Award winning Hedgehog

A hedgehog in a trophy

Tracing garments for machine knitting

Quick snap of a commission before relinquishing it

Sometimes, I get asked how I make my own jumpers and cardigans (etc), using my knitting machine. I have a couple of different ways of coming up with my knitting patterns, but mostly I try to make my pieces fully finished, that is, that they do not need to be cut after knitting in order to put together.. Here I will explain how I trace a pattern from an existing garment. I have simplified the process, but you should be able to get the idea. 

Lay the piece out as flat as possible. This is a back piece with a hem at the bottom. 

Now, separate out the sections. The idea is that in each section, the change in width should be constant. 

Although the width is different at the start and the end of the middle section, you should be able to calculate the decrease from the height and the starting and finishing width

Measure the starting width from the centre (on the knitting machine, the centre position is marked as 0). For asymmetric pieces this may be different on each side. Measure the height of this section. Remember to add on seam allowance. As a rule, I add about 1cm, generally I sew the item up before washing and blocking, so you should have more than 1 cm before washing, unless the shrinkage rate of the yarn is 0.

Note here that the starting width differs from the finishing width. When reading the pattern in rows and stitches rather than cm or inches, you can work out the rate to decrease/ increase by.

In this last section, the left and right parts will have to be knit separately. Note that piece starts 8 cm away from the centre, and finishes 10 cm away from the centre. That means you will want to decrease from both sides at different rates. You will also have to make a section of height 0 before it to bind off/ ignore the stitches from the centre. 

My input form looks like this: 

Note the addition of "style" and "comment". I introduced the "Style" option so that I could introduce an element of pattern into a garment, and account for the gauge. For example, knitting two stranded fairisle will give a tighter gauge for the same tension than knitting plain stockinette, and knitting a tuck stitch pattern (intended style B in this pattern) tends to give a much wider, squatter knit for the same tension. In practice I play about with the tensions so that I'm not adding or decreasing a lot of stitches in between styles.

Once this is completed for all the parts of the item of clothing you want to copy, you have an algorithm that can be used to create your 

I compiled a gauge table, where I have knit up my frequently used yarns with different tensions and stitches, and measured the row/ st per cm. I use a query to apply my chosen yarn and stitch to each section.

When I want to pull out a pattern, I go to the above form and select the pattern, then for as many styles as are in the pattern, I select the yarn, stitch and tension. I can compare the gauges before drawing up the pattern. 

Now you have a pattern to apply to your knitting machine. In sequence 3, the command is to decrease every 11.8 rows. This is just a guide so you can get from the 81 to 64 width in 207. You might end up decreasing by 3 every 35 rows, I like those bunched decreases. 

I imagine there is some software out there* that can do this for you, but I find this way fairly easy to work with. I've played about with the GUI (hoho, bit of a grand name for what I have made) to make it easier to read and understand, after I made a tunic by accident instead of a jumper when I misread an old pattern. Whoops!

This blog has been quite dry, so here are some disguises for eggs I drew in case you need to disguise some eggs

*definitely there is

Dino apron & Soft Spot

Apron in use

Apron, with obligatory loo roll

Here's an apron I made for my dinosaur and baking/craft mad nephew. I used fabric I picked up in the Nippori Fabric district in Tokyo. I can't find a good picture of the fabric on my phone or online, but if I get one I'll add it. I used a pattern from the John Lewis website. I didn't bother with the pocket (what does he need a pocket for). 

Over Easter, we discovered the fantastic work of Philippa Rice and Luke Pearson via their "Soft Spot" videos. Visually, I'd say they have an element of 1970's children's television to them and they feature some rather exquisite stop motion animation. You can check them out and sponsor them to make more videos, if you like. The most recent video is a real treat, me and husband-to-be laughed a lot.

Below is a little video the nephew and I made after watching some videos. For the sea, stuck strips of paper to the stick side of an adhesive sheet of A4 paper, unpeeling the sticky side inch by inch. The nephew drew the boat on an adhesive sheet of paper and stuck it to a piece of felt, and I cut that out for him. He would like you to know that the red in the background is lava. This was the first time he has had a go at stop motion, hopefully in the future we can spend more time on a longer one

Long time...

