Pattern: February Beret (free) (my Ravelry project page)
Yarn: Cascade 220 Heathers, colour #4011 “Sparrow”
Needles: 3.75mm and 4mm

It is now officially Hat Requirement Season. Yes, I made that term up, but it’s still entirely true (in England, at least). Getting out of bed with a spring in my step is a thing of the past, especially when the duvet is so warm and snuggly and five more minutes under the covers won’t hurt… except of course that it does, and I’m inevitably then in a rush, on the brink of being late for the bus. At times like these matching my accessories to my clothing is surprisingly not the first thing on my mind, so it’s good that I seem to be acquiring a hat for every outfit in my wardrobe. That’s my excuse for my endless list of hats-to-be-made, anyway.

This one, the February Beret, might just be one of my favourites. The yarn is sturdy pure wool in a subtle but attractive colour, the pattern is a nice mixture of lace and garter stitch and, while quick and simple, didn’t bore me. The original February pattern was Elizabeth Zimmerman’s February Baby sweater (there’s a beautiful example over at brooklytweed), which then evolved into the recently popular February Lady sweater. (I like the patterns, but A-line jumpers that button only at the top don’t suit me in the slightest.)

My modifications were not extensive. I ditched the i-cord edging for something more secure – I cast on 98 stitches and worked 10 rows of twisted rib on 3.75mm needles before I went back to the pattern and started from Round 1 on 4mm needles, but increased to 147 stitches instead of 189. I must take a moment to thank Phoe for the yarn – the rest is being put to good use too, as I’m making a matching scarf.

In other news, I think my Christmas knitting is under control. I say this cautiously, and this weekend has been a bit of a wash-out in that regard, but I am hopeful. It’s not so much that I have a lot as that it’s fiddly… and I have half a dozen started projects of my own that require less concentration. Somehow they seem more attractive at the end of a long day. Funny, that! However, my holiday starts on Wednesday and I will be making up for lost time.

Next time I write, I’ll share some pictures of my latest eBay acquisition: a Vogue Knitting Book from 1949…

So far this weekend, I’ve finished the back of Garland, my very purple batwing-sleeved jacket. I’ve started the fronts and am debating the wisdom of pockets. (Arguments for: they are always useful and most of my clothes don’t have them, and they’re in the pattern. Argument against: they might be bulky and I wouldn’t want to spoil the silhouette.)

A few weeks (months?) ago I bought a cheap lambswool jumper from a charity shop. It’s a fine knit, so the resulting yarn is probably lace or cobweb weight. It’s 29 WPI, anyway. I have the feeling that using my 2mm needles will result in a loose fabric, and I may well have to look into something smaller (says she, slightly daunted by the prospect of using 1mm needles… Er, I should perhaps mention that I’ve no intentions of knitting anything for myself on 1mm needles, but there are smaller bodies around here than mine). I’ve only unravelled one sleeve, and already have more yarn than I really know what to do with. This evening I will wind it into a ball and swatch.

Some other knitting that has been started is not-so-secret Christmas knitting. It required the writing of a pattern, in fact the writing of a chart, which is a first for me. I will say only that it involves cables (a lot of them) and bell-ringing. More on this next month, at some point after the 25th.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’ve been busy:

I would like to expand on the photos, but as ever, have run out of time. I’ll just mention a rather unusually beautiful video I saw today: a Guy with a camera in his head broadcasts footage from inside the flames. Eerie and moving.

It seems like every spare minute of the past few weeks has been spent on the New Shop. The New Shop will be harder, faster, better, stronger… okay, maybe not harder. (Ideally, it will be easier, and I will stop pointlessly referencing Daft Punk.) The New Shop has a proper shopping cart, a really nice back-end management section, and lots of features that I can grow into. Right now, its sole concern is my knitted doll clothing, but I dream of one day being able to offer knitting patterns for the discerning woman (perhaps also the discerning man, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).

Unfortunately, despite working through the past two weekends and thinking it was done, I have hit a small snagette. It seems that some scripts do not play nicely with others (Lightbox and jQuery, I am looking at you) and it’s going to take a few more hours of puzzling before everything is running smoothly.

I have an eighteen-item-high (see below) stack of knits to finish and photograph, too, which seems to have been breeding over the past few months. I don’t know how this happens; I thought I had maybe five jumpers to add to the shop, but no.

