Tag: knitting

  • Links I’ve been enjoying lately

    • State Library acquires Flinders’ original love letters – It’s more than just love letters, really. I’ve been to a couple events at the State Library of NSW in the past year and I’m always astounded by the depth of their collections. It’s as much a museum as it is a library!
    • News Knitter – A data visualisation project where information gathered from daily political news was analysed, filtered, and converted into a pattern for a machine knitted sweater.
    • The Commercial Pattern Archive – A wonderful resource that archives commercial sewing pattern data to preserve these ephemeral bits of our culture for the future. (Link via Metafilter.)
    • The Easy Tiger Sessions by Charley Castle & The Boys in the Well – We heard this group playing a bit at Wayward last weekend and Rodd tracked them down. It’s “newgrass.” Very nice.
    • Blogroll.org – I’m still on the hunt for more sites to add to my feed reader. Lots to explore here!
  • Saturday in the Shire

    Today is the day Mr. Snook’s homebrew club are filling the barrels*, so as chauffeur I’m enjoying some knitting time while smelling the serenity.

    * Every year they all brew the same recipe, pour it in a couple old whiskey barrels, and let them age under a guy’s house. Then they all share the results…

    Two empty wooden whiskey barrels sitting in a garage

    A person knitting a pink cowl in front of an empty fire pit overlooking the treetops of a national park

  • Highlights of the Easter Show Arts & Craft Entries

    At the Arts Preview last week, I took a lot of photos of all the Arts & Crafts entries that caught my eye. Sometimes because they were beautiful or clever, and sometimes because they were METAL AF. They’re mostly in the order I saw them, so you get the full “meandering around the display cases while pounding drinks” effect.

    R2-D2

    This crochet R2-D2 was fully life-size, and it was a big hit with the viewers. I like it, but he looks a little oddly muscular and organic to me for a robot! (And what’s with that crocheted, mounted dinosaur head?!)

    Felted Wind in the Willows characters

    I loved these needle-felted Wind in the Willows characters. Mr. Toad even has his driving goggles!

    Crocheted chainsaw head guy

    I mean, who is this little crochet guy with a chainsaw head and hands, and sweet red high-tops? Kudos to Andrew Galagher on the ribbon!

    Byte Couture - dress made from keyboard keys, cables, and computer RAM

    I gasped when I saw this “Byte Couture” dress in the Cabinet of Excellence. It was in the “Recycled Garment” category and used computer keys, RAM, and cables to fashion a dress. Well done, Stephanie Powell!

    Crocheted doll

    This crocheted doll is very expressive, but it freaks me out a little bit. It reminds me of the podlings from The Dark Crystal somehow.

    Amazing quilt with circles

    This quilt is why I was not particularly surprised or disappointed to miss out on a ribbon, as it was competing in the same category as mine. 😳 Amazing work, Tonia Barton!

    Cat skellington

    Andrew Galagher strikes again! This “Cat Skellington” won the blue ribbon in soft toys or dolls.

    Punk teddy bears

    Loved the punk teddy bear! I didn’t even realise he has a safety pin through his nose.

    Volcano quilt

    How cool is this volcano quilt? The artist is a teenager!

    Creepy mosaics

    This was the point where I started to appreciate how the folks doing the displays had sometimes grouped together thematically or visually similar items. That mosaic of the Joker stopped me dead in my tracks, and then I was able to appreciate the other two next to it.

    Bag End cake

    This Bag End cake won an award in the “Most Creative Cake” category. Very cute!

    Dragon cake

    And this one won in the “Gravity Defying” category. I love the little Shaolin monks in front of the temple!

    Spartan helmet embelled on a jacket

    SPARTA! This beaded denim jacket was insane.

    Octopus bottle

    I thought this octopus glass sculpture was lovely. It reminded me of The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife and some of the Minoan vessels we saw in Crete last year.

    Rabbit head sculpture

    The creepiest thing about that rabbit sculpture is how the eyes were set back inside the head so the damn thing seemed to track you as you walked past.

     A baby made of pills

    At first I thought this PILL BABY was creepy, but then I discovered that A) the artist is a doctor, and B) she titled it “A self portrait of the younger me.” Now I think it’s amazing.

    Creepy house sculpture with an eye peering out

    This is entitled “Fairy House Light,” so I think maybe it lights up? That would be the scariest night light ever.

    Horse head fascinator

    I loved this horse head fascinator mixed in among the fancy lady hats. Hell yeah! This would be amazing to wear to Melbourne Cup Day. (You know, if one supported such barbarism.)

    Baby dolls

    I think we can all agree that, of the “Dressed modern dolls,” the one on the right is actually way scarier.

