And so it begins...

Last night I completed the final square for the sofa bed afghan! Now all that remains is to join them all together. I purposefully left off the final round on each square, so I could join-as-you-go with the final round once all of the squares were completed. I figured this would be easier than sewing or crocheting them all together afterwards, plus leave a neater seam between each block. One quiet evening a few weeks ago, when I had the house to myself, I sat down with a spreadsheet and figured out how to do it.

Starting at the top right corner (meaning a large square was the final square to be completed) I will crochet the final round following the arrows on the diagram. Each time I pick up a new square to add, I will weave in the ends so that I don't have a mammoth task of end weaving waiting for me when I finish. This is slowing down the process somewhat, but I think it's the best option.

So far I have joined two squares! I am hoping there is enough yarn left in the charcoal ball to do all of the join-as-you-go; I have plenty left of the brown, cream and purple so if I don't have enough charcoal left for the border, I will do it in those instead.

In case you were wondering, the numbers around the outside of the join-as-you-go diagram were me trying to count how many stitches I would have on each edge, so I could figure out which border patterns would work!

Year of Projects Update 9th September

I had hoped to be using today's post to celebrate the completion of my first pair of knit socks. However, circumstances have been against me in the last couple of days, so they currently look like this:

I've got to the end of the gusset decreases, so only have the foot and toe to go and sock two will be done. Unfortunately, I can't see myself getting anything done on these in the next few days, as I managed to sprain my wrist again while out on a work do on Friday evening, so working with such small needles is currently impossible.

Moral of this story - don't attempt to do
gymnastics while drunk!

I have been able to crochet though, so have been working on the sofa bed afghan (not technically a YoP WIP).

The pile of squares is growing steadily; just 13 left to make now and I can start joining them. My plan is to weave in the ends of each square as it gets joined.

I might have got a lot more of it done today, but I have spent the last six hours doing nothing but wedding prep! I spent three hours designing the invitation cards, before getting the go ahead from Jamie to order them from Vistaprint. Then I spent another couple of hours designing all of the inserts to go in the cards, like venue directions, menu choices and RSVP cards.

Adobe Illustrator has been indispensable today

I ended my marathon of wedding planning by booking our honeymoon. We are heading to America, spending four nights in San Fransisco before transferring to Las Vegas for five nights. I am so excited about it! Any recommendations from all you local Americans for things to do/places to eat would be very welcome. In particular, I'm keen to get recommendations for restaurants in San Fransisco, as we will be celebrating my birthday while we are out there.

Expanding my nest

Some of you might remember my grand schemes to keep my knitting stash retained within one bookcase. This bookcase, to be precise:

The trouble is, now we've been living here for a couple of months, we've come to realise that although this bookcase is excellent for storing the yarn I'm not using right now, it's not very handy for keeping works in progress in, or easily accessing my needles/stitch markers etc. I started to spread across the rest of the room.

First up came the liberation of a basket to store my WIPs in. It was meant to sit underneath the nesting coffee tables, but very quickly moved to the other side of the room next to the TV as it was easier to get into there. But it was soon full, as the sofa bed afghan takes up a lot of room! I spread to the coffee table next to the sofa (you can just see it in the photo above, with the very sad looking pot plant sitting on top), and the main coffee table in the middle of the living room. 

I know, the peace lily has seen better days. If we can't rescue it a fourth time
we will have to throw it out and get a new plant for this room

We were tidying up on Sunday, and my wonderful almost husband turned to me and said "you know, what you could really do with is a set of drawers or shelves or something to go in that space, so you can put all your knitting stuff there instead of spreading over the tables". Within five minutes I had gone online, reserved a matching bookcase and left the house to go pick it up.

As this is the ninth bookcase of this variety that we have bought, I am quite adept at putting them together so had it built within ten minutes of getting it home.

For now I have just filled it with the things that were there on and under the table before I moved it. When I get a chance, I will go through the taller shelves and rescue all of my needles etc and find a space for them on here too. I may even make a needle storage device that will hang down the side, so my needles and hooks are really accessible. Another side effect, thanks to this set of shelves not being so deep as the coffee table, is that now you can actually sit on both sides of this sofa and have somewhere to put your feet!

WIP: Sofa bed afghan

I did mean to post this earlier on today, but utterly failed to take photos last night. I've been making solid progress on my sofa bed afghan this week; an evenings work generates at least four of the small squares, or one big one. Last night I was surprisingly productive, making one big square and two little ones.

