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Category Archives: small projects

One onesie turns into three jumpers

Regular readers of this blog have come to expect that I wont follow the pattern. The girls at the knitting club heave and sigh when they hear of yet another “modification” to a straightforward pattern I plan to make. Trust me readers I have tried to follow patterns… but as I am knitting along something will occur to me and I think, ” hey why don’t I add that other thing I saw on that website here, this is the perfect project for that” or “hang on, I can use this pattern of construction with that motif” etc. I have even given myself strict instructions on not to apply modifications on many occasions!
This wonderful Onesie was one such pattern. I was looking for a baby gift to make for my future niece/nephew and this was perfect.

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I got my yarn out and casted on, so far so good. Well almost, no gauge conducted, just went with my gut feeling on the weight of yarn I was using. Come on, that is hardly not following a pattern (especially for someone as hardcore a non-follower as me). I made the raglan increases and it was going to be a straight forward knitting project following someone else’s instructions. But hey, no baby likes a plain onesie, what if I had a motif (it will break the monotony of just stockinette stitch as well). Yes that sounds fab, plus I am technically still following the pattern (“yeah right” mumbles boyfriend). So off I go and find a perfect gender neutral boat motif. This made the boring circular knitting fun and challenging enough for me to keep at it.

Now as I come closer to the shaping of the leg inserts, I think to myself, “Oh the bother of getting a crying baby in and out of this complicated outfit.” I am sure my sister-in-law would appreciate something simple to operate. Also, I have just seen this cool tutorial of the i-cord edging by a fellow blogger which I was dying to try and somehow the length of this onesie was just right to bind off as a jumper! This is perfect. I am doing my sis-in-law a favour and also learn something new. Surely I can make a onesie on the next go, I will give her two gifts. Yes thats what I will do. So thats exactly what I did. I bound off the supposed onesie as a finished jumper with a lovely darker colour edge.

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Do you like it?

The story of my digressions do not end here, dear readers. It gets worse. My sister announces that she is going to have twins soon!! Oh the joy! that means twice the knitting! That’s it, the onesie can now be finally followed to the letter and I will redeem myself. You know where this is going don’t you?

Here are my faults all plain for you to see admire…

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I have managed to learn a few more things with these new jumpers, a two colour long tail cast on (that totally eliminates that nuisance of guessing the amount of yarn you will need) and how to rib the neck before the raglan increases. Its funny but it is such small little steps forward in the learning process that makes knitting so addictive. To hell with plain ol’ stockinette… here is to more modifications and digressions from instruction sheets.

Hat trick!!!

I have been spending a lot of time making beanies recently for all my family and friends.

This one is a gorgeous dark grey with touch of red for the fussiest boy in the house. It is everything masculine and warm on cold crisp winter day. Made with Shetland wool this is the very first hat I have knit.

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This second one is also a boy hat only a bit more flamboyant shall I say. The emerald green is striking and suits the wearer perfectly. This too is made from pure Shetland wool and the pattern is simple yet the twisty ribs have a dramatic effect once worn

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This last one is for a young ten year old chap who when asked what colour he would like, swiftly said anything but pink! So I made him a fun but yet a boy colour hat. I repeated the twisted ribs on this one too but here as the colours are dominant it has a more subtle effect. The bobble just screams fun, don’t you think?

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Disaster narrowly averted.

This is by far my favourite yarn in my entire collection. A warm salmony pink that is feminine yet not girly. It’s also gorgeous to handle and work with, warm, coarse and pliable. I am slowly developing a very strong love for Shetland wool. So it’s little wonder I wanted to make something for myself with this yarn. Greedy, yes I know! But how decadent…

I started with a front panel for a vest. Now by this point I must confess – I hate measuring, anything. I am generally over confident that my approximations will be quite exact. And this from a scientist?! It’s just that measuring things means I can’t start knitting ASAP. So I casted on what I thought would be fine for my waist measurement and went to work. I love this little border pattern from Alice Starmore’s gorgeous Fairisle knitting book.