    Rocking chair

    Stephen Rutherford was in the queue right in front of us with this rocking chair at the Drop-off Day a couple weeks ago. Rodd and I both admired it, especially the way it looks like he’s incorporated some recycled pieces. I was happy to see he won a ribbon in the “Innovative” woodwork category!

    Freddie Mercury, crocheted

    Crochet Freddie Mercury, of course. Nice.

    Animal skull headdress and shield

    Another badass thematic display of an “animal skull headdress,” decorated medieval shield, and what appears to be a DRAGONSKIN GAUNTLET in the background.

    Marie Curie textile artwork

    This Marie Curie themed textile artwork was done by the same teenager who did the volcano quilt. Very cool!

    Armadillo toy

    What a cuddly looking armadillo!

    Paper mache doll

    I can appreciate the skill required to make this papier-mâché doll while also worrying that it comes to life in the night to kill people.

    Magpies

    I really liked the bold graphic qualities of this painting of magpies.

    Gum trees by Ted Lewis

    I recognised the style of this piece immediately and was pleased to verify it was by Ted Lewis. We very, very nearly bought one of his paintings a few months ago, and I’m still thinking about it. I love in this one how you don’t notice the galahs at first.

    Sugar glider print

    This print of sugar gliders was so intricate and so beautiful!

    Banana replicator

    Banana replicator! This amused the hell out of me. It was in the “raster artwork” category, and I had to look it up in the schedule to see what that actually means: “The image must have originated from an original photograph, including photographs purchased within Copyright or acquired after Copyright has expired. The image may be significantly manipulated or enhanced using Photoshop or equivalent computer software.”

    Meerkat

    Meerkat! Mr. Snook is a big fan. We were delighted to discover that the German word for meerkat is “Erdmännchen,” which means “little earth man.”

    Greenhowe clowns

    I almost thought I’d escaped—that as a society we’d moved past this particular brand of evil—but of course, there’s gotta be a goddamn Jean Greenhowe clown. I kid, but not really. It’s not an Easter Show without someone knitting a Greenhowe clown.

  • 2025 Easter Show entry details (and results!)

    Now that the 2025 Easter Show Craft Competition judging is finished, I can finally reveal the details of my three entries!

    Ginkgo Leaves Gradient Lace Scarf

    I bought this yarn – Schoppel Zauber Flower Pro – ages ago but really struggled to find an appropriate pattern for it. Last April I frogged it and started again with a simple lace pattern that looks like ginkgo leaves. I’m not normally a big fan of lace, but I could tell that it was going to look pretty special once I blocked it. I was so pleased with how it turned out, and I thought it had a real chance at the Show. And guess what? It did! My second ever blue ribbon!

    Blue ribbon!

    3-Colour Slip Stitch Alpaca Scarf

    Ten years ago I knitted the Snook a grey alpaca scarf in linen stitch… and last year we lost it in Darling Harbour. It was mostly my fault, so I felt I needed to replace it with something comparable. I settled on a simple 3-colour slip stitch pattern done in Morris & Sons Maya 8ply. Because I used 3 colours, I could just always drop a colour and pick up the next one at each edge. It resulted in a perfectly flat fabric, with one side having a little tessellated seed pattern and the reverse having all of the horizontal floats. It was very satisfying to knit, even with having to constantly untangle the balls! When I was finished, I even knitted him a matching beanie. I doubted the project was flashy enough to win a ribbon, but I thought I’d enter it anyway just to have something different in the display case. As expected, it was shown but didn’t win anything. I’m okay with that. There’s really nothing else in the case like it.

    Slip Stitch Alpaca Scarf

    Rainbow Pinwheel Baby Quilt

    Earlier this year, a friend of mine let slip that he and his wife were expecting their second child, a daughter. I know how much they’ve gone through in their fertility journey and really wanted to gift them something special for her. I also was getting the itch to do some patchwork again after making Baby Taos’s quilt in 2023. I started looking for a design that would work with a charm pack, and soon I settled on this Pinwheel Baby Quilt from Moda. I loved the idea of doing something bright and cheerful, but in a more modern print than in the pattern. I started checking what fabrics were available in my local shops, and I eventually decided on Moda’s Rainbow Spice collection. I bought a charm pack along with yardage for the backing and the binding, and in January I kicked off the project.

    I figured out which fabrics I wanted for the pinwheels, and I cut those into triangles. Everything else got cut into squares for the prairie points.

    Plan for the pinwheels

    I started joining the coloured triangles to the white ones. Once I had them all joined, I could play with how I would lay out the finished pinwheels.

