Paris was just a transit, I was actually headed to an organic farm in the south of France where I was to WWOOF, which is where I worked on the farm in exchange for food and lodging (look it up). I had a nice time improving my French and gardening, my other obsession apart from knitting. The Knitted Kitten enjoyed it too. Here is The Knitted Kitten with The Real Kitten that lived at the farm (or as they say in France, The Real Kitten that lived at the farm. Sketch Show? Anyone? No?).
And with a view of the farm:
Now, I won’t bore all you non-gardeners with my experience as a French farmer, so here is one bit of knitting news. In preparation for my stay at the farm, I hand-spun some white alpaca yarn and dyed some with calendula, some with onion skins and some with eucalyptus, and kept some white. I knitted it into two beanies, one for each of my hosts. They appeared to be really impressed with them, and I felt quite encouraged that my art, while I do it because I love it, is also considered good by other people’s standards.
I stayed at the farm for over two weeks, but there was still more in England that I wanted to do, so I changed my travel plans like a pro and went back to the Uk, which is where I am now. I took the Knitted Kitten to see the changing of the guard yesterday at Buckingham Palace. The Kitten didn’t see much from inside my satchel, though.
So today I was in Suffolk. My aunt and I went to a nice craft fair in Needham. It was lovely. There were heaps of handmade things, like the hand-turned and painted wooden earrings I’m wearing as we speak. What impressed me the most though was a couple of ladies selling beautiful hand-knitted baby clothes. You could tell that hey loved their work for the sake of the work, because they were asking ridiculously low prices for them. There were traditional lace cardigans and these incredible intarsia jumpers that I could hardly believe they were willing to part with for such a small price. These ladies are inspiring for their love of knitting as an art form and just something that you do because you enjoy it.
Right now I’m working on a bright green lace scarf for a special little girl back home, and once it’s finished, remind me to show you a picture of it.
That’s all for now. A bientot and Cheerio,
The Knitted Kitten
London Purling
Hihi,
Since my last post, I’ve spent a couple of days in old London town, being a tourist. And The Knitted Kitten came long for the ride, seen here on the London Eye:
Purlin the Magician
I’m back in Suffolk after a very long day of doing touristy things.
As I had been in Devon, it only seemed right that I have a proper Devonshire cream tea before leaving. So, we stopped in a town called Honiton and found a gorgeous little tea room which was indeed called The Tea Roon, where we had a cream tea. Clotted cream tastes better than it sounds.
I did enjoy Stonehenge, and I liked the audio guide which features British people explaining the amazing feats involved in Stonehenge’s construction, plus fanciful explanations for its existence involving Merlin, the devil and aliens.
In the gift shop, I found this funny little hat. It’s crocheted and probably mass-produced, but I do appreciate the bobbles and quirkiness so I thought it deserved a mention on this blog. I saw a few people sporting these at the carpark as we were leaving.
After this, we visited Bath and the ancient Uffington White Horse, which is a huge horse illustration on the landscape made from trenches filled with chalk (look it up). This bit is unrelated to knitting, but I like baths and horses.
Peace out,
The Knitted Kitten
Maloose
Hello,
I’m here with another update from my trip. On Thursday, I set off with my aunt from Suffolk, England, to Cardiff, Wales. We were there to visit some relatives, one of whom is my great aunt. She had visited the antipodean wing of our family in 1987 and she showed me her photo album from that trip. I was absolutely delighted to see among the photos one of my Grandma, who taught me to knit and who passed away in 2007. The photo showed her sitting in her armchair with knitting in her hands and balls of yarn on the ground all around her feet. My aunt said she was often like this. I’ve always loved my Grandma for lots of reasons, mostly because she’s my Grandma, but I’ll be forever grateful to her for introducing me to knitting, and this photo made me feel really close to her. And also, do you remember in my first post when I said that I suspected that my Grandma, though English, actually knitted in the Continental style because that’s how I knit? Turns out I was wrong, this picture clearly shows my Grandma with the working yarn wrapped around her right hand. So, I guess Continental style is all me. I am very slightly Spanish on my mother’s side…
My aunt and I did a bit of sight-seeing in Cardiff. One place I wanted to visit was the International Baccalaureate building because, sad as it sounds, my high school exams were often marked there and I wanted to see where they were sent.
