knitting Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Handmade by Carolyn

Purple-y top

16/07/2016 11:21 am \ 17 Comments \ Carolyn

Here I am, waiting for the ferry to head off into town, and so I took a quick, in-the-wild photo of my new top. Thanks, random bench! for being a good little makeshift tripod, and I don’t mind at all that you snuck into my photo!

OK. Remember how I said I had enough of the purple-y, wine-coloured silk/linen knit leftover after making this skirt for a little matching top? except with contrasting sleeves? well ok yeah; that explains the whole project, actually. Probably no need for me to babble on any longer!

Well, maybe just the bare details…

Fabric; silk/linen knit from KnitWit. Black pleather for the sleeves from Spotlight, leftover from some of my shoes and my moto jacket.

Pattern; the epaulette cut and sewn, pattern 4 from “she has a mannish style” by Yuko Takada. I just wanted a loose-ish, boxy kind of a plain Tshirt, fairly featureless. I have a pretty good, tried and true, woven Tshirt pattern that I tend to use, NewLook 6483; but I really wanted something with no bust shaping darts. I really really like the Named Inari tee pattern, which is super popular in the sewing community right now; for a good reason of course! however since I had this book already I thought I’d give the epaulette tee a whirl as a possible Inari tee stand-in. So I traced it up and boom…. done. Super easy. And I really like it! and will no doubt use the same pattern again. 🙂

The only variation I made was to leave off the eponymous epaulettes, haha. Maybe next time…

Finishing nitty gritty: 1) I left off the facings, and just overlocked the raw edge then stitched down a simple seam allowance inside the neckline. Simple, neat, and not bulky at all.

2) Pleather sleeve edges were clean cut using my rotary cutter and left raw.

3) Lower hemline; turned under twice in a deep hem and hand stitched;

So that’s it! Simple easy, unexciting, but then again the most useful things often are. Leftovers and scraps, so basically “free”… yay! I really like the sleeves, and hopefully they do add just some little bit of je nais se quois… and don’t just look like a random add-on because, you know; not enough fabric.

Details:

Top; top 4, the epaulette tee, from She Has a Mannish Style by Yuko Takada. The English translation re-named this book She Wears the Pants, and I’ve previously ranted here on my blog about what a bad, bad, or at least awfully misleading title this is; since the book contains very few patterns for any actual pants. grrr
Skirt; the Jade skirt by Paprika Patterns, same purple knit, details here
Bodysuit (under) the Nettie by Closet Case patterns, black stretch, details here
Gloves; hand knitted by me using a 60’s pattern, charcoal merino, details here
Tights; my own design, black stretch, details here and my tutorial for making your own custom-fit tights pattern is here
Boots; made by me, details here

Posted in: knitting, sewing \ Tagged: daily outfit, She Has a Mannish Style, She Wears the Pants, top

scarlet Miette

01/02/2016 6:31 pm \ 33 Comments \ Carolyn

My newest knitted creation is a cardigan; in a toasty, tomato-y, fiery, hot-chilli scarlet. Photographed most attractively against the snowy drifts of Hokkaido in Japan where it looks rather stunning, I think! I should come to Japan more often, so photogenic for photography. I’ve styled it tres fashion-y with my KMart snow boots, bought circa 2001, and my hired ski pants. O yea, rockin it fashioneestas!

Sorry to be repeating myself, but yes it is yet another Miette, a free downloadable pattern by Andi Satterlund… my fourth! Knitted up in Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed Aran, again!… and this wool is so divine I just can’t stand it eeeeeeeee! The last time I was in Calico and Ivy I couldn’t help going over and fondling the new colours, and it took every bit of self restraint I possessed, which is a pretty pathetic supply in the first place I must admit, NOT to buy another new colour for yet another little cardigan. Honestly, I could easily have something in every colour way. Just adore each and every one, and can’t help thinking they’ll seem to be so very very me! This colour way is 360033, Scarlet.

