Stash Less - An Update.

The series where we talk about having a thoughtful stash.

This post is an update of sorts. I'm going to tell you what I have purchased and what traps I am finding myself fall into. And also what progress I have made…..I'm excited by the progress!

Spending

A knitting needle gauge - $5
Knitting pattern Flet (gee it's pretty) - $10
Cotton and needles - $39
Cotton and pattern tracing stuff - $24
Kate Davies new book Yokes (with postage) - $52 

Grand Total $130 in 6 weeks…..hmmm. 

Thoughts on traps

I can't tell you how much this thing is teaching me about the decisions I am making. I've had a few more really useful realisations - and the reason I'm loving them, is that if I understand what I'm doing then I'm back in the drivers seat. No more mindlessness. 

I have discovered another key area (of previously unidentified) hoarding is patterns. I purchased Flet because I really wanted to start it then and there, but I just didn't. I went on to start other things. I am glad I have it but it now sits there annoying me and feels a bit like a weight - like I've added another "to do". I do this with dress patterns too. I have both Anna and Elisalex from By Hand London and they are just sitting there as "to dos".

So I'm not quite sure how to tackle this one as it seems to be an ongoing desire issue for me. At this very moment I'm quite convinced that the Playtime Dress by Oliver and S is just what my girls need for tops/frocks heading into summer. My lovely friend Katie loves this pattern, and when I ran into her the other day, her small one was wearing a gorgeous (Liberty) one and I haven't stopped thinking about it. I'm also kindof convinced I need to try the Tiny Pocket Tank by Grainline rather than my staple Wiksten Tank. Mainly cause I'm a little bored and the straps are a little thinner. Not really a good enough reason to buy a whole tank pattern, especially as I could just alter the straps of the Wiksten.

I think dealing with all this head chaos might be a case of sitting down and looking at what is realistic for me to make in the next few months - Visual Diary time? Because realistically I don't have time to make the girls tops/frocks. Nor do I have time to make myself more tanks. Maybe it is as simple as a reality check. I'm only buying the pattern to engage with the thrill of the purchase and flirt with the idea I have all the time in the world. I really don't. 

The yarn being used below was being "saved" to make this jumper again….. except that I've realised I won't ever make it.

Progress

Progress has been huge. The main thing I'm getting out of it is a total thrill of finally using materials I love. I just want to briefly explain the crazy thought process I had going on - just in case any of you recognise it in yourselves. 

So I would purchase something I love for a project. Then I wouldn't get around to it and so the materials would sit on the shelf. Over time I would figure out other things I "could" do with that special fabric/yarn and so then there would be multiple options. Then I would get confused over which one was the "best" use of the fabric/yarn and so I would avoid making a decision. And then there would be so many things I would want to use it for I wouldn't want to "waste it" by using it on just one. So I wouldn't use it at all. 

Case in point is the top in the first photo in this post. I love this top. My favourite Scout ever. But the only reason I finally used this linen was that I am not allowed to go out and buy something else to use for a Scout. I kept thinking that I would like to use the linen for a dress that I haven't got around to making. Instead it was the best option in the stash for this top, and this is the year of using things. It's a total thrill to be wearing this linen finally in something. There will be other fabrics for frocks. 

The yarn in the baby jumper I started tonight was being "saved" for the elephant jumper (that I will never get around to making). But I didn't want to "waste it" as it was perfect for that jumper (that I will never get around to making). Well now I have no choice. I need to make a baby sweater quick sticks and it is the best option. Elephant jumper be damned. 

Another wonderful thing that is becoming clear, is that by being restricted to using what I have, I am actually making things that are even prettier than if I had all the materials I needed on hand. I'll tell you more about my quilt soon but I am so chuffed with how it is coming along. I wouldn't have started it without this #stash_less. 

I feel like I am letting go - and the making is flying along because of it. No more stalling. Yiihaaa. 

I'd love to hear how you are going with your stashing - even if you are only following along loosely. And thanks for all your warm words on this series. I'm learning new things each week from all of your comments. 

You can see other posts in this series here 

Felicia x

I Made This - Felicia Semple

I Made This is a new weekly blog post that features makers from around the world - some of them you will know through their online presence, others you will not - but their stories are equally inspiring.
I Made This aims to talk about the things we are proud of; of the objects we make that have meaning to us and the journey we take to make them.

So I know this is a weird way to kick off a series that is all about other voices -  but I'm going to start. Mainly because I have been wanting to post about a cardy I made and this is the perfect format for it. 