“It’s on Malthouse Avenue,” I said to my aunt.
“Don’t ask a Welsh person where Malthouse Avenue is!” said my great aunt, “It’s pronounced Maloose!”
Well, that was very funny to me, as I was already quite enjoying the relative absence of vowels in the Welsh language. We were also going to visit Caerphilly castle that day. As we were heading out the door, my great aunt told us:
“If you get lost, just ask someone for directions.”
“Are you sure it’s Caerphilly?” I replied, “it’s not Maloose, is it?”
Here is a picture of The Knitted Kitten at Maloose Castle:
Knittywinkles
I went to St Tiggywinkles today. It’s an animal hospital in Haddenham, England, which has a hedgehog museum in it. The place is fantastic, and it’s a wildlife park, too, where you can walk around and see the animals they are looking after (both temporary and permanent residents).
Like a lot of Australians, I think, I’m fascinated by animals that we don’t have at home. This includes hedgehogs, squirrels and badgers. They had badgers, but I think they were all asleep because none came out to see us. I did see baby hedgehogs in the baby animal hospital section, and some adorable baby squirrels and birds.
The hedgehog museum was interesting, and is why I’m writing this post in my blog, which is a knitting blog. As well as learning that urchin means hedgehog, I learned of this knitting pattern:
Saxon Holiday
Dear blog reader (singular as there’s roughly one of you),
Here I am in England, on the first leg of my European holiday. As promised, I’ve taken along The Knitted Kitten to help document my travels, even though my holiday really has nothing to do with knitting. As you’ll read, while my purposes for traveling aren’t to do with knitting, still, knit happens.
I have found the actual flying a challenge as international flights don’t let you bring knitting needles on the plane. So, I had to be a normal person and read or play games on my iPad. By the way, a tablet computer is great for travelling knitters, as you can store patterns on them and use row-counting apps. I have a few knitting projects prepared for this trip, and I’ll introduce them to you in good time.
I departed Adelaide, South Australia. for Singapore. I’ve been to Singapore plenty of times for stopovers and I do love the airport. I spent some time In the butterfly house and looking around the shops there. While my knitting was on its way to my next destination, I did bring my little knitted friend along in my hand carry. Here she is, enjoying herself on the first leg of the journey:
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| The Knitted Kitten waiting with me at the Adelaide International Airport, resting on the stole I knitted for this trip (which has proven itself practical and oh-so-stylish) |
| The Knitted Kitten at theAdelaide Airport, with my plane in the background. The Kitten enjoyed remaining crammed in my satchel while I played games on my iPad and ate airline food on the way to Singapore. |
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| At Changi Airport in Singapore |
My first holiday destination is where I am now: Suffolk and Cambridge, England. I’m staying with my auntie and her furry children (they are animals, not very hairy human children). For the first few days we were also babysitting some other fur kids. Here is The Knitted Kitten hanging out with one of our visitors:
I’ve spent a lot of time around Cambridge doing stuff that’s unrelated to knitting, and while it’s been wonderful and I love it, this is a knitting blog. Therefore,I was very pleased today to come across something to do with knitting that I wanted to share with you. My auntie and I went to Lavenham, a beautiful little village in Suffolk full of wonky houses. On the way to get a coffee, I found this shop,
cafe knit:
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Cafe knit is a really nice little cafe/yarn shop. It had a good range of Debbie Bliss yarns and some other nice ones too, and even some handspun. I was soooo tempted. I got away lightly, buying my first stitch markers that aren’t safety pins or scraps of yarn. I really enjoyed pottering around in there with my auntie, who also knits.
Holiday
Hello blog readers,
I will be taking a trip for the next two months. My purposes for travelling are completely knitting un-related, but rest assured I will be knitting on this trip. I’m bringing along The Knitted Kitten, i.e, the cat on the banner of my blog, i.e., this one:
I’ve decided to be lame and will be taking pictures of The Knitted Kitten at various places on my trip. I hope you have as much fun reading about my trip as I do going on it. Nah, just kidding, I hope reading a blog never becomes as interesting as travelling around the world.
