Tag: beauty

In pictures, in progress… (updated with pattern links)

Posted on by Alice Neal

Last year, I designed a sweater I called the Vintage Chic sweater, in Paintbox yarns super chunky.

This year, I’ve reworked it for their 100% wool worsted range.

And I’m loving how it’s coming out.

Pattern to follow ❤️

Update:

I finished the adult version and then made a couple of little ones. The pattern is available in many sizes, from baby to adult. Here are some more pictures and links to the corresponding patterns.

You can find the adult version of the pattern, pictured below, here,

the child’s version, pictured below, here,

and the ‘Mummy and Me’ version, which includes both patterns as pictured below, here.

Happy knitting! x

Dots and Stripes. Dotty Stripes.

Posted on by Alice Neal

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No. This post is not about socks.

Although, I have to confess, I could gaze upon the beauty of the beauteous boot socks in perpetuity. I enjoy looking at them almost as much as I enjoy wearing them. And this very frosty northern morning, they are peeping above the tops of my boots and keeping my toes toasty. Over tights, no less. Yes. That’s how I roll.

Oh, and I enjoy wearing them almost as much as I enjoy knitting them.

But I digress.

There is of course a limit as to the number of boot socks you can possess (although as previous posts have explained – teenaged boys + washing machine + wool socks = unmitigated disaster) and I still have quite a lot of scraps of the various yarns I used for creating them.

Added to which, my wardrobe of preloved goodness has expanded this winter, and my colours are all rather autumnal.

I  needed a hat to match.

So I made one.

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After which, beloved son number 2 requested one (he has a very chilly wait at the bus stop on his way to college in the mornings).

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And I really love the colours he chose (and banana cake. And coffee).

After which, I made another one just because I could.

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(I also made the lebkuchen because they’re my favourite and the blooming shops have stopped selling them now that Christmas is over. If you love them too, go and check out this recipe. It’s really simple and they’re bloody delicious).

If you have 100g or so of aran weight wool in a few colours and fancy a spotted, dotted, striped hat of your own, you can find the pattern here. And if you do make it, give me a tag? I do love to see it!

Happy Hump Day <3

New beginnings…

Posted on by Alice Neal

As we hurtle towards the end of the year with ever-increasing, head-spinning, brain-curdling speed, and prepare to enter not just a new year but a new decade, I had a little epiphany.

Ok, epiphany may be over-egging the pudding. But the germ of an idea which I just couldn’t budge.

It’s time for me to shake things up a little, to rejig, to shift the focus of what I do, how I spend my time and how I go about things in life in general, but with no small regard to the woolly arts.

I have a Patreon account, which a few people have been kind enough to contribute to, in exchange for free access to patterns. I am giving it a bit of a rejig, so that the minimum contribution is the lowest tier of $5 a month and instead of publishing patterns, I shall put all the details up here, on my blog, of what I am making, how I have made it, the materials I have used, and the lessons I have learned along the way (all my existing patterns will, of course, still be for sale here). Naturally, I hope it goes without saying that nobody is obliged to contribute, but those who do will also receive for free all the existing patterns uploaded there, and occasional exclusive information / patterns / offers 🙂

To start us off, here is a little tea cozy I whipped up in about half an hour the other night. My husband is quite particular about his cuppa, and has a small white porcelain teapot which, until now, has been kept warm with one of the myriad knitted hats my now teenaged sons wouldn’t be caught dead in (Sigh… such is the lot of a knitting mum’s life). So he requested a tea cosy a while ago and a quiet night at the kitchen table afforded me the perfect opportunity to honour said request.

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Yarn: Paintbox wool mix super chunky.
Method (for a small teapot):

9mm circulars, magic loop method.

Cast on 32 stitches.
Knit 3 rounds of K1P1 rib, then knit around twice.
On one side of 16 stitches, knit back and forth in stocking stitch for 4 rows. Cut yarn and attach to other side and repeat 4 rows of stocking stitch on that side, then continue knitting around so you are back to knitting in the round.
Knit around 5 times.
Then decrease round 1) *knit 6, k2tog* around
2) *knit 5, k2tog* around
3) *knit 4, k2tog* around
4) *knit 3, k2tog* around
5) *knit 2, k2tog* around
6) *knit1, k2tog* around
7) *k2tog* around
Bind off and sew in ends.

