Letting the Side Down...

Today, a friend and colleague, (or 'frolleague,' if you will) took one look at me and said, "you're wearing a hat you didn't knit." He was shocked that I would even consider wearing a hat not made by my own fair hands. It wasn't even a shabby hat - it was retro Carhartt!

But I was pleased. Firsty, because he noticed.Secondly, because he defined me by my creativity and its importance to me. And that was kind of nice.

Cut and Shut Gilet

I feel like I haven't had time to stop and think recently, let alone keep you all updated with my many UFOs. Between preparing stock for our upcoming Christmas markets, tweaking my knitting book, work and babies, life has been very busy indeed. And it seems that people keep asking me to do little bits of knitting for them, which never end up being very little at all!

Admittedly, I do tend to bring this on myself, which is where I begin today's post...

A while ago, whilst out shopping with a very good friend, we saw a fabulous cable-knit gilet. It was love at first sight. She picked one up, tried it on and couldn't resist. Really, this is where the story should have ended: with my friend skipping merrily down the street, bag swinging in hand. However, me and my big mouth, I uttered, "I could knit you a gilet like that, using better quality wool and at a fraction of the price." Clearly my subconscious was up for a challenge but had neglected to check my diary. My friend agreed enthusiastically (who can blame her? It's nice that she has confidence in my knitting ability, at least) so I set off to Boyes to buy some Aran yarn with the highest wool content available.

The hardest part of all this was deciding on the actual pattern. I am more than capable of creating a pattern from scratch, but sometimes I feel there is no point reinventing the wheel. Consequently, I looked at a few jumper, cardigan and waistcoat patterns in my knitting library and did a cut and shut job of amalgamating a few. This is most helpful because it gives you needle sizes, stitch numbers and basic measurements to start off with. I then added the basic cables and a strip for the toggles/button holes.

At the moment, the gilet is half finished, but I'm pleased where it is going. If she's really, really lucky, she might even get it before the winter is over :)

More Woollen Friends

After our success with Mini Alexander and Mini Richard, I've had a bit of a spell of creating woollen likenesses.

Back in August, a man approached me at a music festival while I was knitting and asked if I could make an Audrey Hepburn for his wife, who is a big fan. I, of course, obliged, using the pattern in the 'Knitted Icons' book (Meldrum, C&B, 2007). Now, I think this book looks fantastic, which is what led to me impulsively purchasing it. However, I think the patterns are a bit hit and miss - some of the directions aren't particularly clear and the patterns for clothes don't fit especially well if you are faithful to them. But with a bit of tweaking, you can produce some super celebrity friends, and the Audrey Hepburn I ended up creating was fantastic.

I was then asked by a very dear folk-musician friend of mine to knit a mini version of him for his next album cover. Brilliant! More than happy to help, I got knitting straight away to make the basic doll with trademark curly hair. Here he is chilling on my bookshelf amongst his musical peers:

The thread hanging from his foot is to tie in with the theme of 'loose ends' on the album itself. I then knitted a little waistcoat and made a felt guitar for him to hold.

Once the album is finished, I'll post a photo of the artwork as well as links to the website.

Anyone else fancy seeing themselves in yarn?!

Pointless Knitting

I've been holding this post back because I didn't want to tempt fate. However, after a very exciting telephone call today, we got the news we've been waiting for. The husband and myself have been picked to be contestants on BBC's Pointless! We are off to TVC in London on Friday. Amazing.

Anyway, I'm sure you are all thinking, 'that's great, Suz. But what on Earth does that have to do with knitting?' A valid question, readers. Now, I'm not saying that knitting got us picked to be on TV, but it certainly helped...

Obviously the goal of any audition is to stand out and be remembered in a good way. You don't want to be too showy or precocious or annoying, but you also don't want to be forgettable. I had a good long think about what made us unique and the first thing that sprang to mind was knitting. Maybe, if I took along some of my work, they might think it was cool and remember us. With this in mind, I set about searching through my pattern books to find something worthy.

It was then that I had an epiphany - why not knit the presenters, Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman? I picked up my shiny blue UK size 10 needles and started straight away. I knitted each leg separately then knit across all stitches and up the body. The head, hair and jackets were all knitted separately and then stitched on at the end. I agonised over the features and facial details, but I think I got it just about right with the help of 6mm safety eyes. What do you think?

