Handmade by Carolyn

little pink jumper

30/08/2024 2:54 pm \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve knitted a little jumper… this is made completely from scraps and leftover wool from other projects and the (still) large bag of bits and pieces that Mum gave me a couple of years ago. Something from nothing! Seriously, my favourite sort of thing to make…

the unpromising beginnings…

I started out following a pattern, but before long ended up frogging and reknitting the entire thing just following my gut instinct. It’s a simple raglan design, top down, in the round, with double increases at the two sleeve junctions every row until the underarm, otherwise no shaping. Top down meant I could keep knitting until I ran out of wool; which to be honest happened a little sooner than ideal! Ideally I would have liked it a little longer, and with longer sleeves too, but well… c’est la vie.

To Craig, I’d voiced my concerns that I was going to run out of wool and he replied that I could just go and buy some more… so logical! But of course completely defeating the purpose of using up Le Stash! Honestly, sometimes I feel like the stash-reduction project is maybe just a martyred pursuit… but, you know. Also a virtuous one too, sometimes. I used up every single scrap of yarn pictured above, except for one small ball that I decided the colour looked a little off against the others.

I’m quite happy with how the yarns worked out distributed across the jumper, not too much concentrated across any particular section. When it came to changing the colours, I knitted a few centimetres past the previous colour change before changing to the new colour, so that there wouldn’t be a build up of knots and bulky weave-ins concentrated in one area; and this worked well too. I wove in all ends as I was going along, and am always thankful at the end of any project whenever I think to do this! Seriously, a life saver!

The thing is… I already have a vaguely similar jumper to this one, that is quite precious to me since the yarn was a gift from a dear friend. Do I even need another little pink jumper?! It is actually not too bad looking, I think; and very warm, and comfortable to wear. Serendipitously, Mum admired it the first day I wore it, so I may give it to her.

I’m also super happy I managed to finish this one a few days before my end of the month deadline! Yay! My knit/month pledge has turned out to be quite gruelling to be honest, and it’s difficult to fit in so much knitting. To look on the bright side, I’m two thirds of the way through, and only have four projects to go!

Details: I also made my ivory top worn underneath, and my jeans too…

Posted in: knitting, Uncategorized \ Tagged: hand knit, hand knitting, jumper, own design

little sludgy cardigan

31/07/2024 11:54 am \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

…once again slithering in under the wire on the last day of the month with my knit-of-the-month! For July’s effort I made a new little cardigan. This is yarn that I bought during our hiking trip to Italy 12 years ago! astounding really, I can’t believe it’s been that long! there was a tiny little craft store in Menagio, Lake Como, and that’s where I found it. I posted about that trip on my blog back here…

I’m so thrilled this yarn has finally been realised into a wearable thing, because it’s actually lovely. It is Lang Yarns Maxi Tosca, col. 5706 which is genuinely made in Italy, believe it or not! I was pretty thrilled to find homegrown produce, because souvenir shopping does not always result in such joys, sadly. I bought 6 x 50g balls, and managed to use almost the whole lot while adding one extra pattern repeat to the length. There is just a fairly small quantity leftover.

I chose an old favourite, the Miette pattern by Andy Satterlund; a pattern that since its debut was later rebranded as the Crumb and is now sadly unavailable. Actually the designer has retired all her patterns and you can’t get any of them any more, which is quite sad.

I’ve made the Miette pattern five times now, customising slightly by the time I got to the last one, and referred to my previous notes to make this one the same way. Namely this post. The main adjustment I make is to switch the bust shaping to under the arm. I did include the lacework but kinda regret it, if I’m being honest… in a variegated yarn such as this it doesn’t stand out as much as you’d like, and then when you do notice it it somehow detracts from the loveliness of the colours in the yarn. Definitely something for me to keep in mind for future lacework knitting…

Buttons! is it weird to say the buttons could be my favourite part of the whole thing? yes, pretty weird since I actually think my new cardigan is allover a very satisfying thing. The buttons feels super satisfying though since I made these too… !

so you know I’m trying to use what I have rather than buy anything new… well I hunted through my, still rather large, button stash for nine matching buttons, and even contemplated using non-matching buttons but couldn’t even make that work. I’d almost accepted that I was going to have to head out and buy new buttons but then remembered my modelling clay. Yay! I’ve used this to make buttons before, specifically for this coat here; and even to make the jewellery for my Queen Rutella cosplay, here. I thought I’d been painting them once finished… however was rather thrilled when I realised the final baked colour of them was actually perfect for my cardigan as is. Such luck! I just painted on a clear varnish finish to protect them and bob’s your uncle! SO happy with how they look on my new cardigan.

