Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

I have never been able to understand why someone might knit a facecloth.  That is, until I picked up an almost complete ball of Rowan’s new ‘Lenpur Linen’ at a charity shop for just 30p.    My trusty miniature scales told me that this little purple ball of yarn weighed in at 42g, meaning I had 96m or thereabouts to try and make a project out of, so it was going to have to be something quite small.  Firstly I had to work out what the heck ‘lenpur’ might be, and a bit of investigating revealed that it was ‘Rowanese’ for rayon (albeit rayon specifically from white fir cellulose).  Having recently worked with some (bamboo-based) rayon I knew that it was very absorbent, and along with the linen content would have all the requisite properties required for a gift facecloth.

I found the pattern for Gwen Steege’s ‘Spa Set’ in the book 101 Luxury One-Skein Wonders – a fantastic depository of patterns for those short on ideas, time or money, and it just so happened that I was lacking in all three departments.

One of many quick and easy projects using only one skein

The yarn that the pattern called for had more meterage to the skein than a complete ball of Lenpur Linen would have done, and mine was part-used, so I didn’t know of I was going to have enough to complete the soap bag as well as the face-cloth, but I did in fact have plenty.  I knit the actual graphic design of the face-cloth and small drawstring bag slightly differently from the way that the pattern prescribed completely out of pre-considered design choice because I was too lazy to read the instructions properly, omitting the seed stitch rows that run throughout the pattern.  I made a few modifications to the bag as well – 10 rows of seed stitch were added to the open end of the bag, and a row of eyelets allowed for a thicker, three stitch i-cord to be threaded through a lot more comfortably.

Yes, the design differences were entirely intentional *cough*

Though I cannot imagine ever knitting such an item for myself, I think it gives a nice spin on the tradition of luxury bathing goods (or ’smellies’ as they are known in my family) as Christmas gifts, and not being too extravagant or showy I think it will make a nice gift for my brother’s girlfriend in a couple of months.  I’m currently revelling in the fact that I have added to my completed gifts list.  I think it is only right to celebrate by knitting something gorgeous for me.

It is that time of year when many knitters will be looking towards their stash with an air of panic, remembering the drunken resolution of last New Year’s Eve that saw them swear they’d pace their seasonal gift knitting through the entire year, and realising that they broke their promise almost straight away when they abandoned Uncle Jim’s socks when it got to the heel flap.

If you knit gifts for friends and family to be given during the festive period there is a good chance that your mind will currently be filled with a swirling mass of ideas for presents, but maybe also a nagging nervousness. Will your brother like the novelty jumper with the complicated intarsia motif you have planned for him? Will Auntie Nell appreciate and care for the shawl you have spent weeks diligently knitting? Do your family and friends deserve your hand-knits?

Yeah, er... thanks

There is an ever-more vocal group of  ’selfish knitters’ (this is not a slur, it is often the title that they give themselves), who think that the best person to knit gifts for is yourself.  Maybe only you (and perhaps other knitters) can understand the effort and value of a hand-knitted gift.  The time spent not only knitting, but planning and gathering, creating and perfecting.  Maybe only somebody that knits can understand the worth of a hand-knit. I say good on them! If you enjoy knitting for yourself alone, then wrap yourself in your squishy hand-knits and enjoy every moment.

On the ever-lively Ravelry boards I regularly read threads started by distressed and angry knitters, decrying that the recipient of their lovingly created gift was disliking of their new knit, or (and this might even be worse), that the recipient was totally nonplussed.  Knitting allies, supportive of the gift-giver and their art, will declare the gift recipient unworthy of future hand-knits, and then often indulge in a strange ritual by which they will weigh and measure the worth of a hand-knitted gift.  ”She clearly doesn’t understand how long it takes to knit a _____, she doesn’t understand its worth.  If you value your time at £___ per hour, multiplied by ___ hours, plus the cost of materials…”  Wait, wait, wait…  That’s not a gift, that’s calculating wages.

