Category Archives: Knitting

another little scrappy cardigan

23/03/2024 9:07 pm \ 6 Comments \

Hello!  I’m back wth my March knitting project; this one is of course a cardigan for my oldest grandson Arthur…

It’s the same Sirdar pattern that I used for Theo’s cardigan, one size up.  You might have noticed it’s the same colour pattern too… with seven double rows of each colour offset with each other.  When you start out with a plan like this, using scrap yarns, then it’s always going to be a bit of a gamble that the quantities of wool colours are going to actually be enough to see it through.  Fortunately I was very lucky again that it worked out!

Arthur has quite delicate colouring compared to his cousin; blond hair and blue eyes, pale skin, so I know these lighter, clear colours would be really nice on him.  I’ll come back and post a picture of him wearing it, come winter time. 🙂

In Arthur’s words “it’s beautiful, like a rainbow” sigh!  Higher praise is just not possible!

Now; when I posted Theo’s cardigan, remember I promised to post pictures improving how to join the sleeves to the body to continue in one piece without stretching out the underarm bit?

btw; I know this explanation is not going to make much sense unless you’re actually knitting a thing like this, but it’s mostly to remind myself if I ever need to do this again…

So, up until this point I’ve knitted the body ie. back and two fronts, in one piece and cast off the underarm stitches.  Each sleeve has been knitted flat exactly to the pattern to the underarm.  Then I take a needle and knit the right front and half a sleeve, then take a (long) fresh needle and knit the other half of the sleeve, the back, and half the other sleeve, then take another fresh shorter needle and knit the other half of the sleeve and the left front.  So; the three sections join up on the middle outer edge of each sleeve; and I commence knitting the cardigan from the armholes up, decreasing the raglan seams across the whole piece.  The only seams needing to be stitched at the end are the underarm and sleeve seams.

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little scrappy cardigan

29/02/2024 8:49 pm \ 5 Comments \

Phew!  My February knitting project was finished in the nick of time!  Honestly now, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep up with my resolution of one knitting project per month this year, my hands might not be able to cope… but I’m still going to give it my best shot!

This is a little cardigan destined for Theo; I bought this pattern online; the Sirda Denim Cardigan.  I made the second size and all yarns are scraps and leftovers from my still very large bag of scrap yarns.  The buttons are coconut shell buttons, also from stash.  I know, I know; sorry! the “stash” is becoming a tiresome mantra by now, but honestly I could keep working form my scraps and stash all year and may not still get through it!

I made this exactly to the pattern … except!  (there’s always an exception, hehe)  I knitted the body in one piece, as opposed to back, right front and left front; and then added in the sleeves and continued with the raglan seams in one piece; so essential it becomes a bottom-up, all-in-one knit.  The only seams are the sleeve seams and under the arms.  I felt rather clever about this. #undeservedSelfBackPat but have to admit that it made the underarms maybe a little looser than I would have liked, due to the natural stretching that occurs at this point when you join the body and two sleeves together to continue knitting above the underarms.  If I was going to do this again, which I most probably will, I will re-work the needle arrangement so as to alleviate the pressure on the underarm, and post some pictures. 🙂

I’m so pleased with how the colours and stripes worked out!!

Here are some fun links though; the yellow mustard is leftovers from my mustard cowl, here...

the navy blue is leftovers from my ghost horses jumper, here. It’s slightly frustrating that the navy blue looks so black in this photo, but I promise it does look more blue in real life!

all other yarns are inherited from my mother. A few were also featured in my January project for Gilbert, namely the mustard, and the deeper brown used in the borders of this cardigan.  Hehe, I know this all sounds rather pedantic to be documenting to this extent but it gives me joy to do so, so you know… 🙂

Oh! speaking of that, I finally have a picture of Gilbert wearing the baby jumper and beanie I made for his baby shower last year… how adorably cute is he?!!

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leftovers baby jacket and beanie

27/01/2024 1:22 pm \ 4 Comments \

Hello!  Long time no see!  Well, actually it hasn’t been that long, but you know… I’ve been making lots, but not really much that’s blog-able.  Lots of trials and tests of our new pattern, which should be coming up pretty soon, so please look forward to it!

