And more about the knitting...

Meanwhile, I've been going great guns on my knitting. It's amazing how quickly it grows, when you do a couple of hours every evening. I don't think I could knit much more than that - my hands would get too sore!

I've finished the back, the two fronts and one sleeve now, and I'm halfway up the second sleeve.

It's still unblocked, of course, hence the rolling edges but I wanted to show you how it was progressing. I'm glad I used the yarn this way, as I think it might have just looked like stripes otherwise. And one doesn't need to buy variegated yarn just to knit stripes. I could probably make a multicoloured striped jumper just from yarn I have on hand.

As one does, I've been looking ahead to the next knitting project, even though I probably won't get to it until next autumn, unless the weather stays very cool. I bought some yarn for dyeing a couple of months ago but that's waiting for me to get the dyes out one day. So in the meantime, I bought some of the new 1984 range in 8-ply Colonial yarn from Bendigo Woollen Mills in #286 Maroon. It seems to have been a hugely popular shade, because it's no longer listed on their website!

It's hard to photograph well! It's not really what I would call a maroon, as it's really closer to cherry. It's also not very close in colour to the maroon jumper I am replacing after years of sterling service, which is in a shade that's often called cranberry these days. I don't think I'd even seen a cranberry when I made it, so I don't suppose they had yarns called that, back then either!

Whatever the name, I love the colour of this yarn. I had a jumper in this colour back in the seventies, which I also wore to death, so I'm expecting great things from this one too.

(Is it really sad of me to be able to remember all the jumpers I've knitted and loved, in the past forty-something years? There has been a lot of knitting, as I was taught to knit at age 7 and allowed to knit my first actual jumper a few years later. I guess that amazing sense of achievement, the "I made that!", stays in the mind long after the creation has been worn to shreds.)

Storming along on the intarsia

I've almost finished the coat back now and here's how it looks:

People will certainly see me coming! But I love the way the colours do different things in the cables and the panels. It's always hard to predict how variegated yarn is going to behave. In this case, I got blocks of colour, because the number of stitches in each panel is not that large. The colours would have been a lot more dispersed and blended, if I'd been knitting right across the width with the one ball.

I really like this pattern done in several different colours too, so I may knit it again that way later on. There are some other gorgeous patterns in this book though - it's hard to know where to start.

And now we're knitting... intarsia!

I've finished my daughter's mittens and started a new knitting project.

It's going to be a jacket called Metro from the book Swing Swagger Drape by Jane Slicer-Smith. You can see images of the coat here. The yarn is a variegated wool called Murano from Bendigo Woollen Mills.

The jacket is knitted with intarsia, so each section has a different ball of yarn. You'd think this would be incredibly fiddly. In fact, most guides say to use butterflies of yarn, so you don't get tangled. That doesn't work so well with variegated yarn, because you lose yarn colour every time you join the butterflies. And anyway, I hate fiddling around joining yarn.

Instead, I use a two-basket system. I start out with all the balls of yarn in one basket, on my left, as I'm ready to start a right-side row. I pick up the first ball, knit that section and place it in the right hand basket, with the yarn at the back, which is where it wants to be anyway. I pick up the next ball from the left, twist it round the last yarn and knit the next section. It goes into the right hand basket, in front of the last ball. As you go, the balls are basically ready for their next turn. So far, so easy.

Then comes the turn. Turning right side to wrong side is easy - all the yarns are on the right, and you turn the work so they aren't tangling. This is the easy turn.

Use the same technique as you knit the wrong side row, but each time, as you finish a section, put the ball over the needles and into the left hand basket. Take the next ball from the right and loop around the yarn you just used and knit onwards. At the end, put it over the knitting too, and so on until the end.

This bit makes your head hurt. Keep the last ball on your lap. Pick up the bottom of the knitting and upend it, keeping all the yarns on the left hand side. Now turn the work. You can see immediately which way you need to turn, because you can see the strands of yarn leading into the basket. You may need to put the last ball you used around the knitting, ready to start, but you get good at working out where it needs to be to start again on the right side row.

