Keeping the family warm

This winter I have made two knitted items as presents for family members and one for myself.


First up is my second ever pair of socks, the rather cute owl socks made from West Yorkshire Spinners Aire Valley in Pennyroyal.
Looking back these were possibly a bit complex for my second pair of socks as the wool is the thinnest I have worked with and the pattern uses cables therefore at times I was negotiating 6 needles. I did enjoy making these and loved seeing the little owl patterns develop. I made some adjustments to the toe and cast off, if you would like to see the details visit my project on Ravelry. These were a Christmas present for my sister.




Next was a birthday present for my Dad, a cabled cowl to keep him warm while cycling. This is made with Rowan Pure Wool Worsted, Hawthorn and was fun to knit up.
This has also come out lovely and soft, the style means that it can sit over your shoulders to ensure there are no gaps for draughts to get in.
To see more details you can view my Ravelry project


Lastly was an item for me. I have been working on this since November and it was a simple pattern to use. It is made with James C Brett Marble dk.
This was a good yarn to use and the patterning is lovely. I took my time on the seaming and I am pleased with the results, the seams look neat and feel strong. The jumper is a tiny bit short and next time I will take body measurements as I like my jumpers to be a bit longer in the body. My Ravelry project page has more information about the process of making this.

 
Have you knitted any gifts over the winter period?

Wednesday WIP - 5

Hi All,

Today's post is a bit late in the day because I have been doing quite a few projects today.
The crochet blanket is progressing well, I'm a third of the way through now, it is very relaxing to do and watching the stripe pattern develop.

A project I was working on today was a bread bag as I needed something better to keep bread in as it was going stale. This didn't take long to do and I just love the pattern on the fabric.



I started a new knitting project aswell, which is a scarf using some merino wool I bought in New Zealand. So far, so good, I am using 3.25mm needles which is a bit of a change from the 5mm I was using last week.
 

 

 That's all for today :)

Kayleigh

January review

Hi,

Looking back on January it has felt like a long month, which I think is the same for a lot of people, after the busy-ness, preparations and socialising over the Christmas period. It is usually a time for reflection and setting aims and goals for the rest of the year.
On this note, I have noticed quite a few bloggers have taken this time to reorganise or create new crafting spaces.

I have spent the month of January slowly doing the same. I realised that I had a lot of craft supplies resulting in too much stuff and being unable to find what I was looking for, or to have the space for new necessary supplies.

Therefore I have had an overhaul of my supplies and am now feeling ready to sew and create using all of the fabrics and trimmings I forgot that I had.

I did not really need to buy anything new in the end, except for storage boxes for my desk as I had everything I needed already. Also rather than going out and buying lots of new boxes to 'get organised' I took my time to really think about what I didn't like about my current arrangement and what I wanted as I was using it.

The tidying commences

Some fabric

My issues were that;

I had great boxes to store my fabric in, however as they were deep boxes this meant that when I was looking for a fat quarter I would have to pull out a whole pile from the box, or always needed the one in middle, resulting in my carefully organised towers falling over.

As my boyfriend was having a sort out at the same time, he had some boxes his models come in which I realised would make great trays for my fabric. Therefore the fabric was folded and organised by sizes and put in the trays. I could fit 3 trays deep in each box, now I can pull out each tray to find what I am looking for.

I have a large long drawer in my desk which is very useful, however again it was difficult to organise it. I bought some plastic trays from Lakeland (they were in the sale and no longer available) and now I could sort items to keep in the drawer, it has made a real difference and I have been able to find things a lot quicker. If you do not want to buy something, you could cut up cereal boxes and create interlocking sections custom fitted to your space. IKEA and Lakeland are also good for storage inspiration.

I was always misplacing my scissors, or needing one stitch marker which is stored away with my other supplies. Yesterday I bought 3 seam rippers, and 2 pairs of scissors. I now have a little bag in each crafting place with scissors, seam ripper, tape measure, stitch markers and pins. 

I also refolded and categorised all of my fabric, which was tedious at times, but has resulted in a much better arrangement and I have a more realistic idea of how much fabric I have in each size. My knitting supplies have been uploaded to Ravelry and I have also found a few things I don’t want anymore which were taking up valuable space.


Tips

• Don't buy lots of boxes on a whim because they look pretty or good together. Measure your spaces to see how many you can fit into your space in the most useful way.

• Don’t limit yourself to office supplies, consider bathroom and kitchen storage items, if it works for you and has the appearance you want, then use it.

• Spend a few weeks using your space as normal and note down what frustrates you about it, is the extension lead too short, are your bobbins getting knotted up, are your boxes of pins and scissors in various places you can never find when you need them? Do you have lots of scrap fabric you don't know what to do with? Can you not remember what types of knitting yarn you have? Do you have piles of unfinished projects? Then tackle these issues one at a time.

• Think about what you need to have at hand, if you do a lot of embellishments, you will probably want ribbons and buttons stored on your desk or next to it, if like me you don't use them a lot, then in a box under your desk, which is easy to locate for the rare occasion you do need to find a specific piece of ribbon and don't have to resort to rummaging.