worn here with a ivory tee, sludgy skirt and tights, all made by me…

Posted in: knitting, Uncategorized \ Tagged: cardigan, Clara, daily outfit, hand knit, hand knitting, knitting, Miette

new jeans

14/07/2024 12:41 pm \ 1 Comment \ Carolyn

honestly, I don’t ever encourage T to pose with me, he just does it all on his own. 😀

I’ve made some new jeans, and the overly wide-legged-ness of them is so funky and awesome … it’s silly but I am really feeling like this sort of thing at the moment! I’ve been working on these for several weeks now … taking my time to get the fit just right and exactly how I wanted them. It was fun to work slowly on something that I really wanted. They are super comfortable and easy to wear, almost like a tracksuit, only not. Way better.

I used McCalls 8206 as a starting point. The size chart put me at about size 14, which surprised me a bit. I’m traditionally a 10 in McCalls patterns, but anyway I went ahead and cut out the size 14, keeping the extra paper pattern bits of the other sizes that got cut off just in case the size wasn’t right after all. I basted the legs together, and oh boy, indeed the size 14 was absolutely huge on me. I’m not sure why the size chart was so completely out of whack but I could literally pull them down without having to open the fly basting stitches at all! I ended up having to reduce the waist to the size 10 after all, and shaved the extra width off the leg pieces down the side seams, dwindling them down so they’re back to a size 14 by about knee level. I think I didn’t bother to reduce the size of the pockets though, so they do look a bit bigger on the jeans than they should. But that’s quite fine with me; I love oversized pockets too!

The waistband is curved, which always makes for a nice fit on jeans. However there is no fly shield… and I’d used a jeans zip so there is that slight scratchiness against your tummy skin on the inside. But the jeans are really so baggy I don’t think it’s going to be an issue.

For the waistband lining and pocket flap linings, I used a gorgeous linen gingham, leftover from this dress I made late last year… I’d bought it in Japan during our 2019 holiday and it’s so lovely. I really like how it picks up on the orange topstitching thread, only of course no one can see it but me! I splurged and put one of my eponymous labels in them too…

The topstitching thread is two slightly different shades of orange, to explain; the waistband and belt loop topstitching is a brighter orange than the remainder of the jeans. Actually, now they’re finished I realise you can hardly see the difference so I’m not sure why I was worried about it, but honestly on the spools the colour was noticeably different!

btw, a hand stitched buttonhole, haha. Seems like a weird choice for a pair of jeans but my machine-stitched version just looked a bit flimsy and wholly unsatisfactory!

The fabric is a slightly stretchy, very dark midnight-navy denim, originally from Fabulous Fabrics, and all haberdashery was also sourced from Le Stash. But I do confess to having to buy the pattern new! I searched and searched my pattern stash and decided to splurge on a new pattern when I couldn’t really find anything that ticked all the boxes of my vision ie. wide legs, small waist, lots of pockets including cargo, fitted at the waist but with a flat appearance and NO PLEATS OR DARTS, and a below the waist rise…. I’m very happy I got this one though, because I really do love it and plan to make it again someday, just the correct size next time! I would like to make this in a lighter weight cotton drill, like maybe white, for a summery sailor look… or maybe a camo print. But in the meantime I’m going to try my best to carry off the “cool” vibe of these very trendy jeans!

worn throughout with one of my white Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co Booragoon tops

is this my signature pose? I don’t why I feel compelled to do whenever I’m taking pictures of my clothes… I feel a bit sad I didn’t get an out-in-the-wild picture yet but I’ll come back and post one when it happens… 🙂

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: daily outfit, jeans, McCalls 8206

Bali, Indonesia; a travel wardrobe

13/07/2024 9:23 am \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

Well! it’s taken me an awfully long time to get around to this! several years in fact… I’m a little hazy now as to why I never posted this draft post before but well, I didn’t…. however, as mentioned it in my previous post I really do enjoy reflecting on my travel wardrobes so decided to finally finish this one up too…

Time away: 8 days

Where to: Bali, Indonesia

Season: May, which is early dry season. Meaning hot, and quite humid by our standards

Expected activities: attending the wedding of our friends L & L, a couple of fancy dinners, and the rest of it beachwalking, exploring and lolling about the pool

Colour scheme: not really relevant, I just went with my most lightweight and breeziest of summer dresses!

