Tag Archives: Knitting

out of proportion

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small and big

small and big

A couple of weeks ago, I have knitted my first soft toy following a pattern from the last Let’s knit issue. It was meant to be for my nephew but my children seemed to disagree and as I found it a bit too big anyway I decided to knit a smaller one…. and as you can see, it has been a while since I have last used my maths brain. I don’t want to bore you with the details of my mistake, nothing to be proud off after all, but the head turned out too small…. which I only really accepted once it was stitched on to the rest of the body. It looks funny and I do prefer the nose for which I have used a few simple stitches with brown yarn rather than knit a nose and stitch it on.

So this one has been the fourth soft toy of my life, and although I do like the rather funny look of them I am still not a fan of the time consuming sewing together and finishing. So I am guessing that those pieces will really stay unique and you can count yourself lucky if you are ever the proud owner of a soft toy made by me 🙂

 

 

Check it out

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I have been really busy the last couple of days and have actually been working on the rest of this blog. I have created a few new pages where you can find pictures of my knitting sorted in categories. I haven’t quite finished yet but please check them out.

I am also working on my knitting class. We are already half way through (and didn’t get as far as I had planned it). But I just thought that I should actually go back to my roots as a teacher, so I will prepare a fun (hopefully) quiz as a form of recap rather than just always ask questions and answer them myself in the end.

And as I will have to slim down the program a bit, I have decided to show them only one increase and one decrease and I am now wondering which increase to chose. I can not really tell which one is the easiest. I think my first increase was  M1L or M1R or maybe both together (which would make sense) and i only got to know KFB when I have started to follow English patterns where it seems to appear quite often. So is it seen as the easiest way of increasing the number of stitches? In any case, we are in England, so I should chose the most common way of increasing in English patterns if I am only going to show one way for now.

Any thoughts on that from other knitters are more than welcome.

a long, long time ago….

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…. I knitted a cushion cover, wrote down the pattern, lost the pattern, knitted an other one, wrote down the pattern, knitted two more, lost the pattern again, bought matching fabric and zips and got the sewing machine out of its bag.

But then there was never really time to actually sew them together or more urgent things to sew. I can easily knit with children around but the sewing machine with its sharp and fast moving needle is a different matter.

But last weekend I could finally finish them and here they are…..

I have used mercerized cotton, so the knitted part has very clear lines, strong colours and is a bit shiny. Which goes extremely well with a contrasting background. I am really pleased with them. I chose burgundy as a less contrasting colour for the back this time (In the past I usually used the background fabric for the back as well – nice look too)

front and back

front and back

I have done another one as well, with Sirdar Smiley Stripes. It’s a bamboo-wool-blend and is actually very soft. As the yarn is multicoloured in itself, I chose a light blue background as a bold background is rather disturbing in my opinion.

IMG_0912It is knitted in garter stitch diagonally from corner to corner with an eyelet square to break those diagonal lines.

I really like diagonal knitting. It is perfect when you want to avoid the gauge swatching and calculating at the beginning. And I do like the look of it too.

So now that those cushion covers are knitted, I will only have to put them in my etsy-shop and also get those patterns finally typed up and on to ravelry. I guess, it won’t take me longer than a couple of weeks to get that done.

 

 

 

first impressions

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knitted mouse

knitted mouse

As I will be giving my third knitting class tomorrow it certainly is time for an update here since I had gotten a few comments and wishes  after my last post, and this little mouse might actually be a good final project for the class as it involves almost everything we are going to learn, but isn’t too time consuming.

So, I am teaching a mixed group, some of my students have learned how to knit in the past, for others it really is the first time. Some of them have learned it the English way, others the continental…. which is particularly interesting as I am actually knitting the continental way but teaching in England. As there were many new students joining in week 2, we had to start all over again, but I am really hoping that tomorrow everyone will be feeling really confident about the knit stitch, no matter which hand holds the yarn or which way you get it around that needle.

Those who have learned it the English way tried my way at first but after starting a new row, the yarn naturally changed hand and they were back to English knitting.

I was particularly intrigued by an American lady who has never knitted before and therefore just did what she has been shown…. only to wrap the yarn around English style but with the Continental hand. She swears she has never ever knitted before so I suppose it must be genetic… or she has just seen it too often. Anyway, she was determined to do it Continental style even though I told her to do it as it feels natural for her so I am really curious to see which style she has finally adopted.

Some of my students are really ambitious and they show me their work whenever we meet (and some of them cross my way daily). So I am actually expecting some small half finished projects, like a phone case or a pretty bow tomorrow.

Well, that’s about it, I have a few half finished projects myself, nothing really to talk about. But I do hope that I will find some time soon to get some of them finished to show them off here. So hopefully soon more.