• Make up useful kits for tools you use a lot. If you craft at your desk, sometimes in your living room or out and about, make sure you have everything you need at hand.

• Put together kits for your WIPs, get together the pattern or instructions, the project and the fabric, wool, and notions you will need. Have these in a sealable bag, or box for tidiness. Then when you have the time or feel like a change you can pick up where you left off.

 

I hope you find this useful; do you have any tips that helped you sort out your crafting space?

Wednesday WIP - 4

Well I don't know about where you are, but the weather here is horrible!
As a result my attempts to take a photo of my finished blue shades jumper did not go well. I am hoping to take better photos in a few days to upload.

In the meantime I have two projects I have been working on at the moment.
The first is my ripple blanket. The yarn and pattern were a birthday present from my sister and I started this a few weeks ago. It is soothing and relaxing to work on as it is a simple repeat pattern, which I'm sure you will agree is very effective. If you like the look of this, check out Attic24 who designed this and put the beautiful colours together.




My other project is a cable cowl which is a gift so I'm not going to say too much about this one at the moment. I am enjoying this as it is my first project in the round on circular needles. This is being stored in my project bag when I am not working on it. (The blanket is way too big for a bank, hence it's own basket at the moment)

What projects are you working on at the moment?

Wednesday wip December

Hello, 

I wanted to start sharing images of my works in progress and it will be a useful way to track progress  and inspire me to keep my projects down to a few at a time.

I am working on two projects at the moment, both are knitting, one is for me and one is a gift. Stay posted to see the finished items soon.

Project and craft bag

The fabric in this bag has probably had the quickest turnaround ever in my house! I bought it online last week and it arrived on Thursday, by the end of Friday it was made up into a lovely bag. I think the fabric is so cute I couldn't wait to get it made into something.
This is a basic drawstring bag, it has interfacing on the outside fabric and a yellow lining. I used a ribbon for the drawnstring as I have lots of pink ribbon for a project I was doing a few years ago.

Front view

Side view

Close up of cute design

Overall I am really pleased with this bag and know I will use it a lot.

It can fit comfortably a large 100g ball of wool, A4 pattern and the project on circular knitting needles. It also fits a medium size sewing project too.
I have some fabric left over which I will be making into a small case for notions.
What do you use as your sewing bag?

Supplies
1/2 metre of fabric
Blue and white dot fabric from stash
Yellow lining fabric from stash
Pink ribbon from stash

Rowan Martin Storey Knit A Long

My last post about this project was in May when I had completed about 8 squares for the blanket.
To recap if you would like more details please see my post here or if you would like to look at the other stunning projects please go to Ravelry here.

The official knit a long ended in July, but I knew that I would not be finished by then. Also as the wool was so expensive I wanted to make the most out of knitting it for as long as I could!


 
I finished mine a few weeks ago and absolutely love it. It is so warm and heavy; the wool looks beautiful and is soft on your skin. Me the cats and even my boyfriend have been snuggling on the sofa with it, now the weather is getting colder I finished it at the perfect time.

I thoroughly enjoyed this project, I only got a bit bored when I had about 5 squares to go and that was as I had left a few of the more difficult patterns until then.

48 sqaures in total

Crochet edging

As the patterns were released weekly and involved a new pattern each time I have really expanded my knitting knowledge. I have leant skills that I would never have tried if I was starting a jumper or similar large project. As each pattern was a small square, it was very satisfying to complete each one, and also when making a mistake, you did not lose a lot of work.

Having seen the other blankets on Ravelry there was a lovely thread in the Rowan group about 'signature squares' and some people posted very unique and personal squares. I decided to do this too and chose to write a small chart for it. I wanted to include my initials and the year and I based the square design on the principles of the week 2  (Nordic Star) version. I added in a cable owl as I wanted to learn how to make these and I thought it was cute!

Signature square

I blocked the squares as I went along in batches for 8 to 10, although a couple were blocked again. The only changes I would make would be to have more rows on the week 4 (Lace Kisses) design as this was so much shorter than the other squares.

As I learnt so much in this blanket I decided to finish it off by doing a crochet border, I used some great videos on YouTube to do this and I did a scallop edge. I think this finished off the blanket very well.

Back of edging

Front of edging

 
To join the squares I used mattress stitch on the vertical joins and slip stitch on the vertical.
Once the blanket was completed I was surprised by how much I had left over, it is just under half a ball of each colour. I will have to choose what to do with them now.

Detail of back stitching

Leftovers

Skills learnt
Lace stitches - yarn forward, knit two together, yarn over, make one.
Make a bobble
Cabling, with and without a cable needle
Reading a knitting chart
Mattress stitch
Slip stitch joining of seams
Crochet border

Supplies
Rowan Pure Wool Worsted 100g balls. Bought from Spins and Needles, Lincoln.
Knit Pro 4mm interchangeable needles, purchased same as above.
4mm crochet hook.