Last on the list

I cast on for this little jumper the night before my planned C-section for Baby B.  Since I was scheduled last on the list, I figured I'd have lots of knitting time while waiting my turn and potentially being bumped for emergencies.  I needed something to distract me from my rumbling hungry tummy!

Anyway, I did get lots of knitting done before and after the birth, because Baby was an easy and sleepy little mite on the postnatal ward.

The yarn is WI branded (for what that's worth) and is a acrylic 4 ply and wonderfully soft.  There aren't too many acrylics I'm prepared to knit with and this is one of them.  I suspect it's a cousin of Patons Smoothie?

The pattern is "Beyond Puerperium" and my notes are here.  It ended up as a baby gift for my little niece.  Hope she likes it!

I crocheted the saturn V and I'm ambivalent about the result

For our WI's annual entry into the craft competition at the Fenland Fair, I was persuaded to crochet the Saturn V.  The pattern is pretty cool and so is the subject, but nevertheless I had a bad attitude to this project, probably because of the cheap acrylic yarn in my stash that had to be used.  My white yarn was so cheap that it showed the darker stranding inside it.  Also, crochet stitches don't align on top of each other like knitting ones do, rather they are shifted about 1/4st to the right.  Therefore, the vertical black blocks look like they are twisting clockwise around the rocket (they are).  No idea how the designer avoided this fate - vigorous blocking perhaps?

Anyway, it made it back to be stuffed wonkily into Baby B's toy bucket, to look comically bent at me whenever I see it.  Banana rocket.  At least that bit makes me smile.

I knitted a jumper very quickly

This jumper was finished in November last year, I'm behind on my posting!

In the search for yarn that's (a) cheap (b) soft (c) wears well, I recalled the Patons Smoothie DK that I remembered doing a baby jumper in.  Turns out the only reason it didn't pill was that baby grew out of it before it had been washed too much.  This jumper in the same yarn pilled pretty much straight away.  Boo hoo.

See my ravelry notes here, the pattern is the child's placket neck pullover, changed to be knitted top-down (instead of bottom up) and with a stripe pattern and colour based on someone else's project knitted to a different sweater pattern.

I should always do a tension swatch and this jumper is why.  Gah.  At least toddler big boy likes it, and the actual knitting went quite fast (at least, when it wasn't languishing on a shelf).  It's my third time to knit this jumper pattern, I still love it.  It's so easy to knit and wear.

Advent calendar, what was I thinking?

I was looking at the first advent calendars to hit the shops in October which were all merchandised to the max, and probably Toddler was going on for the billionth time how he'd prefer a blue Thomas the Tank Engine cake from Tesco for his birthday like last year, even though (a) He doesn't even like Thomas and he won't let me read any of the books to him and (b) The cake wasn't that nice either.  I probably thought "Argh, if I buy a Peppa chocolate calendar this year, we'll always have to have Peppa calendars until eternity."  I must have had low blood sugar and probably a blow to the head, because in my addled state I thought the solution to this was to make a fabric advent calendar.

I copied the idea from Purl Soho here, but I stitched all the felt squares onto a woven fabric because honestly, even given super quality felt, how long will their calendar last before its stretched out of shape?  Even when used by a careful adult and not a marauding toddler?  So I bought 8 colours of felt and some cream polycotton and some other weird polycotton with fused batting on the back for the main hanging.

For scale, the larger of the felt squares is 3" across.  The woven fabric for the pockets has a rolled hem along the top, and the sides are zig-zagged before being turned under.  The actual shape of the polycotton is an isoceles trapezium, but it's been stitched onto a square shape on the backing so that there is some fullness at the top of the pocket to put presents in.  So that's an intentional gape, not stretched felt, woo!

I transferred the digits for embroidery by the old skool method of pricking a paper stencil and brushing powdered chalk through the tiny holes.

The blue/brown colour scheme was suggested by Mr B.  I wanted the red-pink-green Purl Soho combination, but Mr B rightly suggested that a second exciting colour scheme which for the other calendar might be hard to think up.  The second calendar is not finished yet (baby won't notice the absence this year) so you'll have to wait to see what colours we picked for that one!  I put names on the tops to stop arguments about who has which colour calendar.

I've already sewn the pockets up for the second calendar, but they don't have embroidery numbers on yet and they're not stitched to the backing yet.  I'll admit I was cursing myself as I edge-stitched my 100th felt square and I'll probably swear some more as I embroider my 50th number.

Anyway, Toddler is enjoying opening a new pocket each day and discovering the treasures from poundland or magicked from my fabric stash.  This is going to be a rod for my own back, probably worse than Peppa and her daily dairy milk.

WHY.

Quick trick to make shirts smaller

I bring you one cunning trick to make adult shirts smaller for children!

Here's what to do:

1.  Find suitable 100% cotton adult shirt.  I used a men's work shirt with a 15" collar pilfered from Mr B.

2.  Wash on it's own in the washing machine on a 90degC cycle with bicarb and vinegar.  I used 3 tbsp of bicarb, which I put in the drum with the shirt, and 1 cup of spirit vinegar which I put in the soap drawer.  This should cause the shirt to shrink a little.

3.  Tumble dry on the hottest setting to make the shrinkage permanent.

4.  Repeat steps 2 and 3 again until you have reached the desired size.  I did about 5 repeats to make the shirt small enough for toddler - about a size 104cm (age 4-5).

After this, when you come to launder the shirt normally, just use non-bio soap powder and wash at 40degC with the rest of your laundry.  Magic!

