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!

I no longer have to steal my husband's slippers!

It has been a point of contention in the Hart household that I have been stealing John's slippers since my mum bought them for him last Christmas. But they're so warm and fleecy and I don't have any slippers. However, with Baby Hart's appearance only 6 weeks away, I needed some slippers to put in my hospital bag (apparently) and I don't think a pair of size 10, half-leg slippers shaped like dogs are really going to cut it on the labour ward.

As is the answer with most things here, I decided to make a pair. And, as is also so often the case, they couldn't just be any slippers, could they?

Cue an old favourite book, 'Knitting Mochimochi' (Anna Hrachovec, 2010, Watson Guptill) and the design that graces the front cover of the book itself. 'Feet Eaters' on page 107 are neat slippers that look like monsters are eating your feet. Brilliant. The sole is knitted with two strands of yarn on US size 8 (UK size 6) needles and take relatively no time to make. They are done entirely in gartar/plain knit stitch and do not get any more complicated than being able to increase knit-wise (or 'kfb' knit front and back). You then pick up stitches around the edge of the soles on double point needles to create the sides of the slipper.

The head part of the monsters are knitted separately.This was basically like knitting a tiny hat on double point needles in the round (US size 6/UK size 8). This is then stuffed, with the teeth added as you stitch them up. In terms of creating the slippers, construction was easy and straight-forward. The decrease rows, created by a mix of k2tog and SSK, provide a clear ridge that corresponds to the edge of the sole. This makes a clear boundary for stitching. The cute ears, sewn on at the end, finish the slippers beautifully.

In all, the pair of slippers took me four days to make in their entirety. In the end, I plumped for the smallest size because they provided the most snug fit across my stupidly narrow feet. I think that would be the only drawback to the pattern; the looseness across the foot. I also chose to change the colours slightly from what was recommended. Instead of going with a pink mouth and pastel slippers, I made red and black monsters. Anyone reading this who knows me personally will not be surprised by that!

Wired

I spent some time in Providence, Rhode Island last year and I met many keen knitters there (not to mention visiting all of the knitting and craft shops in the city itself - heaven). One of them mentioned that she had enrolled on an evening course to learn how to 'knit with wire' and I honestly thought I had misheard. Wire? Knitting? With wire? As if.


Back in England, curiosity peaked and in a post-travelling funk, I started Googling "wire knitting". It was then that I found a vast array of photographs of beautiful, intricate jewellery created with knitting needles. Amazing! I kept on searching and reading and made a page of notes with people's hints and advice for achieving success in what looked like a particularly tricky craft area. The one consistent factor was that it should be attempted with 28 gauge wire, which I found in abundance on eBay. Since then, I have discovered that Hobbycraft also sell it on reels, in a variety of colours, for under £2.

My experiments with wire knitting have been varied in their successes. For a start, it's really difficult and makes your hands hurt. I had to dust off my knitter's wrist support gloves to prevent getting a RSI! Yarn bends and moves, making knitting a pleasure. Wire is much less forgiving. I had to loosen my stitches and use an embroidery needle at intervals to pull the stitches into order. Most of my jewellery so far has been knitted on UK size 10 needles, which are pretty small. This is to make neat, small jewellery but again ramps up the difficulty. Lots of patience is required if you are going to attempt this!

To start off, I used the exceptionally simple backwards loop casting on method shown here. This gives you a supple edge without too much messy wire sticking out. You must remember to cast on the loops from the reel of wire and not the tail from the slip-knot - I kept forgetting and having to slip it onto a new needle at the end. If you are going to attempt to use beads in your work, these need to be slipped onto the reel of wire before you cast on. Again, a learning curve that I did not get straight away. I then just used garter stitch to knit as usual until my wire was the right size.

For the wrist cuff, I cast on 20 stitches and knitted roughly 10 rows. I then used the break and thread method of casting off followed by wrapping the tail of wire tightly around one of the other stitches. Some of my cuffs are fastened with hooks, some with ribbon.