Well, hello there. It is quite dull hearing a person who frankly was never a regular blogger, witter on about why they have not posted. Much has happened. The key thing to know is I'm not making and selling any more. I may talk about it another time, but I was not making a living and my mental health was suffering.

I have not had as much time for knitting lately, but I've been quite into repairing clothing. 

In the seaweed green cardigan below, you can see that the cuff on the top sleeve is threadbare and frayed, and the elbow is worn out. 

I cut the cuffs off, and threaded the stitches onto the thinnest needles I had, knitting two together with thicker yarn. Then I knitted it up on the round with a corrugated contrasting colour rib. 

You could describe the method used on the elbows as embroidery, something akin to chain stitch but more knit-like. 

For less haphazard approach, check out Tom of Holland's visible mending blog and Amy Twigger Holroyd's stitch hacking.

I also knit this jumper for my Dad, back in 2011. I traced the pattern from a jumper of his (edit- I wrote a post on how to trace existing garments), and I wrote a database to handle converting into different gauges. He was really supportive while I was making and selling, driving me to markets and sometimes manning the stalls. He was keen to model the VW commission (did I even blog about that?). He loved this jumper, and when he got ill and the neck hole was too narrow, I made him another jumper with more of a boat neck. I have both jumpers back now Dad is gone. 

I do think there is something emotive about making clothes for someone, knitting for someone. Perhaps it is a way of silently ensuring another person is warm, and knows they are cared for. Maybe it is simply a hobby. Probably a bit of both

If the apocalypse has this much fairisle and cabling, I'll be pretty happy

Morning All- has anyone been watching "The Fades". It's a rather well crafted offering from BBC3 (yeah, BBC3! They made something good - sometimes it happens). Anyway, if the interesting idea of our post death journey getting mixed up and ruining the world isn't enough to tempt you, perhaps the knitwear is? There's a visual feast every episode.

Plus its got him off of Psychoville on it, playing a scifi mad geek sidekick. I do find the "geek turned hero" theme irksome, because often it presents "geeks" as a people with humorous idiosyncracies, but an unrealistic off-the-scale eloquence and sharp wit (Seth Cohen from the OC I'm ruddy looking at you). Or they just wear glasses. There's so much goodwill between the two characters that you can let that go.

Besides, they have awesome knitwear. and no glasses

The appliance of science, yadda yadda

I spent the weekend at the Science Museum, helping out the stitch london lot. I taught plenty of children and a fair few adults how to make a pom pom (If you want to know, google it, or go here)

and thusly, this A&G (Adam and Garth) clip was never far from my brain

There were some amazing things to see and do, and I couldn't possibly do them all justice, so head over to Lauren's stitch london tumblr to see them all in their glory.

One thing I really enjoyed was (re)learning to cross stitch -in my roughshod freestyle way - with Mr X Stitch, who lives at http://www.mrxstitch.com/ and his minions (they'll love that, they will). If you haven't cross stitched for years, give it a go! This years Christmas is going to be full of contemporary subversive samplers. More so than last year. Here is my offering

To Infinknitty and Beyond

And that's the last time I use that pun ever.

This weekend, see my giant plug and socket alongside plenty of science based stitched specimens and the Science Museum, nr South Kensington tube station,in central london. Also there will be a HUGE knitted solar system, and guess what? I only went and knit Uranus, and we all know uranus is a hilarious homophone. Also one of Claire Platt's super cool aeroplanes will be there. 

This heart by Sayraphim Lothian got lost in the post winging its way from Australia. Seemed a shame so I thought I'd give it an extra mention

Click here for all the info

It's Not Fair

I had a reply on facebook "It isn't just the labour it is the fact that we are wasting fabric i.e. we grow cotton that needs water etc then throw it away". As well as "Who has the time to go shopping every week?"

