Hello,
I’m here with another update from my trip. On Thursday, I set off with my aunt from Suffolk, England, to Cardiff, Wales. We were there to visit some relatives, one of whom is my great aunt. She had visited the antipodean wing of our family in 1987 and she showed me her photo album from that trip. I was absolutely delighted to see among the photos one of my Grandma, who taught me to knit and who passed away in 2007. The photo showed her sitting in her armchair with knitting in her hands and balls of yarn on the ground all around her feet. My aunt said she was often like this. I’ve always loved my Grandma for lots of reasons, mostly because she’s my Grandma, but I’ll be forever grateful to her for introducing me to knitting, and this photo made me feel really close to her. And also, do you remember in my first post when I said that I suspected that my Grandma, though English, actually knitted in the Continental style because that’s how I knit? Turns out I was wrong, this picture clearly shows my Grandma with the working yarn wrapped around her right hand. So, I guess Continental style is all me. I am very slightly Spanish on my mother’s side…

My aunt and I did a bit of sight-seeing in Cardiff. One place I wanted to visit was the International Baccalaureate building because, sad as it sounds, my high school exams were often marked there and I wanted to see where they were sent. 
“It’s on Malthouse Avenue,” I said to my aunt.
“Don’t ask a Welsh person where Malthouse Avenue is!” said my great aunt, “It’s pronounced Maloose!”
Well, that was very funny to me, as I was already quite enjoying the relative absence of vowels in the Welsh language. We were also going to visit Caerphilly castle that day. As we were heading out the door, my great aunt told us:
“If you get lost, just ask someone for directions.”
“Are you sure it’s Caerphilly?” I replied, “it’s not Maloose, is it?”
Here is a picture of The Knitted Kitten at Maloose Castle:

Kat

This post was posted in Knitting

I went to St Tiggywinkles today. It’s an animal hospital in Haddenham, England, which has a hedgehog museum in it. The place is fantastic, and it’s a wildlife park, too, where you can walk around and see the animals they are looking after (both temporary and permanent residents).

Like a lot of Australians, I think, I’m fascinated by animals that we don’t have at home. This includes hedgehogs, squirrels and badgers. They had badgers, but I think they were all asleep because none came out to see us. I did see baby hedgehogs in the baby animal hospital section, and some adorable baby squirrels and birds.

The hedgehog museum was interesting, and is why I’m writing this post in my blog, which is a knitting blog. As well as learning that urchin means hedgehog, I learned of this knitting pattern:

Kat

This post was posted in Knitting

Dear blog reader (singular as there’s roughly one of you),
Here I am in England, on the first leg of my European holiday. As promised, I’ve taken along The Knitted Kitten to help document my travels, even though my holiday really has nothing to do with knitting. As you’ll read, while my purposes for traveling aren’t to do with knitting, still, knit happens.

I have found the actual flying a challenge as international flights don’t let you bring knitting needles on the plane. So, I had to be a normal person and read or play games on my iPad. By the way, a tablet computer is great for travelling knitters, as you can store patterns on them and use row-counting apps. I have a few knitting projects prepared for this trip, and I’ll introduce them to you in good time.

I departed Adelaide, South Australia. for Singapore. I’ve been to Singapore plenty of times for stopovers and I do love the airport. I spent some time In the butterfly house and looking around the shops there. While my knitting was on its way to my next destination, I did bring my little knitted friend along in my hand carry. Here she is, enjoying herself on the first leg of the journey:

The Knitted Kitten waiting with me at the Adelaide International Airport, resting on the stole I knitted for this trip (which has proven itself practical and oh-so-stylish)

At Changi Airport in Singapore

My first holiday destination is where I am now: Suffolk and Cambridge, England. I’m staying with my auntie and her furry children (they are animals, not very hairy human children). For the first few days we were also babysitting some other fur kids. Here is The Knitted Kitten hanging out with one of our visitors:

I’ve spent a lot of time around Cambridge doing stuff that’s unrelated to knitting, and while it’s been wonderful and I love it, this is a knitting blog. Therefore,I was very pleased today to come across something to do with knitting that I wanted to share with you. My auntie and I went to Lavenham, a beautiful little village in Suffolk full of wonky houses. On the way to get a coffee, I found this shop,
cafe knit:

Cafe knit is a really nice little cafe/yarn shop. It had a good range of Debbie Bliss yarns and some other nice ones too, and even some handspun. I was soooo tempted. I got away lightly, buying my first stitch markers that aren’t safety pins or scraps of yarn. I really enjoyed pottering around in there with my auntie, who also knits.

