Upcoming sewing?

I haven't completed or worked on anything for awhile, having been busy busy.

However, I do have it in mind to make some quilted kitchen appliance covers to protect the Shiny. Watch this space...

tangerine trees

In lieu of posting a photo of the hat I just finished (which, as a gift, will remain unpictured until received), here is a tiny practice swatch of continental knitting. As you'll see by the poor quality, I need to practice this more (yep, a facecloth is in progress). It's great, though, when you're constantly switching between knit and purl in a pattern, or doing masses of stockinette in the round. I'd like to master it before starting an entirely ribbed hat.

I learned to do this from a YouTube video (safer than skydiving). The lady who did the demo is teaching a class at UK Knit Camp in August - I'd love to go and get guidance (why is tension so troublesome?) but I can't. Anyway: behold!





I wonder if other knitters have lurid sale yarn for practicing new techniques with. I just can't bring myself to use anything I'd actually want for a project. And the crispness of this cotton makes mistakes very obvious, which I guess is a good thing.

So, onward. In addition to the continental washcloth, I've resumed work on the unnamed evil item from wintertime. I'm not at all sure I should have two such troublesome projects on the go at the same time!

When they're finished, next in the queue are:

- a scarf to match the hat just finished

- a warmer hat with earflaps

- a ribbed hat for the husband

- two undecided Christmas presents for my sisters in law, using a super merino-silk blend. mmm.

- amigurumi Christmas ornaments. fun!

Moar yarn!

I'm noticing a trend... I can buy yarn faster than I can turn it into things. Yesterday I found some beautiful wool/silk blend in jewel tones and bought it for top secret Christmas presents. I figure if I start now there's a small chance they'll be done in time!

In other news, still no new finished items to report...

Lack of updates

Due to recent events, I haven't been crafting much. I made a striped blue crochet TP cover for my mom, but forgot to take a photo. Oops.

The list of outstanding projects hasn't changed, although I am toying with the idea of making myself a cabled headband and possibly a mesh shopping bag. We'll see.

Frankenbun

I think this is possibly the worst-assembled Easter bunny ever. The arms, legs and head all point in different directions, one leg is too short, and the face is dreadful. I feel sorry for the little girl who's getting this!

It's a bunny in footed pyjamas, which is why it's mostly purple. A really cute idea. The execution, not so much.

Slow going

I haven't been crafting much but I have been naughty and bought Neat Stuff.

I am 2/3 of the way through a crochet pram toy. I have made seaweed, the handle ring and dangly strings to hold fishes. Now I must make the fishes. I regularly debate with myself over whether fishes really need faces, as I find putting eyes and mouths on a chore.

I am halfway through the first hat (see below) for my stepdad. I had a break while dreading changing colours but did so yesterday and am now making good progress.

The Project Which Shall Not Be Named is still lurking. I have some new needles (see below) that should help.

Now, the naughty list...

I bagged a bargain on eBay; I got several sets of very chunky knitting needles from a store closure.

A company called Denise makes crochet/knitting sets - interchangeable tips that attach to various lengths of cord - which I have obtained. These are apparently airline-safe, too, which is nice. The uses are too many to list here but they will come in handy.

I also bought a huge collection (17 different sized sets) of double pointed bamboo needles from China (on eBay, direct from the factory), the right length for socks/mittens or the tops of hats. These were sooo cheap and came really quickly. I will definitely buy this way again for bamboo, the price difference is incredible. A 5-needle set in the UK may cost £3-4 with little choice of lengths/materials available, 17 of these sets cost me £14 including shipping. There's no contest really.

I bought more yarn... I have some lovely fat merino wool to make a second, bulkier hat for my stepdad for use in colder weather. I'm looking forward to knitting this, it should go very quickly due to the size of the yarn/needles. I also bought other yarns... mumble mumble...

So, hopefully I'll soon have some finished products to report on!

Washcloth

It's hard to photograph a knitted washcloth to its best advantage.

Today I was too sick to do anything useful, so I decided to knit a mercerised cotton facecloth and try out some new techniques. You can't see it too well, but I did a picot bind off on the bottom edge. The stitch pattern is a subtly textured stocking stitch and the four quarters alternate which side is the 'right' side. There's a garter stitch border all around to stop it curling up.

Apparently once you've washed your face with a hand-knitted cloth you'll never go back. We'll see!

Projects

Due to a combination of factors, including cold/flu season kicking my butt and getting stuck midway through a garment that isn't much fun to make, I haven't been doing much. However, I must press on and finish the aforementioned evil item so I can make something else! Added to the list of things to do:

Some TP covers for my mom

A hat and scarf for my stepdad, so his poor ears don't freeze

Socks for me! I got some sock books and am going to learn to knit nice fuzzy sleep socks

Some dangling fish/bird/flower toys for a certain very young lady of my acquaintance - these can be attached to a car seat/pram handle or hung from one of those baby play mat arches

This is in addition to the things left undone from my previous list. Maybe I should make a future-dated post (so it stays at the top) and keep a master list there.

Gadget fun

As an early Valentines Day present, I got a yarn ball winder and yarn swift. This is great for winding yarn into center-pull balls out of long skeins or a pile of yarn from something you crochet and then pull out. And it's fun! There are videos on Youtube for the curious. Whee!

World's tiniest afghan

I recently got a bunch of Vanna White's afghan books and wanted to try out one of the patterns, but didn't fancy making a fullsized one, so I made this teeny tiny version instead. The stitches are fullsized, there's just fewer of them. It's about 10 inches long and was hard to get a good photo of! The main pattern is single crochet with decorative twists on the right side, and the edging is picot on top of a mesh row.

