2nd day

Here my first modules put together. Only more than halfway through doing all these I figured that I don’t need to cut a full square becuase the corners are cut away and can therefore  use the shrunk jumper pieces more efficiently by placing the template running over the pieces.

One day…

Sometimes commercial jumpers are not fit for frogging. I don’t know whether they come like this or become like this in the wash but some yarns just disintegrate when you try to unravel them. That is pretty annoying but being me I can’t throw them away but have to put them with all those jumpers that found an accidental shrink in the washing machine (I get my wool cycle a bit wrong sometimes). In my unfathomable depth of positivity I tell myself that something will become of them one day…

Second test

It seems this ‘one day…’ has come, I am making something. I stumbled upon this modular felt trivet on How about Orange and thought, that’s it!

Because the trivets are made from commercial felt whereas I have just shrunk knitwear, I made a few tests. My first test I seriously don’t want to show anyone. The felted pieces are not stiff enough to be cut properly. They give way, especially when I cut them with the scalpel. I used my little sharp embroidery scissors whenever possible. For the second test, and in the hope that the resulting fabric would be denser, I shrunk them again with another wash at 60 degrees . My second test looks very encouraging. I first enlarged the template to about 13 cm square because I didn’t like the look of the little squares. Cutting  bigger squares was easier, but I still had to be careful.

I’m pretty chuffed with my second test. I think I will make some wall art with the rest of the pile. More on this next weekend.

Popknitting tea cosy

Third! Curve of Pursuit

I did a bit of Popknitting making a tea cosy for my cubical Goblin teapots out of some odd balls that I had left from making my third Curve of Pursuit afghan (yes, third; I simply love that pattern; this one is made from a stash of yellow, pink and bright red mohair/silk yarn dating as far back as the 1980s). Goblin teapots belong to Teasmades, those glorious machines that make tea for you in the morning without you having to get up. Not that I use my two Teasmades. They are pure pieces of decoration. But I have two single teapots that I regularly use.

I love Popknitting. It’s big and bold and beautiful. I used the ‘slipped stitches to form welts‘ pattern from pages 56 and 57. I started from the handle knitting on both sides of the yellow cast-on. After one welt I switched to alternating pink and red welts working around the handle for four welts and then around both sides inserting the yellow top.

The biggest challenge posed the nozzle. I didn’t want to put short rows in. Indeed I couldn’t quite imagine how to do the welts as short rows. Therefore I increased and decreased stitches to form the nozzle, which together with the three colours coming together in the front resulted in something resembling American Art Deco.

Paper lichen

My son and I went to grab a German sausage from the market on Sunday (he tomato sauce, I heaps of German mustard on top) and saw what my son called ‘paper lichen’ on the wall of the Guildhall. I asked ‘Paper lichen?’. He thought that so obvious he couldn’t believe I asked. ‘They are made from paper and are on the wall’ he exclaimed. I had forgotten we had explored lichens a couple of years ago.

The jumper on the cover

I haven’t written for a long time. To get going again I thought I start with the most recent on my needles. It’s a true recycling project, when it comes to the yarn as well as the patterns.I have both ‘A Stitch in Time’ books by Susan Crawford and Jane Waller. I leaf through them a lot but have not tried any of the models although they are deliciously gorgeous. I don’t know which to do first which prevents me from making one at all. I looked up a few vintage patterns on the web too and decided to make a jumper with a vintage take but not one exactly as prescribed. I can come back to the ‘A Stitch in Time’ books later.

I like these two-tone models from the 1930s on the Faded Splendour website, one sporting a brick pattern, the other combining an eyelet pattern with stripes.I prefer the lower v-neck of the stripey jumper but am not so sure I like its combination of eyelet pattern and stripes, though I’ll certainly try the leg o’ mutton sleeves at some point. The brick pattern I had to try. So brick pattern with v-neck it is.

I got two old jumpers from my stash that make for a nice vintage colour combination of dark red and light blue. I think the Jaeger jumper is genuine Shetland wool. With the other I’m not so sure because it says ‘super’ Shetland, whatever that means, but it certainly knits well.

I think the colours work well together with the brick pattern. It’s a slip stitch pattern, so no unnervingly tangled threads because you only need to knit one colour at a time. I hope the jumper will go well with the tartan skirt shown in the swatch picture.

Reading vintage patterns isn’t as complicated as I thought, though it does take a bit getting used to that half of the information usually provided in modern patterns is missing. It takes a bit of maths too to convert things to my size. I knit front and back at the same time and am now up to the armholes.

Spinning a Yarn ready for take off

The Spinning a Yarn Afghan for my mother is ready well in time for the C event, the  C  I don’t like to mention before 1st Advent.

I’m extremely pleased that the two different yarns work so well together. I like the fact that an unloved red jumper of mine has turned into something so useful and beautiful.

First crochet attempts and Spinning a Yarn

Last week I showed Henry how to crochet. He got some light blue wool and a 4mm hook. I had to do the first two rows because he found finding the right loops a bit confusing but after three attempts in between some of Mummy’s crochet he figured out how to do it. That said he laid it to rest for now. Hopefully he will give it another try.

I’m working on Spinning a Yarn. I worked the pattern as a hat before but this time I will make an Afghan. It is meant to be for my mother. She has got self-made red and purple tartan bed linen complemented by a self-made woollen tartan bed spread in the same colours, but she says the wool she used is not so nice. It’s some old machine wash wool she got from somewhere long forgotten. She loves the Wooly Thoughts patterns as much as I do because she always preferred geometrical patterns over the flowery stuff she had to do at school in the 1950s. Back then she was forbidden to do the ‘modern stuff’, i.e. geometrical patterns.

I combined two very nice, but very different yarns: an old frogged red jumper of mine, Schachenmayr nomotta Bossa Nova, made from lambswool, alpaca and silk and White Rose Mohair by Texere Yarns in lilac. White Rose Mohair is a non-fluffy mohair yarn.  I’m sure those two yarns are nice enough for my mother.