares. The center leafy white squares are actually done in the round, I'd been reading about counterpanes and thought it would look better. The picture of the sewn up sample looked a little off.

The magazine says the yarn is Aran Weight but it's closer to maybe a worsted, it's slightly thicker than a regular DK but it's not quite Aran. I got gauge with 5mm needles. I'm planning to get some fleece eventually and back it, which should help keep the embroidery from getting snagged. Not a bad project but not much help from the magazine with some aspects of the project. They didn't mention how to start the embroidery or how to fasten it off well. Thankfully I have done a lot of embroidery. I also wasn't impressed with some of the quality of the sewing up in the pictures and some of the cross stitch was decidedly dodgy.#

I realised when I was looking through my Flickr and Ravelry entries that I didn't have a picture of the original throw. Here's one.
it covers over the back of a press at the top of the stairs.