And this was my reply: 

"Yes, that was a good point made in the article (difficult to address them all concisely). I think the issue of price is bound with the throw away / bulk buy attitude. If an item is too cheap, then it can be bought without commitment.

and I have no idea who goes shopping once a week (even once a month is a push). However, one can easily buy eight garments in primark once a month and meet this average".

So I have some further thoughts:

The appetite for new clothing will not cease overnight, and nor should it cease altogether. I think even my brother - who clings to clothing until they have disintegrated - accepts that occasionally you need to replace your old garments. So we need to be able to buy clothes without feeling (or being) aligned with the axis of evil. So we need to know where to buy this stuff.

I've heard people suggest etsy.com, folksy.com and other such handmade market places before. On the whole- great AND thanks to http://www.tineye.com/ you can weed out resellers more easily. Personal favourites are braintreehemp.co.uk, toms.co.uk (for shoes) and peopletree.co.uk (although sometimes I struggle with their impossibly small armholes). I've bought awesome shoes from ascensiononline.com too. Has anyone found a decent place to buy swimwear from?

(I recognise that the article also covered a "war on want" of sorts. At university I struggled (and still sometimes struggle) with the idea of generating more "things" in the world. My tutor said "You are making things that people treasure". Which I don't think it a bad thing. As long as that is what does happen)

Ode to Penguins

Here is a poem I wrote very quickly in a text

Oh Penguin

You once stood staple in my lunch box

now a diminutive mockery of treat-time

I laugh in your face and not at your jokes.

No, stay! no more poems I promise. I've been trying to improve the website (and include cardigans as there have been enquiries). Well, here are my new photo albums - there's a bit more there to look at than before so have a peruse. Also please note I accidentally deleted my images folder on my server, so I've been trying to replace that but some of it is lost. I'm repairing links as soon as I can, but if you find a glitch, sorry :-(.

Utterly charming unique jumpers from Where's me Jumper?

I read this article in the guardian today. Sweatshops and such like are no secret, so I'm not going to bang on about that incredibly worthy but well worn topic - although I'm still yet to find a really good list of fair trade companies or independent designers who make their stuff in britain*. Nor am I so happy with her liberal use of percentages and loose language when it came to statistics.

However, I find her breakdown of the (d)evolution of the shopper very interesting - especially the genius of the Zara tapping into fly-by-night objects of desire, keeping up the compulsion to return and not lose out on the next unmissable purchase. I also found her analysis of a national homogenised wardrobe familiar, perhaps it started when Trinny and Susannah told us (ok, mainly women) how to "dress for our shape", and duly, we invested in v necks, ankle boots and whatever else it said in that book.

I did notice a while ago the "clone dresses" - it was clear what had been on the catwalk because there were variants of it everywhere. It was so fast, you probably saw it on the high street before it was in Vogue. There are points to be made about the consumer lacking in originality, but do they care?


Night night


*happy to start making one

Spring has most definitely Sprung!

Yesterday I ventured to Brixton whereupon I discovered the Crafty Fox Market. BTW I'm not currently doing any markets, I'm working on building up my range, sorting out my website and selling outlets. Christmas burnt me out and it's no longer wool season, but I'm still making and selling, just not at the constant pre-Christmas rate.

I'm starting to love going to these events and seeing faces I've met from previous craft fairs (and the Knitting and Stitching show). Zeena Shah of HeartZeena is doing tonnes of workshops people can get involved with. James Ward of Jimbobart (click the plate) has started selling prints (wicked wicked), so I'm now the proud owner of this crafty fox. Beautiful! Forgotten Stitches, who also won a place at the Knitting and Stitching show last year, has extended her range with bigger deers and more brooches.

Other things:

I've been looking at past notebooks and sketchbooks, partly to throw stuff out, and to see if there were any ideas I'd missed. I found what is best described as an externalised inner dialogue from before I came up with the biscuits. You can click on it if you want to read it.

