New Year's Needle Giveaway

As of January 6th 8 am, this post has been closed for comments. The winners have been announced in a separate post.

In an effort to rid myself of some clutter, I'm going to give away a chunk of my knitting needles that I no longer (or never did) use. Those who are interested, leave a comment to this post, indicating which set(s) you are interested in, by Friday January 6th 8:00 am Eastern European Time. If there is more than one person interested in a particular set, the winner will be chosen randomly. After I've determined who gets what, I will make a separate post announcing the winners, and after that the winners can contact me with their information, an address to send the needles to. I will pay for shipping to anywhere in the world. There will be no cost to the winners (but if the package causes some customs duties in your country, those you will have to take care of yourself). Even the needles that are not really a set, like the fixed Addi circulars, will be given out in one batch (as numbered), not separately, to keep this somehow manageable.

1. KnitPro Symfonie Rose Interchangeable Needle Set

Wooden interchangeable circular needles in sizes 3.5-8.0 mm and cables to make 60 cm, 80 cm, 100 cm and 120 cm needle lengths. The cables are otherwise identical to regular KnitPro cables, but they are brown in color. The needles are made of the same wood as the regular KnitPro Symfonie needles, but colored as rosewood.



2. Addi Lace Click Interchangeable Set

Nickel-plated needles in sizes 3.5-8.0 mm and red cables to make 40 cm, 50 cm, 60 cm, 80cm and 100 cm needle lengths. A connector to join cables into longer ones. There is a noticeable bump at the join of the needle and cable that bothers me, but there are many people happy with their Addi Clicks, so I'm hoping these will be of use to someone.



3. KnitPro Nova Metal Interchangeable Set

Nickel-plated brass needles in sizes 3.0-6.0 mm and cables to make 60 cm, 80 cm and 100 cm needle lengths. Stops and cable keys included. (I think I originally bought the Starter Set with 3 needle sizes and added 3 more to it.)



4. Prym KnitPro Natural Interchangeable Needles

Prym needles that are identical to KnitPro Symfonie needles, the only difference is that the cable is black. The needle tips and cables are interchangeable with KnitPro ones. Needles in sizes 3.0-4.5 mm each in two different lengths. The shorter tips will make a 40 cm circular needle with the shortest cable, and the longer tips will make 60 cm, 80 cm and 100 cm needles with the longer cables.



5. Addi Fixed Circular Needles

The regular nickel-plated brass Addi circular needles which are marketed as "Turbo" in North America. Gold-colored cables. Size 2.0 mm in 40 cm, size 2.5 mm in lengths 40 cm, 60 cm and 100 cm, size 3.0 mm in length 40 cm, size 3.5 mm in lengths 40 cm and 60 cm, size 4.0 mm in lengths 40 cm, 60 cm and 80 cm, size 4.5 mm in lengths 40 cm and 60 cm, and size 5.0 in lengths 40 cm, 60 cm and 80 cm. The tips on these needles are too blunt for my taste, but they seem to have a lot of fans among other knitters.



6. Addi Lace Fixed Circular Needles

Brass needles with red cables in sizes 2.5 mm/ 80 cm, 3.5 mm/ 60 cm, 3.5 mm/ 80 cm, 4.0 mm/ 100 cm
One gold-plated needle in size 2.0 mm/ 100 cm



7. HiyaHiya Stainless Steel Fixed Circular Needles

Very lightweight stainless steel needles in sizes 2.0 mm, 2.25 mm, 2.5 mm and 2.75 mm in the 80 cm length. Used for Magic Looping socks, but the bump near the join bothers me when knitting at a tight gauge.



8. KnitPro Symfonie DPN Set

Wooden DPNs in sizes 2.5-5.0 mm in the 20 cm length.

Ribbed Hats

Some last minute Christmas knitting for my two brothers, improvised ribbed hats. The red one was knit with Cascade 220, the black one with Artesano Superwash Merino. Not a whole lot to say about knitting these, just thought I should post them for "closure".

The Ravelry project pages for the red and the black one.

