Creative challenge complete!

      Weeks 3-4

1. spiral green vessel, 2. bracelet band, 3. Felted Pod, 4. Not available, 5. snakey, 6. jubilee earrings 2, 7. Not available, 8. snakey bracelet, 9. Pod detail, 10. green shield 2, 11. camino bubbles, 12. button detail, 13. jubilee earrings 3

Now we've moved into September, I thought I'd collate all the projects from the last two weeks of August's creative challenge into a little mosaic. Seems I made less finished pieces in the last fortnight but quite a few were two day tasks or more, so that's cool. As much as I like the excitement of making something in a day, the more complex patterns and experimental vessels are just not that quick! But sometimes the best ideas take time to grow if they're given a little space.

It's been a very interesting creative month where I've learned new wire and beading skills, refreshed on some textile ones like felting and the crochet wrapping, and of course it's always fun exploring new challenging knitting patterns! There are a few experimental samples that I'd like to revisit from this group of projects - the camino bubbles is ongoing and I feel there will be a few more little pods to keep POD company:) And I do intend to get back into pattern writing so the crochet lace parasol will be a definite contender.

     Weeks 1-2

1. turquoise ring, 2. waves and ladders, 3. copper wrapped earrings, 4. Sparkly!, 5. swirl sample, 6. spiral pendant, 7. Hand dyed yarn, 8. firebird, 9. turquoise ring, 10. green shield 2, 11. turquoise monastic weave, 12. copper bracelet, 13. knitted bracelet

Looking at the whole month overall, I am surprised at how much jewellery has made it's way into my creative journey. The wire wrapping is especially important as I can intergrate that into my vessels and hopefully take them to the next level. The beaded jewellery has been a very happy surprise. I've found that I just love constructing with beads. I suppose all my projects have a strong emphasis on construction at the moment - wrapping, weaving, knitting, even felting.

So where to now? Well, I have a good creative flow going on right now so I'm going to see where the creative journey takes me this month. Maybe slowing down just a little though but I'll still be posting every day or two. I'd like to spend some time designing patterns and doing more sketchbook work on new directions for the vessels too. I have a few ideas percolating away :)

I've also got ideas to open a jewellery etsy shop soon as at the rate I'm making beaded bracelets I could seriously stock a shop, lol! And I'm going to re-open my dyed yarn Esty shop for a bit too. I remembered this month how much I love playing with colour and I couldn't use all the yarn I'd dye - even if I tried super hard!! So when I dye some up for my vessels or create more graduating colourways, I'll pop some in the shop as well. I'll let you know in advance if anyone is interested.

But for now, I'm going to take the rest of the weekend off and knit me some camino bubbles watching a film - or two!

See you next week and thank you all for following and supporting me this month!
elaine x

Bubbles, bubbles everywhere

After a few days knitting over the weekend I've managed to do enough of the camino scarf to show you how the bubbles are working out. Very yummy indeed! The zauberball was an inspired choice I think as it's slow graduations are working well with the size of the bubbles.

Now I'm working with the pattern, it's quite a simple construction but gives a more complex visual result. I think that's a bit of a theme for me:) Anyway, I love how this pattern uses the tight and loose tension to create waves and the lace circles. It doesn't look quite like this when I'm knitting it though! Lace knitting never looks like the real thing till you stretch it out and pin it at the end. But I wanted to see how it was going to turn out so I pinned this little sample to have a peek. I'm liking this a lot :)

Another knitter on Ravelry who used zauberball suggested that one ball should be more than enough for a nice long scarf or half a ball for a short tuck in the jacket length scarf. I'm thinking why not go for the whole ball as it's going to make rather a bright statement anyway!

Ooh, and can you imagine this as a wrap - maybe in a more subtle colourway - monochromatic perhaps? I'd love to see the pattern over a wider piece. I have visions of duck egg blue or pale sandy colours for some reason. Not very me I know but I think it would be very beautiful in a quiet, delicate colourway. Hmm...

 

I've only completed two bubbles as yet but nearly at the third one. I like when it comes to dropping the stitches and the bubble appears :) I do double check my pattern and stitch count before I let the stitches run though - check twice, drop once!! Once you get going though you can see pretty easily where the drops will be. I can, now I'm getting into the flow of things, watch the tv as I go and the pattern is easily memorised so you don't have to live with the chart under your nose all the time either. As long as I get the changeover row right then it all flows nicely.

