Jumper time...

Sorry all- this is an old post that somehow never got posted!!! So excuse the jumper trending- although, the weather in the UK going the way it is, it looks like I'm not going to be packing up my jumper anytime soon!!!

I have been into knitting for quite a while now, and after getting a few free lessons in knitting with colour and the fair-isle technique (thanks John Lewis!) I made this for the bf last year:

There are a few similar jumpers out there...

Jonathan Saunders

Topshop

Lazy Oaf

This year, I decided to be selfish and knit myself a jumper... seeing as there are a lot of animal jumpers out there this year, I decided to knit an animal, but couldn't find a pattern for a jumper I wanted, so I took a pattern for a regular jumper and found an image online that I wanted on the jumper and created my own, using this very cool free site http://www.microrevolt.org/knitPro/ to create a PDF file. Here is my finished jumper:

Here are some other animal jumpers around:

Joseph Tiger jumper

ASOS Cat jumper

Haute Hippie Horse Jumper

Also, just saw that Topshop have launched this jumper... how freakily close to mine is it?

I wonder what next year's jumper trend will bring?

Long time no see...

I've been on a blogger holiday for a while now. Not had many excuses apart from age old laziness! There always seems to be other things to be

getting on with, places to go, people to see etc. but the bf persuaded me to give it another go and to try and blog more regularly.

So if this is going to be a fresh start, I thought that I'd change the 'raison d'etre' of the b

log, so rather than making and talking just about fashion, I would blog about anything interesting and noteworthy.

My last post was about knitting so I thought that I'd carry that on and tell you about other projects that I've completed recently:

Teal kimono sleeve cropped cardi. Very easy to make and my first attempt at picking up stitches. Buttons are needed and I saw these cute 'Toile Buttons' from the V&A shop that I vowed to buy a while a go, but just needed a nice enough garment to put them on!

My first foray into knitting with two colours- fair isle knitting- I made 6 of these little sample

squares, sewed them together and stuffed them with 'toy stuffing' you can get from any craft store.

I'm thinking of making a load more for Christmas and have my Christmas tree decorated with various different knitted baubles, what do you guys think?

From making those 'practise squares' I attempted my first fair isle garment- a Christmas Jumper for the bf. I think it turned out pretty well...

It was actually adpated from a Rowan pattern for a woman's jumper! (shh... don't tell him!) and I ambitiously adapted it.

Lastly, I've had this project on my mind for a while now and due to having a spare ball of wool left over from my bro's jumper, I thought that I would amalgamate my love of knitting with my love of making jewellery. It's made using a Chinese good luck knot:

Knit Picking

As the nights are getting longer and colder, knitting has taken over my time. Recently, I had a friend who got married and even though they didn’t have a gift list or ask for any wedding presents, I decided to give them a personal gift- a wedding blanket. Initially I wanted a cream blanket with a border and possibly some cable stitching down the side but I decided to knit something simple as I wanted to make it reversible. This is the image chart I settled upon:

With the pink border being moss stitch, the blue a straight knit only stitch and the heart a reverse stitch of the white area (if that makes sense). This is the result! I embroidered their initials on one side using the extra wool that I had. Please drop me a message if anyone would like to know the pattern to make this as it’s quite complicated to explain (although quite easy to execute!)

The whole blanket was made using: Yarn: ,Knitted on size 10 (UK) needles

Last Christmas I tried my hand at circular knitting- Snoods were everywhere on the high street and I wanted to experiment with some different stitches. I made myself a long purple snood and made a lovely green snood for my bf’s sister. Here are the images, I think that they both turned out quite well and I’m looking forward to perfect my circular knitting.


Currently, I’m knitting a large chunky scarf in a pale purple. I did make a mistake as all the diagonals were meant to have been facing the same direction, but I capitalised and alternated them- making it my own! The image shown is for a very long scarf but as I’m using a wool colour that has been discontinued, I may either stop when the wool runs out or use a different colour- maybe a pale pink or a different shade of purple....

Liberty of London have had weekend courses that cost £50 including a cup of tea and a discount at the shop cafe but when my friend called up, all the places had been fully booked. http://www.liberty.co.uk/fcp/content/NewsArchiveItem5/newsarchive L Never mind! There are actually free knitting classes at your local John Lewis store (if you go to the haberdashery section they should have a leaflet you can take) and my friend and I have both booked a class for this Saturday. With the abundance of Fair Isle knits (see D&G advert) I would like to start learning how to knit with 2 colours or more. I’ve seen some great patterns in the recent Rowan magazine num 48 (Russian doll spreads) and would definitely like to try knitting a dress.

Watch this space for further knitting tales!