Knitting.

So sorry it has taken me such a time to add another post to my Blog. Since my last post, I have been busily knitting my cardigan. To start with, I ended up unravelling the back - I'd found a really silly mistake! Typical!! I had not started the back as instructed. It should have had four rows of garter stitch, but I had knitted four rows of stocking stitch. So now I have got the back completed once more, finished the left front and started the right front.
The photo shows where I have got to on the right front. The pattern beneath is the cardigan I am making. The design is called "Heath". A rather different style for me, but I am looking forward to being able to wear it.



Getting all this done, I made the decision to rip back all the part-knitted cardigan. It makes far more sense to do this since I cannot see myself actually wearing that cardigan should I ever get round to finishing it. There is a rather nice tunic-style summer top in the Jaegar book, so I shall

start that garment after finishing "Heath".

My knitting bag - a Vogue pattern - V7887, it has been made out of an odd piece of upholstery fabric from my stash. The lining is an offcut of curtain lining again from my fabric stash.The pattern is for a gardeners bag, but it makes for a wonderful knitters bag too! Eight pockets round the outside and oodles of space inside. You can just see the part-knitted cardigan which I still have to rip back. The still unfinished Black, White and Red quilt adorns the back of the chair my bag is sitting on.

Tomorrow evening I shall be able to get on with completing my little bowl. It currently sits on this desk with me. I can barely wait to try adding the stiffening liquid. It will be so interesting to see what happens next..........

Knitting and bowl.

I've been busy doing the Textiles course again. This time I have made a small bowl. This has been made using tiny scraps of fabric held together with dissolvable fabric and plenty of free-machine embroidery.


The bowl started off as a flat circle which, after some stitching, had slits cut from the edge into the centre. This was then pinned with the sides slightly overlapping to form a bowl shape.

This just awaits soaking in water and then in a liquid called "Stiffy" which is a stiffening solution. This will ensure that the bowl remains rigid. Sadly this will have to wait for two weeks since there is a Bank Holiday (National holiday - May Day) on Monday and so the course will not be running that night.


This process is probably one I shall try again, since there are so many possibilities available -forming a wide variety of different stiffened shapes.

This is a view taken of the top surface of the bowl.

This is the upturned bowl - a view of the underside.

The side view - it looks a bit lopsided. Whoops!

I shall wait and see how the bowl turns out before searching out this liquid.

Has any one else had a go with this type of idea? Which stiffeners did you find worked the best? I'd be very interested to hear your suggestions and recommendations.

I managed to get my scarves completed with all the ends sewn in. Then started on the new cardigan. I mentioned buying the wool in my last post. Its Rowan Tapestry. The yarn is gorgeous to knit with. Really soft on the fingers. However, because it is so soft it is a bit of pest to work with when needing to rip back..... But oh, I look forward to being able to wear the finished item. I hope that I can finish it before the weather becomes too hot.

Work on WISPs.

Well, this week I have managed to continue work on the Black, Red and White quilt. This time I have got to the stage of sewing all the twelve blocks together complete with the sashing between them.

The photo above gives an idea of the work so far. I have still to complete all the edging. I have plans for borders in both red and black on this side. This would probably need a thin strip of white otherwise it would look too dark and dull.

This is the reverse side of the quilt, showing the sashing around all the blocks. Here the border will be green and black with a thin strip of a pale colour. At this stage, I am not sure whether the thin strip would look better as a plain colour or as a stripe of the different colours used in the blocks. I need to live with this for a few days before deciding. The green shown in the photo above does not look as if it matches. In life it is really a darker shade of the small pale green square at the top left hand side of each of the blocks.

I fell for this yarn yesterday when I went to get some embroidery cottons for an embroidery project. Its fatal going into a shop which also sells wool, I just can't resist looking at all the yarns available at the moment.

This yarn is interesting, it is one of the Rowan range, and each of the colourways is variegated. It feels gorgeous, slightly fluffy and really soft. What fascinates me is that it is made from a mixture of 70% wool and 30% Soybean protein fibre. This particular colour ranges from a creamy beige to a mid brown. I can hardly wait to get started, but I have decided I really should get the ends on my scarves sewn up first.

