Yarn to Dye For

I've also been playing with the microwave and dying wool with vinegar, water and food colouring. All good fun with my daughter:

This was our first attempt using a nice chunky wool, then came:

 

which was more of an adjustment of the knit love bonus yarn, a lovely mix of 65% Cashmere 35% Silk bravely microwaved to suit my taste.

This one was given away as part of the sock club swap.

Christmas Leftovers

Continuing the theme, I also made this tree as part of a Ravelry Christmas Swap:

It's knitted and felted and was quick to do: the pattern is here.

This was the content of the parcel I sent out, which I'm pleased to say went down well.

Catching Up

I have been rather slack on this blog recently, many apologies, work and life have got the better of me. I am going to attempt to do some quick catching up on the 'makes' I've not got around to putting up, so expect lots of pictures in the next little while.

I'll start with the left overs from Christmas, before it seems too unseasonal to mention them:

I made a lot of these knitted and felted mistletoe pieces and added pins to the back to make broaches. The pattern can be found here, but I did do a bit of tweeking as I went along to get the leaves to be more of the shape that I think of as mistletoe like.

 They made cute little stocking fillers along with a nice lip gloss.

Shirt to Dress Tutorial part 1

Here's how I went about this piece of re-purposing:
First I cut off the sleeves inside the body area (removing a couple of deodorant marks) and zig-zagged quickly round them to prevent too much fraying. Then I lay out the shirt and measured the shoulder seam from collar to cut dividing up into equal sections so that I could fold, pin and iron three tucks to bring the shoulder in to just cover my bra straps:

First measured and marked out divisions with the pins

then folded one pin to the next to form the tuck

I continued these folds down the back, getting them to narrow to nothing and over the shoulder down the front about 12cm.

Notice how the fold form a sort of V shape down the back.

Now at this stage it would be wise to do some basting, but personally I'm never very wise so I then set off with the sewing machine top stitching along the formed tucks. I did not start and stop right at the very ends of the folds, but varied the position of where I started/ stopped on each fold making sure to make a firm finish at the end of the sewing. The top stitching on the back went generally lower than at the front.

When I tried it on the arm holes were very gappy and  the overall shape was still to wide at this point so a took in the side seams to fit more closely under the arm, flairing out to run into the original sideseams towards the bottom. (This picture is upside down, arm holes at the top)

I then finished off the arm holes by using a piece of opened up bias binding (you could use some ribbon- cross grain is best) and pinning it with the edges together and front sides facing from the bottom of the arm hole all the way round. This was machined on following the crease of the fold line on the bias tape.  The next stage was to turn the bias tape inwards so that it was on the inside and no longer visible then pin (baste?) and top stitch around the edge to neaten off. Hopefully these pictures will help that to make sense.

In part two I will describe how I finished off the dress.

Shirt to Dress

My husband was reorganising and was throwing out some of his lovely, quality work shirts 'these can be rags' he said; I think not!

So, a bit of cutting and sewing and I've made a dress out of the first one:

Tutorial to follow

Knit Love Club - ''2luvcrew"

Finished these socks in record time for me after casting on the second sock before I got distracted and went on to something else. The little love hearts are so stretchy and fun to knit. Another great design from Alice.

Stash Control

So, after my earlier confession of a complete loss of self-control with buying yarn I have managed to look away on a number of occasions (though had to sign up for next year's Knit Love Sock Club). Just to demonstrate the obvious need I have for yarn here's my latest acquisition.

This was brought back from a Norwegian Cruise by my mother in law who I have just converted to sock knitting. I know nothing about this yarn, except it's very squishy and was a brilliant present... isn't she great? She knows me so well!

Hummingbird Treats

I love my Hummingbird Bakery book so when we visited London I just had to search out one of their shops.

So off we went for a wander round Liberty's and then round the corner to their branch on Wardour Street. We had a selection of cakes between us, but definitely the chocolate brownies came out on top for me, but it was a close run given their heavenly cupcakes.....Divine.

On the way there we made a brilliant discovery: The Cloth Shop window caught my eye as we headed purposefully to the bakery so we had to make a stop off to explore it's brilliant range of fabrics. I was beside myself with excitement because they had some lovely natural fabrics that I just couldn't get locally. I shall certainly nip back with an actual plan of what I want to make when I'm in London next, as it was it was just a case of headless chicken!

Hospital Entertainement!

As I mentioned, when my daughter was in hospital the play nurse came an offered her a choice of things to do before she went down to theatre to take her mind off things. My daughter (I am pleased to say) selected something crafty rather than the other things on offer, but no sooner had the nurse gone off to find the bits and pieces for her 'dream catcher' (which she had sold my daughter as being useful while under anesthetic) than we were called down to theatre.