What I packed:

7 dresses (inc 1 fancy for the wedding), 2 skirt and top sets (inc 1 fancy for other dinners), 2 hats, 3 pairs sandals (inc 1 fancy for the evenings), one beach coverup and one bikini. I made everything, including my shoes! except for the turquoise sandals worn to our friends’ wedding

(see below; from top to bottom, left to right.. all are linked to the original blog post)

silk dress, turquoise sandals

white hat, polka dot dress, white sandals

blue dress, white hat, red sandals

floral dress, khaki hat, red sandals

yellow top, ‘map’ skirt, white hat, white sandals

white hat, white coverup, pink bikini (not seen)

lace top and skirt, white sandals

Marimekko dress, white hat, white sandals

turquoise dress, white hat, red sandals

(worn on plane) brown dress, red cardigan, white scarf, white sandals

I cannot post a layout of my pieces this time since a few, namely the turquoise dress, the bikini, and the yellow top, are no longer in my wardrobe and I just felt it would be unsatisfactorily incomplete. Anyway, the outfit pictures should give a good idea!

My daily outfits:

Thoughts; it seems like a lot for an 8 day holiday but it’s really not! Bali is hot and very humid and honestly, your outfit is usually a sweaty mess by the end of the day! so it’s a really good idea to plan a separate dress for each day. Each outfit I packed was very light and airy and worked perfectly for the temperatures. Hats were also an absolute necessity.

Of course I wore my bathers every day for swimming in our little private pool (pic 6 above), and got dressed properly for leaving the hotel room, even walking the beach right out front. Bali is conservative and even though you do see tourists walking around with not much on, it’s considered quite disrespectful to do this. I had my little cardigan and scarf (last picture) for the plane, because the plane is always cold! however I had no need of these items in Bali.

The last time we had been to Bali was for our own honeymoon, a looooong time ago now! and so I made the lace top and skirt (pic 7) to celebrate. I wore this to a few special dinners, and for our friends’ wedding I wore the silk dress in pic 1. It was really nice to have lots of special occasions actually! all in all, a totally lovely holiday and we had a great time, soaking up the sun and enjoying the last little bit of heat before returning to a fast approaching winter back here in Perth.

Posted in: fashion \ Tagged: travel wardrobe

Balinese sarong-style “alberthe” dress

07/07/2024 2:27 pm \ 12 Comments \ Carolyn

I made a new dress, possibly the last summer sundress before our cold winter sets in for real… I was very fortunate to have a warmish enough day recently in which I could wear it to the beach and take photos of it! although it was cold enough that I couldn’t bring myself to take off my little white Tshirt from underneath. I used a new pattern; the Fibremood Alberthe, and a sarong/piece of fabric that I bought in Indonesia back in 2018, when we went there to attend a friend’s wedding. I posted about my travel wardrobe back … whoops, and wow, I’ve just realised I never posted about that travel wardrobe at all. I wonder if I should gather together some pictures and write about it?!

The pattern can be made as either a little top or a dress… I wanted to use the border at the bottom of the dress, so the pattern pieces were laid down on the cross, and made the dress version as long as I was able to cut it. Actually, it’s supposed to be a much longer dress, like ankle length; however I was pretty happy that my pieces fitted perfectly on my fabric, albeit shorter; with almost no leftovers at all. My aim with sewing nowadays is for a few key outcomes, namely:

to use fabric already in the stash
cutting the pattern out with as few leftovers as possible
to also use all haberdashery, like buttons, zips, elastic etc etc from stash as much as possible too.

So far this year I’ve succeeded in just about all of these endeavours, which has certainly made me really happy… at least enough to assuage my occasional desires to violate outcome number 1, and indulge in buying new fabric. Yes, I still have such desires! I’m only human!

Anyway, that’s neither here not there right now… although I just wanted to mention it again to reaffirm that it’s still an ongoing thing.

The Alberthe is quite an interesting pattern, with an asymmetric long front fold providing width to the dress. It’s supposed to have a zip in the side seam, but I tested how it went over my head first and was happy to realise I could slip it on easily without the need for a zip. The back is a plainish, regular sundress style, with wide straps stitched in between the dress and a facing.