The buttons are also from Calico and Ivy, and I sewed them on upside down, because the upper side was a little shiny for my taste. The underside has the perfect level of non-shiny matte-ness to suit the slightly lumpy, comfortable, homely look that this yarn has.

Everything else I’m wearing here is made by me, including as hinted on instagram, all the underthingies 🙂 In fact, my skiing holiday is an almost exclusively handmade affair… I knew I was taking a bit of a risk in packing nearly all me-made clothes, and most fortunately it has all worked out quite successfully, if I say so myself. The one non me-made thing I packed was a ski jacket. Actually, I’ve been having some thoughts on snow gear and how I reckon a person can make it fit into a handmade ethos… I think it is entirely possible! not that I’m an expert, haha. No West Australian can actually ever lay claim to knowing the ins and outs of snow gear, really! In spite of my snow-noobiness, I’m thinking of writing my thoughts here on the ol’ bloggeroonie soon…

Some knitterly notes mostly for my own alteration purposes…

3 1/4mm needles, size 42, 6 balls of the Donegal Luxury Tweed Aran. Switched the bust dart shaping to the underarm using the same little fix as described here for my previous, navy-blue Miette. Added two pattern repeats to the bottom edge; same as I have done for every one of my four versions of this same pattern. I just like that little bit of extra length, I think this suits me and my figure better than the original design, which is very cropped. This means picking up 78 stitches along each front edge. And 9 buttons too, natch.

Booyeah! done!

Details:

Cardigan; Miette, in Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed Aran, colour scarlet 360033
Striped Tshirt; self-drafted, grey and ivory striped cotton jersey, details here
Cowl; own pattern, mustard 8ply merino, details and my pattern for this cowl is here
Armwarmers; own pattern, green 4ply 100% merino, details here and my pattern here
Gloves; from a 1963 Patons pamphlet, charcoal 4ply 100% merino, details here
Beanie; own pattern, cream Patons pure new wool, details here

also wearing socks and leggings made by me
Ski pants; hired
Snow boots; Kmart, circa 2001

Posted in: knitting \ Tagged: cardigan, daily outfit, knitting, Miette

a bevy of beanies

25/12/2015 7:01 pm \ 10 Comments \ Carolyn

A bounty of beanies! Buckets of beanies! Beanies galore! Beanies beanies beanies! Beanies! Beeeeeeeeanies…

So, I might have beanies on the freaking brain lately. I’ve been on a beanie making bendahhh! A beanie-a-thon. Makin’ some beanehhhhs! Yeah..

And I got my recent new man-about-the-house, Mr ‘Ed to model the newest creations. Over to you, Mr ‘Ed!Well, hello thair! I’m Mr ‘Ed, but you can just call me Mr ‘Ed. Soooo frightfully pleased to meet you. My, but you have ze most beautiful eyes… shining with ze brightness of a thousand stars. May I buy you a drink?

Oh, sorry ’bout that. He looks like the strong silent type but actually he’s the worst sort of flirt.

OK, so the beanies… with a trip away to snowier climes coming up pretty soon I conceived the brilliant idea of knitting a new beanie for everyone in the family. Fired up with enthusiasm I immediately bought a small mountain of yarn. Madness. I did something right though in that a lot of it was that one-ply chunky yarn, the sort that is like a skinny hank of fleece, barely spun at all. I know this stuff gets a bit of a bad rap but in its defence though, it sure knits up pretty quick and does makes a lovely warm beanie. I’ve made seven beanies, seven! and I may have given myself self-induced tennis elbow now, or should that be, knitters’ elbow? but anyway, it’s done.

