I can't help noticing that quite a lot of my knitting has been recently has been, well, grey. There were my grey bunny slippers last week and my grey cat the week before. This week, we have a grey purse and a grey cushion. I could argue that technically they are not grey but rather "pigeon", which is the cute name given to this particular shade of Rowan Alpaca Chunky.
The patterns come from the Rowan Winter Warmers book. I always feel terribly grown when I knit Rowan patterns, even though I'm not keen on them as I find them rather stilted and inaccessible as a fairly newbie knitter.
Anyway, first up was the purse. For some reason, I've never quite got to grips with moss stitch even though knit one, purl one doesn't see that hard. Anyway, this time I managed to produce a 17 stitch rectangle on 10mm needles. The pattern used a loop closure, which I wasn't keen on so I made a proper button hole between a few rows of garter stitch instead.
I mattress stitched the sides of the purse and then sewed on a nice wooden button to make up the purse. The pattern suggested making a lining for the entire inside of the purse, including the flap. I don't think this works too well (fabric too floppy) and besides you only really need to line the bit where you are going to put things. So, I made a lining excluding the flap from a Cath Kidston fat quarter and some interfacing on my sewing machine. I then slip stitched it by hand into the purse.
The second moss stitch make in the same yarn was this cushion. I followed the chart to make the moss stitch heart on the front. It's very subtle but you can see it in the right light (but possibly not in this terrible photograph!). I had to pull some rows back when I forgot to change stitches for the centre of the heart as well the edges. Doh!
The pattern used a fabric backing for the cushion but I had (by the absolute skin of my teeth and I had to weigh the yarn to check) enough pigeon left to knit a stocking stitch back for the cushion.
I back stitched three sides of the front and back of the cushion together, stuffed it with toy filler and then mattress stitched the final edge. In retrospect, I wish I had made a cushion pad instead as you can sometimes see the stuffing though the heart if you plump the cushion the wrong way. I now obsessively reshape it every five minutes so you can't see the filling.
So, I feel like I've got to grips with moss stitch at least a smidge. I'm now knitting an alpaca scarf. Can you guess what colour it is?
Melx
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