Tag Archives: Knitting

Time for tea

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When I posted yesterday about my Lerke doily, I hadn’t quite finished another one. But now it’s finished, blocked, dried – and tested!

I’m home by myself today, and usually I’d have my early afternoon cup of tea in one of my lovely stoneware mugs. But as I wanted to photograph the newest doily, I brought out the bone china again. I also cleaned the little silver teaspoons that I didn’t have time to clean for my afternoon tea last week. (I don’t think my old t-shirt and comfy cotton trousers come anywhere near the elegance of the tea set and doily – but no-one can see me!)

Pink cotton hand knitted doily with rose bone china tea set

 

Hand knitted pink cotton doily

This is another pattern from the book Knitted Lace by Sonja Esbensen and Anna Rasmussen – this pattern is ‘Marie’. As with all the doilies I’ve knitted so far, I’ve used fingering-weight cotton instead of the finer cotton recommended in the pattern – which of course makes my doilies bigger, more like table centres. I do have some slightly finer cottolin in my weaving stash, so maybe my next one will use that, as a comparison. My next one? I’m not sure yet – I’m very tempted by a few in the book. And there’s also a Marianne Kinzel book on my shelves, and I also have a couple of Gloria Penning’s lace doily books… between them, they’ll keep me busy for a few years!

Lerke III Doily

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I love knitting doilies; they’re interesting projects, easy to carry around, relatively quick to finish, and they are practical as well as beautiful!

I’ve mentioned before the lovely book, Knitted Lace, by Sonja Esbensen and Anna Rasmussen – I knitted the Majbritt doily from it a couple of years ago. So when the fingers started to itch again for another small lace project, out came the book again, and I chose the design Lerke III. This is the largest of three similar designs.

I wanted a large doily to go with one of my tea sets, which is white with pink roses, so I went stash-diving for pink fingering-weight cotton… and discovered that although I had several pinkish balls (ahem!) skeins, they were too apricot, or otherwise Not Right. But I did find some wonderful deep pink cotton and decided to use that.

I love the result:

Deep pink hand-knitted doily

It matches my tea set perfectly:

20140128BrightDoilyTeaCup2

 

Now, our dining table is my main work space at present (the sunroom is too hot during the day), so it’s usually covered in papers, books, laptops etc and we clear just enough space to eat in the evenings. Not a lot of space for a doily! On Thursday, I invited a few friends around for afternoon tea, rushed around cleaning and tidying the visible bits of the house, and set the table with my tea set and yes, my bright pink doily!

Afternoon tea table setting

It was a lovely afternoon with great conversation, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing some of my lovely things in use. The crystal plate with the mini-cheesecakes on was my paternal grandmother’s; the small dishes at the back with the chocolate fudge were my maternal grandmother’s. Now I just need to organise a garden, so that I can someday have fresh-cut flowers on the table, too!

 

 

In between…

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In between writing and teaching and travelling and other life priorities, I have managed a little craft work in the past 12 months… but very little blogging!

Finished things:

A quilt for my Mum, last Christmas:
Hand made quilt with floral fabrics

20121230MumQuiltDetail

Some lacy socks:
Hand knitted socks - Double eyelet pattern

Some plain socks:
Blue-purple plain socks

And some more plain socks:
Midnight blue plain handknit socks

A rustic, comfy top-down cardigan:
Handknit cardigan

Oh, and my other finished creative work – a book!
20130821BookBox

Unfinished projects:

Sadly, most of the projects mentioned in my previous posts last year are still languishing unfinished, although I have made a little progress on some.

The aqua quilt is pin basted and part-quilted – just over a third of the 63 blocks are done.
Quilting in progress

I have to clear the dining table for quilting a whole quilt, so I have been trying to keep it a little tidier than usual so that I can quickly set the machine up there if I have an hour or so to play.

I’ve temporarily put the aqua quilt aside again though to work on the quilt for my nephew – I finished all 48 blocks and here’s all of them laid out in one of the patterns he designed:

Log cabin quilt blocks laid out in asymmetrical design

I finished sewing them all together this evening, but haven’t pressed the final lot of seams yet. I’ll probably add a narrow white border, then a black border, and I think I’ll back it with a grey fabric if I can find a suitable one. I’m not sure yet how I’m going to quilt it, but it won’t be too fancy.

The lace shawl I was designing early last year is still not finished. One day…

So, that’s a quick summary of a year’s creativity! Now, must get back to writing the next book!

Winter

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It’s a month since I last posted. I don’t have a lot of textile work to show for that month, but there is some progress.

The aqua quilt is pin basted,and waiting to be machine quilted. It may be waiting a while.

