Of necklaces and felted beads.

One of the Other Crafts I spoke of on Friday was this merino wool felted ball necklace.

I made a few necklaces with felted yarn balls a while ago, but I strung the balls onto ribbon and I was never happy with how they turned out. This time I used some ridiculously soft cotton, and I love it so much more.

I think the hardest part was deciding what kind of clasp I wanted to use. I knew I didn’t want a bolt ring because I find them a little clunky and ugly (not to mention the fact they can be ridiculously fiddly) so I was looking into alternatives. Lobster clasps are a little better, but then it struck me that I already had all the materials to try and make my own clasps.

I absolutely love how it turned out. The simplicity of the clasp and the necklace seem to really complement each other, and I think the handmade clasp adds a lovely extra touch.

In hindsight I wish I’d used the larger jump rings for both necklace ends, it would have looked more balanced. The larger ring is closed though, so I can’t add it on now but I have ordered a supply of open rings of the same size. I’m looking forward to them arriving so I can swap the smaller ring out and stop obsessing over how unbalanced it all looks!

 

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Not Knitting

There hasn’t been much knitting this week because I have been playing with Other Crafts…

39 little felted balls of colour on Wednesday.

(my palms still feel bruised.)

Silver plated jewellery clasps today.

I had a lot of fun making these clasps. I’m looking forward to making many many more!

More about what these bits and pieces are becoming at the weekend…

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Skill + 1UP :: 2KCBWDAY2 ::

Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?

I generally choose my knits based wholly on how much I want the finished item. I tend to not give much thought to what skills or techniques are involved in a project, deciding instead whether I have the patience or time to dedicate to something, so I’m really not sure what skills I’ve picked up over the past year. Looking at my Ravelry project page, the last year seems to have seen quite a few pairs of socks, including my first finished pair of toe up socks…

so I can rate that as one new skill learnt!

In fact, now that I think about it, there was also my super stretchy sock cuff revelation

 

which turned out to be more a revisiting of a standard long tail cast on, but with a cunningly different name. This has now been usurped by the twisted German (also known as the Old Norwegian) cast on, a long tail variant which has even more stretch and (I think) a neater edge. Love! Even this has been improved fairly recently by the realisation that instead of having to guesstimate how much tail to leave, only to have to rip out the cast on and grudgingly start again when the tail is inevitably infuriatingly long or a few stitches too short, I can cast on with two separate ends. What a lightbulb moment! It’s amazingly satisfying to use the centre pull end and the free outer end and cast on, smug in the knowledge that I will always have just the right amount of yarn for my cast on. It’s even worth the extra ends to weave in, and considering how much I hate finishing, that’s some achievement!

My project page also reminds me of my first hand-felted project, the French Press Slippers.

I’ve hand made little felt balls before, but I had no idea that hand-felting an entire project would be such hard work! Even though I loved the end result, it’s going to be a long time before I decide to felt anything other than little balls for a while!

And lastly, there is the still lingering double knit hat.

This was my first venture into double knitting, and although the process had me a little bamboozled at first once I got stuck in it was pretty straight forward. I’m quite ashamed to say that it’s still on the needles, and three months on it hasn’t really progressed much from this photo!

Well, that’s a lot more skills than I thought. Who knows what new tricks I’ll unwittingly learn this year!

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FO Parade part 1

I’ve been remiss about blogging lately, partly because I’ve been ill but mostly because I just wasn’t sure where to begin again. I was initially intending to scatter in a few finished project posts here and there, to catch up on those that I haven’t blogged about over the past few months. But then I started feeling reluctant to post about shiny new projects when there were so many old finished ones that were still lingering. And then of course, some of those new projects turned into finished projects, and the mojo just stalled. All those FOs evolved into a big bloggy yarny white elephant in my mind.

So I’ve decided to post them all now, and start afresh.

Let’s start with the 2010 projects, and the loooong overdue Christmas FOs first:

 

 

French Press Felted Slippers by Melynda Bernardi

Yarn: Texere Yarns Troon Tweed in Cranberry

Ravelled here.

A Christmas present for my boyfriends sister. I love these. The colour is so rich and beautiful, and I dearly wish I could have kept them for myself, but surely that makes a gift all the more worth giving. The only thing I changed was to make LilyKate’s ruffle mod instead of the strap in the pattern, and I think they’re all the sweeter for it!

I dillied and dallied over making these. I knew I was going to make them for her for months before hand. I even bought the wool in September. But if you glance at the project info on Ravelry you will see that I didn’t even start knitting them until Christmas Day! Tut tut.

The knitting was quick enough. I started them in the late afternoon, after Christmas dinner, and they were cast off and sewn up by bedtime. This was my first real experience with hand felting, and I wish I’d taken a before photo. They looked like boats! I started felting these the next morning, and it took f o r e v e r ! I tried doing it in the kitchen sink to start with, agitating them it very hot, soapy water and then shocking in very cold water, but it didn’t really seem to be doing much and I was getting fed up of having to constantly reheat the water, so I got my crockpot out and started agitating in that instead. They finally shrunk down, but it was hard work getting there! I think I must have worked off my Christmas dinner by this activity alone, although I confess I did have to get the boyfriend in to take over for a bit and give my arms a wee rest. I always thought that wool would full quite easily, but it seems not so much! I quite fancied a pair of these for myself, but after all that I think it’s going to be a long while before I hand felting another try…

 

Quick Cable Slouch Hat by Azure

Yarn: Stylecraft Ethical Twist 70/30
        Stylecraft Ethical Twist 85/15

Ravelled here.

