Blocked and ready for take-off!

Here's Multnomah washed, blocked and ready to face the spring breezes.

I am pleased with this and think the shades in it will complement lots of different colours and look great against good old black.

Down in Galloway for the long weekend for Spring Fling

http://www.spring-fling.co.uk/

Ready to face what the weather holds as we check out some studios, some old favourites, and no doubt some new to us. Enjoy the Bank Holiday if you're getting it. x K

Copy-cat knitting

It's not often you see me knit a garment in the recommended yarn, never mind in the same colour as the published pattern, although some people swear by it.

This case is the exception, I'm making "Feeling Good" by Sarah Hatton, published in Simply Knitting August 2010.

Thanks to Ravelry I know that there are errors in the published pattern, such as the lacy panels on the fronts are identical and not mirrored. These are the kind of helpful things that are easy enough to fix if you know in advance to look out for them, so thank-you Rav.

I'm making it in Rowan Purelife Revive in shade Quartz. I have used this yarn before in a Montego Bay-type scarf which I've yet to show you.

I've bought extra yarn because I agree with the designer when she says in the magazine article that she thinks

it would be nice with kimono sleeves.I've never had great upper arms, and now I'm forty, well... they ain't gettin' any better, so, cover-up it is.

And thank-you for your kind comments about Swoony Multnomah. It has had a nice bath and I hope to have some modelled shots to show you over the long weekend.

That is, if I get a long-weekend, curse you Jury Service. x K

Multnomah Preview

Dodging the April-style showers to take a couple of snaps of a little shawlette I've recently finished.

These are the unblocked shots of my Multnomah by Kate Elsa of HelloKnitty.net.

A lovely little knit which was a pleasure to make in the Colorimetry Swoony Sport yarn I bought at The Life Craft in Glasgow.

I made some minor

modifications- I slipped the first stitch of every row, and I introduced a half-repeat of the feather and fan pattern when I had enough stitches, rather than having fields of garter stitch at the sides and centre. This has resulted in more of a pull on central column rather than the straight as a die lines in the original, but I don't regret it. I just kept going until I ran out of yarn which resulted in a few extra repeats. I'm going to give it a wee bath and then put up some nice blocking and blocked shots.

Motoring on with the patchwork

Getting on well with the patchwork this week. Not much to show you at the moment but I can offer you an archive picture of the fabrics before they all got chopped up into hexagons!

It's nuts, isn't it? You take perfectly good fabric, cut it up into wee pieces then sew it all together again in a different order. The things we do for fun! x K

Slightly leading questions...

What do you think about this lovely pattern by Signe S. Simonsen?

What do you think about the lovely yarn it is made from?

Yes, some yarn handpainted by my friend Tigerlilith of Old Maiden Aunt Yarns fane is gracing the pages of the latest edition of Knitty.

Yes, pages plural as it features as a banner on all parts of this Winter issue.

This gives me a great thrill, especially as it such a pretty pattern, and one which I would love to make. x K

Playing with hexagons

My crafty energy has recently been going into playing with some hexagons cut from Christmassy fabrics.

I've decided on the pattern and it's going to be dubbed something like 'Poinsettias in the Snow', that is red flowers with green leaves on a creamy/gold background.

Here is a wee sketchy layout. Don't worry if you see things like identical fabrics side-by-side or other clashes, it's just to help

me visualise the basic outline. DH helped me with the physical laying out and his keen aesthetic eye too.

I've made a few refinements since then and it's shaping up nicely. The four main flowers are sewn with their leaves attached and the green lozenge in the middle is done with its light row around it.

Yes, hexagons are a bit fiddly to work with, but these babies are 5 1/2" each, so they aren't quite as tricky.

Making progress and I'm sure it will be ready for Christmas 2011. Well, when I say sure... x K

Happy New Year!

Wishing you health, wealth, happiness and craft in 2011. x K

I'm going to come right out and say it...

...I miss the snow!!!

No, I don't miss the travel chaos and the frozen and burst pipes and other hardships people have had to endure, but I do miss the beautiful diamante white stuff itself.

Not so much on the streets of Glasgow, but definitely on the rolling hills and old woods of Galloway.

Sparkly crystalline pristine snow.

