Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Henry the octopus


I have just finished these bell bottoms for a friends new baby boy.


I dyed this wool with food dye again and really love the result.
This was the first time I cast off at the waistband and I had to frog 4 times before I got the cast off stretchy enough. Nearly drove me insane.









I wanted to add a little embelishment and first attempted duplicate stitch but it looked terrible so I pulled it all out. I definately need more practise with that before I give it as a gift.


So instead I did this little octopus with chain stitch. Simple , but I think it looks o.k.





I also put his name on the back.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Progress




Here is the spider bag finished. I really like this one even though I don't like spiders-at all!









I couldn't wait to start knitting up my secret santa wool. Here is a progress pic

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Thankyou wooly santa !!!!!!

More goodies for me. The parcel man arrived today with goodies from my wooly secret santa.
This gorgeous wool hand dyed by the talented Tara :) The photo doesn't do it justice, the colours are beautiful.
I think I will use it to knit some longies/shorties for chubba. I see an indigenous theme with a gekko and ants. Can't wait!






And as if I wasn't spoilt enough I was also suprised to find this lovely needle roll included in the parcel.
What a clever girl and just what I needed.














I can't wait to organise my needle stash.
Just need to make room so I have to eat the bar of chocolate that Tara included first!!!

incy wincy spider



This is my second felted bag using the same pattern. I wanted a Gothic theme so decided on a spider embelishment. I wanted it subtle but I put the red on the spiders back so that you could see it against the black web. I spent all night googling trying to find a pattern for the spider and web and in the end just did it free hand.

I hope it looks good after I do the final felting of the bag.

Monday, November 26, 2007

A treat !


A little gift arrived in the mail today . Some cotton from Bendigo Wollen Mills with some lovely handmade stitch markers :)
Thanks Mamasue xxx
I am going to use the cotton to make a sleeveless top for chubba from the Filati summer edition for kids.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Ahoy there me hearties


Another non knitting post but this is what has been keeping me away from the needles :)
We had a pirate party to celebrate our cheeky chops 3rd birthday. Here he is blowing out the candles on his pirate ship cake.








Meet 'Mick' the pirate pinata. I named him Mick after the big mouth that my husband made for him. He was filled with lollies and tissue paper. He took 2 days to make and a couple of seconds to be destroyed . Next time I will re-enforce with wire the top where the string is attached .

















More paper mache. These are treasure chests that I made for party favours. They were filled with 'jewels' and 'pirate gold' and were a hit with the kids.







Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Happy 3rd Birthday



Not knitting related but today is my big boy's 3rd birthday.

We are having a party on Saturday but this is the cake I made to celebrate today. He looked through the Womans Weekly birthday book and chose this cake himself.

I really hate spiders so making it creeped me out a little. My little boy loved it and it tasted pretty good too :)

Friday, November 16, 2007

Girls best friend



Here is the finished bag. I am really happy with how it turned out. So much so that I have started another one today :)

I am doing it for another gift. It is going to be gothic inspired in black and greys. I am planning to embelish with a spiders web.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

First Felting of Bag


After it was somewhat dry I stitched this design onto it. It is kind of rough and rustic but that is what I was going for as I have a picture in mind once it has shrunken down.

I will finish felting it today. I am really excited to see how it turns out.

My Nana popped over this morning and was quite impressed when she saw it.


























Here is the bag after its first felting.

Felting?

This is my current project. I needed a new challenge so am trying my hand at felting. I decided on a felted bag to make as a gift for my girlfriend.










I found this pattern http://www.straw.com/cpy/patterns/bags/bag-musiq-ditty_bag.html

I knitted it on 7mm needles out of double stranded patons Jet. I combined the grey and pink yarns for the main colour and contrasted with the double stranded grey. I managed to knit this in one day. Gotta love large needles.

Secret Santa




My little online knitting group decided to do a secret santa wool swap for Xmas. I decided to do another dye up. Food colouring again but this time I used black, red and yellow. It am really happy with how it turned out. I hope my SS buddy likes it too.

I made some stitch markers out of black and red beads to go with it.

The thing that took the longest time out of the whole thing was winding up the wool. I will NEVER attempt to do that on my own again. In fact a wool winder might go on my Xmas list.

The slowest jumper in the world



My big boy was feeling a little left out so I decided to knit something for him. As he has been out of nappies for almost a year I didn't really want to do longies so I started a jumper. This is a pattern called 'quaker ridge' and is out of 8ply cotton although it seems to be thinner than true 8ply.

It is quite tedious and so far I have only finished one sleeve. I keep going back to it though.

Tannenbaum


I was now gaining confidence and decided it was time to purchase some yummy hand dyed wool. I picked out this colourway from Monster Knits, called 'Tannenbaum'. The whole time I was knitting it I thought of choc-mint icecream.
I decided on shorties this time as we were heading toward spring. I wanted an enclosed waistband but also added a drawstring in contrasting chocolate brown.
This pattern was pretty much made up by me, combining different things I liked about a few different patterns. They are a great fit on my chubba and I plan to make some more.

Blue Lagoon



Here are the longies that I made with the dyed 'Dashing" wool. I used a modifed version of the same pattern as last time.

I also dyed some wool to do a contrasting waistband and seed stitch cuffs.

I was really pleased with how they turned out. Not bad for my first attempt at dying something myself.

To dye for



This time I wanted to have a go at dying some wool myself. I really liked the nice, soft 'Dashing' wool from Spotlight , so I used different shades of blue food colouring and dyed some white 'Dashing' in the microwave.

This is the method I used.http://www.withawareness.com.au/new-page.htm

Beanies


I wanted to do a couple of beanies for the boys for winter. This was the first one done with 2x2 rib on circular needles. The rib nearly drove me crazy but it was great practice.
I made one for my little one to match his big brother. It is cleckheaton country silk.

The rainbow connection





After my first effort I was very excited to have another go. This time I used a pattern written by a member of a parenting forum I frequent. I loved the look of all the hand dyed yarns but I wasn't ready to spend up big on something I could stuff up and I couldn't wait for the mailman. So off to spotlight I go and found this multicoloured bambino merino in 4ply, which I double stranded. I LOVE how these turned out. They are a great fit with extra short rows in the back to accommodate his cloth nappies. Hardly any mistakes this time. My baby boy wears these all the time and we get lots of comments.

In the beginning




I know its a few months down the track but I want to start at the beginning and as you will soon find out, I am not technologically savvy enough to change the dates.
This is my very first project. A pair of longies made with this pattern.http://alison.knitsmiths.us/pattern_baby_bell_bottoms.html It is knit out of 8ply light green 'Dashing' from spotlight. I was extremely proud of my efforts but if you look closely there are a few errors.




Here I am

Well a year ago I would never have thought I would have a blog, let alone one about knitting but nevertheless here I am.

A few months ago I decided to learn to knit in order to make some soakers for my littlest boy to wear over his cloth nappies. I had never attempted to knit anything before but with a little help from my mother- in -law and a lot of help from an online knitting group I nutted, out my first project...and an obsession was born.

So here is my little blog. A record of my knitting journey which will hopefully show improvement along the way.