Things I’ve been doing recently

Knitting hats

I’ve been practicing using double-pointed needles (dpns) and made another hat. This one also turned out smaller than I expected, but now I’ve realised that I had measured my head wrongly and it is actually much bigger than I thought it was. Haha. So this hat too has gone to a child of my acquaintance. The pattern is Meret, by Woolly Wormhead.

Going to exhibitions

Well, an exhibition. We went to see the Ansel Adams exhibition at the National Maritime Museum last Saturday. It was very good. I didn’t really know anything about Ansel Adams before, other than that he was famous photographer, so it was good to learn more about him as well as seeing lots of his photos of water (unsurprisingly, given the location, the theme of the exhibition is “Photography from the Mountains to the Sea”). Going to the exhibition made me feel a bit better about my own photography. I’ve never been quite sure whether it is OK to edit photos after you’ve taken them, or whether this is really ‘cheating’; but Ansel Adams did this as a matter of course. He would, apparently, spend hours in the darkroom developing lots of different prints of the same picture, changing aspects of it until he was happy with the outcome. Obviously editing pictures in a darkroom takes a lot more skill than doing it on a computer, but Ansel Adams was enthusiastic about the possibilities of using computers in photography – there was a film clip at the exhibition of him talking about it. He didn’t live to see the ‘digital photography revolution’ (he died in 1984), but I think he would have been quite excited by it.

Rose at the National Maritime Museum, November 2011

Avoiding snow

We’ve had snow here again this weekend. While we haven’t had such awful weather as in other parts of the country, it is still annoying. I’m fed up with the cold and the grey and the damp…as I expect most other people in the country are. The daffodils have come up, and are struggling bravely on  - they must be quite hardy as they keep bouncing back, when the snow allows!

Having Mr C’s friend to stay for a week

One of Mr C’s childhood friends from Malaysia has been to stay for a week. He just left this morning. It was good to see him again, and I think Mr C enjoyed catching up with him and another friend from Malaysia who actually lives in London but who he hadn’t seen for a long time. Mr C’s friend was quite intrepid, and braved the railways on his own – with varying degrees of success! He brought some Malaysian food over with him, so I’m looking forward to eating lots of noodles soon…

Noodles!

Watching things grow

Despite the continuing cold weather things are starting to grow and blossom (see e.g. daffodils, above). The orchid has also decided to flower this year, after taking a break from flowering last year, which is nice. I was worried it wouldn’t flower ever again, but I was wrong.

Knitting in the age of the Internet

If it wasn’t for the Internet, I wouldn’t have got very far with my knitting. I still count myself as a novice knitter, but without the Internet I wouldn’t have got much beyond casting on. Most of what I’ve learnt about knitting has been learned from the Internet – from blogs, Twitter and particularly YouTube. I know there are lots of books about knitting, but they tend to be relatively expensive, and, being somewhat lacking in coordination and (I have discovered) the ability to decipher diagrams of yarn and needles, I find it much easier to learn to knit by watching someone else actually doing something than by looking at a 2D image or trying to follow written instructions.

I suspect that a lot of people learning to knit now have the same experience – using the Internet where previously we would have asked our parents/aunts/uncles/grandparents. I’m sure many people are still taught how to knit by their parents, particularly, but for a lot of people this is no longer as practical as it would have been in the past where people tended to stay living close to family for most, if not all, of their lives.

It could be said that the learning of knitting skills is an example of a microcosm of  how society and particularly learning have changed over the past twenty years or so.

Hat: take 2

I made the hat again, using 4mm needles and casting on 108 stitches instead of 90, and this version is a much more realistic size. I managed the double pointed needles OK once I’d practiced a bit, and it was much easier to do the decreasing rounds, and it looks a bit better too, I think. It is a very green hat, but my mum has bravely volunteered to wear it, as she has a green scarf it will go with. Here is the hat in repose:

It’s quite difficult to take a photo of the back of one’s own head, and I apologise for the weirdness of this photo:

The colours are a bit odd in these pictures – I used my phone camera which always produces slightly strange colours, for some reason. The hat is much greener than it appears, and my hair is not that colour at all!

Smaller than I intended

The small-sized hat, with apologies for the bad photo.

