Things I have finished lately . . .

In no particular order:

Knit Picks Lace Headband
from the Victorian Yarn Sampler

Itty Bitty Bear
from Interweave Knits Summer 2005
made from bits of handspun dyed with coffee

Something I finished a couple of years ago, but love so much I made two pairs:
Simple T-Bar Shoes
from 50 Baby Booties to Knit
in Katia Cotton Comfort

A Bag for my Sister

 

Here is the purse that I made for my sister's birthday. Actually, I've been making it for about a year, maybe even two, but hey, who's counting?? I was kind of hung up on the needle felting design. The knitting and fulling were done a loooong time ago. The photo above more accurately shows the colour of the bag, but the photos below are better for the details. Amateur photography is apparently not my long suit. Yet. Self-betterment is always a good quest, don't you think? Especially in this case.

 

It is the Sophie Bag pattern from MagKnits and it is really fabulous. Easy, pretty and only takes one skein of Cascade 220. At less than $10 that's fantastic.

 

I lined it with some quilting fabric and made sure it had lots of pockets: one for lip balm, a pen, two side pockets on one long side and one larger one on the other. Add a magnet clasp and all is done.

 

Yay! I love it, too bad I had to give it away! Nah, all along I made it with my sister in mind, so it was easy to give it away and she was thrilled. Happy smiles.

Three Dresses, Three Days

 

It seems that one child, at least, does not have any summer dresses and so, down to the sewing room I went. I had a dress that was given to us which is super easy for the girls to put on and I used it to make a pattern, sizing it up a bit. I'm pretty happy with the results and so are they! Good use of the fabric stash too. I'm on a fabric diet.

Not doing very well at it since I bought some very cute turquoise eyelet and lime green lawn to make another dress for me, similar to the one above (not the cute girly one, that just doesn't suit me anymore, sigh). I made a pattern based on a designer dress that I could not/did not want to afford. It turned out pretty well and also used up some more of the stash, so I treated myself to this. A Mother's Day present you know. Did I say I was on a fabric diet? Naaaah.

Gauntlets Complete

Here they are and I am very happy with them. Of course, summer is almost here and I don't need them, but . . . maybe we'll go camping and I'll have to bring some emergency knitting and my fingers will be cold and . . .

My modifications for the diamond pattern are below. I noticed that, at least for me, reversing the diamond pattern to make the left hand diamond the opposite of the right-hand one did not work very well. It seems that the YO, SSK combination was not as clear as the K2TOG, YO combination so I have only included that version in my notes.

Diamond Pattern for Sally Melville's Elegant Gauntlets
Page 122, The Purl Stitch

Instead of following the directions for the thumb shaping, do the following (brackets indicate directions for the right hand):
Round 1: knit to 1st stitch before the marker, inc, k9(k30), k2tog, yo, knit to marker, inc, k to end
Round 2: knit all stitches
Round 3: knit to marker, k8(k29), [k2tog, yo) 2 times, knit to end
Round 4: knit
Round 5: knit to 1st stitch before the marker, inc, k7(k28), [k2tog, yo] 3 times, knit to marker, inc, k to end
Round 6: knit
Round 7: knit to marker, k8(k29), [k2tog, yo) 2 times, knit to end
Round 8: knit
Round 9: knit to 1st stitch before the marker, inc, k7(k28), [k2tog, yo] 3 times, knit to marker, inc, k to end
Round 10: knit
Round 11: knit to marker, k8(k29), [k2tog, yo) 2 times, knit to end
Round 12: knit
Round 13: knit to marker, k9(k30), k2tog, yo, knit to end
Round 6: knit

Finished, after three years!

Yes, I have finally finished my shawl (stole, whatever) that I began in April three years ago. I have to say, I am really happy with it. It is lovely. It is warm. And it makes a cool noise when it falls to the floor and all the beads go clickety-clack.

Soakers

I was sorting out some photos tonight and updating my Flickr gallery and I found these. These are the Perfection Pants and Curly Purly Soakers that I knit. They have been well used. The pants were knit from New Zealand Treliske Organic Merino Wool Yarn and the pink soakers are from Cascade 220. They really do work and we use them particularly at night, since most of the day when we are at home, the little ones have always just run around naked! The pants look enormous in the photo, but now they are more like capri pants! What a difference time makes, sigh.

Dizzy

Well, since we found the fish mitts (yay!) I have been able to successfully finish a pair of mittens. This is the final version of Dizzy from Mission Falls Smittens. Of course, it was done in the round and it actually has the cuff from Hena, but who cares - they are done. Except for weaving in the ends, but let's not dwell too long on that okay? They are finished. Shush.

