Kirstie Allsopps Cushion Cover Trauma

Okay, so I’m still on Christmas annual leave and rather than waste my days off work by loafing on the sofa watching Most Haunted reruns, I decided to be Crafty and Creative by making Kirstie Allsopp’s Homemade Home cushion covers.    But, shock, horror, when I opened my sewing box this morning to make a start I almost passed out.  ‘Someone’ (naming no names…you know who you are…) had rooted through it and had pinched the small boxes I used to store buttons and pins in, and had left the contents of the stolen boxes scattered everywhere.   My blind string was unravelled.  There were knots in my tape.  My bobbins were cast adrift.  And my cotton was in a shambles.  It clearly needs to be sorted.

I love my sewing box.  I bought it (along with its intriguing contents) from my favourite second hand/charity shop on Queens Road in Watford.   I only paid £3 for it.  Inside were old patterns and books, some of which were priced at ‘just 4d’, along with old lace and transfers and other bits and bobs with yellowing pages.   

4d seems such a strange price compared to our current currency.  I can’t remember exactly when our currency changed, but I do remember it changing.  I think I was about 6 years old, which make the contents of the sewing box at least 30 years old.  There's even an evenlope filled with old transfers, which I have no idea what to do with.

A few years back I used to love nothing better than to make Roman Blinds and Austrian Blinds.  Austrian Blinds (or Festoon blinds as I always preferred to call them) were my favourite thing in the world to make.  The biggest I ever made were to fit a 16 ft by 8 ft bay window.  I was in seventh heaven and clearly still boast about it now!   But then they went out of fashion.  Typical.  

Anyway, roll on the years….  Twelve months ago I grabbed a bargain at Dunelms.  A lovely, patterned, lemon and gold coloured 20 meter roll of Chenille fabric for just £19.99, which was a brilliant find seeing as it normally retails at £49.99 per meter.  The reason for the cheap price?  The first meter or so had a black ink stain along the outer edge.   So far, I’ve made simple ceiling to floor curtains for the front door to keep out the winter drafts, plus a matching curtain for the landing window.  I whizzed them up in just a few hours, so they’re far from perfect, and in hindsight I wish I hasn’t recycled the old curtains to use as a liner, but hey-ho, they’re okay.

Today, I plan to whizz up some cushion covers out of the same material - what's left of it.  I’ll let you know how I get on…..(once I finish sorting out my blasted sewing box!)

11th Square and still knitting

I’m busy knitting.  I’m now on my 11^th square having just completed my first ever moss stitch project!  Woo hoo!  Only another 50 or so squares to go…..   

I’m actually really, really, enjoying the project, but I must tackle darning heart and kisses on the squares to finish them off.  I'm enjoying it so much I have my next project already lined up!  A lovely throw in two-tone green with knitted flowers.

Oil Paintings

So, we've recently decorated the dining room/living area a deep Moroccan red.  Lovely.  With the few Spanish paintings we have hung here and there, it now has a very Mediterranean feel to it.  Very relaxing and mega comfortable.  It's great, too, as we can sit out there with the dogs and watch telly, which means our actual front room remains tidy!

The only downside is the back wall, which is very long and was in desperate need of something to sit above the sideboard.  We once saw a picture of a Spanish dancer in a shop window in Kings Langley.  They wanted £1300 for the print.  Completely and utterly out of our price range.  On top of which, there is no way we'd pay that sort of money for a print.  Then, by sheer chance, we nipped into Dunelms just before Chrsitmas and there, perched up against a back wall in the haberdashery department, were a small selection of Spanish dancer oil paintings for sale. Unbelievable!  So, Charlie very kindly bought one for us for our Christmas present while we grabbed the other as a treat to ourselves.   

They now hang in the dining room/living area above the antique sideboard, which is adorned with old black and white photos of my family – including one of my granddad, rifle in hand, dressed in his fatigues, standing outside his tent during WW1.  Nice.....

Roll on the New Year!

It's really foggy here.  We had a lot of rain yesterday that's washed away most of the snow (woo hoo!), but now the world outside my back door looks dead eerie...  Like something out of a Hammer House of Horrors movie.  I'm just waiting for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee to jump out from behind the murky shadows.  But, until they do, I hope everyone had a peaceful, Merry Christmas filled with lots of lovely presents?  This year I was spoiled rotton.  Handmade gloves, pickles and chutneys, wine, necklaces and bracelets, earrings, a gorgeous knitted jacket/cardi, True Blood and Pacific on DVD and lots of lovely Joyce Meyer books.  Plus a new mobile phone for my birthday!  Thank you everyone!

Talking of presents - I'm planning on doing a homemade Christmas next year.  I've completely made up my mind about it.  I'm going to make a chutney and pickled onions, (hopefully) Oat & Honey soap, organic honey and homemade mead hamper for everyone.  As I visit charity shops I'll keep my eye open for possible wicker baskets - or something that'll suffice as a hamper basket.  I can get bags of shredded paper from work to use instead of straw.  Ben has a friend at work, Marc, who makes us chutney and pickled onions.  His pickled onions are to-die-for and he does all different flavours - from honey right through to blazing hot, hot, hot chilli.  This year rather than give them to us in an old battered-up bottle, he went all-out and decorated the smart bottle in a plain label with 'Marc's Pickled Onions' handwritten on it.  He then put cloth over the lid and tied it off with a yellow ribbon that reminded you of straw.  Compared to his normal, printed label, the overall effect of the new bottle and handwritten label was fab.  It looked like something you'd buy from a Farmers Market.  We're going to have his cranberry, onion and apple chutney with our New Year Day's meal.  I think that is a much better idea than a tin of Quality Street chocolates and a bottle of mass produced wine, don't you? 

