I wanted to make a small gift, and I figured that some fingerless mittens might be fun. Ravelry provided a fair amount of options and I settled on Houndstooth Handwarmers by Ellen Gill. With favourite colours being blue and orange, I first thought of making them in those shades. However, I couldn’t bring myself to do it because it would be a bit much. So I added white instead.
The white was leftovers from my striped sweater, and the blue was self-dyed DK weight merino yarn. The houndstooth pattern isn’t too hard to do, but it did mean I had to continually check the instructions. There are four rows that repeat, and I chose to do them mirrored for one of the mitts as suggested by the pattern. The mittens benefitted from blocking a lot, as the houndstooth is a lot less lumpy now. All in all, decent pattern, and fun knit. I’m happy to report that the recipient enjoyed them.
Making two cute gifts for a wedding where the participants are just supposed to have fun!
One of my colleagues went to Portugal to get married, and to celebrate the occasion, gifts were in order! The only thing I really knew was that I wanted to make something. I just initially didn’t have a clue what the something would be. So I stared considering the options. Since I really like words, I thought about recreating some sort of pun.
I first thought making a set of stuffed peas for ‘two peas in a pod’ but apparently that saying means something different than I thought. It’s about people being alike and not about people liking each other, so even though there is a similar saying in Portuguese, it was out. Since my brain was letting me down, I went the google route to look for sayings that meant to ‘have fun’. I settled on two: ‘Let the good times roll’ and ‘Have a whale of a time’.
The first one was easy, just make a ball and embroider the saying on it. Google translate indicated that it is ‘deixe os bons tempos rolarem’ in Portuguese (no guarantees whether that’s valid though..), which is also five words. Happy coincidences! I settled on a 6 panel ball and to celebrate the union added the word ‘together’ (juntos) to the end of the saying. I chose some of my 10×10 pre-cut quilting squares and added some interfacing to the back. All but one seam were completely sewn and then made extra neat at the joins. For fun, I added a bell in with the stuffing before closing it up. I think it’s very cute!
The second one made me trawl through what felt like the entirety of Pinterest to find a cute whale pouch. The full idea was to make an object that could hold suggestions to have a whale of a time. Basically ideas for dates within the local area. In the end, I settled on using the pattern from this pin, but enlarging it slightly. I chose three coordinating quilting fabrics and fluffy interfacing for the outside and some whale patterned fabric for the lining.
I found a coordinating zipper and sewed it all together. The lining was mostly attached on a train journey because I had a hard time manouvering under the sewing machine. I left a hole in the lining so I could stitch one some cute felt eyes. I also added a felt heart to the tail. I really like how this one turned out. I asked some of my other colleagues for date suggestions, printed those on paper, added some of the discount cards from tourist destinations and put it all in the whale.
In any case, I’ve heard that the wedding was a great time!
Nice and cool culottes for the warm summer weather.
I wanted some more of these culottes but this time non-stretch, so that they wouldn’t almost fall down when I stick too much in the pockets. So I looked in the hoard and found a bit of the blue fabric I also used for these pants and for a mock-up of another pair of pants. I found the original pattern, cut it out with a bit more crotch depth, freehanded some pockets and pocket openings on the front and set out to sew it together.
This fabric frays fairly easily, so I attempted to French seam it together. This worked remarkably well. I even managed to French seam the side from the zipper down. The zipper was an invisible zip and went in pretty smoothly. I cut the waistband just a little bit too short, which is why there’s a little extra tab on that side. I also added a little snap to keep the overlap to sit flat.
When all but the hem was done, I let it hang overnight so that it could get all the bias stretch out. When I pulled it back on to see if the hem was level enough to sew, I found out that it wasn’t. This wasn’t really surprising, I always have to cut the front down to match the back. It was hemmed with bias tape, which was so much easier than trying to double fold it. The final detail was to add a little d-ring on a ribbon so I can hang my keys. All in all, pretty nice for not too much work!
This morning after slowly rolling out of bed at 10:20, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my day. So I did some hula hooping as a form of exercise and decided that I wanted to wear a sweater dress. Small problem, I don’t have one of those. However, I do have the Lekala Tunic Pattern nr. 4742, the Pattydoo Nelly sweater pattern and a large fabric stash.
I pulled out this sweatshirt type fabric with a soft grey fuzzy backing and got to work. First, I brought the Lekala pattern back to its original state without the shortening required for the flamingo sweater. I grabbed the hood pieces from the Nelly pattern and pinned it all to my fabric. I added a little length to the bottom of the dress pieces and cut it all out. Sewing it went smoothly, only one unpick where I put the center front hood facing bit in the wrong way round.
Around 16:00, I had a full dress together and was trying to decide what to do with the sleeve ends. I didn’t really feel like hemming them and then I remembered that thumbhole cuffs *exist*. So I made some of those, following some tutorials on YouTube. The bottom of the dress was hemmed and then I had to mend a tiny hole on the front. 17:15 and the whole thing was done! Less than a working day to finish this thing. It’s nice and warm, just in time for summer (not), and I am yet again certain that I will never participate in a speedy sewing competition…
Knitting one colour at a time but still ending up with a continuous two-colour project.
