I know, I know – my idea of “tomorrow” is dreadful, but I think my loyal readerbase are already well aware of my terrible timekeeping

So onto my mistake. If you click on the photo it will take you to the flickr page where I have added notes to explain the mistake. Unfortunately these notes don’t carry over if the photo is being hosted elsewhere so I’ll do my best to explain.

The first place to spot the mistake is on the waistband on the right hand side. You’ll notice it is about an inch higher than the waistband on the left. The second place to spot it is by looking straight down the middle of the main section of the longies.

When you’re knitting longies, you want the back to be higher than the front for the simple reason that the longies have to accommodate a cloth-padded bottom. To do this, you add something called short rows which basically mean you work to 3/4 of the way through a row, turn and work back to 1/4 way through, then turn and finish your row. This adds two extra rows to the back but not the front. The side effect of short rows is that you’re left with a clear join (which can be seen down the middle of my longies). Of course, being that short rows should have been worked across the back and yet mine are shown across the middle means that…

… I split for the leg in the wrong place. If I’d kept going, the rise across the back wouldn’t have accommodated Greer’s big cloth bum and the right hand side would have been significantly bigger than the left.

So there we have it! Doh!

Posted under knitting

You may or may not have noticed (and Kat can certainly attest to this fact) that I am quite the perfectionist. I’ll try most things but don’t sell my crafts really because I have no confidence that they’re good enough. If there’s even the slightest flaw – if my stitches aren’t quite right, if I am a little heavy handed with paint or dye – I will set what I’ve made aside.

So can you imagine my rage this evening? I’ve been working on a pair of longies* for Greer this week, it’s the first knitting I’ve picked up in a while and I spent most of last night and today working on the leg. I was SO HAPPY with how the wool (which I dyed myself) was knitting up and finally cast off the first leg earlier.

Then I looked at them.

Then I noticed a MAJOR COCK UP.

I’ll post what the cock up is tomorrow, in the meantime I’m going to leave it as is to see how quickly my knitting friends can spot it. Luckily for us, my lovely and fabulously talented friend Evelyn is currently making Greer a pair of her scrappies longies so at least we’ll have one pair to tide us over!

Apologies for the terrible photos but a) they were taken on my phone and b) the light in here is terrible.

I’m away to frog** the leg and start again. Out of curiosity though, can I ask your opinions on the leg design?

Firstly – I’ve got a moss-stitch band roughly where Greer’s knees will be. Primarily this is because the rise is so big on these that I don’t think my variegated wool will stretch to two full legs so I’ve broken it up with the trim colour. The other reason is that Greer will be crawling soon and I think the moss stitch patches will help reduce the wear and tear if she’s crawling in them. Do you think a) the band of colour looks okay and b) the moss stitch band is a good idea or a terrible one? Bob said he thought it might look better simply knitted but after the work that’s gone into them I’d be fuming if they ended up with a hole in the knee.

Secondly – I usually do a ruffle edging on the legs but I’ve gone with a ribbed cuff which can be folded over to give Greer some growing room. I can’t quite decide if I like the way it looks though – what say you?

* Longies are knitted, lanolised trousers worn over cloth nappies. They’re a more breathable solution than plastic pants and the wool can hold a significant amount of wee before it leaches, PLUS with being lanolised the longies are self-cleaning since lanolin+urine=soap. Clever, eh?

** Frogging (for the non-knitters) is when you rip back what you’ve knitted. Rip-it, Rip-it. Geddit?

Posted under dyeing wool, knitting

You know that old adage about time flying? Well, I don’t know how it happened but I’m 29 weeks pregnant and I’m very unprepared! Maybe it’s just because I know that we’re old hands at this managing a baby malarkey but until this last couple of weeks I haven’t bought or made anything in preparation for this little bundle. I disgraced myself yesterday by paying for a knitted cardigan (but it’s so cute!) and I’ve now completed a couple of things.

