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 new things to share

Christmas is not a time when I generally make a lot of progress on things. Time is usually spent with family and friends, and making necessary recovery afterwards. It's also a time when I tend to tidy my workroom, clear my pin boards and generally make ready for the coming year.

But in between, I have done these two things.
This one has been shown here before. It actually dates from 2005, when I was making journal quilts. At A3, they were a little larger than other journal quilts, because I found A4 size too small, and I wanted to experiment with different techniques. This journal quilt was for a challenge I set several friends, called Weather Report. The idea was to choose a month of the year and express that month in an A3-sized work. I chose August, the end of winter and a month that is often wet here in Sydney. I envisaged leaves floating in a puddle, overlaying a map of the Sydney coastline showing Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay. I painted the background fabric, stitched the coastline and made lacy dead leaves by stitching onto Romeo. Once they were stitched on, I quilted water ripples. But it was so hard to get the balance right and I really wasn't happy with it. The coastline didn't show up clearly. So I accentuated it with paint, but then the ripples got lost.

This week, I used my new Prismacolor pencils to accentualte the water ripples a little with yellow shading. I'm much happier with it now and I think it might actually be finished now! Maybe.

My second thing is brand new. Last winter, I saw a jacket in a shop that I really liked. It was made from fabric that had black and bright blue alternating warps and a blue-grey weft. (In retrospect, this might have been a black and grey warp and a blue weft...) I wondered how these colours would look in a scarf. I warped it up this week and thought it looked quite boring! So I added a little ladder yarn in blue with silver bits, and a strand of two-ply bright purple (magenta, maybe?) yarn in some of the blue warps. I actually like how it's turned out, quite classy I think!

I do like scarves - they are so quick to whip up on the loom! My last three projects have been larger, the full width of the loom, and in fine yarn, so it was really good to use something a bit chunkier!

Scarf finished!

I've fallen behind with blogging these past few weeks - just too much happening out there in the real world. But I did finish my first scarf on my beautiful new loom! I just love it, even though I can see all the things I need to learn how to do better! I couldn't think how to photograph it so here it is hanging on my bedroom door.
I deliberately have kept to firm yarns, not the fluffy or feathery ones that are more forgiving for the beginning weaver. I really want to learn how to weave neatly, making nice firm selvedges, so I need to be able to see every time I don't get it right.

Quiet weekend

I haven't achieved very much in the workroom this weekend. Next Tuesday is David's birthday so we went out for lunch with his mum on Saturday to celebrate, and then on to Fagan Park, a big public park at Galston. I took lots of photos of interesting textures and shapes for future reference.

I have made a little progress on the scarf, which I'm told by Erica I should be calling a wrap or a shawl. It's 28in wide so I guess it's more than a scarf. Slowly, slowly....

I've also been painting. I wanted to try stitching, then painting, as I usually do things the other way around. I am playing around with images of Marguerite daisies for a swap. I tried a double and a single, free-motion stitched and then painted. This what they look like:
The single one and...
...the double one

They are rather uneven because I drew the shape with the machine needle. As an experiment, they were fairly successful and I learnt a lot, though the ones for the swap will look a little different. I also painted the background fabric for the swap pages, and a few other pieces that might or might not get used for the same swap.

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!

A sad absence...

.. of photos anyway. My computer is being reconstructed as we speak and this rather elderly laptop doesn't have the graphics capability to allow upload of photos. So you'll have to wait a little while to see what I've been up to.

I've not been entirely idle, though. More stitching has been done on Like Honey from the Rock, though there is still a daunting amount of stitching to do. I'm putting the third (and final) borders onto the Secret Quilt, which I'll photograph for you after the 21st, the day of the great unveiling. You can see the fabrics for the challenge on Rooruu's blog. I had hoped to have it finished completely but I don't think I'll have it quilted in a fortnight. Well, we'll see.

The scarf motif I showed you before has been traced onto Romeo and one end has been pinned ready for stitch. I might start that this afternoon. I've also just begun a stitched piece for the DBDU monthly challenge, which is Dream Landscapes. I'm actually cheating a bit as it's one of the images I printed when I was doing the Forest postcard, but I printed it back them because I knew I would want to stitch it sometime soon. I haven't given a lot of thought to the Like Minded Threads challenges this month - there are a lot of deadlines this month! I'd really like to do something for them this month. As always, there's more ideas than time!

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!