I think I can... I think I can...

I'm limping along, step by step, to the end of these gloves.  There's nothing particularly difficult about them.  Once I'd worked out how to do fingers, the second glove should have been a cinch.  Maybe I've got second glove syndrome.  Or it could have been the school holidays.  I can't think of a really good excuse, so what the hell, I'll get there in the end.

The gloves are currently blocking, and hopefully will be dry enough to weave in the ends in the next couple of days.

I can hear True Grit (the old one) in the background which is slightly distracting.  It's hard to ignore John Wayne.

While I'm waiting, I'll be preparing a test swatch for another magazine submission.  My previous success has emboldened me to have another go.  This time I thought I'd try some fingerless mitts.  Might as well push my luck on the whole mitts/gloves thing.

Edward Scissorhands?

Am I making my very own Edward Scissorhands?  No, but this is very much what it looks like, I have discovered, when one knits gloves.  Even more so, when you have a half completed finger with three double pointed needles in it.  It's a fascinating process.  This glove is now complete, though not yet photographed as such.  It's taken quite a lot of glove pattern study, and quiet thinking and calculating time to work out how to do the fingers.  But it all makes sense when it's broken down.

These gloves may seem quite long, but that's how they should be, according to the teenagers in my life.

Legs are now warm!

The leg warmers are now complete.  I've decided not to publish this design, as it bears a remarkable similarity to a pattern my daughter found, to use as inspiration for these.  Even the colours used are similar.

She's finding that they slip down a little, so I'll probably put some hat elastic through the top of them.  I don't think they slip too much, but it won't hurt to do this anyway.

My next project is a pair of fingerless gloves for the other daughter.  She wants quite long gloves, and why not?  A nice smooth yarn was requested, and so I'd decided to go for Heirloom Celone, only to find that it seems to have dropped of the face of the earth.  I've found another Heirloom yarn, which seems even softer.
It's Heirloom Silk Touch which is exactly the same blend of fibres - 85% Merino, 10% Alpaca and 5% Silk - but not a crepe yarn as the Celone was.  I bought this at Mooroolbark Wool. 

Having already done a pair of fingerless mitts, I thought I had the whold Thumb Gusset thing down, but after three attempts at all the calculations, and still ending up with an unexpected number of stitches, I'm beginning to wonder.  Hopefully, all will be fine by my next posting.

One down, one to go

A leg warmer on the leg is worth two on the needles.  Well at least one leg can be warmed!  The length is fine, despite my anxieties.  This is a fantastic demonstration of how different a colour can look, depending on the colours it's beside.  There are four stripes of exactly the same purple in this.  As the variegated yarn changes, the look of the purple changes too.  I'm halfway through the second leg warmer, so there's not long to go till there are equal rights for legs.

I can't wait to get to the newsagents tomorrow morning for my copy of Yarn Magazine to see my first magazine published design.  How exciting!

Cosy Leg Warmers

I have some leg warmers underway.  I'm doing my usual trick of slowing down to a complete halt when I have doubts about what I'm doing.  The problem this time is that my row gauge is so different to normal that I like to use measurements in my patterns rather than number of rows.  That's fine for "until you reach the armholes", but for stripes of about one inch, it doesn't work too well.  By the time my stripe measures an inch, what's still on the needle is going to add to the length, for each and every stripe.  It seems that making mistakes is a mandatory part of learning.  I'm learning a lot!  These leg warmers may end up a couple of inches longer than they are meant to be.  I should plunge on, and see if that still works OK for my daughter's legs.  Just scrunch them up a bit!  Extra warmth!  But no.  I crawl to a halt.  Must . . . . .  keep . . . . .  going.  If they need to be re-knitted that's fine.  Have I convinced myself?

I officially give up trying to show the true colour of these leg warmers.  There is a repeating purple stripe in these, but it looks a different colour in every stripe!  The miniscule viewer of my camera doesn't help.  The colour is actually better than it looked through the viewer.

If I can't reproduce the colour of legwarmers, I'll try our Liquid Amber.

Not bad!  The colours this autumn are absolutely gorgeous.  According to news reports, the season leading up to now has been perfect for producing these beautiful colours.  They certainly cheer up a grey day. :)
My Fair Isle Pullover is being test knitted.  The colours my testers have chosen are fantastic.  So bright!  I can't wait to see them finished.

Tying up the loose ends

I've been finishing up a few things.  I actually finished this bookmark a couple of months ago, but it's taken me a couple of months to get around to taking a photo of it.  It's the Tell Me a Tail Bookmark designed by Christine Jeffery.  It was, notionally, for a February KAL.  Well, here it is May, and I'm finally posting the finished product.

Next on the finishing pile has been my scarf to enter into this year's scarf festival.  I have to send it off in the next couple of days or I'll miss out. : (  I've knitted it from Sublime Soya Cotton which I found at Wondoflex.  It's a type of yarn I've not used before and felt very much like cotton to knit with.  I've made it fairly short so that the weight of the cotton won't drag it down.  I banged it out fairly quickly, but hopefully it's deserving of a place in the festival.

Tragically, I have nothing on the needles at the moment.  I'm all lined up to do some leg warmers for daughter number 2.  Our trip to Spotlight to choose yarn was very disappointing, so we're off to look elsewhere tomorrow.  The idea is for stripes of purple and multi-colour purple, in a cable rib pattern.  Stand by.  I'll keep you posted.

Fair Isle Pullover in testing mode

I've finished my Fair Isle Pullover, as pictured, and it's now up for testing.  I've rewritten the pattern to hopefully line up the pattern on the sleeves with the body pattern.  If I get a couple of test knitters, this rewrite can be proved or disproved.

I find collars very flattering, and I'm planning to try out different types of collars in upcoming designs.  This first attempt at a collar is a polo collar.  I wasn't very optimistic about how it would turn out, so I'm really pleased that it actually came out as it's supposed to.  Yay for me!

I'm forging ahead as fast as I can on a scarf for the Scarf Festival mentioned in my last post.  The pattern for the main body is very easy to remember, so I've had no trouble knitting during our family Harry Potter fest.  We're hoping to watch all the movies before the next one come's out.  Tonight we saw the Order of the Phoenix.  It's a shame that chunks of the book have to be left out so that it doesn't go for too long.  Enjoyable all the same, though.

Once this scarf is complete, I've had a request for some leg warmers.  I haven't done those before, so that'll be something fun and new to try.