Kat

This post was posted in Knitting

Hello blog readers,
I will be taking a trip for the next two months. My purposes for travelling are completely knitting un-related, but rest assured I will be knitting on this trip. I’m bringing along The Knitted Kitten, i.e, the cat on the banner of my blog, i.e., this one:

I’ve decided to be lame and will be taking pictures of The Knitted Kitten at various places on my trip. I hope you have as much fun reading about my trip as I do going on it. Nah, just kidding, I hope reading a blog never becomes as interesting as travelling around the world.

Kat

This post was posted in Knitting

Hey peeps,
I haven’t written a blog post in over four months. I’ve been über busy with stuff that is largely non-knitting related. Thank God I’ve had a few stolen minutes here and there to continue knitting, and now I have a few stolen minutes to talk to you about something exciting!

Last week I was visiting with a family I know and their five-year-old daughter asked me to teach her to knit!!! Well, we didn’t have any knitting material in the house, so I said that next time I came I would teach her. She also asked me to knit her a toy bird like one which her friend had made. She even drew a picture of it for me. Having worked with children professionally and understanding how it might be inappropriate if I gave her a present randomly (not to mention make her sister jealous and setting her up to ask me for stuff all the time), I said that I’d make it for her for her Birthday, which is at the end of the year. I did feel kind of bad about this, because she asked me so nicely and it would be no big undertaking for me.

I was pretty excited when she first asked me to teach her to knit, but I was also a bit dubious about my own teaching abilities. I’ve tried to teach people in their teens and twenties before, with limited success — although, as I look back on it, more success than I gave myself credit for. I went out and got her some rainbow-coloured 8ply acrylic yarn and some needles designed for children. They’re Birch brand, about 20cm long, made of pink plastic with smiley faces on the ends (4.5mm, though I mostly picked this size because they were the ones that came in pink). I then went online and looked up websites about how to teach a child to knit. I also started a Ravelry thread about it, which had lots of useful responses, and I joined a Ravelry group about teaching kids to knit. Some good suggestions I found are below (I’ll tell you in a little while which ones I used):

• Using a rhyme to remember the steps of the knit stitch e.g. “In through the front door, run around the back, out through the window, off jumps Jack!”
• Teaching just the knit stitch and not casting on or off (no-brainer for me as this is how my Grandma taught me)
•  Doing a bit of the child’s work every so often to make the work go faster
• Using needles of two different colours to make it easier to explain which needle needs to be moved
• Teaching the English method as you don’t have to worry about tensioning
• Not expecting too much
• Showing kids pictures/videos of knitting and letting them see and touch knitted objects
• Not frogging the child’s work — Someone put this on my Ravelry thread, and I absolutely agree. A child would be really disheartened if someone else frogged their work. However, I did read in my online searching a website which suggests that you encourage children to frog their own work so they remember how they started. I think the point of that is moot (good word, no?) in my case as a knit stitch is a knit stitch and that’s all I planned to teach her.

So, I was pretty heartened by all the advice and encouragement. I checked with the little one’s mother that it was fine by her that I give her a knitting lesson and the associated presents. She was pretty happy to let me give it a go, but I don’t think she nor I were extremely confident I would succeed (that didn’t stop me from being excited though). You see, this girl is five. She is reading, so I know she has some level of concentration, but it might not have been enough to learn to knit and then continue to knit until an object was finished. Also, you see, this girl is five. She is wearing shoes, but none of them have laces so I’ve never seen her tie anything in a bow. I have read that a child has the motor skills to knit about the time she has the motor skills to tie her shoelaces. Incidentally, I mentioned this information to my parents and they reminisced about the time my Dad tried to teach my older brother to tie his shoelaces, a little younger than usual, and I — a mere toddler — wanted to learn too, so I tried and tried and cried until I had figured out how to tie my shoelaces (before my brother. A similar thing happened when learning to ride a bike and drive a car. Sibling rivalry? Nah, I’m utterly non-comptetitive). I might have learned to knit at the age of 3!

