What with travel time and a conference to knit in, I’ve finished another pair of socks for a dear friend with BIG feet. Just in time for summer!
This is some Bendigo sock yarn I had at the back of the cupboard. And here is all that was left when the socks were done.
I do love stripes! And so does he…
And here they are, being tried on at a picnic.
And this is bonus bark for your viewing pleasure…
Filed under Knitting
There is no end to the slipper making. I just have to embrace my fate! My brother-out-law let me know he wouldn’t mind another pair a while back, and perhaps he rigged the family Kris Kringle, because I ended up with him as my Kris Kringle. I knew what to do.
It’s the ever popular Fibertrends Felted Clog pattern by Bev Galeskas. Knit from Bendigo Woollen Mills alpaca blend, which works extremely well.
Here they are, knit and ready to sew together.
Sewn and ready to felt.
Partway through felting at 65C.
Ready for recipient, just in time for our departure!
It all began some time ago with wool/silk yarn and some madder dyeing. There was madder root of antiquity. I soaked it overnight first. And tried to follow Jenny Dean’s wisdom.
It all looked good to me. Eventually I added wool to the vat to exhaust the dye, and got apricot shades on the wool.
The yarn came out rather nicely. So then I was looking for a pattern that might be suitable. Somehow I slipped a gear and thought I might not just knit the sock that lives in my head.
I cast on, on the bus to work one morning.
Here we are preparing for class and waiting for lunch.
Here we are at a break in a conference, admiring kangaroo paw. I knit the heel three times at the conference because apparently I can’t be trusted to read a pattern. The first time I knit as the pattern required, and then had a failure of understanding, so I ripped back, re-knit and then realised what I had missed on the first pass, and followed the pattern again! That slowed me down. I am prepared to knit in a conference but not to rip back and pick up live stitches! I had to do that in breaks.
Here I am on my way to a formal occasion, wearing a frock and knitting at the tram stop. I thought perhaps the rare occasion of me in public in a frock should be recorded for posterity.
Nearing the final moment… just prior to the grafting of toes…
And here is a less than wonderful mood lighting photo of the socks on their rather wonderful intended recipient, at last! The pattern is Treppenviertel by Nicola Susen. It is a rather lovely ode to the ‘stairs district’ of Hamburg. As promised, I managed to pick up the pattern after a while, rather than needing to count every row–and this is just what a public transport knitter needs! Three cheers for frieds, socks, and public transport.
Filed under Knitting, Natural dyeing
I had a triumph with the rolled hem foot for my sewing machine recently. (I celebrate all victories great and small). I weakened on my pledge not to buy more fabric when I saw William Morris lawn, and bought 40 cm. Home made hankies. I haven’t made any for years. I remember hand hemming handkerchiefs as a project with my grandmother. She knew children should be seen and not heard! But she also liked to share her skills and upgrade ours, and I think she loved the fact that I was keen to learn. My sisters were less enthusiastic, and better at sport than stitchery. The other grandmother thought playing in the garden was a fine thing for children, and her garden had chooks and passionfruit in it, always an incentive!
Another recent project has been dealing with the ironing board. How did it spring a hole??? No one here is claiming responsibility.
The new one is a bark cloth I’ve had for years since it came home from an op shop. I can’t tell whether it was a little curtain or perhaps a cloth for a small table. It was hemmed in a very parsimonious way, presumably by someone else who thought this was a pretty lovely fabric.
So easy and satisfying! Instructions can be found here, and demonstrate that my last cover lasted only a year. Hopefully this fabric hasn’t been pinned over a window… or I will be making another cover all too soon.
And finally, all the bits and pieces of upholstery weight fabric that have been slowly coming together into this
I mean, this… (we have this cat on loan. Most of the time she is delightful, though she has different ideas than I do about what should be done with paper patterns, yarn, thread, fabric and other things that cause us both excitement).
Have now become yet another bag, of suitable heft and gloriousness. I have a feeling it won’t be warming my place for long.
Filed under Sewing
It all began with a whirlwind surprise visit from my daughter. She was not especially interested in going out or doing anything special. The special was spending time together, and I shared her point of view, so we ate from the garden and lurked about. She asked about this:
It’s part of a pram, or perhaps a baby carrier for a car… abandoned by the tram line some time ago. I picked it up a week or two ago thinking I could at least put it in our bin. But then I got to thinking about whether there could be re-use for the straps at least, and recycling of some of the parts (there is quite a bit of aluminium). Picturing the effort required led to delay! However, since we were sitting chatting and the weather had turned warm, out came scissors, screwdrivers, the hacksaw… and soon I had three piles for rubbish, re-use and recycling. Company and conversation are wonderful.
Then we had a chat about whether there was anything she would like me to make and she asked for a laptop sleeve. So some of the polyester batting came back out of the bin!
She chose some of the upholstery fabric offcuts I still have lying about, and a cotton flanellette covered in little birds that must once have been a cot sheet for the lining.
There was measuring calculating and and ironing and quilting of the most basic sort and mitre-ing of corners. Pretty soon, there was a laptop sleeve.
It fits and it will protect… and she loves it!
Filed under Sewing
First, there was some undyed wool and silk yarn.
Then, there was osage orange sawdust. The colour was so sunny and lovely I considered leaving it at that. But there was an indigo plan.
The fructose vat, no less.
So one fine day there was variegated yellow-green-green-blue yarn. (Yes, that is madder on the left).
Jaywalker seemed the obvious pattern for the job. Here we are at the bus stop after work.
And at a coffee shop waiting for a delicate operation to be performed on my guitar across the road.
