Bye bye, little woollies

The little woolly innocent hats being sent off into the wide world.

Finally, something useful!

From Mazz's pattern in The Guardian's Rebel Knitter's Guide.

You know Mazz... the one who made the knitted adipose monsters, which the Beeb then went out-of-proportion mental about.

Anyway, I modified it because I was pretty sure my ball of yarn was shorter than her pattern, so I added in a stripe of different yarn. The orange crochet flower is courtesy of Nancia, and was useful to cover up the mysterious hole that keeps appearing every now and then in my knitting.

As it's in garter stitch, it's a small bag that stretches out ma-hoo-sive and is therefore perfect for shopping for things like onions, apples and asparagus. Not so good for Cadbury's Chocolate Fingers as the box sticks out funny and it's really obvious that you've been and bought junk food.

A crochet WIP

My crochet is really really basic at the moment. I'm planning to smuggle a crochet needle and ball of yarn onto the aircraft to Australia in order to spend 24 sleepless, uncomfortable hours upgrading my capabilities, but this is where I've got to so far.

This is a scarf, and the scallop will go down both sides when it's finished. It's pretty easy as it's all double crochet (UK treble crochet) stitches, 3 rows straight and then the same stitch in the scallop pattern. Unfortunately the yarn broke, and as I haven't learnt how to start a new ball I'm a bit stuck. Once I've restarted there's only about another half-an-hour's work in it, so there's no good excuse really.

More on piping

Just so that I'd get good value for money out of the new piping foot (which cost £9!) I've also bought this pattern. Again it's a bit summery to make at the moment... what I need is a cardigan.

A work in progress

I thought I'd list a WIP so that I've got something to put under the sewing tag and maybe to encourage me to get on with it. This dress is in an orangey-red linen and has orange piping. I started it when it was warm and sunny, and now it's cold and rainy I'm not very inclined to finish it. It's my first go at piping, and the piping isn't brilliant, but I didn't have a piping foot so I used a zipper foot.

Annoyingly I was 10cm short of piping, but when I went to get more I bought a piping foot, so maybe the rest of it will be better. I'll try to get it finished when I get back from my holiday, otherwise I think it might be a work-in-progress for another 6 months, until Spring!

It's from this pattern, view 3 (blue polka dots) but I'm going to add the pockets from view 2.

In the meantime...

The laptop cover is nearly finished, but I'm waiting to get hold of a crochet needle so that I can close the edges. In the meantime, here are photos of the much-hyped bikini. It's fantastic!

I have to admit to no intention of wearing it. Apart from anything, I've no idea how the yarn would react in water. Experienced knitted-swimwear wearer Jennifer tells me that sagginess is certain.

The strings are simply crochet chains, and the triangles are single-crocheted onto the chain. This was before I learnt how to crochet though so there's a twist at the bottom of one of the triangles. Since I'm not wearing it though, no need to do-over. Result!

First ever project

I'm posting pictures of this, my first ever project, for the sake of posterity. Using three balls of chunky yarn from the remnant bin in John Lewis (I can't remember what it was but it had cashmere in it and is lovely and soft) I knitted a scarf in single rib, with some random thick needles that I think might be 7.5mm.

Although the yarn is great, in single rib it was very dense. It also didn't go as long as I wanted because it was a rib, and shrunk up together. And finally, I made a few mistakes - adding and losing stitches so it got wider, as well as totally bodging up starting a new ball. Twice.

Anyway, past tense because I've ripped it down and re-used the yarn for a new project. I decided the density of the single rib in this yarn was ideal protection for a laptop, so I've started a laptop cover.

Aufwiedersehn!