weekend crafting

This past weekend I got out the sewing machine to make another couple of cushion covers. I also got out the cassette tape player (!) so I could listen to one of my favourite Agatha Christie stories,  A Murder is Announced, an excellent soundtrack to a bit of weekend crafting

The yellow and black fabric with bold stripes is from an old set of curtains. I think it’s probably from the early seventies and it looks quite spiffy alongside the sixties red and black cushions I made last time. They all have matching charcoal grey cotton backing, and I’m getting a bit better at putting in a zip!

Today I’ve been sewing up the seams of my cable raglan jumper, the one I knitted before Christmas that ended up far too big. Having learned my lesson, this time I did things properly, knitting a swatch and then washing and blocking it before settling on 5.5 mm needles, and I also washed and blocked all the pieces as I went along. Knitting books always say that you’re supposed to block the pieces before seaming, but Debbie Stoller advised not to bother, so I didn’t… until now. Washing and blocking the pieces definitely made the seaming process easier.

Almost done!

of birds and vintage menus

This week’s theme for the Flickr Friday Photo challenge is “birds”. Our almond tree is invaded every summer by rainbow lorikeets, and we’ve also been visited by galahs and cockatoos, but just in case we don’t get any birdy visitors by Friday I thought of another idea.

I’ve been collecting vintage menus for a few years now, mostly from ships and mostly from the fifties and sixties. We sailed on the liner Canberra in 1966 and we have a few menus from then, and over the years I’ve collected more, especially from the ships that I used to visit at Port Melbourne when I was a kid.

The menus usually have beautiful covers, often designed by well known artists, and they were issued in sets that the passengers could collect as a souvenir of the voyage. I have five menus from this series of six by artist Keith Shackleton “depicting some of the beautiful birds that may be seen in and around the countries and oceans served by P & O ships” including this one of beautiful pink flamingoes from what must have been a fun “Wild West Night Dinner” on the liner Orsova in 1969.

Vintage knitting patterns for men: Villawool Book 96

I reviewed a vintage Villawool men’s knitting pattern book a while back, so I think it’s about time for another one!

This is Villawool Book 96, an Australian pattern book which was published, I think, in 1962.

There are seven great designs, jumpers, cardigans, a vest and waistcoat, all in 5 ply equivalent yarn. As a retro ship buff, this book has extra appeal for me.  All the photos were shot on board the liner Orsova.

None of the Villawool yarns exist any more but wouldn’t it be fun to knit a jumper in “5th Avenue” or “Gleam”? In any case there would be plenty of beautiful modern yarns that would work for these designs, although I have to say that knitting a jumper on 3.25 mm needles would be quite a commitment.

I’m quite tempted by the blue jumper below with subtle cables up the front. Nice shirt too!

a little bit of ripping

Even though it’s the middle of summer, I woke up this morning with a cold…  although to be fair, some of the weather last week was decidely wintry. I even got to wear one of my jumpers from last year, although not the forest green cable raglan one that I finished just before Christmas.

Somehow, after checking my gauge and measuring while I went along (but only after I’d seamed  the whole thing together) it seemed suddenly HUGE. I tried washing and blocking and got it to come closer to the size  it was meant to be, but then it just gradually stretched back again.

So, after taking a few deep breaths, I ripped the whole thing out, winding the yarn into neat balls and let them sit for a while while deciding what to do next.

I then did what I should have done in the first place, knit some tension squares and wash and block them, which showed that the fabric worked out much better when I went down a needle size. Also, the whole process of pulling everything apart showed me that I had also duffed up joining the sleeves to the cable raglan panels, which gave the sleeves a puffy 80s look (not good, even in the 80s).

Once I’d figured that out I decided to knit the jumper all over again, with smaller needles and getting the armholes right this time.

I started the day after New Year and it’s going surprisingly quickly. I’ve got the front (or back, since they are identical) and two sleeves done, and they are all washed and blocking.

I also sewed on the wooden buttons I bought for my button collar pullover. I never like the crappy plastic ones I put on when I finished it, and I also had them slightly in the wrong spot. The collar sits a lot better now.