It has lovely deep pockets which is nice, although I certainly would have added them myself even if it didn’t! I didn’t hem it, which sounds lazy, but I wanted to retain the border as much as possible. After photographing it, I have second thoughts about this decision. It does look a little unfinished, to be honest. I may or may not go back before next summer and give it a narrow hem, we’ll see.

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: alberthe, dress, fibremood

2 seok (aka knitting bts stuff)

30/06/2024 1:10 pm \ 4 Comments \ Carolyn

Please say hi to 2 Seoks! aka my knitting project for June.

Hehe, these are actually pretty hilarious; well, to me at least! but I probably should explain why;

so as mentioned previously I am a fan of BTS, and two of the members have the name Seok… pronounced “sock”. Namely Kim Seokjin and Jung Hoseok. In the fandom they are sometimes referred to collectively as 2 seok… anyway obviously I could not resist such a challenge! 2 Seok … as 2 socks!! haha, I’m giggling a little even now. #nevergetsold #ohboyineedalife

I designed them myself because there is, as yet, no knitting pattern for 2 seok socks… maybe I should write up this pattern and post it myself?! Anyway, I had in my, still very large, wool stash a ball of very fine gauge, pale pink yarn. I would have preferred white, or even pale purple for this project, but anyway, pink it was and so pink I had to use. I sketched out some pictures taken from online, some I thought were representative of Jin and Hobi, and made them into knitting charts.

I’ve momentarily lost my Hobi chart, but here is my Jin one… funnily enough, when I was knitting these I actually thought the Hobi one a better knitting design and the Jin one wasn’t going to turn out as well, but now they’re finished I feel like the Jin one turned out better.

I embroidered the designs in a purple-y pink yarn, leftover from these socks, and to introduce some sort of continuity to the socks, used the same yarn for the toe and heel sections. This is also a good idea, because it is a proper sock yarn, whereas the yarn I used for the body of the socks is really fine and probably not up to the wear and tear you need in these areas.

Fun fact; I actually started these socks back in May of LAST year, and only picked them up again this month. I know, I know. I think I no longer have any current projects on needles still, but I still have that big stash to go through. What to make next?! Don’t worry, I have plenty of plans!

oh, by the way: I took a picture of Theo wearing the cardigan I made for him back in February… I’ll go back and put this picture in its proper post, but for now, ta da! It gives my much joy to see him wearing it!

Posted in: knitting \ Tagged: bangtan, bts, hand knitting, knitting, socks

another twisted collar shirt

07/06/2024 8:03 am \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

I made another unusual little shirt … this one is similar to the other, cotton one that I made just recently but does have some key differences.

I used a length of beautiful snowy white linen from the Linen Shack … very fine and lightly crisp, almost floaty, and it was just as lovely to work with as the dusky pink linen I used for another recently made shirt… Honestly is there anything nicer to wear than a crisp and fresh linen shirt? It’s one of my favourite things to have and wear and all my white linen shirts get worn to death. I mean, a white top goes with absolutely everything so although one might feel like it’s a bit predictable it is also undoubtably indispensable. Personally, I absolutely must have at least one white shirt in my wardrobe at any time and particularly a linen one for summer!

This one has many details that you’d expect for a classic button-up shirt with collar, collar stand, and cuffed sleeves; except it’s not classic at all because of the off-set nature of the collar. I’m really enjoying exploring this idea for a new pattern and haven’t finished experimenting yet!

For this one, I used tortoiseshell coloured buttons which I think is a nice contrast to the white. These were long ago harvested from off an old business shirt of Craig’s. Galica commented on my previous post about considering just one pocket so I decided to give this a go. I went for a double-topstitched arrow headed pocket and pocket flap with identical profile. This blouse has topstitched seams throughout for a classic casual shirt look, which I really like.

I cut the neckline of this shirt quite a lot wider from the cotton sample I made recently, so it needed an obviously different collar and collar stand. This also took me quite a bit of time to finesse… and I haven’t quite settled on which one I like better! The hemline is longer on this one too, only reason being that I had a tad more of this fabric than I did of the cotton! I do really like the gently curving hemline. In my opinion it’s a really nice shape and I’m very pleased with it. 🙂

I’m wearing the shirt here with my blue Closet Core patterns Sasha trousers. By the way, I must apologise for the funny colouring in these photos… I had to substantially adjust the colour, which must be the primary cardinal sin when blogging about and/or illustrating clothes! However I took my beach photos here at about sunset and the natural light was a quite strong and definitely misleading pink/orange glow. I just wanted my new, beautifully white shirt to actually look white!