I now have 4 blue and teal star blocks, but that project is on hold for now.

My new shawl design is also on hold, as is the cardigan I’ve been knitting for a while.

I have finished something – a pair of plain socks. I’m calling them my lumberjack socks, since they’re good boot socks and the greens remind me of pines. The yarn is Cleckheaton Country Tartan 8 ply.

Green boot socks

I knit while I’m writing, and plain socks are best. I’m a slow writer, so I spend a lot of time staring at the screen, searching for the right words. The knitting is a kind of meditation; it helps to shift my brain into a creative mode, and keeps my hands busy so that I don’t go clicking all over the internet. With plain socks, I’m not reciting a pattern in my head and I can drop them the moment words come to me so I can type. I’ve got a lot of writing to do in the next few months; I have two more lots of the Cleckheaton yarn (blue and red), so I see some more socks in my future.

The only other creative project I’ll be working on for the next month or so is a quilt for my nephew’s 18th birthday. It may not get done in time but we’ll see. I had some black and white fabrics, and bought some more on Friday – although it’s pretty hard to find non-floral B&W (not grey) fabrics in our town; I went to the quilt shop, Lincraft, the other fabric shop, and raided Big W’s fat quarters, but there wasn’t a huge choice anywhere.

However, today I’ve selected the ones I’ll use; I’ve made 4 blocks so far, and cut up most of the fabric for the remaining 44 blocks. I will have to get a little extra of 2 of the fabrics but I have enough to go on with for now and will go to the local quilt store during the week. My plan is that when I need a break from writing, I’ll make blocks.

My nephew plans to be an architect – so what better structure to use than log cabin 🙂 I haven’t decided how I’ll put the blocks together yet. I’ve been playing with the 4 completed ones to see the different effects – isn’t log cabin such a versatile and magical block – so many possibilities!
Log cabin quilt blocks 1

Log cabin quilt blocks 2

Log cabin quilt blocks 3

Log cabin quilt blocks 4

Quilting journey

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I’m a learn-as-I-do kind of person, and I’m enjoying learning about patchwork and quilting. I’d love to spend more time on it – on all my textile work! – but work and writing claim a lot of my time and brain power. However, on Sunday, after finishing uni marking on Friday and teaching an all-day writing workshop on Saturday, I declared Sunday a rare holiday from work, and spent all day playing with fabrics. As a result, my first quilt top is now finished:

Patchwork quilt top

(I’m also more relaxed… I should declare holidays more often!)

I did think about making it larger, and I made a few extra blocks… but then I decided to leave it as is, my logic being that I didn’t want to have to quilt a huge quilt for my first one. So, I put the extra 9 blocks together into a small piece, and quilted it for practice:

Quilted 'table topper' - practice quilting.

I’m glad I did this; it enabled me to get more used to machine quilting and handling a (somewhat) larger piece without being too concerned about making mistakes. I’ll have a go at free-motion quilting in the sashing, although I need to get the right foot for my machine to do that. Then I’ll bind this piece – although what I’ll do with it, I don’t know. I suppose it’s about the right size to put over a new-born in a bassinet; with all my nieces and nephews in their late teens and early twenties, maybe there’ll be a new-born sometime in the next decade!

I had work to do last night, but in the disjointed couple of hours in the late afternoon when there’s dog walking and dog feeding and dog playing and making dinner and such, I also made a patchwork star:

Patchwork star block

Maybe it will just be a practice block. Maybe there’ll be more. Maybe there might even be a quilt one day – I  love blues and whites and stars…)

Maybe I’d better concentrate on finishing knitting a shawl (I worked out some problem rows last night!), and writing a book, and earning a living!!

Progress

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My knitting mojo has returned, but it’s battling for time with the quilting mojo, and the writing and working demands – oh, what lovely things I could make if I didn’t have to work in addition to my writing!

The new shawl design is coming along, and there’s light at the end of the tunnel – and some order coming to the design chart! Here’s a little sneak preview:

Lace shawl detail

The yarn I’m using is my favourite 50/50 silk/merino blend, hand-dyed by Spinning a Yarn. It’s a beautiful heavy lace-weight yarn, about 600 metres per 100grams, with a smooth feel and lovely sheen from the silk. Hopefully I’ll have the border finalised and this sample completed in the next week or two; then I’ll need to write up the pattern (charts and written instructions), work out additional sizes, have it tested knitted, have the pattern tech-edited, photograph the shawl/s… and then it will be ready for publication.

