Red – Hopefully Creative

Clothes Pin Bag

Updating the clothes pin bag with skateboarders.

My previous clothes pin bag was sadly becoming more and more difficult to access with the opening raveling slowly away. Since I do need to keep those pegs somewhere, I set out to make a new bag. I’d pinned and saved the pattern in October of 2021, not specifically for this purpose but because I thought it might come in useful at some point. It’s the Best Nest Organizer Basket by Nancy’s Notions and I followed the YouTube tutorial for it. I did make the front just a little bit higher so it could hold more and added a longer strap.

The fabric was some leftover red linen-y stuff for the outside, thin batting in the middle and for the binding and lining a cotton with skateboarders and rope jumpers. I’d initially intended the cotton to be a shirt, but I wasn’t actually sure I would ever wear it, so I think this is a much better use of it. I mostly followed the instructions although my quilting was probably a lot less dense that they would’ve intended. Reason for that was that the timing on the treadle is enormously off and it’s in repair, so the electric machine was used. That machine’s bed is different, so quilting isn’t as easy. The thread was a contrasting yellow that matched the little skateboarders. It also made me play thread chicken, and I won, twice.

It came together quite easily, although I still thoroughly hate making bias tape. The cutting and measuring and marking and pressing and all that jazz is just not up my street. It does look better with this matching bias tape though, so I’m happy I persevered. I also played bias tape chicken and sort of won. There are some parts of the long strap that don’t have a double layer of bias tape, but there isn’t a soul that’s going to spot that, so I’m more than happy with it. I think this thing is really quite cute and it should perform its job. We’ll see in just about 8 years whether it will have held up as well as the previous one did!

Leftovers Hat

With the last of the leftovers, made a jaunty hat.

After the success of the Nutmeg leftover sweater, I set out to finally get rid of the last bits of that yarn that had been hanging out in the stash for way too long. So on New Years Eve, I got the knitting machine ready, and cast on some stitches to see what the settings needed to be. Turns out that it was impossible to knit this yarn when casting on on every needle of the machine, so I had to skip every alternate needle. This did mean that while knitting, it was very wide but it would shrink in width and expand in length when off the machine. Since I was fairly uninterested in actually doing a super good job, I just cast on the maximum amount of stitches that would fit and figured it would probably be fine.

I was actually inspired to knit this thing by this video. While looking for a tutorial for a triangular scarf on the knitting machine, one of this channel popped up. After I watched it, it moved on to this new video and I decided to watch that too. I didn’t do any of the special things, but I did get the idea that rectangle hats were a thing. So after the cast on, I just knit until there was no more red yarn, then I switched to the white until that was all gone too. Next up, blue and because I didn’t think it was long enough yet, I also added two of the leftover tiny balls of gray. The rectangle of knitting was taken off the machine and I used knitting needles for the cast off. Then I sewed the sides and top together et voila, hat!

Since there is no further stitching in the hat, you can just fold over the bottom gray edge any way you want. I’ve been doing a fold in such a way that there is a three layer bottom and no purl is on show. Of course, you can also just fold it over and have purl visible. The points of the hat can be back to front or side to side or at any given jaunty angle. In the end, I used 45 g of gray, 15 g of red, 15 g of white and 37 g of blue. This means that I now only have 34 g of gray and 27 g of black leftover. We’re getting to the bottom of this particular yarn stash!

Nutmeg Leftover Sweater

Random stripes for random colours.

Some time ago (Ravelry tells me May 24, 2020), I started on a sweater meant to use up leftovers of Zeeman Tweed wool, the thick version. I had the body of a Marsala sweater basically finished and got stuck on the sleeves. It went into a box of doom for probably two years or so, never to be worked on again. In October of this year, I unraveled it all and started on a new leftover sweater. This time using the Nutmeg by Jenifer Stark.

It’s a fairly simple raglan sweater with the one design element being the roll over hems, made with 5 knit rows and one purl row. The original pattern was quite boxy, so I added some impromptu shaping in the sides and some sort rows to the back at the bottom. The original plan was to have all the hems in gray, and then alternate stripes of red, white, blue and green. About three stripes in I devised a new plan, to have main colour stripes (red, green, blue) that would all have white in between colour switches. It worked out quite well, but I had a literal mountain of ends to weave into the sweater. I dedicated long stretches of time to do this fairly regularly, knowing that if I didn’t do it immediately, the sweater was liable to go into another box of doom.

