Gift-A-Long 2015 is off and racing!

The Indie Design 2015 Gift-A-Long is now underway!  Yippee!

Here's a quote from the Gift-A-Long group on Ravelry which explains the event:

What is Gift-A-Long? It’s a multi-designer promotion to help you kick your holiday gift-making into high gear!The Indie Design Gift-A-Long is a 6 week long KAL/CAL of holiday gifts made from patterns designed by a rather extensive list of independent designers. From Thursday, November 19th at 8:00 pm US EST - Friday, November 27, 2015 at 11:59 pm US EST tons of indie designers will be discounting between 5 - 20 of their patterns 25% for this event. Use coupon code: giftalong2015.

The sale runs until the end of November 27th (US EST)  -  That will be 12 noon November 28th here in Melbourne, Aus.  The sale might end there, but KAL's (Knit A Longs) and CAL's (Crochet A Longs) run for 6 weeks.  There are chat threads for each type of item being created, to keep each other's motivation up and lot's of competitions and prizes will run be happening for the duration.

Click here to see all my patterns which are eligible for the discount.

Click here to see patterns from all designers which are eligible for the discount.

Just use the coupon code giftalong2015 to get the sale price.

Gluten Free Impossible Pie

I made a Gluten Free Impossible Pie a couple of days ago.  I haven't had success in making pastry with Gluten Free Flour of any kind.  It's a bit tricky to manipulate due to the minimal flexibility. Gluten does have its uses.  I used a standard Impossible Pie recipe, which included tinned corn and fried, diced bacon.  To add to the excitement, one quarter of this pie is for the vegetarian among us.  I mixed all the ingredients except the bacon, replacing the flour with Buckwheat Flour.  I put the mixture into a greased pie dish.  I sprinkled the fried bacon over three quarters of the mixture, and some tinned Kidney Beans over the other quarter.  I sprinkled cheese over the whole thing.  Oops, the photos are around the wrong way.  I cooked it as directed by the recipe.  And there we have a pie with a definite crust at the bottom.  Here's one vegetarian piece, and one bacon piece.  Being Buckwheat Flour made the crust a little dense, but it was easy and delicious!

Gluten Free Impossible Pie

Although it's three and a half years since I've posted in this blog, it seems that this is still the place where quite a few people are finding my patterns.  It's time to revive this blog!  I've renamed it to Wakeful Knits and I've changed the look a little bit.  I've added a tab at the top where you can find all of my scarf and cowl patterns. I'll gradually be adding tabs for other types of patterns too.
The latest project I'm working on is this slip stitch pullover.  Here's the completed back.  I'm partway through the front and hope to get a bit more done soon.
Welcome to my reactivated blog!

Slip Stitch Pullover Back

Determinism means never having to say "I hate myself".

I'm moving

Hi all,  just a quick word to let you know I'm moving.
My new blog is knits the journey
Hope to see you there!

Cushion Cover - Ready to Assemble

The knitting for my cushion cover is complete. All that's left now is to assemble it and sew on buttons. I haven't thought about what buttons to use yet.

I'll post again with pictures of the completed cover (with cushion enclosed).

I'm about to start work on an item for a magazine subscription. I won't be able to post about this, so blogging may be a bit sparse over the next month or so. No change there. :)

Cushion Cover progressing

The cushion cover is nearly finished. There's only one more repeat of each colour to go. My daughter asked me, "What is that? It's so long!". It does look very long, so I dragged out the intended cushion for a quick measure up. It still seems ok. It just looks odd on it's own. Keeping the faith.

Gauge (Tension) for knitting cotton: My 2 cents worth

Hello gentle reader. Yet again I'm knitting with cotton. Obtaining the correct tension/gauge seems to be a work in progress for me. My latest theory, which seems to be holding, is the following:

1. Wash and dry your swatch.


2. Out of curiosity, measure your tension/gauge in rows and stitches.


3. Hang the swatch for 24 hours, clipped to a coat hanger, a double pointed needle threaded through the bottom of the swatch, with a 50g ball of yarn hanging from the needle.


4. Measure your tension/guage whilst the swatch is still hanging.


5. Unhang (you know what I mean) the swatch. You'll find it springs back from it's weighted length.


6. Measure your tension/guage yet again.


7. Calculate the midway point of the tension/guage, between the hanging measurement and the post-hanging measurement.

For a garment such as a cardigan, this seems to be an accurate way to calculate tension/guage.

I'm currently working on a cotton cushion cover. As I'm knitting on smaller needles for a firmer fabric, and the fabric will be wrapped around a cushion, rather than hanging, I'm using the standard tension/gauge measuring technique. Time will tell whether this is the correct approach. Here's the tension square for my cushion cover.

The colour choice may seem strange. My original idea was for an intarsia cushion cover of a swamp hen on a green background. Either I'm very bad at intarsia, or one-stitch-wide legs are impossible to make look good. I wasn't going to waste this yarn, and if this colour combination is good enough for a swamp hen standing on grass, then it's good enough for a striped cushion cover.