Holibobs

It's an early start for the family today as we attempt to cram all our possessions into the car and make our regular pilgrimage north to the Lake District. It's a mark of how busy the past few weeks have been that I havent even thought about my holiday knitting, much less packed anything 

One option is just to gather up a selection of WIPs and bung them in the boot. The other option is to grab a few skeins of yarn and my needles and start something new and unspecified - every holiday should have a new cast on...no? The sensible option would be to go for option one but I think you can probably guess that option 2 is by far the most appealing one to me.

I may be a bit quieter than usual on social media but I will still be around - there night just be a few more photos of sheep than usual.

Our most important tools: and top tips to look after them

As knitters we are often asked what our favourite tools and notions are and we will happily discuss the merits of wooden needles vs metal ones. We rarely give much thought to our most important tools of all though - our hands.

I experienced a mild bout of RSI a few years ago after trying to take part in a challenge to knit 26 pairs of socks in a year. I got to June if memory serves but all that sock knitting took its toll and I had to take a short break from knitting altogether. That experience was so unpleasant, and the thought of not being able to knit was so uncomfortable (read: horrific) that I vowed to take better care of my most important tools in the future.

1. I always try to give myself a weekly manicure. If my nails and hands look good I'm more inclined to treat them better. I try to wear gloves whilst washing up and doing the housework and have little pots of handcream dotted around the house and in my project bags. I particularly like the solid lotion bars, such as the Love + leche ones pictured above, for my knitting bag as there is no risk of the dreaded lotion explosion.

2. Some knitting friends on Instagram recently shared a tip with me for smoothing rough skin when working with silk yarns - which will catch on every tiny flaw. Mix a small amount of olive oil with sugar or salt and use to massage into your hands. Rinse under hot water and dry.

3. Frequent breaks. I take a tip from the Knitmore Girls and take a short break in my knitting every 15 minutes. Even if it is just to set down the needles, flex my fingers and move my gaze to somewhere in the middle distance (my eyes also have a habit of complaining if I focus too long in one spot). I do this even when power knitting to meet a deadline but I do find it hard to remember sometimes so I set a reminder on my phone.

4. Stretches. I found this website a few years ago and they have a great series of hand exercises specifically for knitters which I try to do as often as I can. 

I hope these tips help you to take care of your mitts and if you have any top tips that work for you do please let me know, I'd love to hear them.

If you need a bit of motivation you could always check out the #nailsandknitting hashtag on Instagram where people (myself included) have fun matching their nails to their yarn. If you are going to be taking a photograph of your hands that's always a good incentive to slap a bit of handcream on.

Fuss Free Festival Shawl - with added stripes

I am really pleased to say that my Fuss Free Festival Shawl pattern has now been expanded to include directions for making a striped version. The original uses just 1 skein of sockweight yarn and the striped version uses this plus 25g of a contrast colour.

You could go the whole hog and use both skeins to create a larger two colour shawl - just keep going with the contrast colour. Just make sure you save enough yarn for the picot bind off if you want it to be in the main colour.

In the pattern I've allowed fairly generous yarn estimates but the pattern is very adaptable and you could easily change it to suit the yarn amounts you have.

When estimating the yarn needed for the bind off the conventional wisdom states that you measure the length of knitting to be bound off and then multiply this by 3 to give you the length of yarn you will need to finish the bind off. It's important to remember that a picot bind off uses considerably more yarn than normal and so I would probably double this number just to be on the safe side.

The pattern is available to purchase on Ravelry or if you sign up to my newsletter you can snaffle it for free for a limited time. If you are already a subscriber - check your email as you should have received an email with the update in it yesterday.

I really hope you have fun with this pattern and I can't wait to see how the different projects take shape.

My first sock blank

I've never knitted with a sock blank before and this year I was determined to give it a go. I wasn't sure how I would feel about knitting with kinky yarn and to be honest as soon as I started knitting with it I knew that I couldn't knit a whole shawl with it. I think it might work better for socks where you knit at a tighter tension but trying to knit a garter stitch shawl on 4mm needles left me with a very wobbly and unpleasant fabric indeed.

I knit the start of another Fuss Free Festival Shawl - maybe just a few inches and then blocked it still on the needles. I just wanted to see what a difference blocking made to the fabric. It helped but didn't entirely get rid of the wibbliness so I decided to wind the yarn into a skein and soak it to get rid of the kinks. 

I was planning to take photographs of the process but in the interests of honesty and authenticity I have to report that it didn't go well. There may have been a cat intervention at a crucial point. Winding yarn with such kinky energy into a skein takes some concentration and effort and things ended in a heck of a tangle.

There was swearing involved and let's just say that you wouldn't have wanted to see pictures of the ensuing chaos. But with a bit of patience I got the yarn soaked, dried and then to beat the tangles I handwound it into a ball.

Now that the faffing is done I can relax and enjoy the knitting. The gradual shift in grey tones is very pleasing but part of my just wants to knit faster to get to the colours!

Just one more row...

Just one more row - is the eternal cry of knitters everywhere. Or in my case - crochet - as this week my crochet blanket square is nearing completion and I'm keen to finish it up and get started on the next one. We are going away at the weekend for a family holiday and the next square in the series will be perfect to take along with me.

In the case of this blanket though it isn't just the 'one more row' which is appealing but also the 'one more colour'. I'm normally a big fan of grey and neutral shades as you well know but I'm really enjoying playing with the pretty seasonal pastels and pinks for this square. I can't decide whether to keep the same colours for the next 3 panels or whether to change them up a bit as we move from spring into early summer. I can't decide yet but I think I will just keep working and see how the colours flow.

One thing I'm not looking forward to is the Weaving In Of All The Ends and part of me is wishing that I had been doing them as I went along. Obviously this now seems like a blindingly good idea but at the beginning, in the full throes of blanket enthusiasm this wasn't something that occurred to be as I gleefully seized on pretty colour after pretty colour.

Thinking ahead to my next square I have been looking at other ways of ends management and I see that some people are big advocates of crocheting over the ends as you go - Lucy of Attic24 has a tutorial on it here. I know that some people also do a version of a magic join but I am a little wary of this as I don't want it to pop open.

If you have any tried and tested ways of avoiding the dreaded Ends please do let me know. And if anyone wants me today I'll be in front of Netflix with a dwindling pack of sweeties and a (hopefully) growing pile of little woolly ends.

Monday Motivation

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time you will know that I'm a huge fan of a to-do list for helping me to get stuff done. Whilst that's great for the normal chores and business tasks it doesn't help much on the crafting front where my attempts at steely focus are easily distracted by the new, the shiny and the pretty.

What has been working recently though is the Mojo Monday thread over on the Everyday Knitter Facebook group. Every Monday we pick a WIP to make progress on and then on the Friday we show our finished object (FO). I have to say that it is proving to be a great source of motivation for me. Obviously life happens sometimes and plans change. Sometimes knitting has to come second to other life events (shocking but true) but in that case you simply award yourself some consolatory cake and admire the FOs of others.

What really helps is seeing the motivation and enthusiasm of others and there is the gentle accountability of having publicly stated your goals out loud which I find does wonders for your focus and determination.

What helps motivate you? Do let me know. And if you have any spare motivation hanging around please send it my way. This mountain of WIPs isn't going to knit itself.