I think though, I'll be saving this for evenings and getting some more jewellery or beading back into my days or I may be seeing bubbles in my sleep!! And after lots of short day projects this seems to be working up really slowly - for me anyway!

See you all soon,
elaine x

Camino bubbles

Today's been a busy day of mostly painting the ceiling with a little bit of knitting. It wasn't quite meant to be ceiling 90% - knitting 10%, but the painting just kept going on and on..... and one coat wasn't enough so it went on and on.... again! Hoorah for my friend who phoned and made me stop, lol!!

I really should try that the other way around, shouldn't I? Start with the knitting first and then squeeze in the painting. I obviously got my priorities skewed!!

So after said phone call and a lovely homemade pizza, I decided it was well past time to start my weekend knitting project. I've been eager to try Camino Bubbles out since I spotted it last week. My first quick sample used my own dyed yarn but the colour runs were too short for this design so I'll just save them for something else. I haven't dyed any new graduating yarns yet so I thought I'd have to put this on hold. But as I was yarn rummaging, I found a lovely bright ball of Schoppel-wolle's Zauberball in colourway Fuchsia. Seriously yummy find. And it's going to be just perfect - long stripes and gorgeous colours:)

 

I haven't got far yet but I can tell the colour gradations are going to be just lovely. The deep purple is going to run into a deep fuchsia soon, then onto red, vermillion and orange. This is going to be one bright scarf! But I think this pattern is designed for just that so it's going to be really exciting to see both the pattern and colours emerge together.

It's a very clever little design using tension and ladders to create the distortion from straight lines - a very nice knitting challenge indeed. And that makes me Happy :)) I'm sure I can squeeze in another hour of knittting yet tonight, don't you think?

 

See you all soon, hopefully with a knitting update. Fingers crossed that ceiling looks finished in daylight because tomorrow it's knitting in the lead, painting nil!

Rainbow's end

Today I decided to do a small, fun, relaxing project, using techniques I'm already familiar with so there would be more making to be had. In complete contrast to the last few days of fine wire and jewellery, I opted for a bit of rainbows, sunshine and comfy knitting.

There's a pattern I've been saving on Ravelry, a lovely rainbow bag made with simple short row shaping that's been calling my name for ages, so today I decided that this was the day! Yarn - check, needles -check, pattern -  ah, you have to buy it, but it's not a lot. Do I want to buy a pattern when I could probably work it out? Now, after learning from the wire bracelet project that sometimes it's ok not to reinvent the wheel every day, I decided, yes, why not? Have a day off from the working out and just enjoy the knit. So I did. :)

A lovely rainbow of colours to work with, perfect. The rainbow bag dimensions were 30x45cm and I thought, that's a two day project for sure. Maybe I can make a mini one? So, sure enough, I could halve all the calculations for the mini rainbow bag and we were off. I was thinking by then that this mini rainbow bag would be just perfect for my 2 year old niece - or a big kid like me :)

After knitting faithfully to the pattern for a while, I began to notice some things didn't seem right. The overall shaping with increases didn't seem to be logically placed and my lovely oval short row coloured panels were shifting off to the left alarmingly. I re-read the pattern to make sure I'd not made a blundering mistake. Nope. No mistake. Somehow the increases needed to make the bag bigger at the middle weren't staying in a straight line up the centre of the bag - major problem. I'd already knitted 3/4 of the bag by then and I was not a happy bunny:(

So what to do now? Maybe a fresh look at it tomorrow will help me work out whether it's just me or the pattern that's the issue. Or, dump the pattern!! Oh, the irony though - if I'd just written a basic pattern out I'd have been fine, lol! I might just do that anyway and brush up my pattern writing skills:) So, today's lesson has been sometimes you should trust your instincts when you know your knitting is going squiffy. And maybe the pattern isn't always right.

Well, the big kid or the little kid will have to wait just a bit longer for their bag full of rainbows but it will happen I'm sure. There's always a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow now, isn't there? :)

eeny, meeny, miny, mo

Vivian

I've been doing a little re-organising of my room this week and as usually happens, I found a bag or three of unfinished knitting projects stashed away. I've been slowly working through my unfinished projects so I kinda knew these were lurking around but now all the accessories like bags, gloves and socks are complete, all that's left are the biggies. The garments. There are 3 tops sitting there in various stages of completion - Durrow, Jaden and Vivian. 