My quilting has taken a slight hiatus; I was away in Canberra & Sydney for 10 days, and now I’m back I have a stack of uni marking to finish this weekend, so no quilting for me until that’s done. My first quilt top is coming along, but I’m looking forward to getting back to it and finishing it:

Nine-patch and snowball quilt top in progress

I have to redo the sashing, piece border strips and sew them on, and am also going to piece a strip in the backing fabric to make it wide enough. Then there’s the actual quilting – I’m thinking about simple machine-sewn diagonals in the 9-patch blocks, and maybe handquilting the snowball blocks – but I could also machine-quilt them, which might give me a chance of actually finishing the project!!

I used as a pattern guide a project from the book ‘Two From One: Jelly Roll Quilts” by Pam and Nikki Lintott (Book depository link) (Goodreads link). I didn’t follow the pattern exactly – I used assorted fat quarters and scraps, not jellyrolls, and made it bigger – but I found the instructions, diagrams and photos clear and helpful for me as a beginner quilter. I do recommend the book; I’ve even bought another book by the Lintotts – Jelly Roll Sampler Quilts. (Book Depository link) (Goodreads link).

Of course, although I am only a beginner quilter, I have adopted very quickly the stashing habit! I have quite enough fat quarters and leftovers from this project to do another in similar shades; I have also stashed sufficient fabrics for at least three other quilts. They’re only in the dreaming/vague planning stages at present, but there is one I’d like to make in the next few months for a special person, and I ordered some fabrics for it from equilter.com when they were on special a couple of weeks ago. I have in mind a relatively simple quilt, highlighting the fabric rather than the patchwork, so it might be doable by the desired date in amongst all the other demands on my time.

In a quick round up of other news, my sourdough baking repertoire now includes cinnamon scrolls:
Sourdough cinnamon scroll

I’m also just baking my second loaf of sourdough chocolate bread, inspired by my niece who loved it when she stayed in France, and who is now a sourdough baker herself. It’s very delicious!

Skye the now 15-month-old ‘puppy’ is still keeping us on our toes – she loves her toys and she’s full-on play, play, play – until she’s ready to sleep for a while!

Oh, and have I mentioned that I have to write my next book by the end of September? No? Needless to say, I shouldn’t be here…! There may not be a whole lot of blogging in the next few months, but I hope to squeeze in some textile creativity, to help inspire the creative writing imagination!

Majbritt Doily

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As I mentioned in my last post, I plan to knit some doilies to go with my new teacup sets. I know some people think doilies are dreadfully old-fashioned and useless, but I’m not one of those people! I love the simple beauty of lace knitting, and to me doilies are both functional and decorative, protecting a table surface as well as being lovely in themselves.

I’ve finished the one I started a couple of weeks back. At 43cm diameter, it’s more of a table centre than a doily, but I’m very happy with it:

Handknitted doily - pattern Majbritt I by Esbensen & Rasmussen

The pattern is Majbritt I (Ravelry link) from the book Handknitted Lace, (Book Depository link) by Sonja Esbensen and Anna Rasmussen, which I bought a couple of months ago and have been itching to knit something from since!

The designs are charted, which I love (hate reading rows upon rows of written directions, especially for lace!)

I had a bit of a panic, though, the other day. After a week of mad work finishing the edits on the latest book, I picked up the doily again for some relaxing knitting. I knitted round 41 and 42 fine (even round are plain rows). I started round 43 – and it Would Not Work. I didn’t have enough stitches, and the pattern didn’t ‘fit’. Something had to be wrong. I spent some time googling for errata, and checking Ravelry to see if anyone else had the same problem. Nothing. Sigh. There has to be a fault with the pattern, right? Sigh again. I’m an experienced knitter. I can look at the picture and work out what it’s supposed to be. Looking at my knitting, the error had to be in the previous round’s instructions. So I tinked back round 43, and round 42… oh, and the other round 42 – oops, how did THAT happen?… and for good measure, round 41 as well.

(Should I mention here that the mad rush to finish the edits had included an all-nighter? And that I am not as young as I used to be?)

Needless to say, there was no error in the pattern. It was perfectly correct. And it is a lovely pattern!

New Year, new look

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While I planned to post something today – a catch-up post – I didn’t actually plan to give the blog a whole new look. But you know how it goes… the theme I was using needed updating, and so I did the auto-update, and as a result it went all wrong. I could have stuffed around and fixed it (the problem was the widgets, I think), but I’d been planning to do a new theme, and I now have a great little program called Artisteer, so I played around on that and voila! – we have a new design!

