Knittin’

So last week I had the chance to go to a friend’s ‘knit in’. What is a knit in I hear you ask? Well bloody good question – I’d never been to one before and wasn’t exactly sure either. It was seven women, several bottles of good red wine, snacks, music, comfortable chairs, and sticks and thread – knitting needles, crochet hooks, wool, acrylic yarn. For close to 4 hours we sat and chatted, got to know each other (the women all knew the host but we didn’t all know each other), nibbled, drank, told stories, and laughed. I heard about pets and career changes and life changing accidents, and neighbours and travel and good boot stores. I heard snippets of conversation about the who’s who of my industry, about other knitting projects, about boyfriends left overseas, about job dreams, about lifting weights in the gym. I saw the resident cat come and hunt a ball of wool and stalk off with it, saw other things my friend has made recently, and had my first crochet lesson (I did some! 3 stitches to two, take off the second, start again... hmm, made sense at the time)… I toe tapped to George Michael and I almost finished a knitted square for the Wrap with Love project (see below – I seem obsessed with it, every second post is about my emerging blanket at the moment!). All of the squares started that night were for the blanket project – so I got to take them away at the end because I will be going near the drop off point this week anyway. Ah, because you see, this Friday at the ABC on Harris Street in the City, there is the annual ‘knit in’ of grand proportions. Starts really early I think, and you get to knit in company, or help sew up the existing squares.



Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my mum has joined in and posted me a parcel of amazing squares she’s knitted – lovely soft, hairy, stripy, colourful squares (her knitting is so even compared to mine, not a dropped stitch anywhere!), my housemate is knitting one on the diagonal (you know, where you increase every row until you’ve made a triangle and it’s half the size you want your square to be and then decrease every row to go back to the pointy end of the triangle at the bottom) using up the scraps of wool in stripes. I was going for a pink and green theme, and had planned to stitch it up myself and give the blanket finished to the group that organises it, but I am trying different colour combos with the extra squares that other folk have made (pics below). I’m thinking I’ll be able to sew up a blanket and have loose squares left over, which other people can use in theirs for Friday’s knit in.



Funny starting something yourself and then considering how to include other people’s contributions – am reflecting on my own control-freak tendencies, and (sure completely subjective) aesthetic boundaries. I don’t mind so much exactly what colours end up in it (fibber – I kind of do), but I want it to look nice, and cared for and not too scrappy, so that whoever ends up getting it doesn’t think it was done without thought. I had been thinking it would be nice to make it the way I’d like something to snuggle up with on a cold night – but maybe this is missing the point a bit? Maybe people who are out in the cold because of loosing their homes wont care if it doesn’t look like a ‘throw for the couch’ and instead wont even notice the colour scheme because they will be in temporary accommodation and have bigger things on their mind. This is probably obvious – but it’s easy to forget that perspective when you’re choosing wool and casting on in front of the tellie ion a warm room. Mind you, one of the squares knitted on Saturday night (by the most lovely lady) was kind of scratchy, brown flecks with a thick yellow stripe up one end, and actually a rectangle. I have tried, but don’t think I can include it in my pink and green (/blue/orange/maybe fawn) project. I’m sure though, that along with some other rusty colours, or in a completely rainbow, beautiful eclectic blanket it will look great.

Rapt with love

Well my wraps with love project hasn't progressed all that far yet. So far I've done 6 squares (takes 28 to make a blanket) but I think my mum has been doing some too and will send them to me to add. Also at a conference last week a woman I know through work was talking about teaming up to do some at our 2 workplaces - an idea I like. So it might end up being more than one blanket!

The pattern is on their website (see previous post) and involves 10 inch by 10 inch squares knitted on 4mm needles, using 8ply wool/yarn. Mine are a bit shonky because I only have 4.5mm needles, so I cast on less stitches and hoped for the best. I figure as long as I finish teh whole blanket it wont matter that my squares are a wee bit stretchier than other folk's. Right?

Going for a green and pink colour theme, which I thought would be nurturing and cheery for someone cold and away from home.

Slippery snakes

Aren't these lovely? My mum made them to take to my little brother's kindy as a craft project with the kids. She cut and sewed them the day before, and glued on their felt eyes and tongue (she opted out of button eyes because of the potential choke hazard). The fabric is an old yellow cotton sheet for their undersides, and a sequiny print fabric on their backs. Stuffed with the standard pillow stuffing.

