Category: socks

Meet Miss Mouse.

Miss Mouse

This is a project I’ve been meaning to get around to for a long time. I started with a Patti Medaris Culea pattern (well, a combination of two patterns), enlarged from A4 to A3 on a photocopier. I’d already worked out that this would result in a doll that was about three feet tall, which seemed about right for the scale I wanted to be working at.

Miss Mouse

This still resulted in some of the trickiest sewing I’ve ever done – and you can see that I wasn’t totally accurate! I used the hand wheel a lot to manoeuvre the needle slowly around the fingers, which seemed to work pretty well. The fabric is silk noil that’s been dyed with tea, and it was absolutely perfect for this project. Nice and soft, easy to sew and sculpt, and not in too much danger of unravelling along tiny little seams.

Miss Mouse

I started with the most fiddly part of the doll – the hands. I don’t have haemostats or tube turners, but at this scale the fingers were easy enough to turn through with ordinary tweezers. I made a pipe cleaner armature for each hand, which fitted into the fingers perfectly. I still needed to add a little bit of stuffing, which was quite fiddly, but I’m really pleased with how the hands came out. They’re just poseable enough, and I kind of wish I’d been brave enough to go with the option that had all five fingers sewn separately. (Next time.) I’m pleased I decided to go with this enlarged version of the pattern though – I really don’t fancy making these little hands at their recommended size!

Miss Mouse

Limbs and body made, I had a momentary crisis when I came to the end of my bag of toy stuffing with one lower leg left to fill! Thankfully, being a ridiculous hoarder who used to work in a fabric shop, I knew I had another half bag lying around somewhere in the back of a cupboard. It’s a slightly different texture and density, but as this doll’s most definitely not for sale, it doesn’t matter too much. 

I also had another minor crisis when I discovered that I’d completely failed to read the instructions for the elbows and knees correctly before I sewed them closed. So the arms and legs are jointed in a somewhat experimental manner, but again, it works for me and my plans for the doll, so it won’t be a problem.

Miss Mouse

And here she is, giving us a little wave! I do love those hands. You’ll notice that she’s missing one rather vital body part – her head! As you can see, it was rather late at night by the time I got to this stage, so I decided to go to bed and think about her head the next day.

Miss Mouse

And here it is! I spent a long time looking up pictures of wood mice from lots of different angles, which I then tried to translate into a three-dimensional pattern. Spatial awareness is really not my strong point, so it took a lot of scribbling and crossing-out and trying again before I got to this stage. I’d anticipated having to make three or four heads before I got the pattern right, but I’m very pleased to report that this was the first one! Her nose is perhaps a tiny bit over-pointy, but I’m very pleased with how she’s come out.

Miss Mouse

 

And here’s the completed Miss Mouse, relaxing in the big armchair. Doesn’t she look sweet?

Miss Mouse

And to give you a sense of scale, here she is relaxing on the sofa with Paul.

(They were watching Terminator. I think Miss Mouse found it a bit scary, but at least she’s got her own little Universal Aunt to cuddle.)

The markings on her upper arm and foot are from the tea-dyed fabric. She has more on her back. I’m slightly disappointed that she doesn’t have more staining, but I somehow managed to avoid the most mottled parts of the fabric.

Miss Mouse

Of course, what Miss Mouse needs now is a little outfit. I don’t know yet exactly what she’s going to wear, but I do know that she needs a lacy shawl. This led to a long search through my knitting magazines to find a pattern that I could scale down to fit a doll. This is Leona by Anniken Allis, designed to be worked in a 4-ply yarn on 3.5mm needles. I’m making it in lace weight on 2.75mm needles, and I can reduce the number of repeats in the main section without messing up the border if it starts to look a bit big. It’s going to take flipping ages to knit though…

Miss Mouse

…wouldn’t it be so much easier if Miss Mouse could knit it herself?

Miss Mouse

Oh look! She’s found a perfectly mouse-sized sketchbook on my desk! I wonder what she’s going to write or draw in it?

Miss Mouse

I’d been thinking about mouse-shoes as I was making her (as you do), but it wasn’t until I started knitting the shawl that I realised she’d need socks as well. Obviously. Because mouse-feet aren’t the same shape or size as people-feet, I’m working out a pattern from scratch as I go along. The handy thing about toe-up socks is that you can try on your work in progress!

