Knitted Corsages

Do you remember those flowers I knitted?  Well, I played around with the patterns a little longer, come up with a pattern for a slightly larger flower and then set about making something else from them.  I love the bouquet idea but I wanted to try making corsages from them. 

Sewing them together seemed easy enough but using the yarn made them too bulky.  I then tried some very sticky, very messy glue (anything involving glue and I end up in a right mess!) and that was great… Until they ended up in pieces a few days later.  For some reason the glue just wasn’t up to holding them together for very long.

On my desk is a small red and white polka-dot box.  It has ribbons in it now but it used to have a load of thread in it.  I thought that perhaps simply tacking the flowers together with some sewing thread might just work. 

Like with the bouquet idea, I sewed down a few buttons to the centre of the smaller flower.  I then attached a brooch pin to the back of the larger flower and then covered the base with a small square of felt.  I tried to use felt and thread that matched as closely as possible with the knitted flower.  Then, with the pin attached, I layered up the flowers and then tacked them together, first with the smaller and middle flowers, and then I tacked them to the larger flower, trying to keep the stitches away from the felt.

The thread worked a lot better than the yarn and because it’s strong, I was able to pull it tighter in places to give some shape to the corsage.

Here is a selection of the ones I have made so far…

 

 

Knitted Flowers.

As you might have gathered from most of my posts, I love knitting. 

I had a go at making flowers a while ago using fabric but I couldn’t find a way of stopping the edges from fraying… and then the whole thing falling apart in a shredded mess.  So then I thought I’d have a go at knitting flowers.  I already had a few patterns for them at home but they were just a bit too complicated for me.  I’ve been knitting for almost a year now and I’m picking it up well enough but I’m not very good at reading/understanding patterns, and there’s almost always a stitch or technique involved that I haven’t learned yet.  So I thought, “b*&$!r it, then!” and, using the patterns as a starting point and the knowledge I have so far I set about making my own patterns. 

It took days to get something close to anything that I had in mind. But finally, I had it!  I had the main flower done, but to me it seemed like something was missing.  It was nice enough but it definitely needed something more.  So I tried making a tiny one, and after a few more days and a bag full of bits of yarn, I had that sussed, too. 

Well, now what was I going to do with them?  I started by layering up the two flowers and stitched them together.  And then I spent a good 40 minutes or so going through my button box and chose three buttons to use as the centre of the flowers.  I layered up the buttons and then stitched them on top of the flowers.  But what was I going to do with that?

Ages ago, I bought some brooch backs from Art Store, randomly.  I don’t even remember buying them!  They were in the bag containing beading needles and some elastic (that I do remember buying) and I happened across them when I was searching my craft cupboard for something else.  It took a while to finally get one of the backs on the flower… after I’d been jabbed far too many times.  I decided after that I would just sew one of them on!

I then had an idea about bouquets of knitted flowers.  I want to make one to display in my craft room – just for me!  So I ordered some florist wire online and then waited rather impatiently for it to arrive.  When it did I set about making more flowers, layering them up as I  had before and choosing three buttons and tried to attach them with the wire.  It was a bit fiddly at first but by the 3rd attempt I pretty much had it cracked.   I even made a couple of leaves.  Brilliant!

… Well, almost!

   

It’s coming together ok but there are quite a few flaws in the design that I’m still trying to figure out but I will get there in the end…!  I will not be beaten!

The most beautiful yarn EVER!

I was in Clydebank weeks ago.  I don’t really know what I was looking for.  I went into the indoor shopping centre… not the huge one (that has almost everything in it), but the smaller, slightly dodgy-looking one.  I’ve seen people go in and come out of it all the time, I just never went in myself. Until then. 

It was then that I spotted it.  A really tiny yarn shop!  I mean tiny, too.  Outside it, on a shelf were these 50g balls on the most gorgeous yarn I have ever seen in my entire life!  And they were reduced from £5.20 each to £2.60 each!  Awesome!  I was about to pick up at least one ball when something happened (that I won’t go into) and I ended up leaving the shopping centre without the yarn and in a rotten mood, swearing I would never go in again.  But the yarn was amazing!  I had to have it!

So last week I swallowed my pride and went in, specifically to get this particular yarn, the 8mm pins I needed and then I would leave.  She still had the yarn! Awesome!  There were only about 4 balls of the yarn altogether, and they were in 3 colours.  I picked up the blue one… and then spotted a greeny-coloured one. They were both very pretty!  I couldn’t decide which one I wanted the most. In the end, I got both of them!  It looks like this (sort of…!)  I would take a photo of the ones I bought, but my camera isn’t working at the moment.

 

It’s made with nylon, wool and polyester (and has little bits of foil/tinsel through it).  Its thickness changes throughout between thin and REALLY chunky.  Once you’re used to that, it knits really nicely.  If you have to frog it (and I have, a few times!), you have to tease it out, or you’ll end up in a right ol’ tangle!  The yarn and tinsel sheds a little, but it doesn’t spoil it.