All beanies, apart from the blue one are knitted in the flat and then stitched up the side. Generally I prefer to knit beanies in the round but in this case I didn’t happen to have the right size needles, so in the flat it was:

I’ve written out my three, very simple patterns, and they are all available as free downloadable pdf patterns here

mid grey, black charcoal, burgundy red beanies: Baggy beanie

(aran-weight) blue beanie: Baggy beanie 2

raspberry (at top) and cream (below) cabled beanies with pom-pom: Cabled beanie

Yarns, all from Spotlight:

(raspberry, at top) Moda Vera Jester in Fuchsia, modelled with my mossy green scarf
(mid grey) Moda Vera Mawson, with my mustard cowl
(black) Moda Vera Shiver in Black, modelled with my cream infinity scarf,
(burgundy red); Moda Vera Shiver in Burgundy, with my mossy green scarf
(flecked charcoal) Heartland in Black Canyon, with my cream infinity scarf
(navy blue) Patons Inca in col 7047, with my mustard cowl
(cream) Moda Vera Jester in Cream, with my plaid scarf, which is just a hemmed piece of slightly fluffy woolly plaid

Also; here’s how I make an easy cheat’s pom-pom. Otherwise known as, the pom-pom to make when you don’t have time to make a pom-pom!

The secret is in the yarn, big thick chunky “bulky” yarn. This’ll take about five minutes, max!

So: start with something like a small book, or a stiff card, or pamphlet or something. Wind yarn around it, over and over, until a nice thickish wadge of windings has been built up.

Cut through all thicknesses, top and bottom.

Take a piece of thinner yarn, wrap it once around the middle bit and tie it in a nice, very tight knot. Wound it back around to the other side and tie another knot. Wind it around just a few more times, again; tie a knot. Super tight. No such thing as too tight.

Fluff it out, and done! Any strandy, uneven bits can be trimmed off neatly, or you can just leave it as a bit, messy, floppy thing. Which is pretty cute too, I reckon 😉

Use the tails of yarn to tie it on to the top of the beanie

Later edit: I managed to get some photos of my recipients, modelling their beanies 🙂

Posted in: knitting \ Tagged: hat, knitting, own design

all Aussie adventures

16/09/2015 12:54 pm \ 68 Comments \ Carolyn

MY OUTFIT IS FINISHED!!!
And I am showing it all together here for the first time. Can I just say right here; wooooohooooot!
The challenge, as laid out by Nicki of this is moonlight, should you choose to accept it, and I did! was to make for yourself an entire outfit using ONLY locally sourced materials. Sounds simple, right? It has been anything but!
I’m very grateful to Nicki for conceiving this brilliant and very thought-provoking challenge, and for inviting me to take part. This has been one exceedingly amazing ride, has blown my mind more than any other dressmaking challenge I’ve ever done, and really pushed my creativity to the limit. At the beginning of the year I seriously did not think I would be taking my outfit to the levels I did…. I thought for sure I would be giving myself a pass on some things, for example; thread, and allowing myself to use regular Gutermann’s thread. As time went on though I toughened up, embraced the idea of going the whole hog; and I’m very pleased that I did manage to rise to the challenge and make the maximum possible from locally sourced products!
In fact, I’m quite proud and extremely happy! :))
For the challenge, I made:
a knitted alpaca cardigan/jacket
a merino felt dress
merino felt and pine shoes
a merino fleece bag
merino fleece undies and bra
In a nutshell, every single blinking thing I have on here is made by myself, using pretty close to 100% south-west Australian sourced materials

Those of us in Western Australia; Sue, Megan, Nicki and myself, have had to be quite innovative in our approach, I think. I mean, forget zips, thread, elastic… there is not even any freaking fabric made in WA! This was our single biggest hurdle, I think!
However, we are extremely fortunate in that we have wool available to us; lots and lots of wool! Australia has the world’s biggest wool economy… did you know that 80% of the world’s apparel wool is from Australia? and Australian merino is the world’s best quality woollen fibre. 22% of the country’s wool production is here in Western Australia (source)

Hardly surprising then that all four of us have used wool as the majority component in our outfits.
My dress, bag, underwear and shoe tops are made from Western Australian merino fleece. I made my wool felt fabric from the fleece as outlined in this post. My dress is made from natural undyed merino fleece felt, and I hand-embroidered the fleece all over with locally handspun, undyed merino yarn.

Anigozanthos manglesii

The embroidery design is my own; a random arrangement of of kangaroo paw motif, for our Western Australian state floral emblem.