And if you do find you've turned the wrong way, you can always rotate the basket until you're untangled again. Now how easy is that?
The only hassle with this method is if you need to take the yarn off the needles and unravel for some reason (hey, it happens to us all!). Untangling intarsia knitting is a pain, anyway, because you have to untangle all those yarns twisted around each other at the joins. The trick with this is to take every second inside ball - the ones that have knitting on either side - and put them on your lap. You have to be careful to unravel whole rows and not accidentally go back in the wrong direction at a turn. Unravel section one, find the first inside ball and untwist it, unravel it and untwist again around the next yarn. Unravel the next section, take the second inside ball and untwist, unravel, untwist. It's way easier than untwisting each ball.

Most of all, never ever leave your knitting with a row partly knitted, stopped at a change of yarn. When you come back, it can be very hard to remember which way you were going and, unless the pattern gives you a clue, you can't tell without counting rows. Guess how I know this?

Happy knitting!

And while I was knitting...

I whipped up these fingerless gloves for my daughter, at her request. As a writer, her hands get really cold but she can't wear gloves and type, so these are ideal.

She specified no pattern on the back, as this can be distracting when she writes, so I limited myself to a little twisted rib on the cuffs. It's pretty, I should use it more often.

Again, I'd forgotten how quick and easy they are to make. The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic (yes, I do like that yarn, why do you ask?) 8ply, colour 658 Mallard.

It's knitting season

The weather is cooling down and, for me, that means knitting season. I don't miss knitting during the summer months, but somehow, as soon as it gets chilly, long before I need a knitted jumper or jacket, I start browsing the knitting stash and pondering.



This year, the choice was easy. Late last winter, my husband begged me to make him a sleeveless jumper. He feels the heat in the same way that I feel the cold but even he sometimes needs an extra layer.

It was too late in the year to start, but the yarn was there ready to go and we'd already worked out a pattern.
 









It was really fast to knit - I probably could have done it last year! I forgot how long it takes to knit sleeves.

The basic structure is my tried-and-true Patons basic pattern from about forty-five years ago. The diamond and cable pattern is a variation on traditional ganseys worn by fishermen in northern England and Scotland. The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mill's Classic in 5ply, colour 740 Lichen, knitted on 3mm and 3.75mm needles.

Winter blues

Just recently, I remembered why I'm not keen on winter. Can't be doing with cold weather - it seem to get right into my bones.

The one thing I really like about winter is that I get the urge to knit. When Jennie visited in June, she was knitting this scarf using short rows, which results in beautiful triangles. I got quite excited, because I haven't knitted anything with short rows for ages. So I tried out the technique on some variegated yarn I had left over from another project.

Of course, I didn't have enough of it for a scarf but it made a beautiful piece of cloth, which will get used for something, sometime.

Then I started thinking, "what if?" My first "what if?" was using short rows to make diamonds along the centre of the knitting. I knitted the initial triangle, but then, after the next triangle, I slipped stitches to the centre and knitted a double-sided version, for the centre diamond. Then I slip stitched to the end and knitted the second side triangle. It worked as I imagined but I wasn't thrilled with the results. The join between the changes in direction was much more pronounced, perhaps because there's a lot more distortion in the knitting and therefore tension on the stitches. If I used textured yarn, that probably wouldn't be as obvious, but I found the process quite tedious. It's not exciting enough to show in a picture.

My second "what if"? was to change the stitches. Obviously, a scarf needs to be double-sided, so the pattern uses garter stitch. The interest is in the changes in the direction of the rows and the variegated yarn. I tried a rib with a dropped stitch pattern in one triangle, doing it both sides of the knitting, and that worked very well.

I was using leftover plain knitting yarn as a test swatch, so I could see the effect, and I think it would even work like this as a scarf, without using a fancy yarn.  But it would be even more interesting in a variegated yarn, though the pattern would be lost (and difficult to achieve) with a textured or fluffy yarn.

