150 flowers done!

A little bit of crochet and the last row of flowers are done! Feeling good now. 150 flowers all ready to crochet into the finished blanket - at last! This is the bit I've been waiting for; the balancing of the coloured edgings against all the other flowers in situ - should be fun:) I might not be able to see the floor for a few days/weeks, but at least it will look colourful! I also have a feeling the cat will decide that this blanket should belong to her....of course;) I will try to catch her on the camera sneaking into prime comfy position - right in the centre, I'm thinking!

The weather here is very wet and dismal today so perfect for snuggling inside for some hooky time. Now, just need to find a good film to watch and I can get started. No deadline for this really but I need to get back on a roll and keep the crochet mojo going;) I haven't seen any finishing rows/borders on other versions of this - maybe nearer the time crochet blanket experts may have some suggestions for me? Maybe it won't look as if it needs one..... but all ideas would be very welcome!

Righty-ho, I'm off for some flower hooky fun. Starting the count - 149, 148, 147...... :))  See you all soon with another update!

143 hawaiian flowers - nearly there!

Today the sun came out again after a very grey, wet and windy week. At last! The sun can make you feel so much better can't it? And this being the longest day today - summer solstice - it felt fitting that it should feel like summer at least;) Anyway, the sun came shining in the window and brightened up a pile of crochet stashed in a shelf waiting to be finished. The hawaiian flower blanket! Yes, all the pretty little flower motifs were glowing brightly and shouting 'Finish me! You know there isn't much to do....' and you know? they're right!

Half the problem with this project was I hadn't decided just what size I intended to make at the start. It swung from being a cot blanket to a kingsize throw - in a giddy moment of enthusiasm:) - then swiftly back again when I realised just how many motifs I would need for that large a project! So I decided to count the flowers and see just how many I would need to turn this UFO into a ta-da baby blankie. 143 is the count so far, but what size is that in real baby blanket terms? Hadn't a clue so I ran upstairs and laid out all the motifs on the bed to see the scale so far......

Forgive the photos - the sun being out for once affected the tones of the bright colours. Weird. Anyway, this is what 143 flowers looks like. I get 10 x 14 rows with 3 remaining flowers. I would say that looked big enough to me;)) So I've decided to go for 10x15, crochet another 7 flowers and call it DONE!

It will still need the final round of edging to create the petal look which means I can join as I go rather than have lots of ends to sew in afterwards. Well, that's the theory. And it will make it a little bigger - possibly, although I have left gaps in the layout to compensate for that final edging. I think it will look nice and jolly once it's all done - and I won't feel guilty every time I look at that shelf now:))

I'll keep you posted....;)

A bit of progress....

There's been lots of loom tlc being going on this last week or so - the loom has been de-rusted, all the headles put back in their place and restrung with a shockingly white cord :) and the wood has been waxed and polished in layers till it's shining. Seems such a quick process summed up in one sentence but I seemed to be working on it over quite a few days.

Here she is, the little 4 shaft table loom all polished and looking a lot better than she did. See the dazzlingly white cord? :) I think the longest part was having to split and count the headles equally after cleaning and putting them all back on the 4 shafts again. Boring job so I grabbed some music to sing along to which made it seem a much quicker process, lol! I didn't need to sand or varnish the wood after all either as the beeswax polish worked into the surface really well and got rid of the water stains I had been worrying about. Seems they were only varnish deep - yay!

One thing still to do before I can get weaving again is to replace the cloth on the front and back beams. Ok, it's looking grubby but on unraveling, I found the fabric is brittle and perishing. Given that this loom is probably a good 40 years old, maybe more, I think the original fabric has done well! So I have some new, sturdy fabric ready to be cut, sewn and stapled back into place. Nearly there! Then I have the longer task of refreshing my memory on double weave - that could take considerably longer than the loom fixing. I think I need to have a really good app for my brain to retrieve all that info from years ago, lol! They probably will in about 50 years time but till then at least I have the internet:)

Just have to stop getting distracted by socks and 3D crochet vessels.... more on that to come :)

Have a good day whatever you're doing!

The lonely sock....

As many of you know, I seem to fall victim to the deadly second sock syndrome on a regular basis :) I can race through one sock but fail to muster enough oomph to continue onto the second. I enjoy the challenge of the new pattern or technique but not the repetition of it - hence a lot of single socks, gloves, mitts and armwarmers are hibernating all over the place in their incomplete state, making me feel guilty every time I rediscover one.

So last friday, when I was looking around for an easy knit in the evening, I stumbled across this poor, lonely single 2x4 rib sock I started. No specific pattern for this one as I just knitted a basic toe-up sock with a short row heel and added a simple rib to compliment the busy hand painted yarn.  The yarn isn't one of my dyed yarns:), it's from Zitron Trekking's hand art range. I've had it for quite a while and it's been tried out with a few sock patterns with little success. I love the randomness of the colour drifts but it always fights even the simpler patterns so rib it was destined to be.

Because this is for a gift, I increased my stitch count to 66 sts instead of my customary 60 to fit a large womans/small mans sock size. (If you needed to decrease or increase the size, just work with a multiple of 6 and knit as long as you need to the heel.) The sole is smooth, the top is ribbed and after the heel shaping, the rib is continued in the round for as high as you want to make them. The cuff is a nice stretchy 1x1 rib and the bind off is extra loose. I remind myself every time and still I always have to unpick the bind off. I think I'm knitting it soooo loose and then when you try and get the damn thing on it gets stuck at the heel :)) So, for me loose means looooose!

