This blog will no longer be updated...

A big thank you to all my readers. I have decided to discontinue this blog. What would have been future posts about my knitting and crafting experiences will now be included in my other blog Healing scribbles, which currently deals with my icon writing, painting ceramics and art therapy activities.  I now want to expand it's content to include my interest in stories, ie how the stories we tell ourselves shape the people we become and the world in which we live and also my learnings on the environment.

I took this decision for a number of reasons, the most important one being the fact that I find it difficult to maintain multiple blogs. I also feel that consolidating all my interests together in one blog, makes for greater clarity and richness. I hope you will join me there...

32. Why I knit...

This is for my nieces, who are not sure whether or not they should consider knitting as a hobby.  It is also for anyone who has thought about learning to knit, but has reservations about it because they are not sure that they should invest their time and energy in mastering a skill which is well plain and simple, un-cool.  They could concentrate their efforts on something more productive and remunerative. Shouldn't they? Well they could, and might, but if they would like to hear the case for knitting, here it is:

Someone who did not know I knit, remarked to me that knitting is for losers of a specific breed - stupid women and old ladies. Who else would bother to waste their time and energy on knitting when you can go out and buy a perfectly good sweater, or scarf or shawl or whatever for a very little.  I am painfully aware that people who endorse this thinking, obviously have never made something with their hands and when that is the case, I have no basis for engaging with them to explain my point of view.  Some, will never know the pleasures of walking into a wool shop and that is their prerogative.  But if you are tempted to give it a try, but haven't yet, let me entice you...

You don't just walk in.  First, you eye the display in the windows letting whatever thoughts that come, arise and propel you inside. Next, you stand in the doorway, weighing up the mohairs and the shaggy wools, cashmeres and tweeds in your mind's eye.  After careful consideration, you decide which direction you would like to begin with. What should you do? Stroke the silks, ogle the 4 plys, squeeze the 8 plys, thumb through the patterns, tug at the swatches, examine the needles, or bobbins, or counters, or markers, or all of the above, scanning for something you do not own - yet? After a long, lingering saunter through the shop, when you have sampled its tactile and visual pleasures to your heart's content, you make an executive decision: Based on my skill level, budget, figure and wardrobe, today I will pick up this, this and this. Then, bag in hand, wallet lighter, you head for the exit.  Be warned, at this point, something inevitably catches your eye - that little thingo that was made for you to have today. Sometimes you indulge yourself, sometimes you don't, but mostly you do.

When you finally reach home, you pack away the purchases, with the wool stash or the needle pile or wherever appropriate. It could lie there for weeks, months, years, well even a decade or two. It could also outlive you and I can testify to that - I have been to a nursing home store room crammed with hanks of unknitted dreams that still languish in the dust.

But enough of that.  Knitting for me is about exuberance, fun and lucky accidents which you can nudge along. Sooner or later, when on a lazy trawl through the internet, you chance upon the perfect pattern, (that you later realise has been sitting on Ravelry for years and years) you save it, print it, highlight it and  scale it to your measurements.  Then you fish out the needles, the wool and the measuring tape. Now, if you are good, you swatch.  If you are bad, like me, you don't and live to regret it, Be warned: if you don't swatch, many long hours of painstaking lace and cabling, inexorably wind up reduced to a wooly tangle ready to be knit up again, this time with the wisdom of hindsight. Then you get on with the real thing - the business of knitting.  Finally, after eons, it is all knitted up, blocked and ready to wear. At this stage, you grab a cuppa, a coffee, a chocolate, a red or white or whatever it is that you need to celebrate the pure unadulterated joy of having made a bit of sheer heaven with your own two hands. You wallow in it, letting it seep into your soul and swell you with pride and encouragement. THAT is why I knit.

Of course I could do more "useful", "meaningful" things with my time (and I do), of course I could buy something with a better finish and for better value at a fraction of the price (and I do); BUT I still knit.  For many years the results of my efforts were wonky, too large, too small, unsuitable or just plain ugly.  But I still knit, because if I didn't, I would lose the opportunity to connect with that intangible something that enhances my sense of well being and feeds my soul. I would never have an object, fashioned by my own fingers and would never know the delight and rightness inherent in the process of creating it.