She stitched them up inside out all the way around except for a small hole for little hands to fit in, took the stuffing, and the teachers and we sat with the kids and helped them stuff them. Then we hand sewed the gap while the kids went and did other things (played outside, read books). It was a lovely idea, and a nice way to hang out and see my little brother with his kindy friends. Watching the kids have snake races, dance with the snakes, and arrange the snakes in the reading corner was lovely.

Pasta almost counts as craft

Truly! Made this on the weekend - fresh spinach fettuccini, using my pasta machine, which I love. Just steamed one bunch of coarsely chopped spinach, let it cool in the liquid I cooked it in, mashed some more with a hand masher, and then used the kind of soupy broth as the liquid in the pasta. At first it seems like there will be big green blobs, but as you work the dough, pass it through the rollers etc, it becomes much more evenly coloured, and gets that very exciting extra special silky fresh pasta feel. Also did some plain dough and made pumpkin ravioli, with roast pumpkin, zucchini and finely chopped and sauteed onion and garlic. Yum!

Felt hand bag for Phoebe-baby!

A little girl I know turns two soon, and I was delighted to find my little felt bag in a drawer during a clean-out!

I made the body of the bag during a felting day at Ms J's house probably 2 1/2 years ago, (made of grey wool and tufts of other colours), then promptly brought it home, didn't know what to do with it (how could I stop my purse and mobile phone falling out? how would I attach a handle? etc etc), put it away and forgot about it.

Then I found it the other day, and instantly thought of Phoebe who is into hand bags, big time. Was going to go look in shops for some cord to sew on, then a flash of inspiration gave me the idea of plaiting some wool and sewing that on.

Perfect for carting about dollies or teddies, don't you think?!

Get knitting for a good cause

Anybody want to make one of these? It only takes 28 squares. Just the thing for a girl with all the scarves she needs who still wants to knit ! :)

See Wrap with Love for more info.

"2" cake

Volunteered to make a cake for a combined 2nd b'day party, as my son is allergic to eggs. However, in the end, he got chicken pox a day or two before and we couldn't go but I still had to make a cake (it was too late to make other arrangements). Although I had planned to make something from the Women's Weekly birthday cake book, time constraints meant I had to switch to plan B - a Vegan Chocolate mud cake (muddy but not too chocolatey and not as unhealthy as it sounds), with icing decoration.

I also wish I could say I made the icing and piped it in a piping bag, but now you can conveniently buy tubes of the stuff at the supermarket. For emergencies only - in future I'd rather make my own and save on plastic packaging. But anyway, if ever you need to make a cake a *little* bit more special than usual, this is one thing you can do...

Quilt cover

OK, so not strictly a Groovy Thing, I know, but I don't get to make things too often, so this is a bit of a big deal for me. And I designed it from scratch.

Bought a child's quilt from Icki-ya, but found it was bigger than what the standard seems to be for cots in Asutralia. Decided to make a couple of covers for it myself. Nothing like the sudden chilling of night time temperatures to spurr you into action! This one is plain to make sure I could do it, but next one will have an applique design on it.

Started with sheet the same size as quilt + 5cm each side to add for quilt puffiness and seam, + an extra 2cm at the bottom end, to allow for doubling over of hem for buttons/velcro/press studs - I went with velcro this time. First, I sewed the hem at the bottom end, making it wide enough for the velcro dots. Then stuck on the velcro dots and sewed them on with crosses (you can see the reverse side on the picture above - I probably should have sewed the velcro on before folding the hem over, but I worried that I wouldn't be able to keep everything in the proper place and would end up with velcro bits that didn't meet). Then I sewed one side hem, put the quilt on top to make sure I wasn't too off with my proportions, pinned the remaining two sides, and sewed them. Voila!

Velcro dots were OK - they stuck in place well while I sewed them on with the machine. But using the machine meant that the adhesive gradually gummed up the needle. Also the added thickness made sewing difficult - it may have played with the machine tension - and my sewing was a bit messy on the underside, which unfortunately is the side you can see on the outside. May go with buttons or press studs next time, as positioning can be adjusted somewhat.

Fabric printing a go go

Further to the earlier foray into t-shirts, I'm now playing with printing onto reams of fabric. This is a simple black pattern repeat on a course weave dark coral/red cotton. sPattern is pretty simple gumnuts in various sizes. I plan to do some with overlays in different colours but wanted to start with the basics.