I still haven’t decided what the rest of her outfit’s going to be like, but at least she’ll be well-served for knitwear…

From my sick bed

14_10_toes

I’d only been back at work for about five minutes after my holiday when I came down with The Plague – otherwise known as the stinking cold that I catch every year when 3,500 new students arrive at the University. Usually my hyperactive immune system knocks me down flat for a couple of days, during which I stay in bed, and then I emerge feeling sorry for myself but generally well enough to go back to work. This time I was off work for a week, mostly because I had a cough but no voice, and was therefore pretty useless on a telephone and a reception desk. Once that week was over I assumed I’d be fine, but no. I went to see the doctor yesterday (about something unrelated, as it happened), and she immediately gave me a note for another week off work.

I’ve been spending a fair few nights awake, propped up on the sofa, to try and avoid keeping Paul awake with my terrible coughing. This has resulted in quite a lot of knitting being done, including learning a new technique. This nightmarish tangled mess, for which I do not currently have enough swear words, is two socks at the same time, on two circular needles. It only took me two goes to cast them both on the right way round, and I only knitted with the wrong needle (thereby finding myself trapped in an impossible loop) three or four times, so I think I’m getting the hang of it now. The toes are done, and I’m knitting my way slowly up the feet. (Very slowly, as these are for Paul, who has Very Big Feet.) I’m fairly certain I’m spending more time untangling the two balls of yarn than I am actually knitting, which is extremely frustrating, and makes the whole process seem very slow.

The yarn, by the way, is the “Sulley” colour way of Superwash sock from Woolly Wonders. It was supposed to be for me, but for the first time ever, Paul saw it in my knitting bag and quietly asked me whether it might turn into a pair of socks for him. Despite his size twelves, there was no way I could refuse… and I do have two other fantastically bright skeins (Carnival and Rainbow Sparkle) to knit socks for myself!

14_10_bottles

I’ve also been doing  a few bits and bobs for the new incarnation of Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium. They’re explained (sort of) in the first blog post, and will be available in the shop as soon as the set is complete.

I have to confess to feeling horribly guilty about doing any kind of making while I’m off sick from my Proper Job. The thing is though, there are times when I’m genuinely not well enough to leave the house by 8am, speak to people all day, answer the telephone, concentrate on booking forms and looking after visitors… but I am well enough to sit at a table and quietly make something. (Well, I say quietly, but you haven’t heard this cough!) At home I can get up when I feel like it (except for Paul leaving to drive to a meeting at some ungodly hour this morning), I don’t have to speak to anyone, so my cough is slowly getting better, and if I want to pack everything away and go for a nap half way through the day, nobody will mind! If it was possible for me to do my Proper Job from home I’d be doing just that, but moving the museum’s reception desk to my house doesn’t seem terribly convenient. So, I’m mooching about, doing everything very slowly, and achieving what I can as I try to look after myself.

Desire To Fly from R&A Collaborations on Vimeo.

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs while I’ve been tucked up cosily on the sofa, looking in particular for artists who work with magic and fantasy and character. There are a whole bunch of people I could list (Mister Finch, The Pale Rook, and Amanda Louise Spayd, for a start), but I’ve been particularly enjoying the fairies of Samantha Bryan. I love the fact that she imagines a busy working life for her fairies – and then provides them with everything they might need to be successful. Absolutely wonderful!

There’s a bit of character-related work going on behind the scenes here, although it’s currently very firmly in the “thinking about it” stage. Lots of notes and lots of ideas, but absolutely nothing to show for it just yet. It’s related to the Emporium, in that I’m hoping to be able to bring Mr & Mrs Magpie to life a little bit… but it’s an ambitious project, so it’s sitting quietly in the background for now. We’ll see how it goes.

Me-Made May: A Scruffy Start!

1/5/14

Oh dear. The Me-Made May Flickr group is filling up with all sorts of lovely smart people showing off their finest hand made clothing for the occasion. And then I go and post this.

Typically, yesterday I was wearing an almost entirely me-made outfit. Today, not so much.

  • Trousers: Black cords with buttons on the pockets, John Rocha for Debenhams
  • T-shirt: An ancient black long-sleeved Hanes men’s skinny fit, from back in the days when we used to print t-shirts. (Though this one’s always been plain.)
  • Jumper: Me-Made black fleece cowl-neck tank top.
  • Bracelet: Honey & Ollie, with added dangly bits
  • Glasses: Gok Wan for Specsavers. (I need an eye test soon, which almost certainly means I need new glasses. I’m avoiding that possibility because I love this pair so much and they’ve been discontinued.)

I took the photo at work, in the very untidy cloakroom, because I don’t currently have an accessible full-length mirror at home. I suppose I should remedy that, if I’m supposed to be taking pictures of myself for the rest of the month!