Obviously, if your teapot is larger than our rather delicate, squat little thing, add a few more rounds, or a few more cast on stitches, to fit.

Happy teatime!

Next: I shall be sharing how I made this gorgeous little jumper and the hat that I am currently finishing to match it.

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Notes:

  • You can also, should you so wish, receive alerts to new posts / projects underway  etc by following me on Instagram or my Facebook page.
  • Occasionally a link will be an affiliate link, meaning that if you follow it and then make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. But please rest assured that I would not recommend or link anything I wasn’t completely delighted with myself 🙂

A Plethora of Inconsequential Nonsense

Posted on by Alice Neal

Good morning my fellow woolly friends (and of course any non-woolly ones who happen to have popped by for a visit).

I’m sitting here with a large bowl of porridge, made with coconut milk, fresh blueberries and just a little wildflower honey and all is well with the world. All children are deposited at their requisite educational establishments and Aphrodite and I have had a good ol’ stomp by the river.

Which leads me neatly to the reason for my post, really.

It’s becoming a year of new and healthy habits. Healthy not just physically, but mentally and fiscally, too. Working from home, and for myself, from a house that is in various states of ongoing repair (it was a bargain – we knew what we were taking on, but with five sons and our own businesses, it’s slow progress!) it is all too easy to prevaricate myself into a stupor. I can quite happily reach the end of the day, having squawked about like a headless chicken, and feel I have achieved almost nothing at all.

So it’s started with the walk. Every morning like clockwork, straight on from the last small person deposited at his primary school. There are so many beautiful walks around our village that there is no need to follow the same route every day, but inevitably mine takes me down to the river, by way of a field I can’t quite resist because of the several times I’ve come nose to nose with deer down there, and all the way along because of the ducklings and the swan who has just about stopped honking her distress at my presence.

Image may contain: tree, outdoor, nature and waterNo matter the time pressure of orders that need to be packed up, patterns that need writing up or planning, jewellery that needs to be finished and posted, that 60 – 90 minutes is a reset switch for body and mind. No matter how stressful the school-run time, when I’m back from that wander, I’m ZenWoman. It’s my meditation for the day (remember: “If you haven’t got time to meditate for 20 minutes a day, meditate for an hour” 😉 )

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Sometimes, my boys come too.

The newest resolution, though, is my Nothing New vow. Perhaps somewhat impulsive, but it feels right. I’m starting with a year, but I’m hoping it just sticks. Where I can make, mend or buy ‘preloved’, I vow to buy nothing new. For 365 days. (With the obvious exception of sundries like undies, right, but even socks I can make.)

The reasons for this are two-fold. The first and most important is my ever-growing distress at the excess and waste we are inflicting with alarming nonchalance on our defenceless planet. Trawl a flea market or two and you’ll find not just decent but actually very NICE stuff, which is often far better made than the tat you find new these days, with the added benefits, often, of the charm of a bygone era, and the cash you hand over not going to huge nameless corporations fuelling underpaid, zero hour, child labour somewhere we should know better not to exploit.

And, of course, it’s cheaper. Win win.

This week’s bargains are a pair of leather boots from eBay for a fiver, and a teapot that matches my recently-inherited china for 99p. Again, on eBay. Off to a flying start.

Bringing it all back to the woolly world, though, I also have a stash-mountain that would probably yarn-bomb most of my street. I wish I were kidding. And it’s good stuff. And I don’t want to get rid of it. So a happy side-aspect of this is that I need to get designing and knitting with what I already have.

(I can hear the howls of laughter as you choke on your morning coffee: “No new yarn!?” I hear you hoot. But I do have the caveat that I am allowed to make new things, which may of course eventually require some new yarn… But I’m going to TRY, OK? I’m going to TRY!)

So, coming up next is my newest pattern: a vintage-inspired cardi which can also be made as a wrapped crop. I’ve been prevaricating their writing for days, and I can prevaricate no longer – so keep your eyes peeled.

 

À toute à l’heure!

Super-Boxy Sweater

Posted on by Alice Neal

I have at long last written up my pattern for my dolphin blue chunky sweater.

