Lucy – Page 6 – Hopefully Creative

Experimental Pinks

Experimenting with colours and knitting machine settings.

At some point, I did some experimenting with dyeing yarn with some red sprinkles. I wasn’t a fan of the end result because it was very pink, and pink is the nemesis colour. So I decided to still use it but gift the resulting thing to a friend and get it out of my house. It was also a great opportunity to try out different things with my knitting machine.

I cast on almost the full bed of my knitting machine, since there are some broken bits not all needles can be used. Then started knitting as normal, decreasing one stitch on one side every four rows. The first thing I tried was gauge stripes (one of the examples in my instruction manual), by knitting rows with the largest gauge (10) and decreasing one step in the gauge every four rows until gauge two. Next, I changed the gauge every three rows, when that was finished every two rows and I even ended up doing 1 row per gauge change. It’s a fun progression to see.

Some simple flat rows came after before continuing with a different example in the instruction manual where two rows are knitted on a small gauge that makes tight stitches and then two rows knitting on a high gauge with looser stitches. The book also had a pattern with putting stitches on hold that looked quite interesting, like a hole with two lines of yarn through it. Because this was quite a lot of work per stitch, I only did a few rows of this.

I tried a section where I decreased every fourth stitch and then put those needles that no longer have a stitch out of work. When knitting, this creates a slightly larger hole between the stitches still in work and the non-knit needle. I like this one. To go back to normal, you add a stitch back to the needles that were out of work and put them back in work. The last one was a cable inspired pattern, I think. It didn’t work as nicely on the knit side of the scarf, so I’m not sure I’ll use it again.

Once all of the knitting on the main piece was concluded, before Christmas, the scarf disappeared into a bag to be forgotten. Until the start of April, when I decided that it was probably time to finish the thing. I wanted to add an anti-roll edge so I did the same thing as in my previous pirate’s cove scarf. It took most of the day, but I did manage to finish it. It’s been wet blocked to hopefully keep the shape.

It has since found its new owner and although I doubt it’ll be worn soon (summer and all that), I hope that it’ll be a useful addition to my friends wardrobe!

MMM 24 Round up

First forgetting then committing.

So I forgot it was May until the evening of May 2nd. Luckily I wear quite a lot of me-mades in daily life, but those didn’t really fit the challenge. I did manage to get myself in gear from the 3rd of May onwards. Below are terrible pictures of all the me-made stuff I’ve worn over May.

gray striped pants, blue sweater with yellow stripes and brown blanket poncho — May 1, 2

Conclusions from this year’s experiment were that the weather really wasn’t cooperating. I didn’t get to wear any of my shorts, and I think that all dresses and skirts were worn with tights. On the only days that were nice enough for bare legs, I wore the culottes. I did manage to wear a fair amount of my clothes and I still had some left over at the end of the month. I may or may not have too many clothes, but it’s not stopping me from making more.

There’s only one item that’s going to be discarded, which is the top from May 29. The Aurea and Center Street project is too short, it doesn’t really want to stay on my shoulders and it pulls down in the back. It’s not pleasant to wear, so I’ll donate to see if anyone else can make it work for them.

I’m still planning on doing this next year again, it’s good to wear some of these things I keep making!

Roxy Blues!

All the blues in this sweater

Browsing Ravelry a while ago, I found a pattern that I really liked, called
Roxy Sweater by Lucienne Tricote. I even added it to my Queue on Ravelry, not an often used feature for me. To make it a reality, I needed a yarn that wasn’t too stripy, but I also didn’t want a solid colour sweater. So I decided to use multiple dyes to create a variation of shades of blue. The most accurate colour is in the final image of the post.

So I dyed some Gold Sport 300 yarn by putting four skeins into my chafing dish and adding different shades of blue over the top. I chose the Jacquard dyes 621-626, Sky Blue, Sapphire Blue, Brilliant Blue, Turquoise, Royal Blue and Navy Blue. Then I added a little 637 Gun Metal. The gun metal didn’t do much apart from somehow producing a few green spots? I decided not too care too much about that.

For the body, I cast on in twisted German cast on on size 3.75 needles, but this seemed tight. I knit the rib section and up to the row of eyelets. Then started the sleeves by casting on the stitches on size 4.5 needles (I think), this felt a lot better, much stretchier. Once the sleeves were done, I continued with the body until the point where the sleeves were supposed to be connected to the body. This was the single most boring knit I’ve ever done. I was so frustrated with the absolutely endless stockinette that I almost wanted to chuck it into a corner for a century. I did, however, persevere!

