June 2007 – Knitting Box

Eye Candy

Yesterday I shipped Annette off to a friend who kindly looked after her for the morning so that I could spend some child-free time at the Sydney Craft & Quilt Fair. It was so good! I was like a child in a candy store, with so much crafty goodness all around. I’ve never been to a craft show before. I’ve read other bloggers who wrote about going to this and that sheep & wool show, or something or another quilt show, etc, and finally I get a taste of Sydney’s craft show.

For me it was a great opportunity to see and feel in person the yarns and fabrics that I would not get a chance to otherwise. Things that I’ve only seen in online stores but not knowing how the colours actually look or how the yarns actually feel. The yarns that I ended up buying could easily be bought online, but I probably wouldn’t have picked these particular yarns or colours if I were just looking at them online. Plus it was great to support the Australian businesses and meet the lovely people at the booths.

So here’s what I got:

Colinette Jitterbug, from Sarah Durrant booth. Velvet plum (left) and Mist (right) colourways.

From Kaalund Yarns booth, one ball of Classic Two laceweight yarn in ‘Pacifica’ colourway down the front (bigger pic here), and two bags of mill ends. The mill ends bags contain little balls of laceweights, boucles, and thick ‘n thin yarns in various colours. I just love the vibrant colours.

And finally we have 3 balls of Rustic 8-ply yarns from Bendigo Woollen Mills booth, in the ‘Carnival’ colourway (close up here). Each ball is 200 grams, they’re huge! I’m hoping these three balls will be enough for a jumper or cardigan for me.

Oh, and I also got some fabrics from Patchwork At Central Park booth.

The night before I went, I had looked up the exhibitors listing and noted their locations so that I could look them up. But even so I didn’t get to visit all of them before I had to go home. Probably a good thing, otherwise I could’ve spent way too much money! If you’re in Sydney, the craft fair is still on until Sunday at Darling Harbour.

29 June 2007

miss dolly

Say hello to miss dolly!

She was made from a miss buttons ‘sew your own’ kit. The fabrics and button all came with the kit, and the instructions are easy to follow. Annette named her “dolly”, because that’s what she calls almost all of her dolls. Um yeah, need a bit of work on more imaginative names here. But when she says “I want dolly”, she knows exactly which one she means, of course.

Here is miss dolly again, with a small child for scale.

22 June 2007

Where are they now?

I think it’s about time I do an update on my knitting WIPs. With the weather getting really cold, I found myself reaching more into my knitting again. And there have been some new projects that haven’t even made an appearance on this blog. So lets take a look, shall we?

Melon shawl

Last we saw her, she was just starting out, at the beginning of Project Spectrum’s yellow pink and green months. Puts me to shame, really, two months have passed and I’m not even halfway with her yet. Not that it’s overly complicated or anything. In fact the pattern is quite easy to memorise, manageable enough for knitting in front of the TV. I just get distracted easily… (you’ll see). I know the lace doesn’t look like much here, crumpled up like this, so here’s a close up of it stretched out.

Serrano

Speaking of Project Spectrum, the theme colours now are red, black and metallics. So it’s probably a good time to dig up my black Serrano cardi in progress and dust her off. (The pattern is from here.)

I started this so long ago it’s embarassing. When I last left her, I have just finished one sleeve (I decided to start with sleeves first), and now I’ll get on to the second sleeve. Why not work on the body now, I hear you ask? Well, because the needles that I need (80 cm/32″ 2.5mm circulars) are being used for something else (see below projects). Turns out I really really like my 2.5mm Addi Turbo needles. Perhaps I should get my needles to multi task like this 😉 Hmm, might be too complicated perhaps, with two socks involved.

Stripey socks

I bought a skein of Heirloom Jigsaw sock yarn from Tapestry Craft because I was taken by this colourway (it’s #54, the pink/white striping). It’s not as soft as STR, but it’s okay, and the striping is keeping me interested. I’m just making a plain stockinette socks, cuff down, but with short row heels for a change. I started knitting this with DPNs, but I had unsightly ladders problem. So I thought I’d try out magic looping. I have tried magic looping only once before (it was for making this baby hat) when I was still new to knitting, and it wasn’t a very good experience. On hindsight, it was probably because I wasn’t using the right needles. The cord of the needles that I used back then wasn’t very flexible at all and I couldn’t get an even tension. For this sock I used my Addi Turbos (yep, that 2.5mm one) and it worked like a charm. No ladders at all! The flexible cord of the Addi Turbos really made a difference. And magic looping turns out to be simple too! There’s an excellent video tutorial here that explains the method very well.

So I’ve got one sock down, but I’m knitting another sock first before returning to knit its mate…

Jaywalkers

A lot of people have been through the Jaywalker craze. I love the look of the zigzag-y stripes and I wanted to make my own too, except that I didn’t have a suitable yarn. Now I do.

This is Jaywalkers in STR lightweight, G-Rocks colourway. As I knit this I can’t help thinking that it would’ve been such a great yarn to use for the previous Project Spectrum colours (yellow, pink and green, all in one!) I’m making my jaywalkers with picot trim instead of the ribbing, inspired by Anna’s jaywalkers.

And yep, I’m using the 2.5mm Addi Turbos for this sock, for magic-looping. I really like magic-looping now, I think it might just become my method of choice for sock knitting.

And that pretty much brings us up to date with the state of my knitting WIPs!

11 June 2007

Bags factory

I recently made these bags for a friend’s kids. I’ve been admiring Sally Shim‘s patchwork (like this and this), and I thought I’d try my hand at some patchwork bags. I love these bags, they were hard to give away. I’m glad the kids and their mum loved them too.

These bags were fun to make. Just simple lined totes, nothing complicated, but hopefully will be useful. Patchwork on one side, and a matching pocket on the other side. As the main outer fabric I used a linen-look cotton fabric called Osnaburg, and some fabrics from stash for the patchwork. Choosing fabrics was both fun and very difficult at the same time. Fun because of all the possibilities of fabrics that I can match that would look good together. Difficult because of all the possibilities — “this looks good with that, but it looks great with that other one too!” I get so indecisive sometimes. It seems that I always love other people’s fabrics combo or yarn colour choices, but when it comes to my own projects I spend so much time fretting about whether the combinations would work!

Anyway, here are the bags in more detail. Click the pics for bigger.

Tote 1:

Tote 2:

Tote 3:

Tote 4:

4 June 2007

Cute overload

Yesterday I met up with Belinda, Corrie, and Jade in another blog get-together. As always, it was really lovely catching up with these ladies. We had a lucky dip, and I was the recipient of Jade’s package. And look what I scored!!

ISBN 452904114x

I loooooove this book!! I actually have been on the lookout for this book since I saw snippets of it in Flickr. And now I have my very own copy. Thank you, Jade!

Here are just some of my favourites from this book:

Cute pillows.

Amigurumi. These guys make me want to learn crochet.

So. Cute.

And here are a couple more books that I recently got myself.

On the left is Girly Style Wardrobe, isbn 457911132X. You can see some snippets here, and check out the cute top that SouleMama made from this book here.

And on the right is isbn 4579108655. This book doesn’t have photos in it, just 39 patterns for bags, purses, and pouches (see here and here).

Oh my. So many things I want to make, so little time!

2 June 2007