Little Purl of the Orient

FOs but...

Ji Yuan has resumed her 'normal' schedule this week. Her summer school started and will last for three weeks. This means that she won't be home in the mornings thereby giving a breather to my helper and also put my mind more at ease while at work knowing that she will need only to tend to Chung Yi. Parents of more than one small kid will understand what I mean. With both of them at home at the same time and only one adult around can be quite a nightmare. Saturdays are again busy days for Ji Yuan. She has piano lessons followed by ballet classes. These lessons allow me to do some knitting while waiting and I welcome them. Yesterday, we brought Ji Yuan to watch the show, 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Fish'by the Windmill Performing Arts of Australia. It was a delightful and entertaining show with lots of brilliant colours and dramatic puppetry. The story is based loosely on Eric Carle's 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. Ji Yuan knows this story from school so she was able to relate to the show and she enjoyed it as much as we did.

I've got some FOs! Here are the plaid mittens.

And I finally finished my crochet motif top.

But, alas! Pictures are deceiving and when taken like that, there's no perspective of size. I'm disappointed to say that the mittens turned out bigger than expected even though I've got gauge. I was very tempted to throw them in the washing machine to felt them smaller as I remember seeing felted mittens before. So I tried felting a small swatch by hand and it didn't felt well. So I didn't take the risk because my washing machine doesn't felt very well. I remember it took 4 or 5 times to felt my booga bag. I'll be meeting my friend, Rebecca, on Tuesday to pass on the mittens to her before she leaves for New York on Friday. I'll see if they fit her.

I don't even have to try on to know that the crochet motif top won't fit. It is way too small for me and there's no way to block it to size because it seems to fit Ji Yuan better! When I tried it on earlier, it was kind of tight but still fitted. However, the ribbings at the bottom and the neck and armhole bands just contracted the whole top by a lot. To cast off the bands, I've used the tubular method which will give more elasticity. Here's a close-up. The yarn could not be reused if I were to rip it as it was cut for each motif. So I've got to leave it as it is. I think it is a good size for a pre-teen and I'm going to offer it to my friend's daughter and I hope she'll like it.

Lesson learnt: always knit, stop, and check!

'Yay' Night

Last night's been a night of many 'yay's.

First, the wonderful Green-Eyed Grrl, Laurie, made me a button! Isn't it nice?

Then, I found my missing 'Knit-Twist Lattice' square while looking for some knitting needles. And that square already has a crochet border, yay. I have too many bags of knitting chucked here and there. It's high time I get myself organized or I won't be finding things.

Thank you all for the kind words on the sampler! It is heartening to see all the squares coming together and I'm now much more motivated to complete it. I encounter a problem when attaching the squares together. As some are slightly bigger than others, I feel that the bigger ones look squashed when crocheted together with a not so big one such that they don't lay completely flat. I wonder if I should rip out the crochet joining and sew them together instead?

Last night, I took out the ball of Rowan Plaid as my friend would be returning to New York next Friday and I had better finish the Plaid mittens before then. I took out my copy of Knitting Around which has a section teaching beginners how to hold dpns. That information, plus the photos, is really helpful and I could manage albeit clumsily to work with the dpns. I think this pattern is well-suited for beginners who want to try out dpns as it uses thick yarn and hence not too many stitches. I even managed to complete one mitten last night! I like a tighter fitting cuff so I'll use a smaller set of needles for the ribbing for the next pair. The Plaid yarn is so good and easy to knit, I'll promptly go and start the second one tonight. Now I feel a little more confident towards knitting socks.

Coming together

We had a great finishing party at Eva's house last Saturday afternoon. Marjorie brought her Big Wool project to finish while I brought all my samplers to assemble. And, oh, those squares are heavy. It was my first time at Eva's house and it's like going to a knitting library. She has a great collection of knitting books of every kind and I haven't even got to the yarn part. Happy time passes just too quickly. So I didn't managed to get a lot done. Go take a peek at the pictures at Eva’s blog.

The cable-y sweater (design 11) from Rebecca 26 caught my eyes and Eva magically whipped out two bags of the GGH Davos yarn that's called for in off-white and blue and insisted that I take the off-white. The yarn is very cuddly and I can't wait to start knitting this. She's also bought some cute Hello Kitty and My Sweet Melody buttons for my daughters and a purse snap from Japan. Thanks a lot, Eva, you are so generous!

I continued a bit with the assembling yesterday afternoon and am very pleased that they are finally coming together after over a year of knitting. Here are all my blocks laid out on the floor.

I could only manage this while the two girls took their nap. See, three empty gaps and I thought I had only two more squares to go. Is my memory failing me or what? Thank goodness I took notes for this project and I quickly identified the missing square as the 'Knit-Twist Lattice'. Got to go and locate it and knit on the last two squares.