Pom pom pom

I don't think I mentioned before, I am having entirely too much fun making pom poms with my pom pom makers. Even if an item has no pom poms, I make a little one to tie the fabric care label on with. What fun! Pom pom pom!

Teeny teddy bear

This little bear doesn't photograph well, but he's done. Sitting down he's just a bit over 3 inches tall. A tiny bear for a tiny baby!

Baby Jayne Cobb hat

This crochet beanie is my homage to the hat made for Jayne Cobb in Firefly by his Ma. I made a few adaptations due to its intended recipient being around 3 months old.

Turniphead hat

I decided to make the turniphead hat in 3-6 month size. It's a mix of two patterns - the hat is knit from one book and the topping crocheted from another.

As I was making it, I was a little unsure about the yarn choice, but I think it works with the fluffy top.

If I use the hat pattern again, I think I'll cut out a bunch of the straight rows, as this hat is much taller/longer than it looks in the photo (the brim is rolled up more than recommended). I won't know whether the size around the head is right until the recipient can try it on, and have included a length of yarn so her mum can roll the brim as needed and secure it in the right position.

HWB flower

I had a tiny bit of yarn left... just enough to give the HWB cover a little corsage. ;)

HWB cover, redux

I crocheted around the edge, since sewing up badly knitted dark variagated yarn seemed like a bad plan. ;)

Still not perfect, but no longer makes me gnash my teeth when I look at it!

What next?

I'm currently torn between a few projects I'd like to start. I don't like to have more than one thing on the go as with my space cadet brain I tend to lose track of what's going on. The candidates are:

• A little deep-orange amigurumi bear for the tiny baby of a friend
• A garter-stitch-squares blanket for the same baby
• A simple little hat for the same baby
• Some purple booties for, yes, the same baby (what is it with babies and wanting to knit?)
• A rainbow scarf and mittens (in gorgeous Mini Mochi wool) for me, me, me!
• A little purple amigurumi hippo for a friend at work who is hippo-mad

I also have recently bought wool for some other projects, but they're not grabbing me as much at the moment:

• A hot water bottle cover for D - just can't face this so close on the heels of the last one!
• A flower scarf for an as-yet undetermined recipient
• A non-flower scarf for another as-yet undetermined recipient
• A spanish square afghan - I made one spanish square and am trying to decide if the end result will be worth it
  

Things I want to make but haven't got materials for yet:

• Lamb toilet roll covers for friends/family for Easter
• Christmas mouse (and possibly Christmas cracker) ornaments, also for friends/family for Christmas
• Amigurumi kit for a friend
• Crochet hook and knitting needle cases for myself

I also have a deep longing to make some afghans when my new big hooks arrive from Purplelinda.

Before I do anything, though, I need to suck it up and fix my hot water bottle cover sewing. It really is dreadful.

Knitted hot water bottle cover

I've always thought that I should be able to knit. You can make a lot of nice things with knitting, and it's suited to things that crochet really isn't by virtue of being stretchier and thinner. So I got a copy of Knitty Gritty by Aneeta Patel and proceeded to learn. Yes, you CAN learn out of a book, if you pick the right book.

I started on the Chunky Scarf, but my heart wasn't in it. I have a lot of scarves already, and I'm not too keen on the chunky style. So I decided to forge my own path and jump into making the Hot Water Bottle Cover instead. Like every other human on the planet, my motivation is vastly increased when I am interested in the outcome of my endeavours.

As a first project, I think it didn't go too badly. My tension was VERY tight for the first half of the first side, which means that both sides are not equally sized or quite the same shape. I can live with that, though, as an improvement is evident. Funnily enough, I read a knitting mystery recommended by someone in my book group (Knit One Kill Two by Maggie Sefton) and it was reading about the heroine's struggle to learn to knit that clued me in that my stitches shouldn't be so tight on the needles that I had to forcibly shove them along. This was one thing that Knitty Gritty neglected to mention. ;)

Where I did go wrong was with the sewing up. I have very good instructions for sewing up, but I was so pleased at finishing the knitting that I just dived in and wrecked the poor thing. My cack-handed attempt at blanket stitching isn't too noticable on the moss stitch section, but is dreadful on the stocking stitche edges, both the one where I did it on the inside and the one where I did it on the outside. Just dreadful. I think my next step is going to be trying to rip it out without destroying the knitted part and trying to crochet the edges together. I should practice proper sewing up, but another thing I only started halfway through the first side was a tip I got from a knitting magazine: always make your first and last stitch of any row a knit stitch to give you a nice bar for sewing up with.

As a friend pointed out, at least the hot water bottle fits inside it. That's a definite plus. ;) And I do like the buttons that D. (always a trooper when it comes to going into shops to buy things he doesn't know anything about) picked out for it. :)

Anyway, here it is. The lighting's not very good and when I've re-attached it to itself I'll try to take a better picture!

Amigurumi snowman

A dear friend of mine has a little baby who was unfortunate enough to be in hospital just before Christmas. They returned home just before the holidays and so I cranked this out the evening before Christmas Eve as a cheerful little present.

As always, there as aspects I'm not happy with (I didn't attach the arms in the best positions, so he's sort of a stop-don't-shoot! snowman) but I think he turned out cute and they seemed to like him. :) And he was the start of my whee-amigurumi-is-fun craze, so all due credit to him for that. ;)

I used the Sparkles the Snowman pattern from Super Cute Crochet: Make Your Own Amigurumi Family by Nicki Trench. I changed his scarf to a rib stitch and am not at all convinced that I made his hat correctly!

New blog!

I have a habit of starting new blogs and then not going anywhere with them... but I wanted to record the crafting I've been doing lately. Hopefully I'll remember to update this as and when!