Episode 41 - Its been a year

Hello and welcome to this weeks episode of the podcast.

If you are on Ravelry and looking for me there I am knittynatterzena and I am on Twitter and Plurk as knittynatter

There is a group on ravelry knittynatter-podcast and it would be great if you came and joined.  Every month there is a finished projects thread and one random generated winner gets their choice of either a pattern on ravelry up to the value of $7 or a set of my hand made stitch markers and you can go over to the etsy store knittynatter to choice a set from there.

This week we have the drawing for April Share you LOLs

Chatter
It has been a year since I did my first podcast, I can't believe how quickly the time has passed. I am thoroughly enjoying myself and so I will be around for a while yet.
I have been enjoying the warmer weather and the sunshine and so thought that I would come and sit here by the window to the garden.

LOLs
I have been busy this week and mostly this weekend, I went to Stitch Solihull yesterday for knitting group and while I was there I purchased some fabric.  I have been wanting to sew more with the warmer weather I have been thinking about a summer skirt.
The fabrics there was lovely and I opted for a light pattern fabric which reminded me of leaves growing and flowers beginning to bud.

I opted to make a simple gathered skirt with a waistband and this is about knee length.  I wanted a casual look and so rather than a zip the skirt buttons up the entire length at the front.  My buttons are a selection of pinks which differ slightly to continue the casual look.  To add a little bit of detail the waist band has the pattern running horizontally rather than vertically.

The technical information on this is that the material was 45" wide and I purchased 2 meters I have over half a metre left.  I used one width for the back and then one width for the front (split in two).  I lightly interfaced the waist band for a bit of stability and added some over stitching detail at the bottom and waist band.  Overall length is 24".

Also finished this week is the beatnik which a free pattern through ravelry and knitty.com from Norah Gaughan.  I used Rowan 100% superwash wool aran weight in a red colour and bought 7 skeins , I have just around a total of one left over. I slightly modified this to get a 34" size and reduced the side panels by a total of 8 stitches (4 each side).  the sleeve I knit as per the 36" size and I have read that they sometimes come up tight.  I am delighted with this finished jumper and it fits perfectly :)

Nattering Away
I have made a small amount of progress on my Summery Sweet Socks which are vanilla socks on a 2.25mm needles and 60 stitches around.  The yarn is Opal Sweet and Spicy sock yarn and I have completed the gusset increases on the first sock and am about to turn the heel.  I have increased to a total of 56 stitches for the gusset.

Spring Shoot Socks did not quite make it into my hands and nor did the Evenstar.

Whispering to me
The Sage I was swatching for last week have been put on hold for a little while as I am going to be knitting the new pattern from Mel Ski the old man and the sea which is due to be released tomorrow.  I have also purchased and downloaded the book to my kindle and will be reading along whilst I knit this beautiful pattern.  The pattern is written with sport weight yarn in mind but I wanted to use stash and have some discontinued Patons Washed Haze in a lovely green colour.  This is a DK weight yarn and having checked my gauge I will be able to knit the smallest size which is written for 32" but will work out to be correct for me with the DK yarn.  I have a total of 786 yards of this which should be enough.

Also whispering to me which will be on the needles this afternoon is the the lady edith by the sadly missed Karrie Steinmetz (knitpurlgurl) and this will be a KAL with the knittingden podcast for May in memory of Karrie.  This pattern was very kindly given to me as a gift on a RAP Tuesday by Keli who is SheepDreamery of the Sheepdreamery Podcast and she also dyes beautiful yarn which you can find in her etsy store.
I intend to use araucania Botany lace out of my stash which is 450 yards of fingering weight and I will probably use a 4.00mm needle to get a nice drape which is the same size needle I used on the last shawl I knit with this yarn and it worked really well.

My speech therapy this week was the fabric that has already become my new skirt.

That's all for this week's update, so I hope you have a fantastic week and I will see you soon, bye now.