I miss the snow!

He he, that's as controversial as I get in this blog ;-) x K

Winter Warmer

Question: What do you do when you like the look of a fair isle scarf from M & S advertised in the paper, but when you see it in-store you realise that although it's lovely, there's something not quite right about it?

Answer: You make one of your own of course!

Mine doesn't really look anything like the original of course because I only used that a spring-board, but I love it all the same. And because I wanted a bolder look I used a unifying background colour (except when I felt more contrast was needed) rather than also changing background colours as in traditional fair isle knitting.

I used some patterns from the thankfully reprinted Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting, combining them as desired, although once the sequence was set, I stuck with it. It all looks different though because the colours were also cycling round too, and by design I didn't get the same motif in the same colour more than once.

I learned a lot about the reading of fair isle charts. Basically the contrast colour is either on or it's off and once I got into my rhythm I was motoring ahead.

I am on the laptop here and don't have all my photos in the drive, but there are plenty more views either on Ravelry or on Flickr for those without Ravelry accounts.

Edit: I should also add that this finished object owes something to Kaffe Fassett's Lidiya Scarf from Rowan 48. (No links but that info should enable you to find it.) End edit.

Hopefully everyone is enjoying the Christmas season. x K

Happy Christmas!

Have a lovely Christmas everyone! x K

Finishing touches

Here are my beautiful new shawl pins. I think they are so nice that even the wee prongs can be used alone on, say, smaller shawls or items which aren't even hand-knitted. :-0

I'm mostly going to let the photos and the links do the talking, but suffice it to say that it tickles me that even though I am not at home, I have four shawls to hand to model the shawl pins!
Shawl pin page on Jannette's Rare Yarns
Zeshane Indian Wooden Handicrafts

A Ravelry for sewing?

It was my intention to show you my new shawl pins from Jannette's Rare Yarns tonight, but that will have to wait...

I have spent a while today uploading my few sewing projects onto a relatively-new sewing community called My Sewing Circle. This link is the join-up and log-in page and This one is the associated blog.

There's not much to see if you haven't joined the community (free and pretty much instant) but suffice it to say it's a place where people can upload their sewing project details, photos, fabric stash and join "circles" for specific interests and locations. Sounds familiar? Well yes, it is very much like what I imagine the big R must've been like in its very early days.

It's good, and it could be very good when the membership reaches a critical mass. It has a lot of the same features as Rav and derives its good ideas from there, make no mistake, but it lacks the amazing link-tastic nature of Ravelry.

I'm glad I found it, I've been looking for something like this and I hope to see some of you in there. My username is.....KEDkrafty! I think some of you may like it, maybe my online friends like Sandra in Croatia and Yvette in France for instance.

This has come at a good time for me because I've been doing a bit of patchwork machine sewing this week. Anyway, My Sewing Circle, let's see how it goes.

New tap

Someone else has done all of the hard work this time!

This is a hand-knitted top, not by me, though. It's a former sample garment for Jaeger Handknits.

I'm really pleased with it, it's a lovely colour and it looks ok now but I think it will look even better as I trim down a bit more. I'm also happy because I don't know how to do this loopy stitch so I have no pangs of conscience that I could just as easily have made it myself.

I bought it from Jannette's Rare Yarns, a shop I enjoyed buying from on e-bay, which is now a normal online shop. Prices are shown in dollars, which is no problem at all if you use Paypal and items are shipped promptly from a UK address

Suffice it to say that I got it for a bargain price, and was quite delighted to see it because in my experience sample garments are usually seen in the first or second sizes. I do not have the pattern book that this came from, but I would reckon this would be the largest size, being a 42".

The T-shirt is called "Sym", and was designed by Amanda Griffiths. It was knitted in Jaeger Albany, colour Damson #270. It comes with a code number, JHGB1113, which I think refers to the pattern book. I can't seem to find it, but my mooching around has thrown up that you can still get Jaeger Albany yarn in selected colours at English Yarns (sidebar).

Lovely new tap, lovely new tap, lovely new tap.

Mantilla

This headscarf has been finished for a couple of weeks but I haven't had any decent photographs to show.

Actually I don't event think these photos are any great shakes, apart from number one, the shadow one.