The Miro exhibition at the Tate is dense and rather wonderful. In particular I was fond of the "moustache picture" (can't remember the real name :-/ ) in the second room with the gridlines showing. I found his roughshod-vs-meticulously neat approach both bloody minded and brilliant.

If you haven't, check out www.petehindle.com , he's a creative type with some interesting insights. And a completely different blog www.katielovesthis.com/ lists weird and wonderful designs from the good people of internet.

I also made a quite lovely cardigan, photos when I find the charger.

FIVE GOLD RINGS

Last night I took a little time out to go to my Dad's Christmas Concert (Bromley Concert Band). It was super christmassy with jingle bell medleys and some carols to boot. We've got a lovely christmas tree and the winter foliage is coming in to adorn the house.

I've been so rushed off my feet that I failed to address the "you must order by now to get it for Christmas" issue. 

Here's the drill:

Order before Tuesday 14th December for postal orders and Greenwich market collections

Order before Friday 17th December if you live locally and can collect from Beckenham

I will also put up a list of things I have in stock that I can mail out before on/before Friday 17th December

If you are local to Beckenham, send me an email or phone me about coming to my Christmas pressie party on Wednesday 16th December

Merry Christmas, kids

ps. if you haven't been following Roz Inetts Advent Drawings, i suggest you make that your next internet stop

New Accessories Sections & Some Up Coming Events

First off - Thanks to everyone who found me at Bust Craftacular, and to the organisers. It was a jolly event which had my sister grooving along to tunes and smiling at customers for me (ta Sheils). 

Secondly - I've finally got the accessories section up. More accessories and colourways to come!

Thirdly - Events (woop)

LONDON

Find ME at Greenwich Market on Saturdays, weather permitting. I am still planning on coming tomorrow (brrrr), I will tweet if unable to come (twitter feed to the right)

Jaina of Polka Dot Sundays won a stall alongside mine at the K&S show, and makes quirky colourful animals out of paper and tape - bringing the process to something of a fine art. Find her and other crafty delights this weekend at 

We Make London

when: SATURDAY 4th December 2010 11.00am- 5pm

where: Chelsea Town Hall,
Kings Road, London, SW3 5EE

If you can't make it to Chelsea because of the snow, why not have a look at her etsy store instead? I love, love, love the Christmassy birds 

BRISTOL

Kate Hindley graduated from Falmouth the same year as me and we happened to both be at bust craftacular last weekend. She's making all sorts in the way of print with mini poster prints, cards and badges and even a postcard book collaboration.  She'll be at Start the Bus from 10th Dec in Bristol, deets here

BRIGHTON

Emilythepemily is as delightfully mischievous as her name suggests. Find her at the Assembly Rooms this weekend

I'm off to make some stuff for tomorrow. If you've made an order recently and it's for slippers or booties, I'm waiting for the rubber grip stuff to arrive as i ran out last week.

PS despite ruining travel plans and causing there to be no post (yeah i know, right? postie's going to break his back with all my parcels building up this week), the snow's quite pretty, eh?

ready to trans-mitt

Grey/ Blue Snowflake

In German, the word for gloves translates literally as hand-shoes (Handschuhe). This feels appropriate for my handslippers - the fingerless mittens. I love gloves and I like mittens too, but I'm constantly taking them off and dislike having a system for putting my coat on.

Pink/Red "I heart Robots" with bike

The design process was slower than I'd like but I'm happy with the result. I came from making full mittens and semi felting them, which creates a slightly less warm but more flexible fabric - important if you are wearing all-encompassing mittens but less so if the design creates its own wriggle room. There's elastic round the cuff (not tight, it's not going to create a sorry imprint everytime you wear them, just enough so it doesn't stretch out of shape) and some around the top too, and a contrasting gusset, call it off-kilter if you like, I just think it looks more interesting.

Yellow Polka Dot (Grey contrast) with Louise Doherty Toaster mug. 

 Okay I got a bit carried away trying to get a good picture of this mug. Louise Doherty's robots, astronauts, toasters and other flights of illustrated fancy are simultaneously comic and stylish. I want her to design a t shirt! She doesn't have a website, not yet anyway.