My underwear features the only “colour” in my entire outfit; I dyed the decorative yellow edging and ties using sour grass picked from my own garden, as posted here.
All the other fleece, yarn and wood in my outfit I left in its naturally coloured state.

My cardigan is alpaca yarn, from the Fibre of the Gods, a tiny mill operating on a farm in Toodyay. This establishment produces alpaca yarn on their own property, from the fleece of their very own alpaca herd. I bought some of their yarn directly from off the farm and knitted my cardigan, as posted here.

My wooden shoe soles are hand carved by me, using Western Australian pine. The pine is grown by Bunnings on their own pine plantations down south and milled by Bunnings in Manjimup. I made my shoes and my bag from my merino fleece as outlined here My bag and shoe tops are also merino fleece, with a grid pattern made of naturally black sheep yarn.

And that’s it, in a nutshell!
Well, typing it all out like this has kinda brought it home to me for the first time; I am wearing a pretty-close-to 100% homegrown outfit, top to toe, for maybe the first time in my life! I’m kinda amazed, even at myself. It’s a little mind-blowing to me.
Final thoughts: I’ve learnt a tonne doing this challenge. Firstly, our local industries are precious and need our support. That goes for everywhere, not just here in WA! I personally am going to put more effort into supporting our local products regularly. I mean, I’m definitely not giving up my more “regular” sewing, but I am going to do this challenge again.
Secondly, that if you really put your mind towards doing something, keep yourself focused on getting a project done, to overcoming obstacles, then you probably can do it. Sometimes you need to sleep on it, think outside the box a bit. I learnt a lot as I was going along, and several times had to improvise a solution to a problem. There were moments when I questioned my sanity in doing this, when I wondered if my ideas were even going to work… a felt dress? unlined? felt underwear? sounds like the vision of a lunatic, or at least a recipe for disaster, for sure… well OK even I can admit that felt underwear is not really a practical nor a workable thing! … do NOT recommend. 😉
Also, I had lots of fun!! I LOVE a challenge and this challenge really stretched my capabilities; which is the very best sort of challenge, in my opinion! I thought hard and long about each aspect of my outfut and tried very hard to honour the materials, to minimise my waste and to make something truly Western Australian in feel and flavour as well as provenance.
There were also moments when I realised I had to accept a small defeat; in the case of this outfit; the glue holding pieces of wood together in my shoes (from NSW, Australia), the nails holding the felt to the soles of my shoes (China) and the cotton jersey liner for my undies (China). They are very tiny elements so I’m not going to beat myself up over them too much.
I guess the important thing is that I gave everything careful consideration, and really thought about provenance and the possibility of substituting local products in as many instances as I was able. As well, I wanted to produce something stylish and lovely, that I knew I would love wearing and feel proud and happy in. I genuinely love my outfit, and feel pretty pleased with my efforts!
Lastly; maybe I’m on a bit of a post-challenge high, but I’m quite excited about attempting this again next year… in fact I already have ideas and plans!
Mad? maybe, but quite happy to be so!

Details:
Cardigan; the Caramel cardigan, in Fibre of the Gods natural alpaca, grown, shorn, washed, carded and spun in Toodyay, Western Australia and hand-knitted by me, details here
Dress; my own design based upon Burda 8511, made from merino felt made by me and hand embroidered with locally handspun merino yarn from Bilby Yarns, details here
Shoes; my own design, pine soles from Bunnings hand carved by me, felt tops made by me from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here
Bag; my own design, in felt made by me from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here
Underwear; my own design, knickers derived from the Tried & True knickers pattern by the Makers Journal, in felt made from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here

Posted in: fashion, knitting, sewing, shoes \ Tagged: accessories, bag, Burda 8511, caramel, cardigan, dress, felting, knitting, one year one outfit, own design, shoes, Sienna