All this is really procrastination. My next project is a vest for the man in my life, to be knitted in Bendigo Woollen Mills 5-ply Classic, but it requires some fiddling around to get the pattern right. I guess I'll bite the bullet this week and do the planning...

A long time between drinks!

Anyone checking my blog would think I've been entirely uncreative since August. Not entirely so - I've been managing the Fibrecircle blog, the SCQuilters blog and a whole lot of other stuff, mostly for ATASDA, but I have managed to squeeze in tiny bits of creative stuff into my life as well.

Of course, I did a stack of knitting. I have two cardigans ready to block for sewing together, but they don't look terribly exciting as they are, so photos will have to wait. I don't know why I put off blocking - maybe because sewing knitting together is my least favourite job in all the world? One is my blue cardigan, knitted from Bendigo Highland yarn, which I just love. The other is my "arty cardy". Whenever I do anything for ATASDA, someone seems to tell me, "dress arty". I delight in making textile art, and I delight in making my own garments, but, no disrespect to others who feel differently, I just don't "dress arty". Fancy dress is torture for me, and while I can see that looking the part is important if you're out there selling work, it just isn't me. So I have made myself a striped knitted jacket for "arty" occasions. By my arty friends' standards, it's tame but it will have to be enough for me. Yes, there will be photos... though probably not showing me wearing it.

What else? Oh yes, the Forest piece I was talking about last time. I showed what the painted cloth looked like once I'd drawn and painted and generally played with it. It needed some contrast fabric for the bag so, naturally, I painted some. I mixed some grey-browns on my palette and slapped them onto cream quilters' muslin, deliberately making it streaky. I added in a few strokes of black, while everything was still wet, to add some depth. Once it was dry, I drew lines on it to make it look somewhat like bark. Here's a detail shot of how it looked:

You need the detail shot because it's hard to see the textured pattern in a photo of the whole piece. I used the bark fabric to make the top and handles of the bag, with the forest fabric as the body.

I wanted to keep the forest fabric whole, but I also think no bag is compete without an outside pocket. So I made a welt pocket with a zipper for the top of the outside pocket - it's there but it's hardly visible.

Here's the finished bag:

It has everything a bag should have. Four inside pockets with elasticised tops, for keys, wallet, phone, etc. That essential outside pocket. Long enough straps that I can sling it over my shoulder easily. It has one tiny drawback - that it doesn't take an A5 sketchbook as comfortably as I'd like, though it does fit in. My current bag is just that bit bigger, and I've got spoilt. This one is probably better for my back, since I'm not tempted to toss in the kitchen sink...

I also did some more block printing and stamping. I love making stamps and I love playing around with them. I made a couple of new stamps recently and have played around with them, to see how they work with my other stamps.

These ones are from designs I've drawn in my sketchbooks over the years, which I've now drawn (sorry) together into my Lost Treasures book. The upper one is from a sketch I made at the Arts of Islam  exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery a few years back; the lower one from a sketch at another exhibition at the Gallery, of Chinese art. See how it pays to take a sketchbook with you?

I did some sample prints:

You can see a few of my stamps from back in May crept in to make secondary patterns. I was experimenting for another project I was working on, for Fibrecircle, on the theme Geometric. It hasn't quite worked out the way I planned, but so far it looks like this:

Basically, it's a little pot, using the stamps as decorative motifs. It was going to be a dice pot for my daughter, who's a keen gamer, but I haven't quite worked out a satisfactory lid for it yet - one that will keep the dice firmly inside between games. But it's a cute prototype.

The block printing was basically adding another layer to some of my paint rags. I had one that I'd used for playing with resists that looked very dark:

I stamped over it using white Permaset Supercover, which, as you'd guess, is very opaque printing ink. I used several of my stamps, plus a piece of window screen to give a gentle overall texture.

It  may not look brilliant in  the photo but the white has really give it some wow factor. I'm thinking it may be a journal cover when it grows up.

