Yarny pleasures

I love tiny little knits. I love knits that are quick and simple, in both execution and styling. Here are two I recently finished:

Pattern: Heartbreakingly cute baby kimono from Mason-Dixon Knitting. It’s not the first time I’ve knit this pattern, and I doubt it will be the last.

Yarn: Mirasol Hacho in shade 300, practically all of two balls.

Needles: 4 mm Addis.

Modifications/notes: No mods except for stepped decreases on the sleeves to diminish the bulkiness of the seams. I love the little yellow ladybug buttons! The lucky recipient of this kimono jacket is three days old now, and I hope to buy a onesie or a pair of trousers in a matching yellow to give her along with the jacket.

Pattern: Baktus – I’m not ashamed of my bandwagon jumping. There’s a reason popular patterns become popular. In many things I aspire to originality, but my knitting is not one of them – especially since I wear my FLS several times a week and have NEVER seen anyone else wearing an FLS or giving the slightest indication of having recognised mine…

Yarn: The last 75 grams of my handspun BFL top, handdyed by Jeni of Fyberspates.

Needles: 4 mm for drape and to get the most out of my remaining yarn.

I love this little scarflet. It’s just long enough to go twice around my neck and tie in a single knot. It’s perfect for work as we have rather overactive A/C. Handspun and garter stitch is such a perfect combination.

Inspiration

I have a couple of FOs to show off, but no pictures as yet, unfortunately. So right now I’d like to share two new books that have inspired me in the last few weeks

Kathrine Gregersen (Samlaget 2008): Brukt på nytt

This Norwegian book is filled with projects to reuse and recycle materials you have in your home. There are knitting, sewing, paper, wood and metal projects. The projects are very simple and charming, and I find the redesign ideas very useful. This book has me looking at our pile of old bed sheets with a calculating eye. In the top picture is the book, two dishcloths inspired by the book and two balls of rags cut from old t-shirts. I’m currently making this:

A bathmat from t-shirt rags. Actually, this project reminds me a lot of the rag knitting in the first Mason-Dixon book, but the idea is probably not original to either book. The styling in this book, however, makes the projects very appealing.

This book should probably be considered a gateway drug. After I bought it for the knitting projects, I borrowed my mother’s sewing machine to try the sewing patterns. This inexorably, and with a few days, led me to buy this:

Heather Ross (STC Craft 2009) Weekend Sewing

A couple of projects from this book that I would like to make once my sewing improves a little:

Kimono dress with an obi-inspired sash

A bag to hold my whole life

Cotton shirt dress – ideal for work!

And last under the heading of “inspiration”: After realising that I’m about to develop a serious sewing habit, I had to start budgeting. So I visited the home textiles shops and took advantage of the late summer sales. The below fabrics are (on left) two 100 % cotton tablecloths, 150 cm * 220 (i. e. a LOT of fabric), which were discounted down to $4 each, and (on right) two 150cm * 1m pieces of thicker curtain fabrics, also 100 % cotton, which were 70 % off. I’m considering the two curtain fabrics for the bag above.

A new kind of stitching

In the last few years, I’ve noticed that knitting blogs have developed in many new directions. Some have been closed down or just ignored, some knit bloggers have started spinning, some have started weaving and some have been sewing. I, of course, have dabbled in spinning, have been drooling over some lovely weaving, but sewing has mostly left me cold. Until now.

I asked my mother if I could borrow her sewing machine (a Husqvarna from the 80s), visited the fabric shop and just started:

Pattern: Two Kates project bag

Fabrics: Outer is Kaffe Fassett quilting cotton, lining is a relatively generic quilter’s cotton, both fat quarters.

Modifications: The bag is slightly narrower than the pattern suggests. The strap is around two inches narrower, as the pattern strap seemed too broad to carry the bag by.

I sewed this bag without sewing even one test seam! This is a charming little pattern, and extremely easy to follow. I really liked that the pattern contained directions to draw my own template.

I also tried my hand at a smaller sock knitting bag. This wasn’t as successful, unfortunately, but the less fortunate parts are easily hidden:

Pattern: Yarnmonster’s drawstring bag tutorial

Fabric: One fat quarter of quilter’s cotton, designer unfortunately forgotten

Modifications: None intentionally, but the bottom turned out too big for the sides, so the bottom is a little scrunched. Also, the topstitching created some unintentional creases.

I really like this bag. It’s small enough to fit comfortably in my handbag and keep my knitting from getting tangled in keys, my mobile phone or my mp3-player headset. At the same time, it comfortably holds a full skein of sock yarn and my project. And because it has a separately-sewn-on bottom, it sits open rather than flopping over uselessly. I’ll make more of these, I think.