I Made This by Felicia Semple

I made this cardigan but I still don't understand exactly how. My hands began making while my head was playing catchup, trying to find an idea. 

The cardigan began with some materials. We were two days into our camping trip when we visited a farm that did natural dyeing as part of a Tudor reenactment. They took wool from their own sheep, and dyed it using camomile and madder and woad and pussy willow. The skeins were so beautiful I couldn't leave them in the farm shop.

My middle girl saw the colours (she LOVES colour) and kept asking over and over "are they for me….could they be for me?" "Course they could love." "A cardigan?" "Sure."

OK. So I'm making a colourwork cardigan. I set a few parameters; Keep it simple. Think of it as a learning experience - I don't know that much about colourwork. Only use one or two colours per pattern. Make it stripy - four rows between each pattern - one big pattern then one small. I decide to think of it as a colourwork sampler of sorts; a place to practice my skills.

Final rule - I can't procrastinate - I have to just start. I have a tendency to procrastinate when using materials I love. I don't want them to run out and so I plan and plan and don't make. So I decide not to plan. We were camping and I have the time to do something a little challenging. I make up some starting numbers for the body of the cardy and start knitting. 

This cardy was the craft project that came out of our adventure. Like the adventure, I made no plans. I picked patterns by using spotty wifi to do a quick google search for "colourwork images" to find something I liked. I'd quickly scribble it down, and knit some more. Sometimes there was no wifi and I would make a pattern up as I needed to keep knitting. I ripped and ripped and ripped this thing. I did the yoke at least six times to get the shaping to work. In doing so I used a whole heap of personal qualities I'm not that practiced at - like patience and sitting with uncertainty. Doing something so uncertain, and so unlike my normal making, made it addictive. I wanted to see if I could. 

Technically it is a bit of a disaster. I don't have that much experience with colour work. I have made a few things but never taken the time to learn the rules. Even (especially) if you plan on breaking them, having a basic understanding of the rules is helpful. For example I used a two stitch seam of the natural coloured yarn on the underside of the sleeve. This lead to many interesting tangled sloppy stitches  that are really obvious if you are up close (see below). A bigger error was that I didn't pay enough attention when I was buying the yarn. I assumed it was all DK and just thought that some of the skeins had been spun a bit thin. I realised about 3/4 of the way through that actually three of the colour skeins were fingering weight. It works. Kind of. I also realised at the end of the cardigan that I'd been holding what I wanted to be the dominant yarn in the non dominant hand. Whoops….. And then there is the fact I used a 4mm needle with dk yarn to knit a colourwork cardigan for a child that "runs hot". It is a thick coat, not a cardigan. Plus it's too small. Technically I might get a fail if we were looking at it from a technical point of view. Luckily we are not.

Because she loves it. And I love it. To her it is her "colourwork cardy" that she asked me for and I made because I love her. She doesn't care that it isn't technically great or too hot or too small. And I'm proud of it. It challenged me and extended me and I learnt.

It holds the memories of our trip and many places we camped. I cast on in England, I redid the yoke in Albania and I crocheted the steek in Greece. She and I sat together at our camp table under the trees in Umbria and cut the steek. I put the buttons on only this week - maybe finally accepting that it is over and we are home. 

It almost feels like this came together through some kind of magic. I don't believe I would have been able to sit down and "design" something I like this much. One uncertain leap lead to another uncertain leap. Such an unusual process for me; I surprised myself. 

Part 2 - Knitting Tips and Tricks - Sleeves and Yarn

So this really should be an Around the Traps style post as I am just pointing you to resources by other smart people. However, many moons ago before I went travelling and broke my camera, I started this series with a Part 1 - Knitting Tips and Tricks and thought I should continue in that vein. 

And do I have tips and tricks for you. I LOVE these. You must go and check them out.

Sleeves

I often get asked about sleeves, along the lines of "what is the best way to knit them"? I want to give you an answer but the answer may be a little unsatisfying - and that is "whatever way you choose" or "whatever way is comfortable for you". You really do need to try them all out and your choice may change over time or depending on the project.

The main methods for sleeve knitting are

• double pointed needles
• knitting them flat and seaming them
• magic loop
• small circulars or little needles
• knitting with two circulars 

In the past I have altered nearly every single pattern to be able to knit sleeves how I want. Traditionally for me that meant knitting sleeves flat and seaming them, even with a seamless garment. I didn't like knitting little tubes. But then I met Georgie and she quietly (in that lovely way of hers) convinced me to give small circular needles another try.

