Florence the knitted bear gets into nursing outfit

I  knitted this little bear for a family new born named Florence and just had to dress her as a nurse; after her famous namesake.

 Designing the little blue dress for this tiny bear, just 6” high, was quite tricky. It has separate bodice pieces, puffed sleeves and flared skirt. The intricate shaping for the sleeves was achieved by making stitches along several part rows and then decreasing rapidly. Using several sets of increasingly larger pins created the flared skirt without too much bulk. A little bit of crochet for the collar.

The bear, knitted in DK on size 11(old UK) was easy to work yet really firm so that no stuffing would ever escape.

Swaledale fleece - to dye or not to dye that is the question

Swaledale fleece, washed, carded, spun and plied

Not much blogging but plenty of slogging away lately on the the two unwashed fleeces a brought home from the Yorkshire Dales last year. Finally its all been sorted, washed and the first 150 gms have been carded, spun, plied and washed again.
Now: to dye or not to dye, that is a question still unresolved.

The wool is lovely as it is; a little harsh in places maybe and neither carded or spun to perfection but quite unique and all my own work.

In the Pink – Acid dyed wool from recycled tissue paper

recycled tissue paper acid dyed wool 

The year is racing away and its been another long while since I posted on this blog. But I have another excuse.

I am getting back to reality after another surgical adventure care of our amazing NHS hospitals,  Taking it easy;  browsing Etsy and the like I came across a new UK online magazine, Bodkin, for crafters who love to try out different skills. You can find it at

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Yarnspy

My dye pot has been staring me in the face for weeks  but  now I have been told I’m allowed to lift a few pots and pans for myself  I just had to have a go at something really interesting  I read there. It proved to be well worth the trouble.  Today I have very successfully dyed 12.5gms (1/2 oz) of wool using a couple of sheets of recycled, colored tissue paper!

That scruffy tissue paper may well have been lurking in my little paper stash for a decade, but today was its day. Wow! Pink fit to dress your favorite Barbie doll and the color has set really tight.

If you have ever had the misfortune to wash a white table cloth with a colored paper napkin caught inside it you will now just how rapidly that color transfers and ruins your cloth

 It happens because the dye in papers such as tissue, napkin, and crepe is most often an “acid” dye which will also dye wool and these types of paper have fewer binders than harder paper, so the color readily comes out in water. There is no acid in the dye you just need to add some (white vinegar or citric acid) to the process to help the color absorption and heat to set it.

I will be growing my collection of tissue paper and napkins if I go to a party from now on. This is a great way to create a hue of colored yarns at virtually no cost and help conserve the planet too!

All thanks to Bodkin . http://www.etsy.com/shop/Yarnspy

Golden sands and Golden Hands - landscape knitting

Never one to throw anything away, my box of odd bits of wool is overflowing again...

Recently I have been gradually working my way through the 150 issues of Golden hands and Golden Hands Encyclopedia of Crafts which I acquired a couple of holidays ago for the princely sum of 1p each. These publications go back to the 1970's. I never saw too many of them at the time. But I will be ever grateful to the good lady who ordered every issue, kept them all and then forty years and later left them at her gate. For sale at one pence a copy - the money to be left in the honesty box at the side. Our stroll to the beach had to be abandoned, the only way this lot could be got back to the campsite was in the car.  And I wasn't going to pass this little treasure trove up!

A little tip I had just picked up about knitting in several colours said to keep the yarn in use coming up from below the other yarns. I thought I would have a little practice. I did not have a pattern so I cast on about twenty  and  made a little sketch of a country scene to have something to aim at. I had to have two goes at the little dog, it came out too big the first time. But drawing a little grid over the shape made it quite easy.

The tip was a good one, I ended up with a little bag. I was so pleased with it, I took the trouble to line it. Just right for crochet hooks and little tools.

All thanks to Mrs Lee.

Now they have all gone bananas in pyjamas

Bananas in pyjamas knitted hats

In the run up to Christmas I spent more than a little time creating Bananas in Pyjamas outfits for two of my nearest and dearest for a seasonal fancy dress party. How easy that should have been. But having trawled every shop in town and seemingly every location on the web, I could not find a single piece of fabric with the right sized stripes. Candy stripe fabric every where... but only a mean narrow cm. wide. In true dedicated Grandma style I ended up piecing every single blue and white stripe for two pairs of pyjamas! A bit tiresome by the end but I got there just in time and with two inches of fabric to spare.

Knitting the banana hats was much more fun and would have been simplicity itself if only I had not had to knit them simultaneously to eke out a very limited amount of yarn between the two hats. They are based on a simple bobble hat with a slip stitches on alternate rows to create the idea of sides and the top stitches decreased  rapidly into an oblong shape, lightly stuffed. And don't they look cute!

What reminded me of all this was the sight of  "this season must have fashion trend" in the Sunday Times Style magazine. Bold monochrome stripes are all it apparently. Amongst many other examples, lo and behold, boy and girl bedecked in £75 bold stripey jacket and £41 bold stripey shorts.

Well I got two pairs of pyjamas out of a slice of blue fabric off the bottom of an old duvet cover from out of my patchwork stash and a metre of white cotton from the market. And two banana hats from some yarn someone else had left over many moons ago. Which is why I never throw things away.
Woolly