knitting Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Handmade by Carolyn

box of socks, April edition

28/04/2019 7:59 pm \ 9 Comments \ Carolyn

Hmmmm, I wonder; what could’ve been the inspiration behind my new socks. Could it be… cherry blossom?? Yes I totally have pink on the brain right now… apologies for my current obsession, though I have to admit that actually I bought the yarn before we left and knitted the socks during our holiday. Can I say I was pre-inspired? 😉

I bought the skein of Saltwater Yarns 80% merino 20% nylon in colour way Shell Pink from Calico and Ivy just before we left, experimented on the plane, and by the time we’d got to Tokyo I’d worked out my “cherry blossom” design 🙂

I adapted my tried and true Patons basic sock pattern to my tastes, and I’m thinking I might write up a real pattern…w hen I get time! but for now here is just the lace design..

there are 60 stitches in the leg part of my sock, dividing neatly into 10 x 6 stitch repeats. The 6 stitch repeat pattern is as follows:

row 1; K1, K2tog, y fwd, K2, P1 (repeat these stitches for the 60 st round)
row 2; K5, P1 (repeat for the round)
row 3; K2tog, y fwd, K1, y fwd, ssk (repeat for the round)
row 4; K5, P1 (repeat for the round)
row 5; y fwd, ssk, K1, y fwd, K2tog, P1 (repeat for the round)
row 6; K5, P1 ( repeat for the round)
row 7; K1, K2tog, y fwd, K2, P1 (repeat for the round)
row 8; K5, P1 (repeat for the round)
row 9; K5, P1 (repeat for the round)

……

the current denizens of my box of socks!

Posted in: knitting, Uncategorized \ Tagged: own design, Patons knitting book C11, socks

box of socks, March edition

21/03/2019 6:49 pm \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

I barely have time to scratch myself lately.. but did manage to produce my quota of socks for March, yay!!

I used a mystery ball of wool from A Homespun House, in a colourway named Peppermint Tea… now, I ask you, is this colour in ANY WAY AT ALL suggestive of peppermint tea? Like is there even the smallest hint in there somewhere… anywhere?!!! INEXPLICABLE!! I’m pretty sure this is going to be the very last ball of mystery wool I ever buy… anyway, naming head-scratchiness aside, I do rather love this neon lollypink colourway; it is very vividly pretty and and it’s going to be a fun one in winter. I jazzed up an otherwise plain sock with three rows of little fair isle hearts at the top; for these I used a few leftovers from my Advent-ure jumper, from the woolly advent calendar I bought from Dingo Dyeworks, here.

The sock pattern is my usual; from a 60s Patons pamphlet, and here is my super advanced and complicated pattern for the hearts. I cast on 60 stitches for my socks, and the pattern is a 10-stitch repeat, therefore each row is repeated six times across each row.

Because they are socks, and I don’t want to risk a toe getting caught in the fair isle yarn at the back when putting them on and pulling through a giant horrible loop of yarn – quelle horreur!! I wove the alternate colour in at the back for every single stitch. Which does make for a nice, neat and very tidy inside!

The current state of the box of socks …

Posted in: knitting \ Tagged: own design, Patons knitting book C11, socks

a cheerful dress

11/03/2019 3:47 pm \ 11 Comments \ Carolyn

New dress! And, how gorgeous is this cheerfully splashy fabric?!!! Ohmigosh, but I love it so much! You cannot possibly be sad whilst wearing this stuff. The very instant I saw it I was just like, YES. MUST HAVE.

SO! every year, my lovely friends give to me a Fabulous Fabric voucher for my birthday… and this year I treated myself to this truly lovely, fine, handkerchief linen, printed in a glorious array of golden mustard, tomato red, toxic-waste lime green, moody purple and a splash of tranquil turquoise thrown in too because sure why not? let’s just let alll the autumn-y colours join in the splashy fun! Not only are the colours absolutely luscious together, but the feel and weight of the fabric is quite perfectly and exquisitely summery. LOVE.

I didn’t actually use the actual voucher to buy this fabric, to be honest I used the real-life voucher to buy wedding dress lining, haha, as you do!! but I mentally made a note to myself that as soon as I saw something worthy I would spend the equivalent and that was going to be my birthday fabric. Confusing? Yes I know I know, hehe. Well I know what I mean anyway. Just very recently Fabulous Fabrics got in a fresh shipment, and I saw this, and knew it was The One.