1/5/14

I did have one other bit of hidden me-made goodness though, which was my favourite socks. I love wearing handmade socks, there’s just something so warm and comforting and lovely about them. And yet I only own two pairs, because I keep knitting things for other people at the expense of my own feet! I think I need to be a bit ruthless, and just treat myself to a few new pairs of socks. It’s not as though I have any shortage of sock yarn (a new skein arrived today!), just a shortage of time. (I’m a slow knitter, so socks take ages.)

Comments from the Flickr group have so far been polite, with the key observation being that I look “comfortable”. Which I am, because that’s the entire point of the clothes that I make for myself! Living with fibromyalgia being the literal pain that it is, comfort is of paramount importance. If I want to have enough space in my brain to be able to get on with my life, I need to reduce my external sources of pain as far as possible. Which means comfortable clothes, at all times.

I do think I need to up my game from today’s outfit though. Otherwise “comfortable” could all too easily be synonymous with “frumpy”, “boring”, “shapeless” and “scruffy”. I may well be all of those things in myself, but I don’t necessarily want that to be reflected in my clothes!

Socks and salt dough

Untitled

I’m so bored of saying this, but I’m ill, AGAIN! Just a cough and a cold, no doubt brought home from one of the hundreds of children who came to take part in activities at the museum over half term. But as a result, there has been a great deal of languishing on the sofa, and a need for some extremely simple knitting. So, I used up some leftovers of sock yarn and made these teen-tiny newborn sized baby socks!

Untitled

When they were done I still had a little bit of yarn left over, so I improvised a pattern for some matching mittens. They’re so cute, I might have to start knitting baby socks with all of my leftover sock yarn! And even though I was looking for easy knitting, I still managed to learn something – these little socks have my first ever short-row heels. I don’t think I managed to close up all the holes very neatly, and I didn’t wrap the stitches, but I know that once these socks have been through the wash a few times, any little irregularities will disappear.

Salt dough experiments

This afternoon I had a little bit of a play with some salt dough, which is currently waiting to go in the oven. I tried two recipes, both of which I’d found on Pinterest, but one was significantly better than the other. These are made from my usual combination of 2 parts flour to one part salt, but with the addition of a small amount of cornflour. This made the dough feel extremely smooth, and it certainly picked up the detail from the leaf cutters (designed for fondant icing) very well.

Salt dough experiments

The second recipe… well, that just made a great big mess. It called for cornflour and bicarbonate of soda, but while the proportions of the recipe were provided, there were no instructions. I knew the split second I’d added too much water because I didn’t have dough so much as this…

I’ve made cornflour gloop with the toddlers enough times to know that I was never going to make anything useful out of it, and I don’t know why I didn’t realise sooner that this is what would happen! Perhaps the state to be aiming for with this recipe is something more like damp sand rather than actual dough. Although I don’t know whether that would hold together enough to cut shapes out of it. (It does work for bath bombs though, so perhaps it would be okay.)

The reason I’m mucking about with salt dough is that I’m looking for an alternative to polymer clay. I did an experiment several years ago using essential oils to scent Fimo, but now I think I want to use something a bit more natural as my base material. I’ve had limited success with papier mache, so I’m thinking that air drying clay might be my next best option. We’ll see. If these little leaves and flowers survive their baking and a little bit of paint, perhaps salt dough will be fine!

Progress on the pattern, and a sock cheat-sheet!

Re-writing the pattern

Well, the knitting pattern’s still in progress. I finished knitting the first test-mitten in the larger size yesterday, and when Paul came home and tried it on for me, it was revealed to be ENORMOUS. So, after consultation with regard to how exactly Paul likes his mittens (apart from Not At All, which he doesn’t really get a choice about, being married to a knitter), I have now re-written the instructions for the larger size. I could have unravelled the Very Large Mitten, but I spent ages working out how to make a cable pattern fit on the back of the hand, and it seems a shame to let all that work go to waste. So I’m knitting the matching one anyway.

I’ve now printed out several copies of the pattern, so I can keep notes about each pair of mittens and any alterations I might continue to make. I have two test-knitters ready to go, but if anyone else would like to give the pattern a try, please let me know! I can email you a pdf file of the latest draft, but you’ll need to supply your own needles and yarn.

Judy's Magic Cast On

This is a sock toe, my first knitted using Judy’s Magic Cast On. At first I couldn’t get the hang of it, but now I’ve got the crossing-over part figured out, it really is like magic! Next I need to figure out how to cast on two socks at once using this method. That would really knock Second Sock Syndrome (where you absolutely can’t face knitting the second one) on the head. And make sure they both come out the same. (Harder than you might think.)