I tend not to think in these terms.  An average pair of socks might cost me £8 in materials, and take me 10-20 hours to knit but I do not measure a knitted gift’s worth by either criteria.  I enjoy knitting, otherwise I wouldn’t bother knitting gifts.  I wouldn’t bother knitting at all.  I would no more try to work out the cost of my knitting time than a model railway enthusiast might measure the worth of his miniature version of Didcot station by timing himself on how long it took him to arrange his plastic trees and replica grassy embankments.

I am grateful that any time I have given a knitted gift the recipient has been graceful and joyous in receipt (at least to my face, anyway), but I try not to get too hung up about it.  I also try to be sensible in what I give to people, and who I knit for.  Much as I would love to knit my brothers a pair of socks each they are 16 years old and like video games and football (they also have size UK13 feet, and there isn’t enough time or yarn in the world) and I know that, really, they will be much more appreciative of something disc-shaped that fits inside an Xbox 360.

Attention, ‘ye sea-farin’ lot

Yarr, scurvy land lubbers. We pirates keep be keepin' arr hands warm with mittens

Both Bones mittens are now complete.  I had some obvious issues with the suggested beads being too big to knit comfortably in pattern, but after strenuous and forceful blocking I think even Blackbeard himself would be accepting of them into his treasure haul.  Ok, maybe they are a bit ‘emo’ for Blackbeard, but I reckon Johnny Depp would be all over them…

We pirates like the shiny stuffs...

I’m satisfied with these and they are now going into my little box of knitted Christmas treasure which I am going to bury before I am tempted to put these on myself,  to keep my scurvy hands warms whilst I swab the decks (or clean the oven, whichever task presents itself first).

In my previous blog post I was in the process of experimenting with inserting pins through the vertical columns of beads on the fingerless mitts I have just finished knitting.  As I had written, the beaded skull and crossbones designs, as well as the surrounding knitting, were quite distorted and unattractive.  Perhaps I understated that just slightly. I have just downloaded the photos:

Before: unblocked an unattractive

The knitting in the picture above is not sitting in an ungainly heap – the larger gauge determined by the beads pulls the surrounding knitting so far out of shape that the knitting puckers quite uncontrollably.  The gloves were un-wearable and uncomfortable with a big lumpen mass of beads on the back of the hand, but blocking has worked its usual magic:

after: beaded motif and surrounding knitting now free of distortion

I am really very pleased with just how much blocking has improved these mittens. I thought that this ill-fated yarn was due for another trip to the frog pond, but instead I will be able to add the mitts to my little box of finished Christmas gift knits once the second glove has finished drying and had its blocking pins removed and I have taken some obligatory pictures for blog documentation.

I have made a small but happy update to the site and drawn some custom smilies for the comment sections.  There are (of course) sheep, different coloured balls of yarn and various items of knitwear.

I said goodbye to the 85% complete Edward’s Socks after finally coming to terms with the fact that I never had enough yarn to finish them.  I decided that the yarn needed to be re-purposed into something completely different, and so settled on a pair of fingerless mittens/arm-warmers, mostly because I already had the beads that the pattern called for rattling around the bottom of my knitting bag.

Knit in 4-ply sock yarn at 32st to 4″ I thought these would be a fun gift for my mother for Christmas, who likes this sort of thing (because she is still a teenager, it would seem).

I have never knit with beads before, and so used the ‘crochet hook method’ recommended in the pattern instructions.  This method of beaded knitting is simple, if very, very fiddly, not helped by the fact that the beads are constantly jostling for position in the row.  Sensing something wasn’t quite working I measured to make sure my gauge was still on and it was perfect, and then I measured to see how many beads would comfortably fit side-by-side in the same 4″ area.  28.  So, you are required to fit 8 stitches to every inch in the pattern, but that same inch will only accommodate 7 of the recommended beads.  The beaded motif is quite distorted where the beads are jostling so tight against each other and it is also causing the surrounding knitting to warp and balloon.

I am going to try and suspend my disappointment for a while and just hope that some creative blocking will help a little.  I tried simply wet blocking the first mitten and easing it into shape by hand, but it was apparent early on that this wasn’t going to be sufficient, so I had to get crafty.

