A Bluestocking Knits

Chinese New Year

Red fitted t-shirts from Michael's, with iron-on Chinese dragons from Dritz-Prym (no. 2909).

Gung hei fat choy!

Halfway?

Well, after twenty-five hours of knitting, I decided to block the Kid Mohair Wrap -- still on the needles -- and see what I've got. 

This is eighteen repeats of the "crossed eyelet" stitch, which the pattern says is what is in the accompanying photo.  If I added the knot-stitch border at the end now, my finished wrap would be only 53 inches long, so I can only assume that the "2 balls" in the pattern is a mistake for "3", as going by this test-blocking three balls of Kidsilk Haze will make it almost exactly 60 inches, the target length in the pattern.

Note that I could not reasonably get a 30-inch wide piece, so this is about 27 inches.  Pulling it harder would of course make the length even less.  It is obviously pretty fiercely blocked in the pattern's photo --

But now 60 inches seems a bit stingy for a wrap to me.  If I use the fourth ball, it would be around 80 inches, which is probably too much.  Is 70-75 inches a good length for a wrap?  I've been going through the dresser drawers, pulling out scarves and stoles and even bath towels, and draping them around my shoulders, and still can't decide.  Any advice?

Winter and Summer

David e-mailed the other day saying that the Company-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named is sending him to the Netherlands on the 11th.  (I must admit that I was hoping more than a little that at least one of us -- cough! me! cough -- would be allowed to go with him, but alas, no, it is far too short a trip this time around.)  But it is cold in the Netherlands in the middle of January!  So I started planning a pair of knitted mitts for him, and thought of this leftover bit of Trekking XXL from my "1810 Socks" a couple of years back, which socks are in fact one of the warmest pairs I've knitted, so it was lucky that the color is a fairly subdued and not-unmanly one.  I finished them in 48 hours -- pretty good, if I may say so myself.  This is about 49g of the leftovers, with still a bit left from that.

And he got his passport renewed and back in his hands in a week, to our astonishment!

I'm also having another go at the infamous "Kid Mohair Wrap" that I gave up on the last time around.  This time I have four balls of Kidsilk Haze, here in 634, a gentle cream color.  I am already doubting my math, though that may just be nerves.  Talking of time, I am keeping track of how long it takes to knit this, as I intend to donate it to my choir's annual raffle -- six hours to get this far, through the bottom border and one repeat of the center pattern.  Seventeen more repeats to go, and then the top border!  Wish me luck!

"Long Flowers Panel"

This is the "Long Flowers Panel" from Sandra Whitehead's book Celtic, Medieval and Tudor Wall Hangings in 1/12 Scale Needlepoint.  I liked it very much from the photo in the book, but I like the real thing even better -- the colors are a little deeper and richer in person.  These colors are exactly the same DMC floss as recommended, except that I chose a slightly earthier cream than the ecru -- the palest shade, in the centers of most of the flowers.

This piece was a bit of a challenge, as I could not get 24-count evenweave canvas at Michael's, not even for ready money, so I got 28-count instead -- even finer, of course.  My finished piece is thus 3.8 x 10 cm with the edging.  I had trouble seeing it sometimes, even with two (!) pairs of glasses on.  I'm not entirely pleased with my stitching, though a light pressing did wonders for the evenness.  I missed a lot of stitches and had to go back and put them in one at a time, and I made two glaring-to-me mistakes, one in picking up the lighter blue instead of the darker, and the other in not noticing that the twisted-rope border became grey-brown for a moment, not black -- I left the blue where it was, as I couldn't face picking it out at that stage, but I stitched over the black mistake with the grey-brown, which was only partially successful, as the black does "bleed" through a bit.  (Probably the blue would have been all right if I'd stitched over it, since it is two shades of the same color -- I was concerned about it being too thick at this fine gauge, but the black/grey-brown bit seems fine.)  But I am so utterly charmed by the piece that it doesn't matter that much.