Fruity Alpaca
Bonjour,
Just quickly wanted to share with you some pictures of a yarn I made. It is alpaca yarn, prepared using hand-cards and spun using the long-draw method. Eyeballing it, I think it’s about 10ply weight. In actuality it is a 2-ply yarn. I had planned to leave this yarn white, but it had too many discoloured bits (it was made from the waste fleece from a combed preparation). I mordanted it with alum and tartaric acid, then hand-painted it with blue and yellow food colouring, setting the colour by steaming it on the stove. I’m rather happy with it, and I like that the yellow and blue mixed together to make green as I had planned. I haven’t heard or read before of using alum to mordant yarn which will be dyed with food colouring, but I do think it helped the yarn soak up the dye. I shall knit something up with this in the next few days.
Learn How to Make a 45 Degree Angle Lazy Kate
Another spinning-related post here: it’s a DIY on how to make a 45 degree angle Lazy Kate! For quite a while now, since I learned of their existence in The Intentional Spinner, I have wanted a Lazy Kate on which bobbins of yarn slant at a 45 degree angle. This makes the yarn come off smoothly and prevents the bobbins over-spinning. For non-initiated readers, here are some definitions so you can follow what I’m talking about.
Lazy Kate: A Lazy Kate (love the name) is a wooden stand that you put bobbins of yarn on so that they will unwind as you ply the yarns together.
Bobbin: A bobbin is the thing that newly-spun yarn is wound around on a spinning wheel. It is essentially a large wooden spool, and you can think of the yarn is the thread.
I went crazy with online buying recently and on the same day that I bought my Craftsy course from the last post, I bought three bobbins online. I previously only owned three bobbins, so the most plys I could spin were 2-ply, or 3-ply if I use Navajo plying. My wheel is an Ashford Traditional single-drive wheel, so I bought the Ashford standard bobbins, from the eBay seller ropes546, who is excellent and even sent with my bobbins a copy of a spinning magazine called The Wheel. I bought unstained ones as they’d be about $5 more expensive each if I were going to buy them lacquered. So, I thought, I’m going to have to buy stain and/or varnish for these bobbins anyway, so I may as well make my own 45 degree angle Lazy Kate and use up the whole pot (actually, I used barely any of the pot).
As I am so nice, I’ve decided to give you a little step-by-step tutorial on how to make a 45 Degree angle Lazy Kate like mine.
How to Make Your Lazy Kate
You will Need
Materials (and approximate cost):
- Wooden door plaque about 30cm long, 8-10cm high and at least 1cm thick….$3
- 90cm length of dowel, 0.6cm in diameter…$2
- Wood stain. I used Intergrain NaturalStain in Merbau and I bought a sample pot…$10
- Two wooden craft letter “V”s about 5cm high (I searched high and low for suitable 45 degree angled triangles of wood. I wasn’t going to faff around with a saw trying to cut a piece of wood at an angle. I ended up finding these “V”s at Cheap as Chips and when I held two together I found that they made a 90 degree angle and therefore individually were 45 degrees. Bingo. They are made of kind of pulped up wood, like super-duper-thick-and-dense cardboard, making them easy to sand down. The plaque is made of similar material)…$2
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| A picture of some of the supplies you will need. Dog is optional. |
Tools:
- Saw
- Sandpaper (I like a sheet rather than a block so you can tear it up to do the fiddly bits.)
- Power drill
- 0.6cm/quarter-inch-ish drill bit (I’ll tell you a secret: I knew my dowel was 0.6cm across so I was looking for a drill bit (that I already owned) that was equal to or slightly larger than this size. The best I could find was 7/32 of an inch. “That’s nearly 0.6cm,” I said to myself, little realising that 7/32 of an inch is slightly less than, not slightly more than, 0.6cm. Doiiiii. I ended up finding a screwdriver that was exactly 0.6cm across and expanding my already-drilled holes by forcing the screwdriver through them. It worked well, as the dowels fitted in very snugly and didn’t need to be glued in. Not gluing them in will make them easier to replace).
- Strong adhesive. I used Parfix Fast Grip (in a much smaller tube than the pot shown). I used the wet adhesive instructions rather than the contact adhesive instructions. Liquid Nails would also work.
