Don't Begin with an Intermediate!

Well, I did say that I would share both crafty successes and failures…so here is my first failure! This is very hard for me to admit, even on an anonymous blog that no one reads! When I proudly show off my ‘I made these’ fingerless cable gloves, I show off the right hand with delight, shoving my left hand in my pocket or behind my back…because yes, I messed up the left hand.

When I got the urge to begin knitting, I bought a beautiful Amy Butler book with beautiful designs in and naively thought that this pair of gloves would be a good place to start as they required minimum shaping and looked nice and simple. Soon I was balancing four needles at a time, swearing profusely and googling each and every step for some kind of guidance. In my excitement I completely missed the diamond ratings for each pattern and got stuck straight in to a two diamond ‘intermediate’ pattern without realising. Oops. The lovely 1 diamond head band or mug cosy really would’ve sufficed!

The 'right' right hand :)

Spot the difference?!

However I thoroughly believe that diving in at the deep end is the best way to learn. It is just unfortunate that the left glove took the brunt of my learning and the right glove was to benefit from my new found cabling skills. I unfortunately didn’t realise that I needed to adjust the pattern with any increases and decreases to keep the pattern continuous, I just bulldozed through the pattern as it was. Oops again. But all is well now. I can now successfully cable knit and I have demoted myself to the 1 diamonds for the time being J and done the mug snug I should’ve started with.

Cozy tea :)

Union Jack Cushions!

My sofa is now the proud bearer of a pair of shabby chic union jack cushions, made by my fair hands! I did plan for them to be shabby chic as I like that look however they are probably slightly more so due to the fact that my sewing skills are somewhat underdeveloped! But I think they look great and go with my living room colour scheme so I’m happy, even my other half likes them, who has taken to calling me quite unsavoury names thanks to my newfound love of craft. I was making some progress on my knitted jumper in bed the other night (I have done the back and am halfway through the front-yay me, longest running knitting project to date!) and he claimed that it was like “being in bed with my grandma”. Sigh. I think that he is just nervous about becoming a craft widower!

As before, I have used scrap materials from my local fabric store, each random sized piece costing between £1.50 and £2, and I still have plenty left over to use on other projects. My usual nice and simple envelope style cushion is the basis (until I learn a new method!) and then very simple strips of plain cream cotton and slightly slimmer strips of gingham appliquéd on the front in the classic union jack shape using a zig-zag stitch. I left all of the edges raw as I want to encourage a slight fray to the fabric as they get used.

I have already starting ploughing through my two, rather bulging, folders stuffed with ideas and patterns galore for another project. I really should complete another one before going on to the next…but I can’t help it! I’m thinking Christmas things now, either decorations or gifts, which is tormenting because it seems so far away and I’m not keen on how it gets earlier and earlier each year however it is only 11 weeks away! And the time it takes me to do stuff, especially learn how to do stuff, I’d better get cracking!