The day before I was to see this family again, I decided that a great first object to make would be a simple toy bird. This would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak (I am a comic GENIUS), by teaching her to knit and letting her have the toy bird she so desired but with me not giving her a gift for no reason, upsetting her sister. So, I spent an hour making a simple bird. I based my design on this one. When I can be bothered I’ll put my pattern on here. I used small black buttons for eyes. I made the bird white so it would be less exciting-looking than the little one’s finished bird. I was happy for her to keep the toy white bird, too. I also looked through my knitting books to try to find a diagram explaining all the steps of a knit stitch, but I didn’t find anything that I was satisfied with, so I decided to do without. I also coloured in two labels different colours. I liked the idea of using two different coloured needles but the 4.5s only came in pink, so I thought putting different coloured stickers on the needles would be good too.

I turned up the next day at their house with a colourful gift bag containing needles, yarn and the bird. I also brought along my own knitting including a project which is still on the needles (which I showed her but she wasn’t interested in — it wasn’t shaped like an animal) and some 4.5s with some pink 8ply to demonstrate how to knit. The five-year-old was so excited to see her present! She immediately took the toy bird and made a nest for it out of toilet paper, then drew a picture of bird seed on a piece of paper and cut it out. “This is a baby bird”, she said, “The one I make will be the Mummy bird”. I find this excitement over a simple knitted bird quite amusing as this girl has plenty of toys already and lots of pets, including four real chickens with real nests and real bird seed.

She asked her Mum several times throughout the day if I could teach her to knit. “Maybe later”, “When your sister is having a nap”. Quite reasonable, but I imagine to an excited five-year-old these statements sound like “Maybe when you’re 30”, “When you don’t like Peppa Pig anymore”.

We finally sat down to knit. I let her choose a couple of buttons from my collection to use as eyes. I told her that I would be showing her how to knit her toy bird using pink wool, and that her sister could have it when I was finished. So, she picked out eyes for that one too, matching the ones she had chosen, “So they’re a family”. I cast on for her and for me and I commenced with the teaching. I decided to try without the different coloured stickers to start off with. Turns out we didn’t need them. She caught on quite quickly and soon my worries about her dexterity vanished. So did my worries about her concentration levels… Me: “Would you like to take a break for a minute?” Her: “No!” Me: “It will help your brain stay fresh so you can keep knitting” Her: “No!”. We ended up switching over our projects from time to time, as she wanted hers to go quicker than it was. I did find that doing a bit of her knitting every now and then kept her interested, as it meant the work progressed quicker. I also didn’t bother with the rhyme. I think this would work well with some kids but I really doubt it would have worked for me as a child or for this girl (I am reminded again of my tearful attempts at learning to tie my shoelaces, getting very confused by the “rabbit goes under the tree” part of the process. “Put the shoelace in this bit here” would have worked better for me.). I don’t think it would have worked for this girl because the bits she struggled with weren’t covered by the rhyme e.g. holding the right needle at the back of the left, and wrapping the yarn upwards.

Despite my surprise at her capabilites, there is one step of the knit stitch she is yet to master. It is the “out through the window” part of the rhyme, the bit where you pull the wrapped yarn underneath the original stitch. When she knits, she does every step except for this part, giving me the needles then taking them up again to drop the stitch on the left needle. I’m fine with this, as she is very little and I can’t expect her to be a master knitter in one day. It does, however, mean that she can only knit when I’m there, unless her Mum or Dad does some Youtubing and re-learns how to knit.

Next question: English or Continental? Someone did suggest I teach English as “throwing” the yarn means there’s less need for tensioning by weaving the yarn through your fingers. However, the English method confuses me. I’ve tried to teach a friend — who could knit — some knitting techniques like lace and bobbles. It confused her that I was knitting Continental so I switched to English, which confused me. Why move your arm all that way when you can just straighten a finger? Anyways, so I decided to teach this little girl Continental, but I didn’t teach her tensioning as I think that would just complicate things further. Instead, she just picks up the yarn and wraps it round for now. She’ll get there.