DIY

We’ve been reorganizing our house a little lately, as a result of the baby moving out of our room. There was an old set of drawers in the kids’ room that I wanted to redo to make it suitable for our bedroom to store some of my yarn stash. I don’t often do DIY, but I do think sanding and refinishing a set of drawers is the kind of thing everyone should be able to manage, so off I went to the hardware store.

Before:

Worn old varnish, chipped and broken drawer pulls, some stains. Not so nice.

Supplies:

Single-use gloves, brush, screwdriver, sandpaper, matte oak-stain varnish (the hardware store assistant told me to buy a darker varnish to hide old stains), new drawer pulls (can you see in the picture that I bought two different size drawer pulls? I couldn’t until I put them on, which annoys me but not enough to have the big ones replaced). I use gloves for all DIY jobs, I hate getting sticky paint or varnish on my hands. I managed to get a little on them while removing the gloves, and discovered that nail varnish remover works really well even with furniture varnish

Step 1:
Remove old drawer pulls

Step 2:
Sand all surface areas. I sanded the top very carefully to remove all the old, chipped varnish, but I was less careful with the rest of the surfaces, as the hardware store assistant had said that I only needed to roughen the surface of the old varnish. As you can see on the drawer fronts below, that wasn’t strictly true and they became quite mottled-looking after the first coat of varnish. They improved slightly with the second coat, though.

Step 3:
Apply two coats of varnish.

Drawer fronts after one coat of varnish:

Top of the set of drawers after two coats of varnish:

Step 4:
Attach new drawer pulls and (optional) cut out and insert paper liners for the drawers. I wanted liners because the interior was quite worn and to avoid snagging the stash yarns.

ALL DONE!

Craftavaganza

These last few glorious days of summer holidays have been absolutely wonderful for my crafting. I have been knitting a lot, spinning a little and even branched out into other crafts. In the next few days I’ll be blogging it all.

Contrary to all conventions of suspenseful story-telling, I’ll start with the best, simply because I’m dying to share it. I give you…. my new knitted jacket:

Pattern: Babydoll cardigan from Alt om Håndarbeide April 2009

Yarn: Lerke from Dale Garn (50 % merino wool, 50 % cotton). The pattern calls for a cotton/acrylic blend, but I wanted a warmer and all natural yarn. Even with the wool content, it is perfect for the cool summer weather we’ve been having recently. 7.6 balls used.

Needles: 3, 3.5 and 2.5 mm needles in Addi and Knitpicks.

Modifications: Lowered the underbust cinching by two centimetres, otherwise knit exactly as the pattern says.

Started: 20 April 2009.

Finished: 28 July 2009.

I’m so happy with this cardigan! I decided to knit it almost the moment I saw it in the magazine, but I immediately knew from past, bitter experience that I would have to lower the empire line underneath the bust. I was quite nervous about making such a visible change, but I measured myself and several empire line sweaters and shirts I already own before I started the work and it turned out exactly right. It’s a very comfortable garment and has already been used several times both at work and at home.

FO at the beach

I finished my hemmed wonder, just in time to wear it to our first proper trip to the beach this year!

Stats:

Pattern: Top-down raglan of my own devising, with hems and a yo row for a ribbon.

Yarn: Vlnap Samanta (Cotton, rayon, acrylic), ca 280 grams.

Needle: 3.5 mm for hems, 4 mm for the body of the sweater.

Thoughts: I’m reasonably happy with this sweater. I wanted it slightly a-line, with a ribbon or cord to cinch it in a litte below the bust. The front neckline is a little loose, and I’m not quite sure about the ribbon, but overall I like the relaxed fit. It’s very comfortable to wear and the yarn is very soft. I love the tweediness of thea yarn.

I may be done with the sweater, but I’m not emptyhanded. My new WIP came along to the beach:

It’s a swingy “babydoll” cardigan from a Scandinavian knitting and sewing magazine. It’s been slow going so far, I’m hoping it will speed up without the raglan competition.

The perils of procrastination

Last year I failed, by an ignominious week-and-a-half, to finish my father’s birthday gift of national costume stockings in time for the national day celebrations. Then, when I DID finish them, they turned out to be about five centimetres too short. Utterly defeated by my failure, I purchased another ball of yarn, then stuffed the stockings and the yarn into a ziplock bag and tried to forget about them. A few weeks ago I happened upon them and realised that, were my father to wear them for the 17th May celebrations this year, I’d have to hop to it. When I finally got started, the addition of five centimetres of ribbing at the top of each stocking took me exactly three leisurely afternoons. As you can tell from this picture, the addition was a truly minute amount of knitting:

I’m beginning to realise that my “lessons learnt” category really should have a question mark, because hope as I might that these stockings have taught me a thing or two about the perils of procrastination, I really have my doubts.

