Tag Archives: Knitting

Old things…

… this will be the very last of my “old things” posts.  I promise.
I’ve done a mammoth sort-through of the photos and I think this is it!  (heaves a sigh of relief…)

Firstly, since this is the only garment in this post still in our possession (apart from the Grim Reaper come burqa outfit, that is); a cardigan I knitted for Craig.  It is knitted in the fair isle method.  Above is a picture Craig took of me wearing his cardigan on a holiday last year (isn’t he sweet, giving his cold inadequately-dressed wife his nicely pre-warmed cardigan to wear, hmmm?  What a gentleman!)
And some close-ups of the cardigan I took today…
showing the right front, and at right the wrong side of the fair isle knitting… (as is correct, the yarn is carried over at the back with no weaving in, only if the distance is four stitches or less…)

Now, some costumes…
Sam as “Link”.  I thought he was so cute in this.  He loved this little outfit and often wore it just for everyday wear.  (if you would like to see what this cute little jigger looks like now, go here…)

Sam, as… guess who?  Hehe, the famous Harry Potter, natch, compete with broomstick and Hedwig the owl.  
On that note, a black cloak is such a useful thing to have in the dress-up box.  It can be the basis for so many costumes.

Here is the same robe again, worn by Cassie as Hermione, complete with Garfield Crookshanks the cat… I threw together the skirt and tie as well, but they do not bear close inspection…!)

(I’ve shown this picture before… but here it is again just to illustrate the versatility of the plain black robe as a costume), Tim and two of his mates as Grim Reapers.  I made all three of their costumes.

Tim’s same costume again, this time worn by me to an Arabian Nights party.  I didn’t want to hire an outfit and I didn’t want to make some bejewelled thing I would never wear again, and as every single female I have seen in the Arabian region is dressed something like this, so I was like, yeah this’ll do.  I naively assumed other girls would have the same idea…  As it turned out I was literally the only female dressed (I thought) anywhere near authentically!  Also the only one not heavily sequinned and baring plenty of belly-flesh…  I confess the costume was abandoned when we decided to start dancing!  Don’t worry I had a skirt and top on underneath…

So, away from costumes now, and a ball-gown of my own design that I made for balls in years gone by (Sorry for the headless shot but my face and my hair look awful in this picture…!)  It is silk organza, overlaying silk and silk jersey layers, three layers in all.  It had a beaded and embroidered neckpiece, both beaded and embroidered by me, that is…

A dress I made for Cassie for her graduation dance at the end of primary school.  It was a simple turquoise cotton halter neck dress, the fabric had metallic gold lines randomly strewn across.  I also made her jewellery, of turquoise glass fish beads and strands of gold wire.

Some rather lovely (if I say so myself) wide-legged white pants that she wore almost constantly for a summer, and a little white broderie anglaise blouse.  Both my own design.

Going way back, and this shirt is from a Vogue designer pattern that I believe my mother still has my copy…  I know I also made and am wearing here the small-waisted and very flared skirt from the same pattern too…

I made both the skirt and top and also my necklace here.  The top was an experiment, I flipped the shoulders out in a twist to get this cowl-like effect.  It used to get a lot of compliments, believe it or not! (my friends are very kind)  We are sitting on one of our sofas in its first slipcover, made by me too…  (now looks like this)

Some more dresses.  I really regret now I never got any good pictures of these two.  The white and red one was rather nice; it was a dress, but looked like a matching skirt and camisole when I was wearing it, as it had layers in several graduated lengths.  My own design.  The patchwork dress, also my own design, took lots of planning; I bought the fabrics separately and cut and pieced them together, then made the dress.  It has smaller squares at the top, graduating to larger squares around the midriff, and then down to the largest squares at the hemline.  It is all on the bias, with a handkerchief hem, and I loved it!

A drop waisted, handkerchief hemmed dress of white dotted swiss voile, pictured against a famous backdrop.  I still have this Vogue pattern too, actually…

And that should be all folks!
From now on, I will only be showing newly made stuff here….

