Spritz cardigan

After the Wattle Bag and the knitted tote, I thought it time I got into one of the (several) larger projects I have waiting. I have two cardigans waiting to be started - both intended for myself. While the Kate Davies one in English Breeds wool was bought nearly two years ago, it is complicated. The other, in a cotton/alpaca mix looked more straightforward, and, if I can finish it before Christmas, could be put to use, if not in summer, at least in Autumn 2026 (that, remember is March-June here in Australia).

The yarn, as you can see, was in hanks. It is several years since I used my swift to wind yarn. I looked everywhere for it, taking my craft cupboard apart, doing a bit of sorting as I went about it. No sign of the swift, but the cupboard is a bit better organised.

The simple Amish swift I had bought at the Yarn Trader is no longer available in Adelaide. From the information on websites it is either discontinued or out of stock. In the end, I sourced another one in Victoria and paid for express delivery. Ordered on Sunday, it arrived on Tuesday. I set to work immediately. Over the next three days I wound all 7 skeins.

It was only on the sixth skein that I worked out that, rather than working from a lounge chair, with the swift on the floor, it was far more efficient to have the swift on a table, at the same height as my hands - fewer tangles and no yarn working its way off the pegs.

The pattern was not as straightforward as I had expected. There are textured bands running horizontally throughout. The sizing is not generous. Measurements are only given for the bust, not hips.While the largest of the three sizes covered is right for my bust, the calculation I did, based on the recommended tension and number of stitches, suggest it is not likely to fit my hips. As it is knitted in rectangles, adding width is unlikely to cause problems. However, given that each of the given size difference was 8 stitches, I added 24 stitches to make sure. It was likely, therefore, that I would need more yarn.  Each of the three given sizes recommended an extra skein of yarn. I figured I would need at least one, and probably two, extra. 

Again, the Crafty Frog in Canberra, where I bought the yarn, has no stock left. Eventually I sourced a supply in Tasmania. I wondered if I should wait to see how much I got knitted from each skein, but since there were few places with stock,  I ordered two more skeins straight away. 

It took a while to figure out how to create the textured band. Once I worked out that Purl=ridge means  'use a row of purl in a knit row', I was underway.

The first ball ran out at 28cm. At that rate, I might have managed without the extra skeins if I'd been careful. As it is, I should be able to add another 15-20com to the length.

I'm posting this well before the project is anywhere near finished, My plan at the moment is to keep going until I have used two balls of yarn and make that the armhole insertion point (provided, of course, the extra yarn arrives!).

Now I know how it works, it's fairly easy knitting. It is, however, relatively fine, so doesn't grow quickly.

I will probably not post again until it is finished. That's certainly weeks, maybe months, away. In the meantime, I've been winding skeins I have in my stash. I've added two more balls to this pile since taking the photo, but the swift is now packed away to use the table for a family dinner. I've found patterns for these, but they are jobs for a much later date! 

Wattle Tote

I’m making an effort, in between knitting projects, to diminish the pile of Ink and Spindle linen bags I have cut out. I began with this heavyweight Golden Wattle on Indigo 

My idea with all these bags is to embroider a couple of highlights but let the hand-printed linen speak for itself.

In this case I planned to cover some of the wattle bloom with Ghiordes knots. For those unfamiliar,  Ghiordes knots are made by creating and anchoring a series of loops close together then cutting the loops. 

The fun part is fluffing up the cut threads.

Creating the loops is exacting, and, to me, a bit tiresome on scale. I was pleased to get to the end of the small bunch I’d chosen.

The threads need to be brushed up with a small stiff brush. When I first worked these, some 15 years ago, I bought a boo-boo stick - a brush designed for removing mistakes in cross-stitch. It’s a while since I used it, and I couldn’t find it. It’s in that safe place.  They are hard to come by in Australia. I’ve ordered another one from Tasmania, a guarantee the original one will turn up!

In the meantime. I found an adequate substitute in the brush end of a dressmaker"s pencil.

Ink and Spindle linen comes in three weights, and I use all three for these bags. This one is heavyweight, which does give a lovely firm surface to work with.

I have a big pile of these bags waiting to be made, all cut out ready to construct once the embroidery is done. I cut according to the shape of the piece, which in this case was separate front, back and sides for the outside, but the lining was cut with the front and sides on one piece and the back and bottom on the other. It took me a while to figure it out! The strip left for handles was a bit thin, so I substituted some denim.

Once I figured all that out, it took under an hour to stitch the bag together on the machine.

