Sockings and lace

Hello again!  I'm back on track and posting once a week, which is awesome as I'm finishing so many things!  As promised, this week we'll be taking a look at some cute Christmas decorations I've been making, as well as another square on my throw.

As you may guess from the title of this post, I've been making some Christmas stockings this week.  The pattern is by Amanda Berry, and is available for free online here.

So far, I've made two - both with the moss stitch top in white.  One is red, the other red and green stripes:

Its a lovely little pattern, and very easy to adapt to what odd bits of wool you have.  I used Stylecraft Special DK, which I got in a pack of five (two red, two green and a white - aimed at Christmas knitting!) for around £8.  This was nice to knit with, and has a very Christmassy feel to the colours.  Plus there is great stitch definition.

Each stocking took just over an hour to make - great if you want an on the go project (and great for me and my short attention span).  I'm thinking of putting some small chocolates in them for the tree, so visitors will be able to help themselves to one, or stringing 24 of them together to make an advent calendar....  The ideas are endless, unlike time!  I'm definitely going to be making more before Christmas, maybe playing around with the basic pattern...  Watch this blog and we'll see if I get round to it!!

So the lace part of this blog post is the latest square I've made for my throw.  I'm not exactly much of a lace knitter - it goes wrong far too many times! - but I thought I'd have a go with a simple diamond pattern I found online.  Here's the finished square:

It did take a couple of attempts (on my first, something went wrong early on and it just didn't line up).  Lace knitting is something that I always thinks looks so complicated (and if it goes wrong, working out what went wrong and unpicking can both be!) however this was actually fairly straightforward.  It probably helps that its not in lace weight yarn, but double knitting.

Anyway, next time I'll hopefully have finished some rather unusual baubles I'm working on, and maybe a square or two for my throw.  Until next time, have a good week!

Finally back... Just in time for Christmas!

So, anyone who has read this blog regularly will have noticed that I've not posted for a while - in fact its now nearly two months since my last post!  Now, I won't bore you with too many details, but the reason for the lack of posts is I've been ill (I ended up in hospital after a severe allergic reaction, which then coupled with exams in September has meant a bit more time off work now to recover) and also I was packing up my craft stuff as we were hoping to move house...  That also fell through in mid September (brilliant timing all round really!).  So its been rather stressful eight weeks or so.

Thankfully I'm now feeling much better, if still a little tired, and I'm looking forward to returning to work tomorrow (albeit on reduced hours for a few weeks to build up slowly).  I think getting back into a better routine will help!

The advantage of needing to take it easy is that craft projects are the perfect thing to do (though in my tiredest days a few went a bit wrong...) and it is now only 11 weeks and two days to Christmas!  Seems a long way off, but I've lots of crafty plans (as usual) so to have any chance of doing a third of them I need to start now.  (if you're interested, one of the silly errors was trying to knit using the short cast on end, not the actual ball of wool...  I only realised when it ran out most of the way across the row!)

However, I think I'll save Christmas for next week...  I'm sure many of you have been into shops and thought "it gets earlier every year!" - I know I was surprised when Christmas stuff appeared early September...  This week, I've finished a jumper and bootees set that I was making for my godson.  Unfortunately, my godson has grown quicker than I knit, so it is far too small for him!  So it will probably be a gift for the next of my close friends / family that find out they're expecting a boy!  (I couldn't even pass it on to my in-laws side of the family, as in recent months the two babies born have both been girls!)

Anyway, this is the finished jumper:

 



 

The whole thing is knitted in one piece in simple stocking stitch.  It didn't actually take that long to knit really, I just got distracted by other projects, especially once my godson was born and I knew it wouldn't be done in time.

 

The advantage of it being knit in one piece (see the picture below) is that it reduces the amount of sewing up that needs to be done (something else I'm very good at putting off - I still haven't finished the bags I mentioned in my last blog post on 12 August!).  This also helps speed up how long it takes, and given how many times I put down the project made it easier to keep track of!

 

 

The matching bootees are also rather cute - each was knitted in less than an hour:

The whole set is made to fit a three month old, and was completed in less than 100g of Sirdar Snuggly DK.  The wool was nice and soft to work with (and so will be soft for baby) and given it only used two 50g balls it was a relatively cheap make.  The patterns for both the jumper and bootees can be found in "Simple knits for cherished babies" by Erika Knight.

So, as I''ve already mentioned next week will feature a few of my Christmas makes that I'm working on, as well as hopefully another square or two of my throw (for those that consider it too early to be thinking of Christmas!).  I'll see you next week (and I mean it this time!) - have a good one.

Strawberries and moss stitch

So, it's been an interesting, if long, week.  Firstly, I had a wonderful weekend - on Saturday I went to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC with my best friend and godson (plus her mother-in-law and sister-in-law!), then Sunday was the Great British Craft Festival (which I dragged my husband to!).  The former was huge, and my legs were so tired, but my purse a lot lighter.  There were so many lovely things!  I'm hoping a couple of items that were out of stock are available again soon, but we'll have to wait and see...  The latter was smaller, and more about card making, though I still got some lovely things.  My husband and I even had a tutorial on how to make a sliding card!  The picture below shows all the lovely things I bought, which will be future blog posts:

The other reason it's been long is that the last two days I've been at the office past 9pm, which when I start before 9am isn't ideal!  I'm supposed to finish at 5.30, but it's been really busy.  Looking forward to the weekend!

Anyway, enough of that, lets get onto the interesting part of the week: the makes.

As the title suggests, I've been working on moss stitch as part of the throw I'm making.  Specifically, I decided to make three moss stitch squares: one classic moss stitch, one double moss stitch and a third in broken moss stitch. 

Lets start with moss stitch.  This is a classic pattern that I've seen used quite a lot.  For an odd number of stitches, you simply K1, P1, to the last stitch, K1.  Then repeat that row until it's the desired length (if you have an even number of stitches, you need to swap knit and purl for even rows).  Here's how it looks:

The second square I tried was double moss stitch.  I did this one on the way home from a day at the horse racing (a work social event) earlier this week.  For this one, on an odd number of stitches, the pattern is:
Row 1: (K1, P1) to the last stitch, K1
Row 2: (P1, K1) to the last stitch, P1
Row 3: repeat row 2
Row 4: repeat row 1
You continue these four rows until it's the desired length.  This is a picture of the finished square:

The final square of the week is broken moss stitch, worked as follows (over an odd number of stitches):
Row 1: (K1, P1) to the last stitch, K1
Row 2: K
This, unlike the other two moss stitch patterns, is different on the back and front.  This is the side I've decided is the front (looks most comparable to moss stitch):

I think I might knit two, and use one each way round...  But then there are so many other lovely stitch patterns to try!  Next week, I'll hopefully have finished a squares one I'm working on...

Now, you may be wondering where strawberries come into all this...  That's because of the knitting related sewing project I mentioned last week:

It was rather simple to sew - you start with one rectangle of each fabric (the lining and outside - I've used co-ordinating strawberry pattern cotton for mine, from Dunelm Mill) and sew together.  Then, fold up one edge to form a pocket (worth making sure you've enough fabric for this before you start - I didn't for my first attempt so it was too short for my knitting needles!). I then sewed the sides, and regularly to form vertical lines that will help keep the knitting needles in place.  I even added a little flap on the top.  The only problem I have is that it's now full...

Anyway, that's it for this week - next time I'll be posting about two bags that I've made (one crochet, one knitted) as well as another square for the throw.  Until then, have a great week!