KAL - Knitting as a team sport.

Life's irritation number 14

Don't you just hate it when you arrive late at the party?

According to my Mother, I'm always late but she, like other elderly people, has all day to get ready for her chosen outing, over estimates how long it takes to get anywhere and I have noticed has developed an inability to tell the correct time. If she is to be believed her clock only shows whole hours and half past and always rounds up!

So I was a bit late joining in the communal knitting activity that is the knit a long but now I have I'm in there with the rest of them!.

Sarah from Crafts from the Cwtch holds regular KALs and I was almost tempted to join in the Pick a Boo summer 2013 one. I found a pattern and some yarn but I just couldn't get going with it so I gave up.

It wasn't until a couple of friends, Kathleen from Knit Like You Mean It and Catherine from Chopkinsknits announced that they were having a KAL for the Right-as-Rainbow baby cardigan August 2013 that I thought about joining in. I didn't really jump at the chance as I didn't have a baby to knit for and the rules were that at least one of the yarns used must be Spud and Chloe Sweater but then they announced there were to be prizes!

As you can see the cardigan uses small amount of a number of colours and the Spud and Chloe worsted weight yarn comes in 100 gm skeins so I bought one skein of the main colour from Mrs Moon, a local yarn store and managed to find an alternative discontinued yarn with a similar wool and cotton mix.

I was up against it time wise so I decided to knit the smallest size and as there was to be a special prize for creative input I did something a bit different with the use of colour at the bottom.

 I used the same colour combination on the sleeves and edge as I did on the yoke! I really enjoyed this project and my eye for colour was rewarded by the designer of the pattern, Stephanie Lotven who's role it was to choose the winner.


Fuelled by this success I joined the Spring 2014 KAL with Crafts from the Cwtch which was for the lovely Miss Winkle pattern with it's interesting looped edging. It is a long thin triangle shape with one long straight side, the loopy slopped side and a short straight cast off.

 I love this Deep Sea colour of BFL sock yarn from Beth at what was Luscious Little Somethings.

A few months ago I bought a pattern and some old style Milburn 4 ply from Eden Cottage Yarns. The old style yarn was being replaced by a slightly different spin of the same combination of wool and silk blend. The pattern was the Quadratic shawl, another garter stitch shawl with a slightly different construction and the addition of coloured strips based on mathematical principles.

Any knitter can imagine my pleasure when I looked at the Eden Cottage Ravelry Group to find that there was a planned Quadratic KAL starting at the beginning of December and finishing on 11th January. It was a no brainer I was in and as I was off on the Yarn in the City Road Trip to Bath Market on the last Saturday in November, I wound my yarn and cast on in the coach (other KAL member had been unable to resist starting before the beginning of December as well!).

I decided to make a small modification to the original pattern as I wanted to use more of the lovely mustard and grey colours that were the contrast to the damson of the body. So I got out my calculator and did some sums to work out the ratios between the number of rows between the coloured strips and the garter stitch rows. I then used these ratios to work our a mini Quadratic at the top end of the shawl reversing the colours.

And here is a photo of my finished Quadratic which I wore out shopping in Kingston yesterday and nearly lost when it slipped off my shoulders in John Lewis!

And what's on my needles right now?

Well to be honest - nothing! After the frantic knitting of 8 (yes 8) Aran cotton flannels for my family at Christmas, a chunky infinity shawl to my own pattern as a present for a friend and finishing the Quadratic, I haven't had time to cast on anything else although my virtual knitting bag (where I keep all the projects I an thinking about) is full to overflowing.

But then I saw this posted by BBC Radio 4 calling for the knitters of the World to unite. Now I wonder if my idea will work, I need to get my skates on as the deadline is 22nd January.