Old bottles of chutney made before March became 'crafty'.

Marc's simple jar of pickled onions looks a million times better than earlier attempts.

The second hand shop I visit on Queens Road in Watford sells old material, ribbons, crafting gadgets etc (it has one corner of the store just for crafting bits and bobs - including baskets filled with old wool).  Every time I visit, I'll keep my eye open for ribbon to decorate the baskets.  Plus, you can stuff other things in hampers - like homemade hanky covers.  Knitted socks.  Mince pies.  Or old framed photos.  Along with a note telling them what's in the hamper and asking them to recycle the baskets by handing them back to you when they're done with them.

I think homemade gifts show someone how much they're thought off.  I think that's why homemade Christmases and Easters are becoming so very popular.  You put a lot of time, thought and energy into knitting socks and gloves etc.  Whereas, it only takes a few minutes to throw a tin of chocolates into your shopping basket..... 

How to start a knitting group

I'm hopeful that one day I will find a regular, local knitting group that I can join.  Where mum lives in Leighton Buzzard they have a gorgeous wool shop (Nutmeg Needlecrafts), which is situated down a very old, cobbled, back street, just wide enough for two people to talk through.  Hidden off the beaten track, it's lovely and quirky with a cobbled, gated entrace and a pictureque window.  And they do coffee mornings where the locals bring their knitting with them, and they have an area at the back of the shop where you can sit and knit anytime you want. In Abbots Langley they have nothing like that.  :-(  Such a shame.

 

Knitting Techniques

Knitting techniques.....  (for those times when we really get stuck....)

I've learned a lot from mum and, surprisingly enough, from You Tube.  It has some great instructional videos.  Check out ImagiKnit on my links (right side of the page).  I think they're the best I've come across.  Anyway, in case you get caught in a condrum and don't know how to slip that stitch, or pick that other stitch up, or even how to urll, try the videos below. 

How to pick up the dreaded dropped stitch.....  (By the way, I LOVE the colour wool she's using!  I can see this as a nice rug....)

Pulling your hair out, wondering how to do the continental purl stitch?  If so, watch below

 

And, finally (for now), Mum tells me cable stitch is just like platting hair.....

Karen's adventures in knitting the Shaker style throw

Right, drum roll please, I've been knitting!  And, shock, horror, knitting rather well (even if I do say so myself).  I'm knitting a Shaker-style throw.

Everyone should knit.  It's the new 'thing' to do.  And, it's passing on an ancient tradition.  Mum was taught to knit by Nuns in Westport, Ireland.  She was (is) so good at knitting, the nun's had her knit cardi's and blankets for other nun's who were sick in the infirmary.  Mum was only little at the time, but knitting has been a life-long hobby of hers since, and I just wish I'd taken it up in earnest years ago, too.

Now, this new hobby of mine doesn't come without its dangers - sore finger-pad syndrome, stiff wrist, poke-your-eye-out-with-a-size-7-needle, and the odd spout of swearing when things go wrong - are just a few of the side-effects, but the final product albeit too tight, too holey, too many dropped stitches, or so unlike-the-actual-pattern-its-hard-to-actually-figure-out-just-what-it-is you’ve-created, is too satisfying for words.

My first attempt wasn't too good, but with each knitted square I see my work getting better and better.

This was my first attempt at Garter Stitch.  The little tassles above are markers for a heart that I'm suppposed to darn on the finished square.  Only, as some of the pattern might as well be written in Latin, actually figuring out what the pattern is telling me to do, and actually doing what the pattern is telling me to do, are two very different things!  So, I never actually got past inserting the marking tassles.  When complete, is should look like this:

Since knitting the Garter Stitch and heart square above, I've gone on to knit a Little Ladders square.  Only, my little ladders is a wee bit holey, and is also a bit squished in places due to me getting carried away with ironing it.....

My next adventure was the Garter Stitch Stripe square, only minus the little kisses as, like above, I can't figure out the pattern!  It should look like this when it's done:

For the time being, my version looks like this:

The square below is my favourite square to date.  It's called Stocking Stitch Diamond.

I had a hard time with this square.  Mock Rib with Garter Stitch Ridges square!!!!  I kept forgetting where I was in the pattern, then knitting out of sync, the end result being the lines didn't match!  Grrr!  But, apart from the odd hiccup here and there (and the occassional swearing episode), I finally did it.

I whizzed (do you like that...whizz....) this up yesterday afternoon.  This is the Stocking Stitch heart square.  Not only an I getting faster, I'm getting better.  It's edges keep curling up, and after my last disasterous attempt to smooth the squares out by ironing them (don't do it!) I've decided this time to pin it down to a towel in the hope that over time it'll settle flat.  The white thing in the middle is supposed to be a heart, but it looks more like the 1980s Space Invader creature.  But, hey ho, Rome wasn't built in a day.

So, to date, I've knitted the following for the throw...

Only another 50 to go!

Christmas Time

Can you believe it's almost Christmas?  Where does the year go?  In amongst the rugby trips to the local town centre to get that almost unobtainable gift that your child/friend/partner/husband literally 'must have' let’s all remember that Jesus was our greatest gift and I pray that this Christmas is filled with joy and celebration for you and those you love.