I still have a lot to learn about this method of jewellery making, but I'm pleased with my progress so far :)

P is for pterodactyl...

Recently something horrible happened. My lovely nan, the woman who effectively enabled and inspired this blog, died at home. I miss her terribly and only wish she could be here in October to see her newest great-grandson. In true form, the last thing she did before going to sleep that night was write 'blue wool' on her shopping list so that she could knit Baby Hart something. That is perhaps the most touching thing I will remember and simultaneously made the whole ordeal both better and worse.

What my nan did do was leave me all of her knitting needles and patterns in her will. I'll be honest and say I was excited to get my hands on them - mostly because of a set of books that I spent most of my youth studying and working through.

Nan was a big fan of Jean Greenhowe the woman behind the scarecrow family that used to be on one of the stops of the Playdays bus (remember that?!). As a child, I loved her creations and nan knitted the majority of them for me. Every week in the school holidays we would bike to Roys of Wroxham to see if she had a new book out and shriek with joy when she did. I now find myself in possession of upward of 20 of these pattern books and, I suppose as a way of coping with my grief, I wanted to knit something right away.

The choice was easy in the end. The first thing I ever knitted from a pattern from start to finish was a little yellow dinosaur with orange spots and his caveman friend. These patterns were in her 'Toy Collection' (1989, Jean Greenhowe Publications) book and you can see pictures of them here. It made sense to go back and create some more cute dinosaurs, so I did! I knitted two 'flying reptiles' and two 'cave people' (pg13-14). Greenhowe's patterns are devilishly easy to follow and these are no exception. The cavemen are knitted all in one go and then stitched up at the end, so are dead quick to make. All four took me less than two evenings to create from start to finish. But what to do with them?

It was around this time that I spotted some wallpaper on a bourgeois home improvement tv show (again, it was on in the background when I was knitting. Promise.) and developed a slight obsession. After many an hour of Internet searches I found it here; 'Jolly Jurassic' fun dinosaur paper! Absolutely perfect for Baby Hart's room. So, with a wall of dinosaurs already, I figured the perfect thing to do was turn my knitted creatures into a cot mobile. And so I did. I'm not sure if the cavemen will ever catch their prey, but they're having a good try!

Baby Chucks

Apologies, readers, for not posting for a while. It is not through a lack of creative endeavour, more a lack of free time to sit and type. Anyway, with the long summer holidays stretching ahead of me, I have time to get my blog up to date with all of the knitting that has been going on here at KnitsandGiggles Towers.

I am currently 27 weeks pregnant and becoming slightly unwieldy. I thought, by now, that I would have a drawer full of knitted joys for Baby Hart but instead I find myself running out of time. Bugger. Time to knuckle down and get those needles clacking!

My most recent project has been a bit of a fun one. As with most people my age, I own at least one pair of Converse trainers. (I actually own many more than that, but I'm not about to admit how many!) It has got to the stage where my husband and I often go out wearing the same shoes without realising. This was then amplified when we went to London to visit a friend and he too was wearing the same colour and style of Chucks as us. A uniform of our youth? Who can say, but we have since diversified our colour choices! Anyway, it didn't seem right that the new addition to our family wouldn't have the same stylish footwear as his mum, dad and Godfather, so I went in search of a pattern...

For a while, I considered adapting a baby bootie pattern but, as is often the case with knitting, a quick search on the Internet saves you reinventing the wheel. And so I found this pattern, which is perfect. The booties are knitted all in one go, starting with the sole. You then have to shape the front of the shoe, knit the side, the separate tongue and then the final side. My first read through left me confused about this but as soon as I got knitting it was clear and easy to follow. They literally take shape right before your eyes. The laces are made from an i-cord, which I have detailed before. I didn't make any changes to the pattern; it worked a treat. The last thing I need to do is add the felt on the side with the star logo.

The result is a great pair of booties that are pretty unique and individual. I'm now busy knitting them on different size needles with a variety of colours to see him through as much growing as possible!