The pattern is the Ariane dress, designed by C’est Moi Le Patron by Coralie Bijasson. The pattern is described as a gypsy style dress with shoulder princess seams, buttoned, with a gathered skirt & long sleeves with elastic in the hem. The instructions also include a note to insert piping in those princess seams, so obviously I did so like the obedient little seamster that I am. Well, I am the hugest of huge detail freaks so yeah. My piping looks black in these pictures, but actually it is a really deep navy, and the fabric is from a pair of Sam’s old work trousers. I’d previously used these same trousers to cut the lining for his and Cassie’s man D’s Christmas hats, blogged here.

Variations; the dress pattern doesn’t include pockets, so I added in some simple inseam pockets (my tutorial for adding inseam pockets here). The skirt is supposed to be gathered into the waist, and while I did initially do this it created some pouffiness that I decided I just did not need! so I unpicked that and instead pleated the extra width of the skirt into five tiny pleats on each side; just outside of the princess line of the bodice. Same for both front and back. I think that pleating/folding is a bit more age-appropriate than gathering… I can’t explain what I even mean by that! but maybe I mean it just feels a bit more “me”? Not that I even know what that means either, Anyway, I really like how this turned out!

The sleeves are long with elastic inserted in a hem. I love the sleeves, and especially pushed up to my elbow length like this.

Oh! the buttons! I almost forgot! SO, I’ve been covering buttons for Kelly’s wedding dress, 100, to be precise! Yes, 100, blinking, covered buttons. This took, HOURS.

But I absolutely adore how they look! and since I was using a particular colour fabric for the piping I thought it would be nice to have the same particular colour buttons for this project too… so I ordered some more of the 11mm buttons. I bought my buttons here. By the way; the “naked” buttons are actually silver, and for Kelly’s buttons, I’d covered a few experimentally and we thought the silver showed through the ivory fabric a little, giving the buttons a slightly grey tinge. SO I painstaking lined up all the bare silver buttons along bamboo skewer tracks and spray-painted them creamy-ivory before covering with our ivory crepe. The spray-paint I already had, leftover from when I made my Queen Rutela costume.

Spray painting the buttons is as fiddly as all get out and I’m not going to lie, actually quite a pain in the neck to do… but it does give some really good advantages. Number one, the silver doesn’t shine through a “porous” or very light coloured fabric, and secondly, and maybe even more importantly, spray paint makes the surface of the buttons a little “sticky” which is definitely a plus when you’re trying to put the buttons together. When I was covering the naked buttons, the fabric slipping and sliding about over the smooth shiny surface was driving me a little mad, and I really noticed a huge improvement with a grippier spray painted surface instead. So, while I didn’t really need to worry about silver showing through in this darker fabric, I did the spray painting gig again for these buttons too, simply for that grip factor.

So that’s it! I’m wearing the dress today.. and while I didn’t get a proper “out and about” picture of the dress, I did snap this… hehe, so silly I know, but I was randomly loving how the lovely floaty linen was rippling in the breeze. I’ll get a proper photo some other day because right now I am getting strrrrrapped for time!! to say the very least. In the meantime… it’s back to the wedding and bridesmaid’s dress for me! Panic stations!!

Details:

Dress; Ariane dress, designed by C’est Moi Le Patron by Coralie Bijasson in a floaty printed linen
Shoes; Zomp, from Zomp boutique

Posted in: knitting, Uncategorized \ Tagged: ariane dress, buttons, coral bijasson, daily outfit, dress

box of socks, February edition

28/02/2019 11:00 pm \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

Squeaking in just under the wire, my socks for February… I only just finished them this arvo; quickly took a few pictures and hastened to write this post, toute de suite! Man; I’ve got to stop setting ridiculous deadlines for myself, like trying to fit in little projects like this around a wedding dress. A pair of socks each month? really?? what was I thinking! the wedding dress has been taking up AAAAAALLLLLLL my time… I’m really enjoying it all so much! and am very very excited to share it here once it’s finished… I’m so proud of it and think it’s looking beautiful, even half done! Just this week I’ve reached a point where I have to do another fitting with Kelly before I can do any more and she has been too busy to pop over; thus giving me a few days to do other stuff. Thus, the February socks got finished! and I also managed to squeeze in a new little sundress for myself too, hehe…

the photos above? well I snapped a nice clean sterile picture of the socks, all very neat and tidy and with no Sophie, but then she trotted over to say hi and obviously is stealing the show. ‘Ello, you booful big floooffy cushion you! “Ooose a booful girl now? What a natural!

but the socks!! My brain is all over the shop, sorry, but honestly there’s not much to say… the sophisticated mottled grey with occasional rusty splodges was the 25th and last, mystery skein I received in my Dingo Dyeworks advent calendar; the large box to be opened on Christmas Day. And I had little bit of rusty coloured wool leftover from my rag-doll Sally’s hair; Morris Empire Superwash merino 4ply, in colour 441, Rust Twist; to be exact. At first I was little lacklustre on the grey, held the rust against it and liked the combo, decided on stripes. I thought it’d make them more interesting; and it does, just a little! but I admit not by much, haha! The “leg” of the sock is two rows of the grey per one row of rust.