The body was finished first and then I completed the sleeves. At that point in time, I was wondering why the purl row at the bottom of the sleeves worked so well to stop further curling, but the one at the bottom of the sweater was doing nothing of the sort. Turns out, I’m still crap at counting and only did four rows before casting off. I undid all of that and knit an extra row. This seems to have helped a lot. Then it came time to do sweater surgery. Originally the neck was gray-blue-red, but the new white in the middle plan necessitated some adjustment. The neck was knit again, and then I matrass stitched it to the first row of the original red stripe. It took a while, but it worked out well. The last thing I did was to add a contrasting stitch in the back of the neck, so I can easily see how to put it on.

In the beginning I had 44 g of green, 136 g of blue, 101 g of white, 164 g of red, 79 g of gray and 27 g of black. At the end, there was no green anymore, 37 g of blue, 15 g of white and 15 g of red leftover and since I didn’t use any, still 79 g of gray and 27 g of black. All in all, a pretty good score. I think that leaving the gray out makes this a much brighter sweater. The gray really muted it. I think it’ll be easy to wear and we’ll see if I finally managed to make sleeves that are the right length. Something I’ve proven to be exceptionally bad at…

Next up, a hat as part of the leftover projects!

Deerstalker Witch Hat

Finally a hat for all the winter witching

We had a sort of vague commitment to doing some sort of Halloween in the office since it was on a workday for the first time in a while. So I decided that I was going to bring the project, which I’d been eyeing up for years, to life. You see, in 2018, Bernadette Banner posted a video about a Winter Witch Hat and then another one about a similar hat in 2020. I’ve been thinking about recreating that for literal years, but never actually got around to it. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to make myself a new hat, suitable for winter.

Since the videos above weren’t full tutorials, I scoured the internet and found some other examples of people taking on this project (ash_rock and Fresh Frippery). This last one is an actual tutorial so I took those instructions and ran with them. Since I wanted the hat to sit more ‘over’ my head than ‘on’ my head, I increased all the measurements. The original plan was to make it out of black wool, but since that fabric is quite precious, I decided to make a test version out of left-over fabric from these pants.

Two brims, one crown and two ear flaps were cut from the plaid. The brims and crown were interfaced for some stiffness and the earflaps were lined with some nice warm fleece. I put the hat together and then decided to line the inside of the crown too. I found some of the interlining from my red coat that matched well in colour and sewed it in. The ugliness is hidden with some bias tape. If I’d been fully awake throughout the project, it probably would’ve gone a lot quicker. However, I did finish it in a day and I’ve been very happy with it. I think it’s cute and I love the little fold-over point. If I make it again, I’m going to make the hole for my head a little bit bigger, but it’s not too annoying this way.

Red & Black Lace Bra

Making my own red & black lace bra that I’ve never been able to find in the shops.

In January 2022, we were again hosting a graduation ceremony for some students and I tried to sew a dress for it. It was made of an odd red, fairly thick stretchy fabric. I knew that no one was going to see me during the online ceremony, so after struggling with it not fitting right, I gave up and threw it in the box of shame (it’s still there.. shame). However, it did have some scraps leftover and I recently decided to put those to use in a new bra. Same pattern as always, the Boylston bra from Orange Lingerie. This time I planned on adding some black lace since I’d always wanted a red & black lace bra. However, the only ones I could ever find in shops had padding up the wazoo and I couldn’t see my feet.

As usual, many construction errors were made. Somehow the bridge is not wide enough for the casings and I don’t think I left enough space in the underwire channels. I’d also twin stitched the cup seams down which somehow led to a pointy boob effect that was less than charming. After finishing the entire construction of the bra, I ripped out the cup-fabric seams and hand sewed them back in place again. Since my hand sewing is not the neatest ever, that made the lace extra important to hide those seams.

I found the lace in a local fabric shop and proceeded to fussy cut it out so I could applique it all over the cups. With some creative adding and snipping away of lace bits here and there, I really like the final coverage of the cups. It took me about 3 hours per cup to sew down all the lacy edges. Luckily, this turned out to be quite a meditative practice. Because it was black on black, neatness was less important – the sewing is mostly invisible anyway. I have yet to wear it for a day, but I assume it will wear similar to the first and second bras. The third one doesn’t have enough stretch in the frame so that one is a little tight. I’m going to try and learn from that experience!

Pizza Sweater?

The dyeing is just the first step, the next couple of thousands are knitting stitches and the end result is a pizza sweater.

