Why can't I count?
So here we have my most challengting knit to date. It is a lovely tea cosy kit from Laughing Hens. The pattern is under their own brand and comes complete with Debbie Bliss Cashmarino Aran and the 4.5mm needles to make the tea cosy. I love Hallowen-related items on an all-year-round basis so this seemed like the perfect make for me.
The challenge is that, to make the pumpkin ridges, you purl a set of stitches, turn the work, knit the stitches and then turn the work once again and purl. Although you were doing this with a relatively small numbers of stitches, I found it a huge challenge to keep count and make sure I was doing the right stitch on the right side.
So challenging in fact, I had to eschew my normal crafting companions of the TV on and the odd glass of wine. For the final stages, I even sat bolt upright at the kitchen table rather than lounging on the sofa. This strategy attracted the attention of my cat, Chloe, who pronounced my work in process "cosy".
The making up was fairly straightforward. Happily the cosy fit my only full-sized tea pot. I had visions of carrying the tea cosy round china shops looking for a match. The finished product is riddled with mistakes, however, the ridging hides quite a few and I'm displaying it with the better side facing out.
Still, an important learning curve and I do love pumpkins....
Melx
Make Jewellery September 2010
This month's offering from Make Jewellery Magazine is unusual in that it is pretty much exactly as shown in the mag. Normally, I end up adapting the projects to better suit my taste or to use beads and findings I already have in my stash.
This month, though, I was quite taken with the green chain maille jewellery in the Get Set! project, which turned out to be available as a kit from Beads Unlimited. As it was only £8.99, I sent for it straightaway (also taking advantage of the Magazine's offer of free pliers, bag of glass beads and instruction booklet from the same supplier). I've orded from Beads Unlimited a number of times before and always found them to be very good in terms of quality and speed of delivery.
A day or two later, the kit arrived. You got plenty of beads and jump rings and an inexplicably huge amount of headpins. The instructions were very clear and easy to follow and the process was quite simple in terms of threading the beads to the headpins and then joining them with groups of jump rings. The only potentially fiddly part is the bracelet, to which I had to add an extra group of jump rings to get the length correct.
Each bag of beads is unique/random, so to that extent my necklace and bracelet are not identical to the mag, but I thought the selection I received was just as nice. The only thing I would do differently is to have picked out the bracelet beads first - it was more important to have a balanced set of beads in terms of size and shape for the bracelet than the necklace. I actually raided my free bag of mixed glass beads to get the bracelet right, which handily included some green ones. I would have been fine if I'd have done the bracelet first.
Still, I thought this was a great value kit that was quick and easy to make and looks fabulous on as a set or as separate pieces.
Melx
Sew Hip Issue 20
This mouse and I had a destiny. I knew I would make her from the moment I spotted her on the back cover of Sew Hip Issue 19. I also knew from one look at her spindly legs that she would be a huge pain...
When issue 20 arrived, mousey was indeed my favourite project. I started with the cheerful matter of fabric choices. I had fallen for the Little Fawn Fabric bundle featured in Sew Hip from Fabric Rehab and I used the pink fabric with white spots fabric for the arms, legs and outer ears. I also ordered a plain pink Kona cotton to use for the face, body and base. I used up some leftover Tweet Tweet by Keiki from Seamstar for the chin, tummy and inner ears.
As usual, I cut the pattern out and stuck it to onto cardboard to make templates. I was impressed that you got, for example, both sides of the leg in the pattern, but it did make the number of pieces seem daunting.
Once I started cutting out the fabric, I made the whole thing in one session with a lot of sweating and very little breathing. Issues anticipated and encountered included: (1) fabric starting to fray as you handled it; (2) trouble turning spindly limbs the right way out; (3) spacial difficulties in positioning limbs the right way round (one leg facing the wrong way!); (4) problems sandwiching the limbs neatly; and (5) inexact matching up of parts. I machine sewed most of it, sacrificing some accuracy for more robust stitching.
So where are the bodies buried?
Mousey has adorable bows front and back to hide dodgy stitching between her ears. A felt heart motif at least partially disguises an inexplicable bit of extra stitching on her side and the stitching up the back could be neater. I also had to trim the odd seam that wasn't sandwiched inside quite correctly.
On the plus side, I do like my mouse's face. I used safety eyes (my embroidery could be better) and I think it gives less pinched look to the features. I also did a little crochet chain tail as I've been practising for my knitting. As the project suggested, I used plastic pellets in the bottom, which helps mousey sit very nicely on the shelf.
So, thanks to Jo Carter for the, ahem, challenge. I do smile whenever I see mousey no matter how imperfact she is...
Melx
Stripey...
The latest adventure in my knitting odyssey has been learning how to knit stripes. I've found You Tube an invaluable resource in seeing how things are done and I've been avidly watching videos on knitting stripes without tying or cutting the yarn.
