Wednesday 26 January 2011

Wasted Effort

Today I'm going have a "pity me" moment.  For once it is not about how much pain I'm in, but about how much time and effort I've put into things that have proved to be unusable.  Firstly I am going to remind you of WIPS in time gone by.  Do you remember my fabulous baby blanket that I was really enjoying...


It's great isn't it?  Well actually no it's not.  It now looks like this:


Can you see the red bleeding into the white?  No, well how about now?


Does this remind you of anything?  Perhaps the saga of the ruined Debbie Bliss Blanket from last year?  I am beginning to think that I am NEVER going to use red baby yarn ever again.  This was a totally different yarn from the previous disaster and I tested one of the colours before using RICO for the blanket.  It didn't run.  My mistake was obviously in not checking the RED yarn.  I am soooo gutted about this blanket.  Once again I used SOAK in a tepid water and didn't agitate it, so I don't know what happened.  Now I have two ruined baby blankets to store in my cupboard.  I can't even felt the blasted things.  Is it possible that my mistake in both cases was using SOAK?  Has anyone else had a problem with it?

Anyway now that I am WAAAAY behind on my baby knitting I have decided to go back to an old tried and tested pattern - Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman.  I've made two of these already, in May and August 2009.

May 2009 - For Eve

August 2009 - For Logan
I am using the left over yarn from the blanket, excluding the cursed red, and I am starting with a girly version of this jacket.

I only started this project last night, and I'm enjoying it so much.  As I said in 2009, I can imagine knitting this pattern for the rest of my life.  You can change so much of it's appearance just by changing the yarn combination.  One of the many good things about this pattern, is the speed in which it can be whipped up.  This is necessary at the moment because I have two baby girls waiting for gifts now, as they have already arrived!

My other wasted effort was for Christmas 2009, when I made my Dad a beautiful handcrafted hat, designed with him in mind.  It was the Handyman's Hat, which you can download from the right hand column or from Ravelry


Apparently it was washed in the machine.  It is now a very small hat.  I was so sad about this hat, because I loved it so much I nearly didn't give it away.  It was my own fault, I got carried away with the beauty of the yarn and forgot that my Dad works outside and his hats get covered in muck.  It was never going to be washed by hand.

I am now knitting this pattern again, but in a superwash wool.


This yarn is King Cole Merino Blend Aran.  It is nice and springy, if a bit splitty.  It is also quite reasonably priced.  The hat is coming along well, but I found a couple of errors in the pattern.  I am re-writing the pattern to fit in with my current pattern style and correcting it as I go.  When I have finished knitting this hat, I will reissue the pattern and ensure that all of the people who have already purchased the pattern, get an updated copy.  I'm quite surprised that no one pointed out the errors to me.

I suppose that re- knitting this hat isn't such a wasted effort.  This pattern inspired me to work on a tutorial showing how to knit cables without a needle.  Sometimes problems can encourage you to not only fix things, but improve on them as well.

I hope to have the finished hat to show you on Friday.  In the mean time I am linking up to Tami's Amis as usual.  Click on the button below to go and see the pretties!

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