White/ Green Graph Paper with contrasting Brown trimming, and Purse.doc

 Mittens.doc My office at work is freezing, so I do end up working in gloves sometimes

 Which picture should I use? I want to print one off to display on my market stall

Also Makers online gave me a little feature :-)

Busy day

Now that H & A have sent their wedding invites out and all the guests have received them and admired them, I can blog about them!

All three of us harbour elements of geek, and a love of the tv show The IT crowd. We wanted to incorporate elements of that without alienating the less computer literate of our guests (not sacrifice aesthetic for nerddom).

The design mimics the Windows 3.0 browser windows with some artistic license harnessed to set the font as the readable-but-fixed-type-font Consolas.

I used a the same box for the details, but changed the browser heading to "Invitation Information"/ "Evening Invitation".

I created a dialog box for the reply slips. I think this bit might be the coolest bit, I love the OK button! Technically I created the image separately then incorporated it into a mail merge (the bride is very organised).

Tah Dah!

Knitting and Stitching

I was selected by Craft Guerrilla to exhibit at the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace last week

They're led by a lovely trio of (rather glamorous) ladies who make stuff. They are based in Walthamstow and lead crafty evenings. Their manifesto can be read here. I hope to hang out with them again at one of their craft fairs.

The event was exciting, massive and incredibly tiring. I am so pleased that I exhibited alongside 5 other lovely crafters.

Ariane of Peppermint Twist is a member of the Craft Guerrilla and makes patterned bags and purses. She sold so many she ran out of paper bags to put them in! 

Forgotten Stitches by Rebekah boasts a selection of meticulous embroidery inspired by the 40s and 50s and often featuring vintage fabrics.


Off for some tea. Will fill you in later xx
 

6 fest, more things and knitting and stitching

In the build up to the knitting and stitching show, I got my new feather cushions online. I'm loving the pink and red for the robots, and I'm thinking it might make a good colourway for the slippers too. I've had requests for girlier slippers and would love to grant them.

The Knitting and Stitching show was mad, I'm still recovering! In the course of it, I met too many crafters to mention in a skim through list, hopefully in time I can mention them all. Lauren of Stitch London (formerly Stitch and Bitch London, one can only assume they ran out of things to bitch about and just concentrated on the craft in hand), who said some lovely things about my work here.

I'm mulling over the idea of creating some knitting patterns, hopefully not too complex, which is tricky, as a lot of my processes are a bit complicated, for example, the stuffing of the digestive is a very delicate procedure which I often have to do twice. Small knitted biscuits are ten to the dozen out there, so scaling it down is not an appealing option either.

For the record, I'm blogging more personal (but not too personal) entries here and I'm aiming to update in a more official format on my news section. That said I've bought the stuff they use for slipper socks to put on the soles of my booties & slippers, so they'll be suitable for the running children and unsteady old folks.

In other news.

My nephew can officially say my name and said "Happy Birthday Sarah" to me over the webcam. He didn't say "belated" but he did get out the blanket I made for him when he was born and sat with it on his lap running toy cars over it. It is nice to see him enjoy something I made for him and I'm really glad it's part of his everyday life, as opposed to sitting in a cupboard as a keepsake.

I managed to find time to go to 6 fest. It was awesome, and definitely a reason for being on twitter! Highlights included: Metronomy (cool), Sweet Babou (indie), Adam Buxton (hilarious), Modified Toy Orchestra (edgy) and the Jim Jones Revue (loud). Modified Toy Orchestra piqued my interest in particular. The clue is in the name, but more so than you'd think. They don't use synthesisers, just the sound the toys make, amplified. I think it's more complicated than that, the sound is darker, more beautiful and less "quirky" than you'd think. Check them out:

Black Star (Live Hong Kong) from Modified Toy Orchestra on Vimeo.