Small circular needles are small 30cm circulars (or sometimes even smaller) with bent tips. I use the Addi ones. I did hate them but have come to see that actually, with a little practice, they are actually very speedy. I ALWAY need to go up a needle size with little needles though as my gauge tends to get tighter - which makes sense if you think about how they are knit. Because the stitches are held in a small tube rather than stretched a bit on normal needles, the yarn between stitches is pulled a little tighter, and this leads to tighter knitting. 

When choosing the method to suit you, consider that everybody has their own knitting quirks; different styles, different hands, different levels of finger flexibility. So what you might find comfortable and comforting I might not. You really do need to try all styles - and try them more than once. It takes a little while to get used to and comfortable with a new style. 

Georgie talks about options for different ways to knit sleeves in this post. She also gives her amazing way for picking up underarm stitches in this other post.

Towards the bottom of the post Georgie mentions that in the very next round, after the round where you have picked up your stitches, you need to do a ssk and a k2tog. You do these at the join between the new underarm stitches and the existing sleeve stitches, to close the gap. You do a ssk when you get to the end of your existing sleeve stitches, knitting one of the sleeve stitches you were holding on waste yarn together with one of the new underarm stitches. You follow that up with a k2tog when you get to the last of the new underarm stitches, which closes the gap between the underarm stitches and the existing sleeve stitches. 

You will love this underarm. It has no gaps and looks great. I use it on every top down seamless pattern I make now. 

Yarn

So yesterday I was talking about how materials matter. How 100% wool does not equal 100% wool in all cases. I know this is a tricky subject when you are a new/intermediate knitter as there are all these new words and who knows what they all mean?

Have I got the podcast for you - two podcasts actually. There is a podcast called Knit FM by Hannah Fettig and Pam Allen and it is a true wealth of information. They cover Yarn - Part 1 and Yarn - Part 2. Get stuck in - if you are even vaguely interested in yarn you will love it. I just love Pam's voice. She sounds so lovely you will want to give her a hug - or maybe that's just me? 

One final thing today - A small few-but-mighty of you took me up on my Stash Less Ripping Challenge. I'm going to send a little something to the brave Libby who ripped out this lovely cabled cardy. Yay Libby!

See you Friday x

Felicia

Why materials matter!

When I was a newbie crafter I often purchased materials because I thought they were cute (for the kids), or beautiful (for me), or they were on sale (cheap). I put little thought into the properties of the materials I was using because I didn’t understand how critical they were. I thought that yarn was yarn, and fabric was fabric. And I think this is a common mistake that many new crafters make.

For me, choosing the wrong materials lead to many projects that were technically OK, but just didn't sing. And if you are going to take the time to make something with your hands you really want it to sing, don't you? 

Materials categorically affect the success of your project. They affect the longevity, the usability, the beauty and ultimately the joy the project brings; while it is being created and during it's lifetime. 

When your project is completed, it is the properties of material that matter - does it drape, does it pill, does it stretch, does it have enough weight, does it have enough strength, is it stiff, is it floppy, is it too heavy, too light and most importantly does it work for the thing you are making. Some properties are immediately visible but sometimes you can’t tell until the project is complete. And sometimes, even after a lot of practice you get it wrong. 

As a lovely instagram friend reminded me the other day - a gorgeous material is only gorgeous if paired with the right pattern. The perfect pairing of a project and materials will bring out the best qualities of both the pattern and the materials.

Let's use longevity as an example because it is one of the key things I am looking for. I want my projects to last, and I want them to wear beautifully.

Much of my making is children's clothes. Much of the wearing they do of those clothes is a little harsher than you or I might wear them. Blueberries, watermelon, grass, glue, ink and many many rocks have created havoc on the things I have lovingly made for them. As a loving parent your only option when faced with the carnage is to smile and hold your pain deep deep inside. As a result I have upped-the-anti on the materials I use, based on the number of outfits coming home from school with holes in the bottoms. I'm still making the same patterns but I no longer use flimsy fabrics. For shorts I once used cotton fabrics including jersey and quilting cottons. My baseline is now a lightweight canvas or linen/cotton blend. Something with strength and durability.

I do something similar for kid's frocks. Although the odd one gets made out of something super light and plain (I'm looking at you lovely pale pink Geranium that now has three ink stains and a hole in the front), I generally only make them out of a quilting cotton weight fabric. I trade off beautiful drape for durability.
Lesson - Small person shorts (in our family) need to be made in a light canvas if the aim is to get more than a few weeks wear from them.