This is the lovely Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark, from Interweave Knits, fall 2006.

This is not the first time I have made this pattern but it is the first time I have done the Lily of the Valley section with the nupps.

It's made with Patons 100% Cotton 4-ply left over from this headscarf from last year.

I really enjoyed making it and I will doubtless enjoy wearing it. Hope you are having

a good crafty week. x K

A Wii cloth

I've never really understood how people can spend hours making cloths just to get them manky on dishes and grimy kitchens.

Face-cloths and shower puffs I can just about handle.

So, to practise my crochet I've made a little cloth to mop my fevered brow when using the Wii Fit Plus. I'm trying to improve my fitness, and using the Wii is one of the ways I'm doing it. Also watching the food and using the bike, taking a Pilates course, walking more etc. Wii Fit Plus on Nintendo page

I've now got a Gold Fit Piggy because I've been exercising on the Wii for more than forty hours. (A Fit Piggy is an on-screen piggy bank of your accumulated exercise minutes, every time you finish say, thirty minutes of Step on the Wii, it tallies up your thirty minutes.)

It's made from King Cole Bamboo Cotton Ravelry link which I had left over from a headscarf from last year. It's proving very useful because I do *glow* a little when I put the Riser on the Wii Balance Board and do a good session. If I dab myself it stops my glasses falling off when I try to do the yoga poses!

It washes like a ribbon in the machine, dries very quickly and has helped improve my crochet as well as my fitness. I have trimmed down a bit and am determined to continue getting healthier. x K

Thank-you

Thanks for all your lovely comments about "Green Shoots" on here, on Facebook, on Ravelry and by e-mail. You are very kind. x K

Green Shoots

I am delighted to present a shawl I improvised myself from the beautiful Bitter Bug colour Bamboo and Merino sock yarn from Old Maiden Aunt which I got in the yarn preview club which ran last winter to give a taster of the different shades and sock-yarn bases available for this year's collection.

I knew this yarn could make a lovely shawl after having used it last year for a well-loved project .

I like it even more than the yarn I used last year because the colour is even more up-my-street, I adore this type of green and the variation in the hand-painted yarn gives it a multi-faceted look.

The little "Bitter Bug" was a charm which came as one of the extra goodies with the yarn preview club. I used him as a stitch marker while I was making the shawl and he looked so good with it I had to incorporate him into the shawl itself.

This project means a lot to me because it marks a bit of a renaissance of my interest in things crafty and after a rough few months it marks the first times in ages I've felt inspired and enthusiastic about *anything*, hence the name "Green Shoots".

It starts with stocking stitch then moves into a chevron stitch and was a delight to work with, in this top-notch yarn.

I'll be working with this yarn again, no doubt, and may have another go at this "pattern" too.

Green Shoots, aaah! x K

Cheeky Pandas

Behold a mini-quilt made to the nine-patch pattern.
I'd had the panda fabric for a while, and held onto it until I could make good use of the small quantity I had.
Our new six year-old niece is getting great use of it for playing with dollies and soft-toys.
Quilted on the diagonal using my (then) new walking-foot attachment.
It seems that JANOME accessories can be used on ELNA sewing machines, in fact for some models the JANOME fittings are now the only option.
Musical note backing fabric and silky bias binding from Mandors if my memory serves me well. x K

Sneak Preview

Here is a sneak preview of a recently finished object I am absolutely delighted with.

Patchwork Project Bag

I've got a bit of catching up to do here to update you on some recent crafty makes.

Here's a patchwork project bag I made this spring.

The block itself is nothing new but I followed a diagram in February's Patchwork and Quilting Magazine and then improvised the bag design round the patchwork block.
I had made the "Shoo-Fly" block before but without the central contrast section.
Because I am inexperienced in patchwork I find some blocks fiddly, so I upped the size to make it less of a fouter.
It is wadded and quilted with a zig-zag stitch over the seams on my Elna.
I added a lining and handles in the marbly green fabric. If for any reason I feel the quilted side is too "loud" I can easily use it inside-out.

Overall I am very pleased with it and it makes a good knitting project or magazine bag.
Fabrics were fat quarters from the Galloway Gem Shop, King St, Castle Douglas.