Ice Landscape Sweater

This sweater is made from yarn that I spun myself.  From start to finish this project has taken almost a year since I've had so little time to devote to it. 

The yarn is a three ply and I managed to get each ply reasonably thin this time.  The first ply is made from a Spin City batt called Ice Crystal, plus 20 grammes of a toning colour from one of my scrap sets which I got for Christmas 2016.  It was wonderful to spin with and has sparkles and silk fibres in it.  

The second and third plies are each 120 grammes of mixed fibres from the scrap sets I got for Christmas plus some fibres I had left from other projects.  The majority of the fibre is from Nunoco with a few bits from Hilltop Cloud.

Ply two is mainly greens, creams and some pinkish browns, and blues spun in longish colour runs.

Ply three is mainly lilac, cream, pink and blue and I tried to spin this in shorter colour runs because I want to interrupt any potential stripiness that might have been caused by ply two having such long colour runs.  The Ice Crystal has some long colour runs as well so it has come out quite stripey, BUT, the stripes do run into each other nicely.  The camera has emphasised the stripes as well.  

The sweater is a homage to a pattern that I bought at WoolFest but decided to alter.  The original was a bottom-up pattern with a circular yoke.   These patterns are the same front and back so need to have a wide neck to avoid choking.  As rib can stretch, the original garment had a very wide neck to start with and I hate a draught on my neck,  I created a one-off design (translation:  set off knitting and sort of made it up as I went along) which is a raglan with a close-fitting neckline and close fitting sleeves.  The rib gets wider as it goes down the sweater, just as the original inspiration sweater does.  It starts with 1 x 1 rib at the neck and works down to 4 x 4 rib at the hem.  The original sweater was wider at the hem than mine ended up being but I was afraid that the yarn would run out if I knitted it too wide.  It also had bell sleeves which look lovely but are not very practical for me, so I made nice neat tapered sleeves with a narrow cuff.   I had to spin an extra bit of yarn right at the end of the project so I could add an extra inch to the sweater length but was pleased to find I had enough yarn to make a full sized jumper. 

I absolutely love how this came out and can't wait to wear it.  I am also really pleased to have completed a project.  I have very limited time to sew or knit at the moment so its great to have something finished.  Next onto the needles will be a red chunky knit sweater and I hope there will be some sewing happening over Christmas too.  

I sewed something!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yup.  I sewed something today.  Admittedly a very simple something, but a something nevertheless.

Took mum for an outing to Abhakhan fabrics today since she needed craft cotton for her charity quilts.  They had a lot of neoprene and scuba which I've been keen to sew with for a while so I got a remnant of black with a sort of houndstooth effect finish.  Reasonably heavy though not the heaviest in the shop.

The original plan was to make a gored skirt but being short on time and keen to get more than one skirt out of my remnant, I picked a circle skirt instead.  I only cut it at 22 inches long so it took less fabric than you might imagine for a circle skirt. I don't have all that much fabric left but I think a bit of careful cutting should yield a straight skirt.

Three hours work, and the skirt was done and ready to wear to work on Monday.  The zipper is a centred application.  I used my usual centred method.  Tack the seam, lay the zipper face down on the seam allowance, pin (or in this case stick it with Steam A Seam), sew from the front, take out tacking, and Bob's Your Uncle, it's done.  I used the overlocker to construct most of the skirt, just using the machine for the seam where the zipper was inserted.

The waist treatment was just a bit of strong ribbon cut to the size of my waist with some turn under at each end to keep it neat. My waistline had stretched out a bit as the fabric was heavy so I tacked the waist in quarters so I could pull it up to fit the band, then pinned and sewed it.  I turned the ribbon down inside the skirt, pressed it and then sewed, on the machine, a quarter inch from the edge of the waist, with a standard length stitch.

I had a bit of a debate about the skirt length and ended up going shorter than originally planned.  The hem is machine stitched because the skirts I'd seen in the stores had that sort of hem (also, the hem was about fourteen miles around and would have taken forever to hem by hand).

