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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting 1 Comment

Who can resist a good Monty Python quote?

On to the blog however, where nobody would expect the sewing machine!

Ok ok, I will refrain from the pointy cushion and skip straight to the comfy chair!

Yep, I finally decided to turn an old set of curtains into an armchair and foot rest cover. It’s not perfect, far from it, but it looks good and does a better job than having said curtain just draped across it…

The kitties certainly approve – there was at least one fluffy menace either on the fabric or the chair the entire time I was trying to work on this!

After this achievement I’m feeling a bit braver about a few other projects I have lined up, ones that hopefully won’t take me so long to get around to doing…

Besides this, as well as a second armchair cover, I’ve been doing a lot of tidying, mending and one final big push with everything the garden has to offer. I have about three buckets of apples and probably three more of pears to sort through, but we’ll get to them when we get to them.

I’ve also picked up my spinning again. It’s slow progress, but it’s getting there. After getting covid my asthma has been bad to say the least, not quite but near the same level of bad as when I had pneumonia (and no, I am not an OAP, I was in my early thirties at that point) but with the increased inhaler use, and stringer inhalers too, I have a permanent shake. It’s not affected my knitting but a lot of my other crafts have struggled.

But I will persevere! I have grand plans that involve hand spun wool, and even more crafts, and the learning of new ones, so I will go on!

Unsurprisingly not a lot of knitting this week, so no finished projects and no wool used. The total hasn’t gone up either so I won’t bore you with the wool count.

Until next week, stay safe!

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting 1 Comment

Or should that be ‘cloak and nerf blaster’?

Last year I mentioned I had a few sewing projects, the first and biggest one was to make a Gaunts Ghosts (a unit from a Warhammer 40K book series of the same name), style cloak for a friend of mine. I did achieve this after a few weeks of messing around and phoning Rabbie for help…

Not going to lie, by the time I sewed the last edges and tidied up the lining, I was pretty proud of my creation! Just one problem, photos.

The person receiving this lives pretty far away, and the size difference between him and myself is laughable. Nearly a foot taller, and about three times more broad in the shoulders, there was no hope of me getting photos wearing it! So poor Engel was drafted in, and wearing his motorcycle jacket, was much nearer the scale needed.

Well, in the shoulders, Engel is only a little taller than me so still a good bit shorter! However, you get the idea of the fit at least.

So, seeing as I took these photos in August, why am I only sharing them now? Well, the first reason is the cloak reached my friend end of September, and he did some footage of it which is stuck on a hard drive a cat decided to wee onto. I doubt any photos will be taken in the wet and cold of British winter so…yeah.

And…reason two may be that I have no finished knitted projects to share so figured why not just share this now?

Regardless of the reason, here is one of the first sewing projects I plan to share!

That’s all for this week, stay safe!

Wool Count

Starting total – 843

Wool used – 4 (3 this week)
Wool bought – 1
Wool given to me – 0
Wool gifted to others –
Wool handspun – 0

Total – 843 (Net difference: -3)

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting 1 Comment

Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned a certain set of blue projects for a while, a set of three matching blue sweater vests to be exact, and the answer to that was…

Well, I finished them. Did all the picking up of stitches and ribbing, weaved in the ends, then shoved them in a bag and out of sight for…three weeks…?

I am ashamed to admit I have only just pulled them back out to photograph them and to share with you all!

Apologies for the photos being somewhat uninspired, but with so much blue, and it being three identical garments in various sizes…there’s not much you can do with that!

I’m planning on gifting these today, and if my measurements and maths are all correct, they should fit the FIL and the little Terrors well. Can’t wait to see them all matching!!

In current knitting news, I am doing a spate of Christmas knitting. These will get shared, in part, on the blog as the only member of the family who reads this and will receive them has been helping come up with ideas and inspiration behind it all. More on that later.

I did mention last week about sewing projects, and there’s been some fun photo shoots with regards to that, as well as a few extra little projects sneaking their way in. There’s debate as to when I should share these as I don’t know if I should before I send it off to its new owner, or wait until they have received it… When I get an answer I will post about it, until then, we’re all somewhat being kept in the dark!

In non knitting news, my new job has been going well. It’s strange working for a company that focuses on nurturing their employees and encouraging ideas and creativity, compared to being just a number who gets their workload increased until they crack…

There was a lengthy conversation with Engel where I explained that I was happy, but also anxious, because surely, at any moment now, the other shoe is going to drop and it’s all going to turn out to be some elaborate ploy with some awful catch attatched… I’m still waiting.

