2006 Round-up

So, it's time once again to count up the projects that were completed during the year. Some have been ripped, some given away, some live in the drawer never seeing the light of day and some are almost worn out from loving overuse!

On the knitting front I completed:

13 pairs of socks
1 pair of gloves
4 kids sweaters
2 scarves
2 shawls
4 cardigans
5 sweaters (3 short sleeved)
6 dishcloths

Not a bad haul really I don't think! Last year I knit 37 items and this year it was exactly the same which is pretty freaky really!

Now the sewing for the year, took some time to count this up without a FO list I can tell you!

6 dresses
14 t-shirts
11 pairs of kids pjs (four pairs had shop bought tops with appliques on them)
1 dressing gown
3 nightdresses / adult pjs
3 pairs of trousers
13 shirts
8 bags
7 skirts
13 kids t-shirts
11 pairs of kids trousers/shorts
1 quilt
1 apron
2 Christmas stockings

wow, that's more than I expected 93 things by my quick count, and I wonder why I still have so much fabric left.... Again, some of it was given away, some didn't fit and some I've worn to pieces already, but it all increased my sewing abilities and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can whip up next year.

Here's to a productive 2007 for us all!

Man vs Sock

Still here, had a wonderful Christmas with my parents and we're now lazing around the house with the odd dog walk or short shopping trip here and there until DH goes back to work on Tuesday and Little One back to school on Wednesday. Very little crafting has been achieved but I am enjoying the time doing nothing.

Someone who has been blogging though is my DH. He has started a blog called Man vs Sock all about the challenges and fun of knitting his first pair of socks. Drop on by won't you and cheer him on. He is obviously becomming a little obsessive as I had to tell him he couldn't knit at the dinner table tonight!

Happy New Year to everyone, have a fun and safe celebration.

Not Going To Happen

My Mother's bag isn't going to be finished in time for Christmas. I'm finding the pattern quite confusing and my sewing doesn't seem to be up to scratch at all. Add to that the fact that I thought I would have 10 hours of sewing time this week totally forgetting that Little One finished school on Tuesday so that only gave me 4 hours (this bag is too hard to work on while tired) there's no way I'm going to get it done.

So, I'm thinking perhaps I will pull out one of my easier bag patterns and whip one up for a present (the bag was half her present) and perhaps finish this off properly and unrushed for her Birthday (which isn't until September) or maybe I should wrap up the pattern and give her an IOU, which I've never done before and seems a bit cheap to me.

I think I probably will try to sew her something quick, I have a t-shirt pattern I've used for her before which I know fits her perfectly and plenty of easy bags and plenty of fabric (!) that I could use. I have until Saturday morning to get it done at which point the sewing room has to be transformed into their bedroom for the duration of their stay. If I don't make it then it will have to be the wrapped pattern, I know she won't mind but I will, I was so looking forward to giving her this gift and one little picture and badly worded instruction is holding me up, it's a small step but very important for each piece and I just can't get it right at the moment....

Knitting is chugging along slowly, all socks all the time still but hey, they make me happy and are easy so what the hell.

If I don't get time to post before I hope everyone has a great Christmas!

Christmas Sewing

I finished off half of my Christmas sewing yesterday, still left to do are a bag and an apron for my Mother which I will get going on this weekend hopefully. As they are coming here for Christmas I have until the 23rd to finish it off and get it wrapped, should be long enough!

I made another Simplicity 4535 bag, which was my travel bag that I took to Oregon with me. My sister saw it and asked for one, as I had fabric in my stash intended for a bag for her anyway I just matched the two up and away I went.



This time I didn't add any length to the bag (I made mine 2 inches longer) but did make a couple of other changes. I added 2 inches to the handles, I found with my bag that when I had my coat on it was wedged right under my arm which wasn't very comfortable. I also left off the pocket from the outside back (it's the same as the one on the front) as I can't think of anything more uncomfortable than having a stuffed pocket rubbing against you when you're using the bag. I left off the pencil pocket inside as well but did the proper zipped pocket on this one that I missed off of mine.


I forgot to put a magnetic snap at the top of the bag but I'm sure it will be fine without it. I topstitched around the top of the bag to stop the lining from rolling outwards, I find it strange that the pattern didn't call for this as every other bag I've made had done.

After I finished the bag I and wrapped it up and the other present for my sister and BIL I decided to have a go at the stockings that I wanted to make for my parents. My Mother still does stockings for each of us, daughters and husbands only, not grandchildren! I decided that as they are coming here this year it would be nice to do them stockings as well so I whipped these up using fabric and notions from my stash. The blue one is for my Mother and the red one for my Dad.

I didn't use a pattern for these (which is why the foot is a little oddly shaped) and the whole process making both of them took me half an hour sewing (I'd cut them out the day before). It makes me laugh that the rick rack on the top of my Mother's stocking is from my square dancing dress that she made me in 5th grade, she kept it in her stash until about 2 years ago when it found it's way into mine! There is still a tiny length of it left which I'm sure I'll use up one day.