Once I had the body and sleeves at the right length, I decided that I hated the body cast on too much, so I cut it out. It was replaced by a much stretchier cast off. The body and sleeves were attached together and that marked the start for more interesting knitting, with the raglan sleeve decreases, the eyelet section and the garter stitch bit. I had to redo the neck section four times, too tight, too low, too stretchy, etc. I’m happy with what I ended up with though. The finished product is a little shorter than the pattern calls for, because I wanted to wear it with my dark dungarees. This is now my favourite outfit even if I will try to avoid endless stockinette handknitting with yarn this thin for a good long while.

Dark Pants

More dark pants, now without a front flap.

After the dark dungarees, there was enough fabric left for pants. Since pants are still my favourite thing to wear, more pants seemed like a great idea. Never mind that I now have two stacks of pants/jumpsuits in my cupboard. I used the same pattern for these as for the dungarees, with some small changes. I tried to slim the legs a smidge by eliminating the original pleat/crease, removed the insane hem allowance and added welt pockets to the back.

After I started sewing, it turned out that not all of my cutting changes worked out. The plan was to have double darts in the back for shaping, ending before the pocket. Somehow that led to a very pointy butt, so to solve the width issue in the back, I had to add some buttonhole elastic to the waistband to make it fit. This also meant that I got to bust out my buttonholer again to make the buttonholes in the inside waistband. This time I chose a longish rounded buttonhole and added two buttons.

I had hoped to eliminate most of the pleat at the front and replace it with a dart, but it still needed a bit more dart than I anticipated. It turned out well enough though, so I’m not sure I care too much. These pants close with a zip in the left side. It’s not in these pictures, but I did add a hook an eye on the inside just for some extra security.

The hem is less deep but still works well. I really like wearing these pants and their dungaree sibling. Extremely comfortable, great belt loops, nice pockets, good stretch, goes with everything.. Fantastic project if I do say so myself.

Dark Dungarees

Cosy dungarees, just finished in time for winter to end.

I bought some corduroy on a market a year or so ago and was like: pants for me! But then I brought it home and washed it and discovered that I hadn’t bought enough because corduroy has a nap and it looked silly to put things on sideways *insert sad trumpet noises*. Some time later, I went back to the fabric market and found a different dark corduroy (it’s not black, but it’s not .. not?). I didn’t take any chances and bought more than enough for dungarees so I could make those, and more!

The dungarees are based mostly on the Burda Style 12/2022 model 1 pants pattern (from these plaid pants) and on this shorts dungaree flap. I made some changes to the pattern that I don’t particularly recall, although I remember changing it to a side opening. I included jeans style back pockets and the same pocket shape on the front of the bib-flap. This corduroy is very stretchy so I was afraid to use a woven fabric for the lining pieces and grabbed a knit in the end. The bib, pockets, waistband and straps are lined with this stripy knit fabric.

There were two problems with getting this thing done: making choices & executing them and getting the buttonholer to work . I hemmed and hawed over the bib shape, the pocket shape and placement, how to put it on the fabric, everything. This makes a project take so much longer than expected, also when it takes you a week or so between the major steps to actually finish it. Throw it in the corner when you haven’t exactly figured out how to get that pesky waistband attached, how to hem it, stuff like that.

The other major thing was that I wanted to add the straps using buttons and I wanted my imported Greist buttonholer to do the work for me. Those templates would make it so easy to make a pretty (keyhole) buttonhole, I thought. It took trying it out on three machines, a lot of cursing and finally taking it apart and cleaning the sticky grease out to get it to function. I’m so very proud that I managed though (this was my third try). It’s now stored next to the one machine that could make it work, a 1901 Singer 28, hand-crank vibrating shuttle sewing machine. Check out how it makes buttonholes!

All in all, I really like these pants. The corduroy is comfortable, the straps are nice, dungarees are generally great. The only downside is what to wear underneath, so I’m now knitting a ‘shorter’ sweater that can go under the dungarees. Got to keep busy after all!

Dinosaur Dog Coat

Doggy coat for warmth

My dad just got a tiny little dog thing, but I’ve been told that it’s regularly quite cold. So in order to help the creature feel more comfortable outside, I was asked to make him a little coat. I looked online for a pattern and found one from Wholefully. Apparently commenters weren’t always super happy with it, but I decided to give it a try anyway.