The Linen Shack white linen can be found here

(not an affiliated link)

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: daily outfit, own design, shirt

some odds and ends

05/06/2024 12:45 pm \ 1 Comment \ Carolyn

Just recently I took part in me-made May again, and had a month of taking my own photos once more. It feels funny to go back to this, since I’ve completely got out of the habit of taking daily photos, but I do enjoy joining in with me-made May. It helps me to take stock of the items in my wardrobe that I really like and those that I don’t! and also identify any gaps in my wardrobe…

So these are my daily outfits for the month… there are 32 outfits for 31 days because we had one evening out for my sister-in-law’s birthday party for which I wore a separate outfit from during the day (pic5). I made every item of clothing I’m wearing in every outfit, except for my black hiking boots and white sandshoes. I did make the sandals in pic14 though!

Thoughts; (warning; skip this bit if you find wardrobe analysis boring!). I liked all my outfits although there are 1-2 things I pinpointed as being shabby and maybe not really up for public consumption any more (overdyed blue dress and the tomato cardigan from picture 1). I also resurrected a few things from storage to wear again, and was reminded how much I love them really. (chambray top from pic26, overdyed dress from pic12, jeans from pic 25, jeans from pic32, the shirt I made for Craig in pic16). Surprisingly (for me) I hated nothing, which is good, and makes me think I might need to retire those things I chose NOT to wear during the month! I conscientiously tried to wear something different every day and only discovered that I’d doubled up on a few things after the event. I wore my pink Pinjarra cardigan twice (pics 10 & 23) and also my little raspberry jacket twice (pics 9 & 25), and my brown knitted cardigan three times (pics 7, 13 & 24). For the last few years I’d got into the habit of not wearing jeans very often since I became convinced that I look terrible in them. However, lately I’ve found to my surprise that I don’t mind how they look on me. So, I’m planning to make a new pair of jeans, surprise surprise! Wardrobe gaps: well, sorry to sound like a broken record, however as old pocket-less items die they are only going to be replaced with pocket-equipped items! This is absolutely not negotiable.

In the end, me-made May is a bit biased in that I don’t get to wear my truly summery things nor my truly wintery things either. It’s all the middle ground, trans-seasonal things that suit middle ground temperatures. I mean, this is fine; because the majority of my wardrobe is obviously middle range things weather-wise… however sometimes I think I should do this sort of analysis privately for a hot month and a cold month too.

I also kept a pictorial record of my purple hair wash too! just for fun. :). The colour was quite intense to start with and had washed out to a shade I REALLY love after 2-3 washes. I took the 6th picture today, the colour is quite subtle now, but it still noticeable, I think. In a good way! However, this is a lesson to me that if I ever use a purple colour wash again to just use maybe a third of the tube, at most!

I made something else last month; a new pair of winter jammies… I used the Closet Core pattern that is my namesake of course, the Carolyn pyjamas for the bottoms. The top is vaguely similar to my usual pattern Burda 10/2009; 121 that I’ve used for winter pj tops in the past, but I’ve somehow managed to lose the pattern I’d traced out. I didn’t feel like re-tracing it, so instead I just laid down last year’s top and traced around the outside, haha. I added oversized pockets to the front, because I always need pockets.

I had to buy new fabric thus breaking my no-buy rule… but it was a necessary sin since I had no flannelette in my possession! I bought as little as I dared and managed to use the entire amount, so I’m forgiving myself! The bunny print cotton flannelette is of course from Spotlight, and I bought a small amount of white to give some contrast because I always like a bit of contrast. To be honest, I searched and searched for some garishly cotton candy coloured unicorn print flannelette which would have been my absolute ideal… and was extremely disappointed to find nothing like that. These sweet blush-pink bunnies are reasonably cute enough so they will do. For now!

In closing; a favourite moment from me-made May was the day when Cassie, Theo, Gilbert and I visited the Subiaco Flower festival together… we had such a lovely afternoon!

(photo taken by a kind lady passing by)