A trove of creativity

I realised, as I was writing my recent peek into our day post, that in the previous one I had promised that I would share a cardigan that I had recently finished knitting.  My long blogging break has made me forget the bits and pieces of our lives that I used to share here on a regular basis.  I love to make and create things, mostly things we wear or use, and gifts for friends and family, so I thought I would share not only my cardigan but also some of the other things that have been keeping me busy over the past few weeks.

The cardigan was a labour of love.  I started it way back in the Summer last year, around the time that we booked flights for a holiday in the winter sun, I thought this would be perfect to wear on our holiday.  The cardigan was not finished by then but I did take it with me, it was too hot for knitting so I only added the odd row.  I really enjoyed knitting this cardigan despite the length of time it took, it was one that I picked up and put down in between other projects.    I chose this pattern not only for the design, which I love, I also wanted to improve my knitting skills and it certainly has done that.  I was a bit worried about knitting all that lace, as I have had many disasters trying to knit lace patterns in the past, but I needn't have worried it was so much easier than I thought it would be and I could see where I had made a mistake which I hadn't been able to in the past, all part of the learning.

I have two projects on the needles now, the first is a tunic for Alice.  This pattern goes up to age 10, Alice's current age but she is so tall I was sceptical that it would be long enough, it isn't, I need to add at least 10cm to the length. That is quite a bit of extra knitting, when I got to the end of the first ball of wall and measured my knitting I realised that I had miscalculated the amount of yarn I would need, luckily I was able to buy an extra two balls from the same dye lot, the last two which was a great relief!

The other project on the needles is a cardigan for my nephew, I love this pattern it will be the fourth one of these I have knitted.  This a great knit for when we are watching something together as a family, which we often do , I can knit it in the dark/poor light.  This is knitting up so much quicker than the tunic as it is a much smaller size and it is all stocking stitch.

Over my years of knitting I have amassed quite a collection of needles.  I am not a fan of sewing up seams so I choose patterns that are knit in the round, these patterns often make use of double pointed needles or dpns.  Six years ago I made a case to keep them in but I continued to add to my collection and out grew this needle roll some time ago.  I have been meaning to make a bigger one for a long time, every time I visited my local sewing shop I would be reminded that I had once again forgotten to work out the measurements.  On a recent visit they had an offer on some end of roll pieces of fabric so I bought a piece hoping that I could make it work, lucky for me it did.  I hand embroidered the numbers on before I sewed it up, now I shouldn't need to use my needle gauge to find the needles for a project, provided I put them back in the right place of course!

We have been making little gnomes this year as each season has come along, they sit on our seasonal table. Earlier this year some dear friends of ours moved away to another country and I wanted to make them something that was small enough to be posted and would be enjoyed by the whole family.  So I made them a full set, one for each season, I hope that when they place each gnome on their seasonal table they will be reminded of all the lovely time we spent together, a  little piece of us in their new home.

What have you been making or creating recently?

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Lace Cardigan Pattern here
Tunic Pattern here
Cardigan pattern here
Needle Roll Tutorial here
Peg Doll inspiration here

Sewing

I have been slowly amassing a collection of dpn's ( double pointed needles) over the last couple of years.  I have kept them in the same bag as my other knitting needles or in a project bag, loose, as a result I keep losing them.  When reading posts on blogs I kept spotting the different ways that other knitters stored these needles and wanted to make something to store mine in, a specific bag for them.  When you buy dpns they sometimes have a size printed on them which wears off soon after you start using them, in order to work out which size I needed for a project I always had to get them all out of the bag of needles and use a needle gauge to find the right ones.  So I needed a bag which would keep them all together and allow me to group them by size.  I liked the roll up cases that I had seen for storing knitting needles, pencils, paint brushes etc and decided to use that design.

I worked how wide I wanted it to be and cut three pieces of fabric, one to make the pockets, one as a the back and the other as a flap all the same width.  I worked out the lengths for each piece, the back was longer than the longest needle I had, the pockets were about 2/3 of the length of the same needle and the flap was roughly the same so that it overlapped with the pockets.  I doubled all these lengths.

I first sewed the open edge of the pocket piece to the folded edge of the back piece then folded the pocket piece over so it lay flat on the back piece.  I had worked it where I needed the stitching for the pockets to go and stitched the pocket flap to one thickness of the back piece as I did not want the stitches to be visible on the back of the case.  I next sewed the open edges of flap piece to the open edges of the back piece to give me one long piece with a seam in it.  I turned the whole thing so that the right sides were together and pinned up the whole of one side including a ribbon and sewed that seem.  I then did the same with half the seam on the other side, to allow me to turn the whole thing back to the right way out.  I hand sewed the rest of the seam and another piece of ribbon and my case was complete.

Joining in with Nicole for Keep Calm Craft On.