I tested the result out on a couple of family members. As I feared they thought there should be a little more embroidery, suggesting  the lower right-hand corner.

I was inclined to agree.  While not ideal, it was possible to embroider through the layers of bag and lining, so I did. It won't hurt to hold the two layers of linen together there near the base.

It's a definite improvement. I'm now pretty satisfied with this one. 

I have no specific purpose in mind. No one I know needs another Ink and Spindle tote - but I'll add it to my stock, which will find a good home one day.

Knitted Impressionist bag

Piecework Magazine for Fall 2025 had a knitting project that appealed to me. Called Water Lilies Tote, by Sarah Kelly, it is a knitted bag inspired by Monet’s Wattler Lilies series. I liked the look of it and thought it would be an interesting knitting challenge. I also happened to have some wool in similar colours, some of which was even in the recommended wool, Rowan Felted Tweed though not enough dark pink for the whole, and none in the dark blue background colour. I did, however, have a whole 200gm ball of Bendigo Woollen Mill’s  10 ply Rustic Tweed in a very close colour, and three pinks to mix.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I gathered resources and set off stitching. 

I found the instructions a little confusing.  I didn't want this to be my debut in double-layer knitting. I didn't have enough of the pink and green wool to work two sides and I had no intention of working it using the intarsia method. I therefore adapted, working the floral front back and forth, using mainly Fair Isle, then a plain back, sides and base. I added a few stitches to the front, to allow for joining. Unfortunately I miscalculated, and ended up needing to adjust the chart. 

It took a while. There are a few places where I used Intasia (the yellow, for example) and but I enjoyed the challenge. There are errors, but I figured felting would cover them.

When I began the plain back, it occurred to me if I created a steek I could knit it in the round, without purling, I seem to have come a long way since my nervous first steek in 2022! It worked a treat. It used the same number of stitches as the front but because the tension was much looser without the multiple colours, it was wide enough to cover the sides as well. The 200gm ball of dark blue ran out a few rows short, so I added a green edge.

I stitched between two stitch lines on the machine and cut the steek. I also used the machine to join the front to the back and form sides.

For the base, I picked up stitches along the lower front and worked across, binding each row into the sides of the base at either end as I went. I found a very close match  to the dark blue left over from  Alice Starmore's St Brigid Aran. It served for the handles as well.

I closed the last seam with knitting, after pinning it to make sure I got it even. 

The result pleased me. It was a decent size but a bit loose and floppy. Since it was meant to be felted, I wasn't concerned.

It's a while since I felted an item in a washing machine. I'd forgotten that when I last did it, I had a top-loading machine. I prepared the bag, but couldn't raise the temperature of the machine on anything but a 140 minute cycle, longer than recommended in felting instructions. I took a punt and tried the  shortest cycle which only heated to 30C. It didn't work, so I tried hand-felting. That barely worked.

I then took a risk, and added it to my washing machine along with my sheets, and washed it on the bed linen cycle, with temperature raised to 60C. Two and a half hours later, it emerged - felted. There are places where you can make out the lines of stitches, but it is well felted.

 It was also damp, but not saturated, after  the spin. I placed a cotton cushion inside it to give shape as it dries.

This, I think, will be a useful and sturdy bag. It looks quite good and has used up about 300 gms of stashed wool.

That's a win on several fronts (and backs)!

A Sashiko Tablecloth Finish.

For my birthday in 2023 a friend worked this table runner, which I loved. It was part of a suite of Sashiko designs, called Galaxy Dreaming, from Indigo Niche in Queensland. There were two square panels in addition to the runner and I thought it would be good to work the square panels as placemats. 

My friend got on board and made me two for my 2024 birthday, and I bought another six panels to make a full set. 

The designs are beautiful and a joy to work. It became obvious the squares were too large for placemats so I decided to join them into a tablecloth, and bought another runner. 

I have been working these over the last two years between other projects. They are ideal ”grab and go” projects. All you need is a panel, one hank of thread, a Sashiko needle and scissors, ready in a pouch. Once I got to the second last panel I made an effort to push on and finish.

Until then, I had assumed I could arrange the panels either side of the two runners. When I did so, it wasn’t straightforward.

I tried several configurations on my extended table, deciding in the end to go with a variation of my original idea.

To make it work, I needed to buy some matching indigo fabric to add a border - and to fill the gap in the centre.It took a while to purchase the fabric.

