I spend £8

Not a bad haul! It's all 4-ply, but wool, or at least, with wool in it. I've been thinking about making the adult version of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Surprise Jacket - it would be a great stash buster. Looking at people's on the Internet is so fascinating. They all look so different. I like the ones that look as if they have been knitted at a tight gauge - some looked a bit saggy and droopy and being a short and ever rounder person that's not a good look for me. I also liked the ones with thin stripes, which means lots of ends to weave in, the effects were more subtle.

I thought that if I knit with two strands, then I could use up loads of oddments and use a second thin strand that was the same colour throughout to hold the colours together. Say a blue, black, purple, grey, cream version with one strand of vintage 3-ply of dark grey?

Test Yarn

Why do I knit a test garment? Why work with vintage acrylic and oddments? Because I hate waste! If my knitting goes wrong and I'm working with under a fiver's worth of yarn, I can shrug and put it down to experience. The time that went into it was pleasantly spent - like doing a crossword or a jigsaw. If however I have bought fifty pounds or more worth of yarn, and buttons, and the garment goes wrong, it's a tragedy. I feel that I'm a bad knitter and a wasteful person and all kinds of other horrible feelings that I don't want attached to my hobby!

Sewers make lots of test garments. They keep a supply of gingham or muslin and quickly run up a shell to see how the design works. One book I read said that you can expect to throw away 5 patterns for every one that you will make up with good fabric - fashion fabric they call it, to distinguish it from the test fabric. I thought this was a great idea. When people see me knitting they often say that they gave up knitting because they would spend time and money on a garment, put it on and think: nah! I don't like it. It doesn't suit me. Knitting a test garment saves you from this disappointment.

It takes time of course, but you'd be surprised how much knitting time is spent puzzling out the directions and thinking what the *** does that mean? The second attempt knits up in half the time. I also learnt to knit faster. I was an English knitter, or a thrower. Now I knit Continental, which is nearly three times faster. That makes a difference.

It is always difficult to find a bargain pack of double knit, especially if you want a nice colour as well, but my stash is full of other bargains - so much so that I'm getting stricter about what I buy. Even though I want to test a Kim Hargreaves design in Calmer called Cloud, I passed by a bag of Stylecraft cotton in a bright coral pink. It wasn't my colour! It's shameful how acquisitive I am - part of me still yearns for that bag of yarn - it was a bargain after all!

The Yeoman shade card came - their merino wool looks good (I wasn't keen on the acrylic). Buying direct from them would cost around £20 for a garment. When I get better at knitting, I'll probably start doing my test garments in this kind of yarn - a kind of middle road. There are colours like black, cream, pink and burgundy that are always useful because they go with everything. Then if I really love a garment and it suits me, I'll splash out on the fashion wool in the perfect colour. And when will I be this good? By next year. By the end of next year. By the year after for sure!

Lovely Pink Silk

It's taken me over half an hour to get into Blogger today - for some reason it wouldn't accept my password while I was logged in, but the password was correct because when I logged in as Andy, it let me log in as me! Words fail me.

Computer frustration almost destroyed my pleasure in this lovely stash addition - 50p worth of lovely pink silk. But not quite - it will be perfect for poppies.

Tomorrow I'll report on progress on Turbulence - and my new project. I've had it for now.

Poppies

When I put away the green and pink balls of yarn I bought for poppies I decided to photograph the swatches - and the failed attempt at a Chanel jacket. Kafee Fasset has no words to wisdom to offer on fit - but he does have the answer to the colour problem. He says that if the colours are not working, what you need is 20 more colours! Hopefully, now that I'm knitting Lucy Neatby's way, I'll learn how to control my tension, and by the time I can knit a garment that's the right size, I'll have the extra 40 colours tucked away in the stash ready to start knitting again. I like some of the colourways, but overall, it's just not right.

Finished the practice swatch for the Turbulence cable panel - hurray! I went wrong once at the top, but I think I'll go back to the real garment now.

Brown Stash

Bought a couple more balls today, to add to the 80p worth from a few days ago. The new colours are acrylic, unfortunately, but I only need a few rows for the fair isle so they will be just fine for that. This pile of brown is destined for a 80s classic - the Ralph Lauren Ski Sweater. Ah nostalgia. It probably won't be the same this time around. The pattern is by Nancy Vale. I came across her 80s book second hand - I bought the original when it came out. Ralph Lauren's prairie collection was THE thing one year, I can't remember which, but I made the dress (American cowgirl type) from a Vogue pattern and the jumper and by some lucky miracle they turned out OK.

Awful Alef

Here's a photo that both depresses and cheers me up. Depresses because it's so unutterably awful - (look at my face! Did you ever see such a thoroughly fed-up knitter?). The good side is that looking at the above mess, there is no doubt that I'm improving! There's at least twenty things wrong with that Alef. It's the first one I made after a break of 20 years or so. I had to give up knitting because I needed two pairs of glasses, one for watching TV and one for knitting - impossible, and I'm not really a radio person so I gave up knitting. Then I got wonderful varifocal lenses. It's over £300 for the lenses (not the frames, that's extra!) but oh, is it worth it. It's like having eyes again! I can read maps, look at labels in shops, well, I won't go on, there are many convenient uses for eyes. And then, in February 2006, I suddenly remembered how much I like to knit. So, I went to the local yarn store, bought the current Rowan book and some yarn and launched in - with the above result.