When I first learned how to knit socks, I made myself a cheat sheet. I use the slip-stitch heel pattern from Wendy D. Johnson’s book, Socks from the Toe Up. I very heartily recommend this book – it has lots of different options for casting on, three different types of heel, and lots of patterns to plug into your socks once you’ve got the basics figured out.

But, I don’t want to carry the entire book around in my sock-knitting bag, which is where the cheat sheet comes in. I know how to knit socks now, but I need reminders of how and when to turn the heel, and how to do a stretchy cast off, and how many rows I knitted on the first sock, so I can make the second one the same. Hence the cheat sheet.

Because I find it so useful I thought it would be nice to share it, so I’ve uploaded it to a tutorial page. I should say that the original pattern obviously remains © Wendy D. Johnson, and you really do need her book for the full instructions! The sheet isn’t a full sock pattern in its own right, it’s just some helpful reminders for when you haven’t got the book in front of you.

Meanwhile, I’ll be knitting yet another test mitten, and hoping that this one turns out to be a normal human hand size!

Knitting Update…

Owl Wrist Warmers

The run-up to Christmas is always the same for me. Deciding far too late that I want to knit something far too ambitious, and then wrapping it up in such a hurry that I forget all about taking photographs. This year I did remember to take pictures of a couple of things, so here they are!

These are the Owl Wrist Warmers from issue 21 of Mollie Makes. I’m not a regular reader of Mollie Makes, but I saw this pattern on the front and knew it would make a lovely Christmas present, so I snapped it up. They’re made from one ball of Sirdar Click, and the only alteration I made was to mirror the cables on each cuff. (I’m fussy like that.) The hardest part (apart from wrestling double-pointed needles, which I still dislike) was sewing on the little buttons so that the owls didn’t look too cross-eyed!

Childry Shawl

This is Childry, from Issue 100 of Simply Knitting – well, from the booklet of extra patterns that came with it. The recommended yarn is Fyberspates Scrumptious 4-ply, which I didn’t have, so I went for 2 balls of Regia sock yarn in one of the Kaffe Fassett colourways. You can wear it either way round – with the point at the front it’s ideal for filling in the annoying little gap at the top of a coat.

Childry Shawl

This way round, it’s held together with a sparkly little hairclip from Accessorize. I must admit that I thought I was going to die of boredom while I was knitting this. Because it all garter stitch all the time, it’s wonderfully easy and the self-striping yarn does all the work of making it look pretty. But the row where you start with 250 stitches and then work k1, yo, k1 into every stitch, leaving you with a count of 750… that ruffle took some getting through. And then, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to do a picot cast off! Which looks lovely, and I’m very pleased with it, but it took three evenings to get the shawl cast off and finished.

And of course, being a sucker for punishment, I immediately cast on to make another one for myself. Mine will be made from some Mystery Colinette that I’ve tried to knit a bunch of times without success, but which I think will be perfect for this.

7/07/2012

I also finished knitting these socks…

Stripy Sock

and these socks…

Noro Kureyon

but not these socks. I’m about half way through the second one, and they’ll hopefully be a birthday gift if I can get them finished in the next ten days.

Currently on the needles are:

  • The Noro socks above
  • The aforementioned Mystery Colinette Childry shawl
  • A black and silver sparkly cardigan
  • A complicated lace jumper that I can only knit when alone in the house
  • Two horrible peach shawls that I’m probably going to unravel soon

That should keep me busy for a while… until I decide I’m bored of them all and cast on something else!

Noro Kureyon Sock

Noro Kureyon

I’ve been knitting rather a lot of socks lately, mostly with Regia yarn, because that’s what’s easiest to get hold of at my local shops.

I’ve been resisting the lure of Noro Kureyon sock yarn for quite a while now, mainly because it’s usually out of my budget. But the colours are just lovely, so as soon as I spotted some in the John Lewis sale I couldn’t resist.

When I was winding the skein into a ball I thought I’d bought the impossible – a ball of Noro without a knot in it! Sadly with a mere five grams to go, the inevitable knot appeared. But at least there was only one, which is a massive improvement on any other ball of Noro I’ve ever bought. It’s still full of bits of twig though, which seems ridiculous. If I’ve spent all this money on a ball of  yarn, I don’t want to be picking bits of vegetation out of it as I knit!

It’s also really oddly spun. Very thick and very thin in places, which makes it impossible to achieve a nice smooth fabric. This is going to be one lumpy sock. So twisty, too. The yarn is full of energy, and absolutely desperate to ply itself as you knit. And then there’s the texture. So rough! Having just worked on one sock with some scrumptiously soft String Theory Colorworks yarn, this Noro feels like horrible scratchy rope.

