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Tag: knitting

  • Harry Potter Mini-Scarf Bookmarks

    Harry Potter Mini-Scarf BookmarksMy friend Steph is a primary school teacher and a few months ago she was admiring the Harry Potter scarves I’d knitted. Since I had lots of the yarn left over, I told her I’d knit a mini-scarf to use as a bookmark for each kid in her class. They’re extremely simple and you can finish several in one night. I used a normal DK (8-ply) yarn and a slightly smaller needles size than recommended. (This makes for a bulkier bookmark.) Cast on 8 stitches in red, knit six rows, and switch to yellow. Knit six more rows and switch again, each time carrying the unused color up the side. When you’ve got thirteen stripes, cast off and weave in the ends. Add three tassels on each end, made from one strand of each color. Voila! And I even managed to get them done before the next movie comes out. 🙂

    (Special thanks to Amy, who helped out by knitting some up from her own stash.)

  • Double Trouble Socks

    Socks!Socks!
    Tonight I finished my first pair of knitted socks. They’re big house socks for the Snook to putter around in. Since double-pointed needles scare me and I like to do things as quickly as possible, I used this “Double Trouble” pattern for knitting both socks at once on two circular needles. (That sounds difficult, but this page has great illustrations that explain it pretty clearly.) To the right there you can see the Snook modelling them. The wool was a German “Sockenwool” that I did on 2.75 mm needles to get a 10 st/inch gauge. It was dyed in varying colors which gives a nice mottled effect. Pretty sweet, huh? Here are two more pics of the socks on the needles to give you an idea of how it was done. (I did the calf section in 2×2 rib, which is why it looks so much skinnier than the body of the sock.)

    Two socks at once!   Close-up of needles

    I was most scared of “turning the heel” but this pattern makes it a cinch. I recommend it for you beginning knitters that are getting tired of making scarves! Just use a thicker wool than I did. The thin stuff takes ages to knit up… 🙂

  • My First Sweater

    My SweaterMy First Sweater
    It’s done! It’s slightly wonky and the fit is weird in places, but it’s wearable. (I think I’ll be able to block out some of the weirdness when I wash it. I should’ve done that first, but I was too excited to wear it.) The pattern is called “Sweet” and it’s from The Knitter’s Bible by Kate Buller. The wool is Jo Sharp DK 100% wool in “Plum”. The ruffle looks hard but – other than having to cast on 500 stitches – it was suprisingly easy to knit. The actual hardest part was sewing everything together at the end. I suck at that. The seams are a little bulky and non-symmetrical, which accounts for most of the fitting problems. I’m definitely going to knit my next sweater in the round so I don’t have to worry about that stuff. But it’s kinda cute, right?

    (Edited to add: Yeah, ignore my glazed expression in the photo. It was 7:30 am and I’d overslept, so I’m a bit out of it.)

  • Scarves Galore

    Scarves Galore
    The Easter Crafting Marathon continues. I’ve finally finished my red mohair scarf, which you can see below. The other two are scarves I’ve made in the last couple weeks.

    Snookums and the Rock Star Scarf  Me and the Red Mohair Scarf  Blue-green Mohair Scarf

    First you have Snookums modelling my “Rock Star Scarf”, which is knitted out of Faux Fur. It’s this crazy yarn with lots of little hairs sticking off it that actually looks like fur once you knit it up. (Let me warn my fellow knitters: It was insanely difficult to work with. You can’t see any of the stitches so if you drop one, you have to start all over.) The second and third scarves are both made of mohair, which is incredibly soft and fuzzy and beautiful. I did the blue-green one first as a gift for my Dad’s wife Cindy, and I liked it so much I got the red to do my own. Pretty nice, huh? They’re both about six feet long and six inches wide. I can’t wait to wear mine outside (if it ever stops raining)…

  • Craft Backlog

    I am not allowed to start anymore new crafts until I finish the old ones. Seriously. Right now I have on my list:

    • My first sweater, which is about 1/4 done.
    • About a foot of scarf made from some gorgeous red mohair.
    • A baby blanket for my little brother, of which I have, like, six blocks out of fifty.
    • A rugby scarf, which is currently just in the “piles of wool” stage.
    • Knitted socks for the Snook, of which I have only wool and a vague idea.
    • Record albums waiting to be turned into bowls. (see above)
    • Album covers waiting to be turned into purses.
    • Half a dozen pairs of socks waiting to be turned into monkeys.
    • A couple groovy old tins waiting to be painted and decoupaged.
    • My “Storm at Sea” quilt, still waiting to be finished and edged.
    • “Hello Kitty” images ready to be printed onto transfer paper and ironed onto my underpants.
    • A pile of miniature Harry Potter scarf bookmarks to be fringed and finished.