When she came back all groggy and plastered up to her arm pit there was a box of bits and pieces at the end of her bed. As soon as she had come round properly and I'd persuaded her to take her medicine (no mean feat) she was desperate to make something. The only way to do this was for her to choose items out of the box with her good arm (which is not the one she 'uses') and then tell me what she wanted me to do with them. So, under strict instruction this is what we came up with.

I was quite impressed by the range of materials they had and it was good distraction for daughter and worried mother alike.

Stash, Stash, Stash

After some encouragement from our school librarian (you know who you are fellow wool fiend) I eventually got round to organising my stash into a kind of system. It's in one place (ish) at least. So the scary truth is that after an honest overhaul (outcasts sent to help the aged) I still have 6 very large plastic storage boxes stacked from floor to ceiling. They are grouped into 4ply, lighter than 4 ply (sock/ lace), aran, chunky(ish), cotton and fancy/ not sure where to put that. I can't bring myself to photograph it because it really is a shameful admission of my yarn addiction.

However, then there's this box. This one is full of yarns I have bought/ acquired since the reorganisation. There are some really gorgeous, deluxe skeins in here, with the serious damage done at Knit Nation where I made the mistake of touching some silk skeins and whoops I'd bought them. It is absolute heaven to stick your hand in.

I must get some yarn self-control, I must get some yarn self-control, I must get some yarn self-control, I must get some yarn self-control............

For anyone interested, my daughter is picking up nicely, fingers crossed that all is as it should be when we visit the hospital on Monday.

Ouch!

Despite my recent post which was scheduled as I'd written two the other day I've not been doing much over the last few days as my daughter (7) had an accident at the park with a see-saw. As a result it's been a couple of traumatic days at the hospital. She's broken her wrist in two places with the growing plate from one bone moving off somewhere else and she went to theatre yesterday, but we've got her home now. We intent to sit and watch back-to-back films for a day or two, and do some high level treats and spoiling until she's feeling more with it.

While we were in hospital the play nurse came and offered her games, TV etc, but she perked up when craft was mentioned, but that's a story for another day when I'm not on full pampering duty.

Knit Love Club - ''Caretta Caretta"

Caretta Caretta got renamed in my project page on Ravelry to 'bling- berries socks' because the colour of the yarn reminded me of blackberries which are over- ripe and leak their colour everywhere.

The 'bling' element was obviously in connection with the beads (that sit in the lace pattern holes) which I have continued onto half the instep pattern attempting to stop where my shoes would come.

The yarn was Spirit Trail fibreworks Sunna and is unbelievably soft and deluxe to work with, what a treat to go with another of Alice Yu's brilliant patterns.... I enjoyed these so much that I knitted other things in between working on them to make them last longer.

Shawl for a journey

I've just finished knitting 'Citron' a free pattern by Hilary Smith Callis on Knitty. It was really, really easy, even though there were a great deal of stitches by the last ruffle and I cut it short by a couple of rows because I was out of wool having used a ball of yarn with a few metres already pinched for another project.

A brilliant knit while on a long journey in the car again (and afterwards too), where I could knit away with relatively little concentration, but the choice of colour changing yarn made it interesting.

The Noro (Silk Garden- Sock) I used seemed to soften after I washed it before blocking - still, I think this will be once to be worn over a top, not next top the skin. I love Noro colourways, I just wish they had the tactile quality of some of the other yarns I use.

Dress- finished at last

With a bit of a struggle with the invisible zip I eventually finished my dress. I decided to add a frill of the bodice fabric to the bottom of the skirt which seems to have balanced it better and as the striped cotton is quite firm it helps to hold out the softer black fabric and give a bit of shape to the skirt.

Amazingly (since it's been so long since I've sewn myself a garment) it fits nicely, so I'm quite chuffed with my handy work.

It also swishes round nicely!

Peg Dolls

We've been making peg dolls out of bits and pieces from our recyling collage/ junk box. They were good fun and approached with a high level of ambition from my daughter, some bits she needed help with because they were a little fiddley for little fingers, a good amount of PVA glue seemed to be the key.

Experiments in Crochet 1

I've been experimenting with crochet, it was an idea to help me carry on 'making' with a touch of RSI, thinking that the hand action is different from knitting. It seemed to work quite well for a while. This scarf was made for my daughter's class teacher. She examined her clothing daily for a week or so and then decided that this colour from the stash would suit her best. ...... I hope so. It's always tricky making things for people that you don't know very well.

At the same time I was making this simple shawl. I call it my 'Glamping' shawl, though i'm not sure that the camping we do is very glamorous. I’m chuffed with this, it should prove really useful for English beach holidays and is great for wrapping up my daughter too; blanket/ shawl.