Month: August 2013

The packing has begun.

The packing has begun.

We’ve been packing up bits and pieces around the house for a few weeks now, mostly getting everything out of the loft and chucking lots of things away. Today we reached the point where we’d be packing things we need and use, so it was time to start on the Shed. Thankfully most things are stored in small boxes and drawers anyway, so it was just a case of piling them all up inside the big packing boxes. I’m trying very hard to pack like with like, so I don’t have to rummage through a dozen boxes to find one small thing at the other end. We’re going to need a LOT more boxes to fit everything in.

The fabric and thread are all staying out for a little while longer, and I’ve also held on to one big reel of elastic, so I’ll be making things that I can put together with no other haberdashery – everything else is in one of those big boxes up the corner!

Now I just need to try and stay patient a bit longer. We found out yesterday that it had taken one set of solicitors (not ours, thankfully) an utterly ridiculous TWO WEEKS to deliver the latest round of paperwork, which is infuriating. We could have moved in by now, if they weren’t taking so long! And they’re being paid a small fortune, to apparently not do their job very well. Like I said, infuriating!

Still. We’re getting rid of some more things today – 90 paper bags and a couple of hundred CD cases are moving on to new homes. Then I just need to get rid of one lovely-but-rusty bike, and my old sewing machine and overlocker.

We’re getting there.

Slowly.

Knitting: works in progress

Jillybean shawl

As my sewing things in the Shed are gradually being packed away, my focus is shifting across to knitting. This is a Childry shawl, knitted in Jillybean‘s Knot Another Granny Yarn. I’ve just reached the soul-destroying part, which is the row where you triple the stitch count to make the ruffle. Each row now takes about half an hour to knit… but it does mean that the end of the shawl is in sight!

Colinette shawl

This one is another Childry, in a long-discontinued Colinette yarn. I don’t think this one’s going to be as big as a shawl (it’s only about six inches long at the moment), but I think it’ll make a nice little neckwarmer.

Striped Tank

These colours aren’t quite right – it’s a lovely maroon and dusky pink combination. The pattern is Echinacea, by Rita Taylor. You’ll notice that mine isn’t exactly the same as the one on Ravelry. I utterly loathe doing colour work, so after only a few rows the flowers were unravelled and transformed into stripes. Eventually this will be a lovely square-ish tank top to wear at work.

Forest Scarf

This Kidsilk Haze Stripe was originally bought to make a jumper. After eighteen months I’d only knitted three inches of the first sleeve, because knitting complicated lace in mohair that’s impossible to unravel turned out to be a really bad idea! So now it’s almost turning into the scarf pattern that’s printed on the ball band. I say “almost” because the borders up the sides of the scarf are supposed to be in moss stitch, but I seem to have been knitting them in garter stitch for quite a while. Given that I can’t see where the change happened amidst the fluff of the mohair, I’m going to make the executive decision that it doesn’t matter!

Golden Cowl

This one’s my new favourite. I bought the yarn on Saturday, wound it up into a ball (all one thousand metres of it!), and started designing straight away. It’s eventually going to be a lovely little golden cowl for a Christmas present. In fact, I’m hoping there’s going to be enough yarn to make two, as I already don’t want to give this one away!

The nice thing about having a lot of knitting on the go is that I can pick and choose depending on the state of my hands and the length of my concentration span. The nice thing about a lot of it being very simple knitting is that it frees up my mind to think about other things, while my hands just take care of the stitches. (Mostly. When they’re not knitting garter stitch instead of moss stitch by mistake.) At the moment I’m thinking about cowls and mittens and interchangeable lace patterns, and maybe a little booklet to show them off. We’ll see. For now I just need to make sure that I’ve got enough knitting available to keep me as sane as possible during the house move.

Meet Mrs Magpie

Mrs Magpie

I can’t believe it’s taken me since May to get around to showing you this, but please say hello to Mrs Magpie!

As you know, she’s one half of Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium – a Victorian-inspired but thoroughly anachronistic curiosity shop. She only makes a public appearance roughly once a year, so she likes to dress up for the occasion.

I made the costume, with the exception of the sonic screwdriver (made by Paul), and the birdcage necklace, which I bought from Atelier Fabry-Pérot. It’s part of a set of laser-cut decorations, but Mrs Magpie, being a lover of enormous shiny things, thought it would make a fantastically extravagant pendant.

I’m sure I’ve been going on a bit about all the changes that have been happening this year. My health’s gone out the window, my hours and role at work have changed, and now we’re in the middle of moving house. I’m also changing the things I make, and am trying to focus at the moment on the materials and the creation and the process, rather than the selling of an end product. I find it helps me to imagine who might buy or wear or use the things I make, and Mrs Magpie is most definitely in charge of all things bright and flambpyant and shiny! I think she might need a friend, who’s more interested in the soft and natural and comfy.

That didn’t go well…

Silk noil dyeing failure!

Last night, in my rush to have a piece of dyed fabric to work with today, I brewed up some tea in the urn and threw in a big piece of silk. Unfortunately, I didn’t really think through how much dyestuff I was using compared to the amount of fabric – and the answer turned out to be not nearly enough.

Silk noil dyeing failure!

The silk had been in the tea urn all night, but you can see that it came out almost exactly the same colour as it went in. The very weak colour of the dye solution is another clue that it simply wasn’t going to work!

Silk noil dyeing failure!