So, progress so far on the second sock? You will be proud of my staying power! I knitted all friday, saturday and a little of sunday night and I have raced through the cast on, zoomed up the sole, conquered the heel and am now on the home straight up to the cuff. Wooo! See what I can do when I just get past that second sock syndrome? :)

So now the lonely sock might actually become a matching pair after all :)

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.

June is bursting out all over :)

June is here, the sun has been out, the garden has been going wild and the flowers are making everything  have a bright and cheery look all of a sudden. I've been away for quite a wee while recently but now I am back and raring to get going again. I have some finished projects to reveal, some ongoing larger projects on the go and a huge list of things I suddenly want to fit into my summer - weaving, dyeing, pattern designing, lots of knitting;) and oh, yes, lots more knitting!

I've been tidying out my shed/workshop in preparation for all the 'work' that I will be doing :) After I cleaned out all the clutter that had accumulated, I discovered my loom will need a little tlc before I can get any making done. But new linen for the rollers, clean up any rust and possibly a new wax or varnish will bring it back to looking brand new - she says hopefully! Then I can get onto rediscovering double weave. By the time I have made the repairs, I will have had time to read up all about it and refresh my memory - nothing like a new challenge:)

This will be my weaving view out of the shed window (I had to rehouse a few spiders and clean the window first :) Can't wait till all the orange lilies and crocosmia come out in the right bed, then it will be a riot of bright colour. Jungle garden:)) Ah, a good name for a new range of dyed yarns maybe? I was meant to convert this back to grass this summer but I don't have the heart to get rid of all the lovely plants and the garden has far too many plants already to relocate them. What a shame, it'll just have to stay as it is for just a little longer, wink:)

Some beautiful inspiring displays in nature at the moment too. This is the climbing hydranga just outside the shed window, to the left. It's in a lovely sheltered spot so it should flower well again this year. I'll have to go around and take lots more detailed shots while the weather is good. I missed a lot of beautiful detail on the irises a few weeks ago as I just forgot to grab my camera and take some close-ups. Hopefully if I'm blogging more again, I'll remember to think blog, camera, photos a little more often!

Hope you are all getting a little bit of sunshine wherever you are today:)

elaine x

Blue skies

Blue skies, sunshine and the wind has died down leaving a balmy early spring day. The sun actually feels warm on your face but it's still freezing in the shade. So we took advantage of the fresh spring feeling and decided to make the most of a wind free lunchtime and ate al fresco:) Albeit with a few warm layers on ! And, you may notice - salad! - organised in pretty patterns, just because I can :) And on the ryvita is some scrummy red pepper houmous - yum! Fruit juice in the lovely dinky cherry glasses. It has a juice jug to match and they are my favourites. Nice and jolly for warm days don't you think?

Aaahh! I feel like I've come out of a long hibernation - the fresh smells, the buds on the trees, the warm sun - they are all shouting it's nearly spring!! And all this sun is making me feel energised :) Energy, I have so missed you over the bleak grey winter months. It's all lovely and cosy bundled up warm by the fire knitting or crocheting but come March, I do love the cross into spring and it makes me impatient to be out and doing.

And doing is exactly what I have been up to the last few days. I've been looking around the garden now it's kind of warm enough to stand outside for more than a few minutes and a sad sight it is to behold - weeds everywhere, flowers needing deadheading - oops! - badly overgrown shrubs and trees, fallen leaves everywhere and weeds, weeds, weeds! A bit overwhelming but the sun is out and that heartens me for the lengthy task ahead. So, instead of crocheting my circles, I've been doing a little bit in the garden over the last few days. It feels like I've been doing a lot - and my back agrees! - but there are only a few tidy patches so far.

But amongst the tidying, digging and weeding, there are little gems appearing shyly in the sun...



Primroses....



 Forsythia......



Camellia.....



All bringing some welcome colour back into the garden. I'm looking forward to seeing all these buds flower on the camellia - it will be festooned in lovely pink :) Long may the sunshine last!!

Happy dance :)

Yesterday my creative mojo returned - to my great relief! I was on such a roll at the end of January with so many ideas buzzing around my head I couldn't make samples quick enough and then.....whumph.... a dry spell. Nada, nothing, zip. Maybe I used it all up in one go:) or maybe reality intervened and demanded my attention back in the real world, but may I say - welcome back! my life has been a bit flat without you!!

So new to the ideas pool is a variation on my filigree vessel. I'm just tinkering around with different wire types and strengths to crochet around and writing copious notes and ideas as I go. I thought I'd introduce some colour into the mix as the last one was uniform white and I wanted to compare and contrast a bit. The white one didn't have a wire base either and I'm seeing a lot of 3D moulding, bending and manipulating in this one's future.

I have the perfect circle shapes, then the ovals, and once I find the best wire, some organic squidgy shapes randomly altering the circumference any way it pleases. They might all work well together, they might prefer to be just a family of squidgy shapes instead. I don't know, but that is the beauty of it - and I never get bored experimenting:)

Beginning to group them together here but need to make more before I can gauge how effective they will be. The hand dyed yarn is working well on the bigger shapes but finishes abruptly on the smaller ones as the dye repeat is too long. But that's another element to play with! I don't want it overly stripey either so maybe just a slightly shorter length of skein. Or dye two varying length skeins the same colourway and hope I remember which is which!

Righty-ho, just another 10-20 more circles to go and then I can play with the 3D manipulation. Happy, happy! x