A bit of sewing for a change

I don't do a lot of sewing, but sometimes Loving Hands is asked for sewn items and the challenge of making them appeals to me.

The Neonatal Sister at University Hospital Coventry and Warwick asked for some small drawstring bags  to hold memory items for bereaved parents.  Without the bags, parents would have to take their precious items home in a paper bag.  Among the fabric stash I found some Peter Rabbit fabric and a small piece with nursery animals on.  These two pieces made eight bags, which will be sent off later this week.  Other Loving Hands members have made some bags too, so hopefully we can keep the hospital supplied on a long term basis.  

I've also enjoyed myself making some hand puppets.  The charity Knit for Nowt supplies family puppets (which can be either sewn or knitted) to social workers and therapists for use with children.  The puppets have two faces, one happy and one sad, to enable children to express emotions that they may not otherwise be able to show.

So far I have made four puppets: Mum, Grandma, Girl and Boy.  Grandad is under construction, and Dad is at the cutting-out stage!

Can you spot the differences between the two photos???

Little things

I seem to have spent a lot of time lately working on large blankets.  When I found a large bag of 4 ply in among the yarn that RAFT gave me to make more blankets, I was rather pleased, because 4 ply to me says baby blankets, which are a lot smaller than the ones I have been doing.  There were four colours of Patons Diploma 4 ply, a lovely soft yarn.  As a bonus, I also had a couple of balls of the same yarn in a fifth colour in my stash.  Small squares were needed, so I went for a simple approach:

Just a plain treble crochet square.  But what colour order should the squares be set out in?  Decisions, decisions....

I'm probably going to go with the top order.  The squares need a white frame to border them too:

So far I have 15 colour squares, 3 with borders.  So I need to do another 10 colour squares and a lot of borders:

The finished blanket will be about 32 inches square, just right for the baby packs that RAFT put together to go to refugee camps.

Another little project has been to make small, warm items for a charity called Muddy Footprints, which distributes them in impoverished areas of Bulgaria.  I have been using coned yarn with a high wool content to make fingerless gloves.  The pale green is two strands of 2 ply Alpaca yarn while the multicolour is 4 ply super wash 100%wool.  These should be very warm to wear.  The pattern I am using is a very simple one I found on Ravelry called Easy Fingerless Mitts by Calypso Knits.  Although it is written for dpns, I am using the magic loop method on a circular needle.

By the way, there is also a large corner to corner blanket on the go, but it has been a bit too warm to work on that one much.  However, today has been cold and wet, so it might get dragged out this evening for a little more work!

Favourite so far?

As this year is my Year of the Blanket, I have been looking at different patterns and styles beyond my normal Granny Afghan or Corner to Corner designs.  Looking on the Crochet Crowd website in March, I found a new pattern called Modern Chevron Afghan, by Jeanne Steinhilber.

It appealed because of its unusual construction with 5 diamonds (OK, squares joined point-to-point) as the start, then colours built up around.

I had 2 large balls of Aldi Aran in bright blue that I thought would work with this pattern, and some oddments of different colours that I could use to add colourful accents.  I started with 5 bright blue squares, then added the first band of colours.

I did a few rows of blue, then another band of colours, meaning this to be one end of the blanket.  Turning it around, I carried on in the other direction, with more colours then a long expanse of blue.

The chevron effect is really deep and interesting to work.  Somehow it made me think of Native American beadwork.

I carried on until the blanket was long enough to cover a single bed (or to put it another way, when I had used up the 800 grams of  aran yarn), and then I put a final band of colours in place to finish it off.

The pattern has no borders, but mine didn't look finished, so after consulting my Loving Hands friends, I crocheted a narrow band of navy blue down each side.  I was worried that I would run out of yarn, but there was just enough.  So this is the finished blanket:

It weighs just over a kilo, and is destined for Operation Orphan's Keep a Child Warm project.  I found it very enjoyable to make as it looks really bright and cheery, and it grew really quickly.  Overall it is probably my favourite of the 9 blankets I have made so far this year.

Buttonholes

Gosh, I never thought I would be writing a post on the scintillating topic of knitted buttonholes!  Let me go back a couple of weeks, when I discovered a free Sirdar pattern on the Black Sheep Wools website.

It's a simple pattern for 4 ply yarn (I have a couple of cones of baby 4 ply), and ranges from small premature baby sizes to  6 months old size.  Best of all, there is a V-neck option, which I like for very small babies so that they don't have anything tight around their necks.