Maybe this time I will get around to actually finishing one of them. With my track record, I'm being realistic sticking at only one:) And maybe, just maybe, I'll get on a roll and finish them all? Stranger things have happened! Each one is at a different stage. Vivian above is quite a complex pattern and I know the reason it got stashed was I made a mistake in the cabling so it will require ripping back and a lot of patience to fix. Either that or just start again. I was reluctant to take such drastic measures last time as it took me sooo long just to get that far, lol! Now, it seems less relevant so maybe I'll start again. It would probably be quicker than tinkering with all those cables and moss sts. But then, I do like a challenge.... :)

Durrow

Durrow, on the other hand is nearly finished. Both front and back panels of rib are done and I only need to complete the sleeves. The sleeves are a lovely fine cabled celtic looking design which should be fun to knit and as it's a chunky yarn, hopefully quickly too. Strong contender for first back on the needles.

Jaden

And Jaden. This lace top is more of an autumnal/fall knit so I really should be wearing it now. It has nearly both sides done but I messed up the pattern decreases on one. I can't remember if this meant I had to take the second lace panel back or whether I had past caring at that point:) Would be a strong contender except I feel guilty that this is the only one I was knitting for myself and I really should get the others done first. Maybe I'll indulge it as second on the list.

Right. I've decided....... Durrow it is. Needles to the ready!

Whole lotta knitting going on....

The weather has been truly appalling this week so I've been indoors a lot planning and designing more than working on existing pieces. And although I could sit comfortably in the living room with a good film, I tend to find sitting at my computer with a decent space to put all my bits and bobs is more conducive to getting me in the creative ideas mindset. Kind of like a workstation where I focus on just work. It also helps that I can play music, browse Pinterest for new images and share them with you on my new facebook page - and probably check facebook and e-mails more than I really need to. But it's all part of the creative process, isn't it? :)

Also this weather reminds me that I can't really pretend there is anything left of summer :) and warmer, snuggly knitting is creeping back into my making list. This little project is just an experiment into the construction of armwarmers and the use of graduating colour, primarily using stripes. I love the contrasting colourways and how such a simple thing like changing proportions of colour can dramatically affect the whole look of the finished piece.

The three gloves above are all based on the same pattern using fingering weight sock yarns. The front two are Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball - colourway tropical fish, and the back pink/purpley striped yarn is Happy - capricorn colourway by Wendy. The wendy is a bamboo/nylon mix and it turned out much bigger and has no elasticity. Such a bad choice for gloves that should stay up your arm! But they look good so I'll keep them for myself. If anything they won't let me forget that lesson - probably every time they slip down, hehe.

But they are quite quick to knit up if you are using a pre-striped or graduating yarn. And no ends to sew in! The pattern is just a generic armwarmer/long glove pattern for 4ply/fingering yarns with regular decreases but what I'm really interested in is how I can take this form and manipulate it into something completely new construction-wise as well as playing with colour. And dyeing some graduated yarns specifically for this, of course:)

But the dyeing will have to wait a few days as all this rain has flooded the shed again so everything has to dry out before dyeing can recommence. Not a big worry though as everything is already up off the ground due to this happening at least twice a year, lol! But on the good side, I can stay nice and toasty inside and take advantage of the time to design some more. Who knows what will come out of it? I don't know either but it will be fun finding out;)

Back soon, elaine x

Diagonal silk bag

While the headles from the loom are de-rusting in a basin of some acetic acid (brilliant for rust btw), I thought I'd show you one of the projects that has been finished recently. Now this one really deserved to be finished a long time ago and has been sitting in the hibernation pile for I think several years, which was silly as once I got started again it was such a quick knit. The only thing that stopped me at the time was the tendancy for the silk yarn to break at thin bits and drop stitches. Trying to find and and fix dropped stitches with such a scrappy yarn repeatedly made me sideline it until I could either think of a way to prevent the problem or gather enough patience to give it another go! So two years later, I had a plan and patience;) and we had a go.