I also had a bit of a horrible health issue in there as well, which hopefully has been cleared up now.  Nothing to really worry about.

But in the meantime I knitted this new cute little set for my littlest grandson Gilbert!  When he’s a bit older I can hopefully take a picture of him actually wearing it, but right now it’s over 30C so maybe not just yet!

So, in my end of year post, I mentioned I had a huge stash of wool that I was planning to pass onto a day care centre or something.  Well, while looking more closely at it I actually found an old needle in one of the balls of wool.  HORROR!  I immediately felt immense pre-guilt that I could have inadvertently exposed someone’s child to a potential injury… just imagine!  Anyway, the upshot was that I decided to make more of an effort to use a bit more of the wool myself.  I have tentative plans to produce a new thing every month but I admit that that is a lot, so I’ll just see how I go!

I used the same pattern I used for the previous knitted set for him from last October, the Naturally Yarns pamphlet K679.  That first one was for size 6-9 months, and this new one is for size 12 months.  It’s all leftover wool, and even the buttons are from my stash too.  The buttons don’t even match each other, but that’s ok!  you can hardly tell without looking closely. It was fun to choose wools and colours again, and to blend them all in in a way that would look intentional, and like a proper design.  I wonder if I could get away with making a few more sets?!

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white top… ghost horses jumper… patchwork underthingies

30/06/2023 6:11 pm \ Leave a Comment \

Perth dress/blouse

Hello!  I have been so remiss in not posting this top, made months ago now… I wanted a new white shirt and if you’re feeling like a quick and easy shirt project then what better pattern to get out other than my own Perth pattern?!  #shamelessplug

The back pleat goes “out”; I really prefer pleats to go “in, the fact that this one does not was not intentional but a boo boo.  It’s, ok, I can live with it!  I used some white linen/cotton from my stash; leftover from my Charlie caftan that I made *checks blog stats* goodness me, about six years ago now!  And obviously made a few minor mods.

The length is about halfway between the top and the skirt cutting lines, and I lengthened the sleeves as much as I could to about three quarter length.  I really love this sleeve length on a shirt! and for visual interest I added buttoned cuffs.  I also added a little pointy-bottomed breast pocket, for almost the sole purpose of sporting a “circa 2023” label.

I also made the little black flecked white skirt.

Item 2; this (to my mind) absolutely beautiful jumper is also something I finished months ago, and have only just got around to wearing and photographing it for my blog here.

The pattern is Ghost Horses by Boyland knit works… I bought it through her blog site here but you can also get it through Ravelry…

The yarns are:

dark blue: Rowan felted tweed, col 170 Seafarer

variegated pink: Manos del Uruguay silk blend, col SB3317 Kilim

plain pink: Manos del Uruguay silk blend, col SB3236 Clafoutis

Le inside/backside

I bought the yarn from Morris and Sons in Melbourne, during our Harry Potter excursion over there, last March.  Actually, March 2022, hehe; so embarrassed to admit that.  I actually started knitting it straight away and got it to final ribbing stage within a few months.  Then took like forever to decide on the finishing bands.  I didn’t really like the slightly tight look of the finishing bands on the pattern envelope sample and tried multiple variations ie various k/P ribbing combos, stocking stitch, double yarn etc before finally settling on … well, these ones.  Mine is same needle size as body, single yarn, 2K 2P rib, very loosely finished.

And at least it finally is finished!

yea haw!  btw, I made my shirt, skirt and tights too…

Item 3:

I made a new underwear set… all from scraps and leftovers!  this kind of project is super fun for me, mostly because it is so crazy and silly.

The pattern is my favourite, the Cloth Habit Watson, and the fabric is all from projects in my previous post; the T-shirt for Arthur, itself an old T-shirt of Tim’s; and the red and navy stripe from the skirt I made for Cassie.  I had only small pieces, so it was fun to cut and join bits together to get enough for my set!  I know I know, silly and crazy.  But fun!