- Paint brush to apply the wood stain
- Newspaper for the messy work
- Small flat piece of rigid plastic to stir wood stain.
- Pencil
- Ruler
- Eraser
What to Do
- Mark off three 20cm lengths on your dowel. Save the rest in case you need to replace a dowel later on.
- Cut these three lengths from the dowel. Sand down the ends. I sanded one end round and one end flat. See Fig 1.
Fig 1. How I sanded my dowels (two rounded and one flat end) - Take the wooden plaque. Sand off any rough bits. Measure and mark a line running along the middle of the plaque along its length. See Fig 2.
- Mark three points evenly spaced along this line. These will be where you will drill holes for the dowels. My plaque was about 30cm long. I put the two end holes about 4cm from the edges and the middle one equally distanced between these two. See Fig 3.
Fig 2. Centre line running the length of the plaque - Taking your power drill (with correctly-sized drill bit), drill holes in each of these three marks. Sand off any rough bits. Erase pencil marks.
- Insert dowels into holes. Have the flat end of each dowel flush with the back of the plaque, with the rounded end sticking out. Because my holes were the exact same size as the dowels, I did not need to glue them in. This will also make it easier to replace them if need be. If your holes are slightly larger than your dowels, you may need to use your strong adhesive to secure the dowels in place. Sand off the back of the plaque where the dowels poke out to make it smooth.
Fig 3. Close-up of mark for drill holes - Saw outer serifs off letter “V”s. Sand them down so that the serif stubs are flush with the rest of the outside of the “V”.
- Turn plaque over so you are looking at the back of it. Mark two lines on either side of the plaque. This is where the “V”s will be placed. It doesn’t matter too much how far apart they are, just as long as they are parallel and when attached make the Lazy Kate stand sturdily and at a 45-degree angle. You figure it out. See Fig 4.
Fig 4. Placement of letter “V”s - Glue letter “V”s to Lazy Kate along these points with heavy-duty adhesive. As well as putting glue on the surfaces touching each other, I ran a line of glue down the sides of each “V” once it was stuck on, to reinforce them. Erase pencil marks. Allow to dry.
- Stain Lazy Kate according to instructions. Allow to dry. Enjoy. See Figs 5. and 6.
So there it is, my tutorial for a 45 degree angle Lazy Kate. I hope you enjoy making yours as much as I did mine.
Peace,
Kat
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| Fig 6. Lazy Kate with two of my new bobbins on it |
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| Fig 5. Completed Lazy Kate |
Angelfish Beanie Pattern
This is a double-barrelled post.
Barrel 1 — The Inspiration
The other day I splurged and bought the Craftsy course Lace Shawl Design. I should add that it wasn’t expensive at all, and it was actually cheaper than usual as they have a sale on right now ($20 instead of $30), I’m just cheap. I’ve only watched the first lesson, but I’m really inspired by it. The epitome of creativity is designing something original, and since I started knitting, this has been my aim. In fact, it’s a dream of mine to knit my own wedding dress one day. Sorry, Mum, there’s no man in my life right now, but that doesn’t stop me from planning my wedding. I love knitting lace and I’ve done quite a bit of it. I’ve also done a small bit of designing — mostly beanies and simple bags, that kind of thing (and a jumper for my niece which you know about already) — but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to design lace, especially with complicated shaping like in a fitted gown. When I handed up my thesis last year, I bought myself a book about designing and fitting knitted garments which I can see being useful to me later on and is a good general guide, but it didn’t get into the nitty-gritty of complicated things like lace design.
So, I bought this class. Miriam Felton, the teacher, is very inspirational in her enthusiasm for knitting and just getting out there and having a go. As I said, I’ve only watched the first lesson so far, so my wedding dress is a long way off, but I have been encouraged to finally post my first pattern online.
