Glasgow City Nights

So it didn't turn out exactly how I planned, but I think this yarn was fated to have another colourway name; Glasgow City Nights. It reminds me of autumn, fireworks, dark evenings and orange city lights against red sandstone tenements.

Speaking of fireworks; thank you to the 3 moronic twats who felt it would be just hilarious to light a rocket directly outside our house at 3.30 am. I was unable to get asleep again for quite some time, so busy was my brain furiously penning letters to MSPs. We found the rocket this morning next to the car - I was all for submitting it to Toryglen polis for fingerprinting ...

With thanks to the boy for putting up with me and driving me around Glasgow during the 20 minutes of perfect 'evening sky' for some good blog pics.

Partial triumphs....

I've been away from blogging land for abit - partially because the Ravelry forums are sucking away my life [in particular the pinny thread] and partially because I'm not having an awful lot of success on the fibre front of late.

Finally Pinwheel has been allowed off the naughty step and is currently blocking [looking to be about 5cm to small in the diameter which I think is totally fixable]. I have taken something good out of this debacle however; I have learned that once I have swatched I should go up 0.5mm needle size to get correct gauge for the 'real' knitting. Clearly I tense up a bit on the waste of time that gauge squares always feel like.

[Even though I'm planning on making a big project memory style blanket out of all the squares.]

A Christmas knitting gift [photographed in extreme close-up so as not to give the game away - the intended recipient is a reader] went a bit awry when I realised at the final hurdle that I had cast on the wrong number of stitches. The wrong number of stitches! I can't believe I failed at such an easy level! And then! - not to notice throughout another shaping aspect of the knitting because I ignored such lines as "you should have x number of stitches remaining, etc, etc" because it didn't even occur to me that I might not have the right number of stitches. *Le sigh* Knitty karma has swiped me once again.

I have cast on again ...

Good news - the yarn room is clean and organised - I'm very happy about this. Notice the extra empty pamphlet boxes to accomodate future knitting magazine purchases - I am thinking ahead.

I thought I'd play with my new Ashford dyes this weekend too. Notice my lovely new dyepot - she is pretty isn't she? So the kitchen was clingfilmed, then newspapered...


And the dyeing began. I wanted to create 'Kingfisher' as I saw one this year with the boy and apparently it's quite rare to see one, but I saw it right when I began birdwatching. I wanted the blue to be a Cerulean blue since this was the name of our hotel in Tokyo. The blue was spot on I think.

I used superwash sock yarn so that it was a total fudge it wouldn't matter as it'd be pretty much hidden anyway.

Then on Sunday I added the Kingsfisher orange - the perfect shade! This is where I should have stopped. Blue, orange and white - these are the colours of a Kingfisher.

But for some reason I decided it needed a brown for the muddy banks, and that was where it went a bit blugh. It turned out more purple brown than an orangey brown and doesn't look great. Unfortunately as it's quite a dark shade it's pretty much unfixable - unless anyone knows better? I'll probably just leave it though as my knitting karma seems to be set for October...

The final colours - I'm going to wait for it to dry then ball it up and see if it knits up nicely - I think it will as it's primarily the Cerulean Blue. Oh well, off to carry on with mystery Christmas shopping. Promise I won't leave it so long next time!

Gauge Rage

Thought I'd get into the spirit of autumn and walk around Kelvingrove park taking pretty tree shots ... I was trying to re-find the things I love about Glasgow as it all seems a bit 'meh' after Japan. Various shots were ruined by the rubbish lying everywhere *sigh* so I went off to find the resident Heron at the pond ... instead I found a family of rats.


... and a fibre-stealing squirrel. I was on way to Knit n Stitch as well, so I was stacked with yarn.

In the spirit of the changing season I decided to sort out my craft room. Above is the clean bit. Then I ran out of shelf space and a trip to IKEA was needed ... and so below is what remains to be sorted. Despite appearances there is an order to the chaos.

And I got to the sleeve section of the Pinwheel Sweater - yay! Until ...

It's too [expletive] small!! I could cry. I really could. I mean I gauged the arse of this I swear! I bought 3 sets of sodding Addi circular needles ... IN THREE LENGTHS. I washed every single swatch. I was good right? I did what I supposed to?!! And I got bitten.

So I'm torn between washing and blocking what I have - just to see if it miraculously grows by 10 cms in diameter. Or frogging it and facing the fact that all my passion and love for this may wilt.

It's not the best time of the month for this to happen ... the following is the exact words the boy used when I expressed a desire to frog this quickly, like removing a plaster - before the shock wears off and I start to weep at months of wasted knitting;

"Maybe you should wait a bit? You're all hormonal at the moment and not thinking straight"

He maintains that he 'didn't mean it like that'.... He is currently residing in the dog house.

What should I do? Washing and blocking is a waste of time right? I just have to face this don't I?