The other fun thing I've done lately is some breakdown printing. It's a fascinating process, in which you paint thickened dyes in patterns onto a screen, allow it to dry and then print using the same medium. The medium gradually breaks down the dried dye paint on the screen, with thicker areas acting as a resist. It yields these beautiful complex prints, related to one another but not quite the same.

I don't think I'm anywhere near done exploring this technique yet.

I've also made these quilt blocks:

and these:

(actually I've made 26 of these ones now), so I've not been entirely idle, have I?

Treasures

I've been too busy and too crook to blog much lately. I have managed to achieve a few things, though.
I finished my Lost Treasures journal cover for the Fibrecircle challenge. It seemed to be one of those projects that generated interruptions. As soon as I would begin work, the phone or doorbell would ring and that would be that! But now it's finished and I'm very happy with it.

I've also been knitting madly. No photos yet, but I have finished knitting my daughter a duffle cost, and I've almost finished blocking it, which seems to have taken as long as the knitting! Once I do that, I can sew it together and take a photo before I give it to her. I've also almost finished my long cardigan in Bendigo Woollen Mills' Highland yarn. Just have to finish the second front and the back. I was knitting them in tandem to be sure I had enough yarn. I seem to have had plenty, even though it's quite a long cardigan.

I've also made some postcards:

Major work, it isn't, but it's enough for now!

More knitting

Here's a photo of The Coat so far. It's really been easy peasy, once I realised that the cables didn't do anything fancy where they crossed. I wanted them to do a clever over-under interlock, and of course, they don't. I could have made them do it, but I was worried I'd get distracted and forget I'd changed the pattern, if this really does take me two seasons to knit. Anyone living in northern climes might wonder about knitting being seasonal. I know the Yarn Harlot would be astonished to learn that there are places in the world where you Just Can't Knit, sometimes. I suspect she might want to come down here and prove me wrong. But I defy even her declared capacity for self delusion enthusiasm for knitting to cope with Sydney in February! Not even to make a sock.

I also mentioned the one I'm making myself in Skye, from the Bendigo Heather range. I took a photo from the sleeves I've knitted, so you can see how gorgeously flecky it is. I'm tempted to buy some of the few colours they have left, before it disappears completely.

But then again, there's the whole vexed issue of storage. And how I'm trying to get things out of my workroom, instead of bringing new things in.

Speaking of getting things out, I am also slowly making a knitted scarf from leftover wool. The pattern, to the extent that one need a pattern, is also from an Interweave free download, Knitting Scarf Patterns from Spin-Off, called Spontaneous Knitting by Charlene Anderson-Shea. The idea of knitting scarves lengthwise using different colours of leftover yarn is not new, by any means. I was doing that when I was a teenager! What is clever is the idea of using moss stitch (she calls it seed stitch), which, when you do it in different colours each row, results in a line of what looks like running stitches along the scarf in each colour. You can see it here if you go down to Page 8. It almost looks woven. I've done about a dozen rows and am liking it just fine. I'll post a photo when I've done enough to look like more than a frill.

Two steps forward..

...and one back, or is it the other way around? Either way, I can't say that the past weeks have been hugely productive of wonderful creative things.

First there was the knitting. Whenever the weather turns cold, my thoughts turn to what I can knit this year. I cunningly bought some gorgeous yarn last year from Bendigo Woollen Mills. It was from a range called Highlands, which they have almost sold out now, so I guess other people loved it as much as I did. The shade I bought is called Skye and is, unsurprisingly, blue. It has little brown and white flecks in it, and I was a little dubious, since brown flecks sometimes just look like you've been through hedges and ditches recently. But no, it seems to be knitting up beautifully. Two sleeves are done. I always begin with the sleeves, since I find them so boring at the end. So far, so good, you say.