  

I’m belatedly a little annoyed that the white-fronted knickers are asymmetrically pieced so it looks a little lopsided, but at the time I was just happy to have enough to even cut a front! so I guess I can’t complain…

 

The strap elastic was also salvaged from an old, also me-made bra, the straps though were still in really good nick …  the knicker elastic I had in the stash already too.  In the last couple of years since we moved and I vowed to use entirely from the stash, I’m constantly amazed at HOW MUCH is in there…!

So that’s all for now.. until next time!

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I crocheted a hat!

11/11/2022 11:26 pm \ 2 Comments \

… and it’s been a long time in the making too!

I originally bought this raffia in Okadaya in Shinjuku, and subsequently this pattern book in a newsagent in the Kanazawa train station, back in 2019, pictured in this post here, and the anticipated hat been on the to-do list ever since…

I took all the bits and pieces off to the Maldives with me, in full confidence that I would comfortably produce a hat during my long idle hours lounging around by our pool … ha ha ha.  Oh, the naivety of the beginner crocheter!  I made a pretty good start during our holiday, for sure… several pretty good starts, in fact.

 

You see, the first few times I started I realised something was going irretrievably wrong and I would unravel the whole thing and start over.  It was frustrating, to say the least.  I reckon I’ve done enough crocheting for at least four hats, in the making of this one.  Finally I came to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with my Japanese translation, or my tension, as I’d first thought, but that there WAS something wrong with the pattern, sadly.  My hat was going to be enormous.  Once I realised those things, I decided to ignore the stitch count of the pattern and instead calculated my own based on the hat dimensions helpfully laid out in one of the diagrams.  There was less unravelling once I adopted this approach; still a bit of unravelling but I was finally onto a successful formula.  Finally, my hat turned out ok, I think.

As I approached the end of the third and last ball, I pre-crocheted the hat band and keepers, and then proceeded to use up every last scrap of the raffia, right up until the very last centimetre.  To be honest, I would have actually liked to have a fourth ball so as to get a much wider brim, but well… it can’t be helped.  This was impossible to predict at the time of purchase.

When I was taking these pictures, in our own back yard instead of the much hoped for Maldives photo-op; it was quite windy so I added a length of shirring elastic, to go under my hair and help keep the hat on during walks on our very windy beach.  After the hours and unnecessary hours that went into making it four times over, I wouldn’t want it to fly away in a whimsical gust of wind!

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Tali Tali Sandhills

22/06/2021 1:18 pm \ 17 Comments \

I thought about holding off on posting anything about this ensemble until later on, like after the exhibition and I had some pictures of it actually IN the exhibition but … well obviously decided no!

I was thrilled to be invited to participate in FrockOn this year, a collaborative exhibition between Flying Fox fabrics and Ikuntji artists group; an event that aims to highlight and celebrate the work of indigenous artists in Australia … Essentially indigenous designed and printed fabrics were supplied to sewing peeps like myself and we were expected to turn it into an ensemble for the exhibition.

I received 2m of this print; “Tali Tali- Sandhills” by Alice Nampitjinpa.  The design depicts the artist’s Tjukurrpa the Tali Tali Dreaming in reference to her country in Western Australia… you can read more here, and even purchase some of the fabric if you so choose…

The print is in khaki and cream on black linen and I really threw my all into making something truly worthy of this really beautiful print!  I just wish I got to keep it! a few peeps on instagram suggested I buy more of the same fabric and make another set for myself, but honestly, I don’t know if I have the creative stamina to do that.  But anyway!  Here it is, in the spirit of continuing to document everything I make, sewing wise on this ol’ bloggeroo  … 🙂

I made the top using V1486, a Nicola Finetti for Vogue design … (this pattern previously made here) I love the boxiness of this design and thought it went so well with the clean, very straight and fitted lines of the skirt… the back closes with an open ended zip and I was pretty determined to use a gold zip, the nickel colour did not look good at all… however the gold one came only in a 75cm length so it had to be shortened. This is always a far fiddly-er process than you imagine and I’m always terrified the zip pull is going to be on the wrong side or fly off the top! A solid wedge of hand stitched upholstery thread at the top provides a good thick stop though.