This new Blogger is a bit of a pain photo wise isn't is? I keep my photos elsewhere online and have always just copied and pasted the link into my blog where I wanted the photo to be. This Beta Blogger is like Gmail, ie incredibly frustrating, in that it won't let you right click and paste into it, it pisses me off over and over again with Gmail and I can see it being annoying here too. Now I have to us the Blogger photo uploader thing to put the link in to my photo and then it pastes the photo at the top of the entry rather than where I want it to be.... I'm sure I'll get the hang of it sooner or later but posting this took a lot longer than it would have with the older version! I am fighting the urge to go back and label all my previous posts, that would be a huge time suckage project!

Right, some new 2.5mm dpns just arrived in the post so I'm off to cast on yet another pair of socks, it's a disease I tell you.....

(Just done the spell check, me like the new way it works!)

All About The Casting On

I don't seem to be able to concentrate on one project at the moment and, despite the really long list of WIPs on the sidebar, all I want to do at the moment is cast on for new and exciting projects.

New on the needles in the last week or so is the next pair of socks for DH. I'm turning the heel on the first one at the moment. I can't say I like the colourway he choose very much but he does and they're his socks so that's ok. I just got 2 more balls of yarn for socks for him in the post from Get Knitted as well, I do enjoy having plain socks on the needles for when I'm reading blogs or watching something absorbing on tv.

I also cast on Tulips from Knitscene Fall 06. It's a kimono shaped cardigan with lace on the sleeves, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to skip the lace and knit them plain as I don't like the tulip lace the pattern uses (guess that makes this knit Tulip-less). I'm using some pink Jaeger cotton I've had in the stash for ages for it and I'm about 5 inches into the back at the moment. It's plain stocking stitch on 3.5mm needles so another easy project for mindless knitting.

Finally I've cast on for the Shetland Triangle by Evelyn Clark (is this from Wrap Style Kathy?). I'm using the Tequila Sunrise colourway bamboo I have in my stash and am enjoying the simple lace on 4mm needles. It's not a full sized shawl and I have 500 yards of yarn which judging from the pattern notes should make a shawl the size of the one in the picture.

The other projects are creeping along, the turquoise and brown socks are pissing me off again as the colourway is swirling up the cuff after working properly on the foot... I have another colourway from the same company and if I have these problems with that I'll definitely not be buying any more of this yarn. The Snowflake Socks have about one pattern repeat done, I must get them to the top of the basket and get a repeat done a day so they get moving, it's a pretty simple pattern and the 10 row repeat doesn't take much time. Licorice Whip is waiting for the hip increases and then it's straight knitting to the bottom, I really must take it out more and work on it, I'm so close to getting the body done it's silly and then all I have is 2 sleeves on dpns, shouldn't take too long. I dug out the Diamond Fantasy Shawl the other night and did 4 rows on it, I don't know why I've avoided knitting lace for the last few months, I must get back to it as I really do enjoy it.

Everything else has been on hold and not touched. Sewing wise I cut out my sister's bag but haven't touched it since. Little One has been home from Nursery for 2 days with a cold so we've not made much progress on anything really. He's going back today so I intend to get some sewing done on that bag while he's out.

Right, off to start turning the heel on DH's sock and then get some lunch for Little One.

My New Model

Here showing off my latest sewing project is my dressform which totally surprised me by arriving the day after I ordered it! It's interesting and a little scary to see your shape and size in a 3d form in front of you, of course she doesn't have the lumps and bumps that I do, I wish that my stomach was that flat! However, she does give a good estimation of what the garment looks like worn.



This is Onion 5022 yet again (no, I'm not bored of it yet!). The fabric is a ribbed sherpa that I got from a US co-op ages ago and the FOE is also from a co-op, this time a UK one, so long ago that I can't remember which one it was. I tried to use the ribbed sherpa for a project a while back and it didn't work out so I wasn't sure that I would get it right this time but it seems fine. The idea for this shirt was something simple and thick enough to be like a sweatshirt without being as dull as a sweatshirt can be, I think I managed it.

I have started cutting out my sisters bag for her Christmas present. The flowers on the fabric are so big that I'm having to move pattern pieces about to get the flowers how I want them to be, I'll get there in the end but it's a little tedious. I have a few other projects ready to go as well, all of them I'm looking forward to working on, hopefully I will find more time to get them done than I have recently.

I did have time on Saturday as the boys were out but unfortunately due to being a complete klutz I didn't get to use my time well. I managed to slide down the stairs very early Saturday morning whilst going to find out why the computer hadn't finished burning the dvd it was working on. I have a carpet burn on my elbow and my right foot took the brunt of the fall as I instinctively stuck it out to stop myself sliding any further and seem to have bruised several of the bones. I did, however, learn that falling down the stairs is one of the few things that will wake my deep sleeping DH up, which is good to know! By the time I'd cut out the top and sewed the seams on Saturday I was in real pain so I sat down and put my foot up rather than carrying on working on it. This Saturday the boys are out as well so I will hopefully not injure myself prior to then and will be able to make the best of the time!