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It’s a super-speedy knit and, given the fact that we had snow at the beginning of this week here oop north, you might yet get some use out of it before Spring makes its presence more permanently felt!

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It’s designed to be roomy, oversized, boxy and a ‘throw on’, and can be worn up on the shoulders, or pulled down for an off-the-shoulder look. And it’s also designed to be worn mid-hip so you can pair it with jeans or a skirt very easily, or with a long tee underneath for a layered effect.

And it’s written in two oversized sizes, in Paintbox Yarns Wool Mix Super-Chunky, in my case in dolphin blue.

You can find the pattern here, or it’s available for instant download along with a growing back catalogue which is also instantly available when you join me as a patron here.

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Sandra Dee Socks

Posted on by Alice Neal

Some time ago, I bought some beautiful Blue Faced Leicester superwash sock yarn from The Knitting Gift Shop. They’re a hop, skip and a jump from me and run by a truly lovely couple dedicated to producing as locally as possible.

But it’s taken me this long to drum up the dedication to commit to knitting and designing lacy socks and, following the success of my Dolly Socks, I decided it was time to put this beautiful stuff to work.

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(I have another skein of it waiting for me, and am currently working up the courage to try dyeing it myself, for a truly unique project – any tips or pointers for yarn-dyeing gratefully received!!)

So here they are, anyway. My Sandra Dee Socks (click the name for a link to the pattern, or check out the patreon links up at the top, for info on instant access to this, to February’s patterns, and to all future patterns):

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Happy knitting, lovelies! <3

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Dolly Socks ftw

Posted on by Alice Neal

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Anyone who follows me on Instagram will know I’ve been playing a lot with socks, chunky and fine, of late.

And one of my newest discoveries is Toast, a washable sock yarn with cashmere by Debbie Bliss.

My first foray with them produced these

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(which I will write up next 🙂 )

But before I do, I got a bit excited about this yarn’s squishy softness and the way it holds the integrity of each stitch: it was clearly a contender for a bit of lace…

So I picked up the needles and a gorgeous ball of silver yarn, and

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I didn’t need to get beyond this to know these were going to be beautiful.

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And they’re NOT boot socks. These babies deserve to be seen.

So slip them on, dig out your mary janes (my chestnut beauties are Duckfeet. You may have heard me singing their praises before), and BRING ON THE SPRING!

If you fancy knitting a pair yourself, you can find the pattern here (or check out the patreon page up at the top, for info on instant access to all future patterns).

Happy Knitting, Lovelies <3

Weekend WIPs

Posted on by Alice Neal

I’m not sure I’ll ever fall out of love with grey…

This weekend, I’m working on the fluffiest tee in the whole wide world, made on 7mm circulars from a cloudy ball of wool and alpaca:

And I’ve turned the heel on my second lacy sock, on 3.25mm needles in Debbie Bliss Toast 😊

Next up… A pair of yoga socks, I think.

Happy knitting, lovelies ❤️

A Socking Success

Posted on by Alice Neal

Could it really be my third (is it third, or is it fourth??) post on the same pattern? I guess it could. But the thing is, you see, once you’ve designed it, knitted it, written it up… then the pressure’s off and you get to play.

So, as you saw in my last post, I’ve been playing with some bold and striking combos. This grey-black gradient, with the red-orange-brown has produced something I think is rather spectacular…

You saw the first sock, last time:

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but before I post the next picture, check out the colours on those balls of wool – the point I’d got to before casting on the next.

What I think is rather spectacularly beautiful is that as striking as the first sock is, the second looks like its long-lost brother – left on a windowsill for a decade until its rediscovering has reunited it with its counterpart, still as fresh as a daisy. Whilst our windowsill sock looks like a sepia photograph of the original.

So, now that I’m done with the waxing lyrical, take a peek:

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Also, gasp in wonder at how wonderfully well they match my kitchen table. 😉

Of course, they still look awesome with my Duckfeet boots

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So… which are your favourites? I have to confess, I’m pretty hard-pushed to decide:

And, as always, if you fancy a pop at them yourself, the pattern is here.

And the yarn is here. I used colours 5 and 68 for mine.

Happy knitting! <3

Teddy’s Mittens (free pattern)

Posted on by Alice Neal

And Teddy walked to school in his mittens. Delighted. But probably mostly because of the snow.