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Some foot fabulousness; hand-knit by Mum

My mother gave me a special gift for my birthday recently, two works of art designed to adorn the foot-al region of my person: a pair of her famous Turkish socks.  Well, famous in our own family, anyway… traditionally she has only made these for the males in the family so I feel pretty honoured and privileged to be the first female recipient of a pair; cough cough, did I hear gender privilege anyone?  Ahem… 
Putting my Mum’s creations here on the ol’ blog is always a humbling experience, as it just highlights to the max the vast superiority of her handiwork and creativity to my own.  I usually turn out socks of the very basic kind, true I choose yummy colours that I love but there is no difficulty level in that, and my socks themselves are pretty utilitarian in style.  When I lay eyes on Mum’s work I feel dead boring in my own output.  sigh
The pattern, as in decoratively, of these socks is created in the fair isle knitting method, that is carrying the unused colour loosely at the back of the work and bringing it forward when it is needed, and the pattern, as in construction-wise, of these socks is the Turkish method of knitting socks.  That is, starting from the toe and knitting up the foot to end at the top “hole” that you stick your foot in.  This method is the opposite from my usual preferred way of sock knitting, the English method, starting at the top and finishing at the toe.   Knitting socks in the Turkish method of course has the huge advantage which is that you can knit contentedly away, making each sock exactly the same length until you have used up your available wool… and not run the risk of running out of wool halfway down the foot section, a terrifying possibility with the English method.
But I digress; I know from experience that knitting one’s own socks is a passion reserved for just the initiated few; so instead of me dwelling on the finer points of sock manufacture, please instead admire Mum’s work above…
On a side note; modelling socks, definitely my favourite.  You may not be surprised that I am kinda low on my modelling mojo.  However socks… well!  No need to worry about a bad hair day, weird facial expressions and who knows (or cares) what hideousness I am actually wearing elsewhere on my person?  My feet are looking beautiful, so yay!

Socks; handknit by my mother using 8 ply yarns

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Oh, this old thing…

… and a few more old creations.  (Don’t worry, these are drawing to an inevitable endpoint, as I go forwards through time and eventually wind up at “now”, at which point these posts will finish and you will be seeing new stuff only…  It’s just that one of the goals I set myself was to document as much as I could of my handmade things in this blog, so bear with me here.  This is a finite process…)
This is our little family (Sam on the way) in more stuff I made; Tim’s (Topkids) overall has been seen before here.  I made my dress, completely inspired by the dress (below) in Beetlejuice, do you remember this?  I basically fell in love with this loose long floral dress and set out to make myself close to an exact copy of it for myself.   Fortuitously it worked well as a maternity dress too.  I felt lucky that dropped waist blouse-y Laura Ashley numbers were quite fashionable during the years I was producing children…
The blue floral dress with lace trim that Cassie is wearing is a TopKids pattern.

Below is a four generation picture; my grandmother, mother, Cassie and me.  Cassie is wearing a dress made to the same pattern as the blue one above.  It is interesting how the very different fabrics used give each dress a completely different feel; this one seems kinda “smart” while the floral and lace above give a far more “pretty and dressy enough for a party” feel, no?  Perhaps this tiny set of two dresses makes up another miniature rogue’s gallery (like yesterday), seeing the different looks you can get from one pattern by varying minor details; in this case the fabric.

This little romper is literally the only thing that I made for my own children and passed on to other little relatives that was returned to me (!) but unfortunately without the little blouse I had made to go with it.  It had a really cute pink blouse to wear underneath, with a Peter Pan collar and full batwing sleeves gathered into elasticated wrists.  The little floral romper here has a zip up the centre front and tabs with pearl snaps on the pockets and shoulder straps.  From TopKids patterns.

Below is a  picture of Tim and Cassie on Tim’s fourth birthday (Sam is around by now, but is not in this picture!)  Cassie is wearing a dress that was truly one of my favourites, out of all that I had made for her!  It was of a lovely floral brushed cotton in very pretty shades of blue, green and violet, and had a sailor collar of soft ivory brushed cotton, around which I topstitched on a pale blue satin ribbon edging to enhance the sailor-y look.  I loved seeing her in this dress…. she looks so pretty, doesn’t she?

Below; I am with Tim and a fairly brand new Sam in a baby sling… Tim is wearing a red-and-white fair isle jumper knitted by my Mum, and I am wearing a blue, turquoise, red and pink cardigan with black and white geckoes that I knitted from a pattern, the details of which are unknown, sorry.  It is knitted entirely in the intarsia method, with each section of colour in each row, in individual balls (ie, that is 15 different balls for some rows…), and is possibly the most complex thing I have ever knitted.  Each row of the pattern was different from each other row, as you can imagine.  Even the two sleeves were different from each other!  The main of the knitting is in stocking stitch, but the red and pink sections are in reverse stocking stitch…  my modern-day me is actually pretty impressed with my olden-day more-patient me.  
I am embarrassed to admit that I went on to lose all appreciation of my own time and effort, and painted the entire interior of a house while wearing this thing, which explains some tiny spots of white paint now adorning the front.  Also it has gone camping with us (and I recall wearing it 24/7 including sleeping in it on one particularly cold camping trip) and it has been a bed-jacket too.  I still have it, but needless to say don’t really wear it anymore.  It has slightly felted, through bad washing.
(Later edit; in reply to some comments, it’s a bit hazy in my memory now but I’m pretty sure I made this before I had little kiddies underfoot… just no pictures!)