There’s been some spinning going on as well, I have a project planned that requires some hand spun, and some natural dying of fleece for no other reason than I wanted to have a play with colour.

Yesterday saw me getting my second Covid jab, which I am pleased to have now had. Its a strange one, I wasn’t keen on getting the vaccine for myself, as in my health, but was very keen to get it so I would feel that the risk of making friends and family and loved ones would be greatly reduced.

Give it two weeks and I will be giving out all the hugs!

Thats all for this week, sorry it’s a bit of a ramble, I feel like I have lots to say but also not sure what to say, or where to start.

Until next week, stay safe!

Wool Count

Starting total – 897

Wool used – 107 (5 this week!!)
Wool bought – 33
Wool given to me – 47
Wool gifted to others – 4
Wool handspun – 9

Total – 882 (A net total of 15 down)

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting 1 Comment

To show you this quick little leaving present for someone at my work:

It’s based on the hat worn by Jayne Cobb in an episode of the cult hit TV series Firefly. I’m pleased to say she was happy with it! No pattern given as it’s something I whipped up from my head…

In other not knitting news, I had my sewing lessons again and made more cushions! (Waiting for the rest of the class to get confident with the machines before I move in to more fun things) so here’s my latest upcycled T-shirt cushion!

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It’s probably one of my favourite T-shirts that Engel doesn’t wear anymore (it’s so baggy it’s like a tent, and that was before he lost weight!) So now, it’s an awesome cushion.

And since I had time…

Well, let me explain this one, from the beginning. The beginning by the way, is some point in 2011.

This is the result of a string of disasters.

I wanted to knit my other half the big bad wolf jumper, (from the book Domiknitrix by Jennifer Stafford) so bought some wool and cast on.

Halfway through, I ran out of wool and found it to have been discontinued. I managed to find something similar so…rip rip rip went my first attempt, and I cast on again using the new wool.

Sigh.

I knit all the pieces, sewed them together and had him try it on. I’d sewed the arms too tight, so yank yank yank out came my sewing and back I sewed again.

Grr.

It fit. Perfectly. Just the right amount of drape so as not to be snug, but not so much as to be baggy.

It was worn every day for a week before I got it off him and into the washing machine…where it did something very weird. It got both wider and shorter.

Argh!

He put it on once it was a dry and it looked like a super baggy belly top…not his look at all!

OK, that did give me a chuckle.

After sitting in the naughty knitting corner for a year, I rather haphazardly turned it into a cushion. It was ok, but… I kind of sewed the cushion into the cover. So… not so easy to wash.

Grr!

So today I pulled it apart again and turned it into a much nicer, neater cushion!

And that is the rather long tale of why my big bad wolf jumper is now a cushion…

There you have it for today’s post.

Starting total – 697

Wool used – 100 ( 3 this week)
Wool bought – 13
Wool given – 7

Total – 617

 

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting, Uncategorized 1 Comment

As mentioned last post, working on Christmas knits so nothing to show right now! Well, I do have this recent creation:

img_20160917_190716290

Not knitting, but still craft related. There’s a group in the village over that teach people all kinds of craft – knitting, crochet, sewing, card making, felting, all sorts! So I’ve been getting to grips with a sewing machine. I’ve always been able to thread one (mum uses a machine, but her eyes are not so good so that was a job she had me and Rabbie do) and I can do a straight line and that’s about it.

Now though, I turned one of Engels old super baggy but still too awesome to just throw away t-shirts into a cushion cover! This is the practice one, there’s more awesome ones to do.

Want to see knitting though? Here’s a pair of pen-tacle cuties from the archives:

Who says stationary has to be boring? The red one is a classic squid/octopus inspired creation, and the second…blame Engel. He was playing Day of the tentacle… Or something?

Lastly, the wool count. Yeah…well, you see…I worked out what I was going to knit for the Christmas presents, but came up three balls of wool short (yes, I came up short despite owning 600+ balls of wool!) So in Tuesday popped to the wool shop near work (Black Sheep – it’s amazing!) and managed to walk out with just the three I needed (even more amazing). Yesterday though, I got home to find Engel had picked me up three balls more wool and a bag of tablet as I was feeling a little blue.

Considering I hadn’t actually told him this, and had only just begun to feel blue, well, that’s probably the most amazing thing of all.

Or it’s the brood telepathy.

Does however mean that instead of being good and using two balls of wool, I added six, so net gain of four balls of wool. Oops…

Starting total – 697

Wool used – 97
Wool bought – 13
Wool given – 7

Total – 620

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