This cowl has been my travel project since June 2024. This means that it was almost always in my bag and was mostly worked on while I was on the move. I mainly chose it as the travel project because it wasn’t too complex, but there was still some interest in it. Not endless stockinette but a slip stitch herringbone pattern. This meant that I only knit with one colour at a time while slipping stitches of the other colour to create the pattern’s chevrons.
I found the pattern because it happened to be in the pattern magazine that I had purchased to make this sweater (which hasn’t happened yet). It’s called the Haberdashery Cowl by Ashley Rao and came from Interweave Knits, Fall 2013. I did not pay attention to gauge and it shows. The original is very loose fitting and uses a button to close tighter, but my version didn’t need that. I think it’s because I chose a slightly thinner yarn too; self dyed alpaca 4-ply sock yarn in ‘white with yellow, orange and blue’ and ‘blue with dark blue spots’.
The pattern consists of a written section and a charted section. The charted section is published in white and brown, to correspond with the colours of the example cowl. However, mine was going to be blue and yellow and I kept getting extremely confused by the colours, so I redid the chart in excel in my colours and printed it. I added some tick boxes to the right so that I could remember where I was. I think it saved my sanity.
This thing is also pretty cool on the inside. The beginning of round is just visible on the left where I made the yarn cross over each other. I did block it because the bottom edge was very tight, it’s loosened some with the blocking. Of course I’ve finished this winter item just in time for Spring, it was over 20 degrees Celsius yesterday. So I don’t know how much wear it will see in the next few months. But I am happy that I managed to finish it and I’m ready for a new travel project!
Joining a mystery knit along to make an octopus inspired “cowl”.
For the first time ever, I participated in a Mystery Knit-a-long (MKAL) last month. A KAL is a project where you get some part of the instructions and should complete those in a set time period. Mystery just means that you haven’t got a clue what the end result is going to be.
Sometime in September, I saw the announcement for the Cowltopus MKAL by Laura Nelkin, an MKAL that was to take place in October. It was on sale and it seemed like a fun idea, and I really like octopuses, so what could go wrong? Well, I forgot about it until about two days after the first clue came out and I hadn’t done any of the prep work. The prep included finding the right yarn and swatching it. I found the yarn I wanted to use, but it still needed to be dyed.
The pattern calls for DK weight yarn around 225 m/100 grams. There should be a main colour and a contrast colour, and both can be composed of mini skeins or just a single colour skein. There should be contrast between the MC and CC and gradients are encouraged. So I looked on the internet for different kinds of octopuses and settled on the quite elusive Glass Octopus Vitreledonella richardi. To match the inspiration, my MC was one full skein of Ultra DK in light blue. For the contrast, I chose to split a skein of Ultra DK into four section and dye them in a gradient from yellow to chestnut/brown.
Once the yarn had dried, the gauge swatch got going. The swatch indicated that I had to size up my needles a little because I couldn’t get gauge otherwise. The first clue had come out on October 3rd, and was supposed to be done by the time clue 2 would be released a week later. I managed to get my yarn dyed and swatch ready by the 7th. On the 13th, I finished clue 1, to get right back on with clue 2.
Clue 1Clue 1Clue 2
Clue 2 went really smoothly and was actually finished on time, done by the 14th. This wasn’t super challenging yet, so I sailed right through it. The only new things were magic knots and needing to pay attention to the stitches. The third clue was where it got interesting. There were two options, brioche knit or ribbing. So I decided to learn something new and got going on the brioche. It wasn’t as scary as I was worried about. The instructions and video companion were very helpful and it all went according to plan.
Clue 3Clue 3Clue 3
Clue 4 was the last clue and where we were finishing the cowl – that turned out to be a hood. It was more brioche but now with waves in it. Actually quite fun to knit! The pattern is designed in a way that you shouldn’t run out of yarn unless you choose to ignore the instructions – my bad. I was supposed to start the end with 4 grams remaining, but I had 3.6 grams of yarn left. In the end, I had to tie in 15 cm of leftover yarn from the dying process to get the last few stitches finished.
Clue 4Clue 4
I enjoyed learning new things and not knowing exactly what was going to happen throughout the KAL. I’m not discounting doing one again even though the resulting hood isn’t totally my style. I’m very happy that one of my colours was solid, because the finished hoods from other knitters are overwhelmingly busy. I’ve not found much reason to wear it yet, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. Sometimes having a fun process is more important than having a good result.
A vintage knitting machine pattern in some muted fall colours.
The booklet that came with my knitting machine also had a pattern for a striped ladies pullover with V-neck, DP 2219. This seemed like a fun thing to do with the knitting machine that wasn’t a rectangle of some sort, so I set out on a quest to complete the pullover. This started with dyeing yarn. I chose upcycled quarter round yarn, a sock weight with 425 m/100 g and tried to dye it in the colour scheme of a picture I found on the internet.