I knitted the second size (12 inch chest - yes, it's hard to believe but babies that small do survive) and followed the pattern for the buttonholes when it said for each one to cast off one stitch, then cast on a stitch in the next row to complete the hole.  But the buttonhole rib was knitted on very fine needles (size 12 in old UK size, or 2.75mm), so the hole made was very tiny indeed.  I went through all my buttons, and believe me, I have a lot.  Even small shirt buttons were too big.  Eventually I found some tiny rectangular pearl buttons which I was able to coax through the buttonholes.  

I decided that when I knitted another of these cardigans, I would have to make bigger buttonholes, no matter what the pattern said.  Fast forward to this morning, when I am knitting the buttonhole rib on my second cardigan from this pattern.  What do you do when you want to know how to make better buttonholes?  You use Google, of course!  And I found the perfect instructions on the website of a US magazine called Creative Knitting.  The buttonholes this time are 3 stitches across, and are the neatest that I have ever managed, thanks to these instructions.

It was so easy to find buttons to fit, I was spoilt for choice. I decided to go for some circular pearl buttons which fit easily through the buttonholes.

 And so I now have a new technique as well as two preemie cardigans ready to go off in my next parcel to Needles and Hooks, Angels and Preemies

Happy Easter!

Worry Monsters

In the world we live in, children sometimes have concerns and worries that make them anxious and stressed.  They can become fearful and obsessed with things that might happen but in reality are most unlikely to happen.  The Worry Monster is a soft toy with a zipped mouth that can 'eat' their worries if they either write them or draw them on paper and feed them to the monster, then firmly close the zip.

Knit for Nowt, the Yorkshire based charity that Loving Hands supports, has been asked for these worry monsters by people who work with children, so this week I had my first attempt at making them.

Meet Humpty.  He's made of fleece offcuts in green and purple, with a red pocket for a mouth, which can be firmly closed with a black zip.  His nose and eyes are buttons sourced from the Scrapstore (I especially like the nose button!), and his eyebrows make him look rather worried himself.  I called him Humpty because he reminded me of a stuffed toy of that name who featured in a long-running BBC children's programme called Play School. I remember watching it as a child, and also watching it with my own children twenty-odd years later.

 There was more fleece left, so he acquired a big brother, Dumpty.  I gave Dumpty a bow-tie made from one of my husband's discarded ties.  By placing his features a bit lower, he looks an altogether less stressed monster!

They will be going off to Knit for Nowt along with the dragon hand puppets.

Uses for odds and ends

The start of the new year means the stash count, when those of us who belong to Linda's Stashbusters go through our bags, cupboards, drawers and (in some cases) lofts to check out how much yarny stash we are starting the year with.  A side effect of this checking is the finding of lots of odd part balls of yarn which have been left over from completed projects.  I found I had enough odd bits and pieces of cream, grey and purplish aran yarn to make a corner to corner lap blanket.

 Above is the blanket underway, and below is the finished article. It is 36 inches square.

It's perhaps not the prettiest blanket that I've ever made, but it is lovely and warm.

At the moment it is lovely and sunny here, and as the days are starting to get longer, thoughts are turning to spring. Already the pots of miniature iris that I planted in September are flowering away, and the daffodils in the garden will be out in a week or so.  Springtime is when rescue sanctuaries need substitute nests for orphan animals and birds, so I have been using yet more oddments of yarn to crochet nests for Secret World, the wildlife sanctuary which is only a few miles down the road from us.

Nests need to be knitted or crocheted very firmly, to make a self-supporting structure.  Mine are made with 2 or 3 strands of yarn which together make at least chunky weight, using size 5.00 hook or needles.  I shall be dropping these off on Saturday.

So some inroads have been made into my woolly oddments; but there are still plenty left!

One cosy striped blanket

I don't know what the weather has been like where you are, but here in Somerset it has been really cold for the past few days.  As I'm typing this, I am looking over a lawn that is white with frost.  Although it will be beautifully sunny today, the temperature is forecast not to rise over three degrees. I've been quite happy to have this blanket across my lap for the past couple of weeks as it has gradually been getting longer.  It finally grew to be single bed size, and so I finished it off with a simple border of one round of treble crochet and one row of double crochet:

I like its cheery appearance and also how heavy it is, as it has been made with aran equivalent yarn and weighs in at almost 1.2 kilos, so it really has made an impact on my stash.  This is, of course, not a justification to buy more, I have to keep reminding myself.

This is the first time I have made such a large blanket in one piece; normally I make smaller lap blankets or larger blankets from squares which are then sewn together.  I was very pleased with the speed with which it grew; choosing a new colour every other row somehow kept my interest and even the ends to be darned in did't put me off as I disciplined myself to do them every 10 changes or so.

This blanket will be going off to Knit for Nowt, a charity based in Yorkshire and supported by Loving Hands, who have asked for single bed sized blankets for this winter.  