(Apologies for iPhone pic - not my camera of choice)


They were certainly admired in the audition (something I am very grateful for) so will accompany us to London next week.


The only sad thing is that someone beat me to it. Yes, a contestant a couple of weeks ago also knitted Alexander and Richard and took them on the show. Only time will tell if my efforts make it onto TV, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Felting Catastrophes

Apologies, first, for my lack of posts of late. I have been working away in the Knit Cave on some exciting new patterns, which I will be writing about soon. So if you have a penchant for all things geek related, keep checking back!

In the meantime, I had a little bit of an ordeal with some felting...

Now, as a knitter, I've always been aware of felting and its merits. For those of you that don't know, felting is the process of turning your yarn into, well, felt. Have you ever put a wool jumper through a hot wash? Well, that tiny, thick jumper that you pulled out of the machine has been felted. And when you do it on purpose, it can be very useful.

Felted wool is thick, solid and strong. This makes it perfect to use for bags, brooches and embellishments. It can also be cut out, so if you felt a large square, you can cut out flowers and other decorations from it. I've seen lots of lovely corsages at craft fairs that have been made from felted wool, and even a bag.

I decided it was time for me to have a go at all this, and set about looking for some appropriate yarn. Now, because you are going to heat the yarn up and make it mash together, it needs to be of a suitable material to allow you to do this. This is, of course, wool. Off I went to Boyes (other wool shops are available, but that's my wool shop of choice!) to get some and I had a right job finding any. Every time I looked at a label, it had synthetic materials mixed in. Eventually, I found a label claiming that the yarn was 100% wool (hooray!) so I bought it, excited by a new challenge.

I thought I would try and knit a simple pencil case, so I knitted two equal rectangles in st-st on 4mm needles. I sewed them together with blanket stitch and prepared to throw them in the washing machine. After reading various websites and knitting books, the most common advice was to put the knitting in a washing machine at 60 degrees with a towel and some washing powder. The towel helps to rough it up a bit, encouraging the fibres to fuse together.

Well, what came out was a complete mess! Honestly, for those of you that panic about washing wool garments and ruining them, don't. After all that, it came out looking just the same. So I threw it in a pan of water and boiled it. Seriously. And you know what happened? Still nothing.

Perplexed, I carried on researching. It turns out that some yarn, even if it is 100% wool, will have been chemically treated to stop it from going wonky in a washing machine. This wool will never felt. The trick is to check the label again - if it says you can wash it in a cold machine load, it won't felt. No matter what you do.

In the end, I dug out a beautiful ball of pure wool that I bought on honeymoon in Iceland from a wool factory in Vik. I knew it was wool because it had that almost greasy feel to it and broke apart very easily (one strong tug whilst knitting and it just snapped - took a lot of getting used to). I re-knitted the pencil case, threw it in the machine and out came a perfect, solid, felt bag. Hurrah!

In conclusion: check your labels, then check them again, then give up and go to a farm shop that has sheep outside.

Game Boy for the iPhone Generation.

Continuing with my drive to put more time and effort into designing and making my own creations, I thought it might be fun to make myself a new phone case. Being a poseur, I have an iPhone. It's an old one, mind. And I maintain that it is an aid to my craft because I have a variety of knitting apps that allow me to access patterns and count my rows at the mere touch of a button. Ahem. But being a touchscreen it does require some sort of soft cover to stop my keys scratching it to bits in my handbag.

Further to this, I must (shamefully) admit that I am jealous of those with an iPhone 4s. Not because of Siri or any of that gubbins but because they come with an awesome array of case accessories. And where would any right thinking person of style be without accessories, daaahling? Nowhere. That's where. So imagine my green-eyed fury when I saw on a friend's picture that you can get a case that turns your phone into a Game Boy. The gamer girl geek inside me shrieked, 'TO THE KNIT CAVE!'