It’s strange how tiring it is to sit at the computer and code for hours. I think I need another weekend, please. In my absence of mind I managed to enlarge the beret I was knitting by several inches, so now it’s ideal for a giant, but not so much for me. I will be ripping back when I am more awake. It’s going to be lush, though: cream merino and the Crumpet beret pattern from here. Perfect for winter – and isn’t the name excellent?

It’s been a wonderful weekend, the kind that makes you hardly begrudge the coming Monday (well, not much). On Saturday my sister and I travelled in on the Tube to St. James’s Park, and from there we braved the wind (this is no joke when a skirt is involved) to reach the Royal Horticultural Halls. We joined a long queue, waited around while it inevitably began to rain, and then were let inside to roam the stalls, admire the architecture, pet the Great British Sheep, and generally have far too much fun.

There was a knitted gingerbread house, raising money for Great Ormond Street Hospital:

Our livestock came in the form of an angora rabbit, which shuffled about its cage quite contentedly. Next to it I saw my first active spinning wheel, although I’m not sure if it was angora fibre being spun.

My main purchase was from the Fibre Harvest stand, which was piled high with skeins of undyed and dyed yarn spun at Coldharbour Mill. Seriously good stuff. I had a fondle of the goods, and then spotted a deep, dark purple amidst the 4 ply. Love at first sight! I’ve been looking around for a rich purple 4 ply to make Garland from Rowan 44 (yes, it has batwing sleeves; no, I care not) but it was proving a fruitless search up til now. It had to be just the right kind of purple, you see. Anyway, this was on sale, and it’s a soft merino, and I bought six (!) skeins, which is probably too much, but I wanted to be absolutely sure I had enough. (Garland is knitting up beautifully.) As an added bonus, it’s also water-wheel spun.

I’ve wanted to try spinning for a while now, and the iKnit day seemed like the perfect place to pick up supplies. There weren’t a huge number of spindles around, but in the end I settled on one from the Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop stall, carved by a neighbour of one of the women who sold it to me. Thank you to the nice girl – a fellow shopper – who advised me to go for the lighter spindle! I picked up a bag of Bowmont roving from the Devon Fine Fibres stall and had a little chat with the woman who raised the sheep – she was also very helpful, and gave me some good advice about fibre.

Speaking to the sellers, looking at all the local fibre and yarn, I had a wonderful sense of being connected – if that makes sense. Recently I’ve been thinking a good deal about where our clothing, food, and material ‘stuff’ comes from. Food is becoming easier, as the shops are now labelling the countries of origin, but clothes are iffy. Technically you only have to sew on a label in this country for the item to be legitimately “made in England”, which is ridiculous. Super-cheap clothes are everywhere, and the resulting quality is equally low. Mass-production means we usually have no idea who made our clothes, too, and this has not always been the case.

Anyway, I think this is something I could go on about for a while, so suffice to say that I am very excited by the idea of taking local fibre from well-kept animals, spinning it by hand into yarn, and knitting that yarn into a garment, custom-fit to my shape and size. I’ll see what’s happening at every step of the way, I’ll have a full awareness of the time and effort it’s taken, and as a result I think I’ll cherish the thing more than anything shop-bought. (I’ll keep you posted!)

The other highlights of the day for me were the Yarn Harlot’s talk and the A Stitch in Time fashion show. Stephanie was so funny I think I cracked a rib laughing, but also thought-provoking and intelligent. I thought I’d enjoy it, but I had no idea how much. She’s a great speaker.

The fashion show was for designs from Jane Waller’s upcoming book, A Stitch in Time, which is inspired by clothing of the 1940s. This is right up my street, of course. The models were beautiful, the knits equally so. I didn’t get any photos myself, but there are some good ones in the iKnit Flickr pool, especially these.

If I’m honest, another part of the day that thrilled me was the knit-spotting. I felt like I should have been carrying a little notebook and writing down ‘Tangled Yoke: 1, Swallowtail Shawl: 5′, etc. Not only did I see some beautiful garments, but some people were kind enough to admire my Rambling Rose cardigan. (Er, I’ve not blogged it here yet! Will do soon.) I was really chuffed, and a little embarrassed, but in a good way. After all, Laura Zukaite designed the pattern, and I just did the easy bit. It was at this point that I made the startling discovery that everyone else was a knitter (or a crocheter, or a spinner). They got it. They knew what I was talking about! Glorious. And that, for me, was the joy of the day: people from all walks of life, getting together and sharing their craft. I can’t wait for next year.