Beautiful yarn though, such lovely rich colours to knit with, lovely. The pattern is from Knitty.com a while ago and is called 'Unbiased' by Stephanie Shiman. You can find it here. It's a simple but effective bag knitted on the bias in four separate pieces, then stitched together and a strap added. It's all done in garter stitch and on 5mm needles, so it knits up very fast indeed.

The original pattern makes a sizeable tote bag with 3 balls of the silk yarn but I couldn't afford three at £25 each at the time so I just got one and decided to scale down the bag a bit:) If you're on Ravelry, you can find all the mods on my project page at tootiefruitie as well.

I had to start a few times to get the right percentage of proportions for my one little silk ball but the bonus is the smaller it is, the less you have to rip back:) I revised the measurement of each of the 4 sections to:

Width = 5” along base which makes the full bag width 10” (with two panels together)

Height = 11” on outside edge

Height where two panels meet in the middle ‘V’ = 7”

I followed the pattern instructions for the assembly but had to make some adaptions for the strap. As it’s a more petite tote, I only used 6 sts for the strap width - ideally binding off each section to the last 3sts (instead of the patterns 5). As this only occurred to me afterwards,  I K2tog at the beginning of each row till I had 6 sts remaining. I quite like this effect though as it looks like the strap is tapering down, so it’s all good.

The strap length was of necessity only as long as the amount of yarn I had left - I used every scrap left to graft the two strap ends together but you could make this as long as you like depending on the amount of yarn left. As it’s such a messy yarn no knots or seams show at all - perfect!

All in all this took me about 3 or 4 evenings watching tv to knit so quicker if you were on a roll:) The yarn was a pain to work with as it was unevenly spun and I kept having to untwist the ply just to get an evenish yarn to knit with. But do be careful not to untwist it too much as the yarn loosens too much and snaps and you have dropped stitches and another knot  - she says feelingly! Saying all that I think the yarn is worth it for the richness and the handle of the silk.

This pattern makes me think about recycling scrap fabrics and spinning them together into nice chunky yarns. It would be really good way to use up all those scraps..... :) Another thing to add to my wish list! Right, I think the headles should be rust free by now so off I go to wash them off and rebuild the loom.

Bye!


ETA: About the rust - Only use acetic acid if it's not shifting any other way. I started with WD40 and some fine grain sandpaper, when that didn't shift the stubborn bits, I moved onto a brillo pad/wire wool. Only then did I use acetic acid/white vinegar and it has to be washed off with soapy water afterwards as the acetic acid can keep reacting with the metal even after it comes out of the basin.

Deep red habitat

Hello, hello! I've been sucked away into knitting for christmas land, where everything revolves around christmas television, nice munchies and speedy knitting as the deadline draws ever nearer - 12 days to go.....

But I have a finished hat to show you - a lovely deep red version of Jared Flood's (Brooklyn Tweed) 'Habitat'. I love this deep colour too! Even though I knitted a version of this hat a few years ago, it felt like a new pattern but it did seem easier this time around and quicker too. Does this mean I'm getting better?? Ah, ha, fate will slap me down for getting cocky:))

I wouldn't say I was totally in the zone knitting the cables or that it was a super quick intuitive knit for me on this occasion, but it was fast, only taking a few days whilst watching tv, which does tend to slow me down when I have charts to read as well as distract me.  But you do need to be doing something else as well when you try to cram a lot of knitting in before christmas:) For those of you interested, this was knitted watching Ice Age - (ah, Sid the sloth cracks me up every time;))),  the Mentalist and a few CSI's.

I do love the all over cabling on this hat and once the first few rows of pattern are done its easy to see if you are crossing over in the right direction - or not. Sometimes I catch myself expecting it to be wrong the first time - which in this case is just as well!! Just the one cross but at least I noticed straight away and not near the end! It was much easier to tink back a few rows than rip back two days work.

This yarn has a lovely lighter red fleck in it too which keeps the colour from being too solid but doesn't fight the cabling. One of the happy occasions where it's even nicer knitted than in the ball.  And if you look closely at the hat laid out from the centre, can you see the flower shape? Like a 5 star petal motif, very subtle though. What a clever pattern. I don't think I noticed this the first time around.