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But soon I began to realise I was being rather optimistic about my cast on. I had a few options now, and one of them was unravel the whole thing and start again. But then the other problem that I wasn’t convinced I had enough yarn to make a vest for myself made me rethink the unraveling. Now here I display another unscientific nature of my personality. I buy yarns before I have any project in mind. In fact it almost always is the other way around, the yarn inspiring the project.

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So I made the rookie decision to convert this vest panel into a beanie side panel. I was happy with its length if it were to transform into a beanie. So I set out and made a second panel exactly the same. Thus knitting my first beanie without any pattern help from the pros or circular needles.

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Then I did the stupid thing of joining the two panels in flat!…

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…realised this won’t work, and started watching some tutorials at last after eating my ego. It was at this point I knew that there was only one right thing to do, order a set of double pointed needles. I unravelled all the flat joining the top of the two panels, left the side joins intact. I then unravelled the two cast off rows and picked each stitch carefully on the double pointed needles.

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Did I make sure I had equal stitches on each needles? Yes, approximately!
This is what I have now…

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Phew! So have I learnt my lesson on making sure I know my measurements before starting? Well all I can say is, I have realised that the bigger and more ambitious the projects get the less of an escape route I will have If I don’t get more organised.

Another weekend another bulky project.

My old chair is slowly going a through a yarn revolution. It started with a bored weekend where I made my seat cover for the chair and the back rest was left for another weekend at loose ends.

So here is an update of the back rest cover…

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This back rest was knit with the same 3 strands of DK yarn knit together and a cable pattern from, you guessed it – 200 knitted blocks for blankets, throws and afghans (Paperback) by Jan Eaton (pg. 53).

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My old office chair is now completely transformed in true yarn bombing style.

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The rest of the furniture patiently awaits.

My first commission.

A friend of mine saw my yoga slippers and asked for a pair. Thrilled with the compliment I set out to improve on my original colour scheme. This one is lovely with different coloured stripes. Same Shetland wool that is beautiful and coarse to work with and gorgeous to wear.

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I am quite proud of these. And my friend loves them…so here’s to lovely presents all year round.

Cable knitting without cable needles.

My recent impulse buy has been such an inspiration. Invariably the colour of the yarn really gets me excited. This one is a gorgeous tweedy turquoise. I had to knit something almost immediately! Do you ever have such an urge that a material is almost impossible to put away?

I had watched this fab Utube video a while ago on knitting cable patterns without the need for those menacing and intimidating looking cable needles. I was rather impressed with the simplicity of the tutorial and decided to try it out on the next suitable project. My opportunity was staring at me when both the yarn and the project in mind came together. I was going to knit myself a phone cover. Quick and easy yet challenging in technique.
The pattern I chose was once again from one of my all time favourite books, 200 knitted blocks for blankets, throws and afghans (Paperback) by Jan Eaton (pg. 72). I modified the pattern to suit my phone cover.

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So as you can see from the photo, I used only the central pattern from the entire block. However, unlike the Utube tutorial I did use a double pointed needle to hold my stitches as it was easier than swapping them over on the working needles as suggested. However, what I learnt was that cable knitting was not that hard and fairly straightforward once you pick the concept.

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So that’s what my phone cover looks like. I added the ribs to them to make it easier to insert and remove the phone.

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The back is fairly simple with the ribs at the opening.

The best part is, I knitted this in one evening and now I love how the inspiring cable knit turquoise yarn goes with me everyday on my various adventures.

The weekend warrior project

I seem to have been working on some never ending projects these days and in a way it’s frustrating even. So I decided to join a few DK yarns (lambs wool) together and create a quick chunky seat cover for a lovely vintage office chair I have been meaning to restore.

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These three, red, grey and black yarns form a lovely pattern when knitted together and a stark colour that is perfect for a high use office chair.
The pattern I chose is from 200 knitted blocks for blankets, throws and afghans (Paperback) by Jan Eaton (pg. 63). This is a gorgeous chevron pattern that lends itself to a simple yet distinctive seat cover.

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The flat area of the seat was fairly straightforward if you follow the pattern to the letter. My biggest challenge arrived in the form of ‘shaping’ the seat. For this I got out my crochet hook. This is simply because I know how to create a wall far more confidently with crochet than I know with knitting needles (something I have plans of rectifying in the very near future). So the walls were created with double crochet to create well fitting corners that makes the seat cover rather snug.