Since my dad and Timmy (the dog) live quite a ways away, the dog was measured by Cathelijne and then I made the coat from some other leftover fabric I still had laying around. For the outside, I used the scraps of my first dinosaur coat, in hopes that it would also provide some protection from the wind and rain. For the inside, I found some fleece for extra warmth.

I put in the measurements and drew out the pattern on some paper, then placed it on my fabric where it happened to fit perfectly on the tiny bit that I had left. As this is the third thing made from that dinosaur fabric, it’s been used more than expected. For the closures, some Velcro was attached to the front flaps and the tummy flaps. I lined the Velcro bits with some extra dinosaur to prevent it from sticking to the fleece. Lastly, a hole was added in the back for the leash to go through.

The whole thing was snail-mailed and unfortunately the tummy flaps were a little bit too short. I seem to remember that it fits when Timmy is wearing the coat by itself, but not when he’s also wearing the harness. So I’ve made some notes on the pattern so that if I were to made it again, I can add some length to the tummy flaps. Cathelijne has made a Velcro solution to make it fit now.

Grey-diation Shawl

Adding some details to stave off endless repetition.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about this shawl. I finished it a couple of months ago and from what I can recall, the knitting was very boring. However, it does have good colours, grey, white and black go with everything! And I have worn it out a few times since, so lets try to recap anyway.

My Ravelry notes indicate that I started this new shawl on July 1st, 2023 and finished it on 11 October 2023. Not too bad of a turn around. The pattern is Aranea by Erika Wine and I later incorporated Asscher by Christina Danaee into it because I was so bored. The yarn was the ‘grey-diation‘ yarn dyed in December 2022. The pattern is fairly simple, the only thing to remember is to make the ‘spokes’ by effectively knitting i-cord along the edges and three other spines. In the beginning, a stitch is increased on each side of each spoke every fourth row. Once you pass 40 stitches between two spokes, you start increasing every other row.

This is a lot of knitting stockinette and for some reason, my yarn didn’t want to run out. The shawl is supposed to end when there were 80 stitches between the spokes, but I still had a lot left when I hit those 80 stitches. So at some point, I wanted something, anything else to do but knit-stitches for an eternity. I found the Asscher pattern, which has a pretty cool eyelet pattern on the back and started incorporating those instructions in between the spokes. I deviated at some point and made an extra triangle. I also needed to keep in mind that the i-cord binding still needed to happen, so I kept weighing the yarn to make sure I had enough. Once I reached the end, I followed the bind off instructions and wet blocked it.

Since I wanted the lace design to stand out a little more, I blocked it with straight edges instead of the spiderweb intention from the original pattern. This was probably not the best idea because what I liked most about the Aranea pattern was the spiderweb effect. However, I’m definitely not making this by hand ever again. I had to force myself to finish it. It has turned out a pretty decent size and it’s definitely wearable. I now also know how that gradation effect in yarn will play out when knitting. I have learnt (again) that endless stockinette is not my forte and will try to keep this in mind with future projects.

Froggy Hat

Frogs perching on lily pads make the best head gear.

I’ve been subscribed to Dot Pebbles a.k.a. Claire Garland’s newsletter for a few years now, and every so often I get a free pattern for a knit animal. These knits are always very life-like and look insanely complicated. I made the polar bear before and while it all worked out, I wasn’t sure it would while knitting it. So I’ve been eyeing the Frog pattern that’s been making the rounds on the internet recently. I thought I had received it a while ago in my free patterns too. Turns out that I indeed had and I really wanted to have a frog…

Since I really wasn’t sure if it was going to work, I tried to get similar yarns to the ones Claire Garland suggests. I got some drops kid-silk in my mailbox and dyed some fingering weight yarn in ‘toad-green’. The body and legs of the frog were going to be toad-green with apple-green kid-silk. It’s belly was undyed yarn with moonshine kid-silk.

Knitting the body is really fast. I only deviated from the pattern once, by skipping the mouth stitches. I couldn’t get them to work and it just looked awful. Once the body was done, I knit the legs and arms on. At that point, I decided that I need him to be posable so I found some armature wire in my stash and added that. When I make the frog again, I’m going to try to use the wire while knitting, instead of when it’s all done. That way, I can probably hide the ends without having to use so many bits of yarn. With the wire in, froggy can do push ups or sit awkwardly instead of just flop down.