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I cut all internal facings from plain black linen and made bias binding for edging throughout from khaki cotton batiste … I think this looks quite smart on the inside…

I made the skirt using V1693, an Issey Miyake for Vogue pattern that is sadly long out of print… (this pattern previously made here)

I really love how the asymmetric details of this design play up the jaggedly stripes against each other in such an interesting way, adding a bit of a visual twist to a print that is already quite dramatic!

I made bias binding of khaki batiste to bind inside edges and flat felled the side seams of the skirt inside… I found the perfect blotchy khaki buttons in my stash, and handstitched some “made by me” labels inside both pieces, these are cut from the same khaki cotton batiste and handwritten using a laundry marker…

I am SO EXCITED to see the exhibition virtually in July and to view all the art and textiles work by all the artists involved… it was an honour to be invited to contribute in just this small way …  It was very scary to make that first cut but once I’d committed to my chosen designs it was a hugely enjoyable process to work with such special fabric.  I posted it off back towards the beginning of the month and just hope it gets there ok!  Still slightly terrified!

  

Details:

Top; Vogue 1486
Skirt: Vogue 1693
Sandals; my old faves from Zomp boutique

boy I really kinda wish I still had it looking at these pictures now.  I actually REALLY love it!

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fluffy blue speckles

10/08/2020 3:33 pm \ 2 Comments \

Oh hey!  I’ve just finished knitting a new jumper.  Perfectly fluffy and perfectly relaxed and slouchy, the most wonderfully comfortable lounge-able thing you can imagine.  This is the We Are Knitters sparkle raglan sweater, a design by Krysten Ritter, in the “sprinkle blue” colour way.  It comes as a kit with everything you need to make it all packaged up neatly  in a lovely brown paper bag.  It’s was the absolute hugest treat to come home and find this on my doorstep! a really delightful present to cheer myself up during a sorta low spell.

And it was truly such a joy to knit!  unply-ed, unspun “fleece type yarn and giant fat needles meant giant fat stitches too, so it knitted up super fast.  Quick gratification, for sure.

And how beautiful are these wooden needles?  They look so cool… so much prettier than my old metal ones.  I wondered if they’d be a tinier bit “stickier” than metals; and yes they were, but not so much as to be annoying or a problem.

The yarn is We Are Knitters “the meriwool”; absolutely gorgeously squishy stuff!!  100% merino, and supposedly treated with a superwash treatment to make it machine-washable.  This is awesome news because I already dropped a bit of chocolate on it… whoops!  I didn’t risk the machine was yet though, I’m too frightened!  I just gave it a spot hand-wash just very gently rubbing wool-wash into the chocolate-y smudge and the spot came out alright.  When I do get brave enough to toss my sweater in the machine I’ll come back and update on whether this worked out just fine or whether it was disastrous… but I’ll be allowing myself a few more wears first, just in case!

So; there was a slightly negative thing with my kit… when I checked out the requisite five balls for my size I noticed that one ball was from a different dyelot than the other four.  This one ball had noticeably less blue sparkles in it that the other four balls.  Not too much of a problem, I thought; I’ll just use that one divided evenly over the sleeves; as in, two rows of the majority dyelot, two rows of the odd-one-out, and repeat; for each sleeve.  This worked out ok, I think but as I was doing the front and back of the sweater I couldn’t help but notice that as well, one ball of the majority dyelot seemed to have considerably more blue in it that even its fellow three balls from the same dyelot.  You can see this at the top of the sweater in the lower picture, below.  It wasn’t obvious when you were looking at the balls together, but once I’d knitted practically the whole ball it did start to stand out a little bit.

above, I’m wearing it back to front compared to the below picture…  the pattern front and back are exactly the same as each other so you can wear it either way, which I really like btw!  I’ll probably wear it like the below picture because I prefer the way the sparkles appear on this side…

