Wristlets

These are just a very quick make from some scraps that if I could not think of a use for them would have been thrown away. Well how terrible so I made these instead!

 

 If you ask me they would make the perfect present for a teenager. I certainly would have liked these then.

 What can I say about these? They are two tubes with were sewn large, then I tried them on and then took them in till they fitted my arms - easy. They were sewn using an overlocker. I overlocked the edges at each end.

 Then I added stretch lace to trim the edges. I do love the effect though!

And thats it. Of course you could do similar and make mitts but I wanted these as wristlettes not gloves. I am intending to wear these to make my arms warms with the Raggy dress.

They will look good with my Raggy dress. or with any T shirt and will brighten up my Chrismas wardrobe I think but I do not expect them to last long really. Perfect for Chritmas though.

 

I did not have enough fabric for the raggy dress to have long sleeves but this will sort that problem out though the fabric used for these is actually left over from my top and has sparkle and sequins which the dress does not but its very similar and will look Ok together.

 

I made some very similar mitts  using the same method from stretch lace.

  

I just left a hole on them for the thumb to go through when I made these. 

The wristlettes though, are to keep my arms watm over Christmas when I wear my lovely not so little black dress. 

 Or even a vest top, track pants and wellies!

 

I do love these though! 

Keep safe

Bracken

Woven Cotton cartoon print T shirt

I made this top with no pattern. Its based on this top I made a long time ago. The yellow top I wear loads in summer and since there was just a small piece of this fabric left over from my Partly Sunny Frock I realised I could make a similar top from this lovely cartoon fabric.

I am though going to make a couple more of these T tops because I really like them. They are I think better in summer than winter but despite that its the right time for me because I need t destash and I need to do this now not in 6 months time.

 My old top has been a summer staple for years now so its well over due to make a few more. They are very cool and airy in the heat. In winter being woven they are less useful unless you wear something underneath but if layered, they seem so far to work all year round.

Ths is comfy top despite being thin summery cotton and its now winter. I will admit to wearing a vest under it when it was nasty cold day a few days ago but its big enough and loose enough to be able to do that. It looks great with jeans and leggings. I have not yet worn with a skirt but cannot see why it will not go and I have to say I very much like this despite the simplicity of the design. Its just two pieces - a front and back -in what is a vague bat wing shape to allow for ease of movement but its not too bat wing meaning I cannot still wear something over it which is essential this time of year.

 

And I love this print!

To cut this out I literally laid the old top on my fabric and cut around it. I had to cut front and back seperately due to the shape of the bits I had left, but if making from new uncut fabric you could cut both together and just slightly lower the front neckline with respect to the back neckline. 

 

My original yellow top is actually all one piece so no shoulder seams. I have found that although aesthetically thats nice its does not work well on my body because I seem to end up pulling it forward and backwards to find the right place on my body. This has shoulder seams and works much better.

The neck is imperfect. Thats the only thing I did wrog with this. Or not wrong but I just overlocked the edge and sewed it over and I think it may have looked better if I had either made a facing like my yellow top or eve just bias bound it. I decided having made it I would try it out and I do not intend to change the neck but its not as tidy as it could have been.

 

So this is a bog success and I think I need to stop worrying about using easy to make designs because I find most of the time they are often also the nicest designs to wear. I tend to gauge my makes on how difficlt they are. Well there is an arguement in favour of pushing yourself but it should not I think be at the cost of making things you really like. This is a very simple top. You need minimal sewing skills to make this yet its probably, going by my yellow version, going to be worn more than many more difficult designs. I intend to make at least a couple more of this kind fo T shirt.

Have a lovely weekend and stay safe;

Bracken

Purple mohair mitts free knitting pattern.

The purple mohair mitts ( left)  were made from my own made up pattern which is detailed below if you want to make some. On the right are my latest version using double knit with the Aldi pattern I made before when I made the Anarchy mitts.

I made these to match my purple jumper and hood:

 

Mohair equates to chunky but I could not find any flat knitted patterns, only ones knitted in the round. I am going to attempt some in the round soon but I had to buy some double pointed needles because I did not have any in the right sizes. These have now arrived. Though I think maybe I prefer to do some sewing first because I have now got lots of knitwear and am missing my sewing.

One reason to make up my own pattern was that I also want to use the yarn I have and not have to buy more - and of course that also means these will match my purple jumper. I did not add the diamond cables like the jumper though. That was just too complicated when I have yet to work out even how many stitches I need for a basic pair although I did do these in a cabled rib which matches the ribbing on my jumper and hood, but I did not do any other fancy difficult stuff for this pair. They are just stocking stitch. I might see if I can do that another time but this is my starting point so I need to know how to get the right size etc. 