Barrel 2.1 — The Story Behind the Pattern
Last year I made, as a Christmas present, a beanie for a relative. Apart from rectangular projects, this was the first thing I designed myself. My family contains many aquarium enthusiasts and this one (who is not my Dad, but my Dad owns one too) owns an aquarium shop. I’ve grown up with community fish and I like them very much. One of my favourites is the angelfish. Here is a photo of one that I found on a public domain site:
I decided to make this relative a beanie with an angelfish on it. My aim was to make a beanie that reflected his aquarium-shop profession so he could wear it at work but not be so wacky that he wouldn’t want to wear it in public. This is what I ended up with:
I’m pretty proud of it. I especially like the moss/seed stitch (I believe the name of this stitch is controversial but I say go cry a river) edging as it serves the purpose of providing a more rigid bottom of the beanie while also looking like aquarium gravel. I had originally planned to do a blue background (like water) and black stripes on the fish, but I wanted this to be something a grown man would be happy to be seen in (the blue is gorgeous but quite garish, or should I say garfish? No, no I should not.), so I switched the colours.
Barrel 2.2 — Angelfish Beanie Pattern
Here is the pattern for my angelfish beanie. Please feel free to sell finished objects made using this pattern but please do not sell the pattern itself. I’ve only made this once and wrote the pattern down as I went along. If you find any errors or any confusing bits, please let me know so I can improve it!
Techniques
This pattern requires the use of Intarsia colourwork. As a basic principle in Intarsia, each time you change a colour, you start a new ball or strand of yarn. You do not, therefore, carry long lengths of yarn behind the work (these are called floats). This said, if you have just a couple of stitches of one colour, you may want to cheat a bit and carry the yarn at the back for that (I like to weave these floats round the working yarn like with stranded knitting, to make the back look neater) But, at the intersection between colours, it is a good idea to cross the two yarns over each other at the back so there are no holes. For the intricate bits, some people (not me) like to leave them off and fill them in using duplicate stitches once the piece is done. I’m sure this advice is far too vague to be useful, so here is a good tutorial on Intarsia techniques: http://theknitter.themakingspot.com/blog/intarsia-knitting.
This pattern is knit flat (as are most (/all?) Intarsia patterns).
Download the pattern here: Angelfish Beanie Pattern
ERRATUM: 31.12.2017 – A previous version of this pattern had the wrong number of stitches on the first row worked in black. It previously directed to K41, work chart, then K44. The correct directions should say to K41, work chart, then K40.The current pattern has been corrected.
Angelfish Beanie
Materials
Yarn:
- 100g Black 8ply acrylic yarn (I used Thorobred)
- 50g Brown 8ply acrylic yarn
- Small amount Blue 8ply acrylic yarn
- Small amount White 8ply acrylic yarn
- Small amount Green 8ply acryic yarn
Needles and notions:
- 3.75mm straight needles
- Row counter
- Stitch markers
- Tapestry needle
- Scissors
Tension: 22sts x 28 rows = 10cm
Size: To fit an adult head 50-55cm/20-22in circumference (I can tell you it fit my head which is about 22in and about how big you’d expect a man’s head to be)
Stitches:
- Moss stitch:
- Row 1 (RS): [k1, p1] to end
- Row 2 (WS): [p1, k1] to end
- Stocking (stockinette) stitch :
- Row 1 (RS): K all stitches
- Row 2 (WS): P all stitches
Intarsia Chart:
Pattern
Using brown and a one-needle cast-on (long-tail), cast on 112 stitches. Work in moss stitch for 7 rows.
Next row: Switch to black. K41, pm, work row 1 of Angelfish Beanie Intarsia Chart, pm, K40.
Continue the Angelfish Beanie Intarsia Chart between markers and black on either side of markers in stocking stitch throughout.
After Angelfish Beanie Intarsia Chart is completed, work 11 rows in black (stocking stitch).
Decrease for crown:
Row 1 (RS): [k6, k2tog] to end. 105 sts.
Row 2 and all alternate (WS) rows: P all sts
Row 3: [k5, k2tog] to end. 90 sts.
Row 5: [k4, k2tog] to end. 72 sts.
Row 7: [k3, k2tog] to end. 54 sts.
Row 9: [k2, k2tog] to end. 36 sts.
Row 11: [k1, k2tog] to end. 18 sts.
Row 13: [k2tog] to end. 9 sts.
Cut yarn, leaving a long tail. Thread tail through a tapestry needle. Pass thread through remaining live stitches and tighten. Use mattress stitch to sew together back seam of hat. Weave in ends. Block. Enjoy.
Peace,
Knitkatpaddywhack