The pattern is my standard sock pattern, from Mum’s Patons pamphlet from the 60s, the same one I’ve used for literally ALL my other hand knitted socks.

Now I just have a few more blog posts to write on some other things I’ve snuck in lately, the sundress, and another thing, and then it’s back to the wedding dress! Eeeek! Such a whirlwind!

the box of socks!

Posted in: knitting \ Tagged: Patons knitting book C11, photobomb, socks

box of socks, January edition

31/01/2019 6:17 pm \ 15 Comments \ Carolyn

It’s completely bizarre to be donning a pair of socks on a stifling hot day of 35C, which indeedy yes it is today, but I absolutely must! since I promised myself I’d knit a pair of socks for each month of this year, it’s the last day of January and I don’t want to be late!

And so. I ordered a mystery ball of wool from A Homespun House; from the monthly lucky dip club for November. I very much liked the idea of this; because the mystery ball of hand-dyed wool also came with a handmade, and most probably, extremely cute, mystery progress-keeper from sucre sucre miniatures, aaaand… well I just felt like treating myself to a mysterious little package. So I did! I placed my order, and impatiently and excitedly awaited the arrival of my wool.

The skein was marked “Edeberry”. Was it was meant to read Elderberry? *shrug* I mean, not that a name makes any difference to the rose really; because the colours are delicious; a subtle and sophisticated moody range of smoky purples, pinks and coffee colours, with a bit of ocean blue and grass green thrown in for good measure. And that little troll-progress-keeper? Soooo cute, oui?… He’s my new knitting buddy, and he’s called Ramon.

I used my fave, same little old pattern, from a 60’s Patons pamphlet; a nice simple, plain and eminently serviceable pattern. I like that all the interest is all in the lovely dusky coffee-pink colours.. and this same dusky coffee-pink loveliness will be surely appreciated come the sharply cold grey days of winter…

My box of socks for the year so far!

Posted in: knitting, Uncategorized \ Tagged: Knitted, knitting, Patons knitting book C11, socks

a knitting advent-ure

29/12/2018 1:07 pm \ 24 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve knitted a magical, rainbow, unicorn of a jumper/sweater!

But, what is this, Carolyn?? I didn’t know you were into magical rainbow unicorns?! Well, of course there is indeed a story behind this…

my little “troll” progress keeper was my constant companion and cheerleader… 😉

So, in the past few months, idly hanging around on youtube I randomly got into the world of knitting youtubers, and watched a few videos… I think it was Katie of Inside Number 23 who introduced me to these wonderful things called knitting advent calendars … I thought they sounded like such a fun idea! at roughly the same time I’d been to Calico and Ivy checking out all the wool and other yummy eye candy they always have in there and seen and admired some gorgeous wool hand-dyed by a local lady going by the name of Dingo Dyeworks, and I mentally tucked the name away. Later on, in search of an advent calendar, I found that the same Dingo Dyeworks had produced one for this year. SO naturally… I bought one!

day 1; and I’m ready to party!!!

The advent calendar came in the form of 24 cute little boxes, each with a mini skein of wool inside; the colours of which were a complete mystery. There is also a 25th box, which is much larger and contains a full-sized skein of the same sock yarn, but I decided to base my “advent”-ure project on the 24 mini-skeins. The only thing you knew about them was that they were all on the Dingo Dyeworks “ridgey-didge” base; a fingering-weight 85% fine merino 15% nylon superwash, which I’d checked out in Calico and Ivy and liked. SO I laid my plans… to make a jumper, or sweater. I bought from C + I a skein of similar gauge yarn in an undyed cream colour and did a few swatching experiments, made a few calculations and a plan, decided I could indeed make a whole jumper from sock yarn. I knew knitting just a little bit every day would be perfectly manageable, and fairly painless. In fact, I always find the lead up to Christmas so full of stress and madness that I welcomed the thought of carving out a little bit of time in each day, to just devote myself to a quiet, happy and mindless project just for me.