Snuggly Warm

The kids and I felted up some scraps of Cowichan wool the other week. I brushed it all up nice and fluffy with a metal hairbrush and then we put the scraps in some ziploc bags with some hot water and dish soap and the kids rolled and smashed and mushed until we got this lovely warm fire for Bunny.

On another note, I finished up these slippers, another Mohair Ballet Slipper from Beverly Galeskas' book Felted Knits. I have made several of these, but this was the worst one so far. I spun a really bulky yarn for the cuff and we died it with orange Kool-Aid, but it was tooooo bulky and the stitches did not felt nicely the first time round. Also the slipper cuff was stretched way out of whack in proportion to the slipper body. So, I cut out notches from either side of the heel, similar to how you would stitch a moccasin heel and stitched up the sides with wool and the joined the cuff with matching sewing thread (the original yarn was no good at all for sewing the cuffs back together). All in all, it went really really well. The seams disappeared, even on the cuff and we now have slippers for a small human that really likes orange and red.

Mushroom Cap Hat

So here is the skein of the wool I spun the other day. Silly me, I thought I wouldn't need all the fibre . . . but that turned out to be a good thing. I did much better prep on the remaining fibre and used my wheel instead of my spindle and got a much more consistent yarn. And as for designing the yarn for the project, well, three tries later I finally had the colour pattern that I wanted! Of course, I had to knit the hat three times anyway. I used 15mm needles the first try and I had a hard time getting the tension right, so I tried again with 12mm and decided that the fabric was too stiff. In the end I went back to the 15mm needles and had a much easier time, I guess it just takes practice to use such enormous needles!

In the end I ran out of yarn and had to borrow some strips of Blue Faced Leicester sliver that I am using for another project. I didn't bother spinning them, I just twisted them as I knit the last couple of rows. Probably if I had been more consistent with the first batch of yarn, I might have had enough. Who knows!

Here is the finished hat. The pattern is my own, such as it is. Cast on 30 stitches, knit plain up to about 12 cm, then decrease 5 times every second row until there are 5 stitches left. Pull the yarn through and voila! — a new Mushroom Cap Hat. The yarn worked out to about 3 wpi and Barb, one of the owner's at River City Yarns, where I picked up the fibre, says that she is certain it is Merino. It is definitely soft!

Dolls

I love making dolls. I've mostly made Waldorf style dolls, except for this really sweet muslin doll I made when I was a teenager. Unfortunately she had a run-in with my mother's cat, but she still looks pretty good considering she is over 20 years old! I sewed every stitch of her and her clothing on my great-grandmother's Singer treadle sewing machine. It has so many cool attachments. Sigh. I've also made some cute little fairy dolls from Felt Wee Folk by Salley Mavor, but I'll save them for another post.

Here is a gallery of sorts of the Waldorf dolls I have made, starting with the first and ending with the last.

I changed the body style of the dolls considerable as time went on. At first I thought that a button jointed doll would be the most fun to play with, but after reattaching the black doll's arms and legs a few times I decided that maybe they weren't the greatest after all. These dolls were made with patterns from Joy's Waldorf Dolls (modified by me, it seems I can't ever follow a pattern without changing it.) She has nice patterns and good quality doll supplies. The baby doll is about 30 cm (12") high and the black doll is about 40 cm( 16") tall. Both of them have hair that is made from a crocheted cap of mohair (with a bit of nylon). The black doll has his hair rug-hooked into the cap. The baby just has a brushed mohair cap.

Dressing and undressing the button-jointed dolls proved too difficult for young children as well, and well, frankly, I dislike the shape of their bodies. So, the next doll I made I did a rework of a couple of patterns and made Gina and Fridgie (the baby).

I made Gina partly from a pattern rework of one of the dolls in Making Waldorf Dolls by Maricristin Sealey. For the one piece doll body she recommends sewing a diagonal lines to form the hip joint. I didn't do a one piece body - the legs and arms are sewn on separately, but I thought it might be good to incorporate the diagonal line. No. The short answer is no. If I had thought about it I would have realized that. Oh well. When Gina sits down she becomes very pigeon-toed! She has a huge head of hair, made the same way as the earlier dolls with two complementary colours of yarn.

Fridgie is based on a tiny soft baby doll that my sister had as a child. She is about 15 cm (6") high. Her legs could be a tad longer I think, but otherwise I think she is very cute. I used a pre-made wig from Joy's Waldorf Dolls that I had kicking around.