 

 

 I think these would work with a normal double rib as well but that may mean changing the number of stitches,  I will see on my next pair. I intend to make a few variants of these this winter and see what I am able to come up with. For me this is a real challenge to totally make a knitting pattern up from scratch so I think this project could be fun. I also will enjoy doing some smaller knitting projects I think rather than jumpers and now I have 8 jumpers, I really do not need any more at the moment so should just make what I do need as in gloves and hats.

Being 1980s mohair they are chunky weight so 5-6mm needles. I actually used a larger needle on the ribbing to the body of these which is not usual for knitting. 

 

These are my latest pair of mitts made using double knit with the Aldi pattern:

  I really liked my knitted mitts made using the Aldi  pattern. I have made two pairs of them now but they are double knit yarn and I currently have lots of bits of mohair from my various jumper projects so I decided to try and do something similar in mohair, but of course the needle size and therefore stitch numbers etc are all going to be different.

 

The wrists are the same twisted rib I used for the ribbing on the edges of the jumper and the whole of the hood is also this twisted rib pattern. I was a pain to knit and I wonder if its really any better appearance-wise that fishermans rib because the fluffy mohair does obscure the look of this. Still never mind its very thick and warm. And stretchy.

The thumb in the first glove is increased the wrong side so these are imperfect but it took me a while to work out exactly how to do the thumbs so I left the first one in order to work out the second then decided its not so bad so one is not really quite right but they will do for my prototype.

Anyway this is really my experiment but it worked so well I decided to share it.

 

 PATTERN

So here is my own pattern. I am excited to be sharing a knitting pattern with the world. 

I do hope this makes sense:

Using  5mm needles and double yarn ( to make it wear better) cast on 31 stitches. I used an aran type of cast on where row knit through both loops when making stitches to get a firm edge. I did the edge cast on in pink but the changed for the first row to purple.

Then for the rest of the pattern I used a single strand of yarn and knitted as follows:

Row = R

R1 (wrong side) using just one strand of the purple yarn : k1,* p2, k1 * repeat to end of row.

R2 ( right side): p1, *Cable 2 stitches, p1 * to end of row.

Repeat these rows for however long you want your ribbing on the wrist edge to be.

I did rows of stripes in purple, lilac and mauve ( for want of a better description of my purples) with just a narrow bit of the violet used for my jumper The thumb is in violet too because I only had a small scrap left over of that colour, but lots of the purples used for the jumper ribbing. Probably I had only eough violet to do one or two rows in a jumper so not even a quarter of a ball of yarn. It really was just a scrap of yarn. Using it carefully does mean the gloves will tone with the jumper.

Ok so once you have done enough ribbing: I knitted 9cm ( or 3.5 inches) including the doubled yarn edge in pink, I used 2 rows of lilac, 2 rows violet, 2 rows of purple alternating for the stripes) swap to 4mm needles because I wanted my main part very thick and warm and hard wearing. Normally you would use a smaller needle for the ribbing to the body but I decided to do it the other way round. The ribbing is smaller due to the cables so its not normal ribbing. Its up to you. Mohair in stocking stitch would usually be knitted on 5.5 to 7mm needles so I am knitting this up much thicker. Then I knitted straight in stripes up to my thumb. To get the stripes 6 rows lilac, 6 rows purple in stocking stitch for 11 cm( 4.25 inches). I made sure I had even stripes but you could ahve different thickness stripes depending on the yarn used.

To shape thumb; k8, then put 5 stitches onto a stitch holder, make 5 stitches and k to end of row. 

Continue in stocking stitch stripes leaving the 5 stitches alone on stitch holder for 3 stripes of lilac purple and lilac  with 6 rows in each stripe or measuring 3 inches or 8cm. So each stripe = 6 rows and measures about 1 inch or 2.75cm.

Then change back to 5mm needles and continue in the twisted rib pattern. I did this for about 3cm so just over 1 inch in violet. Then I used doubled pink yarn ( two strands together) to cast off. 

For the thumb I joined purple yarn and cast on 8 stitches and using stocking stitch knitted  4 rows then changed to violet and did  k1. p1 rib ( like the edge of my hood) I knitted 4 rows of rib then cast off. 

I sewed the thumb into place carefully to the hole in the body of the mitts, then sewed up the side seams. I did cast on in the wrong side of one mitt but when I  sewed up that did not matter. It just hardly shows though I will try not to do that next time and I will post my next version of this in steps so hopefully its easier to copy. I never knew I would have a success here or want to share it so did not do enough photos for a proper step by step description but any knitter can probably understand this pattern ( I hope). 

