Practical Polly

Slow Jumper

2011-03-14T17:35:00.004Z

This is another ageing FO- one which I actually finished knitting in March 2009!!! I fell out with it, and only got around to taking pictures in May 2010. More embarrassingly, I then decided I liked it after all, and have worn it quite a lot in the last year- but only got around to blocking it last week. (These are the May 2010, pre blocking photos...)

I used Elizabeth Zimmermann's Icelandic yoke sweater pattern for the yoke, but I took the measurements and the shaping of the body and the sleeves from the tatty old jumper I was replacing (which was not yoked), so it didn't quite work out as intended. That's what I get for disobeying the Zimmermann!

It doesn't quite behave itself over the bust and shoulders, or in the upper arms, but I've decided I don't mind. Blocking did help too, once I eventually got around to it...
It is the only garment I have ever made with a view to wardrobe planning. I made it to replace a black polo neck jumper I wore for work with either a tan, black and white checked skirt, or a bright orange one. The original jumper eventually became too bobbly and tatty to count as respectable work wear, so I planned this jumper to go with the two skirts (hence the colours in the yoke).

As it happens, I since got the yellow skirt shown here at a clothes swap, and I now also wear the jumper with a short tan corduroy skirt. And with some tweed trousers, also from the same clothes swap, so it is a bit of a winter workhorse!

It is ravelled here, and there are a few more images on Flickr too.

Messy sunny Tuesday

2011-03-08T12:20:00.003Z

Following on from yesterday's post, and given that it is Tuesday...

The scraps, and the pattern piece for the self fabric belt for yesterday's dress has been sitting on top of my sewing machine since last May...
My engagement with Messy Tuesday (which is meant to be a reaction against the excess of the unattainably perfect in domestic blogs by being open about the grubby, ugly, mess which is often just out of shot) has so far been somewhat cheaty. I want to boldy embrace the concept, but I take huge pleasure in pretending to live in beauty- and I'm unashamedly houseproud- so I found it impossible to photograph my sewing dregs in situ, and felt compelled to put them on a well lit chair. So it goes...

I have also been embracing messy Tuesday through LAUNDRY. Today is the second glorious drying day in a row- a rarity in South East London, which is to be celebrated by load after load of laundry

Thank you Felix and Lara for messing up Tuesdays!
PS- all those lovely socks in the foreground were knit by housemate Alice, and the stripy jumper is this one.

It's that time of year!

2011-03-07T15:46:00.002Z

The daffodils are out, the clocks are going forward, and I'm blogging- it must be spring!

I'm cheating wildly by posting a dress which I made last spring, in May, using both a vintage pattern and vintage fabric from my grandmother's stash (I think- the pattern could have been a lucky charity shop find...)

It's Simplicity 5668 and has a 1973 trademark. It makes me feel a little like an air hostess (which I clearly quite like- as I wore it very often indeed last summer)

As promised by the pattern envelope, it did indeed go together in a Jiffy, very pleasing. I made view 1- in red on the envelope, and quite clearly the envy of misses views 2 and 3. I'd been saving the fabric up for ages, and had all sorts of plans, involving tracing off Burda patterns and altering them. Fortunately I came to my senses and realised that if I wanted a dress this side of 2050 Jiffy easy cut easy sew was where it was at...
I also appear to have taken exception to the photographer- pesky paparazzi!

Spring just keeps springing

2010-05-03T13:31:00.003+01:00

It appears that I only blog in the spring. Ah well, at least it is a cheerful time of year...

Aptly enough, the image above shows a hot water bottle cover which was originally meant as a Christmas present. The image below shows its state around Christmas (and for some time thereafter)

Fortunately it can be reassigned as a somewhat unseasonal birthday present, and will be posted tomorrow- phew!

The buttons come from my copious inherited button stash- and I do mean copious. It includes an actual shop rack of buttons which my Grandmother bought at a closing down sale some decades ago:

The armchair and cushions lurking behind the knitting are also from her house, and they now grace my home- albeit a different home since I last posted (it still has the same people in it, and is only down the road, though!).
For the second year running I appear to have moved house, changed jobs, and made less stuff than I would have liked. I'm hoping this is not a set pattern.

I have been rubbish at responding to comments and messages- I'm not sure I'll get though the backlog, but I'll give it a stab. Sorry if you have been trying to get in touch!

Spring is sprung

2009-04-08T20:29:00.004+01:00

Spring is most definitely here- not only have I finished my first warm weather dress of the year (and my first bit of sewing since moving house in September!), but it was still light enough when I got home from work this evening to have a bit of a photoshoot on the roof terrace.

The dress is dress 101A from the March issue of Burda, and the fabric has been in my stash for ages. It came from the same sales shelf at the back of the fabric shop as the cloth for this, this and this (among others- I think I'm the only person who buys from that shelf, and I take that responsibility seriously...)

I really love the fabric, and have been mulling over what to make with it for years- I had considered the Whirl Away dress, and the one I made a while ago was meant as a kind of wearable muslin. I wanted something with quite a lot of volume, so the bird motif had space to (ahem) sing, and the Whirl Away's huge skirt seemed ideal. However, I don't really wear the one I made, and it's a nuisance to walk around in, so back to the drawing board I went.

I'm very pleased with how this turned out. It has the volume I was after, but the yardage is actually relatively contained, so I even have enough fabric to make another! (I had to keep telling myself this as I mucked around with seam allowances- Burda does not include any, and I'd never made up a pattern with no seam allowances before...)

On another track completely- thank you for still reading! I'm glad this blog is still lingering on the odd RSS feed. Yay!

A year and a day

2009-04-02T22:19:00.002+01:00

So, life has been mostly offline in the last year...

I've changed jobs, moved house, made some stuff (but not as much as I'd like). I've thought a lot about blogging, and about what it's for. I've skipped my blogiversary. Can a have a blog-hiatus-iversary instead?