I've got so many squares now, it's difficult to find the space to lay them out and take photographs! I'm nearly 70% of the way through now, so I've got 52 squares in total with only 23 left to make (5 big, 18 little). It occurred to me today that the one space I do have where I could lay them out to see how far I've got is on the spare bed where the afghan will eventually live.

Handily, this serves multiple purposes. First, look at all those squares! There's loads of them! Second, see how well the colours I've chosen matches the delightful brown colour scheme of our spare room. Third, it gave me the chance to check that the size I'd planned is actually big enough for the bed itself.

Here is my plan, handily colour coded to reflect the layout on the bed. I think it will be exactly the right size once I'm done, as there's an extra round of black to go on every square which will make them all about two inches bigger, plus a border round (yet to be decided exactly what border I will use, as I don't think I like the one that comes with the pattern).

I'm starting to get very excited about finishing this now. I reckon I could have the squares done in a week if I really focus on this and nothing else, although I will be taking my sock to roleplay night tonight as it is far more portable.

Giveaway Winners!!!

A couple of weeks ago I posted up a giveaway to celebrate a few blogging milestones. The closing date has come and gone, and I can now reveal the winners! There were two prizes up for grabs: a skein of Zauberball sock yarn and two skeins of Knit Picks Shadow Tonal lace.

Using my Capucine hat for the draw

First up, the draw for the Zauberball...

Congratulations Renee!

Prize number two, the Knit Picks Shadow Tonal Lace...

Congratulations Emma!

I will be in touch with both winners via Ravelry. I think it's kind of cool that the European yarn will be winging its way across the pond to America, while the American yarn will be staying here in the UK.

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Snappy Happy Monday

Amazing door I found in Gerrards Cross

G&Ts round the fire on Wednesday night last week

Bigger fire on Monday night

Going to bed as it started to get light.

Perfect Friday night, curled up in a duvet on the sofa
with my knitting and Mr Fidget cuddles

Almost ripe apples

Year of Projects Update 2nd September

When I came back from the LRP event last week, I was so tired I just couldn't face working on any of the projects I had on my hooks/needles. Even my granny squares seemed like too much effort, with all the colour changing involved. But I wanted to do something while I lay recovering on the sofa. So I scanned the yarns on my Year of Projects list to see if there was anything simple I could get started on.

King Cole Zig Zag

I hunted out this sock yarn, and went searching for my DPNs. I had a quick look through Ravelry for simple sock patterns, but couldn't decide on any of them. In the end, I googled "easy sock tutorials" and found my way to knitty.com and their Socks 101 tutorial. The only DPNs I had were 2.25mm or 2.5mm, which meant I definitely needed to swatch to ensure my socks would fit.

I know, I know, I've said many times that I have no interest in knitting socks. But there is a method to my madness! I can't think of anything else to do with this yarn, for starters. I have also become more curious about why people get so excited about knitting socks. After all, you wear them inside your shoes, so nobody even sees them half the time. And on my list of yarn to use this year is a gorgeous skein of Candy Skein Yummy Fingering in Arctic Mint, which I would love to do justice to and I think a really nice pair of socks I can show off would fit the bill nicely.

I ended up getting 8 stitches per inch on the 2.5mm needles, and decided that this would be perfect, as it meant I could cast on 64 stitches. The socks are knit cuff down, and I've whizzed through the first half of the first sock.

I love how the colours pool and stripe with this yarn, although I'd prefer there to be more purple and pink and less white!

The instructions for turning the heel were very straightforward; even my super-tired brain didn't have any problems with it. I've been obsessively making notes on my Ravelry project page so that when I come to sock number two I can do it the same way!

Spot the difference...

I've only faced one set back so far, when I snapped one of my beautiful bamboo needles. I've had to proxy in one of my longer 2.25mm needles so I can knit the foot over four needles, which I find more comfortable than just using three when I've got this many stitches on the go.

I have to say, I am actually quite enjoying knitting this sock. I still don't really see the point of spending all that effort on a really posh patterned pair when they'll be hidden in my shoes, but a plain vanilla sock certainly fits the bill for brainless and portable project. Plus, it means I get an excuse to buy more sock yarn! I think ultimately, I will only knit these plain socks in real workhorse sock yarns, so I end up with a stash of socks to wear inside my army boots when I go to LRP events. Any recommendations for decent, relatively inexpensive, hardwearing sock yarn that would fit the bill?