Completed scarf.

Well, I have now completed the purple scarf that I mentioned starting in my last post. The photo shows it draped around Aggie's shoulders. Aggie is also wearing the purple jacket I made last year.

I have also been working on the Black, Red and White quilt. (Last posted in November!) This was the Block of the Month quilt which I worked on last year and is one of my current WISPs (Works in Slow Progress). I have finally completed the quilting and am in the process of stitching all the pieces together. Photos will have to wait until next time - its prickly with pins at the moment waiting for me to stitch the four lines of three blocks together.

Two scarves.

Its the wrong time of year to be making scarves - Spring has definitely arrived in England. However, I found myself completing scarves this week. The first to be completed was the felt scarf. This was started earlier in the year as part of the Adult Education Textiles course at Sir John Deanes Sixth Form College. I am still not certain whether or not I should add a deep fringe to the short edges. It will be left draped around Aggie's shoulders until I finally decide. Aggie is my tailor's dummy and is a very useful aid at times like these.

The first two photos - above, show details of the completed free machine embroidery just before I soaked off the Madeira Avalon ( water soluble fabric). At this stage, I had pinned it to some plastic foam ready for soaking in the bath.

The next two photos show the completed scarf after it had dried, sitting draped around Aggie's shoulders. The second of the photographs shows a detail of the scarf and the fabric scraps I had trapped in the stitching.

My last post about the same scarf can be found here:

http://crazydaisytime.blogspot.com/2007/03/scarf.html

The last photograph shows the completed knitted scarf, shown draped around Aggie's shoulders. I now need to knit an edging all around the scarf to even up the shape and sew in all the ends. There are not many of these since I knitted all the pieces together as I went along rather than sewing them together. It will be a really cosy scarf for next winter - it feels so gorgeously luxurious!

It has knitted up really quickly - this is my original post:
http://crazydaisytime.blogspot.com/2007/04/knitting.html

I have definitely caught the knitting bug again - I have already started knitting a very simple purple scarf to go with a jacket I made for myself last year. Madness. Still, if I don't buy any more wool, I shall then have to get on with the unfinished cardigan..........

Band Robin

I promised a couple of weeks ago that I would post photos of some stitching I recently completed. This is for a Round Robin.





The piece you see here is Margaret's Band Robin. She has stitched the glorious tulips which are at the top. I have added the amaryllis design beneath. You may recall the photos of the amaryllis from an earlier entry to the Blog.

This second photograph shows some of the detail of the stitching and the beading. The threads I have used are YLI silk, whilst the beads are Mill Hill small bugle beads. The colours are more accurate in the top picture.

The following pictures show my own Band, currently in the USA. I have used YLI Jeans Stitch on 28 count fabric. The background is a mottled blue. The fabric was purchased rather than dyed by myself... perhaps something else to try one day. The booklet is travelling round with my embroidery.

Knitting

I must be mad, but I've started knitting again..........

I found myself listening to a really interesting podcast by a male knitter from Australia:

http://www.sticksandstring.com.au/

Its well worth a listen.

Unfortunately, I have now got back into knitting once more. For me knitting is addictive, once I start I cannot stop until I run out of wool or finish the project.

I do have one knitting UFO (UnFinished Object). This was started a couple of years ago. Its a Jaegar pattern called "Hattie" and should have been a cardigan rather a long time ago. The yarn is Jaegar Trinity in a shade I would call light jade.

I got bored, so didn't finish it. I got to half way up the right front, having completed the back and left front. One day I shall get back to it.

I don't know what I am knitting at the moment, at present it is a collection of 4" squares which I shall probably knit or crotchet together to make either a scarf or a shawl. I'm making it up as I go along......... The yarn is the polyester yarn shown at the top, alongside some of the completed squares.

One thing that has got me really thinking is the idea of going green - using more ecologically sensitive yarns, threads and the like. This was the topic of one part of David's podcast (http://www.sticksandstring.com.au/) today. Neither of the yarns I have could be called green. One is polyester and the Jaegar Trinity uses silk, cotton and polyamide! I think I have rather a long way to go before I can consider myself truly green.