Saturday 29 August 2015

Working to a deadline

Things I do not like.... Deadlines. I returned from my holiday a week ago, it was a 'stay-cation' visiting my parents who live in Berkshire (with a stop off in Dublin where my brother lives). I decided a couple of months ago that I'd like to take clothes which were mostly me made, as a kind of me made holiday. I planned the things I was going to make over the summer, some of which I've already blogged about. Among these items were two knits, one of them was the shrug (which didn't actually make it on holiday as it suddenly became rather warm), the other was a deep red cardigan which was to match a dress which you haven't seen yet.

The Belmont cardigan by Gudrun Johnson (photo taken from pattern)

I began this like all good knitters do, I made a swatch to check gauge and to practice that eye catching pretty lace on the front


I know what you're thinking... That's not red! Well I used the same kind of yarn as I did for my Victory jumper, but I swatched in the cream colour keeping the wine colour for the real thing. And yes I know this means the gauge might have been out, but I figured blocking would fix that...


And so I began (people who follow my Instagram wil recognise these photos, I poached them from there for the blog). Thing is once I finished the ribbing and had a few rows under my belt I wasn't happy with the looseness of the fabric. So I ripped back and began with 3mm needles rather than the required 3.5mm. I understood this would mean it would be smaller so I adjusted to make the next size up.
This is where that pesky deadline started to niggle at me. I had 6 weeks to go at this point. I figured with some committed knitting time I could still do it. 


I knitted everywhere, in the car (as above - with quite curly needles until my 3mm needle tips arrived in the post), in the library between jobs, at home watching the TV. The pattern is great I must point out, it's easy to follow and to remember, the lace was coming on a treat


However...
After it got to this point...


.. I know, nearly there! It became very apparent the back over the shoulders would be far too tight. I was running out of time at this stage. So rather than rip the whole shebang back (all that lacework!) I took the back down to the sleeve divide and put increases in until the shoulders were wide enough. I know, it was a patch when it should have been properly mended. But at this point the deadline had taken over! I just ploughed on ahead (hangs head in shame).

I even made sleeves...


They were tricky, I've never made them before by picking up around the armhole and working downwards. Sadly I have also never mastered the magic loop so this was done on DPNs, meaning I couldn't try on as I went... Result... Sleeve one was much too tight! (Goes to sit in a corner to rock gently). So I thought (deadline looming), I can go ahead with sleeve two, get the size right, and then re-do sleeve one, I've still got time. So a much larger sleeve two went ahead. Once I had finished this... In the car on the way to Berkshire... I tried on the finished cardigan... Sleeve two fitted, yay! But the rest of it was tiny!! (Sobs)

So I have learned several lessons here
1. A swatch only helps if you continue to use the same size needles for the actual item
2. When things start to go wrong, don't just continue and hope for the best 
3. Deadlines are evil!!

So for the time being Belmont has been returned to the balls of wool from whence it came. I will try it again, I really like the pattern and I really want my red cardigan. But for now, I'm going to try something new, and I'll do it very carefully... With no deadlines.






Thursday 13 August 2015

How not to make a dirndl

I've been making quite a lot of the same skirt pattern I have noticed (you haven't even seen the denim version yet!).


And while I love the shape of this one, it seems you can have too much of a good thing. I found some fabric while shopping online which I just couldn't let go of, it's got squirrels on it!! And even at a whopping £12 a meter I still had to have some, but I stuck to just ordering a single meter of it. Once it arrived I then started to wonder what to do with it, but really we all know it had to be a skirt. I mean just look at it!



It's a light cotton, navy blue with white and light blue squirrels all over (no pattern matching required you will notice. Some of these little guys even have little acorns!!

I figured a good and frugal use of my meter would be a dirndl skirt, the only measuring needed really was the waistband and the length, providing it was wide enough the waist gathers would surely take care of the rest. I researched how to plough ahead with this and found a great tutorial by Gertie on her 'Blog for better sewing'. Wonderful! Off I went.

Now it's disclosure time. There are no photos of this skirt, and I shall explain why. The tutorial was great, easy to follow and resulted in a very nice dirndl. Then when I tried it on it became apparent that ample hips like mine do not lend themselves to snug waists and gathers around the hips... My word I looked wide! 
These skirts are perfectly beautiful on other people, but on me... Nope

However I refused to let the squirrels down, this skirt can be saved!! So one afternoon (while also tending to a poorly bunny) I unpicked the whole thing! Well it was just the waist but it felt like the whole thing. This left me with a correctly measured waistband, and a tube of fabric hemmed at one end and with a zip at the other. You know what this calls for (I explained to the poorly bunny who glared at me from his cone of shame)... Box pleats!!


Ta da!
A smoother line over the hips and all the fullness of the dirndl... Boy do I feel smug! I confess that I managed this largely by fluke, I just guessed the size of one pleat, repeated it so they all matched, and asides from a smaller pleat over the hip opposite the zip, perfect fit!!


And a close up of the pleats. This went from a huge failure to a huge success thanks to box pleats. It's such a fun skirt, and I can't believe I've never made anything from a novelty print before... Madness!!


One more shot from the back... I really love this skirt

Oh and the bunny is fine now :)


Thursday 6 August 2015

English summers are rubbish

So it's been an up and down sort of a summer, while America has been sweltering in heat waves we have had... Well...



Ok so it's maybe not quite that bleak.. But it's been sodding chilly.
This drove me to do a bit of what I can only describe as winter knitting... Enter the shrug!!


This beauty is an aran alpaca and polyester blend 'James C. Brett Aztec' which is quite a mouthful. I followed the free pattern 'Cashmere shrug' to be found on Ravelry (all hail free patterns!!).

I loved this pattern, it's a ridculously easy K2 P2 rib (kind on those who are pretty shoddy at fitting... Me). I whipped this up in less than a month! LESS THAN A MONTH!! Then it sat there for a week waiting to be stitched together... Oops


Even the stitching was pretty pain free. And I really love the results


It has no fastenings, covers the waist of low slung jeans, has a cute little collar, is fuzzy from the alpaca, but most importantly... It's nearly wind proof!!


It's perfect to use as a jacket in the summer, and I anticipate it will get a lot of use in the winter... For now it's my good luck charm as no sooner had I completed it...
Out came the sun