My first mittens

Ok, so they turned out more like oven gloves, but I’m still proud of my first pair of mittens! I knitted them as part two of Ruthie’s birthday present from a pattern I found amongst a haul of magazine cut-outs from the 70s and 80s brought in to Knit Club. I thought they’d be easier as they’re knitted flat, but all the sewing together of the seams was quite tedious and I think I pressed them a little enthusiastically. Still I really like the pattern and I know how to do Fair Isle now too, so altogether a good project and probably not that difficult to adapt to knit in the round.

Here’s a pic of me when I started making them on the beach on one of the last really sunny days of Sept 2009.

Click here for a pdf of the pattern.
(It may take a while as it’s a big file)

Knit Club Kids

In the early days of Knit Club, our friend Andy the illustrator was still around in Falmouth and, before he finished his MA and headed back off oop North, he did a lovely picture of KC’s founding members. Nice one Andy!

Andy gave the original to babahogs as a gift and it’s still there to this day. Lovely!

To find out more about Andy and his work, visit his website at www.grandechampignon.com

My first knitting project

Just before I moved to Falmouth in July 2008, I was lucky enough to meet the lovely Sarah in Nottingham who was also headed to sunny Cornwall. We met on the UCF forum for new MA students and it turned out we were both migrating south on the same day. Well a few G&Ts later we became firm friends and we’ve not stopped eating, drinking and guffawing since.

It was Sarah who had the idea to start up Knit Club, having been a member of a knitting group for young, trendy types in Nottingham. I of course agreed to attend the first meeting, at the lovely Babahogs art cafe, thinking I could always just busy myself with tea and cake while the real knitters got on with it. But it wasn’t long before I was knitting along with the rest and with Sarah’s expert tuition, and some distant memories of knitting scarves for teddy bears when I was about 7, I soon completed my first project! Click here to see me proudly modelling my scarf when I finished it at Knit Club.

It ended up being much too wide and much too long and really much too fluffy to wear, but it’s still the first thing I knitted, so I’m proud of it.

Here’s how I made it:

Using chunky wool (I used 5 x 50g balls for mine but I could have managed with 4 if I’d made it narrower) and 10mm needles, cast on 32 stitches.

Row 1 & 2 – *K1, P1, repeat from * to end of row
Row 3 & 4 – *P1, K1, repeat from * to end of row

I think this is called irish moss stitch.

Repeat rows 1 -4 until desired length and cast off. Finish off with tassles (here’s how to make them if you’re not sure)