.

The final three!

With one day to spare, the final three hats are done.  There's a man's chunky blue and black hat, a lady's dk dark red hat, and a newborn dk hat.  As ever, I've been combining yarns make inroads into the donated coned yarns and to get different weights, so the man's hat is a strand of black aran and a strand of blue 4 ply , while the lady's hat is 2 strands of 2 ply red wool/cotton and a strand of 2 ply grey mix (probably acrylic, but I can't be sure).  The baby hat is made of some King Cole Bin Ends yarn which is very pretty and puts me in mind of cup cakes sprinkled with hundreds and thousands!

This completes my self-set challenge to complete 12 boys' jumpers and 52 hats in one year.  This target has certainly spurred me to knit and crochet more this year than I have previously.  The donations of yarn that I have collected on behalf of Loving Hands this year have also encouraged me to think more laterally about what I can make and how I can combine yarns to get different effects.  I have used up almost 16 kilos of yarn since January, without counting December's finished items.

I have, however, decided not to set any targets for 2017.  It will be interesting to see whether I use up just as much yarn when I am free to make whatever I like.

There is one final item that I finished off just after Christmas.

I took these two cones from my stash in November.  They are both 4 ply, and the bright pink is very bright!  The paler pink is from a range called Magicolour, and has a rainbow of other colours running through it.  Working directly from the cones, so no ends to darn in, I started a corner-to-corner blanket.  This photo gives you an idea of the different colours:

The completed blanket is 42 inches square and looks like this:

It is bright and cheery and will be going to Chemogiftbags, a charity which provides support for people undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.

Happy New Year everyone, and thank you for reading and commenting on my posts in 2016.  

Hat chase nearly over

Just a quick post to report that I have finished hat 49 of 52 for 2016.  These are 3 chunky, tweedy hats, made with multiple strands of stash yarns.  The green ones are adult size and will be going to the Mission for Seamen.  The grey and maroon one is child size, and will be for Operation Orphan's 
2017 campaign to Keep a Child Warm.  On 27 December we will be driving up to Twickenham to meet friends and go to the Harlequins rugby game at Twickenham Stadium, so I will have time to make progress on a matching scarf go with the child's hat.  I don't tend to knit hats in the car because of the danger of losing dpns under the driver's seat.  Once bitten, twice shy definitely applies in that case!

Still lots to do on this Christmas Eve; both my sons and my daughter-in-law will be arriving later today, so there are beds to prepare, baking to be done, and still quite a few presents to be wrapped and stockings to prepare.  So I will use this picture of our local woods in the snow to wish everyone who happens on my blog a very Happy Christmas, and thank you for taking the time to read my posts.

Log cabin

Back in April last year, I started knitting a log cabin blanket.  I had a lot of Stylecraft Wondersoft variegated yarn in peacock, but when knitted up, it looked more like camouflage than a flamboyant bird's tail.  I think the jumpers below demonstrate what I mean.

So I put the rest of it to one side, and had a think about what I could make with it (did I mention that I bought a kilo of this yarn?  Probably not!).  Finally I came up with the idea of a knitted log cabin blanket.  There have been lovely ones knitted by other Loving Hands members, so this seemed like a plan.  I chose a range of different colours that were in the peacock, and two that weren't, to provide a little bit of contrast.  This was a project that my heart really wasn't in, and so it only came out when I didn't have anything else to do.  But do you know, as I was sewing it up, I began to fall in love with it.

Somehow it makes me think of modern art:

Doesn't this look like it could be on a gallery wall?

OK, I'm getting a bit carried away here.  Because it uses different brands of yarn, some of the squares are not quite as even as they might be, but this adds to the overall patchwork effect of the blanket.  And there are so many ends to be darned away - I still have a good few more to do.  But it is lovely and warm and weighs in at 460g.  It's a bit odd and quirky, and I have a feeling that I might keep this one for myself!

Ideas for what I should make with the remaining 300g of the peacock will be welcomed!

Jumper number 12

Yessss!  This is boy's jumper number 12, so I've met the first part of my challenge for 2016.  It's knitted from a Knitwell pattern which I found among my Mum's patterns.  There is no date or price on it, but it uses old needle sizes (9s and 7s) so is pre metrication of knitting needles, which I think was around 1975.  It was interesting to knit; the front centre panel has increases and decreases to make the little stocking stitch squares.  I enjoy cabling and knitting twisted stitches, which featured on the sleeves as well as the front.

The yarn is from a cone which I bought from the scrapstore.  It is marked as chunky, but to me it felt more like aran.  I compromised and knitted it on size 4.00 and 5.00 needles (8s and 6s) instead of the recommended sizes.

