Fame Infamy

I'm starting to worry that I'm gaining a bit of a reputation. First of all, I was head-hunted to start a knitting club by one of the Big Girls' teachers today. Despite having an already bulging schedule, I'm seriously tempted. It would be amazing to work with teenagers on more adventurous projects and design work. Then, as I was getting ready to leave work, a parent popped his head round the door to wave a scarf at me and say, "It's a home knit!" before wandering off.

Who am I kidding? I'm not worried at all. It's brilliant!

Anyway, I digress. I actually signed on today to tell you all about my new tea cosy...

Before Christmas, I suddenly became inundated with commissions for Christmas presents. One of them was for a tea cosy. A friend asked me to design and knit him a tea cosy that was like an Aran jumper. He sent me a few pictures of jumpers for inspiration, too, and asked for it in cream. I obliged, turning it around in two days before sending it off and not giving it another thought.

Except that's not entirely true. Now, whenever the teapot comes out, my mind wanders to the beautiful cable cosy. How I wish I had one of my own. The solution? To knit my own! Hurrah!

The cosy is knitted in two pieces and sewn together at the end, leaving ample room for handle and spout. I used 5.5mm (UK5/US9) needles and chunky wool, bought from my fantastic local wool shop in Stanhope. It is a fairly simple design using the basic cable C4B and alternate sections of knits and purls:

Now my tea can stay cosy and warm in this chilly weather!

It's a Sickness

Happy New Year, knitting friends! I hope this finds you well and happy and ready to embrace 2013.

I don't really do resolutions myself, but I do need to be better at updating my blog, so maybe a few things should change around here. Not least because I have been knitting like crazy for the past couple of months and haven't shared any of it with you.

My reason for posting today is to document my addiction. I can't stop buying knitting books. I know; it's a sickness. I just pop into those cheap, high-street book shops and come out with a bag full. I spent all of last week sorting out my bookshelf. Finally, it was tidy, and I felt marginally better about living in a cramped house. Then I went out and bought another book. Arg! I think my husband is about ready to strangle me.

Possibly the best thing about my addiction is that other people recognise and embrace it. I was bought an amazing book for Christmas by a dear friend called Knitted Dinosaurs (Barrett, 2011) and I am itching to get started on a few of them. My little boy has a dinosaur themed bedroom, as you'll know from previous posts, so I think a few more frieds dotted around the room will add to the ambience quite nicely.

I also picked up Animal Hats (Henderson, 2012) from my local discount bookseller's for a bargainous £3.99. I'm a bit miffed that a lot of the hats are crocheted (just can't do it) but some of the designs are just fantastic, particularly the shaggy lion.

I'll make sure I post photos of any successful projects!

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.