It isn’t over…
And you can find them here.
Off to make more… 😊
Author: Alice Neal
New Friends
Last week I had a few hours to kill while some very obliging gentlemen fitted a towbar to my rather tricky car. Two of my boys and I spent those hours pootling around a nearby outlet centre and I picked up a book for a couple of pounds because there was a very straightforward tank top pattern which required not too much brain power from me.
It was this book here.
And it happened to contain a rather adorable pattern for a sort of small stuffed toy in the shape of a cat. Rather too small for my liking. And rather too two-dimensional. So I selected some leftover chunky yarn, 10mm needles and got going.
When it came to assembling it, I knitted an extra panel and put it in the base to help it stand upright, and ignored their minimalist embroidered face, opting instead for button eyes, sewn nose and whiskers.
You can see from the pictures how very simple it really is:
Here he is made up:
And here he is standing on his base:
Of course, once they’d seen him, everyone wanted one. So… here he is with his next buddy:
Just another three to go! 🙂
Note: It took between 100 and 150g of chunky wool on 10mm knitting needles to make one. A great stashbuster 🙂
The Google Tunic
Or maybe the Pinterest Dress.
Call it what you will, it is essentially a sampler. A top-down, in-the-round, seamless yoke fair isle sampler. A project for me to learn about colourwork and fair isle.
As is so often the case in my life knitting, I didn’t really have a set idea about what I was making before I began. Much of what I do is intuitive, experimental and heart-in-mouth-will-it-fit? It is also a smaller gauge and therefore longer knit than I am used to. I like to use Aran or chunky because I get impatient and want to move onto the next thing, as evidenced by the fact that many of my previous posts showcase items I began after this tunic and finished well before it was complete.
This dress began with the optimistic working title “Spring Tunic”. We’re now well on the way through summer. See? 🙂
It began as it usually does: with a clearance section on a wool website. I trawl them too often, looking for the bargains. I have one stipulation: natural fibres. And I usually stick to it 😉
I found Sublime baby cotton kapok dk. I don’t usually knit with cotton. But I was working on the premise that knitting (and crochet) being something I love, I don’t want to only do it in the autumn and winter, and there must be pretty knitwear for the rest of the year.
Rather than babbling on about it any more, here is the sampler tunic, finished with crochet around the hem and sleeves: a progression in pictures:
Now… Back to the million-and-one other UFOs on my list..!
The Split Poncho
Hello strangers 🙂
OK, so we know about the Ponchette, right? And that you can now make it for yourselves? If you visit here, I wrote the pattern up at Black Sheep Wools’ request and it is available as a free download on their website.
But the thing is, I have a nipper I struggle to keep up with. And ponchos always leave me a little restricted in the arm department, so this needed some thought.
Here it is in pictures and I just might, at some stage, write it up so you can have a go too 🙂
I have a couple of crochet blankets on the go, too – so more anon!
Hope all is well in your woolly worlds <3
A Spring Scarf in Natural Wool
OK, so the spring scarf I mentioned last time? It’s finally finished. Here it is, being modelled by… well, me.
First things first. The materials used were:
1) a 2.5mm crochet hook, and
2) three different colours of natural, undyed wool.
The palest I bought on eBay many moons ago and no longer remember from whom. But the two darker ones are from The Knitting Gift Shop, which is owned and run by the gentleman who also owns the printing company that does all the printing for our own beard oil company, and his wife. Yes, that’s a bit convoluted. But I’m glad to know them – apart from the wonderful job they do with our printing, their wools are all locally sourced, fabulous quality and reasonably priced. And I loved working with them (and no – I’m not on commission!) 🙂
So, onto the construction.
It started with the Japanese flower.
This is a free pattern and there are many blogs (mine too, now) that tell you how to make it. I saw it, made it, loved it. And then worked out how to join the motifs, and then decided on a scarf.
So this is how it works (UK terms):
Chain 6 and join into a circle with a slip stitch in the first chain.
round1: Chain 3 (counts as one double crochet) and make 11 double crochets into the ring, for 12 in total. Slip stitch into the first ‘chain 3’.
round 2: Chain 5, then into each gap in the circle, make one double crochet followed by a chain 2. You will have 12 loops all the way around. Join with a slip stitch into the first ‘chain 5’.
round 3: chain 3 (counts as one double crochet) and make three more double crochets into the first 2-chain gap. Into all the remaining 2-chain gaps, make four double crochets.
round 4: *chain 5, miss 2 double crochets and make a slip stitch into the third. Slip stitch into the next** repeat from * to ** all the way around. Slip stitch into the previous round. These loops are the beginnings of the petals.
round 5: make 8 double crochets into each of the loops, with a slip stitch into the last round between each petal.