I think I'll try to post weekly here again, but I'm not going to feel guilty if I don't. I might cheat and show you pictures of things from the year's gap- nothing like a bit of time travel!

Like the little quartet of images above: spring in the garden of my old house, in last year's London "snow event"; summer in Italy, craning the set for an opera I worked on into place; autumn in the doorway of my new house, with Flatmate Alice's boyfriend, the first time we all went to see it; winter in Italy again, driving to the seaside to eat fish with friends and celebrate the new year. Not a bad haul!

Messy Tuesday

2008-04-01T19:48:00.003+01:00

I feel I'm somewhat going against the spirit of Messy Tuesdays by posting a stage-managed picture of some mess, but it turns out that I'm far too vain to post the real mess currently engulfing me, and besides, this particular mess is a beautiful and interesting one, which I quite wanted to talk about anyway.

This mess is my embroidery thread box- but it's messiness precedes my ownership of it. It is one of the many textile related things I inherited from my maternal Grandmother. She (like me, as Flatmate Alice can testify) was a great saver of things. Among other oddments of hers I have a large bag, and several tins, of her odd buttons, a box of empty cotton reels, and this box, which I decanted from a bag, of her embroidery thread ends. There are also several boxes of full skeins of thread, all sorted into cottons, silks, etc, and arranged by colour, but I do not have those. I was never a big one for embroidery (to my her slight disappointment, as it was her favorite craft) and I only have this lot because I once rashly declared that I enjoy untangling thread, and my mother responded by presenting this bundle to me. As you can see, I got about halfway through before getting bored, not too bad! And in a way, I'm glad I didn't untangle it all. This is a mess that is older than me. Some of it is probably older than my mother. There is enough untangled to do what little embroidery I am likely to do, and enough left for the next person to untangle. Or add to.

(The fabric in the background is from my Paris trip, it's 3m of silk from La Folie des Coupons, and I think it will mostly be lining. Unless it turns out to be very, very frilly cocktail dress. You never know...)

Spacerific

2008-03-28T17:29:00.003Z

The future keeps creeping up on me at the moment, so I thought I'd share these two future based ladies. I embroidered them onto pillowcases using this most excellent Sublime Stitching pattern (purchased as part of this expedition), and embroidery thread from a box of scraps which belonged to my Grandmother. I believe the stitch is called split-stitch- I followed the instructions here...

Unfortunately their rocket packs were not quite powerful enough to carry them across the Atlantic, so I had to resort to Royal Mail to get them to their destination in LA

In other news- I've been boinged! They linked to Craftster, not here, but I nonetheless felt I ought to spruce up my sci-fi crafting credentials...

A warm welcome

2008-03-06T19:44:00.004Z

(It seems I am unable to post things when they actually happen. So, let us assume it is last Monday, and carry on regardless)
I have just got back from a very brief trip to Italy via Paris. Nobody was in when I got home, but I felt amply welcomed by this lot on the windowsill by the front door!

I was only gone six days, and before I went I planted up another one of the very fine wine boxes from Nicolas with some bulbs and pansies, as a window box.
Here it is, looking promising before I left...

It's just an empty fine wine box I begged from the shop, filled with half and half bought compost and wormery compost, and planted with forced daffodils and pansies from the flower shop down the road. I was lazy and didn't bother lining it or treating the wood- it was going to be chucked before I got to it, so I'm ok with it rotting over time...

In between the two pictures above was quite a lot of fabric and yarn shopping (which I will come back to at some point), a great many good meals

and several trains.

A dress!

2008-02-24T16:51:00.004Z

Finally, after much talk, and more buying of fabric and patterns than I let on here, I have actually sewn up a woolen winter dress- just in time for spring!

It is McCall's M5464, made up in a wool/acrylic/polyester mix (not even pure wool, after all that!). I saw the fabric in the King's Fabric sale in Oxford for very cheap, having just seen a beautiful olive check dress on a woman in a restaurant. Irresistible, despite the low wool content!
The dress does have the sleeves I've been coveting, and has already done plenty of work-dress duty.

I wore it to a Bluestockings meet up, and mentioned I felt it was a little plain. Lara suggested a giant bow- so I had a bit of an experiment. I may have got a little carried away...

Um, suggestions?

(eta- Pattern Review here)

10

2008-01-28T21:47:00.000Z

This post contains two tens, both courtesy of Flatmate Alice.
The first ten (above) is what ten pounds will buy, if sent to America with a willing and able flatmate. Last November Alice went to a conference in the US, and then on a mini visiting tour. She owed me ten pounds for some domestic reason or another, so I asked for it back in crafty goodness instead of cold hard cash. She scoured the country's finest craft emporia for bargains and came back with what you see (there are three whole yards of the blue floral cotton!). Thank you Alice!

The second ten is a piece of chain-mail goodness: Alice tagged me for a "You Make My Day Award", which has been doing the rounds of the knit-blogosphere. The rules demand that I pass on the warm fuzzies by selecting my own list of 10 blogs which "bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland". An arduous task, but one which I shall bravely embrace.

Of course, I will start with a big fat cheat. I have disqualified both Slipped Stitch (as she tagged me) and Tres Chic Veronique (as she tagged Alice)- and I would also like to take this opportunity to clear my name: I do too read Slipped Stitch! I just rarely comment- since I have usually already said whatever it was I would have typed. So, without further ado (and alphabetically):

Blue Garter: Sarah publishes engaging, beautifully photographed posts about things I really wish I'd knitted, with plenty of "real life" titbits too.

Dab Hand: It turns out I actually (sort of) know Ingrid- we met once at a wedding, both as our partner's plus ones, and I very much enjoyed her company. She got in touch when she recognised me in a picture of the Wonder Woman Jumper and I've been hooked on her beautiful blog ever since.

Fehr Trade: Melissa is the most fabulous seamstress/designer that ever lived in a Thames boat. And why, yes, that was her you spotted in the Ikea shower curtain dress.

Green Kitchen: I came across this image of Michelle's Wool Felt Cloche Hat, and fell in love with her work- it's the colours she uses that really get me- dark and faded and beautiful.

I May Be Knitting A Ranchhouse: with that title, what's not to like?!

Needled: This is intelligent, mindful crafting at its best. Kate writes thoughtful essays which hold your attention, and makes the most beautiful things.

Oxford Bluestockings: This is such a cheat! I get seven blogs for the price of one here. Geography and logistics have had me miss more Wednesdays than I would like lately, but I still very much consider myself to be part of this group.

Soulemama: Amanda chronicles her crafty, creative family life in this beautifully photographed blog. It's gorgeous, inspiring and well written. I'm sure she's been nominated by any number of people, but checking Soulemama is so much a part of my daily routine, it would be dishonest not to list her here.

Ysolda: Do you know that if you type "ysolda" straight into the address bar in Firefox it sends you here? This pleases me no end, as, of course, do Ysolda's posts and patterns.

Zeitgeist: Kate is a grad student studying textile design- I love her colour-work, and I really enjoy seeing machine knitting in a blog.

Ouf! That was hard! More pure knitting blogs crept into the final 10 than I expected, but I think that's a reflection of the blogosphere- knitting does seem to be exceptionally well represented. Or maybe I am not enthusiastic enough in my exploration of sewing blogs- guidance gratefully received!

The Rules: Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times.

Keep me warm

2008-01-25T16:48:00.000Z

Today the weather is most definitely January- cold cold cold. As I am too stubborn to put the heating on, I have been relying on the power of wool and hot water to keep me going. Above you see me in my most favoritest woolly of them all. It's a hand-knit, but I've no idea by whom, as it came to me in a bag of hand-me-downs some time in my early teens. It kept me warm for reading and homework, then for university essay writing, and now for working from home. It's a garment that can be trusted.
A supporting role is played by the hot water bottle, which I gave to Anthony for Christmas last year, the cover being hand-knit by me. I got a little overexcited with the camera and had a bit of a photoshoot:

Since no fire is ever allowed to burn in the grate, I might as well pose blankets and hot water bottles in it, for symbolic warmth!
The hot water bottle cover is a very straightforward improvised pattern, but I'll write it up if anybody asks. I made one for Flatmate Alice for Christmas this year, in alarmingly bright (and hard to photograph!) alpaca.

This is the best shot I got- inside out for some reason. Below is a rather fuzzy right-side out one:

You can just about see the design- pink and purple zigzags. I wasn't sure what to do for the fair isle, and mentioned it to Anthony. "oh, do pink and purple zigzags" said he, and with such a definite tone that I did. Alice claims to like it (and besides, it's for warming feet, not soothing eyes), so all's well...
Right, in the spirit of making public commitments rather than private ones- I shall post again on Monday.

Spectactular Craft

2008-01-21T23:19:00.000Z

Well, there certainly hasn't been very much spectacular crafting from me lately, but the duck needs breaking, so I shall report on some spectacular craft I merely looked at.
Aaaages ago (no really, ages), Flatmate Alice and I took ourselves off to a Friday Late at the V&A, along with Bluestocking Abby. This was principally for the very fab workshops and demonstrations laid on in honour of the Golden Age of Couture, and most excellent they were too.

However, we also had a good nose around the Spectacular Craft exhibition, which is still in situ (and will be until the 17th February). It is a wee round-up of some pretty amazing pieces of art made using craft techniques, under the auspices of the Crafts Council.
The two photos above are both of Anne Wilson's "Topologies", an amazingly intricate sculpture made of tiny bits of thread, crocheted and otherwise tangled into minute artifacts or beasties, pinned out to be admired. It's enormous, covering a huge white table.
The picture below is of Annie Cattrell's "Conditions", a series of glass blocks with delicate wisps of cloud etched within. I have no idea how she gets the etchings into the blocks, but she does, and the effect is far more beautiful than my picture of it is!

I didn't get a picture of my absolute favorite part of the show: Susan Collis' works. They don't look like much on first glance (a battered table in a corner, a dust sheet dropped on the floor- at first impact you assume you've wondered into a bit of the show that is not ready yet). But when you get in closer, what at first glance looks like dirt is tiny, perfect embroidery. Paint splodges are marble inlays, scratches are ever such fine lines of gilding. Even odd screws in the wall are bejewelled. Perfect.

Which just left time for a pit-stop in the shop (where we spent as least as long as we had in the exhibition...).
Right, I'm going to post again on Friday. You see if I don't!

Uncursed

2007-11-19T19:48:00.000Z

I'm behind behind behind! I've a post coming about the Stitch n' Bitch Day, but it requires photography, which requires light, which is in short supply round here. So here are some old-ish pictures of a pre-blog FO.

This is a jumper made originally for Anthony, a couple of years ago. It escaped the boyfriend curse by dint of only being worn once by him, before falling into my clutches. Ha ha!

I used the same basic shape as I did for the Wonder Woman Jumper (hurrah for Woolworth Knitting magazine 1973! And a calculator to re-gauge the whole shebang with!), and Rowan Kid Classic. I bought 4 balls of each colour, but I had almost all of the last two balls left over (and made legwarmers). It took about 4 weeks to do, is lovely and cozy, and gets a lot of wear (well, from me it does. Not so much from its intended recipient...)
A quick and pleasing knit!

Home again home again

2007-11-05T21:09:00.000Z

And the postal backlog is nearly over. Hurrah!
The wee bag/pouch/envelope above has reached its destination in California, and can now be safely blogged. It was a belated birthday present, made from the last of this lovely fabric (which has already made a skirt).
I've already written about one of the badges, and the other comes from the same place- the Mundane Appreciation Society. It was a Crunchie bar wrapper which I had in my pocket (the bar itself was long gone...).

Of course, all good post goes in both directions, and I was not disappointed: this lovely haul was awaiting me on my return

The part wrapped in a ribbon comes from the kind-hearted Ysolda, who took pity on my plaintive cries for the fall issue of Interweave, and sent me hers (well, sent it to me and Flatmate Alice to share). And she didn't stop there- she threw in the ribbon (with knitting instructions on it!!), the fab vintage buttons and some Ysolda originals- the two gorgeous wee appliqués, and the fabric under everything- both with her own prints on (there was some delicious dark chocolate, too, but it didn't make it to being photographed...). Thank you Ysolda!

The sewing patterns are my own fault. I ordered them in my winter-dress-pattern buying frenzy- we shall see how long it takes me to actually make either of them up...

Japonicarama!

2007-11-01T22:50:00.000Z

My Grandfather has a Japonica quince in the garden, which produces an annual modest glut of fruit.
Since the un-processed fruit is bitter and inedible, and the blossom very pretty, most people grow the plant as a flowering shrub, and let the fruit rot.

However, if you can be bothered, it does make a delicious, if laborious, jam. So of course, I jammed!
This year the tree excelled itself- rather than the usual, manageable, 3kg or so, it came up with 6kg of fruit (and that was discarding ruthlessly, instead of saving the savable!)

This took 12 litre of water to boil up

Six hours to push through a sieve for the pulp

and 6kg of preserving sugar (lurking behind the bowl...)
It took 28 jars to pot it up (I had to resort to buying all of the tumblers in the local charity shop!)

But it's yummy!

Bucolic

2007-10-26T00:18:00.000+01:00

I'm spending a week at my Grandfather's house in the countryside, holding the fort whilst my Mum is away. I have lots of good intentions about photographing all sorts of lovely things in exciting new surroundings, and writing engaging and witty posts about them, but we shall see...
My attempts at photography today were somewhat thwarted. Most of my tries for the picture at the top came out more like this:

The guilty party clearly visible at the bottom left!
She was very interested in these:

(and in the squirrels, but they're impossible to photograph at the best of times, let along when you're having your arm pulled off by excessive enthusiasm at the opposite end of the lead...)
Note to self- walking the dog and taking pictures are not suitable partners for multitasking!

The mundane is beautiful

2007-10-23T21:01:00.000+01:00

In all my skirt fueled excitement yesterday, I didn't get to post about some amazing art I happened upon over the weekend.
On Saturday I met Felix after she'd been to I-knit, and she dragged me along with her to the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea. She was on the trail of the Mundane Appreciation Society, AKA Kayla Bell and Claudia Figueiredo.
These two fabulous ladies are on a quest to make us notice all the beauty that is right in front of us.
They exhibit the debris which accumulates in our lives

and make badges from what they find in our pockets

(the badge at the top of the post was made from an umbrella case I had been carrying around since loosing the associated beloved umbrella. It now proudly adorns my coat, which seems pleasingly appropriate).
And (preemptively) in the spirit of their work, Felix and I happened upon these on our way through Vauxhall. Perfect.

A skirt for gardening

2007-10-22T22:11:00.000+01:00

Do you remember this delicious fabric? Flatmate Alice brought it back from Japan in August, and it has finally made it from a plan to an actual skirt. Given the subject matter of the print I had to stand in the flowerbed for the pictures.

I'm very pleased with myself, not only for squeezing a flippy (albeit short) skirt out of one metre of fabric, but also because the pattern piece for the waistband had gone AWOL, and I redrafted it. That's what you get for using vintage patterns... It's Style 4167, from the seventies, I think.

In other news, Anthony and I had an anniversary at the weekend, so treated ourselves to afternoon tea at Le Chandelier

I'm a speedy tea drinker...

The internet loves me

2007-10-18T22:10:00.000+01:00

Is this not a lovely haul to unwrap on a Thursday morning?
Last week, I won a competition on BeeBeeMod, home of the generous Jen. This morning this lovely lot were delivered- and they weren't even the proper prize! That was an ever so clever shopping bag, which rolls up into a teeny tiny portable wee thing. Here it is, with a pattern for scale:

Thank you, Jen!

The pattern is the internet's other love token to me in today's post.
I ordered it as part of my winter dress quest last week, and I think I can squeeze the view C jumper into the 1.5m of herringbone fabric I bought then for Simplicity 3631 (It'll mean splitting the back piece into skirt and bodice, but I think I can cope with a back waist seam, if it's going to save me from buying a whole new 2.3m of fabric, as per the pattern envelope!)

See? I knew the blogosphere was a truly productive place to spend my time!

Stationary crisis averted

2007-10-17T23:21:00.000+01:00

My secret drawer of pretty notebooks is empty! However, my stack of scrap paper waiting for a purpose is well stocked, and I still have some very pretty wrapping paper left over from my birthday, just waiting around to be used to cover something.
So I trimmed the paper:

Laid one sheet on the wrapping paper:

Covered the sheet in the wrapping paper and taped it on:

Stacked the rest of the paper neatly on top:

Folded:

Sewed from the inside:

Along the spine:

And, since by then I had forgotten what I wanted it for in the first place, put it on the shelf with the rest of my notebooks...

PS- thank you for the lovely comments about my silly striped cardigan. I'm still not convinced it's quite suitable for, say, work, but I shall wear it with a spring in my step nonetheless!

Silly stripes cardigan

2007-10-15T17:33:00.000+01:00

Remember my Sensible Stripes Cardigan? Which was the second attempt at a stripy cotton cover-up for summer? Well, here, thanks to Lara's prodding, is the first attempt, photographed in the same spot for comparison purposes.
Not entirely unwearable, but definitely at the younger end of the wardrobe spectrum...

It was made using the same top down raglan calculator as the other one, but I think I must have given myself more ease on this one. I also did not do any waist shaping, so it's rather more dumpy than it's sequel.
I used an Italian unmercerized cotton DK yarn, Adriafil Cotone Nature (although the pink was in the discontinued Adriafil Cotone Povero. It was replaced by the Nature range, but Povero was a tiny bit finer, and hence went further) I had three balls of the pink and the yellow, and four of the blue (or 2, 2, 3. Maybe.) In any case, I ran out of the yellow and had to fudge the bottom of both the sleeves and the body, and then I ran out of the blue, and had to do the second button band in pink.

In other news- they broke the Tate!

(It was Anthony's birthday on Friday, so we went to look at it)

Wooly thinking

2007-10-11T23:16:00.000+01:00

Winter is coming, and I can't stop thinking about woolen dresses. I have plenty of summer dresses, but a great gaping vacancy for winter ones. This must be remedied, and the above loot came home with me from John Lewis' and Liberty's to make a start.
Not quite the pattern I wanted, but apparently the dress only takes 120cm of fabric, and I do think the jacket is lovely (the pattern I did have in mind may or may not have been ordered from Habihat as soon as I got home...).
The yarn is to make a start on my Christmas knitting- you can't get much more wintery than that!
However, I am not quite so unequipped with winter dresses as I let on:

These came from a very pleasing box in my Grandmother's attic. For my own reference:
The black wool at the bottom is 58" wide, and 3.5 yards long
The grey wool is 135cm wide and 140cm long
The blue with the gold check (which is silky and thick and blankety) is 133cm wide and 90cm long.
(and they are all a little bit moth eaten, but only a little bit)

There is enough of the black to make the dress in the pattern- which is an old die-cut one, with holes instead of printed markings- see:

I was debating what colour to make the contrast on the collar as I checked the pattern pieces when- tragedy! The collar piece is missing! And so are the bodice facings, but they are easier to redraft. The bodice pieces have pin marks, and none of the rest does, so I'm guessing it was frankensteined to a different skirt, and the collar piece ended up in the wrong envelope. Bother. Oh well, I had been wanting to learn to draft properly...

New but old but old

2007-10-09T22:29:00.000+01:00

I should clear out my stuff more often- I forgot I had these!
My Grandmother's collection of Stitchcraft magazine:

They were in one of those safe places that are practically impossible to get at...
The oldest copy is from 1932 (and has a special teen knitting feature which must have been the draw for my then 14 year old Grandmother!)

The red and white chequered jumper in the middle is a special quick and easy project for beginners (!).
The issues peter out after the fifties (I'm guessing by that point she had enough patterns to knit anything which took her fancy...)
Fancy another cover? Thought so:

A nice bit of knitted tweed for spring- just what the doctor (and the dog?) ordered!

Fairly Easy Fair Isle (suitable for jungle wear)

2007-10-08T21:08:00.000+01:00

An oooold FO got its moment in the sun this week. I made this with the spoils of the 2006 January sales at John Lewis. Flatmate Alice and I accidentally turned up half an hour before it opened on the first day of the sales (we thought we were going half an hour after it opened on the second day) and scored lots of lovely Debbie Bliss Merino Chunky (sadly discountinued and sorely missed). It's the Fairly Easy Fair Isle from Stitch and Bitch Nation.

And apparently I live in a jungle.
I promise it's London really, I'll let you know if I head towards the equator. See:

Legwarmer season

2007-09-27T23:25:00.000+01:00

One good thing to be said for colder weather- time to bring out the legwarmers!
These are made out of delectable Wensleydale Longwool DK yarn, left over from a hat I made for Anthony (hence the shortness).

The camera can't really cope with all the fuzzyiness, so this is the best shot I got of the stitch pattern. It's a slipped stitch herringbone pattern, which I think is in a Barbara Walker book. I found a version of it online, and promptly lost the bit of paper I'd printed it on, so ended up unventing it.
These boots are the perfect legwarmer companions:

They have a lowered legwarmer viewing area at the back!

In their honour- I had a go at the classic "knitting in a bush" shot:

The shirt off my back

2007-09-26T00:05:00.000+01:00

Behold! What you see here is my first ever shirt, made using the Built By Wendy pattern in her book, Sew U (this is the pattern I lifted the collar and stand from for the black tulip shirt dress.)

For a first ever shirt, I wasn't displeased, and I do wear the thing, but I'm not overjoyed either.
I cut it a size larger than I usually would, having read that it ran very small. Unfortunately I ended up having to take it in a lot at the waist to stop it from drowning me, which left the bust fit looking a bit peculiar.

Also, the fabric (another old prints shelf find from my usual shop!) creases very easily, and not in a particularly casual cool sort of a way...
(Note to self- first take pictures, then lean on things)

Still, I can't complain- I was aiming for a wearable muslin, and a practice run at making a collar and a button band. I'm very pleased with the black tulip shirt dress which came after it, and I do have a wearable shirt (albeit one which doesn't stand up to close examination)!

My weekend in pictures

2007-09-25T00:54:00.000+01:00

Notes on Flickr...

21 September

2007-09-21T13:03:00.000+01:00

Jammy

2007-09-20T18:30:00.000+01:00

I was brought up on homemade jam , and it never really occurs to me to buy it in shops. So, when I opened the cupboard earlier this week to find- shock horror!- that we only had four jars left, there was only one possible solution. Shop bought blackberries.
I know, I know, it goes against the very ethos of homemade blackberry jam, but it's my absolute favorite and I just can't bring myself to buy the jam ready made. That's what living in London does to a county bumpkin.
Even I could not bring myself to buy enough little punnets to keep our toast covered until next summer, so I supplemented with shop bought plums. Here they are just after the sugar went in:The little white floating things are kernels (I cracked open some of the plum stones and extracted them). I've not added them before, but they're meant to make it yummier. We shall see...
In other news, how about these for the stripy cardie?
They fit through the button holes, which is a good start! (can you believe that picture was taken at two in the afternoon?? That's the light we've been getting lately...)

Black tulips shirtdress

2007-09-19T23:10:00.000+01:00

I made this earlier on this summer, just in time to join Lara and Bree for the sheep day at Spitalfields. It is made from the same fabric as the Whirl Away dress, just in black with blue flowers rather than blue with white, with buttons inherited from my Grandmother.It's only the second shirt I've ever made, and I'm inordinately proud of the collar and button band! I used this pattern, but I frankensteined on the collar from the Built by Wendy shirt in her book Sew U.
It's been getting a lot of wear, I've been eying up the other pattern views...

I also learned a valuable lesson about backgrounds and skintones whilst I was photographing it. Look Ma! No hands!

HHe
I made this dress earlier on this summer, just in time to join Lara for the Sheep day in Spitalfields. It is made from the same fabric as the Whirl Away Dress, only in a different colour.

Make do and mend

2007-09-18T22:16:00.000+01:00

This pleasing sight is the newly mended handle on my beloved handbag. The nice man at Merryfields did it (the link, unlike the handle, might be broken, it wouldn't work for me earlier)It took some coaxing to get him to believe that it was worth mending such a beat up old bag ("but I like it!"). Nonetheless, he's done a good job, I think.

To tell the truth, it was not I who did the beating up of the bag. I only bought it a couple of months ago, from the vintage bit at Motel. Not so much "making do", then...
It was cheap, though, and I really do like it- it makes me feel like a proper grown-up, possibly one living in the seventies. Chloe Sevignie in a period piece, perhaps?

The feverish joy of getting it (and my best ballet flats, newly resoled) back seems to have made me think I'm taking pictures for a leather goods catalogue:PS- Thank you for the lovely comments on the jumper!

(Yorkshire) Riviera jumper

2007-09-17T19:35:00.000+01:00

Hot off the needles! Well, hot off the finishing table, anyway.... It actually came off the needles absolutely ages ago, but ended up getting stuck at finishing. Just in time for autumn, so I'm not complaining!It's Debbie Bliss' Riviera pattern, from her Alpaca Silk 2 book. I knit it out of the sadly discontinued Jaeger Luxury Tweed, hence the (Yorkshire) in the title, the Mediterranean riviera seeming singularly inappropriate as a namesake for a cabled tweed woolie...
I changed the collar from a great big scoopy thing to a little funnel one, which caused me a bit of grief (entirely caused by lack of planning!), and is where I got slowed down, but overall this was a smooth ride. The cables are quick to learn, and the knitting nips along at a suitable clip.
All very pleasing!PS- Ravelry ate my weekend! My invite came through on Saturday morning (beautiful timing!). I'm practicalpolly if anybody's interested...

Oddments

2007-09-14T23:09:00.000+01:00

I was waiting a very long time for the bus on my way home this evening, and then got stuck in a world of traffic, so today's post is a bit miscellaneous...
Still, standing at a bus stop for ages meant that I finally noticed the view above. Not much to write home about at ground level, but lift your eyes and suddenly the narrowness and pointiness of the houses jumps out, and all the different pretty roofs.
I went on my way cheered by the surprises to be found above eye level- and cheered by some nice new bus knitting:This is going to be a fair isle slipover top, and it is going to keep my middle warm in the autumn. I'm using Italian Adriafil merino from the back of a shop again- here's hoping I have enough this time!

ETA- only 38 people ahead of me for Ravelry, eep eep!

Favourite shoes

2007-09-13T19:12:00.000+01:00

These shoes make me happy whenever I wear them. I really love the shape of the toe: pointed but not too pointed. The heel hight is just right, and they make a pleasing click clack when I walk. Perfect!
I got them about three years ago (from Schuh I think, they're Irregular Choice), and don't wear them too often so they don't get worn out. I've had the heel tips replaced a couple of times (and they could do with it again), and they've lost a star, but they're doing ok. A good few years in them yet!
The leaves you see around them are not autumn leaves. They have fallen off the trees because of the very hot summer we are in the middle of. We have many more lovely summer days ahead of us, and will wear many summer dresses. Whatever the Met Office has to say.
See? The roses agree with me (even if the Michaelmas daisies don't), and are covered in buds!

Missability joy

2007-09-13T01:01:00.000+01:00

I spent this evening at the Missability opening show, judging the amazing knitted walking stick cozy competition along with the other Bluestockings. It was organized by this lovely lady:Multimedia artist and musician Felicity Ford (I really really want to start that sentence with "mild mannered"- and Felix would so come up with the superhero goods by the end of the paragraph!)
There were some tough choices and some close calls, but we finally came up with the winners (to be revealed on the Missability site...)
Soundtrack to the night was the Missability radio show, and there was even cake- a perfect soiree!

A little bird told me...

2007-09-11T19:44:00.000+01:00

...that sewing a pin onto the back of a button makes a broach.
This particular one came from a very small but very full button shop. They have buttons shaped like just about anything you can think of, and then some! Slice of cake? Of course, in which colour? Sewing shears? Why yes, large or small? Button joy!
Or in this case, with the addition of a broach back which Lara very kindly gave me for a different purpose entirely, broach joy!
I probably ought to have glued it, but I had thread not glue, and wanted to wear it now this minute. So I have to live with a slightly messy back. Oh well, nobody would ever have seen it if I hadn't just posted it...

Sensible stripes cardigan

2007-09-10T20:16:00.000+01:00

Here I am in disguise as a grown-up!
This is so fresh off the needles that it still doesn't have any buttons (it might get some wooden toggles, given that the buttonholes I made might turn out not to be very big- but suggestions are very welcome!)It's a basic top down raglan, made using the trusty calculator. I knit it out of Blue Sky Alpacas
delicious organic cotton, in bone and nut. The colours aren't dyed at all, the cotton just grows that way! Very pleasing (and very, very soft)I shaped the waist a little bit (as you can see in the above picture), and I worked turned hems on the sleeves and the bottom instead of ribbing (as you can see in the below- slightly blurry- picture)I'm very pleased with it, the perfect goes-with-most-things stripy cotton cardie, which will solve all my summer evening cover-up dilemmas, and my in-between season quandaries. Hurrah!
I am very pleased, not least because I tried to make it last summer, but made the tactical error of going yarn shopping with my Mum. It turns out that if you buy yarn with your Mum, you end up with colours best suited to a small child (but chances are she'll pay, so it has its good side...). Anyway, the upshot was that last summer I made the perfect kindergarten stripy cotton cardie, which accounts for the grown-up-ness of this one.

Sort of my own handiwork

2007-09-08T21:12:00.000+01:00

I selected these beads and strung them onto some elastic all by myself, does that count as making a necklace?
Modeled here with the gorgeous slipover top Flatmate Alice made for me last year- it gets a lot of wear, particularly in the inbetween seasons!
Here's a closeup:
You can really see the lovely burnished wood on the beads, and the tweedy-fluffy-angorayness of the jumper. Texture happiness!

Are these yours?

2007-09-07T21:21:00.000+01:00

I nearly stepped on these on the pavement outside the Taylorian library in Oxford, so I popped them on a ledge. They were just lying there on the pavement, all shiny and unscratched and neatly folded:
I hope their owner comes back for them!

Picnic skirt

2007-09-05T23:05:00.000+01:00

Today feels like summer is over before having really started up yet, so I thought it was a good time to post about this skirt.
I cut it out in September last year, sewed most of it, and abandoned it, finished except for the waistband and hem, until late this July. The sad fate of a summer project started at the end of the season!
I made it out of a tablecloth from a market stall, using this vintage pattern from a charity shop:It's view 4.
It's not the most flattering skirt I have ever made, but I think that's more than made up for by the jam jars adorning it- who needs a trim waist if they have jam!In that picture you can see the slight tulip shape on the side seams, caused by not having quite enough fabric, and laziness. I could have pieced in little godets, and done fancy plaid matching, but I decided it wasn't worth it on a skirt which is only going to get out to play a few times each year...
I also went for a handkerchief hem, on the same reasoning.
Here's a back view:
And finally- in it's natural habitat- the spread out on the park lawn! If you're going to make skirts out of picnic tablecloths, you ought to eat picnics in them!

Charts!

2007-09-05T01:07:00.000+01:00

By popular demand, I've scanned the charts I used for the Wonder Woman jumper. They're huge, and upsetting my Flickr, so if you would like them please e-mail me. I'm not sure they'll be terribly useful, but I've posted a tutorial to go with them on Craftster, to explain a bit (it's really not a proper pattern- more like a report!).
Do let me know if anything is horribly unclear, or if you've any other questions.

Thank you again for all the lovely comments which are still coming in- they make me all warm and fuzzy inside. Many more and I truly will be able to fly, tee hee!

Goodies

2007-09-03T15:26:00.000+01:00

I'm so excited by all the comments and links the Wonder Woman jumper has been getting! I'm working my way through replying to them all, but I'm a bit slow, so I haven't got to all of them yet... Loads of people have asked about the pattern, so I'll also be scanning the charts I used tomorrow, and posting those.
In the meantime, Flatmate Alice is back from Japan, hurrah! I made her the cake at the top to celebrate (it's supposed to be cherry blossoms..)
I'm glad I did, because she brought back me some gorgeous Japanese fabric: It's a medium weight cotton twill, with a lovely stretch to it. And it has little ladies with watering cans! and wheel-barrow/lawn-mower things! I see a skirt in my future...

The Wonder Woman Jumper

2007-08-31T20:33:00.000+01:00

This jumper took me 14 months to make, and makes me very, very happy (funny expression notwithstanding). So happy, I'm going to have to post another image.

And one more (there are a ton more on my flickr. Not that I'm vain...):

I got the basic shape of the jumper from a Woolworth magazine from the seventies, and I drafted the design myself (with the aid of many many pictures of WW!). I knit it out of Italian Adrifil merino wool, which claimed to be DK, but was blatantly 4ply, and ended up needing 3mm needles. I also ran out of wool twice during the project. Once of the blue during the back (and had to stripe in a different dye lot):

And once of red, during the main body. That was much worse, because the red I had was discontinued! And I had done all of the front, with the intarsia, so I really didn't want to rip back and do it again with a different red... In the end I came up with this:A cable in two colours, running right at the edge of the back, so that when seamed it looks like it is the seamline. With the bonus that it looks a bit like flames! Hurrah!

I reckon I got away with it thanks to the bracelets of power:
And now, excuse me, I must fly off to save the universe!
---
ETA- A lot of lovely people have asked for patterns (Thank you! I'm very flattered!). That's something that may or may not ever happen, but if you e-mail me, I'll send you a scan of the charts I made up, and a wrote up something of a craftster tutorial here. Let me know in the comments if you have questions...

