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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.

Bye 2012 we had a great time with you…

We are over a year old and the WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Wow lets have many more Dreamliner full interactions in the new year. This success has been totally unexpected, all thanks to the new friends we made both at the club and online. May there be plenty of beautifully handcrafted objects filing up your life in the coming year. Lets keep sharing the craft.

What we get up to…

A lot of you ask me about the other members of the club and most are almost always surprised at our demographics. We are a bunch of 20s and 30 somethings coming together every fortnight after work for some long awaited dedicated time for knitting amidst the crazy life of full time work, kids and Internet shopping!

After a year in existence, here are some of us on our last pre-Christmas meeting -

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As you can see we are normal!

PointedNeedles started with a simple desire to have a knitting club in the neighbourhood that was accessible to full time working people rather than the other afternoon clubs.

We have amongst us chemical engineers, primary school science teachers, environmental agency researchers, university lecturers and staff, physiotherapists, HR managers and more… Lively conversations and a healthy dose of urban humour that’s what makes PointedNeedles. Come join there’s plenty of room….

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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