Fortnight

Yet another Brooklyn Tweed pattern. Jared Flood's Fortnight is a very well written pattern, and obviously thought has been put into making it well fitting. However, unexpectedly after completing a project like Bridgewater, I felt I wasn't making progress with this hat fast enough, the cabled part seemed to be taking too long for my impatient mind. Go figure. I would also like to try knitting the version with the sort of earflaps, but maybe not immediately after completing this one. Yet I'm itching to start Leaves of Grass, an obvious two-week shawl project. I don't always understand how my mind works. But before I can do that, I need to finish some last minute Christmas knitting first.

This hat was knit with Cascade 220, which I've found a good yarn for hats for its softness. However, for cabling without a cable needle, it felt a bit splitty, so I don't plan on doing any intense cabling with it in the future.

The Ravelry project page

Bridgewater

While I'm happy with the finished project, I did not enjoy knitting Jared Flood's Bridgewater pattern as much as I would have hoped. Both the garter stitch center square and the fiddly knitted-on edging mostly made me feel I just wanted to be done with it already. I only really enjoyed the middle part, the Horseshoe lace pattern, which was no more than 25% of the knitting time, if even that. The knitted-on edging took the most time per amount of yarn, and after I'd calculated that with my normal knitting speed it would take at least a week to complete, I decided to finish it in a knitting marathon this weekend, just to be over with it and able to move on to other things (if I left this brewing while starting new projects, I would never pick it up again). So, yesterday I spent the majority of my waking hours working on the last half of the edging, and finally finished it around 10 pm. Never before have I been so exhausted from knitting! (I calculated that if I'd knitted this whole shawl full-time like yesterday, it would have taken me about a week to complete. If I were to knit something like this for money and have a decent hourly wage, this shawl would have to cost several hundreds of Euros.)

I did not make any intentional modifications to the pattern, but there is an unintentional modification (I don't call them mistakes) where I systematically knit the stitches on the wrong side of the edging that should have been purled. I was so far into the edging when I finally noticed this mis... er, modification, that there was no way I'd rip the whole thing, so I decided to repeat the same thing for the rest of the edging. It looks fine to me, so I don't really mind. If the big picture looks good, I don't have a problem with details such as that.

I did enjoy the yarn, madelinetosh tosh lace, quite a bit, even though on metal needles it was a bit slippery. I bought the yarn from a craft fair recently specifically for this project, and I think it was a good yarn-pattern match. I'd love to work with this yarn again, but not on this pattern, though. I think one go at Bridgewater was enough for me! I'm thinking Jared's new Leaves of Grass shawl pattern will be more to my taste, since it reminds me of the construction of Girasole, but I have a different yarn planned for that one. However, in the year 2012 I seriously plan to knit 12 shawls, so there will probably be several possibilities for working with tosh lace again. I'm thinking maybe the Briar colorway, which looks very pretty in pictures. The colorway I used on Bridgewater is called Glazed Pecan.

The Ravelry project page

Mustard Laurel

Knitting worsted weight yarn after so many fingering weight projects felt unnatural at first, but my first time working with SweetGeorgia Superwash Worsted was still a pretty pleasant experience. It was a particularly suitable yarn for a cabled hat, even though when I picked it up at a craft fair I didn't yet have a clear plan for how I was going to use it. I just knew I had to have it, and would find a way to justify the purchase later.

This was my second time knitting the Laurel pattern by Jared Flood. It's a lovely pattern, but I was somewhat disappointed to find out the errors I informed them about last January, when I knit this pattern for the first time, still haven't been fixed. I have a feeling this is more due to Classic Elite, who published it, rather than Jared, because the latter is usually very good about keeping his patterns error free. I've had wonderful knitting experiences with all the rest of them. (Having knit the Porom six times and the Girasole twice, for example, should tell something.)

This is the time of the year when taking pictures in natural lighting is starting to get challenging, particularly on work days. Today, the sun sets at 3.15 pm. There is still some lingering light for some time afterwards, since the sun sets slowly this close to a pole, but the last bits of daylight aren't really ideal for photos where you want to reproduce the colors as accurately as possible. The next time I photograph a knitting project probably has to be on a weekend, since it's only going to be closer to the winter solstice.

The Ravelry project page