Another level

I have now officially reached another level of handmade. I made my own yarn.

I knew it would happen eventually, but I did not expect it so soon. Well I blame my dear friend Anthea and Yarndale. 

Anthea started spinning a year ago and I begged her not to get me to another craft. I was happy to watch her spin. And then we went to Yarndale - I am going to write about it in another post, it was just amazing... - and after 5 hours of absorbing all this yarny vibes I bought a drop spindle. Just because alpaca yarn is so expensive and Anthea bought the whole alpaca fleece and I thought I could just try...

I did not wait to get home, oh no. I started right away. I got a 100 g of Blue Faced Leister top for practice.

And in half an hour I had a bit of handmade yarn! (Can you see in the background? It is Lucy from Attic24!)

I remember thinking that I would spin for an hour a day. Well, it did not work as I couldn't stop so I spun all 100 grams on Monday. I took this photo in the afternoon, the rest is rubbish because of the lack of daylight.

I finished, I wind it into a skein, soaked it and then prayed for it to dry faster as I couldn't wait to knit it.

Here it is winded to a lovely little yarn cake.

I could definitely see a difference between the first and second half - let's just say the first one is more of a novelty yarn ;) That is why I decided to make a hat, the more even part would go for the ribbing and the body can be more fancy. 

And it looks great. I love it. It is the best hat I ever had. The best hat I ever made. It is sooo handmade by me!

I love it!

Getting ready for Yarndale

I waited so long and now it is just a few days away: Yarndale. I am so excited!
Preparing myself for long hours of yarn fiesta  I bought myself a travel mug and to make it worth this adventure I made a little sleeve.
Now the obvious downside of knitting or crocheting rainbows is there are always minimum 14 ends to weave in.

Nearly there

All joined and a little border of half trebles added. Now the gruesome task of weaving in all these ends...

Going strong

Well, finally I feel I am getting somewhere with this blanket.
I finished all white rounds and found a perfect basket when the squares wait for the final grey round.
The finished ones found a cosy spot on the bookshelf and wait patiently to be joined.
And I have already joined six of twelve planned rows :)
I love when my crafting is so organized!

Making slow progress

I am working on a blanket for my youngest. I have no idea why this one is going so slowly, I was making solid granny squares before and it was a breeze, and that was a big blanket. This one only has 96 squares  and it is aaaageees since I started.
Maybe it is because I keep counting the squares and sorting different stages, moving them from piles to boxes and back...
So, I think I am going to challenge myself to finish it in the next two weeks. And I will post photos of this blanket finished here, on Monday, 1st September.
Ha!

Nearly finished

These blissful moments when the blanket is nearly done, all the ends are sewn in and you just have to make  the last round of half trebles.
The extra bonus today is finding out that my hook fits right in the yarn ball making a lovely nest for my little owl :)

Crazy nine patch

I found a tutorial on You Tube on how to make a crazy nine patch blocks some time ago. The title puzzled me a bit because I was searching for 'crazy four patch' but soon everything was clear. It amazes me how fun and easy it is!
So, first you choose your fabrics and I have a very colourful one with letters, black and white with numbers and matching fabrics with dots and simple patterns.

I have made six big nine-patch blocks, black on white dots always in the middle, numbers and letters in the corners.

When they are laid out you can see that this is not the best design... 

But than I cut them into smaller blocks. This reminds me of what I read some time ago about how quilters are crazy because they cut perfectly good fabrics to sew them back together, but the craziest ones cut it again ;)

Every block was cut into four. See how number and letter fabrics are not cut, but the black dots are cut into small squares - this is exactly what I wanted.

And then came turning, shuffling, turning and shuffling again and again until I was happy with the layout. And I tell you, it was FUN.

I love how the quilt top looks, now I just need to buy wadding (shame, it refuses to just grow in my stash...), and quilt it. Bright orange thread, me thinks :D

The second one

I have been making a lot. Quilts, dresses, jumpers, even poncho, I just couldn't make myself to sit and write about it.
But this weekend I have made something that I want to shout about from the roof tops. But it is dangereous and it is raining so I write about it here instead.
Well, somehow, yesterday

I MADE THE SECOND SOCK.

