Now where is all this cold weather?

Happy New Year!  I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year and not finding everything just a little bit flat after the holidays.

The New Year hasn't brought much of a change in the weather it seems. After 4 years of bitterly cold winters, at least for some of the time, it comes as a bit of a shock to the system that this one has been so mild in the run up to Christmas and remains mild now, as we head towards the middle of January.  I'm all geared up for proper cold weather and it hasn't come.

So bearing mind this mild weather, what have I done this week?  Made a new chunky hat of course!   I think I mentioned it in an earlier post that I bought this lovely Malabrigo yarn at the Knit and Stitch show at Alexandra Palace, back in October. 

This is me wearing it. I just love the colour - one of my favourites

It took me a while to track down a pattern. It would have been easy to go to the Local Yarn Store(LYS) and buy a pattern but I have so many books and magazines, and access to Ravelry that I didn't want to do that. Surely it couldn't be that easy to find?! Wrong,  I couldn't find a pattern for that yarn, then I couldn't find one for the substitute that didn't need more than I had, or I just didn't like the pattern - too simple/ too fussy.  I am obviously hard to please. 

In the end I adapted a baby pattern from a book I have.  The hat was to fit a 16" head which required a cast on of 48 stitches.  I ended up scaling it up to 72 stitches to fit my rather large 24" head!  I had to add a set of patterns and then I also did 6 knit rounds that weren't in the pattern and because there were more stitches there were more decrease rows (I rather like the effect on the top).

I must admit I had to do quite a bit of frogging.  Having no pattern to work to I had to guess how many rows I needed and then I had to guess whether I had enough yarn to finish the job.  I think I got almost to the end of the decrease 3 times before I finally finished it, just because I had so much yarn left it seemed a shame to waste it and the hat, although a beany and meant to be snug fitting, was just a bit too short for me, so I  ripped it back and added some more rows.  I probably should have tried to work it  out properly and not guess but it seemed like harder work than knitting it so I didn't bother.  I am not even sure that I could have!

Anyway, I am very pleased with the finished article.  It is very warm and cosy, not to mention very soft and luxurious.

Now where is that cold weather so that I can actually get some use out of it?!

Nearly there - Christmas is coming!!!

As I haven't posted for a few days I thought I would just squeeze in a post between the manic last minute shopping and house cleaning and show you my contribution to our festive decorations this year.  I got the idea from a Prima magazine but other than the idea of the stockings hanging from the stair post and the template for the shape, this is pretty much made up as I got along.

It is made from felt and ribbons because I really like working with felt - it is so forgiving after wrestling with cotton and voile and all sorts for my crazy patchwork piece for my course (more on that when I finally get a chance to edge it).  I am considering whether to embroider the intital of each of our family onto the little stocking but there are 6 stockings and only 4 of us so it might look a bit odd.

I also got to use some lovely Christmassy red velvet which I love.  I must admit the bow is constructed rather than tied - I tried for the natural look but it was too messy and I ended up with the tails facing the wrong way - at least by cheating everything faces out!

So 2 more days to go until The Big Day and we can stop all the preparations and shopping and put our feet up and enjoy it.  I might even have the time to get the knitting needles out again as I have such a long list of things I would like to make.

Whatever you are doing this Christmas and wherever you are, I would like to wish you a happy and healthy one!  Merry Christmas!!!!! 

Busy, busy.

Well, it is the end of term for my City and Guilds course.  I can't believe the last 10 weeks have flown by so quickly.  This week we had a special workshop on book making.  Not the sort with the horses you understand, that would be weird for a design and craft course, but making lovely note books to show off all our design ideas.  More on that in a moment.

First of all I wanted to go back a week and show you my crazy patchwork from last weeks lesson.  It was slow going as it is the hand stitched version but this is how far I have got.

I decided on a blue red and gold theme, the primary colours really.  I have sewn most of the pieces onto the calico - I have used ordinary patchwork cotton fabric, a few bits of silk and some voile which I have used over the top of some fabric so that the calico doesn't show through.  It is meant to be square but I have yet to trim it.

I even have a tiny bit of gold lame that I got with a sample pack ages ago.   The voile is covering the pice of plain blue fabric at the bottom which has a bit of a shine.  It was fiddly as voile isn't keen on lying flat and you can't iron it but it looks quite good.

The bit with the red leaf on a gold background is very posh silk upholstery fabric - 2 layers thick. Whilst it is very nice it has frayed horribly so I have had to edge it with ribbon. Embroidery just won't work there.  So, having done all that I now have to tidy it up and do the embellishments with beads and some fancy stitching.  Should be fun.

And this is the book I made this week which I am quite pleased with.

It is A5 sized and is made from cardboard with hand decorated paper covering. The inside is heavy paper, torn for a more handmade look. The pages are stitched together and given some support by the ribbon so this picture shows the spine.



And these are the pages - 7 signatures or groups of pages with 8 pages in each signature.  Quite a decent size really

The hardest part was assembling it,  It was really hard to line up the board covers with the pages especially if you tried to do the front and back covers at the same time.  Mine aren't quite the same but you can't see that from these photos and I am trying to ignore it or I will never be very pleased with it.  The perfectionist in me won't let me be pleased!!  Anyway, I have enough materials to make another one so I shall see if I have learned by my mistakes and can do a better job of lining it up next time.

And finally, as I didn't have a knitting picture to upload last time, here is a picture of the back of the cardie I am in the process of knitting.

The yarn is Sirdar Escape in these lovely shade of blue. turquiose and navy.  I just fell in love with it in the shop as the colours seemed to glow.  It knits up quickly too so I am enjoying this project.  I haven't done much this week though as we had visitors this weekend but I am hoping for a quieter weekend next weekend and then perhaps I might manage some more.



And finally, whilst I was sorting out my photos I realised I seem to be having a bit of a blue and turquoise thing going on at the moment - my notebook and my cardie seem to be using the same paletter.  Maybe I will start a new trend - colour coordinating your clothes with your stationary!

Thanks for reading.  I hope that next time I have a finished piece of hand sewn crazy patchwork to show.    Best go and get on with it!!