Number Nine Finally Up

Finally got the ninth chapter up! I'm not especially gifted with battle savvy and all the reading in the world seems to have failed to make me much of a tactician.I'm fine with the people stuff but once I have to come up with how long it takes anyone to travel across any terrain or stuff like that I start leaking self-confidence at an alarming rate! So, here's hoping those reading it are still enjoying it and those in a position to know will be charitable to my inevitable mistakes!

Finished a New Celtic Tote!

Over the Christmas break my brother's fiancee admired the Celtic Tote bag I'd made. I asked if she'd like me to make her one and she said she'd love that, her only requirement was no brown.
Okay, with those provisos in place, I embarked on the project!
In the end, wasn't as straight forward as I'd hoped. The yarn I bought didn't come in very interesting colour ranges and I couldn't find a contrast yarn that I really liked. So I had to do some thinking.

I ended up using the blue and knitting the first side. Wasn't coming out as big as the first one but didn't worry about that too much. My big problem was trying to come up with a contrast colour I liked because I wanted to make one of the cables a feature, doing it entirely in the contrast colour.

In the end I pulled something out of my stash. I had some spun and dyed corriedale wool that would felt nicely and I thought the colours were lively enough to be eyecatching.

So, when I began the second side, they became the feature cable!

But I was still really unhappy with the colour and finally decided the only thing would be to dye the whole thing! Decided on red since it really made the contrast yarn pop but my first attempt wasn't very successful because I didn't have a whole packet. It came out a sort of wishy-washy purply-colour.

So I decided to let it dry, press the pieces and sew them all together and dye them like that since I had to wait until I could buy more dye! But the bag did look lovely all sewn together.

Finally I got the dye and once that was done I threw it into the washing machine and felted the daylights out of it! I knew it was going to come out much smaller than the first one but I was a little concerned with just how small it came out.

But still a very usable size, much more like a handbag. So I got the lining material I'd bought (which now the bag had been dyed went with it much better than it had before!) sewed it all up, attached the button and Viola! A very beautiful little Celtic Tote!

I'm very happy with the end result, especially the colour! The feature cable was horribly fiddly to knit and although I'll never do it again! I think it really makes the bag its own individual and extra special. Now all I have to do is get it to recipient. That could take a while too :)
Hope you like this. Happy Knitting :)

So What have I done this Week?

Laundry done? Nope. Although I did wash a load of towels but didn't manage to put them on the line. Hey, it's drizzling out there...on and off...when I look out the window...
Ironing started? Eh, negatori!
Floors swept? Carpets vacuumed? No and...nope.
But I have been knitting! Look, all the nice pretty things I've been making!
I made this lovely cat-ornament-cat-thing...

...and then I knit these really great felted slippers from a great magazine I bought when I was in Albany last...with wool that I also bought in Albany...even though I have an obscene amount of wool at home that I could have probably practiced with...but I digress!

The backs with the buttons are how the heels ended up because my feet are so ridiculously small that even felted the slippers were HUGE! But aren't they cute!!

Still knitting the Blush Vest and don't have a nice picture and we went to Albany for dinner with newly returned In-Laws (They've been to New Zealand, lucky hobbits!) so took slipper pattern and wool I'd spun and dyed and knit up another pair of slippers over the course of the night and even managed to felt them when I got home! And they turned out so well!!!

Aren't they pretty? The heels are different again to the first pair. I wanted to put a button detail on them again but they didn't fold over the way the first ones did and I didn't like how the heel kind of hung out. So I sewed them up to about 2cms short of the heel and then gathered the heel up so it made a nice circle where you heel goes. Hey, it makes sense to me! And they fit! What more could I want?

Well, I think that's about it. I've done a bit of dyeing acrylic yarns...not sure I want to do that again. It smells funny for starters! But I now have some interesting coloured yarn that I'm not sure what to do with, one of them so acrylic-y that it squeaks! I think that one may find its way to being a market bag or something.

This boring pink fluffy became this almost elmo-oh-my-god red fluffy stuff


And this was the Acrylic then...and now. Better colour, just as squeaky!

A most productive week...of a kind. Hey, the house I will always have with me but inspiration comes only now and then, or sometimes more often...depending on the yarn available...or the patterns that crop up...but definitely not as often as housework anyway!

I'll have to give serious thought this weekend though to vacuuming, laundry and ironing otherwise the Hubbie will begin to remonstrate. And I've got to have a look at Chapter Nine of Raven of Arlon before another week flies by. Sigh. Why can't I get paid by the quota of Creative energy I generate.
Oh well....
Happy Knitting :)

Okay, what did I get this week when I was in Albany?

I went into Albany on Friday to do some long overdue grocery shopping and to see my Mum and Dad (OF COURSE!). When I dropped into Mum's though, Dad wasn't there and Mum explained that he was doing a buying/selling business. People have heaps of things they want to off load but don't have the time or inclination and Dad buys it as a lot from them and then sells the thing on Ebay or through the papers...whatever.
And Mum said he'd gone off to get a house load and apparently there was some WOOL in it!
Oh. My. God!
Dad was putting the stuff in storage and promised to keep the crafty stuff aside and bring it home for me and for a while there I had ridiculous fantasies of boxes of yarn stash and old pattern books. Considering that it was a couple moving and not an estate sale...never going to happen. But the stuff I got was pretty nice too.
Thanks Dad! I hope I didn't look TOO much like a seagull on a hot chip :)

First off I got a collection of cottons/polyblend/curtain blockout off cuts that'll work really well for a variety of things. Linings of bags for instance

Then there were these bits. A small ball of size 20 crachet cotton in white, a leftover beige ball and not quite a full ball of kind of fuzzy soft and cuddly yarn in a burn-your-eyeball-out pink. The picture really doesn't do justince to it. I'm dyeing this yarn as we speak to see if I can make it more bearable because it does feel lovely.

Then there were the real yarny stars! Almost 5 balls of this bright boucle yarn. Boucle is not my favourite kind of yarn. Far from it! But these bright shades will make excellent and interesting cushion covers or something like that. Just nothing I will EVER wear!

This yarn was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. 6 balls of wool and silk combo. Imagine! I hate to think how nuch it must have cost! The colours not too bad, fortuantely it has just escaped that kermit green to something more pleasantly organic but I'll have to find something nice to knit it up in.

The rest are not nearly as exciting. Although this was a surprise. About 6 metres of satin bias binding. Will make excellent edging on any blankets I might finish and thereby provide them with a little luxury.

Then theres the metres of velcro, the metres of trouser elastic and the hemming tape (in both pictures, there's one still in its packet on the left and another kind of one in the right picture in a brown.) Also a few assorted zips.

And lastly a makeshift sewing kit with elastic, curtain gathering tape, pins, machine bobbins and a bit of this and that in it.
Phew!

So it was really nice to be able to rummage through. But I'd also gone to Spotlight and bought some things I "needed" (really! I did!!) Some wool yarn to knit some slippers in and see if they'll felt properly and some buttons for Kim's Celtic Tote. Ah....

So there you have it. I have not been idle, I have been productively engaged and thoroughly enjoying it. I've done more besides but I think that's enough for today.
Happy Knitting :)

Chapter Eight :)

I've got stuff that I've done but I promised this chapter would be up by the 5th and...here it is! Blimey, where'd the time go? So now I've done this I can take some pictures and put up a proper post tomorrow.
Happy Knitting :)