For some reason, despite all the energy, sweat and swearing that went into the making of the ruffled slippers, I decided that the slippers alone were not enough of a gift, so I quickly raided that Ravelry pattern database and decided to knock out this hat.

The pattern required a bulky weight yarn, but I couldn’t find a suitable one in my stash, so I used two strands of Ethical Twist DK. The yarn is scrumptious. It’s soft and silky and beautiful. They do two different blends: a 70% organic Falkland wool 30% alpaca, and an 85% organic Falkland wool 15% baby alpaca. The 85/15 is ever so slightly softer than the 70/30, but there’s not really much between them. I couldn’t decide which of the two to use, so ended up using one of each, and even though the colours are different (85/15 is “Cream”, the 70/30 “Natural”) the difference is negligible.

The pattern is simple and straight forward, and more importantly for last-minute Larry over here, it works up super fast. I started it in the evening, finished and blocked it the next morning.

One thing though, this yarn grows like crazy when wet. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am swatch-averse. I only really swatch for projects when absolutely necessary and under duress, and the number of times I've actually washed and blocked a swatch before starting a project can probably be counted on one hand. So I did slightly panic when the pre-blocked normal sized hat grew to epic proportions as soon as it hit the water, and chastised myself for not steam blocking instead of wet blocking. I hovered over it as it dried, tszujing it into shape now and then, and thankfully it dried back to a normal size, but this is probably something I should bear in mind the next time I use this yarn.

  

Top Down Bonnet with Anime Character by Adrian Bizilia

Yarn: Sirdar Country Style DK

Ravelled here.

Apologies for the abysmal quality photo, but it was taken in December darkness before rushing off to gift it. This is the last of the December FOs, and was an embarrassingly long time in the making! I started it back in April, and got as far finishing the hat, attaching the i-cords and one ear, and then it stalled until December when I finally pushed myself to knit on the other ear and finish the face. Needless to say, it doesn’t fit the intended child any more, but it seemed a shame not to gift it anyway, and it is now perched rather fetchingly on the Teddy by the child’s bed.

I was going to use felt circles for the eyes, but I didn’t have any on hand so I chain crocheted them on with white acrylic, finishing it off with a little black acrylic for the pupil, and embroidered the nose and mouth on with the same black acrylic. It is an adorable pattern, and I wish I’d finished it on time, or made a bigger size so I could see my Godchild wearing it! I have had a request from the boyfriend to make him a man sized one, although I’m a little dubious to see how a 20-something year old man will look in such an adorable hat. It might have to be on the proviso that he doesn’t wear it in public when I’m around!

I think this post has waffled on for quite long enough, so I’ll stop here and carry on tomorrow with my FOs of 2011 so far!

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Fat berry braid

I’m going to class my second attempt at dyeing wool tops a semi success. I l o v e the colours here. They came out darker than I expected, gorgeous deep berry and purple with the odd splash of lavender hidden here and there. It’s perfect for autumn. I’m a little sad that it’s only a wee 20 grams.

However, I seem to have (yet again) lightly fulled the merino. I am almost positive that it’s down to my complete inability to Leave The Wool Alone. Last time I prodded it too much during the dyeing. This time I managed to not poke it whilst was dyeing, it was the cool down I had problems with. My eagerness to see what magic the dyes had worked on the wool led me to do bad things. I know heat + alkaline + wool = felt-o-rama. I know I should leave the wool to cool down in the pot. I know all this, but it’s oh-so-hard. I don’t seem to have had this problem when dyeing yarn, so I’m not sure what it is about fibre that brings this insatiable impishness and impatience out of me, so that I sneak the fibre out of its bath before it’s ready.

I don’t think it’s completely irredeemable, it’s just going to take a little bit more prep than I’d like. I’m very much looking forward to spinning this up on my wheel.

And next time, I will have to Walk Away.

Or buy superwash fibre.

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Impatience is (not) a virtue

                     
So I was trying to keep casting on for Levens for the Ravelympics, but then a big delivery of yarn I ordered arrived, and one thing led to another and Levens just seemed to happen… What can I say, I’m just fickle like that.
Currently about a third of the way through. I’m using a much lighter weight yarn and therefore am obviously waay out on gauge so I’m winging it for now. My gauge is probably still too loose for the yarn I’m using, but I’m quite liking the light airiness of it. Right now however, I am torn between sticking with the 3 ruched panels and just working them for longer, or whether to add 2 more. Ho hum.
The other project currently on the needles (I’m not counting the tea cozy, it' seems to be permanently on the needles) is the toe up socks I cast on while I should have been revising. It’s my first pair knit toe-up, and to be honest my patience with them is starting to wear a little thin. Whilst I quite enjoyed the cast on (Judy’s Magic Cast-on) and the foot and like the idea of being able to try them on as you go, I seem to be stumbling at the heel. This will be the third attempt at the heel. The first time there weren’t enough gusset stitches so it was a bit too tight, this time it’s because it’s too big, presumably because I’ve started the gusset increases too late. Here’s hoping the third time is the charm, because frankly I’m starting to feel a bit like the Goldilocks of toe-up socks.

For the moment though, they’re banished to the naughty corner.
Ooh, as an aside I’ve been playing with my new needle felting kit, and have made the Boy a little Valentines card. Needle felting is rather addictive.
I think it’s safe to post a photo because I don’t think he reads this…


What a sap :P

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