Week Sixty Seven

School holidays are over.
I finished my son's jumper. Its in Sundara Worsted Merino in a colour called "The Hours With You" a mix of cool chocolate and caramel browns.

I didn't use a pattern but knitted from the top down, measuring as I went. I left one raglan seam open and picked up a ribbing band afterwards. Wooden buttons.

Its shown here on my dress form, its sized very generously for a ten year old boy.

I made a plain wool, weekday dress.
This is my usual pattern made up in 100% wool ponti knit.

Nothing dramatic but a good basic for wearing under jackets and cardigans.

Then a made a pair of pants with the same wool. This is the Anita Pant recently bought from Tessuti Fabrics. I made a small split at the ankle.
They fit well through the hips. Now that I've thought about it, I'd like a pant a little looser in the lower leg. My next version I'll made a slight adjustment. I'd like them to look more like a pencil pant than a legging.

Hard to photograph these.

I'm on a mission to sew through my stash and thin out some of the remnants and odd lengths bought on a whim.
Apologies for the shocking photographs. Its a complete rush to get everything done today.

I made two pillowcases for my eight year old daughter. Paris is her dream.

I bought this cotton thinking about a dress for her, but my online purchase, when it arrived turned out to be a heavier polished cotton. (I really ought to read the fabric description and not get carried away by pink and the Eiffel Tower. i'm as bad as she is!). But it makes a great addition to her bedroom.

Then I made two square cushion covers with remnants. (Also for her but for a different place).
This is an Alexander Henry 2011 fabric called "Love City"

and this is made up from two fat quarters.

Finally our Family Room sofa has a new cushion. Second from the left. This is a Kristen Doran screen print called Eva and Kit crochet squares. 

(I didn't make the cute bulldog cushion, but since we have the real one, this was a nice addition.)

Week Sixty Six

I have finished Twigs and Willows. I'm happy with the way it turned out.

I love the design and will be reknitting this with a different yarn. The yoke is so pretty.

The sleeves went in pretty well too. (Although I redid the numbers because I was working to a different gauge)

My reservations are all connected with my yarn choice.
I used Swans Island Worsted in Vintage Lilac. A hand dyed yarn from natural dyes.
All five skeins had the same dyelot but even so they had a lot of variation. I had to alternate using three strands in order to get a blend. Also, the sleeves aren't a good match to the body since they were blended from a different skein combination.

However now I've assembled this cardigan it's not as obvious as it was when I was closely inspecting each piece. There is a teeny bit of 'striping' on the back but overall its not too bad.

My second comment is that I think I could have gone up a size. (Although I have a tendency to always oversize my knits and sewn garments). I also chose a very tight gauge to work this yarn and the yoke detail really pulls in.
As its shown here it has been steam blocked. I'm going to wash the cardigan and more aggressively block it to see what happens.

Finally, I was very fortunate with the buttons. They're 1960s (?) vintage bought from All Buttons Great and Small in Sydney (sidebar link). I bought them back in 2008 for a kid mohair cardigan.

Here is the former cardigan. The yarn was GGH Soft Kid in Bright Lilac. The pattern is Cabled Cardigan by Hannah Fettig from her book "Closely Knit".

That was a lovely cardigan to wear, but sadly the years stretched and pilled it. Before getting rid of it I removed the buttons (6 as one was lost).

Week Sixty Five

No blog update this week. But I'll be back next week with some finished projects (I hope!)

It's now the first week of school holidays and I'm spring cleaning and sorting the stash in order to relocate about 50% of it back into the city closer to where I am during the week.

The challenge is to decide which moves and which stays.

Week Sixty Four

I worked on my Twigs and Willows cardigan. I finished the first front and am half way up the second.
I'm hoping the leaf motifs will spread and even up after blocking.

My skeins aren't very well matched, but at least they're not as different as the Madelinetosh pashmina skeins from Flo. I'm knitting and alternating with three strands to get the piece as blended as I can.


Speaking of mismatched skeins, I am thrilled that my order from Eat Sleep Knit arrived.
They sent me the lightest skein of "Ink" from the batch they had in stock and I am very optimistic that it will be fine.
I hope to finish my Flo cardigan over the forthcoming school holidays.

Here is the new skein (at back) with original leftovers and the hand wound dark skein. Apologies for the iphone picture)

I pulled Rincleau from my wip basket. The cowl is 8 1/2" of seed stitch. I'm still going but it is very pretty in this Sundara Aran Silky Merino. The colour is called The Great Pacific.