Alas poor socks... I knew them well

With the pins in situ the beads are laying in a much more uniform and orderly manner, but I shall not know the success of the experiment until they have dried and I can see if it has sufficiently coaxed the fabric around and through the beads into submission.

It feels like knitting has more meaning when a warm hat can be pulled fresh from the needles and appreciated on a crisp autumn day.  I do knit in the summer months, but there is something distinctively homely about knitting woollens as nature puts a nip in the air and spins gold into the sunlight.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

~Albert Camus

Autumn and winter are my favourite times of year.  I like the reassuring cosiness of warming myself from the inside with a cup of hot tea, and from the outside with a wide array of mittens, scarves and hats as I crunch my way through fallen autumn leaves on the way to the park just to stop and look. Sometimes I wonder if people have forgotten how to look.  All too much of the time we only walk to get somewhere (and that’s for those of us that do walk and haven’t had a car seat surgically grafted onto our backsides), and sometimes I feel we all just need to take time out to just see what mysterious dance nature is performing all around us.

I have recently somewhere new to make my acquaintance with October.  Virginia Water, part of Windsor Great Park.

Autumn at Virginia Water Lake

I’ve been invited out for walks around this amazing park a couple of times in the last few weeks, and even in such a short time I have noticed how drastically the season has changed the landscape.  New views come into focus as leaves fall from trees, allowing a sight line through increasingly skeletal branches.  Flowers and soft foliage die down, letting your eyes appreciate the larger scope of the land and geological forms.

I made sure to look down and search down into the woodlands that surround the lake.  I walked off of the beaten (and gravelled) path and searched the woodland floor, and it is there I found one of the most magical and fleeting vestiges of Autumn.

Fly Agaric - a handy place to sit in any fairy tale

I spent a number of hours kneeling on the moist earth with wet knees, enjoying the smells and views of the very small, where I could imagine myself as a small woodland creature or character from Scandinavian mythology (I had not been eating these mushrooms, no matter how I might now sound). With my face close to the musty earth, surrounded by leaf mould I tried to capture my Gnome’s Eye View to bring home and inspire me.

Nature gave me an umbrella when it started to rain

When I returned home from my second trip, having photographed all kinds of mushrooms and toadstools I sat down and sketched the ballooning shapes of mushrooms until they distorted into new forms, and imagined myself a gnomish creature amongst a forest of spongy mushrooms, and that’s how the Gnomish Hat was first conceived.  I have worn my Gnomish head gear on subsequent excursions to autumnal haunts, and I am taking great comfort from the feel and function of my own hand-knits on the transitional season that will lead to the bleak Winter – not that I mind the Winter, if anything I love it even more than Autumn.  For one it is the perfect opportunity for even more snuggling down into layers of knitwear and watching the landscape be stripped back, waiting to be born anew.

I have many more photos of my excursions to Virginia Water if anyone wishes to continue their Gnome’s Eye View tour of one of the most beautiful parks in England.

scarf, pre-blocking

A couple of days ago I finished a scarf made from some yarn which had been hanging around me, ignored, since I started knitting.

A simple feather and fan scarf it was simple enough to knit, but exciting for the fact that it gave me my first opportunity to try and block some simple lace.  I wanted to really open up the lace pattern so tried to block the scarf quite aggressively, and here are the results:

Marialis End-to-End Scarf from Designer One Skein Wonders.

In lieu of blocking wires I used a technique that I’d heard mentioned once in which embroidery thread is run long the outside stitches and then that sturdy thread is held in place by the pins pushed into the surface upon which you are blocking the item. I’d really love to get some blocking wires one day, but at the moment an old skein of embroidery cotton provided a much less expensive alternative, and it seems to have worked very well.

Feather and fan lace, now opened up and uniform in pattern

Considering the lack of trust I had in this skein of yarn I am not unhappy with the resulting scarf. The colour settled into a striping sequence where brown waves of colour emerge from each side, looking not unlike tiger stripes, and although I might not choose to try and tame such a yarn again, at least the sequence stayed consistent throughout the knitting, which I am grateful for.