Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

This will be my last post for a little while now as I am going into hospital for a spell (though hopefully not too long) where I shall probably have say goodbye to my needles and the internet for a bit whilst I recover.

Knowing that I had this hospital stay approaching, I have been trying to get some more of my Christmas projects completed. I finally decided on a hot water bottle cover for my brother-in-law, and I decided that it should be a very Christmassy affair. Knit from a single skein of Louet Riverstone Chunky, I improvised the entire pattern. I don’t know how it came together, or what process of luck decided that it was going to fit, but somehow it did. Before felting in the washing machine, it was a truly colossal piece of knitting. I never had a camera to take a ‘before’ picture, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say it was huge.

Fortunately it felted to a perfect size for a standard hot water bottle, ready for decorating:

It is very much a ‘work in progress’, but I wanted to take some pictures whilst there was still ample light. I think the shepherd needs a few sheep, and it just needs a bit more detail and overall refinement, and I think the star needs a small bead at its centre, to catch the light (in this case I am going to ignore the ‘less is more’ idiom and insist that, actually, more is more), but I now have the general idea of the design laid out for when I am able to return to my projects and (hopefully) finish them in time for gift-giving.

Have fun knitting, everyone, and I hope to be back soon! In the meantime, please feel free to leave a comment, just to say hi, or to tell if you are busy with gift-knitting and if you think you are going to finish in time

I am back in the land of the living internet, and now that I am properly connected I have uploaded the very simple patterns for these two easy face cloths in one PDF file to download. With 26 knitting days left until Christmas, these would be lovely tied with a ribbon alongside some luxury bath goods or a handmade bar of soap. Or maybe they’ll be a the perfect knit for you to enjoy a relaxing bath with, as a congratulatory treat for yourself after a hard day’s Christmas shopping?

Perfect for the young and the young-at-heart.

Download the PDF pattern for the Rubber Ducky face cloths

I decided to go ahead and frog the Hot Water Bottle cover I had been knitting at the saddest of times and try to find something small and frivolous to re-use the yarn on. As the yarn that I had been using was cotton, I decided to make a couple of small face cloths for one of my sisters who happens to collect rubber ducks. [edit: really, look, I now have proof]

The funniest thing about this edit is that I sent her an email saying simply ‘can you please send me a picture of some of your bath ducks’ and she sent this in reply.  No text at all in her reply message.  I like that she knows not to bother asking ‘why?’.

Wrapping the face cloths with some hand-made soap will, I hope, make a nice, small, secondary gift to give with her Squaffle scarf.

This cheerful motif has a partnering design which I’ll post with a downloadable PDF of the pattern when I get to a more stable internet connection as I am currently experiencing the joys of Virgin Trains’ wireless internet service, which is more temperamental than a hormonal teenager.

A few weeks ago I took note that it was on it’s way. A small, almost whispering voice that told me not to leave it too late, that I should start preparing now, but obviously I told that voice straight back that it was ages away, that I had plenty of time. Yet, without notice, it creeps up on you whilst you have your back turned on it, until you look over you shoulder and it is staring you in the eye…

Huh? 30 days? But, but… that can’t be! It’s even worse than that as I actually have an operation and subsequent hospital stay between now and the actual day of gift-giving. Oh, and of course I will have to allow time for Royal Mail to lose all of my gifts as my entire family are scattered throughout the isles. Oh, yes, and I’m supposed to be seeing one of my sister’s on Monday, and I am supposed to bring gifts, etc with me then… The same sister who, three days ago announced how much she and her other half would like a scarf each. That’s OK – I have a couple of newly knit scarves! Hurrah! Oh, but you want one in white and one in black? But I only have green and orange.

Well, I made Squoffle for my sister

Which was a quick and easy knit, so that’s one knitterly problem out of the way, but as for her partner…  I don’t have any black yarn, nor any money to buy any with, so  I’m a bit stuffed as far as that is concerned, so I will push it to the back of my mind and pretend that the problem isn’t there.  That always solves things.

Still. Looking at the tab I have organised my Christmas knitting under in Ravelry I haven’t done too badly.

The thing that worries me most, though, is that these projects are all for the women in the family, and I realise that I have so far totally neglected to knit for any of the men.  I’m going to try and knit a couple of hot water bottle covers to then felt for my brother and my brother-in-law, but as for my other sister’s boyfriend, I have no clue.  I am going to see if I can gather enough yarn to make a pair of fingerless mitts for my mother’s husband, something to complement her Yarr! Boney mittens, but with half-fingers perhaps, and without the beading (I don’t think he would be that ‘into’ beads).   I have no idea where I am goign to find the time or yarn for any of this from, but I shall just have to hope that an answer makes itself apparrent soon.

Squoffle is a short buttoned scarf, made with a single skein of bulky/chunky weight yarn. Though it is a very easy pattern every sixth row makes a departure from the established garter stitch to add a row of interest with knitted eyelets, some of which are later utilised as button holes (an additional boon to those who do not enjoy making buttonholes, of course!)

This scarf lays completely flat with no curling, so whether you choose to block your finished piece or not is a matter of personal choice, not necessity.

