A scarf and a squirrel handbag.

Remember that frighteningly tangled skein of silk?

This is what became of it:

It's a narrow scarf, which is long enough to reach below the waist on both sides. It's knitted with one strand of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk and two strands of Colinette Parisienne held together. I cast on 13 stitches, on 5mm needles. Every fourth row, I changed to a 10mm needle. Otherwise it's just plain garter stitch - keep knitting until the yarn runs out!



Here's the last of the pre-ordered tote bags, which I finished today.



You may have noticed that it's a different shape from the others!

The photographs don't show the shape particularly well - it's more curvy than it looks. It's big, too - in the second picture the bag has an A4 pad inside it, to keep it nice and flat. It has one long handle, and you can just see a tiny sneaky peek of the Design By Claire label in there too.



Tomorrow night is Hallowe'en and I've just rustled up a very quick costume thanks to Martha Stewart. I'll tell you all about it as soon as I have some photos. Happy Hallowe'en!

Two t-shirts

I've been working non these two t-shirts over the weekend, and finished them today.

They're for Selina, made from fabric which she saw on Ebay, and sent over to me. The first t-shirt is a cotton/lycra jersey, with a silver skulls and roses print. The second is a polyester blend, I think, with a purple print of skulls and daggers.

Both t-shirts were drafted from scratch. I made the patterns based on a combination of tracing an existing t-shirt which fitted well, images of t-shirts which Selina liked, and a detailed description.



The skulls and roses t-shirt is a basic women's fitted t-shirt shape, with a double-stitched hem and neck band. The sleeves are slightly gathered at the shoulder, and have a band which forms a small cuff.



The skulls and daggers t-shirt has the same slightly puffed sleeves, but without the band. Instead it has a wide band at the bottom of the t-shirt, and the same plain black band at the v-neck.


I've really enjoyed working on these. I haven't sewn a t-shirt since the summer, and I'd forgotten how nice jersey can be to work with. I think I might have a dig around in my t-shirt pile, and see what else I can come up with.

Links and recommendations

On Tuesday I had a little frenzy of ordering things.

The first item to arrive dropped through my letterbox yesterday, which was nice and fast!
I'd placed an order with Woven Labels UK for some new labels to sew inside my creations.

I ordered 144 labels, for which I paid a grand total of £5.90, plus 99p postage and packing. Bargain!

I did cheat a little bit - because I didn't want an image or a special font, or my own logo woven onto tape, I actually ordered the school name tapes. Red text on a white background matches my website perfectly, and they look really nice. They do have a really nice selection of fancy labels though, so you could still choose something a bit more dramatic without going the whole hog and paying for your own logo to be done.

This is the second time I've used Woven Labels UK, and I would heartily recommend them.

The other items I ordered might take a little longer - one is fabric from America (more printed cottons from Cia's Palette), and the other is Fair Trade organic cotton from India.



For those of you who are knitters, I am very excited to have been signed up to Ravelry! I haven't added very many details yet, but I have just uploaded lots and lots of photos of knitting to Flickr.

I've also just bought 10 skeins of Colinette Banyan in Neptune. It was a bargain on Ebay, and with all of those lovely patterns on Ravelry, I'm afraid I couldn't resist...

A Trio of Totes

I now have ten out of eleven tote bags all finished, and I'm really pleased with the way they've come out. :)

They're all fully lined, and all of the seams, on the bag and the lining, are stitched and then overlocked for extra strength. The handles are interfaced to prevent them from stretching, and they're held on to the bag by two rows of top stitching. I've been using a similar bag for several months now, and it barely even looks used. Of course, the beauty of fabric bags like these is when they start to look a bit grubby, you can just stick them in the washing machine, give them a good iron when they come out, and they look as good as new!

The bags shown above are approximately A4 in size (10" x 12"), and have two handles around 21" long. You can carry the bag on the shoulder, or in your hand without it dragging on the ground. Alternatively, you can have a single long handle, which measures around 42".

I've also updated the details of the tote bags on the Design By Claire website, complete with shopping cart buttons, so that you can simply choose your fabric and order a bag online.

I hope you like them!

Some days, you just shouldn't knit.

I was off work yesterday, with tonsilitis, so I thought I'd have a nice relaxing afternoon on the sofa, gently coughing into a bit of nice simple knitting.

I had a skein of Colinette Parisienne mohair and a skein of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, which I thought would pair up nicely together to make a fabulously soft scarf.

I wound them into balls with my trusty ball winder, and made a start.



I had wondered whether the mohair might be a bit of a pain, as I'm using two strands held together with one strand of the silk, and I was a bit worried that I might get into a tangle using the yarn from both the inside and the outside of the ball at once.

Three rows later, and I discover that the problem is not going to be with the mohair, but with the silk.



My carefully wound ball has started to fall apart at both ends!

An hour of careful untangling later, and I am faced with this:



That could have gone better. :(


The LiveJournal brit_knits community have been extremely helpful, and in the end I was able to untangle the whole thing, without taking the scissors to it! It only took five and three-quarter hours... I could have knitted the whole scarf in that time!

