Still overwhelmed in most areas of my life. I use knitting as a (healthy, as long as I don’t get tendon issues) way to ground myself.
Knitting updates
Tag: craft
Crafting updates: knitting
Time for another crafting update: I’m slowly making progress on the 80’s style sweater, socks, and just finished my first shawl. The green blanket is finished as well, it’s not big but it’s very cozy 🙂
Until next time, stay healthy and take care!
Knitting updates
This time there will be mostly pictures and little text 🙂
So let’s begin! My blanket is almost ready, it fits on two circular needles, the lace section is almost over and there are two more skeins left. I don’t know yet how I will block it, because my yoga mat is too narrow, but I’ll find a way:
I started a smaller project with green cotton, a very pretty skein, but I’m not convinced by the progress, the needles could be a bit too large and the shawl-in-progress is somewhat missing structure. I’m tempted to frog it, but I’m almost finished, so mm, any thoughts?
My last and favorite project is a cotton sweater from a craft book printed in 1985, I chose to swap red for taupe and it’s coming out oh so nicely 🙂
I really want to start another pair of socks (most of my stash consists of sock wool – maybe because it’s easy to grab a pretty skein than buy the amount for a pullover?) but I will finish one of those three projects first.
That’s all for now! Until next post, stay safe 🙂
Craft and kitchen updates
Here is a small update of what I knitted, painted and baked recently.
My big blanket project is progressing nicely, the wool is a bit rough but very warm. The rows are getting longer and longer due to increases at the corners, and I will soon add a second circular needle! It was odd to start with the row in the middle of the blanket and then add rows around the sides of the rectangle, but it is working out very well and surprisingly fast.
A few days ago I painted a horse without mixing colours, as if I were adding one puzzle piece at a time. I’m not trusting myself with colour mixing, I suspect that I generally use too much water and paint too fast over areas that are still wet.
And last but not least, my last loaf. Before that I baked buns, but they were gone so fast that I don’t even have a picture of them 😀
Stay safe and healthy, wherever you are!
Knitting progress
I’d like to share a few pictures of my knitting projects. Lately I got up to speed to a point that I have three or four open projects, and I can resume each of them without having forgotten too much, or the stitches got the mark from staying on the needles:
I like the combination of repetition and change that is in varying proportion in each knitting project. The Flax pullover had large parts of uniform stitches, while the Bairn blanket requires a lot of attention the whole time. I am not yet that good in picturing the result of a written set of instructions, so I am more or less surprised by what takes shape while knitting, and I hope that this sensation will stay. The silence and concentration are comfortable to me, and the presence of other knitters when we gather at our meetup is a mix of talking/sharing and of staying in our own bubble, busy with our current work. I find this less stressful than a social meeting based on chatting, because I like to listen and to observe, which is very interesting when each participant of the meetup brings a new technique, a gadget, or a story.
Today I bought some more kilometers of yarn at the yearly sock wool sale of my favourite shop… stay tuned for more colourful pictures! Too bad that the Internet doesn’t allow to share the texture of the wool, but maybe that will be implemented soon? 🙂
Finished colourful sweater!
After many months of patient knitting, here is the result:
I opted for a warm and colourful sweater with some extra challenge. Strange Brew pattern looked promising, as it was simply explained and open to customisation. I used a spreadsheet to test various pattern and colours (putting numbers in each cell, and using colouring rules according to those numbers to test out different colour palettes), and then headed for the wool shop to buy all I needed:
… the challenge of alternating colours started right away, and turned out to be fun:
It was a nice knitting project to do, except maybe for the boring body part worked in the round… but the yoke was worth waiting for. Now the last step is wet blocking, and then I’ll wear it! Luckily it’s still cold in my city 😉
Visiting a luthier
Wateau, a luthier specialised in guitars, moved in my extended neighborhood around a year ago. Since then, I have been quite curious about his work, and finally had the chance to visit his worshop thanks to the European Artistic Crafts Days.
I was the first visitor to come for the open day, and Mathieu guided me through the workshop, explaining the functioning of odd tools and giving me information about guitar construction techniques. Then a few clients arrived and while he was performing a few fixes and tuning of their instruments I looked around, searching a good subject for a sketch.
I finally decided to draw the press that Mathieu built himself, and that is used to bend the wood of the sides of a guitar. I somehow didn’t save the picture of that tool, but only the one of the drawing:
The press works by appling heat to flexible metal plates, between which the soaked wood is placed, and by progressively bending the wood in the shape of a half-guitar template (that is a removable part of this tool).
It took around 20 minutes to sketch it, including a quite long phase of observation. It is definitely an odd machine with a lot of parts and it was quite difficult to choose where to start! But Mathieu has been patient and let me sit on one of the tall chairs while he cut wood parts for guitar necks and cleaned one of his workstations. It was pleasant to share a silent moment with each one focused on independent things. I found it remarkable, because it is usually the result of a longer acquaintance, but I’m experiencing it more and more often with like-minded people whom I just met. I plan to ask him to pay another visit, so that I can sketch a few more subjects, and enjoy the atmosphere of the workshop. Stay tuned for more craftsy posts!
aghisla draws 