The name Squoffle comes courtesy of my other half, who phoned me whilst I was travelling to say he had picked up something special for tea.  As he poured through descriptions of gorgeous starters and a sumptuous main course and what wine we might enjoy, I of course only had ears for what was to be for dessert.  Looking at the packaging, he said over the phone in a confused voice ‘Squoffle?’  A Small tear in the cardboard had partially obscured the ‘o’ of ’soufflé’, and so the word squoffle was born.

I like to think of the squoffle as meaning a ’squishy waffle’ and with it’s frothy texture and grid of eyelets, it’s a name that seemed to suit this little scarf quite well.

Download the PDf for Squoffle

Oubliette, from the French ‘oublier’, to forget.

In the immortal words of Hoggle from The Labyrinth:

An Oubliette is a place you put people to forget about them.

I have an oubliette, not for casting away annoying people that have done me wrong, but for projects that just never came to be, for whatever reason.  It’s not so much a dark and distant dungeon which I can walk away from to such a distance as to not hear the piteous sobs of what lies within, but a small cylindrical box that resides on my desk.

As long as items are concealed within I do not feel guilty about their unfinished state.  ’Out of sight, out of mind’ works just fine as far as I am concerned, but today I decided it was time to open up the oubliette and find what UFOs (unfinished objects) still resided within, and if they could be completed, salvaged, or if the yarn could be re-imagined in any way.

To be fair to myself I am a pretty monogamous knitter.  Every now and then I will have to lay aside a complex piece of knitting, such as the Red Admiral I am working on, because I have a knitting deadline to meet (the current one being Christmas – how did that creep on on me?), but under normal circumstances I only have one project ‘on the needles’ at any one time.

Despite this I found a few things inside:

There’s the leg motif of the Pine Tree socks I was knitting for my brother-in-law, the rest of which I had ripped out to make some mitts for my mother (but I couldn’t bare to unravel the tree motif for some reason, and I found I had enough yarn to complete the mittens without doing so).  There is also a half-finished hot-water bottle cover I was making out of pink cotton as comfort knitting when my Grandad passed away, and which I couldn’t bring myself to later complete as it somehow brought back the feelings of sadness I experienced as I knit when his death was imminent.  I have decided to unravel the pink cotton and make a few fun and frivolous things for Christmas, to repurpose the yarn into small but cute things for a few of my siblings, to make the yarn into something happier.

Also in the oubliette were a few knitted sunflowers I had made from old yarn scraps that I didn’t want to throw away as waste, so I am going to have a think about how I can use those as embellishments on a project.  Hoggle would be proud.

What came first, the woolly or the mammoth?  Did these magnificent prehistoric pachyderms evolve or were they created… by knitters?  Here are two of my favourite things – knitting and natural history, in one T-shirt, designed by Eskimimi for Mr Cloud.

With knitting needles for tusks and a warm and cuddly knitted body, this mammoth really is woolly.  In this t shirt the mammoth is caught at the moment of casting on a new project  perhaps another mammoth in a previously unknown form of reproduction.  Could this have been why these wonderful animals eventually died out – because they couldn’t knit new mammoths fast enough?  Help to make sure that knitting never dies out again by making sure that we never forgot the fate of the woolly mammoths, and give fellow knitters and science nerds alike a smile for only £12.99, and available to ship worldwide from www.mrcloud.com

Lace knitting is like a regression. It essentially harnesses and brings under control the one thing you try to avoid as a new knitter – holes. Terrible when created accidentally, some crazy knitters make these holes on purpose, arranging them into intricate and beautiful patterns.

I have dipped my toe into the frothy pool of lace knitting before, but only a little. A simple feather and fan scarf is the most complex piece of lace I have attempted so far, but I have decided not to be afraid of any knitting techniques anymore.  What’s the worse that can happen?  I take my toes back out of the frothy lace pool and instead visit the frog pond.  So, armed with two absolutely gorgeous skeins of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn, I had a look through some lace patterns and found a design which I liked the look of, Ailsa Daly’s Red Emperor scarf, freely available for download from her website ‘Knitabulous‘.

I have so far completed one of the edge panels of lace, and have enjoyed the knitting very much.  I haven’t found the knitting too taxing – I can still listen to an audiobook whilst I knit, I can even listen to my other half without waving my hand in his direction in the internationally recognised knitter’s gesture of ’shhh! I’m counting!’

Looking at the edge panels on the knitabulous site I realise how much comparative length is given to the stole by blocking.  The lace portion I have knitted so far is completely different in its dimensions to the finished stole as pictured, which I think is a slight shame as I like the almost 3D appearance of the cockleshell shaped motifs in the border and I now have vague concerns about having enough yarn to make an adequately long stole, but I have sworn not to get too upset if I end up with a short but beautiful rectangle.

Either way, whether this stole is due to become my favourite knitted object ever, or simply an exercise in learning another aspect of the knitting tradition, I am no longer scared of lace.  It’s just a series of yarn-overs and various decreases, reined in with a little bit of concentration.