If you follow me on instagram, you might have seen my daily “unboxing”, a single example of which is above… I had so much fun just opening the yarns and seeing that day’s colour! Honestly, even without the daily calming and meditative knitting session, and notwithstanding that I now am the proud owner of a divine new jumper – the texture of which is so baby-soft and so squishy, and basically too too heavenly to even describe… just opening the days’ little box each morning was also such an enormous joy for me. I also posted a picture in my stories each day of the day’s progress. If you want to see them all, I’ve saved the whole process in my permanent stories, called “advent”-ure, at the top of my page 🙂

day 3… 🙂

I started from the bottom, and knitted the same number of rows on each sleeve and the body section each day, and then when I got to the appropriate place to start the yoke, joined them all together and continued in the same way, decreasing raglan style up to the neckline.

day 14…

Before opening the first skein I wasn’t 100% sure there would be enough yarn in each little skein to do the width of stripe I wanted, in this case my plan was to “fill in” between the stripes with a few rows of the undyed yarn I’d bought for the cast-on… but after day one I’d happily determined there was plenty! in fact I estimate I only used roughly a half of each skein, even for the widest sections.

day 17…

I’d decided to just knit each colour as it appeared and not second guess anything at all! so the delicious Unknown of it all was exciting and fun; but I have to admit there were one or two days I was like “whaaa??” However I’d checked out the Dingo Dyeworks advent calendar from 2017, which was so so beautiful, and I just had to put my trust in this years’ being beautiful too.

day 20…

It is a little different, to be sure! and while not all the colours were what I might have chosen and there was even a coupla days where I truly wondered where this was all going! Would this advent-ure be irredeemably unicorn-ly?! However I’m very happy to admit that my fears were unfounded and I feel like my finished sweater is now one of my loveliest and, dare I say, the prettiest that I have?! and the colour-story worked out quite beautifully in the end. I’m still about 99% convinced days 16 and 17 were mixed up! but that’s neither here not there really, since you can’t really tell that in the end result.

aaaaand, day 24!

Knitting on this every day was, as I’d hoped, a calming and peaceful, meditative and fun! interlude in the lead-up to Christmas for me, so I am so glad I decided to do this … yes, it resulted in a smaller pile of me-made things I could give my loved ones; I bought a few presents for my family this year and I refuse to feel guilty about that! and I still did manage to make a few things. And I have a beautiful and unique new jumper!

back, indistinguishable from the front actually, but you know…

Details:

Jumper; my own design, made from the Dingo Dyeworks 2018 advent calendar
Skirt; Vogue 1247, made from curtaining fabric, details here
Thongs; fipper, bought on our holiday in Bali

Posted in: knitting, Uncategorized \ Tagged: advent calendar, Christmas, Clara, daily outfit, dingo dyeworks, jumper, Knitted, knitting, own design

scraps cardigan

24/06/2018 3:54 pm \ 51 Comments \ Carolyn

A couple of years ago, I went down to help Mum clean out her “doing room”, the obvious outcome of such an exercise being that I then took home an embarrassingly huge amount of fabric and yarn supplies to add to my own stash…. we did manage to throw some stuff out! Not much though!!

This is just the wool. All scraps and leftovers …. scary, huh?

There’s no rhyme nor reason to the colours or thicknesses of wool there, it’s just a completely random hodge-lodge of odds and sods and bits and bobs. Hmmm, well you know me…. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!

See, I reasoned there had to be at least ONE cardi in there.. somewhere…! it just had too be found! So I selected a bobbly, chocolate yarn and just cast on…

And I found it! a cardigan, I mean 🙂

I picked out a mostly autumnal colour-palette of warm golden mustards, greens and browns though there is a pretty solid presence of randomly thrown in purples, greys, orange, chartreuse, raspberry and pink too. Some of the yarns are tapestry wool, some are real knitting wool. Around all edges is a border of the same, bobbly chocolate yarn; which I’m pretty sure that Granny used to knit a set of three matching jumpers for my brothers and me when were all quite little…

Apart from the crazy mix of wool, it’s a pretty basic stocking stitch cardigan with a rib border along all the edges. I made-up my own pattern, loosely inspired by the free Miette pattern in that it is cast on at the neckline then I increased stitches at four places to create raglan sleeves; all knit in one piece, and with a single wooden button closure at the neckline. With a bit of careful measuring and halving and rationing out of yarn I made sure the two sleeves are reasonably identical to each other, a small modicum of order and method! but otherwise the colours in the body are pretty random.

knitting under the strict eye of my supervisor…

So, yay! for what is basically a freebie!! It’s kinda crazy but I’m very happy with how it turned out.

I did sort of write down a pattern, but it’s in such extreme shorthand that even I can barely work out what I did now! Sometime, when I’m feeling super enthusiastic, I might even have a good look at my notes and transcribe them into something resembling a pattern. Until then…!