These are knitted to the Aubrey Doodlepants knitting pattern and for the non cloth nappy users amongst you, they’re longies which are designed to be worn over cloth nappies. I’ve made a few pairs of these before and I’ve always been impressed but this time I went down a needle size to ensure a thick fabric capable of holding moisture.

Of course, since they’re so small I had more than enough wool left to make a matching hat which I used the Fae Folk hat pattern to make. I do like this pattern but I wasn’t terribly happy at how my decreases came out so I’ll make a bigger version and see if that is any better.

I still haven’t caught up on any of your blogs this week and I can only apologise, I honestly don’t know where my time is going! I do plan to spend Monday (my birthday!) relaxing with some nice tea, a pack of Fox’s classics, some knitting & sewing and my laptop whilst I have the house to myself so hopefully I’ll be back in the swing of things at some point this year!

In the meantime, I’m interested. What is your go-to handmade gift for a new baby? Or if you’re a parent, what did you make for your baby that you absolutely loved? What do you wish you’d had time to make? Better yet, what did you make (or have made for you) that you never used?

Ooh! I forgot to mention – Annie blogged about our owl swap and another swap she was doing, she got much better photographs than I did if you’d like to nosy on over and see what we exchanged. She was a fantastic swap partner which is why I’m glad that we managed to get her into the Time for Tea swap as a last minute addition. Check out the updated participant list!

Hope you’re all well! Now, if you’ll excuse me I must go straighten my hair as I’m being taken out for a meal to celebrate my birthday

Posted under knitting

First off, the Time for Tea swap sign-up is now closed! I will be emailing all participants tonight with a questionnaire and I will also email the newer signer-uppers with an invite to the Flickr group where we can share photographs of our works in progress and swap parcels. I’d like to use some of your photographs at the end of the swap so if you’d rather I didn’t, please let me know. Signing up to flickr is not mandatory, just another excuse to get to know each other a little better.

Today’s post is for me to do a little showing off. When I was trying to decide what to make for Annie in the Owl Swap I came up with the idea of a bag she could keep her knitting in. Now for me the critical element in a knitting bag is that it MUST be able to fit my knitting needles in it. Also, personally I don’t like record-style bags – I’d prefer something a little more upright without losing any space. Now with apologies for the less-than-fantastic photographs – this is what I came up with:-

I also liked the idea of being able to close the bag over but still have a little access to the contents, so I made one large strap that can be slung over a shoulder, and another smaller strap for the large strap to go through and hold it closed.

Of course, this bag still had to have some relevance to owls really so I had my first attempt at appliqué. For a first attempt I was pretty pleased with myself although I’d have liked my stitches to be neater.

I only wish I was a neater seamstress because if ONLY I could sew in a straight line, I would make and sell these bags. Ah well, if wishes and all that! What do you think? Would you use it if you were a knitter?

Crafty plans for this week include my first ever attempt at making a cake with fondant icing, a little work on some longies I’m making for the new baby and a start on a couple of patterns from the fantastic Amanda at KitschyCoo. Luckily I will have my partner in crime Kat here to help me out tomorrow. Hooray!

Posted under general crafty updates, sewing, swaps

I was updating my Ravelry projects over the last few days and had asked my wonderful hubby to take some photographs of #2 in the longies I made for him earlier this year. Of course I was banking on #2′s usual hamming-it-up-for-the-camera which simply didn’t happen. Thank the deity for chocolate though, a wee bribe and he was suddenly all for it again!
The toes just make it for me. I want to tickle his feet!

I counted up my completed projects on Ravelry and I managed an average of one knitted project per month through 2008 which isn’t bad but could have been better. A lot of my knitting time was spent on Erica’s christening gown which I ended up ripping out, and by a lot of my time I mean easily an hour a day for three months. When I go into a knitting frenzy though I tend to zip through my projects, there’s no happy medium! Ah well. I have a few projects lined up in my queue and probably the largest of those is the February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne. It’s an adaptation of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s February Baby Sweater and it is just divine but also the largest project I will ever have attempted. I do baby clothes, I do toys, I do gloves – I don’t do adult garments!