below; the wrong side, showing the intarsia method of knitting used…
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Easiest knitted handwarmers, ever

So, I mentioned that I had plenty of socks already, but still some sock yarn kicking around… so I turned to another extremity on my person that really feels the cold; my hands.  I am definitely a cold-hand person… and can be relied on to lay a soothingly cool hand on the brow of a feverish sick person, anywhere, anytime.  Nice for any sick people in my life, but nonetheless I am forever engaging in some futile attempt to lift the temperature of my hands above that of a corpse.  This takes form in various procedures; whether it be slowly rotating my hands over the toaster in the morning, making myself a gazillion cups of tea not necessarily because I am thirsty but so that I have a hot china mug to clutch for a short while (warning; this particular hand-warming method greatly increases the required number of visits to the ladies room), walking about with my hands stuck weirdly in my armpits, or sitting on my hands, which by the way is good for warmth but not for maintaining any actual feeling in the fingers.
And yes there are gloves, some pairs of which I do have and are wonderful for warming the ol’ handies, but not when one is doing delicate stuff such as knitting, or working on a computer keyboard and one’s gloved fingers keep typing in such gems such as: “hekoo there., anmd how arte yourd tofdsy?”
Anyhoo, I brilliantly detected this gap in my wardrobe, and set to filling it…

Here is my pattern for these super-easy handwarmers, suitable for knitters of all levels of ability.  It really doesn’t get any easier than these things…

Yarn; 4 ply, I used Morris Empire Superwash Merino 4 ply
Quantity; 1-2 balls…  exactly how much yarn depends on how far up your arm you want your handwarmers to extend.
Set of 2mm double ended needles
Tension; 28 stitches and 36 rows to a 10x10cm square of stocking stitch

Cast on 60 stitches, distribute so there are 20 stitches over three needles.
Bringing the last stitch on the third needle round to join onto the first stitch on the first needle to start knitting in the round, commence in K2, P2.  Leave the long tail from your first slip stitch hanging loose without weaving in, this marks the starting point of your knitting and enables you to count rows more easily.
Continue in K2 P2 for 8 rows.
From the 9th row, K in every stitch.
Continue for 20 rows.
Row 29; turn and P 60 stitches.  Note for this stocking stitch section, always slip the first stitch purlwise on a purl row, and knitwise on a knit row)
Row 30; turn and K 60 stitches
Repeat last two rows until there are 20 rows of stocking stitch.
Row 50; join the work so you are knitting in the round once more, and continue knitting in each stitch until the work measures the desired length (in this example, 31cm from the beginning)
K2, P2; for the next 8 rows.
Cast off in K stitch loosely, and weave in the loose ends.

Voila, one handwarmer!  Now just repeat for the second one… if you want to get fancy it is pretty easy to incorporate a cable design or something down the backs of each hand, but this is the basic unadorned model to start with.  This is a super easy project that doesn’t require much thought at all, so is perfect for while your family is watching TV or something and you want something mindless to do… and your toasty warm hands will thank you in the winter!

Details:
Handwarmers; my own design, knitted in Morris 4 ply merino, in Imperial Blue (col 424)
Top and tights; Metalicus
Skirt; Vogue 7303 in charcoal suiting, dyed blue by me here
Scarf; a gift
Boots; Francesco Morichetti, from Zomp shoes

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Another trip down memory lane…

…  Remember when I said I had only once before made Cassie and myself matching clothes? Well this is Cassie’s dress, that was made from the leftover scraps of a dress I had made myself.  Her little dress, made using a TopKids pattern, has a white Peter Pan collar, and a miniature faux man’s tie in turquoise fabric, itself the leftovers from these shorts (so you can see how long I hang onto scraps…!)  I’m sorry it’s not a very good picture, and what’s more I have no pics of my own dress in this fabric; but imagine this maroon, deep turquoise and red large-scale plaid in one of those 90’s style shirt-dresses with a high small collar, long sleeves and a big full gathered skirt.  Something like the red version of this pattern at right… yes, very very very 90’s.  I hope I haven’t shattered any delusions of myself as a style maven now!  At least I never liked shoulder pads so never used them.
So I’ve got that going for me…    (Can anyone recognise that quote?)