So, what have I been up to since last I posted? Not a lot in the way of knitting and crafting, as I’ve been flat out teaching, marking, finishing a book and revising it. I have a number of wips languishing or receiving only occasional attention – two top-down cardigans, a lace shawl, some mittens for Gordon. But I did finish some red socks for my sister for Christmas:
Handknitted red socks

There was also a little Christmas sewing – a roll-up shopping bag for a batty friend who likes bats – the print isn’t really bats, but it looks a little like them so we call it bat camouflage:
Roll-up shopping bag

Shopping bag

I was in a secret santa swap with the local Ravelry crew, and I made an apron for my cheesecake-baker extraordinaire friend, Amanda:
Handsewn apron

They’re not made from yarn or fabric, but I’ve also made quite a lot of these in the past few weeks:
Sourdough crumpets
Sourdough crumpets – delicious toasted and spread with a little butter and honey! I stocked up my parents’ freezer while I was in Canberra for Christmas, and restocked ours yesterday.

Knitting-wise, I’m currently working on a lace doily:
Knitted lace doily in progress

…because I need some lace doilies for the lovely china teacup sets my sister gave me for Christmas:
Hitkari tea setting

Ashdene Kensignton tea setting

And the last thing I should mention is that we have a new puppy – 9 month old Skye, who joined our household two months ago, after we had to euthanise our beautiful, beloved Princess Dog. Skye loves toys…
Skye with her toys

… and is a fibre enthusiast…
stuffing from a cushion pulled out by puppy!
She especially loves the fluffy stuff inside her cushion, and often pulls it all out – it’s one of her favourite games!

So, that’s my catch-up post for this last day of 2011. I hope you like the new blog design – I do! I’m hoping that 2012 is a great year for all my friends – may there be much making of beautiful, practical things, for all of us, and companionship in the making and sharing 🙂

 

Finished Helmi

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I’ve finished my modified Helmi cardigan – and I love it!

Handknitted cardigan. Pattern: modified Helmi. Yarn: Bendigo Rustic 12 ply

(Okay, so I don’t love my over-weight shape, but the cardigan is comfy and warm and should still look fine when I’m skinnier in the tum and butt!)

I didn’t do buttonholes in the front band; for the closures, I’ve used wooden beads I’ve had in the cupboard for years, and crocheted loops. I’m planning to re-space the ‘buttons’ so that they’re closer together and it doesn’t fasten quite so low.

But all in all, I’m regarding this cardigan as a success, and I’m definitely a convert to top-down knitting. This is the first jumper/cardigan I’ve knitted for some years that I actually like as a finished product on me. And since I’ve received four cardigan-lots of wool form Bendigo Woollen Mills recently, and we’re only part-way through a cold winter, I’d better go and cast on another cardigan!

More small achievements

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I seem to be managing to cross a few things off my to do list lately – not huge things, but some little ones that nevertheless make me feel good! And those I haven’t yet crossed off, I’m making good progress on.

Since I’ll be in hospital for Christmas and won’t be able to visit my parents, I thought I’d knit another lace doily, this time in colours to match the blue and white linen my mother often uses on the table for Christmas dinner. I rummaged around in the stash and found a cone of pale blue cotton I’ve had for years, and cast on for the a second one of the Little Flower Doily (Rav link) from Bad Cat Designs. It took me a little over 24 hours to knit, and here she is blocking this morning:

Little Flower Doily blocking

So, I can be at Christmas dinner in spirit – or under a nice glass plate of Mum’s fruit mince tarts 🙂

The Christmas knitting – the small amount I am doing – seems reasonably under control. The Binary Cable Hat I started knitting for my nephew before his birthday in August didn’t get finished, as I confused myself with how to set the binary code for his name into the cables, and therefore stuffed it up. However, this morning I finally frogged most of what I’d done, back to the first inch, and have restarted again, getting it right this time! So, it’s now progressing well, and I hope to have it finished if not today, then tomorrow. I have another gift for him, but this will get popped in with it when it’s done:

Binary Cable Hat in progress

There’s another gift I’ve half-finished, but since the recipient sometimes read this blog, I won’t mention it 🙂 (But dear recipient, don’t get TOO excited. It’s just something I have owed you for …ahem ….a while. This year you might actually get it. Fingers crossed. But I have something else for you, as well!)

When those two things are done, then the next project will be finishing my All-Lace Brangian shawl, which is about half-done. I realised this morning that if I want to actually finish the Ravelry 10 Shawls in 2010 challenge, then I’m going to have to finish that shawl (my 1oth for the year) in the next week or so, in order to get it blocked, photographed, and uploaded to the group before I leave for hospital on the 10th Dec. It’s only a small shawl, so that should be doable.

And in pattern news, I have updated the Brangian Progressive Yarn Usage table, and added one for the All-Lace Brangian version, which has slightly different row counts and therefore yarn usage. They can both be downloaded as .pdf files from this page.