Whitehead suggests finishing by folding the edges of the canvas and backing it with a piece of light cotton.  I used another method with more finished edges, though, following Janet Granger's excellent tutorial on miniature wall-hangings -- this uses a whipped edging.  Since my piece was so narrow, I decided not to cover the back with iron-on interfacing, as Granger does, and simply enclosed it with the turned edges of the canvas (judiciously dabbed with Fray-Check).  My whip-stitching is also rather amateur -- oh, I see one long stitch! -- but again, the piece is so charming that I am quite delighted with it anyway.

(I still have to add hanging loops to the top.  Next time I might try mitering the corners of the hem.)

A kit of this piece can also be found, as the "Tudor Long Panel", on Whitehead's website, Knighttime Miniatures.  There are a number of other interesting pieces in the book -- many of which are also available as kits from the website -- all original designs based on mediaeval and Tudor sources, mostly "tapestries" for the miniature setting.  The charts come in both color and symbol versions, which I find very handy, as I seem to work better from the symbol charts, but the color ones give a good overview of how things will come together.

Yes, I am planning an Elizabethan doll's-house ...!

Twelfth Night

"Daylight and champaign discovers not more: this is open. I will be proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-devise the very man. I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me; for every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me. She did commend my yellow stockings of late, she did praise my leg being cross-gartered; and in this she manifests herself to my love, and with a kind of injunction drives me to these habits of her liking. I thank my stars I am happy. I will be strange, stout, in yellow stockings, and cross-gartered, even with the swiftness of putting on. Jove and my stars be praised!"

Malvolio -- played by the inestimable Stephen Fry -- convincing himself that Olivia loves him, while Sir Toby Belch (Colin Hurley), Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Angus Wright), and Fabian (Jethro Skinner) eavesdrop, in the recent production at the Belasco Theatre on West 44th Street in New York, originally performed at the Globe in 2012.. 

Happy New Year

There is a tradition that what you do on New Year's Day is an indication of what you will do throughout the coming year.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, I did a lot of mom things -- schlepping Julia back and forth to her riding lesson (the horses don't care that it's a holiday!), chores, grocery shopping, cooking. 

I also -- hurray! -- did some needlework, both on the first of a pair of Selbu-ish mitts for Laura, whose school trip to Washington DC is at the end of March.  I could hardly let her go that far without some handknits.  I made a Three-Rib Beret which I gave to her for Christmas, and now am working on mitts with the same color -- which is Lorna's Laces' "Blackberry", possibly one of the most delicious purples ever -- so that they will almost match but not quite.  I'm not as far along as I expected to be, since the first mitt was just a smidge too small, and I've pulled it out and restarted the colorwork section with a few more stitches, rebalancing the pattern and making some adjustments.

I also continued working on this, which is the "Long Flowers Panel" from Sandra Whitehead's first book of miniature needlepoint projects, Celtic, Medieval and Tudor Wall Hangings in 1/12 Scale Needlepoint.  Fate, I tell you -- the book was in a public library not more than fifteen minutes' drive from my house.  I have for a very long time been fascinated by doll's-houses, as I've said before, and I was so pleased with the house we made for Laura that it has never been far from my mind to make one for myself.  Since needlework is at present far easier than woodworking -- not to mention more portable -- I am starting with that.  Oh! but it's tiny.  This center section is barely 3 cm wide, and I have to wear extra glasses to see the stitches.  Michael's had all of the floss colors recommended in the pattern, but not 24-count evenweave canvas, so this is 28-count.  But I must say it's fascinating, and I'm enjoying it immensely, despite having found four missed stitches already!

And I read, too! staying up a little too late, perhaps, but I was enjoying it -- the first of Susannah Stacey's (aka Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey) Inspector Bone series of murder mysteries, Goodbye, Nanny Gray.  I was so disappointed to find that our public library had recently weeded all of this series that I bought three of them for a penny apiece off of Amazon a month or so ago.  Douglas Henshall's character in "Collison" a few years ago reminded me very much of Bone, an engaging detective coping with a tragic recent past, and rereading them now I tend to see him in the part, which can't be a bad thing.  The books are an easy read but intelligent, and I like the way that Bone's and his daughter Charlotte's stories are emerging very slowly throughout, so that you get to know them over time instead of all in a rush.

Happy New Year!