Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

Checking Ravlery when I switched on my laptop this morning (as much for it’s warming powers on my thighs this on this cold, snowy day as anything else) I had a PM from Alabama Whirly to say that I was nominated for…

How cool is that?  It took me a while to find the awards, and then to look through them as there are around 30 categories each full of amazing, funny and disastrous projects, patterns and posts.  I have been nominated for my Goldfish Hot Water Bottle cover in the Best Personal Pattern category:

This is such a lovely thing to have woken up to, I am extremely excited and touched that somebody thought to nominate one of my projects, it was totally unexpected!  I’m off to finish voting in all of the various categories now and then I had better have a shower and get dressed (I know my priorities!)

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

Contain your excitement…

So… several people (ok, two – the beautiful and intelligent Getknitics and Mooncalf) guessed that yesterday’s blob was a leaf!  It was a fig leaf, to be precise – a pattern taken from Lesley Stanfield’s ‘100 flowers to knit and crochet’ which arrived in the post on Saturday. This was a book that I’d wanted pretty much since I started knitting, but wasn’t sure if I could justify spending £10 on a book about ‘frivolous embellishments’, because it was hard to see how they might have any practical value, until I realised the obvious and pressing need for crocheted, felted fig leaves:

For those astute viewers that might rightly note that the original, slightly less magnificent statue by Michelangelo does not actually figure a fig leaf, this is quite true.  However, in reserved British style, one was made for the cast of the statue at the V&A museum after Queen Victoria expressed shock at the sight of the statue.  Nowadays, however, David usually likes to be a bit more free and easy, much like Giantmonk when he’s not trying to help me justify buying a book of crocheted and knitted flower patterns.

Felting is an inexact science at the best of times. Add to that the fact that I cannot really crochet (I have tried to teach myself a few times, but I always forget how to do it as soon as I put the crochet hook down) and what emerged from my washing machine today was a little green mangled lump of inevitability.

Made from Rowan Pure Wool DK, it resembles a comedy lump of slime.  I’m not even sure you can make out quite what it was supposed to be.  I’ve pinned it out to block as I think it has a certain charm to it anyway, and I don’t have the heart to throw it away.  What did surprise me is how much lighter the felted item looks from the original yarn:

As I have used this same ball of yarn for a few different projects now I have seen that it does lose quite a lot of colour in a cold wash even, but I wasn’t expecting the colour change to be quite so drastic.  I am not sure if this change in colour is due to the washing process or if the fluffiness of the now fulled/felted fibres alters the appearance of the yarn and the way it behaves in the light, but I haven’t noticed this drastic colour change in any other yarn I have so far used in my stumbling journeys through the alchemical processes of felting.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a use for my new lumpy creation, but I’ll have a think about how it might be put to use.  If anyone has any suggestions, please list them in the comments and I’ll see if I can act on them!