I finished the pink bird I was using as a demonstration. Here is an extremely bad picture of it I took with my phone (Notice the uneven tension around the neck. I think this is a bit that my student did; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

Peace out

Prof. Knitkatpaddywhack

Kat

This post was posted in Knitting

I either steam or block practically everything I knit and crochet (except for that which I felt). Today I want to talk about blocking, which is my usual method of finishing an object. Blocking is a process of wetting a knitted object then pinning or stuffing it to the shape and size you want it to end up as. This helps the piece end up in the size and shape you want, and it also improves the look of your stitches, making them look more even. All this is especially important for lace shawls. I’m going to take you through my blocking process, and then show you a few before-and-after shots.

My blocking process is based mostly on this book (I think I used a different edition to the one here). So here’s what I do:
 You will need:

• Finished object
• Access to heated water
• Dressmaker’s pins, plastic shopping bags, or blocking templates (e.g. “sock blockers”)
• Tub large enough to fit your object comfortably
• Laundry detergent
• Towel
• Ironing board (for a small object) or an area of vacuumed carpet

Procedure:

1. Fill tub with luke warm water. Add a splash of laundry detergent.
2. Put knitted object in the water. Make sure it is thoroughly wet. For a woollen object, be careful not to move it around too much as it may felt.
3. Tip the water out of tub, letting it drain away from the object. You can squeeze more water out of the object but make sure you don’t stretch it or wring it.
4. Fill the water with luke warm water and put object in it again to rinse.
5. Repeat step 3
6. Repeat steps 4-5 at least twice more
7. Put the object on the towel. Fold the towel over the top of the object and roll it up, to squeeze as much water out as possible. If you like, walk all over the towel or do a bumdance on it.
8. Take the object out of the towel. If you want to block it flat, pin it out to shape onto an ironing board (if it fits) or clean carpet. If you want to block it to a 3-dimensional shape (like I often do for beanies and socks), either fit it over blocking templates or stuff it with plastic bags.
9. When it is dry, unpin/unstuff it and it’s done!

So that’s my version. knitty.com have a fantastic guide about blocking and steaming different kinds of fibre. I just wanted to finish up by showing you some of my finished objects before and after blocking.

In my very first blog post, I mentioned that I was making my mother a shawl for Christmas. Well, I finished and blocked it. I’m not sure if the photo does the blocking justice, but here is a before shot:

 And here is an after shot:

If you’re wondering about why I changed to bronze for the edging, it’s because I ran out of the blue yarn (it was a spool of machine-knitting yarn which had once belonged to my Grandma). It’s a shame that the bronze lurex I picked doesn’t really block that well, so the edge doesn’t have the sharp points that it otherwise would have had.

My second object is made from the yarn I featured in my last post, for all you…reader, out there. I was worried that any finished object made from that yarn would end up lopsided because the yarn was unbalanced. So, I beat it to the punch and made a lopsided object. That way, if it was made more lopsided by the yarn, you wouldn’t be able to tell. I made a short scarf from this yarn, using a very simple mesh lace pattern. It was the first time I had blocked wool, so I was worried it would felt (further than it did in the yarn-finishing process) but it seemed okay. Here is a before shot:

And a close-up:

Here is a picture of it blocking on the carpet:

Here is an after shot (closeup, the long shots turned out blurry):

So, yeah…it might be hard to see the difference. To be honest sometimes I can’t see much difference either, but I made a conscious decision when I first started knitting to finish my knitting projects, for any benefit that might come from it. I wanted to do it right if I was going to do it at all.

As for this scarf, it was very short, so after I wove in the ends, I added a couple of buttons and voilà!

The buttons I used are from my button collection. They were either my Grandma’s or from another deceased estate collection I inherited from a friend’s mother-in-law. They’ve got prancing deer on them and I think they may well be made from real deer antlers (when I finish this blog post I’m going to look up whether deer antler buttons are a thing). Here is a close-up of one of the buttons:

 Enjoy!