I don't think I ever was a very good knitter - 80s garments had a lot of slack in them! I also knit a lot of ethnic type jumpers, which again don't call for a lot of technique. I used a lot of colours as well, which hid a multitude of sins. I must dig out some old photos - everyone I knew got one of my jumpers. It never occur ed to me to wonder how much they appreciated them! Old sweaters had a second life because they'd go to the local hippies. I went away to Japan for five years and when I came back I saw a couple of my jumpers still walking around the street or drinking beer in the pub.

I spent all night knitting tension squares, so Tangerine Nightmare took a holiday last night. I will do the grafting and sew it up this weekend, because we're at home. It would be nice to finish the last sleeve (still at 6 rows) this week.

I think the big cones are 2-ply anyway. I tried knitting with various needles and numbers of strands last night, but although 2 strands held together gives the right number of stitches for 4-ply, and 3 strands held together gives the right number of stitches for double knit, the row tension seems off, there's always too many rows - I wonder if that's because of the two strands? I think I've noticed this before with trying to get tension with my various bargain cones. Vintage Vogue books have glorious garments in 2-ply and 3-ply yarn, but where would I ever get the time?

If I don't have time to knit with 2-ply, and I can't get the tension for double knit and 4-ply patterns, does this mean I should stop stashing cones? Probably, but I don't think I can! Not when I see all that yarn for so little money!

Could You Have Resisted These Cones?

Honestly? When they cost only three pounds? We were away this weekend so I knitted about six rows, and bought enough yarn to keep me busy for about six years! Why do knitters need a stash? Thank goodness for the Internet - at least I know I'm not the only hoarder around.

The cream cone weighs 1500g, and it burns brightly, leaving a residue that crumbles when you rub it, so I think it may be wool. The pink/beige cone weights 760g and feels much softer. It too burns, but when the flame goes out, it leaves a sticky lump behind that won't crumble, so I think it may be artificial.

It's so thin! I do have patterns for Shetland 2-ply garments and vintage 3-ply garments (I love 50s styles) or it might work if I knit with two strands held together - to get double knitting - that would be the best option because there's lots of practice garments I want to make. I'd need more time to knit than I have now (six rows over a weekend!) to embark on anything in fine yarn. And then, what if it didn't fit after all that effort?

I couldn't get into Blogger on Friday because all my settings changed after I unwisely let the computer install the updates it's been asking for for weeks. I couldn't find anything, nothing worked...Bah! I hadn't taken a picture anyway, because I haven't figured out how to do real good close ups that demonstrate what you want to show, but I would have said how poor the knitting on the first sleeve for the Tangerine Nightmare was.

If you want to knit beautifully, Lucy Neatby has you form the stitches at the very tips of the needles, so that when you have two needles in one stitch, it's only the tapered ends that go in, adding up to no more than one needle at any one time, so the stitch never gets stretched. She demonstrated the way I used to knit, cramming the whole needle in at any old angle next to the other needle, so there are two needles rammed into a single stitch and called it stitch abuse!

I knit her way for the body of the garment, and it is a huge improvement - my tension stays much more even as well, and that has to be a bonus. But, when it came to four needles and a circular for the sleeve, I must have gotten excited and forgotten her rules (and no purl to bother about either!) How messy it looked, even with mohair hiding many sins. I'm not frogging. No way, not tangerine acrylic mohair, but I am going to knit the second sleeve beautifully. Watch this space!

The Stash Grows!

Couldn't resist this cotton glace from the hospice shop, even though two of the balls had been used. It was only £1.50 for 4 balls, and Rowan is such lovely quality that it should be worth the washing and rewinding. Four balls probably isn't enough for an item, but it's the right colourway for my ongoing Poppies project.

I have lots of failed attempts at Poppies, that I'll photograph one day - but basically I've come up with the idea of a French-style jacket (you know who I mean even if we're not supposed to use the brand name) in Kafee Fassett's good old Persian Poppies pattern. I love Kafee's fabrics, but his designs don't suit me. I disovered this by spending nearly a year knitting the Turkish Carnation jacket - it looked wonderful spread out on the bed or on a chair, but it turned me into a hippie garden gnome. I'd say you need to be a minimum of six foot high to wear any of Kafee's designs, so, I'm using Jean Frost's basic jacket - at least that's the idea.

I had about four goes at it before I gave up. I had lots of trouble with tension (this is before I discovered Lucy Neatby) and also, my matchy-matchy me didn't like the range of colours that I started with. Some people liked the mad peasant look of throwing every colour of the rainbow in, but I want more colours that are closer in tone. I haven't bought any new colours for ages, so today's cotton was a welcome find.

The buttons are real shell (60p worth) There are two small, four medium and four large. The large ones are not right for Tangerine Dream - too bright. I chose the brown buttons you can see on yesterday's picture before the lacy bits went on, and now I'm not so sure about them. There isn't anything else suitable in my stash, and even if it gets finished, I'm not sure the Tangerine Dream warrants a trip to Duttons for Buttons for special matching!