On the subject of adult garments, did any of you see this gorgeous owl sweater which Ysolda Teague linked to yesterday? How amazing is that?! I’d have to admit that I think I’m probably too busty to pull off such a delicate sweater but it’s just a fantastically-executed design and I think from what Ysolda was saying, the designer is a relative novice! I can’t believe how chuffed I was creating my mittens but I really hope that girl has an enormous feeling of pride in her work. Admittedly, when Jessica Marshall Forbes of Ravelry and Kathy of Grumperina are leaving comments on your blog then it’s a pretty safe sign that you’ve created something amazing. Well done Kate!

The other thing I wanted to blog today was this bird bag made my Carina Envoldsen-Harris. I don’t want to hotlink her image and steal her bandwidth, but can I recommend that you all go and check it out because it’s a thing of beauty AND the best bit? Carina’s bag was made from fabric you can get in ikea!

So, a Happy New Year to all of you and lang may yer lum reek wi’ ither fowk’s coal! My resolution for 2009 is to blog at least once a week, even if it’s just an update on things I’m working on. We’ll see how long that lasts!

Posted under general crafty updates, knitting

Loyal readers may remember this post where I hand-dyed wool using kool-aid. This wool has lay unused for so long that I decided enough was enough.

We use cloth nappies with the children and wool makes an excellent cover for the nappies. I like the longies that are quite popular just now and so using some of my wool whilst following the Aubrey Doodlepants pattern I created these longies for the baby.

I do apologise for the terrible photo but unfortunately space is at a premium in this house right now. The longies seem to be doing the job, they’re beautifully soft and the baby just looks good enough to eat in them. I subsequently made another pair using the same pattern for #2 but unfortunately I haven’t managed to accost him for a photograph yet. I will, though.

I made a few modifications to this pattern. Firstly, I measured her waist and subracted an inch to make the waistband fit better. I also measured her hips and increased in the five rows after the waistband to prevent the waistband from sagging too much. Then, after the short rows were done I found the stitches that would be grafted and increased between those every other row to create a gusset and provide a better surface area for kitchenering. Have I mentioned that I love the kitchener stitch? Oh! Beautiful and not difficult to learn either.

Overall I’m happy with how these came out and I expect I’ll use the pattern again. I’m all about the freebies.

As I live in the UK, it can be quite difficult to acquire kool aid without paying a huge amount in postage so I have recently bought some acid dyes to play with. I’m quite excited but nervous in case I ruin the wool I’ve bought. We’ll see how it goes.

I have more to update but I must wait to hear when my craftster.org swap pal receives her package as I don’t want to ruin her surprise.

Posted under dyeing wool, knitting

My baby daughter has lots and lots of cloth nappies, what she doesn’t have is wraps. I had bought a load of fleece last year with great intentions of making my own wraps but I’d never got round to it but yesterday, we ran out of wraps and I ran out of patience! This was the end result.

I unpicked a pair of cheapy leggings that fit her well, this was the most time consuming part!

I then tacked the pieces onto my fleece and cut them out. Note that the remaining fabric is balanced on my legs and the box next to the table to prevent the fleece from stretching before it was cut.

1. Once the parts are all cut out, tack the middle sections together and stitch those down to where the crotch will be.
2. Then stitch together two of the outer leg seams.
3. Fold and tack the waistband, then run the seam. Thread your elastic through the waistband and tie it off tight enough that your trousers will stay up. Either stitch the elastic ends together or tie a knot.
4. Tack and stitch the other outer leg seam
5. Tack the inner leg seams and starting at one foot, stitch up one leg and across the crotch. Use the backpedal and go back across the crotch before continuing down the other leg.

You’ll be left with something like this:

Which fit like this:

I’ll be the first to admit these aren’t the neatest FO I’ve ever done but I’m happy with how they’ve come out

Posted under for the kids, sewing