Back behind the wheel

I’ve had a little bit of a spinning break for the past couple of weeks. I’ve been slogging along on some sweater projects, and I just finished the last of my nice summery fibre, so I didn’t feel like spinning. But now I’ve gotten back in the swing of things a little. Here is the last thing I finished, a few weeks ago:

This is BFL, handdyed by Allspunup. This yarn is the first three-ply I’ve attempted. The two large skeins in the back are 99 grams together, and the meterage is written down on a sadly lost piece of paper, but around 250 metres, I’d suspect. I haven’t tested WPI, but I would guess at a fingering weight. The mini skein in front is 12 grams, 64 metres of two-ply from what was left on the bobbins.

The mini skein is testimony to my failure to accurately divide the fibre supply into three. I have to say, plying three singles was significantly harder than plying two. I had a harder time keeping them separate and had to break off more often in order to deal with tangles. I also misjudged how thin I had to go on the singles, and so the resulting yarn is thinner than I had originally envisaged. I’m not spinning for a particular project, though, so it’s all good.

I”ve also replenished the fibre supply a little, as I was beginning to lose inspiration to keep on spinning. The following beauties arrived today from Fyberspates, the best fibre dyer in Europe in my opinion:

This is 106 grams of superwash merino. I’ve spun a similar colourway from this dyer before, so I’m excited about this. But that’s nothing compared to this:

This is 100 grams of Baby Boo (70 % baby alpaca, 20 % merino, 10 % bamboo) in the colourway chocha mocha. I LOVE this! It’s super soft and the colour is incredibly beautiful, a blend of mauve, golden beige and purple. If I can do it justice spinning-wise, it would make a truly stunning lace scarf.

My current spinning WIP is causing me a little trouble, unfortunately. It’s this top from P&M woolcraft:

This top is a blend of silk and merino, and I’m finding it quite challenging to spin. I intended to spin a slightly thicker, lower-twist yarn than my other recent attempts, but difficulty drafting the top evenly means that the single is very unevenly spun. I’ll have to resign myself to this yarn being on the novelty side of things, I think.

Sudden discoveries

Remember this post, where I lament my complete inability to locate or recollect an ad I’d come across for a yarn company website which featured a free pattern for a lacy vest? Two days ago, while reorganizing my knitting magazine stash (so proud of myself, as they are now organized chronologically in separate binders for each publication), I happened upon the correct ad in a magazine I could have sworn I’d checked several times already. Turns out the site in question was Patons. The offer expired in March, but luckily the pattern was still free with registration on the site and.. well. I don’t know if I’ll knit it, but I downloaded it with that same satisfaction you feel when you wake up in the middle of the night suddenly remembering a name or a word that has eluded you the whole day.

In other follow-up news, my wonderfully hemmed top-down raglan is now even more impressively hemmed, with a deep and, surprisingly, straight hem at the bottom of the sweater. I have half of a short sleeve and its attendant hem to go before I can proudly show off the FO. With a long weekend barely started, I’m hoping that can happen within the next few days. You can tell that I’m ridiculously proud of the hemming action, can’t you:

 The last month I’ve been in a blogging pickle – I’ve had time to either knit, spin or blog about knitting and spinning, and if I didn’t spend it actually knitting or spinning I’d have no knitting or spinning to blog about and, well. But the upside is, I now actually have two whole blog posts’ worth of knitting and spinning to share. Next post: A spinning FO and some new spinning fibre.

Book review: The Intentional Spinner

I recently ordered spinning guru Judith MacKenzie McCuin’s new book The Intentional Spinner: A holistic approach to making yarn (Interweave Press, 2009). Even though, on the face of it, the description sounds like many learn-to-spin books, I think this is more of a book for the intermediate/advanced beginner spinner. The first half is devoted to fibre characteristics, but goes into more detail than Maggie Casey or Lee Raven’s excellent introductory texts and has a more scientific approach.

The sections on spinning techniques deals only very briefly with wheel mechanics and fibre preparation, instead going in-depth on the question of drafting methods. She deals with a great variety of yarns and shows in clear pictures how to make them. I find it a little hard to read this book straight through because of the great profusion of pictures and the numbered references to them throughout the text. But whenever I decide to try one of the techniques, I’m sure I will appreciate the abundance of pictures.

This is a great book, which, coupled with Maggie Casey’s Start Spinning, should keep a relatively new spinner happily occupied for a long time. I would not recommend it as a starting book, as it contains too little info on wheel or spindle mechanics and fibre prepping.