Before you think it is not such a big deal, you should know that I can made socks, and I made three of them. All different :D
Two weeks ago, my dear friend Anthea gave me one ball of Drops sock yarn in fabulous colours.

And the best about this yarn is that it is worsted weight. This means no thin needles and enormous amounts of tiny stitches but a proper 4 mm needles and only 38 stitches. Bliss!

So, on Saturday the first sock was done. I was so happy how quickly it was knitting up that I did not mind at all working the heel three times. I wasn't too excited, I have managed to get to this stage three times before.

I have weight the leftover yarn and there was exactly 50 grams left. The colour pattern repeats nicely so I finished the first sock in just the right place to start the second one at the same point, just in case.
And yesterday I just made the second sock. Just like that.

And they look exactly the same and feel exactly the same. 

I wouldn't mind the rib to be a bit longer, but I managed to get two from one ball with that much leftover:

 So, now I can just put them on and enjoy the lovely Scottish summer ;)

How I do 'random'

I am making a granny hexagon blanket for my living room. The plan is to have three different shades of beige, cream and brown in the middle of each hexagon, then one round of red - and I have four different reds - and finally cream round that I will use to join all the hexagons as I go.
I wanted the middles to look scrappy and random. Some people would maybe just buy some yarn and would randomly pick a colour for every round. But my way of being random is to use formula to calculate how many different combinations  of three I can have with six colours and then with every group of three there is six possible combinations. This stage is now completed :)
In total I have 120 circles every one of them is three rounds of different colours and none two are the same :)

Now, the second stage: I have put all my groups of six in order I am going to join them and I have assigned two different reds to every group. Just to make sure that every red will be used evenly and spread evenly on the blanket.
Part of me would like to let go and just pull random yarns from he basket but a much bigger part enjoys my geeky approach to randomness...

I'm blue, dabudidabuda...

I am working hard on Zuzanna's dress. Almost all celtic knot appliqué is now finished, and soon I am going to move to the very important skirt construction.

Although I am really enjoying the process I would like my dreams were less blue now and weren't all about dancing butterflies...
There is some other crafting happening in the background but no time left to share or to take a picture. But I plan to catch up after 14th September.

Big project

The luxurious velvet, a bit of shiny satin, sequins and a lovely, deep royal blue... This is the perfect combination for another irish dancing dress for my lovely Zuzanna. The deadline is 14th September, West of Scotland Championships or actually the week before so that the teacher can approve. 

So... Good luck to me :D

Hot hot hot

It is very, very hot. Yesterday was declared the hottest day of this summer and today is even hotter. I am sewing up my squares with my feet in the bowl filled with cold water and I am trying to remember why do I need a woolly blanket... There was something about cold, Scottish, autumn nights, rain and wind....

It is just a blur...

Lesson learned

Last year I made jumpers for my boys and I promised myself: no more stripes. But of course I was tempted by to many lovely colours and the easiest way to combine them were stripes.

I hate working with more than one ball of yarn at the same time. I hate changing colours while working in rounds. I hate decreasing while working in rounds. 

And I hate weaving in hundreds of yarn ends... There is plenty other, more pleasant things to do when drinking my everyday cup of coffee. 

And then came that last one cup, last ends to weave in and it was all finished:

Now I can relax. And somehow despite really hot summer try to photograph these jumpers on my boys.

A lot to do

There are boys' jumpers...

There is Zuzanna's dress...

I've started Adam's blanket... I just couldn't go on without crocheting...