So I had a completed frog when my mother sent an invite for her birthday party. The assignment was to wear ‘your best head gear’. I knew I wanted to wear my green Rita-cousin dress, so I wanted to make some sort of hat that would work with that. I also had this frog. 1+1 = 2 and I decided to make a lily-pad fascinator with the frog pinned to the top. The lily pad pattern was based on the left leaf from an image on the internet. I cut it out from the same green fabric as the dress, stretched over some foam. I then added some hair clips to the bottom. The frog was maneuvered into a normal sitting frog and safety-pinned onto the lily pad.

I love this thing. It’s adorable, it doesn’t hurt while wearing it, it’s got a frog, what’s not to like!

Massive Pockets Dress

Bright and happy, never mind the flaws.

Who needs a handbag when you can just have massive pockets!

For graduation this year (yes, only 2.5 months out of date), I made another dress. The design for it came about when I was on the fabric market in Rotterdam and found two fabrics in the same pattern but different colourways. I wanted to have this is a skirt that I’d sort of remembered having seen in a pattern magazine at some point. It had godet inserts, which I thought was pretty cool. So I started planning this whole thing, by finding the patterns – Knipmode 11/2020 Model 15 as skirt with Simplicity 55 model 38 (New Look 6447) as top – and figuring out which bit would be which colour. Then I checked my fabric again and I hated it, not heavy enough for this plan.

So into the hoard I went and I emerged with some lovely blue linnen-type fabric and some striped green cotton-y stuff? The striped fabric was quite thin and prone to fraying but it looked so happy together and I’d wanted to make something out of it for so long. I also grabbed some white cotton for a lining because the stripes were going to be too see-through otherwise.

The plan was to do the inserts, the waistband and the sleeves out of the blue, and the skirt and top out of the stripes. Because I’m not the biggest fan of mock ups, I used the lining as a test. I cut out all the patterns from the New Look 6447 dress model and put them together. However, for the life of me, I couldn’t get it to fit. I resorted to my old staple the Garden Party dress pattern, redrew some of the lines and made the top out of that. I did add the sleeves from the New Look dress because I could make it work. For some reason, the skirt was also weird, so I turned it back to front and that helped a lot. Since this was still the lining, it wouldn’t be seen under the outer skirt so it wouldn’t be a problem.

The outer skirt came together pretty easily, since the stripes were on grain it was fairly easy to cut. I did have to serge everything before it frayed apart. For the large pockets, I cut the top of the insert two additional times, one with a hole for my hand and the other as the pocket back. I love these pockets. So many things can be stuffed in there, while still looking like a cool design feature. It’s amazing.

The top and skirt were connected and I basically applied the waistband on afterwards. I’d originally planned a shaped waistband, but that didn’t work out either, so this was it. It’s also nowhere near where the lining waist seam is, because that one ended up too high. It’s magic how much you can fudge things with a little sewing.

On the day itself, it was quite warm, so I regretted that the lining was a thick as it was. I should’ve lined it with a little thinner cotton, but well, that’s too bad. I do really like the design of this dress, and I finished it way in time for the occasion, which was great. Since the weather has been really shit this whole Fall claiming to be Summer (it’s just about rained every day since June), I’ve not actually worn it much since. It doesn’t really lend itself to tights.

Orange Zig Zag

Slowly working on an orange travel project.

I always have a portable project to bring with me on my travels. From October 22, 2022 until July 4, 2023 it was this orange one-skein scarf. I used Anivia by Claire Slade, as my pattern. In order to qualify as a nice travel project, I want a simple repeat that I don’t have to think about too long. The zig zags also really tickle my fancy because I think they are so nicely simplistic but not too monotone to knit.

The yarn, Alpaca 4ply sock from Chester Wool, was dyed on September 4, 2022 with a combination of mostly orange with a little brown. I’m in love with the colour of it. A somewhat mottled brownish-orange with tiny darker orange and brown speckles. It doesn’t photograph very clearly but I think the colour is most true in the picture with the ball and the triangle section below.

The knitting went quite smoothly. The pattern is quite memorable, when the zig goes left, it’s yarn over, ssk, k2 and repeat. For the right zag, it’s k2tog, yarn over, k2 and repeat. To get the zig zag to work, you do a knit stitch more or less at the start of the row. Furthermore, one stitch is increased at the end, and it’s k3, purl to almost end, k3 on every wrong side row. Now, I don’t really like ssk normally, because it gets you out of your rhythm with having to move stitches from one needle to the other. So I did some googling and found a new one step ssk online. I’ve used it from about halfway through and it’s so much faster than a regular ssk.

I’ve not worn this new additional all that often because it’s still been summer-ish since July (wet, but not too cold). However, I hope it’ll be nice!

Category: Lucy