Day One: If You Were Yarn

If you were a type or brand of yarn, which would you be? Are you a classic pure wool? Is there extra tension but a bit of bounce in you because of your high twist? Would you be more like a high-maintenance, strictly hand-wash fluffy angora or a ‘bring it on’ acrylic, bravely heading into the world of possible baby-sick laundering disasters knowing that you will always come out bright and unharmed?

Since learning to spin I have become much more aware of different types of fibres and their properties and how that changes the way in which I spin them. I have fibres that I LOVE and fibres that I will never be working with again but I've never really given much thought to whether any of them represent me in any way.

And, in fact, I still haven't given it much though because I immediately thought of one particular skein of yarn in my stash and the decision was made. It's a handspun, spun by my own fair hand, not the best example of my work but somehow just very much 'me'.

This yarn is a total mongrel, a quick sift through my Etsy receipts tells me that the batts I it was spun from contained 8 different types of fibres, some of them with multiple colours.

I think that the sheer amount of stuff in this yarn was a big reason why I immediately chose it. Like most people I am not one thing, I am a mish mash of complementary and clashing qualities that all come together to make me. The manner of spinning was also a big influence too. Essentially I just sat down at mt wheel with my batts and let them become whatever they became, no plan in mind. What I ended up with was think and thin, dull then bright, twisty then soft and strong then delicate. This means that the weight is difficult to classify and the WPI is just an average, it refuses to be pigeonholed. A bit like a lot of people I'm sure, but definitely like me. I like to look a bit different every day,wearing different styles of clothes and wearing my hair differently. I'm scruffy one day, neat the next, some days I like rainbows and bright colours other days I'm all about black and ripped jeans and studded belts. There's always eyeliner though, just like my yarn with it's 2nd ply of shiny black thread.

Like me, my yarn isn't sure what it wants to be when it grows up. The perfect pattern hasn't shown up yet but it's not stressing. I like to take each day as it comes and see where I end up, there's no master plan, I'm just going about being me and trying my best in all that I do. Maybe I'll never knit this yarn, maybe it never wants to become anything more than what it is....and I'll be completely down with that.

FO: Simplicity 1413

As promised yesterday I have an FO for you. Simplicity 1413, a simple shirt for boys and men made in delightful disco colours for Miss Cassie.

Making things for Cassie is a total joy these days, she gets so excited when I finish things for her and she wears them with such pride. She's also a total pro and recognising handmade things, she can spot a pair of handknitted socks from 29 paces, it's very impressive!

On the whole the construction of this shirt gave me very little trouble. The fabric had been hanging around in the stash for a long time so I forgot I hadn't prewashed it so the pieces all shrunk a little when I got a hot iron on them. I just made sure after the first incident of "aargh, these pieces don't match!!" that I pressed all the bits until they all shrunk and the shirt is still a little large so no harm done. Aside from that and my machine throwing a bit of a fit about sewing buttonholes through a couple of layers of fabric and interfacing it all went pretty smoothly.

I think this will be a really lovely garment for the summer and I'm sure I'll be making her another before long. The pattern is for boys so I'll be sure and pick some nice girly fabric, especially as she's going through a bit of a princess phase. I'll also put the buttons on the girl side too next time as I'm finding fastening them quite awkward.

In other news, I'm still feeling pretty rough although Felicity did do me the favour of sleeping through the night last night so I have had a good sleep. Going back to work tonight after the long weekend is going to be haaaaard though. Boo.

 

Happy Birthday to meeeee!

I actually have an FO I should really be blogging about for today, but I can't really be bothered because today is my birthday. Yay! I've actually had a miserable few days, we've all had really horrible colds so I've not really been in the mood to celebrate. I made a special effort to be more chipper today though so that we didn't just all sit around and mope for the day.

I got up sooooper early, thanks to Lissy who then promptly went back to sleep and left me wide awake so I had a couple of hours of blissful peace and quiet before everyone else got up. I made a cuppa and caught up on Mad Men and Game of Thrones whilst doing a little bit of relaxing colouring in.

This afternoon, with the girls safely out of the way with their aunts and uncle, Stu and I got some lunch, did a bit of shopping and then went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron. Datetastic!

Gift wise I feel like the luckiest lady alive right now. Stu arranged for my whole family to club together and I got an overlocker and a dress form. Due to some admin nonsense we were actually sent two dress forms and no overlockers so I'm still waiting for my new machine, but me and the new lady in my life have been getting acquainted.

I've totally eaten way too much today and I still feel really poorly, but it's been a good day and I couldn't ask for more :)

 

 

In Progress

I've got no FOs to share at the moment, so I thought I'd have a quick look at what I'm working on. Let's go!

Knitting & Crochet Blog Week VI

With only a couple of weeks to go I am in full planning mode. Last year I took a bit of a fly by the seat of my pants approach and ended up not actually finishing the whole week. To be fair to myself I had a 5 month old baby and a 2 year old so I may have been being a little optimistic about the time I could put in. This year, however, I have a bit more time to myself as the girls keep each other entertained a lot of the time and I'm back at work which gives me ample thinking time when we're not too busy. I even have a notebook. With post its in it. I mean business!

Drops 136-1 A.K.A Nathalie

This cardigan is a bit of a behemoth, but I am nearly at the point where I split the whole thing and work on the upper back and fronts separately. Working in smaller chunks will make it seem a bit more manageable and make it seem like it's going quicker, but doing the bottom part seamlessly means that there will be much less sewing up that if this had been done in pieces from the beginning. Win, win, I feel. At the moment this looks massive, but I've rechecked my gauge as I've been knitting so I'm trusting that it will be fine. Once I've got less stitches crammed on my needles I'll wrap the while thing round me, see what I've got and reassess the situation.