Only joking.  Of course I didn't.  I used this.

Purple trousers CAPSLOCK MOMENTS

I made my first pair of proper trousers!  I'm not counting the self-drafted trousers here and their many shorts variation friends.

I made the "Elvis" trousers from the 1/2015 issue of Ottobre magazine, whose model displays them in turquoise thusly:

I had to make these because I love me a good pair of brightly coloured trousers on a little man, and toddler likes them too.  I scored some purple twill for £2/m from St Ives bank holiday market.  Although it has an inexplicable fire-retardant backing, this has softened completely in the wash.  Nevertheless, these pants will only ever be metaphorically on fire.

A red bowl of conkers was just lying around, so I kept it in shot.  I'll admit it doesn't look as arty as I thought.

Sadly the notions cost me more than £2, even when I skipped the zippers on the back pockets.  I'm not going to count the £15 I splurged on 32 sewing machine feet from China, or the cost of the top-stitch needles, or the spotty cotton pocket facings and button from my stash.  However, I ought to count the fly zipper and the red top-stitch thread (of which I used an entire spool).  So maybe the trousers cost me £6 all in.

BOOM!  Spotty cotton!  Also, eagle-eyed viewers will note my top-stitch tension issues, even after unpicking 4 times... ARGH.

I have a thing about red and purple together.  I had SO MUCH FUN making these trousers.  Fabric that doesn't fray. lustrous red thread, new machine feet... ahhhh the good times.

The pattern is lovely, although Mr B takes issue with the style detail where the side seam twists onto the front leg.  Pah!  I love it.  They're also slim enough for Toddler B, although I am waiting on a red belt from eBay to keep them up so he can wear them now and make them last longer.  That's why the bottom of the belt-loops are not stitched down yet (just in case the belt is wider than expected).  Also, I ran out of topstitch thread, so you don't get red bar-tacks at the top and bottom of every belt loop.  I ain't buying another spool for that malarky.

I skipped the exposed metal zippers on the back pockets to save money and my furniture.

I did have a few issues with the top-stitching - my machine wouldn't get the tension right sometimes and made loops of top-stitch thread underneath the fabric, usually when sewing right on the edge of 3+ thicknesses of twill.  I think because the presser-foot had uneven pressure over the bulky seam allowances and the fabric got pulled up and down by the needle.  I managed to partly solve it by using a pad of rolled up twill beside the seam to make the foot press evenly.

Sometimes my machine skipped stitches when trying to top-stitch over e.g. 6 thicknesses of twill in a seam intersection.  Tbh who can blame it?

Ok, so now I fess up to the mistakes.  I don't know what possessed me but I didn't take into account the diagonal twill weave when I cut out.  I just folded the fabric and cut double.  I think.  Or something.  It was dark in my windowless sewing space in the evening.  Anyway, the weave is not doing what I would like across the back seam (or indeed the front).  Don't look too closely.   Also, my top-stitching could be more even, but I'm going to allow myself some leeway on that as it's my first attempt.

My top stitching is not the best, but toddler will move too fast in real life for this to cause anyone visual pain.

I'll be making these again!  IN EVERY COLOUR ST IVES WILL SELL ME.  Did you hear that, man on St Ives market stall?  I WILL BUY ALL YOUR WACKY TWO QUID TWILL.  I will look for new audacious colours of top-stitch thread.  MAD LEGS AHOY!

Note that the shirt is looking a bit small - not to worry, a new one is in the works.

In less capslock-inducing news, I have cut up one of Mr B's old work-shirts and am in the process of transforming it into a toddler sized shirt.  This is quite exciting to me (and toddler).

Doctor, Doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains!

So, I finally finished the last pair of curtains which I was cutting out the two days before baby arrived.

Of course, taking photos toward the window in the daytime in a room that is painted in a dark-ish colour does not yield good results with my camera in idiot mode.

Behold!  The curtains with the irritatingly large pattern repeat are done!  A further 3m of fabric from a different bolt (so slightly different colour) were found and purchased, but I don't think you can tell that one drop is slightly different.

Also: I bring you another top tip of the blindingly obvious variety.  Cheap material is... cheap.  Okay, the feel and print of this fabric are fine, but the fabric had a badly wonky grain and off-grain pattern.  When cutting out I had to choose between cutting perpendicular to the selvedges, cutting along the grain-line, or cutting along the pattern repeat (we chose to take an average of all three, so hopefully it would hang fine and the pattern not be too wonky).  Add to this the 24" pattern repeat and you've got a headache.

Anyways, not much to say here that I didn't already say about these previous curtains of the same design.  They're interlined with blackout lining, and lined with polycotton.  I still love the metal eyelets and you shouldn't mess around with those shonky plastic ones in the highstreet shops.  Just go straight to Hanolex and buy the biggest hammer you'll ever own.

Mr B:  "This hammer is awesome.  It looks like a Thor Hammer, you know?  Like the god Thor?"
Me:  "Yes, that's why it's called a Thor Hammer."
Mr B:  "Oh."

If you're interested, the wall colour is "Soft Cinnebar 3" by Dulux.  For the first time in my life, I copied a "Get the Look!" article in the National Trust Magazine.  Except it's cheaper to get a Dulux colour mixed than go to Fired Wallet or wherever they were suggesting.

I am finally rid of the horrid brown and tan pairs of suede-effect unlined curtains that came with the house!  But, bad news:  Mr B wants them to be re-sewn into covers for his mower and his vice (to protect them from belt sander dust).  I don't know if I can bear to touch them... eugh.