Done!
So, the next task (other than the ever-taxing weaving in of the ends) is to join them. For this, I made the next flower up to the end of the 4th round. Then I made 10 petals. For the 11th and 12th petals, I made the first four double crochets, put my hook behind the fourth or fifth double crochet of a petal on the back of the first flower, drew the yarn through it, and continued on with the next four. I repeated the process on the next petal and we have a join.
You can see the construction of the scarf very clearly in the above picture. They are all joined to at least one flower by two petals, and if you join as you go along (you can use this picture for reference) it makes the whole thing much easier than trying to figure a way to do it all afterwards.
It’s an incredibly portable project, too, so you can bundle it into a small bag for the car, bus, queue, waiting room… or in this case beach 🙂
Finally, the blocking. I’m not sure how useful this was really since the flowers are intrinsically quite flat and the petals designed to curl up a little. But I’ve just got these blocking mats and pins and, frankly, I still get a bit excited about using them. So I did 🙂
And ta-dah! That’s it!
If you fancy giving it a go, and my explanations are a little too woolly, or assume too much knowledge, or… whatever difficulty you might stumble across, I’m more than happy to attempt a better explanation or answer any questions – just holler 🙂
In other news, I have a bit of a plan for a lot more of these,
but you’ll have to watch this space 😉
Upcycling the Godets
It started with a tunic, crocheted in chunky brown wool, which was never quite right.
I frogged it. Reused the yarn in other projects. Was relieved it hadn’t been wasted.
But I was left with these:
My mother-in-law tells me they’re called godets: triangular-shaped pieces used for ‘letting out’ or shaping garments. I made two for a long denim skirt to enable me to take longer steps, for example. These two, which didn’t look right in a tunic that no longer existed… What to do?
And then it hit me.
I had reached this stage last evening, modelled by Ted (3):
And by bedtime, it looked like this:
Here, it is modelled by Bert (7):
I crocheted two sides together in an unobtrusive colour to provide the less visible bottom seam, then used the beige chunky wool to crochet the other side, around the brim, and to make a huge pompom.
I’m glad not to have frogged the godets.
In other news, this scarf is almost finished, and when it is, I’ll share its construction:
And we had a beautifully creative Easter Sunday afternoon – our first egg-dyeing eggsperiment 😉
Toodle-pip for now ❤️
A teeny tiny embellishment
I bought myself some clogs.
I have some brown ones already, from Schuh, and I live in them come spring and summer.
But I wanted some black / grey ones. My wardrobe palette seems to be autumn browns and beiges, or blacks and greys just now.
I found these, charcoal grey felt from Birkenstock:
But they felt a little plain, a little too unisex. They needed embellishing.
I had a spark of an idea, which began here:
A very fine, natural undyed wool. A teeny granny square. But it still wasn’t quite right. Too angular. I wanted softer.
It ended here:
with the teeniest tiniest of crochet hearts. Sometimes, it’s the littlest things 🙂
In other news, my hook is back on this Spring Scarf project:
Spring Tulips Sleeveless Sweater
Or tank top. Or vest. It’s difficult to know what people call them these days, as searching for any of those terms can bring up such a variety of garments, including waistcoats and cardigans…. I thought a vest was a sleeveless t-shirt you wore under your top when the weather turned chilly.
To me, it’s a tank top. Although I do accept that it isn’t a very delicate or romantic term.
Anyway, here’s the story:
I’m a mum. I have five children. I run my own business. I don’t often need to dress particularly formally. But occasionally, just occasionally, I do. I wanted a slipover – there’s another word for it! – an extra layer to go over a shirt when I wear smart trousers.
I chose a beautiful yarn – Drops Lima, which is a wool/alpaca blend – in grey. It may have been dark grey, or charcoal. Here it is:
I didn’t have a pattern. I figured, how hard can it be? *cough* and in my usual rather-too-gungho fashion, I embarked.
On 4mm circular needles, I cast on 176 stitches. Not sure why. I’d like to say it’s because I had worked out my gauge, measured my size and done the calculations, but it isn’t. I suspect it is because a similar jumper in a similar yarn on similar needles required the same number of stitches. And I knitted 5 rows of rib.
Then I rounded the number up to 180 stitches, making four at relatively equidistant intervals around the row.
Then I got knitting.
And knitting.
And knitting.
And, after all the fair isle I’ve been doing lately, I got really bored.
So I googled fair isle patterns and came up with a google image of a flower. And guess what! It had 9 stitches across, which meant I could do exactly 20 repeats without altering anything. So I ordered a couple of balls of the same yarn in contrasting colours – an off-white and an ice blue – and put a fair isle strip in there.
