Knitting…. does it count as wordless wednesday?

Knitting Desaster

The wool for this sweater was on special offer, I bought it almost 4 years ago, and have been working on it on and off for about a year. I couldn’t find a design that fits the bulky, hairy yarn and my petite figure, so I swatched and designed until I thought I knew what to do. Today I finally finished it. I love the colours and the sweater. It took so long because I didn’t want to work on it on the commute, because the yarn is hand-washing only and the pattern complicated.

 

This is the pattern close up. It is an old pattern, called grape vine, trees (where I live) or print o’ the waves.

The only problem: the sweater doesn’t fit me. At all. That’s what the title of the posting is about. It looks actually worse on me than the photograph suggests. I’m small and skinny, so overly big and bulky sweaters do not exactly look flattering on me.

The stuff is really hairy and has a lot of wool and mohair, frogging it would ruin the yarn. So I’ll probably sell or gift it, although it’s breaking my heart.

 

Tutorial – Handmade Hem on Aida Fabric

I did stitch a lot and am almost done with chatchup, but I’m away from my scanner and don’t have good light for photographs right now. So I show you what else I’ve been up to.

I like that sampler better now than in the beginning, but I long for some on grid work anyway, to make things easier and faster. So, my next sampler is going to be a sampler an aida band. So I bought a ready-made band, but of course the short sides need some finishing anyway.

I’m showing you how I’ve done it.

First, I secured the edge with nun stitch, but you coulod as well glue or machine stitch it. I know it doesn’t look good but it will be invisible in the finished piece.

I wanted to create a sort of tube where I can insert hardware for hanging the samokler. So I folded the fabric to create the tube. I made the piece inside the tube as wide as the tube, otherwise it might show.

Next step is to draw out the threads for the drawn thread hem. For that, I cut them in the middle of the fabric strip and carefully drew them out of the warp going from the middle to the sides. On store-bought aida bands it is almost impossible to draw the threads out of the woven sides, so I glue the weft threads there later to secure them. this will be on the back of the work anyway.

Next, I pinned the fabric in place before the stitching.

For stitching, I turned the work over to stitch from the right side. Usually you do the hem stitches from the wrong side for a cleaner look, but on aida and other easiely countable fabric, I never manage to hit the correct holes in the fabric on the side I’m not lookfing at, so it won’t slook clean at all.

Well, here’s how the plain hem stitch is done.

Now this s the finished thing. It still needs cutting off the loose ends, I want to glue over them once more before that. I know there’s a mistake in it, but can’t be assed to undo it.

TAST – Barred Chain Stitch

This week’s TAST stitch is barred chain stitch and alternating barred chain stitch.
got to know this stitch during the first TAST and use it a lot for ragged lines.

This week I mostly spent gardening. Spring is slowly arriving here, the bushes are still bare, and I spent a lot of the time cutting the bushes in my garden to shape. So I stidtche some bushes. I’m not sure if I’m leaving this section as is or add some more, but I wanted to post something in time this time round.

TAST – Whipped Wheel

This week’s TAST is whipped wheel. Of course I have done this before. As old inspiration, I show you a little tutorial. I’ve taken the pics for it long ago, but never got round to writing up the tutorial. This is a good time to do it.

For another old example, look at my gallery, and Waiting for Spring

Also look at whipped and woven wheels on glued jute fiber.

But now to the tutorial. This is how I do padded whipped wheels when I’m on the commute and have no padding material availiable. You could do the same by stacking felt, that would be less expensive but would probably take longer than this method.

First, draw a circle as big as you want the stuffed woven wheel, then smaller circles inside that. I space them about 1mm apart, or 2-3 on rough material like this.

Now, fill the smallest circle with satin stitches going round and round like a spider web. They will pile up.

Do the same with all circles exept the outmost one.

Next, do the spiderweel you will actually whip. For this one, use the outmost circle as guidance. When you are done come out with the needle in the middle of the wheel and start whipping.

This diagram shows how to do the spiderwheel.

This shows how the whipping is done. If it’s not clear enough, look at regular whipped wheel in a stitch dictionary.

And now look at a cool shot of the finished thing, showing the dimensional effect.

I Keep Knitting (despite TAST)

And now that I’m on vacation, I actually find time to photograph and post a few of my knitted things. I’ll show more over the next few days.

This is a little bag I made. It was inspired by seeing the leaf pattern on a cowl I didn’t want to make. I know the thing is lacking a drawstring – I’ll buy some satin band as soon as i get round to it.

I quite like the improvised pattern and may actually write it up for download, but I want some braid between the seed stitches and the rest of the bag. I will have to test knit that before publishing.

the empty bag:

The same, filled with a pack of tarot cards (which is what I knit it for):

Once more, from a weird angle:

And a closeup of the pattern:

Would that be something you might knit?

TAST – running stitch

This week’s TAST stitch is running stitch. The easiest stitch of them all, and maybe the one with the most possible variations.

Others have posted long explanations about the running stitch embroidery traditions of various cultures, do go to Sharon’s blog and look at the postings of all those people. I show old stuff again, but this time lots of it. A sorry to those who know my blog and know these pics. Life is keeping me busy these days.

The fist shows a modern variation of kantha stitching. Kantha is an Indian form of stitching, it consists of many running stitches, sometimes used similar to quilting. Here the stitching was done over painted bondaweb between cotton and poly organza.

The next is a sample of pattern darning as used in european embroidery. It is also called diaper stitching because it was sometimes used to hold the layers of diapers together to give them enough volume for their purpose.

The next one shows a piece made mostly from manmade fabric and thread, stitched kantha like and then treated with a heat gun. The two links go to postings about this piece with more information.
<a href="http://tenar72.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/another-melting-experiment-with-panne-velvetand-lutradur/"melting experiment with lutradur
detail pics of the same project

TAST – Couching

So this week’s TAST was couching.

This is a stitch or group of stitches that is so versatile that I was at a loss what to do. You can couch almost anything using almost any stitch.

What I did here is probably better called laid work. Or nue is done the same way just with gold thread and silk. If you use different colours and patterns for the couching stitches it is called new england laid work.

-the next one shows – from left to right – oriental couching, bokhara couching and figure stitch.

Sorry I had no time to be more verbose today.

TAST – Chain Stitch

I missed chevron stitch and detatched chain stitch because my sampler went missing and I couldn’t quite bring myself to start a new one. So I found the old one again – under the sofa. Can you spell freudian slip?

I’m still not too happy about the background but challenges are about challenging oneself right? So I stitched on.

This time’s TAST stitch is chain stitch. Chain stitch is a a stitch I’m using a lot, but it doesn’t really inspire me. I use it as a plain filling stitch or line stitch, you do need Those either.

TAST – Detatched Chain Stitch

This week’s TAST is chain stitch.es I’m showing an old sample again. Don’t have as much time for this as I would like. Just enjoy the eye candy.