    See? Lots. I keep thinking of new things I want to try, though! I’ve been eyeing the resin supplies at the local casting shop. I have no willpower.

  • Knitting

    Apologies for the light posting. I had a relatively relaxing weekend, except for my allergies which occasionally drove me crazy. We’re now fairly certain that I have a food allergy to “sulphur dioxide”, which is a fairly common food preservative (and unfortunately gets used a lot with red wine). I’m going to make an effort to avoid it and see if that helps at all.

    In crafty news, I attended an “intermediate” knitting class Saturday. I was surprised by how much I knew. In fact, I didn’t actually learn anything new. Cables, fixing mistakes, changing colors… I’d already figured it all out from my books. What’s more, some of the other girls – who’d been knitting for years – didn’t know ridiculously simple things, like how to pull yarn from the center of a ball or make a tassel. So basically I got a lot of confidence out of the class, and I took the opportunity to get the teacher to help me plan my first sweater. I’ve got all the wool (some lovely Jo Sharp stuff in plum) and I spent most of today working on it. I’ve got about half of the back done! I can’t wait to try it on.

  • Dr. Who

    Damn! There’s a Dr. Who Convention in town this weekend and I didn’t know about it. I should get over there and see if I can take some orders for scarves. Although now that I think about it, the kind of fan that would fly to Australia for a convention probably already has a scarf… right?

  • Craftiness + Hoochiness = Knitted Bikini

    Knitted BikiniCheck out what I made! I felt like I’d been making scarves for years, so as a change of pace I decided to knit a bikini using Get Crafty’s fabulous instructions. It’s knitted with cotton, not wool, and as I used a double thickness throughout it’s pretty dense (and therefore ensures no nipple visibility). Unfortunately this design is just not the right swimsuit for my body shape. The trunks, which just barely manage to go over my thighs, are pretty cute, but they’re so low that I have major plumber butt (even though I followed the instructions for “more coverage”). And the top… Well, I think the main problem is that string bikinis aren’t made for girls with larger boobs. I’m a C cup, and the whole triangle thing just doesn’t work. Even if I made them bigger, they still don’t fit the shape of the breast very well. (I really need to figure out how to knit one with an underwire.) So needless to say, I shan’t be sporting this puppy at the beach anytime soon. It was a fun experiment though.Some notes if you’re interested in trying it yourself:

    As I can’t get the kind of cotton recommended in the pattern here, I just went with normal DK weight cotton. Unfortunately I knitted a test swatch and my gauge was way higher than it needed to be. I was afraid to move up a needle size though, for fear that the weave would be too open (and I wanted to keep the nips covered). So I played around a bit and discovered that if I doubled up the cotton and went to a 5mm needle, I got the correct gauge and the fabric was nicely dense. Unfortunately that meant I needed twice as much cotton. Luckily I’d bought 4 50gm balls, and I used up just about all of it.

    Another problem: I knitted the two boob triangles on different days and my knitting tension changed significantly, which means they’re slightly different size. I’d suggest that you knit them both at the same time to avoid this.

    The biggest problem I had was the bit at the end of the pattern where it tells you to “single crochet” around the trunk elastic and the bikini chain. I posted a request for help on Glitter and was directed to this page of instructions. That’s for making a hair band, but I figured out fairly quickly to adapt it to what I needed to do. I did the bikini chain easily, but I decided not to finish the trunks since they don’t fit well enough to ever wear.

  • Knitty

    The spring issue of Knitty is out! Too bad the seasons are reversed here and all these pretty little spring things aren’t exactly appropriate for an Aussie winter…

  • Gryffindor Stocking Cap

    Gryffindor Stocking CapHere’s my latest knitting project, a stocking cap that I whipped up earlier this week. As you can see, I’m still trying to use up leftover bits of Harry Potter scarf yarn. The pattern is pretty easy to follow and it’s a good one to get familiar with using double-pointed needles (for knitting in the round). The only part I had trouble with was the tassel. Mine is all kinds of wonky. But the rest is cute, huh?