Everyone who’s seen me knitting this sock has been absolutely entranced by the colours, but immediately disappointed as soon as they’ve touched it. I’m assured that the socks will soften once they’ve been through the wash, and I really hope that’s true! I was going to give them to a friend as a Christmas gift, but I don’t think “I thought you’d like a pair of scratchy, lumpy socks” is quite the message I want to convey!

Sock Addict.

Stripy Sock

I always thought it was a bit silly when people learned to knit socks and promptly gave up knitting anything else. I’ve made a few pairs for other people over the past couple of years, but it wasn’t until I made a stripy pair for myself that the bug really bit. As soon as I’d cast them off, I started the toe of this one straight away.

This is another Regia colourway, and I rather like the pink, red and orange stripes. I couldn’t tell from looking at the ball quite how the pattern was going to develop, but I’m pleased that it’s turning out so regular. I’m using my usual toe-up pattern with a slip stitch heel, and I’ve just reached the stage of increasing for the instep. This means I’ve just realised that the stripe pattern’s going to be disrupted as I keep increasing and when I work the heel. I’ll find out how much that bothers me as I go along. One solution would be to work the toes and heels in another colour. This avoids the pattern disruption to a certain extent (although the stripes will still get thinner as you work the gusset increases), and it also means that the toes and heels can easily be pulled out and re-knit when they start to wear out.

I have plenty of stashed Regia waiting for me, most of it earmarked as Christmas Socks for friends and family. I’ve also thought of a few basic pattern variations, so I don’t go mad from knitting the same socks over and over again.

I’ve also started looking at different sock yarns, although there’s not much available in the shops where I live. Noro sock yarn feels kind of scratchy, and I’m not sure I’d like to knit with it. I’m looking forward to seeing how my Schoppel Wolle Flying Saucer comes out. I’m on the hunt for some extravagantly purple sock yarn for a friend (recommendations welcome!), and I’ve spent a while looking for the perfect green-and-white self-striping yarn. Thanks to the Yarn Harlot I found it this morning, and have now ordered the last ball of Clorophyll from String Theory Colorworks. I also picked up a mini skein of plain white, specifically designed for the toes and heels.

So, I’ve just spent twenty-five pounds on the materials (and international shipping) to make a single pair of socks. For a friend who hasn’t asked for socks, doesn’t know they’re getting socks, and has no idea how long a pair of socks takes to knit. Clearly this isn’t a gift for them, it’s a gift for me.

I’m turning into a sock addict.

Stripy Socks

Socks

This was something of an exercise in nail biting – would it be possible to make a pair of socks from just 80 grams of yarn? The answer turned out to be yes – if you don’t mind them being short, and you’ve got a little bit of something else to use for the heels!

The stripes are just less than a single ball of one of Kaffe Fassett’s colourways for Regia. I didn’t think I’d matched the repeat when I wound the yarn into two balls, and had resigned myself to knitting fraternal rather than identical socks. I’m thrilled to bits that the stripes actually match! The heels are a little bit of Opal which just happened to match the purple stripes perfectly.

The pattern is Wendy D Johnson’s Slip Stitch Heel Basic Socks. I knitted them from the toe up on two circular needles, starting with a figure eight cast on and ending with a Russian cast off. I have a high instep so I like socks with a heel flap and gusset, as they give a little extra room. I also like the way that the slip stitch heel provides a thicker fabric where the socks will wear. I might experiment in future with slip stitch toes!

I bought new needles for these – Addi 30cm circulars with angled tips. I’d been using 40cm Pony circulars, but found the extra cable a bit annoying. I’d say that the 30cm needles are the perfect length for knitting socks in the round, especially with the angled tips, but I did find the purl rows a little fiddly when I was working on the heels. My gauge is much better for socks on 2.5mm needles – nice tight fabric, and minimal holes in the short-row heels. I might buy a couple more, so I can have more than one pair of socks on the go at once.

I think the only thing I’m not completely happy with is the cast off. I know from experience that I tend to cast off tightly, so I looked around for some stretchy solutions. Unfortunately I think I’ve gone too far the other way, and the socks are very slightly baggy around my ankles. Mind you, if the socks were longer the ribbing would be around a wider part of my leg, so the cast off would probably be just fine. Perhaps I’ll give it another try before I decide against it altogether.

I may have had a little falling down in the Hobbycraft sale just after Christmas, which resulted in rather a lot of half price Regia coming home with me. Looks as though everyone’s getting socks for Christmas, now I’ve got the hang of making them!