So another knit down, and I don't really want to think how many there are still to fit into the 12 remaining days..... I really should have a better plan for next year - but I say that every time ;)) Off I go for some more christmas tv watching. What shall it be next on the needles?

Bird in hand mittens

Well, that week went by fast! I've been knitting away trying to make a dent on my christmas list - mainly these bird in hand intarsia mittens. So far it's taken me most of this week to finish one, which was longer than I had planned for but I do love the way they are turning out.

There is something so lovely about intarsia mittens. They conjure up images of cold, crisp winter days with startlingly blue skies and having to wade through feet of snow to make snowmen or have a snowball fight:) Of course, the wearer of these mittens won't be getting cold hands as these are super snug! Having the two threads weaving in and out of the back makes it twice as dense and these are knitted tighter than normal gauge too so altogether more compact and toastie for the hands!

It's been a while since I've knitted any colourwork so it took me a bit to get back into the swing of things. The inside weaving came back quickly but keeping tension on dpn's at the joins was more problematic. I still have to block this first glove so I hope it evens out somewhat. Hopefully the second one will be a bit more even in tension. But of course, the pattern is so lovely that you won't notice a little thing like the odd uneven stitch or two now would you? :))

It's the attention to detail that makes this pattern work so well I think. I love the little braiding detail between the cuff sections and the picot edging - yum! I also love the way this pattern has the traditional birdseye pattern for the palm side of the mitten - very nice contrast - and this panel is very easy to knit too:) It looks just as good on the inside as the outside so I thought I'd show you that as well so you can see the weaving in of the threads. I must admit I am a bit of a perfectionist with intarsia and I like to keep it as neat as I can, so each floating thread is wrapped every 3 sts to keep larger catchable loops from forming.


And there is one more surprise with these mittens - the bird:) Yes, the bird that makes these bird in hand mittens is a little embroidered bird on the top of the thumb. Ah no, you won't be finding it on mine yet as I'll only stitch it in place once they are blocked but I can show you where it will be......

Okay, see that kind of white bird shaped blob at the top of the thumb? There! Yes, it does take a bit of imagining:)) but draw a little beak, add an eye, a bit of wing detail..... yes, it's there! and it will be on both thumbs so it will make you smile every time you see it. Lovely!

Well, I've cast on and done the picot edging of glove number 2 so back to the intarsia and braiding for the afternoon, snug inside watching tv while it is SNOWING outside. Yes, snowing! We never get snow this early - what is up??? It's not deep or lying much but it's not even December yet. But we may get a white christmas!! Time to hunt out my christmas films - and munchies. Is it too early to start on the christmas snacks??  See you soon! :))

Brea bag

One of my christmas maybe's has made it on the needles. Last in the mosaic, the brea bag has been in my queue of lovely things to make for ages. I didn't know who it was going to be for then but now, pattern and person have gelled together and we are steaming ahead in knitting this one up.

The Brea bag pattern is designed by Norah Gaughan for Berroco and is a very quick knit as it uses two strands of worsted together. You don't knit this in the round though so there are a lot of stitches to cast on straight needles. Thankfully, you are constantly decreasing each RS row so the numbers become more manageable very quickly. I did check my gauge on this one before I started as this was a stash yarn with no bands but it was spot on! I'm quite happy if this comes out bigger but any smaller and its more a purse;)

I'm planning on lining this one too once I get the fabric I want on E-bay. I've already spotted a belt I can adapt as a strap/handle so all I have to find is a really nice button. Still searching but I have a bit of time yet;)

When I was cropping my photos, I suddenly thought how easy it would be to adapt this pattern into a hexagonal cushion. Just increase the repeated sections to 6 on circulars and no seam either!  If I bulked up the yarns I could get a really nice big floor cushion too. Or, make loads of hexagons and sew them all into a blanket/throw. One takes a couple of hours once you're familiar with the pattern and I'm sure I would get quicker with practice;) I imagine it would be quite heavy though if they were all double worsted weight.