As I was emptying the tea urn into the bath I cleverly managed to kick the spout, which poured scalding water all over the top of my foot. Not my best move ever. It damn well hurts, and I don’t quite know how I’m going to put shoes on to go to work tomorrow. (I don’t have any ballet flats, all my shoes fasten over the instep. Ouch.)

Silk noil dyeing failure!

This is the finished colour of the fabric – almost exactly the same as before I started. It does have some rather nice iron stains (an experiment in modifying the dye with rusty nails), but they’re so spread out that they just look like a bit of an accident. Perhaps another dip in the tea urn with a darker dye will make them look a bit more purposeful. You can see below that the fabric has changed colour a little bit… but it’s far, far too subtle for my liking!

Silk noil dyeing failure!

I do this often – not the dropping scalding water on my foot, thank goodness, but the mad rush to have something prepared for my one day off during the week. Once a month there’s an odd junction in my work rota where I work all weekend and don’t get two days off in a row that week. My following day off always seems extremely precious (and a long away away from the previous one, even though it isn’t really), and I invariably put too much pressure on myself to get lots of creative work done that day. Sometimes that pressure works really well and I get lots of sewing done (such as the orange jacket I made on Thursday and wore to work on Friday), but sometimes… well, sometimes you get days like today.

Emergency Craft Box

The house move is panicking me too, as my new sewing room is also going to be the box room until we can get some flooring put down in the loft, so I don’t know how long it’ll be until I can get everything unpacked. Thankfully my knitting will remain accessible (it’s currently squashed into the storage end of the sofa), and I’ve packed myself an Emergency Craft Box. This contains lots of embroidery, plenty of sketching materials, and lots of small bits and pieces that I never seem to get around to. I might just pop a few bits of needle felting kit in there too. I may not get around to making use of any of it, in all the disruption of the move. But it makes me feel much calmer about it all to know that if I want to, I can.

ORANGE wool jacket

Orange Wool Jacket

Words simply cannot do justice to how INCREDIBLY BRIGHT this fabric is. Ridiculously orange, with teal, magenta and a little bit of yellow thrown in for good measure. In case you hadn’t guessed, this fabric is LOUD.

I think I bought it in Chepstow last year, in a fabric shop that was absolutely piled to the ceiling with goodies. This was everything that was left on the roll – 160 cm long, 150 wide.

Orange Wool Jacket

The pattern is one of my own, that I tested in cotton jersey earlier in the year. Irritatingly, I was so busy with the Emporium that I didn’t take any photos, but it’s very comfortable and I’ve been wearing it a lot. This style is perfect for wearing to work, where it can be quite chilly on the front desk, but it looks daft to be sitting there with your coat on.

It’s a double herringbone wool tartan, with a little bit of boucle running through it, for those who care about such things. The lower sleeves are cut on the bias, with a little bias cuff. This allows them to stretch a little bit, but not too much. There are no fastenings at the moment, although I’m contemplating covered buttons and little loops of selvedge to pop them through. I’ll wear it a few times first though, and see how it goes.

Orange Wool Jacket

I made absolutely no attempt to match the stripes at any of the seams. I didn’t have anything like enough fabric to try, and I don’t think it really matters. The only thing I want to change next time though is to eliminate the top seam on the lower sleeve. It doesn’t really need to be there, it looks a bit distracting, and it creates a dodgy junction of four pieces of fabric coming together in the same place. In a thick fabric that can be difficult to keep tidy, so it seems best to just get rid of the extra seam altogether.

I’m not sure it’s quite chilly enough to start wearing this to work just yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to wearing it!

Silk bloomers & Fairysteps…

Silk bloomers & Fairysteps

You remember the silk bloomers I made yesterday?

Silk bloomers & Fairysteps

This is what happened when we went outside to take some photos of them.

Silk bloomers & Fairysteps

I’m sure the local dog-walkers thought we were bonkers!

Thanks to Fairysteps for the gold boots and leather top, and of course to Paul for patiently taking dozens of photos, most of which I pulled a face at. (Or in.) I am not confident having my photo taken, or trying to climb a tree!

Striped silk bloomers

silk bloomers

Still on a bloomer-making kick, these beauties are made from a silk skirt that I haven’t been able to fit into for years. The leather top is a very rare item of clothing from Fairysteps.

As part of the Unravelling course, I’ve been thinking about the various roles I play, and about alter-ego characters. I’ve still got the Angel Islington’s long white wig, from Progress Theatre’s production of Neverwhere (yes, I know I still haven’t shown you the photos of the costumes!), and I was brushing it out the other day whilst thinking about fairies and other mythical creatures. I’ve recently made white bloomers and a white linen dress, so I could have put together a beautifully ethereal white outfit really easily, and gone down to the woods to take some photos. But my first thought was “but white will just get really dirty”.

Then it struck me that not all mythical creatures are ethereal and fairylike. Some of them are tied to the earth, and fascinated by its processes, and invariably a little bit grubby if not completely covered in mud! So along came a leather top, and a not entirely practical pair of silk bloomers.

What this outfit needs, I think (apart from a good iron), is a little bag or tie-on pocket of some description. I mean, there’s no point going out investigating in the woods if you’ve got nowhere to stash your treasures, is there?

Hopefully I’ll be able to convince Paul to take some photos of me mucking about in the woods in this outfit later in the week. We’ll see.