I've done a lot more swatching than 'end product' knitting over the past year. Luckily I like swatching. Clara Parkes talks about swatching as 'taking your yarn for a walk' - not just as a means to check gauge, but as a way of getting to know it, to see if you're going to get along and where your yarn might best be employed. I've been 'taking my ideas for a walk' over the past year and it's been fun - sometimes frustrating, sometimes rewarding - and there's still more exploring to do.

So I've made very little this year, apart from a big pile of colour-clashing swatches.  As much as I've loved it, I've been itching to get an actual thing on my needles, some tangible proof of my efforts with contoured intarsia. 

A good knitting friend's thirtieth birthday gave me the opportunity, though a May birthday excluded anything too cosy and I decided on a bag.  She's a fellow cat-lover, so I wanted to incorporate a cat motif that I've been working on.

And I used a diamond pattern on the back:

There's a definite texture with contoured intarsia that isn't there with traditional intarsia.  I have to admit to blocking these with the quick and effective treatment of placing a wet tea-towel on the knitting and blasting it with a hot iron. The blocking works its magic, but the texture isn't completely tamed. I see it as part of the charm. 

What do you think? I have loads of ideas for what to do next, but I'm currently doing more swatching, with cotton this time, to see if I can persuade an inelastic, less forgiving fibre to work with this technique. I'm not convinced yet, but I'll keep trying because I have a summer top in my mind that won't go away.

Wendy x

I love the way there's always something new to learn about knitting.  I'm not talking entrelac, steeking, double knitting, intricate lace and all the rest of that complicated stuff, I'm talking decreasing. 

Of course you know how to k2tog for a right leaning decrease, and you've outgrown skpo and moved onto SSK for a left-leaning decrease. You might know how to do their equivalents on a purl row. You might even know about the improved SSK (although it doesn't improve much for me I have to admit). 

But if you know about working through the back of the stitch in the row above an SSK and you haven't told me, then I may have to reassess our friendship.

I've been playing with 'contoured' or 'shaped' intarsia for nearly a year now, which involves increasing and decreasing either side of the colour change in intarsia in order to make a smooth 'contoured' line instead of the traditional intarsia pixellated line.  Because of this I have a geeky obsession with increases and decreases. I follow links on Pinterest, I watch video tutorials on YouTube and I can safely say I know an unhealthy number of ways to increase and decrease in my knitting. 

But I never knew that if you work into the back of the stitch in the row above an SSK then it does marvellous things.

Imagine you've worked an SSK on a knit row (I'll call it Row 1). Then when you purl back along Row 2, purl into the back of that SSK stitch from Row 1:

Below, on the  left of the picture I've worked a few rows of SSKs on the knit row and then just purled that stitch on the next row as usual.  On the right of the picture I've worked an SSK on the knit row and then purled into the back of that stitch on the next row:

How beautiful is that row of decreases on the right compared to those on the left?

I learnt about this little trick in a video from Cat Bordhi, where she explains the 'hungry stitch' technique. She uses a slipped stitch on the row below the SSK to remove excess yarn out of the SSK and neaten up the decrease even further. She mentions, almost in passing, to work into the back of the stitch on the row above.  The 'hungry stitch' is too complicated for me on my contoured intarsia patterns, which are already a little bit crazy. But that working into the back of the stitch thing - that is beautiful.

Wendy x

I've just finished the last square of a blanket I've been working on, and added it to the top of this pile of thirteen unblocked squares. It's a big blanket, so it's taken a while. Plus I have previously put it aside for long periods of time, so the first square was knitted a fair while ago. How long ago, I hear you ask? Hmm... let me think about it... 

My inspiration for the blanket was the print below; Fish Festival by Seb West. I first saw the print hanging on the wall in a bed and breakfast hotel room. I liked it so much that I bought a copy once I was back home. Then I got that feeling that comes when there's a little flame of a knitting idea that won't go out.  I wanted a blanket. 