To those who think that knitting is about throwing a piece of string between a pair of sticks, well you are right, it is, but it is so much more. To produce a customised garment takes many years of trial and error, lots of disasters and near misses. You learn to grit your teeth and try again, you build your persistence and staying skills. You also learn to cheat - I have used mathematical and programming skills to crack patterns which initially appeared beyond my capacity to reproduce - you have to be resourceful and think laterally if you want to complete a challenge. You connect with the army of forebears who have gone before you - some related to you by blood and others by interest. 

In this product- and profit-oriented world, we have forgotten to enjoy the small things, we do not put a premium on feeding our souls. I do, and I know a lot of women and men who do too. I have never met most of these people in real life, but I still think of them as my friends - a large-hearted, skill-sharing, on-line brother/sisterhood that I can tap into at three in the morning or in the middle of the day, a community spread across the globe, that shares and supports total strangers, just because they all knit.  They are for me the living embodiment of kindness and generosity in what could otherwise appear to be an indifferent world. They are another reason why I knit and I hope you will too.

- Gillian Valladares Castellino

31 Super quick mitts

This is the quickest fingerless mitten pattern I have done. I have relatively tiny hands and the mitts fit very snugly, so you might want to increase the number of stitches for larger hands. I used the magic loop method and knitted them in the round.

I created them using:
8 ply wool and 6 mm needles

Key
K = Knit
P = Purl
K2tog = Knit 2 together
K2tog tbl = Knit 2 together into the back loop

Method: (Make 2)
Cast on 28 sts and distribute evenly over two needles. Place marker at the start of the round.
Rows 1 & 2 (rib): K1, P1

Begin pattern: (4 row repeat)
Pattern Row 1: K to end of row
Pattern Row 2: K2tog to end of row
Pattern Row 3: K2 into each stitch to end of row

Repeat the 4 pattern rows 6 times (ie 7 pattern sets in total) ie Pattern Rows extend from Row 3 to Row 30

Row 31: K2, K5 onto scrap yarn, move the 5 stitches onto the Left Hand needle and knit the remaining stitches using the main yarn, to complete the round.

Continue in pattern (using only the stitches done with the main yarn and ignoring the stitches on the scrap yarn) for 11 rows ie from Row 32 to Row 43

Rows 44 & 45 (rib): K1, P1

Cast off as follows: K2tog tbl, slip st on Left Hand needle to end

Thumb hole:
Pick up 12 stitches (ie 6 on each needle) along the scrap yarn before removing it.

Knit 5 rows

Rib 2 robs

Cast off

31 Lauren Hat

This is a very pretty, easy to knit cabled hat from Cascade yarns - a free pattern. It is called the Lauren Hat.

It is a quick knit - I knitted one for me and one for my niece Faye. This is a photo of  Faye's hat...

30 Easy Cabled Sweater

This is a beautiful free pattern from Lion Yarns. Here is a link to the original pattern - Lion Brand - Free Easy Cabled Sweater

I wanted to have both the front and back identical, so I did not knit it in one piece. Instead, I knitted the front, transferred the piece onto a holding needle and then knitted an identical piece for the back. I then joined the pieces together. Also, I modified the collar and omitted the sleeve ribbing.

 You can view more details of my modification on Ravelry - My easy cabled sweater link

29 Aran Button Vest

This pattern is from Patons - Book 1265. It is Pattern 3 in the relevant book, but did not knit according to the specified measurements even when the guage was right. I had to use a serger/overlocker to slash and resize the garment to fit me and sew up the neckline which gaped horribly. As you can see it did not look much like the original. 

Here is what the original looked like:

Here is what my version looked like :(

In future I will be swatching from this booklet and then sizing the pattern according to my own measurements. Ah well, this was a good learning exercise and on the plus side the garment is wonderfully warm.

Here is a link to details of the relevant book - Patons - Book 1265 - Jet

28 Eco vest

This pattern is adaptable for different types of wool and needle sizes. It is a free pattern off Ravelry.com and is from Knitting Green by Ann Budd. Here is a link to the pattern Eco-vest .  I knitted it in two versions: