Mellow Me

Now that's what I call a quick satisfying knit. All in all this cardigan took me just 2 weeks 4 days to make. It actually took me longer to decide what buttons to use! That being said it is a very simple cardigan (Mellow by Martin Storey) and knit up in aran weight yarn, so the expedience is quickly explained away. Although this doesn't make me any less pleased with my new wardrobe edition. The thing I most pleased about is its wearability. I have worn this so much since it's been finished and indeed even before it was finished as I wore it out twice before I made that vital decision about the buttons. As you can see on one of my Diggle photo shoots above, in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern a few weeks back, there's a bit of free-form crochet going on, but no buttons on that cardigan.

Finally with some buttons!

The button dilemma lay in the fact that as this was an aran knit and so I knew that it had the weight to take some of my growing stash of Nichols glass vintage buttons. But the question was, which ones to use? I put it to my knitting group as I had dazzling amber ones, deep sweet like green glass ones and gold leaf shaped ones among other to choose from. But my knitting girls didn't let me down and helped me to decided on these muted green glass buttons. They are all individual and unique. I think my favourite is the one in the middle below as it's pretending to be a sew through button, even though they're the shanked kind.

The others are like little candies or pebbles. So cute and tactile. They aren't as flashy as some of the other buttons I could have chosen, but I think this makes the cardigan all the more wearable for it.

I actually only had 4 of these buttons to begin with but the lovely Dixie from Nichols Buttons was kind enough to help me out and found 2 more to finish the cardigan off. Thank you Dixie! 

While I'm singing her praises I'd like to point you in the direction of her most fabulous blog Handmade Lives for craftspersons. It's full of frank and honest advice on running and maintaining a craft business. She talks good honest sense and I urge you, if you have your own craft business (or know someone who does) you will benefit from reading her wisdom. 

The only other thing to say is that this has been the first cardigan that I have modified the pattern for confidently. They were minor alterations in the length, waist shaping and collar but made all the difference to my happiness with the finished article. I'm hoping to get up a bit more confidence in this area of my knits from now on. The joy of making clothes should be that the fit is exactly right, so I will strive for that in my future garments.

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day to all.
Weather you love it or hate it, go eat some cake - that will sort you out.

Swatch

Sunday morning was for swatching. Flo kindly let me pick up my needles for half an hour while she watched some rubbish on TV and the Mr had a little lie in. Bad parenting, I know, but we all need our sanity.

Now this yarn that has a bit of a story behind it. Back in 2005 I made my first ever jumper it was a hideous affair as demonstrated by the photos taken at the time.

It was 2005, forgive me

It was too short in the body, the bat wing, neckline, yarn and everything about it just didn't suit me. But I'd spent a lot of money on the yarn and was determined that this jumper would be something beautiful, one day. I eventually ripped it back last year, only 12 years later, and put the balled up yarn back in the bag with the hope that its 'one day' would come.

I'm not saying that Sunday was that day. Indeed I am thinking that Sunday was not it's day at all. I'd ear marked a pattern from an old Knitty issue called Cherie Amour for this neglected yarn long ago and finally had the time/ bottle to try it out. But once it was knitted up, in the exact gauge no less, I just couldn't get past something. The pattern is great; I think it works for my body shape and obviously works with the yarn. It's the actual yarn that's the problem. It's bulky weight which means it adds bulk to my body. That top in this yarn is going to make me look bigger, and that's not really a look I'm going for as a woman with real curves. The yarn itself is in a variegated colourway which I can't get my head around. The purples and greys are soft and warm but variegated is just not me. I'm a solid kind of girl, semi-solid at best. Knitted up this flecked fabric just turns me off when I think about it as a garment for me.

And so 'one day' did not come and back into the bag it goes until I can figure out something beautiful for it to be. Until next time.

The Problem with Mods

I thought I was being clever, crafty even, for thinking that I could take a pattern and make a few modifications. It would all be fine. Nope, wrong! I cast on a simple cardigan, made a few mods while knitting the back; shortening the length and adjusting some shaping. I cast on the first front section and it was going fine until this happened:

Check out how the ribbing on the front section (on the right) is two rows longer than the ribbing on the back? And in Aran weight yarn two rows is the difference of a whole centimetre, not something you can easily hide or get away with. From this picture you can't exactly see but I'd almost knitted the whole front section before I noticed this stupid mistake. I wrestled with weather I should rip back or live with the mistake, but eventually did the next best thing and called my knitting guru Wendy, she'd know what to do. In her wisdom she suggested knitting a ribbed swatch, cutting through row two of the rib, picking up the live stitches and then casting them off.  I gave it a shot and it worked! 

As I'd practice on the swatch I was confident in getting stuck in with the actual garment but I'm not going to lie, cutting through my silk cotton stitches was not a pleasurable experience. Especially as I'm making all of the mods to ensure I have enough yarn to finish the project and this would potentially waste precious yarn. But it worked and now I have matching ribbing on the front and back sections. Thanks Wendy!

PS: While trying to take the 2nd photo someone decided to stand on my project. I let it slide, this time...

Charlotte

This is the Charlotte cardigan from Millamia Wonderland that I bought the pattern and yarn for over a year ago at Ally Pally 2011! I knew I wasn't going to have time to knit it immediately so bought enough yarn for the next size up form what Flo was wearing at the time. Thankfully she is a slip of a girl and so despite knitting this in size 2-3 and Flo being 3 years old in about a months time, this should still fit her for a while to come. Fingers crossed through next winter. 

Learning from my previous mistakes when knitting for Flo I'm glad this cardi is nice a long and so hopefully won't be looking like a crop top any time soon as her Starr cardigan did. I can also remove the belt loops and re-position or leave the off all together should I need to as her growing picks up speed.

The pattern for size 2-3 specified 6 balls but I needed to buy an extra ball to finish off the belt. There were also meant to be pockets but I decided not to make them - what do 2-3 year olds need pockets for anyway?

One of my main challenges with the project seems to have been getting Flo into the cardigan, to stand still and look presentable enough for me to take a picture of her wearing it. I had to bribe her to wear it and then ended up with just one, sort of useable shot above. All of the others were either of her back running away or something like the one below.

The Millamia yarns and patterns are just gorgeous and I recommend them to anyone. I especially love their colours which are so modern and wearable. They range from muted shades to eye popping colours and look so lovely on kids.

The last Millamia pattern I made before this was back in 2010 when I made the Emil babygrow. My, hasn't Flo grown?

Yarn Play Time

It's going to be a while until Flo gets the hang of actually learning to knit. The best she can do at the moment is use my needles as drum sticks and drag yarn around the flat, unraveling it as she goes. However, while trailing Pintrest one day I found a nice activity which I felt made good use of my huge stash of crappy acrylic yarn and at least gets her involved in Mummy's hobby.

Pintrest is full of this kind of stuff and if you can get past the 'American Mom' tone of it all you can usually find some good activities for little ones. This one involves chopping up different lengths of your crappy yarn. I got Flo to wield the scissors and asked her if she wanted the lengths longer or shorter as we cut. I also got her to pick out the colours she wanted etc. It actually was a really fun bit of the activity despite not really being the main part of it.

We then mixed up some PVA with a bit of water and used our hands to slosh it about in a mixing bowl.  Then we dipped in and swished about the different yarns bit by bit and dangled them into a fairy cake tin. At the end I added a bit of undiluted PVA on top of each 'flower' of yarn, just to make sure they'd come out stiff enough. We left them to dry out for a couple of days, checking on progress with a poke here and there.

Once dry I thread them together on another piece of yarn and strung them up in the front room. You could also use them as rosettes, badges, gift tags, put them on top of pipe cleaners to make a bunch of flowers, the possibilities are endless.

The Kindness of Knitters

A few months back I blogged about the high street takes on knitted ceramics that I noticed popping up all over the place. Kathy, who is a fellow knitter and blogger from Houston, Texas, commented that the US store Target had another version and posted a link. I love to get comments, it reminds me that someone is reading! So this in itself made me happy. Then out of nowhere I get a package in the post. Wondering what I've ordered online and forgotten about, I opened it to find the very same vase with a note form Kathy. She found the vase on sale in Target and decided to buy it and sent it to me! I am totally bowled over by this random act of loveliness and so I want to sincerely thank Kathy. It really made my day/ week/ month to know that people can be so kind.

Also today I was updating my progress on the Charlotte Cardigan that I am making for Flo and realised that I have hit 100 projects in my Ravelry Notebook. It feels like there should be some kind of fanfare or party poppers going off but I shall just pat myself on the back instead and look forward to the next hundred.