It didn’t turn out the way I hoped, although I’m not sure exactly what I was hoping for. However, once I started knitting it up, I knew it didn’t really fall within the colours I would love to wear. Still determined to see if the pattern would work, I continued. I made one major change, by decreasing the depth of the v-neck, but apart from that followed the instructions. I finished knitting the front and back, and blocked them. Then I lost motivation and it sat in a bag for a while until I met up with a friend. These colours suit her much better, and I knew I needed some sort of external motivation if I were to ever finish it, so I asked if she might be interested. She was.
So I knit the neckband and after some cursing and annoyance managed to get that installed in a way I liked. It’s probably not the way the pattern intended, but it’s on there now, so it’ll do! The sleeves and bottom still rolled quite badly, so I decided that it needed cuffs. I first knit some in a mock rib on the knitting machine and had them attached before deciding that the join was too awful. So I ripped it all back, cast on ribbing and knit it by hand, both around the cuffs and the bottom.
I think I probably asked before summer whether my friend was interested (providing no guarantees on when it would be completed) and it still took me until September to get it finished, but it is done! She enjoys it, I’m happy to have made something out of the yarn that I wouldn’t use for myself, I liked testing the pattern and doing something different on the machine. A bit delayed, but still a win in the end!
Everyone needs a ceremony dress with happy ribbons.
I’d only vaguely been thinking about the Convocation ceremony this year when I ran into a fabric that would be perfect. The pattern is fun, but still appropriate for work things. It’s a dark blue with little white bars topped with red blocks. The contrast wide stripes on one end of the fabric would work really well as a hem, I thought. The fabric itself is a thick knit, so easy to work with.
I used a pattern from Simplicity Naaimode 41, model 4, also known as Simplicity 8751, version 2. I made some changes to the original though. I left off the sleeves, as the slight extension on the shoulders looked like it would be plenty. I don’t like drop sleeves. To make sure it would cover enough, I did raise the underarm edge a little. However, the neckline was quite wide so I added some afterthought strips to narrow the neckline. I moved the waistband from the inside to the outside and used the dark contrast stripe from the edge of the fabric. Finally, I had to include some decent pockets!
I finished this thing almost a month before the event actually happened! I don’t think I’ve ever been this in time. I didn’t even dally with the hem, which was done sooner than some of the other details. The dress doesn’t have closures, but you make it fit with ribbons in the waistband tunnel. Since I put the tunnel on the outside, I could use those functional ribbons for some extra pizzazz. It worked well and we had a great ceremony!
Some more dye experiments – olive does weird things..
I recently got to spend a lovely afternoon with a colleague, playing with dye and bleach and trying some new things.
We mostly used Alpaca 4 ply yarn, and dye in three shades of blue (brilliant, royal and sky), periwinkle and gunmetal grey.
Turns out that if you put too much blue in, the variation gets lost. To get some variation back, we put some bleach over it, but it didn’t do all that much. Maybe my bleach was too old or it just doesn’t work. We decided to tried again with only brilliant blue, the periwinkle and some gunmetal speckles. A much more defined result.
As a contrast to the blues with periwinkle, we also did a silver grey one. It’s always amazing to see how you end up with clear water after dumping in a bunch of dye.
For some variety, we dumped some dye labeled ‘olive’ in the pan, and added two skeins of kid silk, and one alpaca 4ply. The yarn turned entirely green first before becoming orange-ish? It was as if it entirely split; super interesting to watch and I should’ve time-lapsed it, somehow.
One of the blue ones and the olive yarn stayed in my house while the rest went home with my colleague. It was a good afternoon and I do really love experimenting!
It is yet again almost time for the next event on my work calendar. This year, I started on time! The deadline for this was mid-June, but I managed to finish it before the end of May! It certainly felt like an accomplishment. The inspiration for this project came about from seeing this pin on Pinterest of a white dress with an overlay at the bodice and a blue edge around the overlay and the hem of the dress.
What I ended up with doesn’t look like the pin at all, but it was heavily inspired by it – don’t ask how my brain works. I found the pattern of a dress with a bodice overlay in Simplicity Sewing Pattern magazine nr. 42, model 18-20, also known as Simplicity 8047, and I really liked it. The pin came into play when I decided I could add a border to the overlay and the hem of the dress. So off to the hoard I went to find fabric. One of the boxes yielded this blue opaque fabric and some white and blue dotted stuff, neither of these I remember buying, so I assume they came from a friend’s de-stash.
I used the markings for the short length and made extra pattern pieces for the dotted band. I chose to cut the size 38 which was a mistake. I had to take the underdress in massively in the bodice, several centimeters at center front and added extra darts in the back neckline. This also lead to some real challenges with the overlay, where I had to take a bunch out at the side seams and wasn’t entirely sure how to even get the neckline and sleeves to behave. After having it sit on the mannequin in desperation for some weeks, I persevered and got something that looked pretty decent.
Of course, event outfits require pockets. While the skirt isn’t tight per se, there is not enough room for bulky items in the pockets to remain invisible. But alas, we carry on. The weather was still dreadful and so cold that I had to wear a layer extra over the dress in order to be warm enough to function. Nevertheless, it did behave well on the day so I’m pretty pleased.
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