Tag: handmade

Jumper Season – WHOOP!

Posted on by Alice Neal

I know, I know, knitting isn’t just for autumn and winter, but I really do struggle to knit big bulky things all year round. I love to wear big bulky things though, and this Autumn has got me really excited because it was only in Spring that I taught myself to knit jumpers. And by then it was kind of too warm to wear them.

I bought myself some wool 🙂

2Andes1It’s the same lovely stuff as my last jumpers, but breaking out of the earthy colour mold – just as a little refresher, you understand 🙂

However, I also had some left over from this little chap:

Owl3which I figured would make a rather nice jumper for my littlest. I’ve come to the end of the ball and have had to order a bit more (I know – shucks – buying wool… what a nightmare! 😉 ) I’ve chosen a top-down, seamless yoke method which, given the small size, started out on DPNs and progressed to circular needles when there were enough stitches.

So, here it is in progress (excuse the dodgy phone pics):

Ted1Starting out on double pointed needles.

Ted2Bringing in some stripes and separating the arms stitches out and onto waste yarn.

Ted3Another little flash of pattern.

Ted4Trying not to stamp my feet that I didn’t have quite enough wool 😉

I’ll be back, though <3

The nights are drawing in… ;)

Posted on by Alice Neal

I know, I know, not quite.

But it’s definitely a bit nippier than it has been.

And that Cuddle Cat thing? Well it’s just got dinkier, and snugglier.

It started with some divine DK in natural, undyed, pure Jacob wool from The Knitting Gift Shop, who are specialising in such wools and in kits and accessories, too. Well worth a look if, like me, your weakness is undyed, natural, knee-wobbling pure wool.

And suddenly, what I have is a pocket-sized pussy cat with a stuffed head, button eyes, wool-embellished features, and a button at the bottom. In the middle? I’ve sewn a little calico pouch and filled it with washed and graded wheat, and aromatic lavender heads. To be microwaved and popped in the Pusscat’s tum.

Perfect for your pockets in autumn, or your boots before you put them on in winter, or your pillow for a gentle drift to sleep.

Anyway, here he is. Take a look 🙂

Pocket-Puss Pocket-Puss2 Pocket-Puss3 Pocket-Puss4 Pocket-Puss5And if you’d prefer me to make him for you, come and ask me over here.

 

New Friends

Posted on by Alice Neal

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:

CuddleCat1

Here he is made up:

CuddleCat3And here he is standing on his base:

CuddleCat2Of course, once they’d seen him, everyone wanted one. So… here he is with his next buddy:

CuddleCat4CuddleCat5Just 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

Posted on by Alice Neal

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:

pinterest-tunic7
An example of one of the charts I googled

pinterest-tunic3pinterest-tunic5pinterest-tunic9pinterest-tunic10pinterest-tunic-11pinterest-tunic12pinterest-tunic-2-squarepinterest-tunic4Pinterest-Tunic

Now… Back to the million-and-one other UFOs on my list..!

 

The Split Poncho

Posted on by Alice Neal

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 🙂

splitponcho7splitponcho6splitponcho5splitponcho4splitponcho3splitponcho2splitponcho1I 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

Posted on by Alice Neal

OK, so the spring scarf I mentioned last time? It’s finally finished. Here it is, being modelled by… well, me.

The finished article in its rightful place
The finished article in its rightful place

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.

Making the petals
Making the petals – you can see all the loops around the circle, and the first three petals of round 5 complete.

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.

Joined at two petals.
Joined at two petals.
Joining in rows
Joining in rows

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.

Coming along nicely
Coming along nicely – don’t be fooled! It’s still a scarf, just folded in this picture.
I took it everywhere
I took it everywhere

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 🙂

neutrals3
Almost finished.
Finished and blocking
Finished and blocking

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 what will it be?!
But what will it be?!

but you’ll have to watch this space 😉

Upcycling the Godets

Posted on by Alice Neal

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:

20140424-130944.jpg

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):

20140424-131219.jpg

And by bedtime, it looked like this:

20140424-131311.jpg

Here, it is modelled by Bert (7):

20140424-131349.jpg

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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:

20140424-131639.jpg

And we had a beautifully creative Easter Sunday afternoon – our first egg-dyeing eggsperiment 😉

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Toodle-pip for now ❤️

A teeny tiny embellishment

Posted on by Alice Neal

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:

20140412-065538.jpg

But they felt a little plain, a little too unisex. They needed embellishing.

I had a spark of an idea, which began here:

20140412-071625.jpg

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:

20140412-065928.jpg

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:

20140412-070835.jpg

The Sweater of Many Random Stripes

Posted on by Alice Neal

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.

Drops Andes 100 sts on 8mm circular needles. Random stripes begun
Drops Andes
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.

Body almost done
Body almost done

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!

Sleeve underway
Sleeve underway
Body and sleeve
Body and sleeve
One sleeve complete. The second started.
One sleeve complete. The second started.

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.

All on one needle.
All on one needle.

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!!

The raglan sleeves!
The raglan sleeves!

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!!

The finished article!
The finished article!

I haven’t taken it off yet:

Taken by my son
Taken by my son
Tricky mirror 'selfie'
Tricky mirror ‘selfie’

I must now attend to my severely neglected works in progress children 😉

These two, amongst others, are still on the needles:

Cotton fair-isle for spring / summer
Cotton fair-isle for spring / summer
Wool / alpaca tank top.
Wool / alpaca tank top.

Until the next time.

And if anybody fancies attempting the jumper, and I can help at all, please shout! <3