After the New Year’s dyeing, I needed to use those freshly coloured skeins for a new project. I looked around Ravelry and discovered the Faverolle by Cirilia Rose that looked very interesting. This project by swhill80 was especially enamouring to me. So I set out to create something similar, if you want to read some of the ‘real time’ notes, the project is here. I showed the start of the project to a colleague of mine and she said it reminded her of pizza, so Pizza Sweater it is.

After casting on, I ran into difficulty with the thing being way and way too big. Took out some of the knitting but left the ribbing and started figuring out how to make this thing my size. This lead to the creation of a large spreadsheet that has just about every row in the project listed and the instructions recalculated. Following the spreadsheet worked well and knitting the body of the project was actually very quick. I got stuck a little with the sleeves due to lack of motivation and then got really bored knitting the collar insert. I did eventually get myself back in gear and once it got going, the collar was also easily completed.

The project has a saddle shoulder, which is not something I’ve ever done before but I quite like the way it turned out. What you might also notice is that there are two definite colour groups in the sweater. The sleeves and the collar inserts are more pink in hue while the body is definitely more yellow. This is to do with the different dye processes I used and I’ll definitely keep those results in mind when I dye again.

In the end, I do like this sweater and we will see how much use it gets. I’m not sure if the yarn might be a bit too scratchy or if it will be fine. The fact that the collar is relatively high is a plus because it should be nice and warm. I do think that I probably could have made it just a bit bigger than it turned out now, but my gauge apparently shifted throughout the project so it turned out a little tighter than expected. Luckily it is a knit and they are stretchy so it is probably not going to be a problem. I hope that finishing this project today will also spur me on to finish some of the projects that have languished in the box of shame… On to the future!

New Year’s Dyeing

Experimenting with yarn and different methods of heat setting, resulting in three different colourways!

After not sleeping enough with the fireworks still going for hours beyond midnight, completing the puzzle I started in 2021 and finishing up the last oliebol, I got to work on new years day. I’d been thinking about dyeing yarn all holiday week, and just.. didn’t get up to actually do it. I’d decided I wanted to try a few different things, oven dyeing, speckles and partial dip. I used three different yarns, all from World of Wool in the UK.

The one that I started with was some 56’s English Superwash Aran Weight, I have six skeins and decided to dye five of them. I kept one spare in case the sweater I want to make with this requires more than 5 skeins. I decided to try and oven dye some yellow and orange speckles citric acid speckles on it. The oven dyeing initially came from a blog post by Needles on the Move found here. The citric acid speckles from ChemKnits Tutorials on YouTube. I mixed soft yellow dye in a little pot with citric acid, and in another pot I mixed soft yellow dye and red dye with the citric acid. The yarn was put in a second hand roasting tin and the dye mixes sprinkled on top. Unfortunately, due to the water that needed to be added, this batch turned out a little bit runny, so the colours are not as defined as I would have liked them. Afterwards, I found a blogpost by The Impatient Dyer here, that talks about how to solve that problem.

I wasn’t going to wait for quite some time for the roasting pan to be free again to dye the other skeins, so I just used my dyeing pots for those. One has a steamer insert on which you can drape the yarn and then add the colour. The other has a steaming section for doing the same thing. These speckles turned out a bit clearer. You can maybe make out some small hue differences in the skeins that are hanging above. The two right most ones are more muted with speckles that were less clear.

The next type of yarn was sock weight, Merino Superwash / Bamboo Sock Weight. I decided to go for some blue and turquoise but with lots of white. The dye was mixed with citric acid, put onto the yarn and then the wool went into the steamer pans. I think it looks cute and I am looking forward to see what it looks like knit up into a project. In case that project will be socks, I ball them up into two ~50 gram balls that are still connected to each other, so that I know for sure how long my sock can be without running out of yarn.

This last yarn was an experiment. The base is Merino Superwash Sock Weight Singles. I wanted to dye a skein partly grey with some speckles of orange. So I dumped an amount of grey dye in the water and partly hung the skein in that dye water. The remainder of the skein was draped over a steamer inset and speckles were applied. Some grey with citric acid and to create the orange I mixed some red and yellow dyes in the citric acid.

When this skein was rolled into two ~50 gram balls, it changed the look a lot. The skein has a dark section whereas you can’t really see that in the balls. I’m really curious to see it knit up. To turn the yarn into balls, I use this weird contraption that I got from a secondhand store for 3.50 euro – maybe used for spinning? In combination with a small empty bottle to allow for a centre pull ball. While it takes forever to wind up over a kilometer of yarn, I was very happy once it was all completed. The yellow/orange yarn is already being knit up into a project that’s about 90% complete, so I hope to finish that soon. There are no intentions for the two sock weights as of yet.