With a bit of photoshop playing I've copied the full hexagon into a blanket pattern - Yum! Love the gothic style pattern the cables make and the bright red!! Maybe not so calming for a bedroom but it would look stunning as a throw over a sofa or chair, don't you think? But perhaps after the christmas knitting list is finished....:)

Wickedly fuchsia

So time for a reveal! Yes, the long awaited wicked vest is now finished, blocked and buttoned and ready to wear. Only took me over a year to get this one off the needles but hey, at least this one managed it:)) I can finish small projects easily but long ones seem to die a death or end up in a long hibernation once I start getting bored. So I don't tend to make many big projects any more. Every now and again I try - like the hawaiian flowers blanket - but its very stop and start at the moment too. I LOVE the flowers, I enjoy making them too but I just don't seem to be able to be monogamous in my projects! Got to have more than one on the go:)

But the wicked vest has made it and it fits! This was an issue as I thought the ribbing and my use of a different weight yarn might mean a very skinny rib fit but no - whew! Looks nice and skinny on the dummy though:) Not quite so skinny in real life - probably because I don't have adjustable buttons to reduce my bum size :))) What a wonderful thing that would be!! I'm not totally convinced about the white shirt underneath either. I'm not really a shirt person so it looks and feels a bit uncomfortable on me  - rather a staid look for me, even in fuchsia! So I think I'll need to experiment a bit till I get the right combo or it'll end up never worn, and that would be a shame after all that knitting and all that waiting!

I did manage to find some really cool rose shaped buttons for this though. I swithered on whether to have a contrasting or harmonious colour as I've seen lovely versions on ravelry that worked either way, but the subtle combinations won the day - if you can call bright fuchsia buttons subtle! But what a job I had getting the right shade of pink! I didn't realise how difficult it would be trying to match this yarn. It's not bright pink, nor rose and has a paler tone overall so nothing seemed to be 'just right' as goldilocks would say. Eventually I decided to go for see-through ones hoping that the yarn colour would come through and soften the overall tone of the buttons. I think it's worked rather well ;)) Girly but not girly, if you know what I mean.

Now, I have to consider the other poor projects in hibernation.... if I don't get distracted...... again! :))

Jaden

Last week, I was rummaging through some bags looking for something to use as a core for some more crochet vessels when I came upon my stash of hibernating works in progress. Ahem! These were all nicely hidden out of eyesight, crammed into bags with patterns all patiently waiting to see the light of day. Although it's not really a bad thing to have a few outstanding projects on the go, every time I see these older ones, I do feel that pang of guilt - like I know I should really have persevered and not got sidetracked by something else newer and shinier.......

But, I've realised I've got a bit of a pattern going on with hibernating projects. Any problem knit that has to be ripped out more than 3 times means it goes in a bag to cool off for a while. In my head this means a few weeks till I finish something else and then I'll have regained enough grace to finish the damned thing (see? not a good knitting relationship going on!) In reality, at least for these bags anyway, it's been about a year... oops! So, I've decided to have a bash at getting a few of these finished off this time around.

Two projects seemed interesting enough to get my knitting needles back out - the Wicked Vest and Jaden. More on the vest to come but today, is the turn of Jaden. The pattern is designed by Ruby Lo and can be found free in the spring issue of knitty 2008. Now, since the top picture is probably all I showed you of Jaden last year, you probably won't remember it - all I remember is that the lace pattern kept going haywire on me and I gave up in disgust and, I think, knitted my lovely buttercup tunic instead.

But look! I've been knitting away over the last few days and we have some progress!! The scallop lace on the back is complete and I've shaped the waist so now it's onto the mindless st st for a few inches before shaping for the arm. I must say I was not enjoying this when I first restarted this. I ripped back the few rows I'd done and knitted some gauge swatches as I had no idea whether I was knitting to gauge or even what size I'd decided on a year ago. Then I started again and true to form, the lace pattern messed up LOTS of times - I'd rather not say just how many, just be astounded at my perseverance:))

Once I twigged what I was doing wrong, it did begin to get easier. In my defense, the pattern does presume you know to automatically start the lace pattern one stitch over in every section to account for the decreases for shaping - as I am a literal person when it comes to patterns, I was expecting the pattern to tell me that step ....:) But now I have the hang of it, I made a good bit of progress, yesterday especially.

Yesterday was TV knitting Jaden fest:)) I think I may have watched and knitted for nearly 10 hours on and off - so for those of you who are interested, I ended up watching:

'The mirror Crack'd' with Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Kim Novak and Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple. I really enjoyed it! It's nice to have a change from Joan Hickson or the more recent ones with Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie. And although I knew the plot, it was still a very enjoyable 2 hours.