The Knitted Kitten 

Kat

This post was posted in Knitting

Howdy,
I’d like to diverge slightly from the usual knitting menu and talk about my adventures with spinning of late. I bought myself an ever-popular Ashford Traditional spinning wheel at a bargain-basement price last year, while I was in the midst of my Honours year at university. I was surprised that I haven’t become obsessed with handspinning, as I seem to with other hobbies, but in the past few days I’ve done quite a bit of spinning and I really enjoy it. I’d like to share with you the story of a skein that I just finished.

Towards the end of last year, I treated myself with some pre-dyed and pre-processed wool fibre in a variety of pink shades from Wingham Wool Work in the UK. Why buy British wool if I’m in Australia, with its huge sheep population, producing high-quality fibre? As I’ve said in a previous post (shows how much you’ve been reading, Geez), I object to the practice of mulesing, where the rear end of a lamb is skinned (usually without anaesthesia) to prevent infection. This is done commonly in Australia, especially with merino sheep, so it’s hard to find certified non-mulesed sheep fibre from Australia. Wingham Wool Work claims to have no wool from mulesed sheep, so they’re a winner in my eyes. Prior to my acquisition of this wool, I had been buying small amounts of raw alpaca fleece from The Alpaca Shop (the link is to a Yelp review) and washing then hand-carding it myself. But back to the pink sheep’s wool.

I decided to use some of this pink wool to make a cabled yarn. I’m fascinated by cabled yarns. The fancy definition which I totally didn’t understand until I got stuck into The Intentional Spinner DVD is a yarn with (at least?) three directions of twist. Basically what it is, is two or more yarns (at least one of which is plyed) which are then plyed together. I’ve knitted with some commercial cabled yarns before and they’re delightful. So I decided to do a cabled yarn, plying two two-ply yarns together. I plyed together two light pink singles, then two dark pink singles, and the other night, plyed them together. Shock Horror! It wasn’t working! The yarn I ended up with was all curly and the two plyed yarns weren’t spiralling around each other like they should. It looked sort of like when you make two singles clockwise, then try to ply them together clockwise. So what was the problem? Well, I realised, while I was doing the final plying, that I had forgotten to over-spin the original plys. Judith MacKenzie McCuin had warned me to do this in her DVD. When you over-ply the original plyed yarn, they’ll spiral around each other much the same as two singles. What I ended up with instead was a curly yarn which looked really nice, but not what I was expecting. In fact, it looked like this:

The problem with it, though, was that it wasn’t balanced. A balanced yarn won’t twist back on itself. An unbalanced yarn will, and knitted items made from unbalanced yarns end up lopsided. You know a yarn is balanced when, if you hold the skein out as a loop of fibre, the loop doesn’t twist. So, I was slightly disappointed but I resolved to turn the skein into a mesh lace scarf, which would look good lopsided (also it might look like it was deliberatley bias knit).

One final step remains when spinning, and that’s finishing your yarn. Finishing your yarn can often turn an unbalanced yarn into a balanced one, by removing some of and redistributing the twist. It was the first time I’d gone through this process with sheep’s wool.

So, what you do is get a tub of hot water and a tub of cold water. You put the skein (tied at four points so it doesn’t get tangled) in the hot water and (wearing gloves, like I didn’t today) swoosh it around and rub it all together. Basically, what you don’t do to a woolen garment. Then, you take it out of the hot water and plunge it into the cold water. I tend to swoosh it around in the cold water then repeat the process a few more times. Then you roll it in a towel to get out a lot of the moisture. So, I did this to my pink cabled yarn, then I hung it on the washing line to dry completely. I was surprised at how much more balanced the yarn was after that. I wasn’t expecting it to be perfect, of course, but the skein seemed more or less balanced, except for a few curly, snarly bits. See:

The Aftermath
So, I left my yarn on the line to dry and happily went on with the rest of my day. It wasn’t until hours later that I realised I’d forgotted the best part of the finishing process: beating the living daylights out of the yarn! So I ran outside and took the yarn off the line. It had already dried in the stinking 37 degree weather, so I did a quickie version of the process I had done this morning, then began with the beating. What you do is grab hold of the skein then whack it on a hard surface repeatedly. Every so often, move your hands to a different section of yarn and resume the whipping. This distributes the twist evenly. So, I did this with my skein, and lo and behold, the snarls were gone! The skein is still slightly unbalanced (it twists to the right, and because the final plying was done clockwise, this indicates that the skein was overspun), so the plan is still to make a mesh scarf. Here is the skein after its beating, hanging on the line (look at the difference):

And here is a fancy artistic photo of the skein:

After it dried out a second time, the yarn was even more balanced, but still not quite right. Despite its flaws, though, I’m really happy with this yarn and I can’t wait to see what it becomes!

