A new year and some new projects

I can't believe its been a whole year (and a bit!) since I last blogged.  Well, I have an excuse, and he's currently fast asleep on the floor ;-)

So I haven't had much time for craft activity - a bit of knitting, like this cute jumper I made for him

The pattern is a simple raglan I took from Erica Knight's Baby Bloom book, her version is plain with embroidered flowers, but I couldn't resist the colours in this self-patterning merino wool.  I've also taken up my patchwork again.  You can see a small cot quilt that H is lying on at the top, which is my first machined quilt - boy was that stressful doing the actual quilting!  I'm still working on my double, handpieced quilt (and  will be for a few years still, I suspect), but guess that I will need to hand it over to someone else to do the quilting as a small one was enough of a challenge for my old machine, and it did eat its way through a few needles too!

My exciting project is on the loom right now!  Here is the warp - my first end-on-end, bi-colour warp...

 Its a nice fine 10/2 cotton from Lunatic fringe, in red and yellow - it looks quite orange from a distance.

The plan is to weave two scarves from this, each to be elasticated double cloth.  I'm feeling a bit ambitious - I was always quite scared of the idea of a double cloth as it seemed so complicated - the idea is you have two separate blocks, so that you weave two intermeshed cloths simultaneously, so bits of one warp come through the other to make windows.  So it looks different on the top to the bottom.  Here is the first pattern repeat for the first scarf - its woven in lambswool, cotton and viscose covered elastic, so once it is finished and steamed it should go nicely crinkly.

 And underneath:

 Here you can see the two warps - one red and one yellow.

I'm really excited as to how the colours have worked together, you never quite know until you bring them all together on the loom.  The pattern is one from Margo Selby's new book Contemporary Weaving Patterns and I'm looking forward to trying out some more, or making up my own (gasp!) for the second scarf.

Katie x

Autumn Basketweave Cowl

My most recent knitting project has been to design a cosy cowl for those cool autumn days.  I chose autumnal coloured yarn and included a stripe across the centre.  I decided to go for shingle stitch to create the texture, which makes for a nice basket weave effect.

Here is the finished result: the buttons are vintage bone buttons with a lovely patina

Hope you like it!  I'm offering it for sale on folksy, but if you fancy having a go at knitting it yourself, you can download the pattern for FREE :-) on Ravelry

Keep toasty...
Katie x

knitting on the beach...

Well I'm back home now, with just the memories of sunny Cornwall (which rapidly turned into rainy Cornwall, but never mind).

We had a lovely time, lots of pretty coastal walks to do around the western side of the county.

Watched some birds of prey circling on the thermals - this one is a sparrowhawk I think:

And did some swimming in the beautiful blue-green sea:

I even managed to find some time to do some outdoor knitting :-) whilst camping... and on the beach.  If you were wondering what the creation is, its a sock!

Well it beats reading...

introducing tim the tiger and leo the lion

We've got two lots of friends coming over on Sunday, bringing their two little boys, Luke (3 in Sept) and Ben (2 in June).  When I found this vintage knitting pattern on the Victoria and Albert Museum site I couldn't resist - particularly as Luke is blonde and Ben is distinctly red headed.  No prizes for guessing then who's getting what!

I did the tiger first, and didn't get chance to take any pictures of the work in progress - but here are some pictures of the lion in bits before I sewed it up.

1. Parts before sewing, 2. Lion's side, 3. Lion's mane

The mane was interesting - basically a loop stitch, which seemed to go on for ever and was really hard to keep neat.  It ended up looking a bit like a wig on the underside - maybe I have a new career ahead of me!?

Here is the finished lion, I think he looks kind of cute frolicking in amongst the crocuses!

Here is Tim the Tiger, having a snooze on the bench after having frightened next-door's rather macho cat, Gizmo:

And finally the two playing nicely together:

I really hope Ben and Luke love them as much as I do - thinking I may have to make a lion for myself!;o)

knitting needle roll

I was in need of more avoidance tactics this week, so decided that it was a good time to tackle the knitting needle roll, which helpfully took up a couple of mornings ;)

I think it's come out pretty well, I like the bold colours of the Japanese cloth and the contrast with the scarlet bias binding I used.

I started following the instructions on the wiki website I was going to use, but eventually abandoned them in favour of a few modifications that seemed to work quite well.

For a start, the piece of material I had for the outside of the roll was shorter from top to bottom than the recommended length, so I had to think quite carefully about where things should go. I settled in the end on having a foldover at the top to stop the needles from coming out when it was all rolled up.  I also created an additional pocket by finishing the lining material at the top with bias binding so that it could be used for long needles.

The ribbons were made by cutting out two lines of the rooster and finishing the edge with the bias binding - cute huh?

 

The individual pockets for the needles were formed by stitching at 1" intervals.  It wasn't too bad, but I did have trouble with the yellow material ruckling up underneath, so it isn't quite as neat as I would like.  Lots of room for expansion though!