I made another hat. This  was my fourth one, I think. It was supposed to be for an adult, but my gauge was quite awry, so it turned out child-sized. Fortunately I know a small person with a birthday at the end of this month, so it won’t go to waste. The pattern was Turvid’s Slouched Tuva Hat. It turned out 14″ diameter using 3.5 needles and double knit yarn.

I’m making another hat using the same pattern now, but casting on more stitches using bigger sized needles. I’m also going to have my first attempt at doing some knitting on double pointed needles, which will no doubt be interesting.

 

Purple loop scarf

This one is a present for my mother-in-law. It looks black in these photos, but it is actually dark purple. It’s nice and long,  and might be the most successful scarf so far in this latest run of scarf knitting. It’s an adaptation of the pattern I used for the blue cowl, just a bit thinner, width-wise, so you can make a longer scarf/cowl from the same amount of yarn. When does a cowl become a scarf? I wonder.

P.S. The concert went well – one of our better ones! – but we (and the audience, I expect) were absolutely freezing!

Slipper socks

These slipper sock things are a Christmas present for one of my colleagues. They were easier to make than I expected. The pattern is Non-Felted Slippers by Yuko Nakamura. I made the cuff bits slightly longer than the pattern suggested, so hopefully they’ll be warm enough. Fortunately she keeps spare shoes in the office so I was able to surreptitiously find out her shoe size, which happens to be the same as mine.

Blue cowl

I finished the scarf/cowl I was having problems with the other day. In the end I just started  it again on the correct sized (according to the pattern) needles and it was fine, so I’m not sure why I got into such a mess with it before. Anyway, it’s  done now. It didn’t turn out as long as the pattern suggested it would – I’m not sure why this was – but otherwise I’m quite pleased with it.  It looks nicer on a person than it does in the picture!

Knitting knots

Yesterday afternoon, after I’d written my blog post, I spent some time watching the latest series of Homeland and attempting to do some knitting. I’m trying to knit a scarf for a friend’s Christmas present, and it’s a really simple pattern. I’ve made it before, with different sized yarn and needles and it worked out OK, but this time it’s taken me ages to get it right – in fact, I’m still not sure that my knitting bears enough resemblance to what it looks like in the photo on the pattern. I had a very frustrating afternoon, starting and restarting the knitting, trying different needle sizes and even different patterns to try and make my knitting look right, but it still didn’t. In the end, I gave up and put it to one side.

I took it to work today to see if a colleague could give me any advice, but she didn’t really know much about this particular stitch, so I just decided to try it again at lunch time, following the original pattern, so at least I’d have some evidence to show her so she could advise me. I did a few rows at lunch time, and it actually seems to be working out a bit better now, for some reason. I’m not quite sure why. As I said, it still doesn’t look exactly like the picture, but this may be because my knitting tension is different to that of whoever made the scarf in the picture. I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll carry on and see how it goes, and hopefully I won’t feel the need to start it again!

This situation with the knitting is potentially a good example of me trying to make things more complicated than they actually are, and not following instructions because I think I know better and then getting into a pickle. More positively, it could also be an example of me being determined and not giving up easily! Well, we shall see who wins in the end – me or the knitting…

Another scarf

I finished this scarf yesterday.  The pattern  is Montana Scarf by Craig  Rosenfeld.  It’s going to be a Christmas present for my granddad.  It’s  quite long, and nice and warm as well,  I hope. Apologies for the bad photo taken on my phone.

Chunky cowl

I finished this cowl on Friday. It turned out alright and was quite easy to knit. The pattern is  GAP-tastic Cowl by Jen Geigley. It’s a good in-the-round project for beginners or people who are not very confident knitting in the round (like me!), and if you use bulky yarn it’s quite a fast knit, which is mainly a good thing. I used cheap yarn again. It’s hard to justify spending lots more on yarn when you can buy this yarn so much more cheaply, although perhaps I should spend more when the things are going to be gifts for other people? (It’s Robin Chunky, in case you’re interested). I used 9mm needles and knitted until the cowl was 12″ wide – a bit shorter than the pattern says, but quite wide enough, I think.

It’s going to be a present for my sister-in-law for Christmas. I hope she likes it.