And out for dinner at the central markets with our friends.
We even went to a conference in Melbourne.
This Melbourne arcade was so splendid I took photos just for the pleasure of it.
Here is the sock in the foyer of the unglamorous conference venue, with its best feature (the flower arrangement).
And here, at last, are the finished socks!
I like the way this pattern zigs and zags.
I like to use a reinforced heel stitch.
And I’m pretty happy with the dyeing. Hopefully the recipient will like them too when she returns from her current extended travelling. They’re going in the mail today, with about 2 metres of leftover yarn. Phew! Just made it!
Filed under Knitting, Natural dyeing
At last! I have finished a larger version of the Rhode Island Red hat. It took some doing. I cast on at least three times. I was clearly having some problems with sizing, and thinking straight. Plus, inexperience with provisional cast ons. I cast on once at home and knit the entire band… enormously…
Then twice more in a hotel in Melbourne. It was a comedy of errors! But I started to lose my sense of humour by the time I had knit the band three entire times, instead of knitting the whole hat!
I may have put the hat in the naughty corner for some weeks at that point, as th0ugh the hat was the one creating the trouble. But now, it’s done and it’s glorious!
Last night it headed out into the world to warm the head of a delightful friend who is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a chicken fancier with an entire flock of hens to tend to in all weathers. Plus, more plans for rare breeds. And, it’s her birthday any minute now. She has a wonderful chuckle, and this hat brought out the chuckling. And she liked the softness of this lovely pet polwarth sheep a lot too.
Filed under Knitting, Natural dyeing
I made a Turn a Square.
It travelled all kinds of places and some of it was knit in Sydney. Here we are waiting for someone else’s lunch to be ready. 
And here we are with muesli and yoghurt. Who knew??? Muesli and yoghurt don’t look this awesome at home! 
There was yarn left from this skein, so I reverse engineered Turn A Square and knit it from the centre out so I could use the whole skein. It seems like the right season to be making a few hats… and Students of Sustainability seemed like the right people to give them away to!
Filed under Knitting
Socks take a little while to knit. Maybe 20 hours or more of knitting for a pair in 4 ply (fingering). To be honest, I’m not sure. Needless to say, I don’t sit down and time myself knitting them. I don’t knit them on a whim, they way I do hats, which just sit about waiting for the right head to come by. I want them to be well received and they need to fit in more senses than one. So, a little while back, there was a tracing of the foot. Then I checked the preferences of the intended recipient, ordered BFL/silk sock yarn, and dyed it with eucalyptus. To get a good strong colour, I dyed the 100g of yarn in four dye baths. These socks have travelled, because in those hours of knitting, socks-in-the-making are my constant companions, which is one of the lovely things about them. I enjoy the knitting, and I enjoy holding the intended recipient in my mind for the time the knitting takes. Here is the first sock, and that week’s reading for theory reading group.
They came with me to hospital to visit a complicated relative who had a near death experience, twice (she is still alive). They may not have brought her comfort but they brought me comfort. The second hospital visit was so dim I did something quite inappropriate and had to rip back a bit. They have been to some high level meetings. They came to a very informal meeting with a workmate which was interrupted by another knitter (otherwise, a total stranger) who was beside herself to see socks being knit right there in front of her eyes. My workmate is a generous man who didn’t flinch! I have walked along knitting them from my bag. They have been fondled lovingly by the odd stranger. I was getting to the heel of the second sock when I went to Sydney. Here we are in a cafe reading political theory (with relish).
In front of a sculpture at a university in Sydney where I attended part of a conference where my beloved did a wonderful job of presenting.
In a hotel room with a banksia cone.
Waiting for a bus outside central railway station in Sydney. Ask not what the other people waiting thought of my photographing a sock. There is a lot going on outside Central at night and no one blinked.
Almost done at Coogee Beach.
Maybe you wanted to see Coogee beach? Glorious!
Toe grafted and ends darned in, in the Sydney airport.
Here they are in better light after a nice steam press!
I hope that they will be snug and long lasting… (non knitters: that is a reinforcing heel stitch you see there).
And I hope that the whimsy of these cables will tickle India‘s fancy the way it tickles mine! This design was suggested by one of my nearest and dearest, who first told me about India’s work years before I first saw it. He was the first to have a whimsically cabled pair of socks made by me… and now there are two such pairs! It is an absolute delight to be able to turn the generosity back toward someone who has been so exceedingly generous to me.
Filed under Eucalypts, Knitting, Natural dyeing
I was rifling through some of the wool and silk items that I packed away protectively during summer, (when clothes m*ths are breeding) and realised I still have three scarf blanks that were given to me by friends. One is a wool gauze, I think.
One is probably silk scrim.
And the other looks like a finer grade of still quite open-weave silk.
I had an idea for how they might find happy homes, and after some days of wishing but not finding time…
These leaves were collected in the neighbourhood as they fell from trees lining a driveway. And of course, eucalyptus! One pot had a madder exhaust in it, because madder is never really exhausted as far as I can tell.
Out they came…
The silk scrim will need another dye bath, I think. The other two made me very happy–and this is good, because I planned for them to be part of my daughter’s birthday present. I tried a different folding and wrapping strategy on the wool and love the way it came out. The tie resist marks were great–
There are leafy parts and abstract parts, parts that are burgundy or grey-black and others that are more orange.
I tend to get more muted colours on silk, and this was no exception. Still lovely, and just as important in this case, different.
I hope she will like them both. She lives in a colder part of the country and she does love a good scarf.
And now… they have been folded, wrapped, tied with hand made string and placed in the post!
Filed under Leaf prints, Natural dyeing
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