Cute as a button

Covered buttons - my new passion, such fun to make! All covered with fabric that I've hand painted/ hand printed recently. I used 25mm/1" and 30mm/1 3/16" plastic self cover buttons. The fabrics are (pink) silk, and (white) vintage cotton/linen, and the designs are done freehand or with linocuts.

quiltilicious

This is a 'work in progress' post, and also a collaborative effort. A while ago I paited these animals onto fabric for my little brother- thinking prayer flags, quilt or something similar, but not being much good at sewing I passed them on to mum to do something with. Here they are after mum has added some colour (they were originally B&W with grey wash), and with the fabrics she's picked for front and back, as well as some thread for funky feature stiching of some kind. I'll post when it's finished too.

A New Tardis for my niece

I bought my niece a cardboard rocket for xmas, which I assembled from a pack. It is made of recycled cardboard. Over the past few weeks I have painted and decorated it with scraps of wrapping paper and pictures from magazines.

I am sure that she will make various additions and alterations over time. Hopefully it survives that long.

knit a computer out of recycled jumpers!

Or design some other funky way to reduce the impacts of computer technology on people or the planet. It's a competition.

Mr Happy's long lost cousin

For my Dad's 60th birthday, we just had to take advantage of the fact that there was a family surname joke and a Mr Men vacancy that matched up.... We made a personalised T-shirt!

We sat down and tried to draw a cartoon of my Dad as a Mr Man, and in the end took the best bits of both to create the B&W version of the fella to the left, which does kind of look a bit like my Dad! We outlined it in black texta and scanned it in (hint - use the smoothest paper possible so no paper texture is scanned in too). We tidied things up on the computer's basic paint program, block coloured bits in, then added final detail such as the lines below for the ground. Lettering was added in a style most like that on the actual books. In the version that went to Dad, "Mr.Merry" is holding a glass of red wine. The picture above is a kiddy version for my son.

Bought some T-shirt transfer paper from computer store, and printed the image in reverse, then cut out and ironed onto our t-shirts! We did a test run (revamped an old t-shirt with quick graphic ironed on) but weren't very happy with how it turned after being washed, despite following instructions. Might get a special t-shirt printed professionally, but for the timebeing, many t-shirt makeovers are in store using the left over computer transfer paper!!

a bit overdue

From ages back, here are another round of monster t-shirts for little ones. Hand cut stencils, printed through a screen. Am overdue to make more - oops. Sorry to any one who is waiting. I suck at being a constant producer, I only like making the protptype. I need a santa's workshop of elves to help with the printing. (Tho that would make me santa I guess, and I'm not fond of that two piece outfit)...

Postcards from the edge

I LOVE YOUSE ALL.

Post modern

This was a collaborative art project done in a pub over beer - aint that the best kind - with a persom in mind. When Aunty B upped sticks or downed tools or whatever the phrase is, and moved herself over the seas to live in Europe for a while, we made 'goodbye postcards' at her farewell, and have been sending them, one a week, ever since (like a farewell card in installments). I can only imagine that their fridge is now well and truly bursting with the drunken ramblings of a room full of postcard makers.
Thought others might be interested in the model - could be used for other occasions too - a baby shower (write a tip on the front of each postcard and send a card each week for teh first few months of new mother/fatherhood), new job (post them to the person who's left, things you'll miss about them) or someone sick and off work for a while needing cheering. You can buy packs of blank postcards at art shops, on nice watercolour paper, suitable for painting, drawing and pasting (mmm, pasting) and they already have the square for the stamp etc on the back. Of course you could just take a pack on your next holiday and do them solo, sketches at cafes on the Left Bank, or botanical drawings from restbreaks on your trek sent to desperately envious folks back home too, I think that's what they're designed for.

Monster mash

I found instructions on the interweb for making an ipod monster cover and sent them on to a friend at work who sent them on to her teenage daughter.. who made one! Cool huh? She gave me the OK to post them here. Thanks and well done crafty gal.

Talking of handmade...

Poetics of the handmade
This was an exhibition in August this year where Latin American artists “whose practices emphasise the lyrical possibilities of hand-crafted objects. Highlights ondisplay include 'an exquisitely embossed tin and aluminium skateboard by Guatamala’s Dario Escobar and a variety of painstakingly created large scale installations'.
http://www.moca.org/museum/exhibitiondetail.php?id=384
Museum of Contemporary Art, Loa Angeles, USA

Monster mash

Thanks to Aunty B for this lovely little monster creation all the way from Amsterdam. He was dancing around my desk, so I thought I'd capture it on film. Inspiration maybe for those thinking of making toys.