But they have been tenderly laid aside, probably until next winter, or maybe the one afterwards, while I tackle The Coat. My dearest daughter (I only have the one) has been complaining for some time of the sheer impossibility of finding a knitted 100% wool coat to replace her treasured and aging one. So I am making her one. Of course, this is the very year when the Fashion Gods have decreed that hand-knitted look-alikes in wool are so terribly cutting edge and, now I've begun, I've seen several of the very thing she wants just hanging innocently in shopping malls. (They look innocent, but really, they're smirking.) Of course, anything I make with my own two hands will naturally be superior to anything mass-produced, but I have a sneaking suspicion that, as the winter makes its presence felt, she will be tempted by those smirking imitations! The solution? Knit faster!

Fortunately, the pattern I'm knitting, the Aran Duffle Coat by Judith L. Swartz, from the Interweave free cardigan patterns download is thick and uses huge needles like crowbars. So it knits up fast. As long as you don't assume you know what the pattern is doing and have to pull out the first 10cm or so, because it isn't doing what you expected. If I have the teeniest complaint about the pattern, it's that is doesn't have a nice clear picture of the cable pattern. Oh wait, it does. Sigh. But now I've done.. ooh, a good 30cm of the back. She'll just have to wrap herself in a blanket for a few months.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to finish a challenge from Fibrecircle. Those who know me, and anyone who visits this blog more than once, will know that I'm not naturally friends with deadlines. So it will come as no surprise to learn that the due date for this challenge was the first week of May. Good grief, it's only a journal cover! But somehow it has been a huge, yes challenge, to get it finished. I can guarantee that, as soon as I start to think about it, the phone or the doorbell will ring. Guaranteed! While it's lovely to have contact with my friends (though, I admit, less lovely when it turn outs to be someone selling me their religion), I'd really like to get this done and out of my head!

The challenge was Lost Treasures. Here's where I got to last time I took a photo:

 Exciting, non? But then it rearranged itself into this:

Better! It's almost finished now and looks like this:

 The thing behind the title is an island. (Yes, for the one inevitable clever clogs out there, it *is* roughly shaped like Cyprus. Upside down. Cyprus always looks like an island that's going somewhere in a hurry.)

The fastening is a cheat, really. I wanted to use a lock and key and then I wondered just how useful my journal would be, if I had to unlock it every damn time I wanted to use it. I'm a lazy cow; I would grab another one rather than bother undoing something. So I thought about something with straps and a buckle. Nope, too lazy, and besides, I didn't have a buckle the right colour in my large stash of buckles, and I wanted to finish this sometime before I die. So I decided on D-rings. But hey, we're back to undoing and doing up again, aren't we? Well, no. It actually has a sneaky snap fastening underneath the whole thing, so the ties are just to allow some expansion as my journal gets into middle age. I couldn't show you the snaps, because my camera was so shocked at the cheat that it refused to give me a decent shot.

See these box things? One upon a time, I had a Plan to make something inspired by my friend's photos of his travels in China. There were all these lovely market shots so I started playing around with the shapes. After a while, I decided that it looked rubbish, so I chopped it into three pieces and threw the bits into my fabric file. Moral of this story, never thrown anything away. Then again, this might be why a visit to my workroom is fraught with danger of avalanche?

The map piece is on the back. I gave it rough white edges by painting over torn paper, and I cut the edges accordingly,so it looks a bit like it's torn from a larger map. It's attached with fusible web and stitched on with latitude and longitude lines. The fabric was a commercial one, but I painted it with transparent Setacolor paints to give it a bit more colour.

I just need to make some "jewels" and coins for it. I've been experimenting with the hot glue gun, although the shapes are, what's the word? Organic. To say the least. And they don't seem to take paint very well, though Lumieres seem to stick the best. My best result was colouring the shapes with Sharpie pens, which have the benefit of sticking to pretty much anything, and then painting over the top.Oh well, playing with media in my workroom does beat robbing banks, I suppose.

Actually, I've been quite busy...

... though much of it has been on real world stuff and not involving lovely textiles.

