Knitting Needles and Pattern Riddles

I've been blogging exactly two months today. Is my two month anniversary at blogging, an excuse to buy more clothes? Its gone really fast and I'm quite proud of my little blog. In my 'Hello World' bit I put about my sewing and knitting etc. I realised last night while I was failing to get to sleep due to day dreaming about Mr. Valentino Garavani sending me one of his amazing creations,that I haven't actually shown you some of my creations. Well attempts at creations.

 In between blogging, selling on eBay, exercising my debit card and dreaming about being part of the Larkin family in The Darling Buds of May, I have been knitting. My Grandma is an amazing knitter and she taught me when I was really young. She learnt when she was four on matchsticks and made a tie for her Dad for Christmas.
Ever since then she has been knitting her heart out but with knitting needles and has created some amazing jumpers for the whole family, including a Christmas tree jumper, a My Little Pony jumper, a Thomas the Tank Engine, a tiger coming out of the forest and many more. She made a postman pat jumper for my brother when he was four and he refused to take it off. Kinda like how I would be if I had a pair of Christian Louboutin's. My mum had to get her to make him another one which she did in two evenings so she could wash the other one. Her and my Granddad were a great team,he would read out the pattern whilst in the bath sometimes and she would do the knitting.
So its fair to say that she knows what she is doing. She has made so many cardigans with amazing patterns within the wool. I ask her how she does it and she says 'It's easy you knit two,wrap the wool over, drop a stitch,make a stitch,knit three,bring the wool under, make a stitch,drop 3 stitches.' Frankly Grandma you lose me after knit two.

My Grandma has spent many years attempting to carve me into a good knitter. When I was born my lovely mum and dad bought me a gorgeous toy rabbit. I never parted with it and even took it to school and till the age of about six or seven. Or maybe it was seventeen. He has had so many covers in his life and my mum has spent hours making new suits for him and sewing his ears back on. Sadly a suit he had on was coming apart and the stuffing was falling out. Now this was proper vintage stuffing,I'm telling you now. It was a t-shirt cut up that my mum wore when she had my sister. My sister's now twenty six. It smelt just like my mum and I really didn't want to lose any of it. So I made him a new suit out of some lovely blue and white star material that I made a dress out of for my best friend. I also decided to make him a jumper to go on top of it. We don't want him to catch cold do we. Yes I know I need to go out more.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone as they say and practice some patterns with the wool colours.  The hardest ones to do were the red and green pattern on the front and the blue and yellow one on the back. Many naughty words and knitting being chucked back in the bag was done during the making of this jumper. I finally finished the front and back and sewed up the sides and shoulders. My Grandma had the great idea of making holes within the casting off, so I could put some ribbon through it and make it fit his neck properly and I could give him a nice bow tie, very smart. I was quite pleased with it if I don't say so myself. I teased Mr.Boyfriend that I was going to make him one just like it. I don't think he was too keen on wearing a brightly coloured 80s hallucination jumper. Strange boy.

My other little knitting project is a 40s Turban with a bow. The pattern is Bestway 1188 and I got it from these lovely people on eBay (where else?) at  Em_vintageretro Shop.  The pattern also contained a pattern for a crochet hat. They came in two sizes a Young Girl's size and a Matron's size. After getting a picture of Hattie Jacques in Carry on Matron walking up and down the wards in my head wearing a knitted turban, I was reassured by my mum it just meant the more mature lady. The pattern is for 4ply,2ply and 3ply, but me being difficult decided to do double knitting.

The pattern requires you to do moss-stitch and this did literally drive me to distraction. Due to me not doing just a plain colour I was constantly wrapping the wool around and by the time I had got to the end of the row, I forgot what stitches I had done and the rest of my wool was in a huge knot. Moss-stitch requires you to do Knit one, Purl one alternately and then the next row do the opposite stitches. I had about eight goes at it and then decided to do knit one row, pearl one row. I managed to do a few lines of moss-stitch but it didn't show the pattern very well. The pattern is a bit complicated and I suggest you don't watch it when Eastenders is on. Syed's hotness and Kim's hilarity really does put you off.

My Grandma has a knitting book full of patterns ranging from the 40s to the 80s with cute faced children, full headed hair men with pipes and women with really cool 60s haircuts wearing thick off cream jumpers containing about six patterns with big brown buttons. Not the best look in the world.
She sadly got rid of all the picture jumper patterns, which I'm a bit sad about. I'd love to make a Noddy Jumper. My Grandma takes Feng Shui to a whole new level. I'm constantly rescuing clothes from her bag to go down to Oxfam. I always enjoy looking through her patterns and I'm desperate to make a few things out of her amazing pattern book.
 I want to make a jumper for my cat, he is nearly twenty and I don't want him getting cold. My cat weighs a stone so I will need a lot of wool. I'm thinking about making him some leg warmers, a scarf and a bobbly hat with holes for his ears, or is that taking it a bit too far? I don't think I'll be making a crazy teapot cosy out of the pattern book to go on my head anytime soon though. I'll leave that to you Lady Gaga.

Second Hand Rose
XxxX