Overall I found the fabric easy to manage, simple and straightforward to sew, but a little tricky to press.    I would certainly sew with it again.

I've also bought some knit fabric to make nightwear and have a nightdress cut out.  The second piece of knit turned out to be too small to make a nightdress so will become a summer top.  I also bought some navy poly wool knit which will be made into a dress for work.

There is a plan to visit a new to us fabric shop near Dewsbury in the next few weeks so there may be another fabric acquisition post at that point.

The "maybe blanket" definitely won't be.  The fibre is currently being spun though and I hope to have something to show in the next few weeks.

The May-Be Blanket

It may become a blanket... and it may not.

At Yarndale in September, Katie from Hilltop Cloud had a Vivid blanket on display knitted up in handspun made from one of her colour packs.  It looked lovely and I had the pattern already.  I got two gorgeous mixed packs of multi coloured fibre for Christmas and had some Hilltop Cloud and a variety of other small bits of fibre which weren't big enough for single projects so I'm planning to spin up some small skeins of three ply yarn to create my own handspun Vivid.  Having said that, there are some variables that I'm not sure I have enough control over to make this a viable project.  Hence the May-Be title.  I plan for this to be a long range project and will spin these little skeins and knit the squares in between other projects so you should see these things pop up at irregular intervals over the next few months.

Here is the first one which was created from reddish brown merino (from Nunoco and containing sparkles), and two different shades of an earthy yellowish green mixture from Hilltop Cloud.  Quite pleased that the yarn weight came out at a light double knitting/heavy sock which is pretty much where I was aiming, and the sparkles do show up in the right light.  Now to see if I have enough to knit one of the squares with.

Patchwork Shirt - McCalls 8649

It's been a bit busy here at SewYLD Mansions as I've been concentrating on my business set up which has left little time for sewing or indeed any other craft related activity.  What time I did have was spent creating socks for my brother's christmas gift (which I forgot to photograph for the blog unfortunately).

As yesterday was Christmas Eve I had a day off from the business planning to do some sewing, finally finishing the shirt that has been sat on my dressform since September.

The pattern is McCalls 8649, long out of print, and my TNT shirt pattern.  Actually I think it may be one of the first patterns I ever made.  It has several variations within the package, and I chose the yoked shirt with sleeve plackets and collar on a band but didn't choose to do the separate front button band.

The fabric is some scraps of shirting from TM Lewin and I just realised I already showed the start of this project on the blog way back in September.

It's destined to be worn with jeans or leggings so I lengthened the back hem a couple of inches so it covered my behind more effectively.

Other than the rather unorthodox fabric choices, and the time it took to lay everything out so it fit on the various bits of fabric, this was a straightforward and bog standard shirt.

The collar and cuffs are slightly better finished than I normally achieve since I had my mother, who is a complete shirt ninja, on hand to guide me on the finer points of the attachment.

I think the shirting might have some sort of sizing in it because it seems a bit stiffer than I would expect this type of shirting to be and it doesn't drape that well at present.  I think that is why the sleeves look a bit stiff and the whole thing has an un-ironed appearance (plus its been scrunched up in my lap whilst I sewed on the buttons).  However, I'm sure it will look much improved after a good wash and ironing it from damp.

Buttons are vintage glass ones from the amazing Duttons for Buttons in Harrogate.  The purple ones have already been on a different shirt that I made.  The clear ones were from a bag of mixed glass vintage buttons in which no two buttons are the same.  This approach seemed in keeping with the whole patchwork vibe.

A Phone Sock

Yep.  I knit my new phone a sock to wear.  :)

It only took an evening.  Admittedly an evening I was supposed to be spending doing something else, but I figured it would be best if my phone didn't get smashed within days of arriving at Chateau SewYLD.

The sock in question is made of super bulky hand spun yarns of varied colours.  I knew if I kept those early experiments in yarn they would come in handy for something and in fact this sock has gained several fans at the office where I am temping.  I am quite pleased with it considering its simplicity and the fact that I more or less randomly grabbed yarns from the bowl based more on their ability to cushion a fall than on aesthetics.  Its also nice to be able to use the handspun for something that I see on a daily basis (or indeed a ten minute basis at the moment as its a new phone and therefore a novelty).

