Return of the Felting Foray

Just to give myself a change from threading beads (Sooo over that!) and knitting large projects like jumpers I decided to give smaller projects a burl. But, since that would be far too simple, I thought I'd add felting to the mix. You know because finishing a project in a day just isn't fun unless you have to wait until the washing machines finished with it to see whether it's been a success or not!
So since I was still desperately seeking a slipper pattern that I really like that stays on my foot without me having to adjust it after felting I downloaded a pattern off Ravelry called "Duffer". With a name like that, how could I resist? Very quick knit, easy directions and quite pleasing appearance even before felting.

But after felting and drying on a pair of shoe airers it's superiority to every slipper pattern I have thus far tried became evident.
They stay on my foot without ANY adjustment!!
What more need I say?



But while trawling around on Ravelry I found this lovely chart for a barn owl and a few elements came together in my mind. Darling Daughter and The Boy kind of collect owlish things, (The beginning of this particular theme has become hopelessly obscure and includes some line he keeps repeating at times which is simply "Hoot Hoot.") and I have some pieces of various naturally coloured spun wool not to mention a ball of beautiful mohair that I spun myself but have been unable to use since if it touches any part of my skin besides my palms it makes me itchy! So, with no preparation or forethought I dragged out the wool and cast on. It only took me about 3 hours to finish but by then it was past midnight so I sewed up the sides and made myself go to bed without putting it into the washing machine yet.

But first thing in the morning in the machine it went! And after it came out I nearly made myself late for work by sewing it onto a cutting board to block it and putting it outside to dry. Was very pleased with the finished result and it feels like heaven when you run your hand over it! The mohair and wool are so lovely, silky and warm it's like having a small rectangular pet on your lap! I attached two felted loops and two large wooden buttons and Behold! a bag!

Yes! A bag! For holding all those important things like...a waterbottle?
A slightly large but not too large book?
A Netbook maybe?
Okay, it's a kind of strange size, 23cm wide and 27cms long, not really big enough to be a useful bag but not small enough to be a purse. But it is gorgeous!!
I don't care, I'm proud and I'm sure Daughter will love it being that she's in Canberra, the chilblain capital of Australia!
Keep on Knitting :)

AHa!! Success!!!

Aha!! I seem to have gotten past the annoyance of yesterdays inability to add photos and now can show off my finally finished commission piece.

I had another jumper I knit, much bigger than this one and another lady liked the yarn and wondered if I could make her up one. She's a tiny lady about a foot shorter than me so I was really concerned I might make it too big or small, even though I took measurements but I'm awfully mathmatically challenged. But she tried it on today and it fits! I'd have prefered the sleeves a little longer but she said they were fine. She's going to pick it up next week and I get $60 for my effort! It was a simple seamless construction because I HATE seaming! But I'm very pleased with myself. Aren't the colour variations pretty?
Happy Knitting :)

Ooops, I am Very Lax

Very lax indeed! It's been almost a month since I've looked at this. Shame, shame, shame. And it's not like I've been doing anything!
I have knit my youngest son another pair of HTML mitts since his hands have gotten HUGE! (and also he can't find where he's put the other ones!). Also a HTML pouch...since the first prototype of the mitts was even too big for him but did covert very nicely to a useful pouch!

Also I got possessed by beaded knitting again and made a really sweet beaded amulet purse that you can wear as a necklace and I used rod-binding cord I got from the op-shop (didn't even realise what it was when I got it. I just got it because it was a pretty colour)to knit it up in. It's so pretty! I think I might make a bunch of these! The worst part is getting the beads onto the thread!!

So, that's what I've been up to...plus a jumper I'm knitting on commission but I haven't finished it yet OR got any photos. But hopefull it'll be finished!!
Happy Knitting

New Wool to Love :)

I found this gorgeous wool at Spotlight called Isla. It's soft, lightly spun and slightly thick and thin. 50% virgin wool and 50% Polyacrylic. I'd hoped it would felt but obviously the wool has been treated because it didn't shrink a bit when I tested it! But I found the perfect pattern for it's wonderful colours, especially as the temperature begins it's seasonal plummet!
This is the pattern from Ravelry - Fast and Fearless Mitts
And these are my attempts :)

Aren't they pretty? I love them all!
Happy Knitting :)

I Actually SOLD Stuff!

This is actually about three weeks late but here we go..
We were attending a farewell dinner at Hubbie's boss' place before they moved off on their transfer and there were a lot of other ladies and friends of the boss from Cranbrook where they used to work. I was knitting (as always!) and the subject came up about how much I knit and how I've never had much success at the markets and the ladies all said they'd buy stuff off me. So Jordan and I went back home, got my two large plastic boxes full of stuff and brought them back to the house. And did I have fun?!
The ladies went through all of them. I learnt a few things. If I want to sell slippers and mitts, or even gloves I have to stop sizing them to my bitty hands and feet! That men quite like the idea of warm hats and slippers. And that party plan selling is probably more beneficial than anything I've yet tried! By the end of the night I sold all these! It may have been more but I can't remember exactly.

I just stuffed the money in my pocket as the ladies chose things since I didn't think it was very polite to count it in front of them. After I'd packed everything up I took all the money out of my pocket and counted it all.

I had made $230!
And I still had $30 more coming for a pair of slippers commissioned by one of the men!
That's more money than I have EVER earned with my craft!!!

I invested the money in a tagging machine and more wool. I feel so encouraged! I also sent about 20 items with the Postie at Cranbrook to see if they would sell.
Ah...I am so happy :)
Joyous Knitting :)

As the weather turns chilly...