And, after confessing that I’d never actually used the sewing machine I bought two Christmasses ago, Raynor encouraged me to get sewing. We had a cushion cover made from a fab 60s red and black fabric, an op shop find I think, but we didn’t have any cushion inserts to fit it. Wayne had the idea of taking it apart and using each panel as the front of a new cushion. So, a bit more ripping…

The sewing project was delayed a bit because I managed to jam the sewing machine and it had to go off to get fixed but here is the first cushion finally done. It’s backed with some charcoal coloured cotton fabric from IKEA.

Yarn swatches

Anne invited me to join the Friday Photo challenge on Flickr. Every week there’s a theme and you have until Friday to take one, two or three photos and share with the group. The theme this past week was “Colours” and it was only while riding home on the train on Friday evening that I realised I’d forgotten to take a photo. And then I remembered this…

Do send away for the Pierrot yarn catalogue if you haven’t already got hold of one. When mine arrived there was a large book, which I’d though was just a catalogue, and a lovely folder with several pages of cotton yarn swatches. I’d thought that was pretty amazing, but then I opened the larger book and it had even more yarn samples, hundreds of them! Wool, alpaca, acrylic, silk, even paper!

The catalogue is all in Japanese but Pierrot include a page with translations for all the characters you’ll need to know to figure out what you’ll want to buy. Amazingly I haven’t actually bought anything yet, but I’m pretty sure The Shy Lion has (I think he might have the new version of the sample book too, mine is from 2010).

Yarn companies really should offer to sell sample cards. You can never really tell what a colour looks like until you can see it in your hands. It’s definitely worth spending a couple of dollars on a shade card to avoid a nasty surprise, like when the ten skeins of what you thought was a soft celery green turns out to be the colour of lime whiz-fizz (Rowan Summer Tweed “Sprig”, I’m looking at you).

It really doesn’t have to be anything special. I love this simple swatch card a yarn shop created for Patons Inca…

In comparison, the swatch card for Brooklyn Tweed is a small work of art. I had already got hold of the sample card for Shelter so when the new Loft yarn was released I couldn’t resist getting hold of the new swatch card with even more colours!

The names can be pretty tempting too. When we visited New York I got hold of some Peace Fleece for thick winter socks for my dad and settled on a beautiful heathered grey with  tiny flecks of white and green, even better when I noticed the colour name, “Father’s Gray”. I only resisted a jumper’s worth of “Mourning Dove” because the suitcase was already at bursting point.

I found out about the yarn from New Lanark Mills while listening to Hoxton Handmade’s Electric Sheep podcast, lovely colours and quite a bargain… (and if you don’t already have  Electric Sheep on your podcast playlist, please do pop on over to have a listen).

And speaking of bargains, let’s close with the yarn samples from our very own Bendigo Woollen Mills. Even the swatch cards are a total bargain, they’re free!

2012 sky scarf

almond blossom against a Melbourne spring sky

I’d heard of project knitters, people who are more focused on the outcome, versus process knitters, people who are more focused on the practice of knitting, but how about conceptual knitters? Lea Redmond has started a conceptual knitting project, something that goes beyond knitting a garment or an accessory…

Most knitting patterns call for yarn, needles, and familiarity with abbreviations such as CO, K2tog, and St st. Typical patterns might even ask you to keep track of alternating colors on a grid. The Conceptual Knitting patterns you’ll find here are creatures of an entirely different sort.

Yes, you’ll need yarn, needles and basic knitting skills. But most importantly, you’ll need a sense of whimsy and adventure. These surprising patterns will inspire you to look out your window, ride the subway and converse with your next-door neighbor. They will have you re-reading your favorite book and feeding a pocketful of coins into the gumball machine in front of your supermarket. In order to knit these unique one-of-a-kind garments, you’ll be sent out into the world – and deep within your heart – turning something as simple as a scarf into an unexpectedly storied object.

The first project invites you to knit the weather in your part of the world over the course of a year by creating a sky scarf.

A “sky scarf” documents the weather out your window. Each day, you will knit a stripe in colors that match the sky. It will be lovely to see how different climates create different scarves! This pattern makes a 5-foot scarf over the course of one year.

At the end of the year you’ll have a beautiful scarf, but you’ll also have a record of what the sky looked like through the year in your part of the world, and you can share with other people through the Flickr and Ravelry groups.