I tried a couple of small things for practise. This one is a very cute little mouse from the book Knitted Toy Tales: Irresistible Characters for All Ages by Laura Long. The challenge is that you knit it from the nose down so there's quite a bit of shaping (which I recently discovered was a fancy name for making the knitting bigger or smaller) right from the off. I was very pleased with my candy stripes and my tiny ears. I even dug out a crochet book (still working on that particular skill) to remind me how to make a chain for the mouse's tail.
The second stripey knit was this little purse from How to Knit by Fiona Watt.
As this is an Usborne Art Ideas book, I'm assuming it is meant for kids, but I thought it contained a number of cute little patterns. Over-aged teenage goth that I am, I went for red and black stripes with a cute little black bat button for decoration. The purse actually fastens with a press stud underneath. I got the stripes and wrapping the yarn part down, but dropped a few stitches and knitted a bit when it should have been purled, but otherwise it turned out okay.
Both projects are knitted with Rowan pure wool DK on 4mm needles. It would appear I have turned into a wool snob already and am shunning arcylic, although I had to settle for some 50% merino for my latest stripey project. This is a three stripe piece and I feel a bit surrounded by my wool. I'll put it up on the blog when I'm done, assuming I'm not too tangled up...
Melx
My hamster is a zombie...
Since I dyed my hair green (I really do look like my avatar), I've been stocking up on green outfits and jewellery so I can be all matching. Imagine my excitement, therefore, when my favourite lampwork artist By Keiara made an early start on her Halloween range. In particular, new additions to her wonderful zombie family of animals.
Having been delighted with my zombie bears, I was thrilled to purchase a zombie owl and a zombie hamster (named Lester). Keiara very kindly whipped me up a set of zombie spacers to match and I bought a couple of cute black bats for good measure.
Since they arrived (which was only yesterday), I've been working hard to determine the best findings to use (I even woke up this morning thinking about it). In the end, I decided to make Lester into a necklace using some unusual satin black metal findings I got from Panduro Hobby. I made the raw chain into a necklace of about 20 inches using a lobster clasp and a jump ring. Lester is mounted on a headpin topped and tailed with 4mm Swarovski crystals. I added four danglers made with four of the spacers (two transluscent and two opaque), again mounted with jet crystal bicones. I really love the chain - it's got a very dungeony and goth feel. Most appropriate for a zombie pet I feel.
I used more of the spacers to make some simple matching earrings with the same black findings:
For zombie owl, I created a sort of totem pole using a clever beadable pendant finding (I think I got this one from Ebay). You just unscrew one end, pop on your beads and then screw it back together. Again, I've used an arrangement of spacers and crystals to set off the fab focal bead. I used a heavyweight jumpring to suspend the pendant from a sterling silver chain.
Finally, I mounted my bats very simply onto sterling silver headpins and earrings hooks with the ubiquitous jet black crystal bicones. Aren't they the sweetest?
I'm thrilled with my new gothy accessories and I can't wait to see what animal the amazing Keiara will turn into a zombie next...
Melx
Balancing Act
This cute peacock is from a new book called Little Birds by Design Collective. It is a beautiful book filled with gorgeous projects centred on, as the title suggests, petite creatures with wings. The book is great eye candy even if you never made a thing from it.
At first, I was tempted to put the peacock (by artist Amy Adams) in the too hard category, but then I decided that I shouldn't be so wimpy. I sewed the whole thing by hand, which felt very zen.
The peacock in the book is a more traditional blue colour, but the body and front freathers called for pre-felted wool. I already had some lime and orange felted wool from Blooming Felt, so lime and orange it was. The spotted fabric used for the centre and back of the feathers is from a fat quarter set from Hobbycraft. The buttons were just from stash. The pattern mentioned for some sort of embroidery cotton I've never heard of (it's a US publication), so I just used two strands of my regular stuff for the sewing and a full six strands from the head plume.
I was actually quite pleased with how it came together. As usual, I ignored the instructions and sewed the eyes on before stuffing the body (I still don't get why many patterns insist you attempt to sew facial features onto a stuffed body). I used a double-dose of cardboard to stiffen my feathers after my first couple seemed to sag a bit. The head plumes went on et voila!
Now for my guilty secret. The peacock won't stand up by itself - it has to be propped against the wall to stay upright. The project clearly warns about the need to balance the feathers and I did use plastic pellets to weight the body, but it wasn't enough. It's not a massive obstacle as Prudence (as she's now called) can live out her days on a shelf with her back against the wall. I wasn't really prepared to undo my neatly sewn body to insert cement or whatever might have provided better balast for the feathers...
Still, a lovely project and I'm looking forward to tackling some of the other birdy ideas in the book.
Mel x