Details:

Cardigan; my own design
Trousers; the Closet Case patterns Sasha trousers, grey stretchy stuff, details here
Tee; Closet Case patterns Nettie, details here
Scarf (on the rocks); knitted by me, details here
Socks; knitted by me, details here
Boots; Francesco Morichetti, from Zomp shoes

I’m wearing it today too! with the same Sasha trousers, my grey Vogue 1152 dress and my new kicks from Trenery 🙂

So, nothing to do with knitting or what I’m wearing, but I was cleaning out my phone, and found this picture of some apples I bought a couple of weeks ago… how cute are these?? they called them Mothers Day apples at the grocer. I bought some for myself since my own mother is away at present 😉

Posted in: knitting, Uncategorized \ Tagged: cardigan, Clara, daily outfit, Knitted, knitting, own design

cha-cha pink stooff

11/08/2017 1:04 pm \ 25 Comments \ Carolyn

Hello!

Our recent holiday was a pretty multi-locationed one, covering a lot of ground and involving buses, trains, ferries, sea planes, also including a few long loooong waits in airports thanks to flights getting annoyingly delayed by fog, and two long looong ferry trips of a WHOLE day each. And because I am the eternal optimist about Getting Stuff Done, even whilst away, I had tossed into my luggage some sock wool and needles, just in case. And thank goodness I did ‘cos consequently I finished two new projects. As they say in Canada, O yaaa! #AirFistPunch

Item ONE! … or should that be items one and two?

A pair of sockeroonies… photographed against the majetic forests of Hanson Island in beautiful British Columbia, Canada… I’m poking my feet outside the tent we camped in, on our absolutely wonderful canoeing trip…

Yarn; Morris Empire Merino 4ply in col 449, delightfully called Cha-Cha Pink; and the small bit of Sheen Green colour way is leftover from my hand warmers. I used my go to sock pattern, from a 1960’s Patons pamphlet that I’ve inherited from my grandmother.

also here in the stunningly beautiful houseboat we stayed in, on the Khutzamateen River. I think I’d juuuust finished them here and popped them on for a photo opp immediately!

Item TWO! or should that be… items three and four?!

A pair of adorbs little hand warmers… photographed against the majestic back alleyways of Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. Pose is thanks to a grapefruit mimosa and the influence of a group of hilarious Vancouver ladies with whom I spent an awesomely fun few hours… thanks so much to Melanie, Sue, Sveta, Barbara and Louisa for a fabulous morning!

from left: Sue, some random tourist, Louisa, Barbara, Sveta, and Melanie and yes, those ARE indeed the aforementioned grapefruit mimosas, ahem…

this pic and the one below both courtesy of Melanie… thanks so much Melanie!!

me with my loupe sister, Melanie… we’re both wearing our magnifying glass “loupes” made by Melanie’s talented husband Osamu Kobayashi… I’m proud to say I was Osamu’s very first customer! I wear my loupe every day and it’s absolutely brilliant for reading menus, labels in Spotlight or in the supermarket when I can’t be bothered hauling my spectacles out of my bag….BRILLIANT, I SAY

and I’m wearing my cha cha pink glovelets, natch! Right here they’re hot off the needles by about maybe an hour, tops !

Anyway… the deets, I’d taken two balls of the cha-cha pink and of course there was plenty of leftovers, and I thought there’s sure to be enough to do something… And fortunately there was plenty!

I just made them up as I went along, pretty simple; and I’ve written a little pattern which I am happy to share. Please feel free to use, I just ask as always that if you do then please do credit me and link back to me here 🙂

Simple hand warmers:

Note: one size, fits most ladies

Materials:

approx 120m (135 yd) of 4ply (fingering weight) yarn… I used Morris Empire superwash merino 4ply wool … this pattern uses only about two thirds of a 50g ball

set of 4-5 double pointed needles 2.5mm (US 1) or whatever gives the correct tension as stated below.

Tension (gauge): 31 st and 45 rows to 10cm

Cast on 60 st and distribute stitches evenly onto 3 needles, continue working in the round…
K2 P2, repeat for 10 rows/rounds
Switch to K stitch,continue knitting for a further 22 rows/rounds, turn
sl 1, P59 st… turn.
sl 1, K59 turn
Rep previous 2 rows for a following 20 rows, turn
sl 1, K59 then join work again in the round and continue knitting for a further 12 rows/rounds
Commence K2 P2 rib, continue for 35 rows/rounds.
Cast off loosely

Repeat second hand warmer the same way.

And I’m wearing them today too… wanna see how I “styled” them? I know what you’re thinking… those things don’t go with her outfit AT ALL. No, they don’t. They really really don’t. But I’m wearing them anyway, hehe. #SayNoToGoodTaste #GoodTasteIsEvil