Dear Daughter has begun to notice just how cold Canberra can be (and it's only Autumn!) and put in an order for some gloves but she wanted the convertable kind, Fingerless gloves with a flap that you can slip over them so they look like a pair of mittens. No problem! said I.

Have wanted to have a go making these so it was a perfect excuse and I found a lovely pattern off Ravelry for just the thing! I used 8ply which in retrospect is a bit heavy but they are lovely and warm and I wanted something in a pretty colour that would put up with indifferent sorting when doing the laundry. I'm not spending my time lovingly crafting a pair of woolen mittens only for them to get tossed in the wash with anything, including Army fatigues and coming out the size of a postage stamp! So Acrylic it was! Here are my results.

Aren't they lovely? And they are so snoodly warm! I hope she loves them. I put press studs on the back of the flap and the top of the wrist so when they're folded back they wont flap around and then I sewed a little felt flower over the press stud on the flap with a hole for the press stud to go through to make it look prettier.

It was a wonderful pattern too. If you're looking for something like this look on Ravelry for Broad Street Mittens by Janie Cortese. Very easy directions and not at all confusing, well, I didn't find them so anyway :)

I finished these a few days ago so this Monday, into the post they go. I hope her little fingertips will hold out until they get there.
Happy Knitting :)

Everything old is new again!

I have been collecting vintage patterns for ages and have been desperate to actually try and knit something from one of them so I took the plunge! I chose a simple looking shawl/shrug-like covering that had no lace involved and only one page of instructions!

Perfect!

I cast on with a lovely lavender purple acrylic I already had in 5ply and using the needles suggested, bravely cast on! I used a circular needle however for this since I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to keep control of over 100 stitches on any of my straights, however long they were!

The knitting itself was pretty boring and not really that well explained in the tiny amount of instruction. Once I worked out what I thought they wanted and placed stitch markers to keep track of stitch increases it got a bit easier...right up to the point, half way through when I ran out of yarn!

I only had that one ball but never fear! I still had the ball band and an intended visit to town (118kms away!) for the next day. No problem! I'll just buy another ball tomorrow.

But alas, disappointment and frustration greeted me! Although I could find the exact yarn required, I could not find the exact dye lot! Not for love or money! So I bought another ball as close to what I had begun with as I could and consoled myself with making it a design element.

So off I went again and soon (although not nearly soon enough to suit me!) I had finished and I had...a great big sheet of knitting.

Now to follow the very brief instructions on how to construct the shawl from this great sheet I had before me.

First mistake: I decided to iron it so it would lie flatter and (I thought) be easier to fold into the desired shape. Result? I ended up with an enormous great sheet of knitting that required either the whole dining table or my ironing board to try and make sense of what I had before me.

Second mistake: It doesn't matter how hard I try I will never get the desired shape if I keep confusing the bottom of the shawl with the top. Once I'd realized what I was doing wrong I did actually start to make headway!

I soon realized however that there was simply no easy way to do this! Folding down the neck and the final edge of the shawl was relatively pain free but then there was the issue of the four tucks, great big long ones! In the end after much experimentation and annoyance I had to sit and labouriously tack together each fold using long quilting pins to hold the folds in place on the right side and a metal ruler of the right dimensions to stabilise the tucks sufficiently so I could sew them together from the back. It took all day.

Then I had to shape the front opening by folding the tucks together to give it the sweeping appearance around the body. Not too hard but then I realized that all the tucks just flopped down from their positions unlike the one in the picture where they seemed to sit with no effort at all, perfectly upright. Damn! Out came the needle and thread again.

I had to tack each fold to where it needed to sit and that was difficult without the stitches becoming to obvious! But after another day of handsewing it was done! I crocheted around each front closure so it looked tidy and finally swept it around my shoulders...

It seemed a little...big?

I attached the hook and loop closures and sewed on the ribbon but it was no use...

It was just too big and wouldn't sit nicely on my shoulders and I didn't like how the closure hung.

Poop!

So I looked at it for another day and decided what I was going to do. I lay it over my shoulders and folded the front edges over each other so the closure became slightly assymetrical. That way I didn't have to add a bulky pleat to the back to try and take out excessive length which would ultimately ruin the drape of the shawl and I didn't have to fold over the front edges, creating clumsy, bulky material at the front. I sewed one hook and loop closure to the centre of the closure going under the top to fix it in place and the two hook and loops on each corner of the top layer to anchor it to the front of the shawl. Then I sewed two faux ribbon ties to the two spots so it kind of looked like they were keeping the whole thing together. It was an improvised kind of solution, I used buttons to fix the ribbons in place but I may sew them down later since they still tend to move slightly and I don't like it when they don't sit even. But otherwise? I am very pleased with the results :)

It sits beautifully, is soft and warm. Not the least nasty and squeaky like some of the old acrylic used to be like. You can clearly see the colour changes between balls of wool but fortunately they fell on a fold so the change isn't as apparent as it might otherwise have been had it happened midway through a length of plain knitting. It falls right on the fold ridge. Couldn't have planned it better if I'd tried :)

So there we have it! My first truly vintage pattern worked and completed. And now I know some things.

Most notably: Few instructions are NOT necessarily a good thing! It's nice to figure somethings out yourself but if there hadn't been a picture with this pattern I would have totally failed!! I'd never have figured out how to put the thing together and even with it there are elements were I had to go "Stuff it!" and improvise. It was necessary and now I have this lovely garment from a beautifully attractive time brought back into the present.

I am satisfied!

Happy knitting :)