Tim is wearing here a little jumper here that I knitted for him using scraps of wool from other projects… rather cleverly eked out if I say so myself, so that the front, back and both sleeves had the same colours and in the same proportions!  Knitters will know this is not necessarily a simple thing to achieve when you are working with scraps…  It went from the dark shades of purple, blue and green at the bottom through grey, then pale blue then the palest yellow and back to navy blue at the top, and the colours were not in defined stripes but faded together in an ombre effect.  I did this by knitting two colours together per row in the fair-isle knitting method.

In this picture, Tim is wearing another jumper I knitted, and I can’t recall now if it was from a pattern or if I took the embroidered teddy bear design from a cross stitch and just transposed it to a knitwear graph… yup, memory not what it used to be!  Again using scraps for the teddies.  Cassie is wearing a little dress I made for her using a TopKids pattern.  It was in two different white and navy blue prints, one a polka dot and the other a floral.  The fabric was slightly fluffy, brushed cotton, and I sewed in white piping around the collar, sleeve cuffs, the single curved breast pocket and around the dropped waistline where the buttoned-up blouse joined the skirt part of the dress.  It was quite cute, no? and a nice and warm little number for winter!

And the quote?  From that great 90’s cinema classic, Caddyshack.

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Fabulous stuff made by Mum and Dad…

My Mum and Dad are enormously creative and talented.  They have made heaps and heaps of beautiful things…a visit to their house reveals one lovely work after another.  I took some pictures of just a few during our last visit…
a sofa table made by Dad, using wood he milled himself from a fallen tree on their property

a pile of colourful socks, knitted by Mum

A banksia seed-pod vase, drilled by Dad

A pair of colourful “leftover” socks, knitted by Mum

Candlesticks, made by Dad from materials scavenged from the tip…

A pair of intricately patterned socks, knitted by Mum

I am so lucky to have such amazing parents.  Thank you Mum and Dad for your never-ending inspiration!

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Scarlet Twist socks

So, having got over my aversion to taking my own photo… ta da!  I’m back, but who knows what hideousness and violations against the fashion world are being committed, just off-camera, hmm?  We’ll never know… actually, I am quite stylishly clad today, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.  Because the purpose of this post is to reveal my new, and possibly last for a while, sockies.  Last, you may ask?  am I sick of knitting socks? well, no, I still have enthusiasm for sock-knitting and I still have some sock wool left.  But I think I have quite enough socks now :), even Craig is helping himself to my sock drawer occasionally, and I am thinking of making other things from my remaining sock wool… just exactly what is to be revealed sometime in the future…
Do you like my new companion? (Sienna is taking a break from modelling too…)  I have included pussycats in my sock pictures before, here, and here, and once a sort-of animal got in on the act here, but this is a first for this green-eyed diva…  she is very fluffy and very placid, and has just been treated to a good vigorous brush, so was in the mood for sitting happily and plumply, if briefly, at my feet; that beautiful glossy grey coat setting off my socks to perfection.

Details:
Socks; knitted in Morris Empire Superwash Merino 4 ply in Scarlet Twist (col 453) with Beluga (col 430) heels and toes, based on the pattern for Ladies Sockettes in Patons Knitting Book C11, a circa 1960’s publication

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A navy corduroy jacket, and a Babar jumper

Today I bring two flashbacks; two, because I don’t have very good photos of either one to warrant an individual post, and because I am trying to whizz through these old projects a little faster than I have been up until now… These items are both things I made for Tim when he was about two.
The first is a little navy blue corduroy biker-styled jacket that zipped up the front (biker-styled… for a two year old, lol!), which I toddler-ised by using contrasting red for the collar and trimmings, the pattern from a Topkids magazine.  Even though Tim wore it a lot, this is the best photo I have of it…

And the second is a little jumper that I knitted using a pattern from a Women’s Weekly magazine.  Babar is embroidered on the front over the knitting stitches.  He wore this a lot… and I have heaps of photos of him wearing this, but these are the only ones even vaguely showing off that embroidery!  The lower picture, taken at Lake Mountain in Victoria, is the first time these sandgropers had ever ever seen snow in our lives!  We made a little snowman!
(translation: sandgropers = Western Australians)

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