Gina is also accumulating an extensive wardrobe!

After little bit of tweaking with my pattern we had Jeff. Jeff is my latest doll and is true adventurer and explorer. My husband even made him some binoculars and we have plan to build a GPS too! Our Christmas crackers this year were loaded with lots of Jeff-sized tools: a tape measure, compass, flashlight and whistle. Essentials for the modern adventurer.

I don't really like Jeff's hair; I sewed it on using a methods from Making Waldorf Dolls. It was a new style for me and, although it's okay when he is sitting up nicely, when he lays down he looks like he has an odd ponytail on top of his head. His hair is made from alpaca and it is lovely lovely lovely. I took my son to the yarn shop to choose hair. He is a very tactile child and found the mohair of Gina's hair to be too scratchy and disliked the mohair of the unnamed black doll as well. It was quite funny to watch him choose, The alpaca was the first yarn we picked up at the shop and after a couple of blind feel tests on the cheek with several other soft yarns, he always chose the same one. It is sooo very soft.

The designs on his coat and backpack were made using freezer paper. I printed the stencil on the freezer paper using my computer printer, cut it with a blade, ironed it gently onto the fabric, and used fabric paint ( Pebeo SetaColor ) to stencil it on. Then you set the paint with an iron for five minutes and it is wash-fast! The stencil is from the Print for Free items at Ottobre. The binoculars are made from two empty sewing thread spools, glued to a bit of wood that my husband cut to fit.

A small terrorist that inhabits our house executed a sneak attack upon the intrepid explorer though and he contracted a serious case of Yellow Fever. Other dolls in the house have had cases of Pink Fever as well. So far they are washing up extremely well. I just gently handwash them in lukewarm water with some Eucalan wool wash. The body photos above were taken after his bath.

Little Bags

I made these last winter to hold
little bird-watching books that we made.


Little bags. No pattern, just made them.
The green is fabric from an old Samoan lavalava.

Sweet little bird.
Gingham applique on velour.

Fabric Purses

Ladybug, ladybug.
This is from an Ottobre pattern.

Reversible bag for my sister.
I made the pattern from a bag I had been given by a friend.

Reverse side of my sister's bag.

For my sister-in-law.
Same pattern as the one for my sister.

Pocket detail.

Felted Slippers

These have all been completed over the last couple of years. I really only use one pattern, the Mohair Ballet Slippers from Beverly Galeskas' book Felted Knits. I have never used the yarn called for in the pattern, but so far Eskimo by Garnstudio and Iceland by Crystal Palace have both felted up very nicely. I used a single strand throughout. The little purple ones on the top right have needle felted flowers on the toes and a little needle felted fake button on the strap. I modified the pattern to include the strap. Instead of using the rolled cuff, I did a seed stitch cuff, left a few live stitches for the strap and voila — mary janes!

The blue ones on the top have an elastic cord inserted in the rolled cuff to maintain their shape. I found that the cuff on that pair really gaped at the back.

From top, clockwise:
Blue, child's size small. Blue is Eskimo by Garnstudio (I think). Colour 12. Trim is Alafoss Lopi-Lett.
Purple, child's size medium. Honestly, I can't remember but it was a lot like Eskimo. the pink is Iceland, by Crystal Palace Yarns.
Red, adult's size medium. Red is Eskimo, solour 8. Pink is Iceland.
Green, child's medium. Apple Green Lopi by Alafoss, and the trim is Lopi-Lett.



These are the red ones that I knit for myself. After a year of continuous wear (our floors are cold!), there is not much left of the sole. Boo hoo.


These are from another pattern by Beverly Galeskas, but they are Felted Clogs from Fiber Trends. I knit them for my mom using Noro Kureyon for the main part and Lopi-Lett for the contrasting trim. I can't remember what I used for the soles.

I have another pair in the works, but they didn't turn out so well. I spun some very bulky yarn for the contrasting trim and we dyed it orange with Kool-Aid, but it didn't felt so well. It was too bulky. I used some old Cowichan Buffalo Wool in bright red for the main part of the slipper and that worked just fine. I'll rework them with some scissor action and all will be right as rain.

First Socks

This is some sock wool from Celeigh Wool in Millet, Alberta. Alberta bred, spun, dyed, and . . .

knit!

They are a reworked version of the Ruffle Socks in the Baby Gifts article at the back of the Summer 2005 issue of Interweave Knits. You cal also find it here at Knitting Daily.