Holiday Knitting

Well we've been back over a month now but I'm still in mourning :-/  it was a lovely holiday - what isn't there to love about France in the spring-time! 

Naturally I did some knitting - can't go anywhere without a suitcase full of knitting projects.  This sock was mostly knitted in Belgium -

Appropriate given it's colour and those famously yummy Belgium chocolates :-)

I finished it in Versailles - also appropriate because of the amount of walking we did about the palace gardens and grounds ... Marie Antoinette's impossibly cute 'hamlet' ... the Petit and Grand Trianons ...

 

The colours of spring in Europe are lovely - and reflected in the clothing worn by many women and children (must be sub-conscious) !   Soft greens, aqua, clear jade, teal colours, apple greens ... the colours of all those new fresh leaves against the freshly washed sky ...

I found those colours in some yarn in the wonderful haby shop in our favourite town in Burgundy - Avallon.

Luckily, one of my daughter's friends is expecting her 2nd bub which provided the excuse I needed to buy it - bought a pattern & the needles ...

 Really European style with all those stripes.

I think I was somewhat obsessed by those colours - bought this deliciously fluffy mohair in Vezelay - 

I bought it from the breeder  :-)  she showed me photos of the goats and everything ... very lovely.

My 2 Blythe Dolls came with us!!   and I did some knitting for them too ...  Lillian needed a chic Parisian dress ... classic, understated elegance - 

figure hugging with 2 little 'Dior pleats' at the back (a bit hard to see in the black yarn) -

Audrey asked for a similar dress - but with bracelet length sleeves and a frilly hem "like the dress in "Breakfast at Tiffany's", the one that other Audrey wears with the big hat" ...

We all did lots of shopping in France and the Blythe Dolls needed a new bag!

I met up with a lovely group of knitters in Paris - a knitting group I met on Ravelry .  Despite my appalling lack of French they were very welcoming and sweet.  As a group they had been knitting shawls and were having a Shawl Fashion Parade in the Palais-Royale.  I took this shawl project but I'd only just started.  I'm not entirely happy with this and it will probably get un-knitted ... not sure about the yarn - I love purple, I love green but I don't love the way they are mixing here.

Spring Things

Wanna see wot I've done with the wool I'd dyed a pretty peachy pink? This:

A celebration of blossoming fruit trees - fresh new green leaves and lots of white blossom with that blushing of pink in the middle of the flowers. Slightly thick&thin it's a 10/12 ply, nice and soft. Pretty??

I do love spring and the magnolias have been wonderful this year - we've a star magnolia:

Pretty Pretty

I've also been busy on the sewing machine: I made grandson a dress-ups cape early this year and it has been a great hit with both grandchildren so I thought I should make granddaughter her own.

Mad purple fake-sequin fabric (strange but my digital camera does not like purple and always tries to make it blue). Cape is a full circle, lined with silver fabric like the first one, I used the rather wide "selvage" which lacked the fake sequins to make a frill collar (quite regal!). I'm quite proud of the SuperChild logo on the back:

B for Blythe (granddaughter is named after the dolls) and a ducky because she loves them.





Rather less fun has been work on another shawl - this one bought on eBay and quite a bargain, lovely silk and a splendid fringe ...





only the fringe needs a lot of TLC. It has become seriously tangled ... Before






It takes quite a while to untangle and iron it out - luckily it is so very long it can take a bit of trimming. The result is definitely worth all the work ...

Lace knitting and some DIY for shoes

Last weekend I found the bargain of the decade - a 2nd hand copy of a knitting book I've been wanting for ages "A Gathering of Lace" as gathered by Meg Swansen; beautiful lace knitting projects including some gorgeous shawls (there are lots of mistakes in the patterns but the errata is readily available). Have spent some lovely hours trying to decide what to knit first - and with what yarn.

Decided on the Sampler Stole, for my sister, using some quite usual fibre that has been 'maturing' in stash for over a year. It is Habu Textiles AK-20 "silk with fern cotton" a very fine thread of silk with nubs of brown fluffy bits - presumably the fiddlehead fern fibre. I didn't actually fancy knitting a whole lace stole with finest thread - I'm not quite that mad! decided to knit it held together with something else. A Coffee and a Yarn (south end of King St, Newtown) now has some gorgeous Kaalund Yarns :-) After more lovely time trying to decide, I got a silvery blue/grey silk (the Enchante in "Glasshouse"). The pale blue of the silk and the brown bits of fern fibre really compliment each other.

Cast on last night and I've knitted a whole inch of the middle bit.

Somewhat less glam - all my shoes have been giving out lately! Took the expensive / good shoes to a pro for mending but the cheap shoes ... I had a fit of DIY


Sticky, smelly, yellow contact adhesive and pegs in strategic places until it dries ... should work and at least give me a few more wears from these shoes.

Knit knit knitty knit

Just off the needles - 1 very small pretty project and 1 large & rather ugly theatrical project.

The pretty one first - a neckwarmer or scarflette for my niece. She likes all the mermaid colours and when Bendigo Woollen Mills sent me a card about their newest yarn "Highland" I thought she would the teal blue shade (called Loch) for a quick little birthday pressie.

Invented the pattern as I went, using a couple of lace patterns that have wavy edges, nice blue/green buttons and some beads on the points for added prettiness.

Now the less than pretty theatrical project - a shawl to be part of a very tatty and broken down costume. By the time it gets to the stage it will have been dyed and will look somewhat different - but here it is as it left my needles.

Tatty costumes are actually rather difficult to make - when they are part of a long running stage production they have to look the same in the last performance as they did on opening night. A previous run of this show had a shawl made from some machine knitted fabric “broken down” with holes and lots of ladders. Of course, this had continued to disintegrate - so I had to replicate that “look” in hand knitting that will be relatively stable with permanent holes and ladders :-)

They also wanted the fabric between the ladders to have a bit of a roll / not completely flat. I’ve never knitted a Clapotis but remembered seeing them and remembered that they have a bouncy roll between the dropped stitch ladders … looked up the pattern … there are Knit through Back of Loop stitches either side of the ladders, an idea I copied so I'm calling this a "Clapped-Outtee".

As the ladders and holes had to be quite random, the Clapped-Outtee Shawl was actually rather difficult and time-consuming - I was using 26 colour-coded stitch-makers at the widest point. I am quite proud of this completely tatty and rather ugly shawl :-)