However, I have not been idle. I finished a jacket I've been knitting this winter, from yarn I bought at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair in 2009. OK, I know I didn't 'fess up to buying it back then, when I was crowing just a smidgen about how little I bought. But, in my defence, I did buy it at the very end of the last day I was at the show, after it had been calling to me all day. And since the Exotica stand was immediately opposite the Bendigo Woollen Mills stand and the tub of yarn was right where I could see it all day, I think it was just meant to be mine. And that's all I have to say about that.

The cable was down the front of a jacket on the cover of The Knitter, Issue 3. That jacket had other cables and was knitted in quite a different yarn. Why make it the same way as the pattern you actually really liked in the beginning? That would be obvious.

I'm not sure if it's a hard cable or I'm getting dumber (I do have my suspicions about that) but it took me several tries to get it right. I hate those cable patterns with weird deformed X's and Y's that all look the same. For some reason, I kept cabling back when I meant forward (or vice versa) and it wasn't until I stopped knitting and worked out what it was I would do, if I were making that cable *without* the pattern, that I actually saw what I had to do. So, strangely, it seems I am much better working without a pattern than I am when I follow one. Scary thought...

So here it is, my very classy masterpiece.

It has a moss stitch band, which gives the edge some definition. Here's a close up of the tricky cable:

Not that tricky, is it? The problem was that little outer curve on the larger twist, which cables the other way. Of course it does! Obvious, isn't it? It really is a lovely cable. The yarn colour is a beautiful greyed purple-maroon, somewhere in between the colours you see here. Evidently, it's one of those colours that are impossible to reproduce electronically...

I also found another garment I knitted earlier, in the workroom this week. I'm not quite sure why it was in the workroom, because when I tried it on, it fitted beautifully and looked great. I think I had some idea that the zipper wasn't put in well, or that the neckline didn't sit right. I am rarely my best critic when it comes to finished garments.

This one was based on a picture in a magazine, possibly Family Circle, which I cut out back in (ulp) the seventies, because I loved the shape of it. I think it was meant to be knitted in Herdwick - remember those yarns that were all heathery, in neutral tones? The unattributed designer was inspired by the garments of the 1940s, and it had something of the feel of a bomber jacket. The yarn I used is actually reknitted. I know, nobody does that any more but I loved this yarn so much, I couldn't bear to say goodbye. It would have been a Patons yarn, probably Totem, which started out as a medium silvery brown. I knitted it up in the late eighties or early nineties as a traditional gansey, the fishermen's jumpers from the ports of the UK. From memory, I used a design from Whitby, the port closest to the place my mother's forebears emigrated from, in the mid nineteenth century. They came to South Australia and their marriage was the 51st in the new colony.

I wore that jumper for years, but alas, a moth decided it was the perfect home for her new babies. I washed it and set it aside because I really didn't want it to be the end. By now, the yarn had aged to a lovely silvery beige, the colour of a well-weathered fence. Eventually, I unravelled it, setting aside the spoilt part. I modified my basic cardigan pattern to something I thought would end up similar to the picture from the magazine. It doesn't look quite the same (I think that one had a collar) but I'm very happy with how it turned out.

There's a neat little shaped slot at the neck, which I don't think was on the original either...

...and it has a ladder pattern up the sleeve (not visible in the main photo).

It actually looks great when I'm wearing it but I don't think you need to see that!

Knitting and other pleasant pastimes

I love to knit. Every winter, I can't want until the humid weather goes away and it gets cool enough to pick up my knitting needles. I learnt to knit when I was seven (remember those knitted squares I talked about here?) and there's hardly been a year when I didn't knit something in the winter, except for those few manic years when I was studying days, working nights and raising kids in between. So when I bought some luscious wool from Bendigo Woollen Mills this year, in a gorgeous purple colour that's right in fashion right now, I was in seventh heaven. Pattern, gosh no! I had a picture of what I wanted , and I am woman, I can make anything!