And there is still 165 squares waiting to be a blanket...
And we are going on holidays in 5 days, just for 5 weeks ;). So there is a lot of thinking, decisions making, planing: what to finish now, what to pack with me, what will be the best for 27 hour car journey, what will be the best to crochet when in the frying pan my mum's summer garden so that it won't stick to my hands, and finally what yarn I am going to buy??
Plus, to add a bit more to my keen hands tomorrow my friends are going to have their wedding - tiny, tiny one but still - and I am making the cake and the bouquet.
And I still have to do all the packing! Brrr...
In the meantime on my kitchen windowsill something is growing:

And I am worried they still gonna be to small to transfer them to the bigger pots and move them to the big, scary garden. We'll see :)

Blanket is being finished

A few months ago I started a blanket for our bedroom. I just had to despite long list of other things that should be made first. But I was cold, and I thought I could use all these odd balls of yarn that mysteriously grown in my stash.
I decided to go for "solid granny square" which isn't very 'granny' at all but I wanted this blanket to be quite thick. I. Only needdd 165 squares.
I started slowly, square after square, colour after colour... Soon it was obvious that I am going to need a lot of new colours.
Fiona from my knitting group showed me a fantastic way to make a sampler to carry around: you just make tiny squares and put them on a stitch holder:

It was so easy to match another colour to the ones I had before that I ended up with 23!!

Now all my 165 squares are finished. It feels strange... It was a perfect project to carry around and this is probably the reason I made them so quickly. I made a spreadsheet to track my progress and it even calculated the percentage of completion.

Can you see a 100% at the bottom?
Now I only have to so al these squares up...

Blanket is being started

Today I went shopping with Adam to get yarn for his blanket. My idea was to get nice, bright and bold colours and mix them in random stripes. But when I asked Adam, standing in front of the rainbow of yarns, which one does he like he picked black.
And then grey.
And when I encouraged him to pick some more he went for white...
And that was his idea for this blanket.

So we talked, and mixed, and talked some more and we got a compromise:

It didn't take long  for me to make up a small sample and I am happy to say that it's been approved.

I am going to start as soon as I finish our bedroom blanket.

In the making...

On Saturday my knitting group is having a "Gartmore at home" event which basically means we meet for the whole day to knit and make whatever we like. As a group we can do almost everything starting from knitting through crochet, quilting, cross stitch, sugar flower making to.... I don't know if there actually is the end to this list. From time to time if someone can do what others haven' t tried yet she can give a class to teach others. This Saturday we will have a tote bag making class, japanese quilting class, scrapbooking class and crochet doily  making class. And I am giving the last one. So I am busy making some samples, drawing patterns and trying to find some order in many symbols and names used to describe crochet stitches.

Creative stitches

Creative stitches is the name of the show I went to yesterday held at Glasgow Exhibition Centre this weekend. Wow, wow and once more wow. The amount of fabric, wool, needles, felt, beads, buttons, scissors and thread I have seen yesterday still makes my head spin. I went with two clear goals set firmly: first to buy fabric for some of the quilts I intend to make in the near future (and to find what I have in mind at lower prices) and second: have fun. I achieved my goals.

That is the fabric I got. It is just amazing!!! I was looking for grey and pink roses (to make quilt for my Mum) for quite some time and now I got it. The fat quarters I got were all Ł2 so now I have all the rainbow colours for Zuzanna's quilt. And some gorgeous reds with black and white for Bartosz's quilt. Oh, joy...
I can't possibly describe how great it was to wander around that hall and admiring beautiful pieces, seeing all these breathtaking ideas, soaking in the creative atmosphere... I will just mention that I've spent a long time at the Quilters Guild and lace exhibition made me cry.
Go and see for yourself...
Near the end I decided I really need to start making something or I will go crazy. I could use a blindfold and an escort outside to stop me from buying more fabric. So I went to Elena Costella's stand two knit. I was asked to knit two flowers: one for myself and one for the charity Creative Care. The pattern for the twisted flower was amazing, how Elena came up with and idea to twist the work (in one of the rows you're asked to twist your left needle anticlockwise after every six stitches) I have no idea but it works great. So I made a red one for me:

and a purple one for charity. And when I finished they started to close the show so I had no problems with getting out ;) I think I will add some beads in the centre of the flower but I love it already.
I can't wait for the next show...