Then, I was faced with the shaping. I found a wonderful resource on YouTube. She is far more organised, methodical and scientific than I, and I watched her like a good little student and then forgot it all and did it my way, incorporating some of the lessons she had managed to make stick in my memory. You can find her here with her lesson on shoulder shaping. I also watched her v-neck shaping videos, did my own rather slapdash workings out, and got cracking. One of the most useful things I picked up was the tip to knit both sides at once, using two separate balls of wool. Genius! Then you can’t go wrong 🙂 (in theory…)
When I had done front and back keeping all the stitches live on waste yarn, knitted my short rows (for the very first time!) to shape the shoulders, and front and back had reached the same height, I turned the top inside out and fused them using the three needle bind-off.
I hadn’t made the v neck quite deep enough for my liking, so ribbing the neck was going to be a problem. I decided on a row of crochet in the grey followed by a row in the contrasting off-white which rather neatly echoed the edges of the colour join I had chosen before the tulips.
Same around the armholes and ta-dah! We have a v neck. Blocking (on my new Knitpro blocking squares which I love):
And the finished result.
I am wearing it as we speak 🙂
In other news, I have picked up an old WIP and am determined to finish it. My stashbuster crochet blanket:
And finally, I’ve been given a rather fabulous camera, so the very first finished object I ever made – a crochet camera strap – has had new life breathed into it:
And look – it takes lovely pictures!
The Sweater of Many Random Stripes
Ooh, I’ve had fun with this one!
Having done a couple of top-down, seamless yoke jumpers and been thrilled with the results, I was in danger of creating an entire wardrobe of very similar jumpers for myself – I tend to knit for myself until I have mastered it, at which point I feel more comfortable about giving things away or selling them.
So I embarked on a bottom-up jumper instead.
I used Drops Andes in a beige and a brown. It is the same as I used for this jumper, which until now was my stand-out favourite. And, clearly, I massively over-ordered on the yarn (*blush* “Hello, my name’s Alice. I am a yarn-addict”) I believe this jumper took around 6 x 100g balls.
100 sts on 8mm circular needles.
Random stripes begun
I cast on 100 stitches to an 8mm circular needle and knitted stripes willy-nilly until I reached a length long enough to reach my armpit from mid-hip. I purposely didn’t knit rib around the bottom as I had a vague notion to crochet a border around the bottom and cuffs.
I then embarked on the sleeves: 26sts on double pointed needles, increasing gradually to 34 by the time I reached the armpit. For example, I made a stitch at rows 11 and 13, then a couple more at around elbow level, and four more gradually on the way up to the top. I kept a note of where I increased so that I could recreate it for the second sleeve. I made the sleeve around 14 rows longer than the jumper body: I have long arms and hate when my wrists are bare in the winter!
I then put 6 sts at each side of the jumper body onto waste yarn, and 6 stitches of each sleeve onto waste yarn, too. They will be knitted together using the 3 needle bind-off at the end.
Then comes knitting across the body to the waste yarn, (place a marker), knitting the live stitches from the first sleeve onto the circular needle up to the sleeve’s waste yarn, (place a marker) knitting across the back of the jumper and repeating with the second sleeve. At the end of the second sleeve, you have your new row beginning.
I then knitted two rows before beginning the raglan decreases which, when you have the hang of them, are really quite simple. Two things to remember: Every other row is just a knit around, and use markers!
Every decrease row involves slipping the two stitches before the marker onto the right needle and knitting through them with the left needle. Then, after the marker, knit two together. So much easier in practice than it sounds!!
Then, basically, knit till you have the size neck you require. You can stop decreasing and switch to rib for a big chunky roll neck, or end up with something more boat-neck like mine.
Once finished, and all ends woven in, I crocheted three rows around the bottom, using a *single crochet, chain 1* pattern, crocheting into the spaces on subsequent rounds, and just a single row of the same around the cuffs. And ta-dah! No curling!!
I haven’t taken it off yet:
I must now attend to my severely neglected works in progress children 😉
These two, amongst others, are still on the needles:
Until the next time.
And if anybody fancies attempting the jumper, and I can help at all, please shout! <3
A Spring Scarf
The sun is shining and my mood is appropriately springy.
Yes, it’s in the air! At last! Emerging from the cold and snowy wardrobe, blinking into the light. Hurrah!
And to celebrate, here is a scarf I’ve oh-so-nearly finished. I suspect it may be the start of something as my head is whirring with ideas and I don’t feel I’m anywhere near the end of this particular new obsession 😉 It is worked with Louisa Harding ‘Ianthe’ which is 50% cotton and 50% merino wool, beautifully soft but also wonderfully sturdy.
So, without further ado, here it is in pictures:
But I’d better get on with one of the other 105 projects I have on the go 😉