I was wondering out loud the other day why I use so many prints in the fabrics I choose, rather than solids (which I love). I have realised the answer is "to disguise the wear and the stains". Again this is something to consider when choosing your materials if you are making for mucky pups like my lot. You will never achieve the gorgeous tone-on-tone linen kidswear look so beautifully epitomised by the Scandinavians, but I've learnt to live with that and you can too ;).
Lesson - Prints increase longevity due to stain disguising powers.

After strength, the next thing to consider is how it wears as well as the beauty of the material. Ask the question - is it still beautiful when used with the pattern I have in mind?

A knitting example - Once when I was a newish knitter I got completely suckered in by all the comments on Ravelry about the softness of Malabrigo Worsted. It is truly an amazingly soft yarn! I took the plunge and ordered a sweaters worth in the gorgeous Paris Nights colourway. I then knitted a whole jumper. At the time this was a massive undertaking that involved emotional strength and guts. Before I had even finished the jumper I could see that it was going to pill like a b@#%ard. Who wants to walk around the streets looking all pill-y? So it became a house cardigan - but it was too depressing to even use for that. I threw it away for it’s sake and mine. It just made me too sad.
Lesson – A super-soft wool is not generally a good sweater wool.

Later I used the very same super-soft Malabrigo Worsted for a Toddler Cowl – a project to which it is entirely suited and it still looks stunning a year or two in. The kid loves it because it is “just so soft mama”.  Perfect pairing. 
Lesson – A super-soft wool makes a great kid cowl.

Now all this talk about the "right" materials may have you thinking that I am talking about expensive yarns and fabrics. To which I would say – not at all!! Two recent projects were tiny baby vests that I made using yarn that was about $4.50 a ball. One was a tiny big squeaky but the other was Alpaca and simply divine. A favourite pairing of materials and pattern was a Wiksten skirt I made by chopping up an old pregnancy dress I loved. It no longer fits as I no longer have DD boobs, but rather than throw it out, I hoarded it because I loved the swish of the fabric. I made it to go on holiday and it is one of the favourite things I have ever made.

Below is a photo of the aforementioned skirt but in an effort to keep it really real in this space I want to give you the following info ;). The photo is a selfie taken in a campsite bathroom that was citrus yellow and royal blue. It was taken at a very very weird angle to make use of the tiny white bathroom door as a backdrop. In real life I am much more woman shaped. 

The right materials are ones that suit the pattern you are using AND with that pattern achieves the properties you want the project to have. 

simple things to remember when choosing materials if you are a newbie
 

Fabrics - If you are choosing materials for clothing think about the weight of the fabrics that you currently wear for that type of garment at the moment. If you are making a frock check the back of the pattern obviously, but then go and feel similar frocks in your cupboard to get an idea of the weight of fabric you should be looking for. Pick up the skirt in your hand and let it fall to see how the fabric drapes. These are the qualities you are looking for in a fabric is what you are looking for when you shop.

Yarn – Look for yarns that have similar properties to the ones suggested in the pattern. But remember that 100% wool and 100% wool are not the same thing. If possible feel them, look on Ravelry, and ask for advice. Look for whether they have ply's twisted together (strands twisted together) or whether they are a single yarn strand or whether they are woollen spun. Some 100% wools are supersoft and floppy. Others are twisted and solid. Others are bouncy and spun. If you aren't sure what any of this means then pop back tomorrow and I will give you a wonderful resource.The more you can learn about fibre the better!!

Feel free to ask me any question you want about what materials to use when. I'll do my best to help.

Felicia x 

More retreat photos!

My words and ideas were all tangled up today, so rather than torturing you with crazy half-baked thoughts, I decided to dish up some more photos of our September retreat. While I have shared a few, I thought it might be nice once in a while to revisit the weekend that was.

Every time I look at them they make me happy and I'm sure they will do that for you too. 

A quick reminder that there is a Stash Less Challenge going on this week that you might want to join in with and on Wednesday I asked a question about quilting that I need your help with. Would love to hear your thoughts. 

Felicia x

Beautiful sunshine all weekend.

Sample hat from Jule's colour work class.

Stitching in the gorgeous light as the sun was going down.

Georgie's giant needles.

Cutting out a Scout Tee.

The gorgeous Leslie with her half finished merino wool leggings.

Random stacks of beautiful yarn strewn all over the place. 

A bit of sparkle for dinner.

Jules doing her dyeing magic.

Belinda's weaving class.

Jen wearing her newly made Scout Tee while doing the Wiksten Tulip Skirt class with Sophie.

Rose in the block printing class with Leslie.

A beautiful hand turned crochet hook (that I blurred in the photo!) during Mel's cowl class.