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So this is the complete seat cover. Rather chunky, sturdy and what I consider very utilitarian. Well pleased with this as I managed to finish this over one weekend, brining back my passion and love for knitting which was slightly flagging in the past few weeks.

The next thing I want to do now is make a cover for the back rest! I will tackle this once I get another weekend where I can work the cover start to finish in a couple of weeks. Keep you posted on that project.

Yoga slippers

This is a little present I made for my cold feet. I use these slippers now during shavashana and they are wonderful in keeping my feet cosy not to mention very easily stuffed in my yoga bag (which is not massive as I go after work).

I adapted another slipper design to suit my yarn. As you can see from the video the yarn used by that artist is chunky and soft and my yarn was quite the opposite…fine and coarse. This is a 2ply pure Shetland wool. I have used two different colours together creating a 4ply yarn that is self patterning.

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This first set of colours is a earthy yellow and blue green yarn. As the yarn was finer than the original pattern I had to work on a flat for a few more rows than the pattern suggested and then create the wall. This was not too hard but required trial and error in increasing the stitches (all DC) to achieve a flat round rather than a wavy round. If you are working on a pattern in the round and you get a wavy round then you have probably increased one too many stitches and if your work begins to curl upwards then you have not increased enough. Use this guide on any yarn rather than being restricted to using the yarn mentioned in the pattern.
Once I was happy with the flat round circumference, which I checked with the broadest part of my feet, I then stopped increasing the stitches. This created the curl automatically, then I continued the same stitch count to achieve the wall.

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I must confess that the reason this is a two colour project is because I did not have enough yarn in the first two colours to complete both the slippers. I could have had one slipper or two halves! For the second half which was essentially the part where you create the slit for the foot to slide in, I used darker shades of maroons. Once again these were 2ply Shetland wool used together.

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I quite liked this two colour pattern in the end. This was a straightforward project and I will highly recommend this to anyone who wants to move on from the basic crochet to making a wearable object.

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I wear these at yoga all the time now and this has inspired me to make a crochet yoga mat carrier bag. I recon the principles will be the same. Crochet the flat round as per the circumference of the rolled up mat and then work on the length of the wall depending on the breath of your yoga mat.
Hope you like my slippers and please let me know if this has inspired you to create something new yourself.

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Scoodie crochet project.

I got some lovely 2 ply Shetland lamb’s wool in various colours recently. Since I didn’t have any knitting needles less than 5.00mm, I decided on a quick crochet project. Like most things I do, I was not particularly organised for a project before hand. I let the wool inspire me.

I begin a project with only a couple of ground rules. I keep looking at the colours, imagine little pieces in a few combinations and consider adding one simple progression to my skill tool box. Sometimes a person or occasion for a gift also helps. So as I was watching u-tude videos to inspire me, this paricular one jumped out. It seemed easy, but I would also learn to create a hood!

I didnt buy enough wool to complete the project, but luckily the lady selling the wool had a few more balls and I could breathe again. This will perhaps teach me to plan ahead next time (one only hopes).

This is what my Scoodie looks like.

I have made a very long scarf section, as I wanted it to be nice and snug around my neck. I have also attached the two ends of the scarf so I can just loop it round.

I particularly like the pom-pom which was not part of the original design on the u-tube video. This also helps create a slight weight which gives the hood a much softer look on top of the head.

I made these adjustments as I went along as my wool behaved very differently to the one used in the tutorial. I quite like the chunky feel of the other scoodie in the video, but I like mine too. What do you think?

The yellow and green ribbed scarf project.

This cashmere and silk blend yarn is beautiful to work with and lovely to touch. The rosewood needles give a very good controlled slip. This is among my first projects (I started three at the same time) that I have now finished.

 

The casting on…

A simple all knit and slip stitch pattern for the scarf.  This was the first time I was using a slip stitch, it is not only very easy but also creates a beautiful ribbed effect.

The complete scarf… a lovely handmade present this season.

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