Next up was the recent CSI trilogy that featured Miami, New york and Vegas all linked to the same story - a good 3 hours there - although I was exausted after that and had a bit of a break for my evening meal:) After that, I settled down to watch....

Carry on up the Jungle:)) as it was on and a nice change from too much intense CSI. Always good for a laugh and Frankie Howerd was especially good in this - 'never has his gast been so flabbered:)) And then I caught a few more csi's on the tv as it was CSI sunday. I was totally tv'd out and actually getting a numb bum from sitting down so much, lol! But the Jaden had grown to the waist - yay!

Now the lace is done and I'm not making so many mistakes when I'm tired, the rest of the body should knit up quickly - well, as quickly as 4ply/fingering can at my average speed of knitting. This is when I wish I could speed knit. I think I would probably make more garments if they progressed quicker!

Well, back to Jaden and some boring stocking stitch - I wonder what's on the TV?! .............:)

Extreme Knitting

Thought you might like to see this video of extreme knitting by Rachel John - 1000 strands of yarn knitted on super big knitting needles. Amazing! The strands alone look like an art installation. Wish I had that stash:)))

Enjoy!

Afterthought heel

So, how do you like the new blog look? Been tinkering with Bloggers beta designer templates all day - lost a good few hours somewhere:-) I think it may need some more tweeking but I like the change. One thing I do like though is how this template highlights the page tabs at the top of the page - they were getting kind of lost before. But now they are more prominant, I'll have to revamp them too!

It's been a bitty week, trying to get some gardening done when the sun decides to come out, trying to spin but not with as much success as I'd like:-) and trying to make a dent in some of these outstanding WIP's that have kind of been hibernating - although not intentionally. Yes, there is an intentional pile:-)

Since I couldn't seem to find my spinning mojo, I looked out these lovely unfinished socks - Little Minx. Last time we saw these, I had decided to use an afterthought heel to keep the colour continuity with the Almond Zauberball bands and all I needed to do was finish the second sock to the top. A good few tv watching hours later and the sock length was done. Then I undid the scrap yarn holding the heel stitches and picked up my live sts onto two circular needles following Knitting up a Storm's tutorial. This method is so easy and very quick to do. It's just like decreasing a sock toe with a simple st st graft at the end. And they seem to make a well fitting heel too!

With the first sock I didn't colour match as exactly as I would have liked - you can see a little darker shading going on there - damn! It looked right at the time too so with the second sock I was more careful and it looks a lot better. These are knitted up bigger than my sock blockers so I'll need to get some modelled shots to do them justice and show off the pattern and the stripes - which is more pronounced that it looked when on the needles but it's all cool:-)

The weather is meant to be rainy and dull over the weekend, so that will mean no gardening time. Well, it gives me a chance to get the last of the DIY done and possibly look out some more hibernating knitting projects as well - unless I succumb to the african flower crochet bug that is going around here, here and here:-)) There is even a Flickr group where you can get the pattern and see other lovely variations. I may just have a little play with colours this weekend and see.... famous last words! But I'll just be glad to get some creative mojo going again so I can post a bit more often!!

See you all soon!

Little red shoes

At long last I've got around to finishing these little red shoes. The pattern is 'tiny shoes' by Ysolda and they really are tiny! They're only 6cm /2.5" long and very dinky! I'm hoping they will fit straight away but I may have to knit an outfit to match them as they are a lovely bold red.

The original pattern doesn't have ribbon but as the design has a little row of lacey holes around the top as a detail, I thought I could use them to thread the ribbon through. I stitched the bow in place too just for stability although it also makes it possible to gather the edge in too to emphasise the shaping.

The pattern is very cleverly designed using an I-cord for the strap and then the shoe shape developing from picking up stitches from the cord itself. It's much more unusual to knit the shoe from the top down but it flows very well and only needs a little garter stitch grafting on the sole and you are done.

I had a little difficulty choosing buttons for these as the back fastening loops were quite deep and seemed to leave too much of a bump from the inside and I don't want to be bruising little feet now, do I? So I ended up going for a lovely bright daisy and I'm thinking some lovely stitched daisy flowers as a hem on a little red dress could be lovely. I think I likey:-)