My DyakCraft interchangeable needles arrived today! I ordered them last June so it has been a long wait. Hand made in 'Vermont Apple'. I love the personal touch of the handwritten sizing on the needle roll and the set number signature too.

I will switch the needles from Rincleau. I'm keen to try these out as soon as I can.
They are so pretty, I'm such a sucker for nice accessories.

I bought some plain black wool Ponti knit fabric and some silk crepe de chine from Tessuti this week.
We will be going on an overseas holiday in a few months and I have a travel wardrobe to prepare for!

Finally, since I had to online shop for a single madtosh skein, it was entirely practical to buy a cardigan quantity while I was online.
I chose this fingering Dream in Color Starry in the colour Tokyo Creme. It has sparkles!

I'm planning a very plain short cardigan copied from a store bought one.

And finally, a cross stitch kit entered the house. I had a gift voucher from Morris and Sons and I bought this cushion kit for my daughters bedroom.

Two weeks of school holidays start on Friday. I will be leaving the city and am hoping for lots and lots of crafting.

Week Sixty Three

No sewing this week, just a lot of knitting.

Since I was stalled on Flo with the dark blue mismatched yarn, I cast on Twigs and Willows (Ravelry link). It is a cardigan from her new book Botanical Knits.

Here is the published cardigan.

I am knitting my cardigan with Swans Island Worsted in Vintage Lilac.
Its the yarn I photographed as a skein against my purple tweed dress two weeks ago.

Having the dress (which I haven't worn yet) is a great motivation to finish the cardigan. So far I have knitted both sleeves, part of the back and up to one of the yokes on a front.

I knit alternating from two skeins for the sleeves and they blended well.  The back piece I needed to start another skein and its not a great match for the earlier yarn. Its possible to see the slight striping on the photograph.

The front piece (folded under the ribbed back piece) I knit from three skeins and its much better blended.

This is why I left the back partly finished to start the fronts. I wanted to maximise the yarn for the fronts.

I haven't decided if I'm going to rip the back down to the ribbing and reknit. It depends on what skeins I have left over from the fronts. And also... it looks more 'stripey' in the photograph than in real life.

I hope by next week's post I will have some finished pieces to show. Maybe not the full assembly.
I'll also be shopping for buttons later this week.

Week Sixty Two

I have a new dress to report.

I went back into the stash as I'm still trying to sew though my older fabrics and found this wool tweed, bought a year or more ago from Tessuti Fabrics. 

Its very loosely woven. Flushed with the success of last week's purple dress, I thought it would sew well.

I cut the same sleeveless shift. It came together really well, although it frayed if I so much as looked at it sideways. I overlocked every raw edge to stabilise it.

I had so much fabric.. but a jacket (assuming I was game to make something tailored with this fraying weave) seemed too much texture.

So I drew out threads and made a tie scarf with fringed edges.

Its not lined. I have to get a production line of linings going!


Then I completed a project that has been waiting a long time.
Back during summer holidays my young daughter did some tie-dyeing. We made a turquoise tee shirt which was only now assembled.

She would have preferred pink, of course. But added bling to the neckline courtesy of an iron on transfer bought at Lincraft is almost as good.

Finally some disappointing knitting news.
I made good progress on my Flo cardigan up until a few days ago. I wound my fifth skein ready to complete and found that the skein (Madelinetosh Pashmina in Ink) is significantly different from the previous Ink skeins.
So much darker as to be usable.

Here is the wound skein shown side by side with my remaining yarn.

I did two rows jut to see. Not that I needed convincing.

I am desperately looking for another skein in a lighter variation of Ink. I have a few leads but even assuming something comes up, it seems my project is going to be significantly delayed. And so close to the finish line!

Not sure what project to work on now. There are quite a few options in progress and for the last couple of days I've been doing a little on each to see which will 'take'.


Easter Weekend is almost upon us. We will be several days out of the city and I have hopes of crafting now power and water have resumed to the crafting house.

My posts have been a little later each week lately as I've been so busy. Next week's post will be delayed with the holiday excuse. I'll be back in town on Tuesday.

Week Sixty One

Unfortunately this week has a photograph-free post. 
I've been knitting on Flo, it still looks the same as previous weeks.... just more deep blue knitted fabric.

My craft room was closed up as we had some building repairs. No power meant no sewing machine. I'm looking forward to catching up next weekend.