Oh, the other thing I’m posting about here is this skirt… this is the Sabrina skirt by Forget-me-not patterns that I made last year in a lovely orange-brown herringbone wool that Mum gave me once.  I recently added pockets to this, as posted here, and now I’m posting it again to point out that I’ve shortened it too.  This involved a fair amount of unpicking an intricately stitched walking vent, just so I could stitch up again closed. Lol, the things we do!  However, I’m much happier with it this length.  I really like my winter skirts to be on the shorter side, and realistically I’m never going to wear this thick woollen skirt in the warm weather!  The other, hidden bonus is that initially I stitched the burgundy-coloured lining hem in orange thread, a. because it’s the thread I used to sew the skirt in and I couldn’t be bothered changing it, and b. I didn’t have any matching burgundy thread at the time anyway.  Now I DO have some burgundy thread, so once I trimmed the lining I stitched the new hem in matching thread.  Yay! for tiny good things!

Look, with regards to the uneven-sparkle issue with my sweater; it’s fine really: I’m not actually bothered because I’m really very happy with it, and I even like that the body is a touch more blue than the sleeves and therefore has a slight visual point of difference.  Sometimes I’m a bit more obsessive about how an apparently random distribution of decorative elements can then appear not so random in the end result; a foible of the design process that a regular person probably wouldn’t even notice but which can at times send my weird brain into a frenzy of debate about whether I should unravel the whole thing and start again.  However, I shall NOT do this, because I knit for joy, not self-flagellation… and I am content to just enjoy my sweater for what it is.  Which is fluffy and warm and pretty and wonderful.

    

Details:

Sweater, the sparkle raglan sweater design by Krysten Ritter, in a kit from We Are Knitters
Rust skirt; the Sabrina pattern by Forget-me-not patterns in an old herringbone wool passed down by Mum? I think? shorted and with pockets added.  initially posted here
Turquoise skirt; adapted Burda 2/2015;109 denim from my NYC holiday, details here
Black tights, my own design, black stretch polyester, details here

yeah, unless it was pointed out, which I JUST DID of course! you can’t even really tell in real life.  I’ve really got to learn to not point these things out…

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baby Arthur

29/01/2020 5:46 pm \ 23 Comments \

Our new baby grandson is here!!!  We’re so excited and thrilled with him, he’s such a beautiful baby boy, speaking in a totally non-biased way, of course!!   note: so clearly above photo is NOT of new baby grandson…  sorry!  But thanks to R2D2 for modelling the new beanie!!

I just had to make a few new things to welcome our family’s new bubby…

Items one and two are my favourites, obviously!   I knitted a little yoda beanie, based upon this terrific free pattern by Shinah Chang on her FuzzyCloudDesigns blog.  I used the pattern for the ears, but adapted my own for the beanie itself, my yarn was completely different and with a completely different gauge from the recommended.  I think from memory I cast on 60 stitches? and for the crown I did the cast off in a 6 segment fashion. In other words, 1 per 10 stitches in the first cast-off row.

The yarn is from the big bag I picked up off a neighbour’s verge recently.  I cannot believe someone was throwing away so much great yarn!

I made the matching onesie using my current favourite onesie pattern, Burda 9434.  I made it using a scrap of cream coloured cotton jersey, and white plastic snaps, that I bought along with their matching tool from Spotlight.  I don’t know why I haven’t used these before! because they really are far superior to the metal versions…  I’m only sad that the white plastic did not take up the dye, like AT ALL.  Oh yes, I obviously dyed the cream onesie to make it motley brown, like Yoda’s robes.  I used dark brown thread so it would match the final colour.

I think it turned out super cute!

The other onesie is pretty plain, and in retrospect rather boring, it’s saving grace is that it’s for size 3 months, and I’m pretty sure Tim and Kelly have basically hardly anything in this size yet.  So it will come in handy  🙂

omigosh, he’s really so beautiful!! thanks Tim for giving me permission to post this!!  I’ll never ever tire of watching it…  🙂

In complete random and unrelated-to-sewing, life stuff; Dolly Parton- yes, THE Dolly Parton! – set the following challenge meme and I had great fun fulfilling it on behalf of Mischka.  Behold, the cuteness!!

 

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