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