Simplicity 1413

I picked up this pattern recently in order to make Cassie a summer shirt and if all goes well I may consider running one up for Stu too. Nothing like matching Daddy/Daughter clothes. Not sure Stu would appreciate the fabric I've chosen for Cassie's version though!

I love it! I've a feeling this isn't going to be my neatest bit of work, but hey, it's for Cassie and she doesn't stay still long enough for anyone to notice that her collar is a little puckered.

Simplicity 1453

I bought this pattern intending to make at least the dress and the little top but I jumped straight in with the hat. It seemed like a quick little project to satisfy my need for an FO. Unfortunately pinning the hat top to the side just about did me in and this went in time out for a couple of days. Intellectually I understand that it doesn't fit together at the edges until you take seam allowance into account, but I just couldn't get it right. In the end I stopped fussing and just went ahead and sewed it without pinning and whadd'ya know I nearly had it. It took me a little bit to get into the swing of it so I had a little excess at the end and unpicked, but next time I will totally nail it.

So a few irons in the fire, but nothing unmanageable so hopefully I'll have FOs to share really soon.

 

FO: BHL Victoria Blazer

Wowee! I made a blazer! Granted this is a really simple pattern, oversized and boxy so fitting woes are minimal, only a partial lining etc, etc, but I'm really quite pleased with myself. I went off piste a little to make the lining go in a little easier and now I'm feeling super smug that my sewing skills are improving enough for me to even consider not doing exactly what the instructions tell me.

So, not only was this pretty easy I'm also mostly really happy with how it turned out. I like the style on me, I'm pretty happy with the fit and I love how it's kinda all business on the outside and party on the inside! I'm not super in love with the fact that I managed to sew the bottom of the lapels into the bottom, but by the time I realised it was too late and I know how it happened (clumsy cutting out) so I'll do better next time.

The changes I made were:

• Set the sleeves in dead last instead of before sewing in the lining
• Sewed the entire lining in by machine, turning it right way around through the armhole, instead of a gap left in the back
• Attached the lining and the shell at the armholes using an overedge stitch
• Topstitched the outer edges of collar, lapels and cuffs as my fabric didn't press too well, I think they look a bit crisper now.
• Topstitched all around the collar and lapels where they join to the jacket to stop the lining from poking out so much. Next time I'll use understitching as well to really keep that lining where it should be.

Blue Steel!

I've kind of got a bit of the blazer bug now, probably because I wore one the other day and Stu kept taking the piss out of me, so of course I now feel the need to wear ALL the blazers. I can see me making at least another one of these and I have my eye on one in jersey from Burda mag last year. Next up though is a cute little shirt for Cassie and I'm also knitting away on my DROPS Nathalie cardigan, hoping that I can finish that while it's still spring.

What's in progress?

Now that Lady Kina is finally done it's time to move on....to another cotton cardigan! I've had DROPS 136-1 otherwise known as Nathalie on my to do list for a while. I bought the yarn, DROPS Bomull-Lin, the actual recommended yarn no less, last year during a sale and it's been taking up so much room in my stash since then that it was definitely time to use it.

The pattern, being a DROPS pattern, looks a little overwhelming. Their approach to pattern writing leans towards walls of text with loads of stuff all going on at once. It's actually really straightforward once you break it all down but I highly recommend sitting down with a pen and paper and rewriting the instructions into steps that are most intuitive for you.

Sewing wise I'm currently working on a Victoria Blazer from By Hand London. I'm using some grey and pink pinstriped suiting for the shell and some slightly horrendous snakeskin shines stuff for the lining. My sister asked me why I even own that fabric and I have entirely no idea. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I sort of like the idea of it as a lining, like a secret touch of bad taste on the inside!

I'm just about to sew up the sleeves, then I need to attach the collar and lapels, insert the lining and set in the sleeves. Hopefully that will be achievable this weekend and then I'll have the perfect garment for the sunny but slightly windy weather we are having here at the moment.

 

 

FO: Lady Kina

I know, I can hardly believe it myself!  Despite feeling like I was knitting magical stitches which somehow didn't actually add any length at all, I was still using up my yarn at an alarming rate.  After finally admitting that I was going to run out quite shortly (and realising that I was quickly losing the will to keep knitting) I tried my cardigan on and decided that actually I was perfectly ok with the length it was.  Sometimes being a shortarse has it's advantages.  I probably should have done this a bit earlier because I didn't have enough yarn to make the bottom band quite as wide as it should have been and then I completely underestimated what I would need to cast off so we have yet another garment that has been bound off with completely different yarn.  Maybe I need to make it my signature design element!

After all that I'm not 100% how I feel about this cardigan.  I was sort of worried that I'd gone mad when I picked the pattern and that I wasn't going to like it at all, but that's not the case.  I like the way it looks, but I don't entirely love it, if you know what I mean?  Partly it's because I started knitting this before the Great Gallbladder Disaster of 2014 and as a result it is a bit too big for me.  I'm also not quite convinced that the gathers at the back are working in my favour.  They look nice at the front but I feel like I don't need that room around my shoulders and it's giving me a bit of a humpy looking back.

The whole thing needs a light blocking too, the front bands look sort of nibbled currently but I'm pretty sure that's nothing that can't be fixed.  Once that's done I may pass it around the ladies in my family to see if it looks better on any of them than it does on me.  I'll happily keep it and wear it, but it seems sad not to give it to someone who will love it if possible.  I find that sometimes knits are just destined for someone else, I'm sure that's not just me?

Pattern : Lady Kina by Muriela
Yarn: Drops Cotton Light and a teeeny bit of Cygnet Wool Rich Aran to cast off because DUH.