Wednesday 24 January 2007

There's actually some knitting content...for a change!

Flicca continues.

She's been sewn together. The collar is finished. One edging is finished.

Only one more edging to go, followed by the ribbon to stabilise the collar and make sure it doesn't go all floppy and shapeless. That'll be fun as me and hand-sewing (when cloth rather than knitted fabric) don't really go together that well. It can all get a bit messy!

Then we have the Soy Silk Karaoke saga! I bought this from Stash ages ago (although they no longer stock it) as I loved the colourway and really wanted to try it out. But...big but...this has been an absolute bastard to find something that works in it.

First we tried this Cornelia Tuttle design which was originally for some Noro (Noro Revisited). It involved a wee bit of jiggery-pokkery to resize it as the smallest size was for a 36" bust and I am not nearly so well endowed. It looked nice on the needles. It looked fine when it was sewn up. It looked absolutely shite when I put it on!

So it sat for a couple of weeks and then it went to the frog pond and got ripped back to it's original state. I liked the wool too much to waste it and knew if I didn't rip it back there and then it would be something that got shoved in a drawer never to see the light of day. Bummer!

So we then had attempt number 2 at finding something suitable and up popped this cute cardi from Knit.1 (can't remember which issue). This mag does have a habit of coming up with some of the more hideous designs in an attempt to be hip and trendy (!) but it does have a few gems in there. I liked the style of the cardi - quite 50's/60's in inspiration. So we knit this up, spent a bit of time on it, took out the side panels as they would have made it horrendously wide across one's lacking bosums', and sewed it up. Again, it looked good on the needles, looked fine sewn up, and looked absolutely crap when I put it on.

Starting to get a tad pissed off by this stage!

So last night I ripped that attempt back and decided to give this little baby a go in the hope that it really would be third time lucky! This is from a Rowan book (number 7 - Woman) that I picked up in John Lewis last week for £2.95 rather than it's usual £5.95. The designs are all knitted in Soft Lux and come out at a similar tension as the Karaoke. I like vest tops anyway so would hopefully get a decent wear out of it. Plus it only uses a wee bit of wool so I should have enough for a cute waistcoat that I've spotted in the book too.

Please, please, please...I hope this one works out otherwise I'll be just a tad pissed off. I am determined to make this sodding stuff work but if it gets to the "I must kill" stage then I'll give it up as a bad job and sell the stuff on Ebay!

1 comment:

Ali said...

What you need is a tailor's dummy so you can try things for size before you get too far! Love your Flicca. I bought the pattern too but god know's when I'll get the chance to knit it!