I’m addicted to it already!  I tried my usual yarn shop and they don’t have it/can’t get it.  I tried online (using various links published in my growing pile of knitting magazines) and found most of the links either blocked or faulty.  It looks as though I may just have to buy it and get it shipped from Italy (which is probably going to cost me a fortune), which sucks a bit but if it means I get my yarn fix… well, you know how it is!

Pretty yarn…

A few weeks ago, a friend and I were in Glasgow, checking out a local art and craft shop.  We didn’t find anything in particular.  After we’d had lunch and she’d had to get home, I thought I’d wander up to John Lewis to see what they had.  They sometimes have some form of yarn in their Bargain Bin that’s cheap enough to practice new stuff and stitches with and not worry about making too much mess.

That was when I found just 1 ball of this:

Gorgeous, huh?  Yep!  I had to have it!  But here’s the problem… I have no idea what to do with it!  It needs to be something cool… but what?!

Ideas very much welcome!

Mini hat knitting pattern

I don’t usually post two in a day but a friend of a friend was talking about putting them on the lids of teapots… which made me wonder why I’d left out the pattern in the previous post!

Anyway, with the original pattern (link in previous post) you cast on 28.  When I made the tiny ones, I cast on 12.  Pattern goes as follows:

Use 4mm knitting pins. Metal or plastic is best.

Cast on 12 stitches.

1st row = Knit
2nd row = Knit
3rd row = Knit
4th row = Purl
5th row = Knit
6th row = Purl
7th row = Knit
8th row = Purl
9th row = K2tog (knit 2 together for the entire row, which gives you 6 stitches)
10th row – P2tog (purl 2 together for the entire row, which gives you 3 stitches)

Cut off the yarn a few inches from the end and thread the end through a needle. 

Thread the needle through the 3 stitches. 

Remove the knitting pin and pull the yarn tightly to close the stitches at the top. 

Turn it inside out and sew the seam at the back. 

Turn it right-side out and you have a mini hat!

NOTE:  I cast on a little differently for this project.  Normally I cast on with my thumb.  For this project, I cast on my stitches with two pins.  It makes the bottom edge of the hat a little looser (so that it fits nicely but not tight) on your thumb.  What I did was to insert the needle into the slip-knot knitwise and then bring the yarn around the needle (as you would if knitting), draw it through the slip-knot and simply place the new loop onto the needle.

You are free to use the pattern as you wish but I’d appreciate it if you could tell people where you found it. Thank you!

Mini hats!

I was thinking about Christmas cards the other day.  I know it’s August but I make all of my Christmas cards by hand so unless I start now they’ll never get finished in time, especially as I want to make a whole load of my cross-stitched robins again for a few of the Cancer Research charity shops nearby (in Anniesland, Partick and I think there’s one on Sauchiehall Street…) as well as my own designs for the cards I’ll be sending to people.

Having been taught how to knit back in March, at the Creative Stitches/HobbyCrafts craft show at the SECC by a lovely lady called Johanna, I’ve been practicing a lot recently.  On Sunday I had an idea about knitting mini bobble hats but wasn’t sure how. I started thinking that if I could knit a semicircle, I could pin that down and make it look like a hat. That way I would also be getting more from the yarn, meaning I could make a lot more of them.  I tried everything I could think of and even messaged a few friends for advice but I just couldn’t get what was in my head OUT.  I got really annoyed (mostly with myself) and then got quite upset. My brilliant idea wasn’t going to happen after all!  I tried phoning a few friendly people, just to hear a friendly voice and hear happy stories, etc to cheer me up… But that didn’t happen either.  I went to bed all grumpy and covered in bits of fluff!

As usual, I was woken up at 4am by noisy people banging doors.  Normally this bothers me quite a bit, but on this occasion I had another brilliant idea.  I would knit bobble hats, and I was sure that there were patterns on the Innocent Drinks website.  They did a campaign a while ago where people knitted mini hats to go on their bottles.  A few pence from each one sold would be donated to Age UK.  I found the beginners pattern and it looked easy enough.  I printed it out and got to work as soon as I got home. 

Some 4hrs later, I had made this: 

That was ok, and I thought they could be sewn to the card, but could also be removed and used as egg cosies.  Then I added the bobble and that squished that idea.  It was now too big and bulky to put on cards.  I looked at the pattern again and had ANOTHER idea.  When making this one, you cast on 28 stitches… What would happen if I cast on, say… 12?  Well, I tried it…!

And this happened!

Tiny hats!

I was so pleased and excited to finally have an idea that worked, I made this lot:

Cute, huh?  The purple and yellow stripy hat at the front was my first ever attempt at knitting stripes. 

These little cuties will most definitely find themselves on cards this year (along with a scarf, if I can figure out a decent pattern…)

The original pattern can be found HERE.