I have another half a dozen hats to make to meet the second part of the challenge by 31 December - watch this space!

Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around....

Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around,

Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground.

Teddy bear, teddy bear, jump up high,

Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the sky.

This week, Loving Hands was asked if we could supply some tiny teddies for babies in Kings College Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit to receive on Christmas day.  Although I'm not especially fond of making toys, these little teds are very quick and easy to do, so I thought I would make a few.  As I was knitting them, I suddenly remembered an action rhyme that my boys and I used to sing when they were small.  And days later, I can't get it out of my head! It must be at least 25 years since we last sang that rhyme, but now it keeps repeating and repeating in my brain.  

These are the tiny teds; they are 2.75 inches tall, just right for little babies.  They are knitted in 4 ply on size 2.50 needles.  Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around.......

As well as these, I have been making some things for Children's Hospice South West to sell to raise funds.  A child's hat and scarf set is knitted with two strands of double knit:

 The pattern is called Luuk, by Annis Jones, and is free on Ravelry. I think the hat looks rather like a creamy cup cake with hundreds and thousands sprinkled on.

I've also crocheted a few snowflakes for tree decorations or to add to parcels:

The two at the top of the photo are made with a tinsel yarn found in a charity shop.  They really sparkle when they catch the light.  The bottom two are just made with crochet cotton, and stiffened after blocking with a little spray starch.  

Hopefully they will help with the fundraising.  Teddy bear, teddy bear,turn around...............

Hats galore

Hats have turned into a bit of a compulsion.  Over the last 10 days or so I have made 8 hats, four knitted and four crocheted.

The first one is an adult hat, knitted with one strand of DK and 2 strands of coned 3 ply.  I really enjoy the mindlessness of knitting rib, and the finished hat is lovely and stretchy.  This has gone into my box for the Mission to Seamen, who do a brilliant job in helping those who work at sea (both my grandfather and father were sailors).

After the simple ribbed hat, I decided to try a bit of fair isle.  This is a technique I am still perfecting, and so I went for a basic toddler beanie and a simple pattern.  I took inspiration from a pattern on Ravelry called Celebration Day, although I changed it a bit, using more stitches and making the fair isle more symmetrical.  I like the finished effect (each of the colours is 2 strands of coned 4 ply) which is quite subtle.  It probably will get a pompom before I send it off.

Next up was crochet.  I found a ball of James Brett Baby Marble that I had forgotten about, and used a 1 - 2 year size Ravelry pattern (Spring Lacy hat) that I thought would work with the colour changes.
Although the pattern is for worsted yarn with a size 5.00 hook, it worked well with DK and a 4.5 hook to make a newborn hat.  They were quick to work up, so I made 2.

Back to the knitting.  There was a small ball of white 4 ply in my knitting bag, just enough for a preemie hat.  I cast on 80 stitches and did a couple of inches of 2 x 2 rib so it would be nice and stretchy.  Then I decided to do a bit of cabling.  Why, I do not know, as I was using dpns, and adding a cable needle to the mix was really asking for trouble.  Well, I got there, but not without a few dropped stitches and a bit of frogging on the way.  There was enough Marble left to make another preemie hat.  This one you will notice has no cables.  Can you work out why???

Finally I went back to crochet for a couple more adult hats.  The pink one is a slouchy one, and has a button on the brim, cunningly concealed in the photo.  The blue/brown one is based on Julia Odie's Magnus hat pattern, sized up for an adult.  Julia is a fellow Loving Hands member, and I have made this hat many times in many different sizes.  Both of these hats are made with different combinations of coned yarn.

So now I have made over 40 hats this year, and my target of 52 by the end of December seems more achievable.

Mixing colours

At the start of the year I set myself a challenge to knit 12 boys' jumpers and 52 assorted hats by the end of the year.  As we start November, I've managed 10 jumpers, and another is well underway, so I'm pretty sure I will reach that target.  But I've fallen way behind on the hat front.  I have recorded 31 hats so far, which leaves 21 to complete by the end of the year.

I've started by knitting these 2 children's hats:

Although they are quite different in appearance, they both use the same multicoloured yarn as their base.  It's another King Cole bin end yarn, which is great value for £1 per ball.  I love the different colours in the yarn, but as a fairly thin DK (or at least that's what I think it is - you have to guess with bin ends yarns) it needed boosting to make warm hats for children.  Coned yarn to the rescue!

Two strands of 3 ply wool / acrylic mix in ivory went into the paler hat, while two strands of alpaca / acrylic 2 ply in a camel colour went into the darker one.

They both make interesting mixes that could be worn by either a boy or a girl.  I am enjoying experimenting with mixing colours like this - I might try with some green next!