Glorious

It's summer here! We've been enjoying the beautiful sunny weather the last few days, especially given the unpredictable nature of weather here. This may be the only summer we get, so I feel obligated to experience it to the fullest. This means exposed limbs, sunscreen, iced coffee / tea, windows thrown open wide... and picnics!

Yesterday, we cycled up through Holyrood Park, and spent the afternoon picnicking on the grassy slopes.



One of the best things about Edinburgh is the possibility to escape to the hills right in the middle of the city. The gorse is blooming brightly, ducks and swans abound, and we even saw a kestrel hovering, on the lookout for rodents / lunch. (But didn't get any photos of it. Ah well).



I've gone for walks here many times, and fancy myself quite capable on the hiking front, but this is the first time I've cycled up - apparently my cycling muscles are non-existent! (Seeing as I can't remember the last time I rode my bike, this shouldn't be surprising. Still, it was difficult.) In any case, the outing forced me to make sure my bike was still roadworthy, so next time I take it out there will be less work to do. I'm hoping this is an incentive to bike more often.

Miles and miles of i-cord

A while back I showed a wedding-craft teaser, trying to be enigmatic about its possible purpose:



I thought I'd be able to show proper pictures of the finished product in wedding context, but as it turns out nobody took any pictures of our i-cord table numbers. So here's one out of context. It got a bit bent out of shape when someone shoved it in a box post-wedding, but you get the idea.



We made 6. DH measured, cut, and twisted the wire (incidently, the same green garden wire we used to make our Christmas tree.) I did the i-cord out of some leftover Cascade 220. Teamwork! Yay! I don't recommend this wedding craft, really, unless you have a knitting spool/loom large enough for the yarn you want to use. My knitting spool is a bit small for worsted weight, so I just did plain i-cord manually, and it got a bit tedious. Still, I'm happy with how they turned out.

And we didn't stop there! Haha. We also made our initials to go on top of the cake. This time I used thinner yarn, and it was much faster - the letters are pretty small compared to the numbers.



Cake in context:



I think we managed to represent our shared love of making stuff pretty well.

Happy Friday, everyone! Go see some more FOs at Tami's Blog.

WIP update

Last month I wrote about my plans for knitting on my honeymoon. I thought I'd bring two sock projects and a shawl - in the end, I didn't even bring the yarn for the shawl. The two sock projects are going well, however.

First up are my yellowy-orange fish socks.


The ubiquitous Pomatomus by Cookie A. - I'm really enjoying the pattern so far, though I know if I stop paying attention I will easily cause a disaster. I am about to start turning the heel on these, and so far I haven't made any mods.

Next, some boring boring man socks. (Not socks for a boring man, though!)


The yarn is actually dark green. I intended to make Mr Pitt's Socks by Kaitlyn Wong for my husband (husband!). These are a close approximation. Amidst my frustration at having to restart several times, I completely ignored the pattern which begins with 2x2 rib for the cuff, and did 1x1 instead. This isn't a weird mod or anything, but it's strange for me since I'm not a fan of how 1x1 rib looks when I knit it, so I don't usually do it without being asked! (Yes, I should really try out combined knitting which may fix my problem - maybe some day I'll get around to that, but today is not that day.) Anyway, not a big deal, but just a little bemusement from me.

More WIPs at Tami's Amis!

FO: the Shawl of Happiness

In my month's absence from the blogosphere, my whole family descended on our neighbourhood, I got married, went on honeymoon on a boat, got some more freckles, and came back. We've been back for almost a week, and I'm still trying to remember what passed for routine before the wedding stuff took over. All that to say, I have a long-overdue FO to share.

My wedding shawl! I didn't have the presence of mind on the day to request that our photographer get some shawl wingspan shots... But here are a few photos that show the shawl in its appropriate context.



Pattern: High Seas by Kieran Foley

Yarn: Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace



Notes:
I added an extra lace repeat to make it a bit longer, but otherwise didn't do any modifications. The pattern is very clear, despite the complicated lace chart; stitch markers between chart sections saved my life. Also, I obsessively used lifelines every half-repeat. I did make plenty of small mistakes, but since none of them were massively terribly, I never bothered ripping back.

Before blocking, the shawl was about 130 cm long. With blocking it stretched to almost 2 m along the longest angle. If that makes any sense - it's a parallelogram, and I measured it across its whole length, not just one side. I'm sure there is a better way of saying that. Whatever.



The shawl kept me warm in the chilly Scottish spring - although part of that was probably my adrenaline and excitement keeping me heated. We did have perfect weather, though, or as perfect as you can ask for in Edinburgh. That is, it only rained while we were inside. Pretty much. In any case, I have since used the shawl as a scarf, and I know I will get plenty of use from it that way in the future.



Photos are by Rod Irvine.

More FOs at Tami's blog!