In a fine example of my ability to point out the obvious, I called it "The Fish Blanket". I started in a bustle of enthusiasm and a large pile of Rowan Handknit DK Cotton in many beautiful shades.  I love that yarn - a tight twist and so 'full' that it's almost impossible to split it - unlike so many other cotton yarns. 

These days I'm a hardcore intarsia enthusiast: if I've not got at least 3 yarns, preferably more, twisting into knots as I work then my knitting feels a bit naked. But back then, three months straight intarsia knitting was long enough, so after an initial burst I put the blanket to one side for a break.  

According to my spreadsheet - stop smirking, I like a spreadsheet - I then knit my way through Flighty, Buster, Drift and, having found out I was pregnant with my first, another intarsia blanket for baby. I found my way back to The Fish Blanket for a month or so, but by then baby was taking up almost all the knitting room I had in my head.  So I worked out how much Rowan Handknit DK Cotton I would need to complete the blanket and bought it all in one expensive trip to the yarn department at Liberty.

The Fish Blanket has had its own large Work In Progress box ever since. And my "baby" turns ten this summer.

When I told The Knitting Girls that I'd finished the last square of the blanket, one of them asked me if I felt a bit sad that it was nearly finished.  I told her that I didn't, that I had only ever felt good things about this blanket, it was never a millstone. I've always been happy to get it out, happy to work on it, happy to put it away again, and I'll be happy to finish it. That's a lot of happy.

So my pile of thirteen squares is now blocked, but they still need to be seamed together and joined to the rest of the blanket. For the border I think I might stick to applied i-cord - something fairly simple anyway.

One column and one border of happy knitting left. Here's to a happy ending!

Wendy x

The knitting group that I am a part of organise a Secret Santa, with presents given out at our Christmas party, and it works really well.  One of the girls did point out that it's not very 'secret', because we always guess and admit afterwards who bought or made what, but that's beside the point -  just buying or making one present means you can put in some time and effort.  That would be difficult if buying for everyone, impossible if buying for no-one, and awkward if buying for only some!

This year I decided to make something.  The girl whose name I had picked out of the bag as my giftee is a seamstress and always produces fabulous Secret Santa gifts, so the pressure was on. I've been playing around with a technique for making 'contoured' colour changes with intarsia, by using increases and decreases either side of a colour change. I decided to make a cowl, and my design for the Secret Santa gift uses this 'contoured' intarsia technique, involves 18 small skeins of yarn, and the intarsia is done in the round, so I always knew it would be a challenge. I ploughed ahead anyway, approximated how much yarn I would need for each colour block, and ended up knitting with this distressing tangle:

If you are consistent about turning one way at the end of a knit row, and the opposite way at the end of a purl row when knitting intarsia, then the yarns magically untangle (sometimes with some gentle persuasion). But this wasn't working for this project: all the skeins moved around in the tray, especially because I was doing intarsia in the round. I was a bit worried: as much as I love intarsia, I was on a tight deadline to get the project done and untangling yarns under pressure is not really my idea of fun.

I know you can get 'yarn holders', but I didn't have any, and not being keen on buying eighteen of them I searched the kitchen for things that I could use instead. I decided on cups, as they are reasonably heavy so will stay in place, plus I have plenty of them, so there would be no need to empty a mug of yarn just to get my morning cuppa.  My intarsia tray ended up looking like this: 

It worked like a dream: the little skeins of yarn twisted round and jumped in their cups as I pulled on them to release more yarn, but almost never escaped their ceramic confines, and my strands stayed untangled throughout the whole project. 

Even with nearly-zero levels of yarn tangling, I still have to make a positive effort to relax into an intarsia mindset, and accept that it's a messy business until it's all over and the ends are sewn in. Maybe there's a metaphor for life in there somewhere - it's muddy and a bit out of control, but learn to live with the chaos and it's all worthwhile in the end.