So here it is.  Twenty stitches cast on with 4.5 mm needles.  Two by Two rib except for the middle four stitches which are a cable (cable two forwards).  The phone itself is 5.5 inches tall so the sock was a strip of knitting 13 inches long.  Forgot to put a buttonhole into it, which would have been rather useful, but the sock fits reasonably snugly and the phone has not fallen out yet.  I just folded my strip of knitting in half and sewed it up the sides to make the sock.  I am not claiming this as a great masterpiece of knitting, merely as a functional and reasonably attractive solution to a problem I found myself with on a Sunday night.

For those that love tech, the phone for which the sock was created is a Moto G 4 which is a reasonably large phone though quite light weight and terrifyingly thin compared to my old phone.  Having managed to badly crack the screen on my IPod a couple of weeks ago when I dropped my rucksack on concrete whilst trying to stop the dog from falling down some steps, I'm now completely paranoid about breaking the screen on the new phone.  Particularly as the IPod was in fact inside a hard leather-covered case at the time of impact.

The five month sweater

This sweater has been in progress, according to Ravelry, for five months.  Rather longer than usual for a simple sweater but I've been busy and had little time for knitting.  This is my first successful colourwork item.  I made a knitted carpet in the general shape of a sweater when I was about twenty, but I'm not counting that one.

The main yarn is WoollyKnits. One of the last of the super skeins, which they no longer sell.  These were 500 gramme monster skeins of wool, sometimes general wool, sometimes merino, and for a couple of years they did the most amazing blue faced leicester.  I believe this one is merino as it is very soft but lacks the sheen of the blue face.  This one was an overdye.  I was told they took all the left over coloured skeins and overdyed them all navy blue which has created a gorgeous subtle stripe effect which I love.

The colourwork is my own hand spun and was merino and silk I believe.  I only had a smallish bit of fibre but it has somehow created a reasonably large amount of yarn as I have lots left.

Originally I planned a star colourwork sweater somewhat similar to The Killing sweater but couldn't work out how to make the stars work across a raglan, so designed the circles and they actually make quite a nice, understated sweater.

The neckline, cuffs and hem have a picot edge which I felt gave a very sleek finish and made it look more modern than a ribbed cuff might have done.

All in all, very pleased with this one, and got it finished just in time for autumn.

 The next knitting project is already cast on and is a Christmas gift for a family member.

The remainder of the colourwork yarn will be going into a handspun blanket if all goes to plan.

 

Quilt Show Purchases

A slightly delayed post since I went to the show on Saturday, but it took a while to get around to the photos.

The show was in the new hall at the Yorkshire Showground and there was much more space and light than in previous years so the show didn't feel so crowded though I don't think there were fewer people, just more room for them to rattle around in.  The light made a huge difference to the ease of viewing the fabric but vendors were having a few problems because the internet connections wouldn't let them use their point of sale machines to take card payments.  Luckily I was toting cash so when I saw this little beauty on Rosenberg's stand I was able to snap it up immediately.  It's some sort of coating wool with a nap, quite heavy, with a label attached that says "Attention to the direction of the hair" which I found cute.  Although I don't yet have the pattern I know exactly what its going to be.  It is the contrast fabric for this coat with the main coat being made in black wool and cashmere coating which I already have in stash.  https://mccallpattern.mccall.com/m7025.  On the other hand it may become the cape from the latest Marfy catalogue free patterns as I have enough for that with enough left over for a warm winter skirt.  

Then I got thirteen patchwork sized pieces of TM Lewin shirting cotton to make a patchwork shirt.   As you do.  The front pieces show the approximate size of each piece I got as I didn't cut much off these pieces to get the finished shirt part. In addition to these prints, I have a piece of a dark purple and white narrow stripe and two pieces of white with a self stripe for the yoke, cuffs, collar and placket respectively.  I have also kept all the small bits and have a vague plan involving a patchwork placket and hem band.