Christmas day sky at my brother's house

Some people have decided to use the idea to knit a record of other things, like a person on Ravelry who has decided to track the colours of the maple tree out front of her house, but I’m going to knit a year of the Melbourne sky.

Rowan Felted Tweed "Maritime"

I have a couple of skeins of Rowan Felted Tweed in “Dragon” grey and “Maritime” blue and I’ve ordered another paler blue  and a pale grey. By using a relatively thin yarn you can double the strands to make lots of colour variations, like blue with pale grey for blue sky with clouds.

Anyone want to join in?

Details at the Conceptual Knitting page.

this week in the garden

The birds have discovered the sugar cane mulch in the vegetable beds and have been having a wonderful frolic, but the seedlings aren’t doing so well, being scratched about by our little feathered visitors. Still, we harvested the first small tomatoes today along with grey and yellow button squash.

…and look! Soybeans!

Last summer I harvested some sunflower seeds before the galahs and cockatoos ate them all, but only one sunflower has sprouted this year. It’s a very handsome bronze one though, so I’ll try to save some more seeds for next year.

We’ve also had some micro horticulture going on in the kitchen, harvesting alfalfa, mustard and broccoli sprouts for sandwiches and it looks like the snowpea sprouts will be ready soon.

Hope you’re harvesting some stuff from your garden too!

Bread and radishes

Another day where the kitchen smells of freshly baked bread!

This is Wayne’s second go at baking bread using Jim Lahey’s “no work, no knead” bread in a pot method and it came out even better than the first.

We had meant to visit Jim’s Sullivan Street Bakery when we went to New York last year but somehow didn’t make it. If the bread is as good as this we must put it on the list for next time. The crust is super crusty and the inside is chewy and  delicious, a bit like ciabatta.

As the oven was warmed up Wayne also baked some potatoes, and I had harvested radishes from the veggie garden, and Vanessa Barrington’s D.I.Y. Delicious just happened to be sitting on the kitchen bench with a yummy looking potato, radish and green bean salad on the cover. Lunch sorted!

The baking smells appear to have attracted a couple of curious visitors too…

On the needles… Bike mitts

I’ve been wanting to test drive Rowan Felted Tweed Aran for a while now. There are a couple of sweater projects I have in mind for an aran weight wool, and then a while back I found a great small project that someone had used the Rowan yarn for so I quickly got hold of two skeins.

These fingerless mitts by Lorraine Ehrlinger are knitted in aran weight yarn but using 3.75 mm needles to give a snug warm fabric which should be perfect for morning bike rides to work next winter.

The yarn is a blend of merino wool, alpaca and rayon and the colour “Soot” is charcoal grey with a hint of blue and flecks of white and back. I knitted a test swatch too, which yielded quite a stiff fabric at the recommended needle size of 5 mm, so I think I’ll try another one at 5.5 mm.

We’ve been doing some work on the garden since Christmas (of which more to come later!) but there is already a nice spot to sit and knit in the dappled shade of the almond tree.

Christmassy Chestnut Roast

Sally gave me the idea of a nut roast for a vegetarian Christmas dinner, which then got me thinking of chestnuts for even more Christmassy goodness. After checking a few recipes on the net I came up with this.

The roast was wonderfully tasty, served with potatoes, roast parsnips and carrots, and onion gravy. I’d planned to have some brussells sprouts too but somebody else had the same idea and there was not one to be had at the shops, so I substituted grilled asparagus.

(sorry about crappy photo)

So I remember what to do next Christmas, this is what I used…

75g cashew nuts
75g walnuts
2 slices sourdough grain bread, cubed
2 onions, diced
2 packs of chestnuts
1 pack of feta cheese, grated
1 egg
black pepper and whatever herbs you have handy

and this is what I did…

Whizz up the nuts and bread in the food processor for a good couple of minutes. Add the chestnuts and whizz for another minute. Meanwhile fry the chopped onions and add the whole lot to a mixing bowl along with the grated feta and egg. Add black pepper and the herbs.

Mix everything together and turn into a loaf pan lined with baking paper, then fold the baking paper over the top of the roast to keep it moist. Bake for an hour at 200c along with the potatoes, carrots and parsnips.

(And next year, get to the shops early for the sprouts…)