Did I mention my other stash?

On my weekly call to my parents to find out they have not done much all week, I mentioned that I had started sewing a knitting needle case for my circulars. Mum seemed surprised that I have a fabric stash in addition to the yarn stash. As she is the one who saved every single scrap of fabric from clothes making when we were kids and could not bring herself to throw anything away (she blames the WWII mentality) I found this startling. Thankfully she also taught me to sew and had a stack of knitting needles and yarn for me to play with once I learned to knit from a schoolmate aged about seven.



So yes I have a fabric stash which is less likely to be all used up than the yarn. Much of it is dull, but for this bag I chose some leopard skin blue fleece fabric. It talked to me at the NEC some years ago. Anyway, lined with different blue cloth, and some linen dyed with indigo by me at some point, I now have a home for all my circulars. There are 28 in this, but this isn’t the complete collection as some are in use, and there is also space for a gauge ruler so there will be no excuse to file the needles in the wrong pocket. The pattern is inspired by Grumperina’s. I felt rather chuffed with it and have very good intentions of making a holder for all my DPNs. That will first entail gathering up all my DPNs from the wild.

New on the needles this week is a red balaclava helmet. Heaven knows how old the pattern is but my guess is 1950s. Nephew put a request in for this after I’d sent his mother and sister knitted presents. He is currently obsessed with Spiderman and luckily for me the superhero made his own mask originally without any black web markings.

Finally Finished

I seem to have an aversion to posting pics of Works in Progress. So some finished bags. As these bags aren’t felted they needed linings, and I forced myself to complete them at the weekend. I actually really like hand sewing, it’s just starting it that’s the problem.

First up is the red and green tote which was finished some time ago. This yarn is handspun and I dyed it and several other skeins years ago with plants and it was all varying shades of beige or dull yellows. Yuck. So out came the chemical dyes a few weeks ago and half went in the blue and half the red. The skeins all came out differing shades of red and green, in tones which matched. This picture does not give the true green – it’s actually many shades of green. I used the green to do the hem at the top, and the bag is lined with blue cloth. Blocking the bag really helped. It will be a useful bag for a small project as I have a tendency to leave knitting all over the house. I like plain tote bags and here the handles are double knit which is fine for a small length and much less fiddly than using DPNs or a circular needle to knit in the round (the intention being to avoid seams of course!)





Bag number 2 is from the Bag a Knitter’s dozen book I have raved about previously. This is the one where I had to frog a square… The yarn is Rowan cotton bought for less than £2/ball in a John Lewis sale. I failed to block this and it has suffered a bit as I think I have sewn it up just a little tightly. But again it’s lined in blue cloth and will fit a jumper’s worth of a project in it.

And lastly, a cable pink bag. I’d seen a pattern in a book in passing for a cabled Big Wool bag. Couldn’t see the point in buying a book for just one pattern so made this one up by swatching and I rather like it. Two balls of Rowan Big Wool bought incredibly cheaply last year and the strap is again double knitted. I still have to sort out fastening for this which is a drawback. I quite like the idea of buckles which means a trek down the market. Need I say it is lined in blue cloth? I did try with all these bags to find cloth in the stash to match the colours of the yarn, but nothing I had was right so I played safe by going for a contrast.

Jaywalker

I don’t understand it. My Jaywalker is the same size as my raspberry ripple sock, and I would have thought should have been stretchy because of the bias thing going on. And look you can see it is the same size.

But when I tried it on I just could not get it on round my ankle. I tried several times at differing times of the day in case my foot had swollen, but no joy. So the sock is being ripped. It will also make me disinclined to try out another sock pattern, except for rib as I know that would be very stretchy.

The decluttering slowly continues, though it is mainly things which have been hidden away so there’s no discernable lessening of stuff. Jam jars, tiles and a couple of old ghetto blasters have gone to new homes courtesy of Freecycle. And I took my old guitar and sewing box to the charity shop last week, along with a large rucksack full of other bags. I have to acknowledge that despite loving bags it is the one object I buy and then don’t use. Don’t have that problem with clothes purchasing as I rarely buy clothes…