Tuesday, March 20, 2007

I'm back

It's been a while I know but I haven't been idle, I promise. The Cinderella Bag for the Purlescence competition is done, photos have been taken and the pattern written up. Robynn has sent me a copy of the soon to be published pattern and it's so exciting. Knitting the wire outer bag wasn't nearly as difficult as I was expecting but I did end up with a big blood blister from trying to cut the wire with a pair of scissors, not a good idea. As I was speeding through the wire knitting hubbie decided to try and take some arty shots.
On the wire outer bag there's a mixture of sequins, beads and some gorgeous Swarovski crystals that I found in John Lewis. You can see them better here.

The trickiest part was putting it all togther; hanging inner bag in outer, feeding the wire through the top, making said wire lie straight and getting handles attached securely without spoiling the line of the bag.

But it's all done now and here's a sneak preview.


The full pattern will be available from Purlescence soon.

I also managed to finish the Sarah Dallas cabled hot water bottle for my mum. It was orginally meant to be for her birthday but I kind of failed there but I finished in time for Mother's Day. To be honest I could compile a whole post moaning about this piece of knitting but I'll just give a quick overview.

Firstly either I'm completely stupid (confused?) or the pattern is wrong. I'm willing to accept either as true but something just was not right when I came to the decreases. To do knit decreases on the first row you had to start on the wrong side (even though the way it was written led me to believe it should be the right side. See I told you I was confused) but after a few rows of decreases this led to unseemly ridges in the fabric. In the end I ripped all I done and kept with the pattern while doing the decreases. Also if I followed the pattern (starting decreases on wrong side) the stockinette stitch top came out as reverse. Another lot of ripping and making it up as I went along sorted this out. Then the fun of making up started. I stitched the front and back together, stitched the flap into place and found the cover to be too big for my hot water bottle (NB if a pattern doesn't have sizes and only states "fits average hot wtaer bottle"-BEWARE). AARRRGGGGHHHHH, after all that ripping. Well I reckoned if I undid the bottom flap seams I could pull that bit up and all would be well. After a scene reminescent of a action movie where the hero decides which wire to cut I was convinced I had the stitch up thread. You can guess the rest. As I unpicked the "seam" a huge hole started appearing. HELP!! Considering this happened late Tuesday night and the cover had to be posted on Thursday morning to make it home in time I'm amazed I managed to retain my composure. I tied up all the lose ends, re-examined the photo in the book to discover that the seam had been sewn to take in much more of the cover. Thankfully this allowed me to incorporate the big hole I'd managed to cut in the stupid thing and all was well. And to top it all I couldn't even phone my mum for some sympathy as it was all a secret. Here's a photo of the offending article to prove I really did manage it. (Sorry, that wasn't the quick overview I had intended)

And if anyone can tell me where I went wrong, please do. There are other things I'd like to make in this book but this experience has put me off a bit and I don't want to waste time or money. So any words of wisdom will be gratefully received.

I've also been up to another couple of things that have kept me busy. The spare room is now painted. The horrible orange fake beech furniture we had clashed so badly that we had to paint it too. The cupboard makeover paint we used was so fumey we could only do so much at a time and it needs so long between coats that it feels like we've been doing it forever (perhaps it has been forever). Anyway it's done now and I've just hung the curtains.

Finally it was our 3rd wedding anniversary at the beginning of the month and I made hubbie a photobook with all our memories from our wedding day until now. It took forever but brought back so many memories. Here's one of the funniest to cheer your day. I call it "Bear in Tree"!


4 Comments:

Blogger Isobel said...

Welcome back - I missed you. I was begining to worry that something was up, glad to read your words again. I really like the hot water bottle, I have the book and will take a look at the pattern.

5:41 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello! I have added a link to your blog onto my page, so that people can come and see your lovely Cinderella bag - that's turned out really well!

12:27 am  
Blogger picperfic said...

Your cinderella bag is so pretty....I love the list of instrustion including 'bad language'!

Hello from a fellow Cambridge knitter!

9:20 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Cinderella Bag is gorgeous and I love the hot water bottle cover. Happy Anniversary!

12:52 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home