Kitsune Approximation

Making a Vulpix/Kitsune mascot for a friend’s birthday

A friend of mine had their birthday at the start of November, so I needed a gift. I’m not sure how it started, but I’ve generally gifted her self-made things over the years. So when the birthday came around this year, that was the intention again. However, I first needed to come up with a plan. Since we were supposed to start a new roleplaying campaign, I figured I’d try to make a representation of our planned character species, a Kitsune. Because I was entirely unsure how to do a fox person, I settled on a pokemon. SewDesuNe/CholyKnight has a free pattern available of a Vulpix. As Vulpix is quite fox-like and also has multiple tails, it seemed like a good option.

The original pattern has a weird hair roll thing on the head, and tiny curled tails. That hair was left off and I decided to draft my own tails, so there are three somewhat curved tails and two that are more upright. It was quite a fast sew, and interesting construction where you sew a front and a back, attach those together and then sew on arms, legs and tails separately. I think I started sewing down his features on Friday evening and sewed him together on Saturday evening, maybe?

There patterns are always lovely to work with as everything fits together so well. The fabric is generally more of a pain, but that’s because it sheds like there is no tomorrow. Again, the lint roller was my best friend while working on this. However, it’s all worth it in the end because they are so lovely and soft and ready for cuddling!

Unseasonal Neck Warmer

Knitting a self-dyed gift that is slightly out of season.

Last January, my father was not super content with the weather. It was cold out and that made his neck and/or shoulders act up a little bit. So I decided to knit him a cowl. Contrary to my own popular belief, I didn’t actually start or finish this project in time for the winter weather. It also quickly turned distinctly un-wintery, so the project got put back on the ‘to start’-pile.

Cue the emergency-more-yarn-purchase in June, and I decided that I might as well buy some nice yarn to dye for this cowl thing I’d been planning. I got two skeins of Merino Superwash/Tussah Silk Chunky Weight yarn. Since my dad likes wearing red, I decided that I would dye them red with black. There was no real pattern, just alternating red and black sections. When steamed and dried, it turned out that here were still some white-ish parts too, but it still gives a lovely effect. I then set out to find a pattern. I chose Biker’s Cowl / Dickie by Elaine Phillips. There were only a few changes in that I used fewer rounds in the neck and in the body as I didn’t have enough yarn to do all the pattern suggested.

The knitting only took 6 days. It was pretty much smooth sailing even if I did have to frog the last few rounds in order to get the finishing started before the yarn ran out. I actually manged to finish it right in time for his birthday. However, because I didn’t actually go over to see him that day, it had to wait until last Wednesday to finally be presented to him. We’ll see if it is nice come winter, if we have a cold spell this year that is. I am happy with it though, and to me it felt real soft and smooth.

Teacup Holster

Finally getting that unnecessary project of the table does make me feel good.

Ever had that thing where you watched a video on YouTube of someone doing a project and then you decided that you also needed to do that project? This happens to me quite frequently and it generally ends up with me just collecting the materials and then either not starting or not finishing said project. In this case, the materials for this Teacup holster have been laying around my house for a good few months since this Rachel Maksy Teacup Holster video sparked my interest.

Last week, I finally got around to both starting and finishing it. I looked up some more examples on Pinterest and started to make a design. I got so fascinated by it that I completely lost track of time and went to bed way to late, but ey, suffer for the craft or something? In any case, with my paper model ready to go, I set out the next evening to cut the shapes from leather. At some point in the past I’d bought a bag of scrap leather from a purse maker in town and I used those bits.

The main design included a bag to carry stuff in, a holster for the teacup that would actually cover its bottom, belt loops and a teaspoon holding section. I wanted to make sure that I could loosen the different straps so I used different closure methods. Some screws for the saucer strap and belt loops and a ‘mirrored’ swing hook on the front. I was counting my swing hooks and found that I had 11 and one was the wrong way? It seemed fine to use that one for this project. It hangs a little more than I would have liked, but that might be due to the suppleness of the leather and that the saucer holder is maybe a little too big?

All of it is hand sewn and I managed to bend and break a few needles in the process. I don’t think my fingers approved of this project, but it is finished! I don’t know if I will ever use this thing. However, finally managing to put that cup and saucer that have been on my dining table since January away feels good! On to the next impractical project!