Midnight Miette

12/09/2015 7:16 am \ 31 Comments \ Carolyn

What: I’ve finished knitting a new cardigan; another Miette, yes, that fantastically popular cardigan design and it’s super easy to see why, too. Such a quick and easy thing to make, top-down, seamless, cute with nicely subtle zig-zag lace design at all borders, free to download here. LOVE THIS SO MUCH! I’m just stuck on it and maybe I can never move on. A bad case of “fools never differ” happening here 😉
This is my third Miette, my previous two are dark green and mustard, all of them in Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed Aran. Green, yellow and now blue. Slightly embarrassing fact; I already have red wool purchased and earmarked for this design! The same yarn too … I could happily have the full colour range because they’re all pretty yummy 🙂

Why: Well, I have felt like a navy blue cardigan would be a very handy little colour to have on hand for aaaaaaages, and this is just me finally making it happen. Navy blue is a great neutral, I reckon it looks fab with everything, and even though it’s not officially one of “my” colours I think it’s rather lovely against the browns, yellows, oranges and reds that I tend to favour. I have a nice navy blue silk blazer which was/is terrific but I wanted a woolly cardigan. I think I’m more of a cardigan person than a blazer person.
Problemmos: Actually I anticipated a quick project out of this one since it is super easy and not my first go at it, but I had surprising rough trot this time. Mostly because this yarn is so dark dark dark navy, and I usually knit in front of the telly in terrible low light; and so half the time I literally could not tell whether a stitch was a knit or a purl. Seriously! Several times I had to frustratingly pull out a whole bunch of rows and re-do it because one wrong stitch had gone unnoticed… I ended up having a torch on standby to illuminate and assess the situ-bar as required. grrrrrr! This cardigan has taken me nearly all winter to finish!
Changeroonies: I made a small but vital change to the design this time; I transferred the bust dart shaping to the underarm side seam each side. I think this is a much better shaping pozzie for a small busted person like myself.

later edit; as requested, the details of moving the bust dart shaping to the underarms goes as follows:

To move the bust dart shaping to the underarm… row 56 is where the bust dart shaping starts; you follow the same shaping (reducing two stitches on each of the “fronts”) EXCEPT you are moving that shaping to the underarm stitch marker, instead of in the middle of the “fronts” of the cardigan.
So, instead of doing the ssk, k1, k2 tog in the middle of each front section of the cardigan, instead do this same shaping at the underarm marker. Do the same for rows 58,60,62,64,66

Details:
Cardigan; the Miette by Andi Satterlund, in Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tween Aran, col. 360039 (Midnight) from Calico and Ivy (6 balls)
Jeans; the Ginger jeans by Closet Case patterns, navy blue cotton denim, details here
Tshirt; Vogue 8879, ivory cotton jersey, details here

The following is some technical blahdy-blah notes to myself, ‘cos I always forget this and have to re-knit tension squares, which I do not enjoy:
I’ve knitted the main using three different needle sizes for the three cardigans, because the tension of the design does not match the tension of my chosen yarn exactly. The Miette recommends 16st x 22rows per 10cm square, while the DBliss Aran tension is 18st x 24rows per 10cm square. So, my first, green Miette was knitted on size 9 (UK) or 3 3/4mm needles, giving a tension midway between that recommended for the yarn and the design and is a slightly relaxed fit. The second, mustard Miette was knitted on size 10 or 3 1/2mm needles, giving the correct tension for the yarn but a tighter tension than the design; and was a closer fit. This cardigan is knitted on size 8 or 4mm needles, giving me the correct tension for the design and a slightly loose tension for the yarn, and is a more relaxed fit. I like all of them, the differences do not feel massive.
I definitely prefer moving the bust shaping to the underarm.

Also, each version, I’ve extended the length by 2 pattern repeats, this requires picking up 79 stitches for the front button bands. Each version I’ve selected size 42, which is technically a size up for me, but I remember from my first go at this pattern that “my” size would be a tad too tight for my tastes… I had to unravel and start over! It might work to go down a size in the looser tension; would be a risk but maaaaaybe? I might just try it for my red version… we’ll see.
I need 6 balls of the Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tween Aran, and with the two extra pattern repeats 10 buttons. These 1.5cm, navy blue ones are from Fabulous Fabrics