Speaking of which... I'm about twenty rows in, and I've now decided that the scarf is too wide. I'm really not sure yet whether I can face unravelling the knitting as well as the yarn, so I might just have to learn to live with a short, wide scarf!


Lesson Of The Day: Don't wind silk into centre-pull balls!

Wanted: One pair of comfy scissors.

Today I have been mostly cutting out.

I have cut out the fronts and backs and handles for ten tote bags, which equals seventy-six pieces of fabric. I didn't cut out the interfacing for the handles, as I'd managed to develop a great big blister on the middle knuckle of the middle finger of my right hand. Ouch.

Before I cut the interfacing I think I will be nipping down to John Lewis, to see whether I can find a pair of scissors with nice comfy handles which don't sit right on my knuckle. Or maybe a rotary cutter. That would be great for this kind of cutting, as I could do several layers of lining fabric in one go.

Once I'd had enough of cutting out, I decided to do a bit of work on the Design By Claire website.

The changes are minor at the moment, and there is a lot more work which needs to be done. The most significant change is that the fabrics now have their own page, so you can see everything that's currently available in one place. The two things which need to be done next are a revamp of the Gallery page, and the addition of a shopping cart functionality which will make it a bit easier for people to actually buy things directly from the website.

Unfortunately, the next chance I have to work on either the website or the tote bags isn't until the weekend, as I have to go out and do my Proper Job for the next three days. Ho Hum.


And just so that I'm not leaving you without a picture - here's a lovely one of my Dad, modelling one of the cravats that I made for my sister's wedding:

Goodies from across the Atlantic...

Hooray! A brief hiatus in the current postal strike was marked by the arrival of two parcels of fabric all the way from America! One is from Superbuzzy, and the other from Cia's Palette. Each contains twelve half-yards of fabric, to be made into tote bags.

Here are the packages, just waiting to be popped open:

These fabrics have already been claimed by eager friends:



And these are fabrics that I've chosen, which are up for grabs if you see one that you like!

 

	State Fair
London map canvas	Sweet Squirrels
Happy Bees	Graphic Leaves
Horses	Mini Panda
Tadpoles in jars	Birdcages
Surfin' Pareo	Robot March
VW camper vans	Little Ladybirds
Kitty Alphabet	Day of the Dead skulls

A couple of these are taken, destined to be Christmas gifts, and one or two might see their way into the bodice of a dress, if they're not snapped up for bags straight away.

If anybody would like to lay claim to any of these fabrics, the resulting tote bags will cost £15, including p&p within the UK.

• The bags will measure approximately 10" x 12", which is more than big enough to fit A4.


• The handles will measure approximately 21", which is long enough to go over the shoulder, or to be carried in the hand without dragging on the floor. Or, you can have one long handle, which measures approximatly 44".


• The bags are all fully lined in a matching or contrasting plain fabric. (Except for the London print canvas, which doesn't need lining.)

Work on the tote bags will start next week!

Knitting dress for the Knitting show...

Way back in the mists of... July, I showed you the making-of Rosealare's dress.

The pattern is Butterick B5028, and the fabric is a cotton tana lawn, from Liberty, with the most adorable knitting print.

We've been plagued by postal strikes throughout the making of this dress. The mock-up went back and forth between us a couple of times, very slowly, and there's another postal strike from now until the day that Rosealare needs to wear the dress. It's going by Special Delivery in the morning, which would normally arrive the next day, but we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that the parcel arrives in time.

The occasion to which Rosealare is going to wear the dress is the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace!

What better place to wear a knitting dress, than to a knitting show?

Knitting Synchronicity

Every now and then I go through my giant stack of magazines, cut out the bits which interest me, and chuck the remains in the recycling.

Over the weekend, I found a picture of a jumper that I really liked, and idly wondered whether I could be bothered to work out a pattern to knit one for myself.

Today, I arrived home from work to find the Fall issue of Knit1 magazine sitting on my doorstep. (Thanks to Magazine Café, where you can subscribe to American magazines in the UK.) What should I see amongst the patterns? A jumper which looks remarkably similar to the one I'd snipped out of Elle!

On the left: Elle UK, August 2007. Jumper by Louis Vuitton.
On the right: Knit1 Magazine, Fall 2007.

Perfect.

I'll probably never get around to actually knitting this pattern. On the list of things I really want to knit for myself, this one's pretty low. But just knowing that I can knit it, if I want to, is making me very happy this evening.

Marmalade Sandwich, anyone?

This skirt is another commission for Madamequeeny. I wasn't sure whether the print would be too big for it to work properly, but I'm actually really pleased with the way it's come out.

Considering the age this duvet cover must be, the fabric's in absolutely excellent condition. I'll probably make another skirt out of what I have left.

Over the weekend I had an email from Cia (of Cia's Palette), telling me that my two favourite fish fabrics are back in stock.



I've only just placed an order with Cia (for lots of different half-yards to make tote bags), but I'm sorely temped to make a version of Simplicity 6373, with the fishies in bags for the skirt, and the free-swimming ones for the bodice...



What do you think...?