Knit, Crochet and Natter 4 - Yarning into Spring

[lazylinguist]

A thread for knitters, crocheters and woollly crafters in general. All welcome, including total newbies! Previous thread here

Yes definitely! I love Stylecraft Special Aran. Bought a load of the DK based on that and its scratchy.
Also bought some Hobby craft own brand and 2 of the colours were visibly different thicknesses despite both being DK.

I know dye can affect yarn lucysmam, my memory is a bit vague but one of the women who own my local wool shop told me red dye seems to affect the thickness of one of the wools they sell from the cone. Maybe the blue dye affects the fibres of your yarn differently too?

Oh no, hope you enjoy your biscuits while waiting for it to pass Tiz!

I've started DS's Hedwig and I know it's bad form to critique other people's projects but it seems to be a half and half split on whether the finished object resembles an owl or a creature with donut eyes so this should be interesting... The tension is incredibly tight so far so it's quite hard on the hands.
www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/snowy-owl-9

Aaah, glad it's not just me! I wondered if I was cracking up .

CrochetBug I bought Stylecraft Special Aran for dd1's cardi & it feels smooth to work with. I'll definitely use it again.

Flavia, that's interesting about the red dye. I seem to recall reading on here a (very thrilling ) thread about pegs. Someone commented roughly how long it took them to break down based on dye colour & I seem to remember that red took an awfully long time!

I'd be interested to see how Hedwig works out - I've bookmarked a few free patterns to make one for dd2.

tizwoz my friend felt rotten after her vaccine. She said it felt very flu like & she was shaky :( I hope you're feeling better soon :)

My yarn arrived! I am nearly ready to start my KAL cushion - I just need to roll it into balls. Sorry for delaying things. It took much longer than I had thought. I am going to get started tomorrow!

@tizwozliz I had my vaccine too yesterday and was in bed by 8.30pm as I was so tired. I was hot and cold in the night and had strange dreams about someone stealing my knitting! I feel a lot better today.

@nicecardigan I had a weird dream/ auditory hallucination. I had my vaccine saturday. I had a bad night the night before because of a few stresses going on. So went to bed about 9 on Saturday. As i was nodding off i could hear a rustling then i was woken up by a rhythmic hammer striking metal, really weird. DH and DS hadnt come to bed by then. I did have a bit of unsettled night but i didnt have a temperature of shivering. My friend who had it on monday was so cold she was sitting up against the radiator.

I’m glad it’s done @bruffin the second dose supposedly isn’t as reactive so less chance of strange side effects for that one.

Sorry to hear everyone's vaccines are making them feel ill. I'm not looking forward to having one, especially if it gives me weird dreams. My meds already do that

Mum fixed my KAL for me (aka undid it and cast on again). I knitted one row and it was wrong at both ends. Even mum didn't know why. So she's started me off again by casting on and doing 2 rows. 3rd time lucky I hope.

The hot water bottle cover is about 2 inches too wide, despite my tension being spot on. so it's being frogged. I don't actually need a hot water bottle cover so it was just a lesson in cable in the end

Also leaving mums with a box of yarn

Thinking I'm over the worst of it now but definitely the most ill I've felt in at least a decade.

If you run a thread or some thin wool along though all the stitches on your needles right now CrochetBug you'll be able to knit and if you need to, rip out down to that row and then put all the stitches on the thread back on the needle. Then you'll always have your cast on and two rows held safely and you can mess around with it as often as you need to until it clicks.

If this doesn't make any sense which it may not, Google knitting life lines

Thanks @FlaviaAlbiaWantsLangClegBack that's genius!

I made a Ravenclaw bookmark this afternoon for dd2's classmate.

tizwoz one of the TA's at work said, this morning, that she was feeling better but not "normal" today after her 1st vaccine at the weekend.

@lucysmam

This is possibly an odd question but I'm going to ask anyway; do any of you find that different colours of yarn from the same brand feel different to use?

I ask because the blue part of the Poundland yarn I'm using for this blanket squeaks when I use it, even though my tension is about the same for each row & it feels different to the turquoise/green that come afterwards - they feel smoother on my hook.

Told you it was an odd one but there we go

Yes I’ve found the green King Cole Big Value Chunky feels different to the other colours! A bit more scratchy

I really want to get started on my cushion KAL! I just haven't had time over the last few days.

Which cushion are people doing? Im doing the interlaced cable

Mines the ribbed hourglass

I'm going to do the interlaced cable. Same yarn as yours too, @bruffin!

I was going to do the one at the back in the picture. But no idea which one that actually is

Mum's doing the one at the front (interlaced cable I think as it looks the same as bruffins) she's nearly finished.

Ive made a mistake, somehow managed an extra row 3, but im going add it into the pattern as it doesnt look out of place

Yay - I've cast on and knitted two rows! My eyes are really tired, so that's it for me this evening.

You people are a bad influence! Thanks to the KAL I’ve been looking at cushion cover patterns and found one I’d really like to make (not as tasteful as all of yours, but I think my brother would love it).

It says use any super chunky yarn. I have a lot of Bernat Blanket for my temperature blanket already, so it would be most efficient (and cost effective) to use that. But do you think the pattern would actually work? It’s quite a fuzzy yarn. Or would I be better off shelling out for six new balls of yarn?

I've done 6 more rows on my KAL (clearly I knit a lot slower than I crochet) and I've gained a stitch again. Can't see where. Video called mum and she can't see where either. But she told me how to decrease again if I find the extra one

I also frogged my hot water bottle cover because its way too big. I'm not resizing it because I don't actually need one, but I can now do cable

Has anyone done Tunisian crochet? I'm eyeing up a baby cardigan.

@QuiltedBear I don't see why it wouldn't work. I'm currently making a hat with some similar yarn. It's very squishy.

When you're crocheting an item of clothing; how do you prefer to pick up/join a new ball of yarn?

I'm almost at the point of needing to add a second on the cardi.

When I've got about 3-4 inches of yarn left i join the new ball on the last yo off a stitch and then sew the ends in. Same as I do for a blanket. :)

Thanks CrochetBug, I just wasn't sure if there was a different way to do it with clothing items. I'm hoping to get to that point tomorrow.