Joseph Mount of Metronomy described the even as looking like a disaster shelter, referring I think to the diversity in the crowd, or maybe the fact that we looked like we'd just walked in off the street. Anyway the atmosphere was fabulous and wholly joyous at saving 6 music, which was a wonderful boost in my otherwise relentless mission for the show.

Goodnight Friends

Better Pictures

Hello

I have some better pictures of the slippers:

 

 

 

I'll be at Greenwich market on the coming Saturday (26th September).

Then I will be at the Knitting and Stitching Show 7th -10th of October at Alexandra Palace. You can get tickets here:

After that I plan on being at Greenwich Market every Saturday until Christmas

Coming Soon:

Mittens

New patterns for baby booties

Square Cushions

 

Things that are broken...

To get the gripes out of the way first, here are the things that are broken in my life:

• Bike. The bike was fixed then broke again quite quickly. (edit: my dad has fixed it)
• Sewing machine. Well, it still works but i keep getting electric shocks from it. Nothing mental, just enough to give me a slight aversion to sewing machine needles.
• Camera. Yes this thing is dead.
• Memory card reader
• (edit) I knew there were more things! Headphone set one (Sennheiser) - One ear functioning. Headphone set two (Boosted Sashimi cutest headphones ever) balances to the left or the right but scrambles when set in the middle. Thus can only use on a computer and not with the ipod.
• My external hard drive disconnects itself as and when it feels like it.

Culture

• Toy Story. Laughs (check), Heart (check),  Call backs (check), Peril (Double Check). Didn't need to be in 3D though. I prefer the storylines to have dimension *snort*
• Henry VIII at the Globe. Codpieces (check), Lots of storyline involving the dissolution of the Catholic church in Britain and the birth of Elizabeth (check), Evidence why it is not a very famous Shakespeare play (check), Giant interval brownie (Double check). 
• Welcome to Thebes. This really was a striking play - lots of poetic Shakespearean language and plenty of Greek mythological references (some stories from Ovid, which made me happy), but enough straight talking to anchor down any lofty pretension. Quality play. 
• On the Telly I have been watching the repeats of Cowards. I know I have caught this before, but not seen every episode. I love how Henry VIII carries a chicken drumstick, and the caravan sketches are hilariously endearing
• Him off of Cowards has a blog with a video/song about Neighbours Sexual Fantasies. I want to link it to the Homeandawaybours website, but i'll write this instead. 

 New stuff.


There are lots of New Things over on my website. But right here I have uploaded a second rate ill thought out animation I made in Canada but didn't do any sound to. Enjoy its poor quality and odd storyline.

Folksy Front Page

Hello All. 

In case you haven't seen, I've been updating my website lately. The slippers are up there, all ready for Autumn and Christmas and I have been a busy busy bee (woodcutter?) getting things done.

I also noticed some folksy stirrings and realised the pink wafer had made it to the front page under Featured Goods. So props to Becca at EASTLANDme and Selki at it belongs to turtle. And thanks for letting me know about it!

Also zips arrived today for making little bags and the patchwork bags could well get photographed.


Saw my little cousins at the weekend. They are growing up and now they are into Horrible Histories. I think I should give them my books but I still sometimes* read them. On a less shameful note, anyone else noticed how the TV show has become something of a cult hit?


Dare I say it could be this generation's "Maid Marian and her Merry Men"?

More things.

I went round to roz's house for a cup of tea and to borrow her teapots to photograph my teacosies... the catch up was lovely Roz has been working on some new sketches and painting, but I accidentally left my camera in a black and white setting rendering the photographs defunct. Oh well

Over at folksy, I set up an online store and took some more successful pictures. Ho ho ho, the biscuit doesn't fit in the cup.

Those slippers what I told you about are over here. Yeah.

Update Update

  

why do the i-pad adverts sound like a male grooming product? is it because i-pad sounds like a lady's hygiene product..?

many congratulations to my lil' sister sheila who got a first in her Psychology degree. Very proud of you!

Tenerife supplied sun, sand and plenty of time to start Ovid's Metamorphoses. I'm about a third of the way through and enjoying every minute of it.