What’s my next spinning adventure? Well, today I whipped up a couple of skeins of 2-ply, using up almost all of the Wingham Wool Work Wool. I’ll use the last little bit for some thrummed knitting. I think I’ll use today’s fruits to make something special for the Strathalbyn show this year, where they last year had a division for a hand-knitted item made from handspun yarn.

Around the same time that I ordered my pack of pink wool from Wingham Wool Work, I bought a skirted raw alpaca fleece from Tinonee Alpacas. I bought this fleece for $20, which is insanely cheap, and as the website says, $20 is about how much it costs to shear an alpaca. If I were to buy a fleece from a farmer in my area, even including the shipping fee, Tinonee Alpacas is still way cheaper. Not only that, Susan from Tinonee Alpacas was a delight to correspond with, and she threw in some extra fleece, and some washing instructions, at no extra charge! What service! I’m going to use some of this fleece to finish spinning up some sock yarn. I’ve already spun quite a bit from Alpaca Shop fleece but not quite enough for a pair of socks. I’m hoping to naturally dye the yarn for these socks using calendula petals.

I’ve also been collecting the winter coat (which is presently being shed) of my rabbit, Coal, and I’m going to try to spin it. I love my bunny rabbit.

In my next post, I’m going to show you some blocking before-and-after shots, so stay tuned, I know you’d hate to miss that one!

Peace out

The Knitted Kitten

Kat

This post was posted in Knitting

Today I got a happy surprise when I opened my emails. I had been nominated for a “Versatile Blogger Award” by the lovely blogger at Honourable Mentions. Her blog details her descent into madness, also known as psychology Honours (and now into Clinical PhD – congratulations!). So firstly, I’d like to say thanks very much! Secondly, I’d like to make some nominations myself 🙂

I hadn’t heard of the Versatile Blogger Awards until about twenty minutes ago, but they’re awesome! Here are the rules (I’ve seen a few different versions of the rules, but here is one version):

1. Thank the nominator on your blog and post a link to them.
2. Post links to 15 other blogs you read and enjoy.
3. Post a comment on the blogs you nominated to let them know.
4. Describe 7 things about yourself

So here we go:
1. Thank You!
Thank you again to http://honourablementions.wordpress.com for the props!

Because I’m new to blogs, I can honestly say that I don’t read 15 blogs, but here are a few that have tickled my fancy.
http://www.faithandfamilylive.com/ – because I’d love to be the matriarch of a happy family where faith is at its centre, one day
http://www.helpfulgardener.com/ – Has an amazing, vibrant forum full of very helpful gardeners!
http://liveaction.org/ – Inspiring young people and heroes to babies
http://www.motherearthnews.com/ – For all my self-sufficiency inspiration
http://randommusingsbymarie.blogspot.com.au/ – She is indeed a short short zucchini
http://thirdbaseline.blogspot.com.au/ – Whose pattern I used for my award-winning beanie
http://honourablementions.wordpress.com – This wee wee courgette shares my pain of the Honours year

            1. I’m the youngest in the family
            2. Je parle français
            3. I have a mole on the side of my right foot, matching one on my mother’s foot.
            4. I share my bed with at least one cat most nights
            5. I drive a white car
            6. Vegetarianism runs in my family (as does knitting)
            7. I play the piano and violin

Kat

This post was posted in Knitting

Knitkatpaddywhack , my Etsy shop!!!!! Please take a look at my shop, I would love some feedback! So far I’ve only listed four items but I hope to expand my range soon. Right now my emphasis is on baby goods, as I love babies and baby clothes are a great medium in which to get creative, as babies aren’t hung up on being trendy. Also, please take a look at my shop’s Facebook Fan Page. I hope to use it a lot to get info out to customers (when I have them). Enjoy!

The Knitted Kitten

Kat

This post was posted in Knitting