    Joined pinwheels with first border of prairie points

    Here are the finished pinwheels, with the first narrow border attached. I’ve also started basting down my prairie points along the top edge. I had never done these before, so I wasn’t quite sure how much to overlap them or how to handle the corners. Needless to say, I buggered it up a few times and had to unpick. I was also texting my Mom a lot for advice. Finally I got the corners looking halfway decent.

    Prairie points meet at corner

    And here’s the completed top sandwiched with the backing fabric and thin cotton wadding. (Sydney doesn’t have super cold winters, so I didn’t need to make it a really warm quilt.) I hand-based it all together with big stitches all over the place, and then it was time to quilt. By this point I had decided to enter the quilt in the Show, and I went for the machine-quilted category. The restriction here is that the quilting has to be done by the entrant; you can’t contract it out to someone else. I decided to quilt diagonal lines through the middle of each pinwheel, and you can see some of the lines from my fabric marking pen. I quilted it myself using the walking foot on my machine.

    Completed top with prairie points and borders

    That handled the middle of the quilt, but I had no idea what to do in the wide border. Back to Mom, who answered instantly: “Piano keys!” This basically just means a series of parallel lines, equally spaced. I decided to sew them using the continuous method, where I was sewing a sort of rectangular zig-zag all around the edge. Here I am drawing in the lines for the piano keys.

    Drawing the piano keys

    Sewing them was tricky, given that I had to manipulate the whole quilt under my sewing machine arm and I was frequently turning it at right angles to itself. The outer edge of stitching would be covered by the binding, but for the inner edge I simply folded back the prairie point and stitched underneath it.

    Sewing the piano keys

    Once all the quilting was done, I ran my overlocker over each edge to trim up the excess and tidy things up for binding.

    Overlocking

    Then finally it was time for binding! I cut my strips and sewed them down on the top side of the quilt, taking care to miter the corners. I followed this blog tutorial, right down the trick of winding my binding and putting it on the extra spool on my machine.

    Attaching binding

    I also used the new-to-me technique of gluing down the binding on the back side. Mom assured me that all the quilters are doing this now! It’s a much faster and more secure way of basting things down so that they don’t move, and so that you can get perfectly mitered corners. And you know what? IT WORKS.

    An in-progress shot of a blue quilt with a hot pink binding attached, showing a perfectly mitered corner.

    All that was left to do was to stitch down the binding. I sewed on the top of the quilt using white thread, very close to the edge of the binding so it blends in with the quilting. But for the bottom thread I used a hot pink that blended in perfectly with the binding.

    Sewn down binding

    The final step was just to wash it several times so that all the fabric pen came out. I laid it flat to dry and then gave it a good press before I dropped it off for judging.

    Finished quilt

    I had never entered a quilt in the Show before, and I really had no idea what the standard would be. I’d seen winning quilts in the display cases though, and I suspected that I didn’t really have any chance of a ribbon. I was right. As you can see here, mine is a lot smaller and simpler than most of the other quilts entered. I’m proud of it though, and I know my friend and his wife will love it.

    Quilt case at Easter Show

  • An outing to Manly

    I had a simple outing planned for the day – take the ferry to Manly and meet up with my former AWS colleague Mani. Sydney Transport, however, had other ideas…

    A sign at Circular Quay explaining that ferries are not running for 2 hours due to industrial action

    Drat. So a couple of bus rides later, I finally made it to meet up with Mani. You know how there are people that you think, yes, we should be friends but we’re both super busy so it’s just not happening? That was us, but thankfully we’re finally able to connect. Mani led the AWS APAC Space & Satellite business, and now she’s taking a year off with her first child. We had a great visit, and she left me really inspired and confident that I’m on the right track with some of the board opportunities I’m pursuing. And she’s really fun! It was well worth the effort of getting there.

    Two women in front of a sign that says The Butchers Cafe

    And hey, by the time I left the ferries were operating again! I caught the Fast Ferry back to Circular Quay and discovered that knitting as you cross the Heads (with some serious swell!) is quite a challenge… 😂🧶

    A woman pulling a face while trying to knit on a boat

  • Bobbles

    I don’t normally knit bobbles… and now I’m remembering why.

    It’s giving “nipples,” isn’t it. 🙃

    A piece of knitting in pink wool with rows of bobbles that look like… nipples.

  • Highlights from the w-g archives

    On this day

  • Links I’ve been reading lately

  • Sydney Royal Easter Show 2025

    Three Craft competition entries delivered – two knitting, one quilting – and my volunteer uniform picked up. April’s going to be a big month!

  • Knitting the gut-brain connection 🦠🧠🧶

    The Darling Square library is hosting a special event in April and May: Crafting wellness: exploring gut health through knitting. Huh. I’ve seen a lot of random fibre projects in my time – coral reefs, breast prostheses, neurons, bunting with knitted leaves on it – but never a knitted gut biome!