So how do you go about knitting a phone case that looks like an old handheld game console? Well, first of all I blocked out a simple design on squared paper to incorporate the screen, surround, controller and buttons. This took a few goes to make it all proportionate. I cast on 20 stitches on UK size 9 needles and just started knitting. Once my work was roughly the length of my phone, I started on the pattern. I then carried on with the block colour again until the whole piece could fit around both sides of my phone. I sewed up the sides, leaving an opening to slip the phone in and out of, and my case was finished!

I think next time I will use grey wool for the console colour, as I'm not too happy with it. But I am pleased with it as a first attempt. Mr. KnitsandGiggles also deserves a brief mention at this stage. I often send him to my wool cupboard to fond balls of wool and he invariably comes back with the wrong colour, thickness etc. However, it seems that sending him off with the instruction to find wool that is 'Game Boy button coloured' is an easy task indeed! What a man.

As ever, message me if you'd like the pattern.

Muppet hat for my little Animal

Let me set the scene: I'm in the cinema with the Dilley family (watched The Artist, which is truly superb) and a trailer comes on for the upcoming Muppet movie. Cue general excitement. It is around this time that Rachael mentions seeing knitted Muppet hats on the Internet and I know that I won't be happy until I've had a go myself. Knitting inspiration really is an itch that must be scratched!

Now, obviously, I have only procreated to have a little subject for all of my knitting trials. Not entirely true, of course, but it is fun knitting for him! So I set about knitting Noah an Animal inspired hat because he's our little drummer boy. I started by blocking the pattern out on graph paper, copying a picture of Animal from the film magazine. It took a few goes to make it symmetrical but I got there in the end. I cast on 62 stitches in the round on three double-pointed UK/US size 7 needles and knitted a 1" band in seed stitch (k1,p1 then p1,k1 on alternate rounds). For the body, I used one strand of orange yarn and one strand of fluorescent pink to give the random, mottled colours of his fur. I then used intarsia to create the face. At the top, I decreased stitches evenly around before breaking and threading the yarn to cast off.

Now, sadly, my son has been gifted the gigantic head of his daddy, so it's not the best fit in the world, but I'm sure he'll get at least one week's wear out of it. Maybe then I'll make him a Beaker one to replace it...

NB: If you'd like the pattern, drop me a line! Happy to oblige :)
        suziknitsandgiggles@googlemail.com

Fair Isle Fishies

Apologies, regular readers, for my lack of blogging of late. You'll probably be aware that I was in the family way, right? Well, that is now not the case and all of my time is being taken up by my handsome boy, Noah Richey. But I wouldn't be me if I didn't have a few knitting projects on the go, they're just taking a bit longer these days...

When I finished work for my maternity leave, I had two weeks until my due date (which turned out to be just under three weeks in the end). With little else to do except sit around getting increasingly more unwieldy, I decided to take on an ambitious project. I've used intarsia on a number of occasions but never to make a jumper or on the scale required by a Fair Isle pattern. "What the hell," I thought. "It'll keep me busy, if nothing else."

The pattern in question was to create a Fair Isle jumper with a fish pattern from the 'Stitch 'N' Bitch Superstar Knitting' book (Stoller, 2010, Workman). The Life Aquatic jumper by Serena Murphy was fun and quirky and looked just about challenging enough. It is knitted on circular needles in one go - something that I encountered for the first time when knitting my lace heart jumper. This makes it feel like you are completing the jumper in record time because I had knitted up to the arm joins in a matter of days. You then have to knit the arms on double point needles and work the pattern chart for the first time. The benefit of this is that you can practise it before you get to the more complicated cowl neck.

Once the arms are knitted, you have to join them to the body and knit all the way across all 290 stitches (phew!) which results in a very heavy knitting project. I certainly felt like I had arms of steel by the end! The only real tricky bit was remembering which rows needed decreases in the number of stitches and making sure that the pattern still looked right. The main benefit of knitting in a circle is that you can do all of the colour changes in Garter stitch, which I find much easier.

Anyway, I finished the jumper the day I went into labour. It's almost like he was waiting, eh? And I got to wear my beautiful jumper over Christmas because that's the best time to wear knitwear, after all.

Happy New Year, everyone. May 2012 be the year you learn a new skill, complete all of your unfinished projects and go on many more knitting adventures!