So I cast on merrily and knitted what I thought was the pattern. Nope, not quite right. So I pulled it back to the basque and tried again. (Me, knit a swatch? Why?) Nope, still not quite right. And again. OK, time for plan B. I'd bought a copy of the gorgeous new Knitter magazine and there was a pattern I'd made years ago, that one where you knit double rib, cast on extra stitches and then drop them, so you get a beautiful wavy pattern. OK, that's so easy, I'll do that one. Not using their pattern, of course, which was made in cotton for English summer wear.

I knitted the back and one of the sleeves, and then it dawned on me slowly that this pattern uses way more yarn than a normal jumper. I knitted grimly on. Nope, it was clear to me from halfway up the front that there was not, in fact enough yarn. A quick email to Bendigo assured me that no, that yarn was now discontinued, even though I only bought it a couple of months before. A quick check on Ravelry for surplus yarn- no dice. Out it all came again. (Isn't it good that it knitted up so quickly?)

On my travels around the Quilt and Craft Fair in June, I found a pattern at the Bendigo stand that was just what I wanted. The First Time Around. So, older and ever so slightly wiser, I bought that pattern even though, like most knitting patterns, it wasn't designed for Fat Ladies, just so I could see how they did that pattern. Easy! A short while later and I had my first (and only) jumper this year.
Isn't it pretty? It just needs a press and it will be ready to wear. Next year.

God is telling me not to felt

Well, perhaps not. But I have this very elderly UFO. It's my oldest UFO, in fact, because I began it when I first learnt to knit squares at about the age of seven. In fact, some squares have been cast off by knitting two together, before I learnt the proper way. (It makes quite a pretty edge.)
I stopped knitting squares when I got to 100 (I was probably about 16 by this stage).
I was going to sew them together into a rug (see, even then bright colours and patchwork fascinated me!) but then I hit a snag. I hate sewing knitting together. With A Passion. I sew my jumpers together because if I don't, well, I don't actually have a jumper. And that seems a bit pointless. But I have to grit my teeth and make myself do it, so I have the jumper to wear.

OK, I thought, I'll crochet them together. But by this stage, I was a penniless young mother, and buying a whole lot of yarn just to crochet these squares together really couldn't be justified on our budget. I tried cheap yarn - oh, yuck! I tried scraps of leftover yarn from my knitting projects on the principle of the brighter the better, but no, it just wasn't right. I have dragged this bag of knitted, half-crocheted-together squares around with me through fifteen house moves.

Then I had a brilliant thought. All these squares were knitted with 100% wool yarn and hey, I could felt them! Then I'll have a whole lot of brightly coloured felt shapes to use in my textile work. Or I could sew them together on the machine and embellish them a bit. I decided to do a test felt on a couple of squares by beating them around in a little bit of hot water in a bucket until I lost interest, and then washing them with other stuff and tumble-drying them. Result, two rather startled, slightly fluffy squares, not looking anything like felt. Hmm.

OK, do it properly. All the squares into the washing machine, add hot water at the lowest level and wash. Halfway through the filling process, the washing machine died.
It's hard not to conclude that this is a Message.

Big update!

I haven't been idle lately, though nothing has reached the blog!

First of all, I made some more pants. I'm really on a roll with pants lately! The first pair was made from a navy blue wool-polyester blend, lined with polyester lining. They feel lovely to wear and very warm! The second pair was from grey polyester, lighter weight but very comfortable. These ones have dark grey contrast topstitching. I've since made a third pair from charcoal-coloured polyester, with a long half-belt waistband.

I also finished the jumper I've been knitting this winter. It was based on a jumper I once saw in a magazine from the eighties. I started with a basic jumper pattern, as I mostly do, and worked out the variation. I'm very happy with it! I also finished weaving a second scarf, which I haven't photographed yet. It taught me that, if you make a mistake in the warp, it really is better to start again, rather than try to fudge it! The scarf itself is nice, but it's a little too short because the warp problems were so annoying and I spent a lot of time unweaving to correct errors. Lesson learned! I've just finished a third project, a wrap, which I made from leftover baby wool. I wanted to try weaving with fine yarn, and I wanted to practise getting my selvedges nice and even. I also wanted to try out using a pattern stick, which was very interesting and worth exploring further. It's turned out very well, and I really like it. The colours are the ones I wear often.

