Another Knitting Bag

Making Mothers Day presents is not easy when your Mother is also a bit of crafter...but she's not really one for making things with a sewing machine so making her a bag is a good choice. She's into her knitting at the moment and apparently stashes her knitting in a carrier bag when she's done for the day...can't have her doing that.

For Mothers Day I made her a knitting bag to stash her unfinished projects in, using the tutorial over at Emmaline. I've used this tutorial previously to make my Nan a knitting bag for her christmas present, here's the post if you want to see it again.

This time I used a pair of circle handles rather than twisted rope effect, just means the bag will look totally different to my Nan's bag. The fabric is different too but I wanted to experiment and see how it would look using different handles as it changes the shape of the top of the bag.

Once again there's a pocket inside with one of my handmade labels sewn to it.

Hopefully Mum likes her new knitting bag and it shall keep her knitting safe in a more stylish manner than a plastic carrier bag.

 

Learning To Arm Knit

 Last weekend Mum and I went to the Creative Crafts Show at Sandown Park and we came across a lady at a wool stall demoing arm knitting. We had both seen videos of it before but never seen somebody doing it for real so we were very intrigued to watch her do it. After watching in amazement for 5 minutes at how quick and easy it was to do I decided to get myself some wool and have a go for myself.

Here's a photo of me just getting started...I realised it was a little too loose after this photo so quickly undid it all and started again, only took a couple minutes to get back to this stage so it's really not hard to correct mistakes. I started with 2x 200g skeins of chunky wool and double knitted them, the chunkier the wool or more strands you use the better the scarf/cowl will look at the end.

I used the tutorial video here for quick reference to remind me how to arm knit.

About 45minutes later I had a fully finished cowl that I could wear with pride. I originally planned to make a scarf but the video showed how easy a cowl would be so I changed my mind.

 Really is quite a long, perhaps a little too long?

 Here's me looking a totally proud idiot wearing my new chunky cowl... I even wore it out that evening when we went to the cinema to show it off!

I even have enough wool leftover that I could probably make a snood/single loop cowl for a gift for someone else.

Learning To Knit

 The other month at a craft show I decided it was time that I needed to learn to knit...everyone else can knit and makes me lovely knitted gifts yet I've never ventured beyond knitting the ribbon scarves.

So it took me quite a while to actually start knitting, I tried looking up how to cast on but failed epicly every time I tried so I had to wait till the next time Mum came over, which was a couple of weekends ago...although it wasn't an easy lesson to learn as she's left handed and I'm right handed so it was a tad confusing to start with...Finally we got me going on a friday night with a G&T.

This is how my scarf looked by the end of Saturday evening, not bad for a few hours knitting and a few mistakes I had to take apart and correct without it all unravelling.

An hour or so a night and a spot of diy in the house later... by the Wednesday night my scarf was finished and ready to wear.

It may be just plain, simple Garter stitch but for my first crack at knitting properly with wool I'm very impressed.

Check back over the next week or so as I'll have more knitting projects to share.

Knitting Bag

 At a fabric show earlier in the year my nan found out I was making handbags for the women in the family for christmas so she asked me to make her a knitting bag for christmas...this was my plan all along but at least with her asking I could get her to pick a fabric that she liked.

 So she picked a dark blue dragonfly print fabric and some plastic twist handles that look like they are wooden. I had plenty of lining fabric leftover from the handbags I made so that was nice and easy.

 I always tend to buy more fabric than I need, anyone else have that problem too?

I roughly followed the tutorial over on the Emmaline blog here.

I stitched in a large interior pocket to store smaller bits in. I ever remembered to sew one of my hadmade labels on the pocket as well.

Quite a roomy bag and I'm really impressed by it. Took me longer to whipstitch the fabric around the handles than to cut all the fabric out and make the basic shape of the bag!

My nan has a thing for giraffes and I managed to pick up a few giraffe buttons at the show without her realising so I've sewn them onto the internal pocket, see how long it takes her to notice them.

 Here's hoping the bag lives up to the expectation and it has many happy trips to the local knitting club my nan goes to. 

Can Can Scarves

 So new thing for me to try AGAIN... my nan made a scarf a few weeks back and sent it to me with a note telling me how easy it was to make and how she was surpirsed I hadn't tried one yet... that was it the gauntlet had been thrown down..I had to have a bash at knitting and make one of these so called easy scarves!

After raiding my local Hobbycraft on their 25% night I came home with 3 balls of wool and no idea what I was doing.... or needles in which to knit with lol... so I went to a local charity shop and picked up a couple of sets of needles for 50p and then went the the wool shop for some advice... wish I hadn't as they were rude and unhelpful. Youtube proved to be much more successful.. search for can can scarves and find the video by BlackSheep and that's how I got started...

So here's my first Can Can Scarf... took forever, well 6 hours of an afternoon after the amount of times I dropped stitches and couldn't figure how to pull it back together so had lose a whole row lol...

And here's me wearing my first attempt a Can Can Scarf... I lived in it for a couple of days till I started the next one...

Then I started working on the green ball of wool that I bought.... this scarf went much easier and quicker... even managed to fix the few mistakes I had dropping stitches or accquiring extras as I seemed to for a few rows lol.

I can see these making some pretty neat christmas presents for friends and family :)