There is only one shop in Adelaide with a range of indigo fabrics for Sashiko and I had to wait for their latest shipment to arrive to get a close match. The colour variations in indigo are astounding. The shop owner tells me she has 1000 bolts of blue - all different.  Only one bolt worked. It is a linen/cotton mix and the panels are cotton. The mix will, I hope, stand the test of time.

My quilting friends would be unimpressed with my construction techniques, but I did measure carefully, and use a chalk marker to get straight lines. I had hand- hemmed each panel to the marked border, but they were not identical in size; nearly, but not quite.  I accommodated the difference in the overlap as I stitched it together by machine.

I considered taking it to a laundry for pressing, but settled for spreading beach towels on the table and pressing in situ. That worked. I then tried the tablecloth out for a family dinner. It worked very well, generating discussion.

Time then to wash it. I put in into the washing machine on a short, cool cycle on a day with no rain forecast and a lot of wind. It came off the line bright, clean, crisp and robust, the fabric plump and consistent. 

I decided ironing would achieve little, folded it into eighths and rolled it for storage. 

In spite of the simplicity of Sashiko, this has proved complex. In the final stages I began to think about how design traditions are melded. These designs were inspired by Aboriginal stories and translated into a Japanese stitching tradition. Embroidery, like other crafts and art forms, has evolved in this way for millennia. I have spent a lot of time exploring such transitions in Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Mexican, Ukrainian, Indian - and several other cultures. This tablecloth confronted me with a contemporary cultural transition. 

I got in touch with Sue Howie, the designer of the panels. She has been generous with information about her design processes. There is also  a lot of useful information on the Sashiko Australia website.

I am planning to offer the tablecloth as a trigger for discussion in one of our World Embroidery Study Group meetings next year. 

In the meantime, I have a tablecloth to enjoy.

Dathan Hap- an accidental keeper.

 

In September last year I went through my wool stash in an effort to use up leftover wool. I set aside three bags - one of alpaca, one of English Breeds, and the largest, one of Rowan Felted Tweed, matching each bag with a shawl pattern. I resolved not to start or buy a new project until I had made at least one of these shawls. I did break my commitment to knit the Justice beanies but otherwise stuck to my resolve.

The Rowan wool was left from two major projects, a large cardigan and a blanket.

There were several complete 100 gm balls and more than a dozen substantial partials in a range of colours. 

I found a pattern in Kate Davies's  Knitting Season book. It is also available on Ravelry. Named Dathan Hap, its four row pattern, designed for stripes, increases at the edges and the centre, so infinitely expandable and ideal for my purpose. 

I began in early October last year, playing with colour combinations as I went. I had (still have) 3 balls of black, which I had intended to disperse throughout, but quickly changed my mind.

The pattern increases both in the centre and edges, adding 10 stitches every 4 rows, creating a roughly triangular shape. I stopped when I had 615 stitches on the needle. I still have wool left, and could have kept going. I stopped because I didn't want it to reach the ground when on - and I was finding half an hour to knit one row was getting a bit tedious. 

I had not intended to keep this for myself, but tried it out on an early morning medical visit. It was comfortable, warm, and easy to put on and take off. Two people at the surgery exclaimed and asked where I got it. Later in the day a man in a park stopped me to ask about it, called his wife and friends over to look at it, and told me it had made their day. Reactions at my Pilates studio were similar.

After 10 and a half months I'm glad to have finished it and surprised at its reception and usefulness. It seems I have a keeper!

Mad woman mending

I have several pair of trousers which I bought from Ezibuy 4 and 5 years ago, made with a merino interlock fabric. 

They are my go-to trousers for winter, warm, comfortable and convenient, but unfortunately no longer available. They wear out along the seams and in a couple of cases, on the pocket where I keep my phone. I mend where I can, but am just about at the point of sacrificing one pair for patches. 

This week I saw a post about mending by needle felting, and thought it might be worth a try on a pocket. At the same time I came across a stray crocheted circle, awaiting its place in a baby blanket. Why not use that?

I found my tools and took the plunge. The circle didn’t quite cover the runs from the hole, so I added a circle from wool I had nearby. I used the same to cover another hole I found nearby.

I also left a couple of tails that got caught in my punching.

This is what it looked like on the inside. 

I tried it out on a supermarket visit. No one looked askance. It did, however, reveal a bit of a lift in the edge of the circle.

 

So this morning I stitched the edge down all around and, while about it, thought I'd add an eye and a beak.

I don't know how long this will last, but it's been worth trying. I don't think it will become my go-to mending method, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I've learnt a bit along the way.

The next test is washing!