I've also been preparing patchwork blocks to take on my travels. I did a test block, which looks like this: The fabrics are pretty florals, in pinks, yellows and blues, from a range called Amelia's Garden. I'm combining them with toning plains in a positive-negative layout. So one block will have flower baskets on a plain background, and the next plain baskets and a floral background. I'm not used to using plain fabrics - tone-on-tones are much more usual these days - but it's what seemed to work best with the soft florals. It will make a lovely quilt for my favourite little girl. It was going to be a pink and yellow quilt, but somehow those blues just sneaked in!

Coming up from under

I’ve been a little swamped by life this month. Happily, the computer is back up and running sweetly, and I can show you the little I’ve achieved this month.

First, the quilt I can’t show you is a finished top. I thought, for all of about five seconds, of pinning it for quilting, but then I calculated I had about two hours this week to devote to quilting it, and the madness passed. I will show you a photo after the unveiling next Sunday.

Looking back over the years I’ve been doing this quilt challenge has made me consider yet again how effectively (or not) I work. I started doing these challenges in 2000, so this is the eighth year for me (the original pair of challengers have done nine). So far the tally is four finished items and four unfinished, on an alternating basis. So, it suggests I really only have one finished quilting project in me every two years! Maybe I ought to do the challenge just every second year?

However, more cheerfully, I have finished some projects! Remember the yarn I showed you a photo of back in June? Well here it is as a jumper. I still love the colour! Shame about the model but one can’t have everything!

Not only that but I have finished the jacket I cut out in February as an autumn garment. Well it will be great for spring! It goes deliciously with a lot of colours I wear – burgundy, pink, cocoa. It wasn’t difficult to make, but it kept getting pushed aside. I’m so pleased at how well the stripes matched, thanks to very good instructions in Power Sewing Step by Step, by Sandra Betzina. My next plan is to make some winter pants. I’ve drafted a pattern from scratch this time, and plan to make a toile first, before I cut into my treasured wool yardage.

And do you remember that scarf design? I’ve begun stitching it, and this is what it looks like so far.
The shine is from the layer of Romeo onto which I traced my design. The scarf fabric is very soft, so I’ve had to hoop the design for stitching, which I really hate doing. But the results are worth it. The scarf was a free giveaway from the shopping centre on Mother’s Day 2006. I just know I’m going to love it so much better with this embellishment!

Some other things I do

I know it's unusual for me not to have blogged after the weekend. Usually I've had some time to play in the workroom, and have something to share here. But while I was happily busy as usual, it was mostly on things that aren't ready to be shown here. I made some progress on a jacket I'm making but a half-finished jacket is not very exciting! I'll show it here when I finish it. I also made some progress on a challenge quilt, but it's to be kept secret until the Great Unveiling in July, so I can't show you that either!

Some things I can show you:
This delicious knitting wool arrived on Monday. I've already started knitting up the dark turquoise into a jumper (sweater) for myself!

Last year, the week before Mother's Day, the shopping centre I take my MIL to each week gave me a free scarf. It's almost a wrap, as it's quite long and 28in wide and it's blue, which is nice. But it's very plain, so I've always intended to add some embellishment. It really needs a wide band of embellishment, since the scarf is on such a large scale. The fabric is quite loosely woven, so it will need to be machine stitched with lots of stabilising. This week, now the weather has turned cool, it came to the top of the pile. This is my pencil sketch of what I plan to do.

The design will form a band 8in wide across each end of the scarf. I envisage stitching the background and leaving some parts, such as the petals of the central motif, in the fabric colour. The planned colour scheme is maroon, pink and green on the blue, with maybe a touch of silver, but this may change! I'll show you how it looks once I've stitched it!