When I went down to the woods today

2007-08-30T21:21:00.001+01:00

Well, I tell a lie. It's more like "when I went down to the woods last Saturday", but since I spent all of today in an office photocopying, I thought it would be more interesting to post about this.
So, last Saturday I decided to stroll down a path near my house which I had never strolled down before, and after a little while found myself in the middle of the woods. The really truly proper middle of the woods, as if all of London had disappeared! That in itself was pretty exciting.
A little bit further in, I came across this, which was my first clue that I had happened upon an art installation which was taking place throughout the wood over the bank holiday weekend. This was particularly pleasing, as I had heard about it, and was planning on going, but I thought it was miles and miles away. But it wasn't! It was just down the road!

The sky over London

2007-08-29T23:58:00.001+01:00

Wednesday is my long-distance commute day, which involves leaving the house by six at the latest. This is almost unbearable when the alarm goes off, but really quite nice once I'm outdoors (or it is so far. All bets are off for the winter...).

I like the feeling of being out and about when most people are still fast asleep, and the quality of the light, and of the air. It's a little bit like an i-spy book: 10 points for seeing the milkman, 5 for a flower which hasn't opened yet, 15 for the first proper yellow ray of sun.

I think this spot scores at least a 20, even though it didn't turn up until almost seven, when I was waiting for my bus at Victoria. Almost proper daytime!

Serendipity

2007-08-28T20:09:00.000+01:00

I am by no means a great gardener, in fact, I am barely and adequate one. However, I do love pretty flowers, and when we moved into this flat the unpromising little plot in front of it set about producing buckets of the things with no input at all from me. Perfection!
I recognize most of them, but this yellow one flummoxes me. It's not in my one reference book...

These ones here are Michaelmas daisies:
These are wild peas:
And these are campanulas, whcih very obligingly come up in all the cracks and gaps in the stonework of the steps. Thanks to our weird weather this is their second flowering this year, making them excellent value!And of course, they provide an excellent opportunity to play with my new camera's close-up feature...

Whirlin' away

2007-08-27T12:25:00.000+01:00

Here is my rendition of Butterick's famous Whirl Away dress, reissued as B4790. I love it!

I made this one using super wide cotton meant for bed sheets, with a tiny floral print which you can't really see in the pictures. I got the fabric from the clearance shelf in a little shop in Italy- most of the fabrics on the shelf have been there for at least 20 years.

I'm definitely making another, using some more fabric from the same place, with little flights of brown birds all over it. I want to make view A, with a solid brown for the front and underskirt. I'm still hunting for the solid brown to match the birds though, so don't hold your breath.

The underskirt rides up a bit when walking (particularly uphill), but there's more than enough fabric in the circle skirt to protect my modesty.

Here is a view of the back, so you can see how scoopy the back neckline is- I hadn't really expected that!

And finally, one in which you can see the waist wrap quite clearly. (and also the brooch I'm using to keep it together until I get around to adding the hooks and eyes for the front closure...) There are another couple of pictures on flickr for the curious...

ETA: Also posted at Pattern Review and Craftster

Loot!

2007-08-24T14:39:00.000+01:00

Nicolas (the wine shop) let me have one of these! It is a 6 bottle wine box, in which very expensive bottles of Bordeaux are delivered. They did not give me the wine.

Had they given me the wine, though, my desk would not have been transformed from this:To this:
No more relying on a dead printer to stop my books from falling over! No longer will I stare at a pile of floppy disks which I have had no way to read for over a year! No, now I have a "pleasingly modular arrangement" (ReadyMade's words, not mine). All I need to do to complete the transformation is remember to take the printer to the electronics recycling centre...

I must admit, I am already coveting several more boxes. Another three, say, for my desk? Perhaps a few for the kitchen, either stacked or hanging on the wall? Sadly they are pretty hard to come by. I have been popping in to Nicolas (and all the other local wine shops) on delivery day for the last two weeks, and this is my first hit. Oh well, patience is a virtue, as they say.

Lions and tigers and elephants, oh my!

2007-08-23T20:00:00.000+01:00

Another blurry wonder from my past. I made this jolly foursome for my wee cousin's Christmas present last year (and took this picture just before wrapping up the parcel, at my Grandfather's house).
I used Knitty's Puppers pattern and assorted scraps of yarn (mostly Flatmate Alice's, as it happened).
The crocodile's fearsome jaws are done with short rows and intarsia, and the lion's mane is done more or less like picking up stitches with a crochet hook. Everything else is as per the pattern.

It's a sorry state of affairs indeed when pictures taken on a cameraphone in the evening in December have better light than anything I could get today, in the middle of August. Pah!

Rash

2007-08-22T22:22:00.000+01:00

This pretty picture was taken with one of these:
which I did not use to own. Hm.

The socks were £1 for three pairs from a market stall though.

Pretty Polly

2007-08-21T18:05:00.000+01:00

I made this parrot out of scraps for a show last winter. It took about two hours, not too bad!

You can see his rather fetching stripes better in this side view.

Ingredients:
Leftover red polyester gabardine (from a dress)
A corner of yellow cotton the bulk of which has as yet no plan
Four slivers of green felt (offcuts from a jam-jar cover!)
Two beads (from my inherited buttin bag)
Stuffing (leftover from making a felt elephant)
A tiny strip of leather (found on the floor of a barn)

Pattern made out of newspaper and guesswork.

The little leather loop is needed for his superpower:

With one small move he can become a dead parrot!

Nice grainy photos courtesy of my cameraphone. Photography is not my strong point...

Birthday Girl!

2007-08-20T11:21:00.001+01:00

It was my birthday on Saturday- this is a picture Anthony took of me enjoying my breakfast and pressies. Photo Booth seems to have flipped it round to a mirror image for some reason. See Flickr for notes...

PS- this is an attempt to post straight from Flickr. Will it work???

A person has to start somewhere

2007-08-17T18:31:00.000+01:00

So why not here? This is a knitted Bettie Page doll adapted from the Knit-Your-Own Rock Star pattern from here:

I made her quite some time ago, out of Rowan Handknit Cotton, for a Glaswegian person who has since defected to LA.