 

Feedback gratefully received on this because I would like to try to write a book on knitting gloves I think because having a problem with Raynauds means I always need them and its a very gratifying to make these completely, including sewing upm in just 3 days. First though I need to learn to write accurate and understandable knitting patterns so will be doing this on the blog as and when I manage to make them.  Hopefully if you do decide to knit some of these you can follow this but any problems do drop me an email and I will try to help you.

 So here they are showing the back: 

I am very very pleased with these. They are extremely warm and I think much better than the Aldi synthetic version in double knit. I do think the seam is much more noticable on these though, than it is on the ribbed pattern so I might have to do a ribbed mohair version next with this pattern as starting point.

 

Maybe the seams are less noticable when worn? I am not sure really.

 

 The dog is Hugh. He is a collie x GSD and 2 years old. He caused this sudden glove knitting due to having eaten my old hand knit gloves. They were about 6 years old but still better than all my shop bought ones. I was very upset with him and explaining I need them to walk him did not make any difference of course!

I am not leaving these anywhere where Hugh or his brother can find them.

And the "front"

And they are very warm and ideal for dog walking in winter.

Take care, stay safe and have a lovely weekend

Bracken

Stripey mitts

 

 

These are the same pattern as the ones I made a while ago here:https://brackencrafts.blogspot.com/2017/12/anarchy-gloves.html

There is a slight difference though in that they are 6 stitches smaller because I found the original ones a bit too big for my hands. The ribbed pattern does make it so very easy to adjust the size!

 

These also match though because though I love the Anarchy gloves I do nto always want mis-matching stripes. They are mostly made from the rest of the yarn from the original Aldi kit because I did not use the Aldi kit yarn for the first pair either. Both pairs have a glitter yarn which came form a Poundshop. I have more of this stuff but yet to decide hwo to use it.

On both pairs I mixed the Aldi yarn with other yarns of the same weights so I would get a product that is not the same as anyone elses. I do like uniqueness!

You can just see the seam where these are sewn up. They are knitted flat so have to have a seam on the inside/underneath. This is great, if like me you, hate knitting in the round.

Like most of my knitting ( and quite a bit of my sewing!) these are imperfect in that as you can see one thumb is a row or two longer than the other. It will not matter.

I actually knitted these while recovering from my Hip op in January this year but never got round to the sewing up bit. I do hate sewing up knitting. I suppose that is a good reason to knit in the round but I don't like that either. I have actally just bought a set of double pinned needles to do just that because I have quite a few Sweater Babe hat patterns I want to knit and if I am going to have to do in-the-round knitting then I definitely prefer double pins to those horrible flexible circular needles. My Mum loves them, and even knits flat with them, but I have never got on with them. I only use those when I have to rip something back and then pick the stitches back up because I find the plastick wire bit of those circular needles makes it easier to do this, especially if you also use a much smaller needle as well. If I can get away with it I even knit the neck on jumpers flat and sew them with a seam at one side. I know its much more professional in the round, but in reality most people never notice.

Stay safe:

Bracken

Knitted Purple mohair aran, and seperate hood - and free vintage chunky aran pattern

 

 

My Mum saved this from some magazine I think back in the late 70s or maybe early 80s. 

There does not seem to be a date on it and I do not know which magazine it was from though she did like Womans Weekly back then so thats the most likely. Its meant to be in chunky gauge yarn but that means most old 1980s mohair will knit about the same. I was never very keen when I was a kid on this pattern but when I thought about it in purple it got a whole new feel to it. I was not sure I had enough yarn in the violet which I used for the main colour and I had only 10 x 50g balls of this ( bought second hand from Ebay for £6 plus postage back in 2017) in the violet which just about did for both jumper and hood, but that was because I used various other shades of purples for the twisted ribbing. I used 5.5mm needles for the twisted rib and 6.5mm needles for the main body because these are what I had and they seemed to give the right tension for the yarn. I knitted the smallest size knowing it will turn out sightly larger due to needle sizes etc. Its turned out just right so this has all worked for me.

 

That twisted ribbing was a killer by the way. I cannot just knit into the back of the stitch like it says because it just does not work for me so had to use a cable needle for every twist. so every other stitch ont eh front rows. I used two cable needles when I got to the body part.

 

 

It seemed to go on forever when it came to the hood. Well what a boring project that was. Also the instructions say to increase on both sides for the hood and I think having done that that its wrong. You should just increase on one side but never mind. My hood and the original picture are not the same. Its does not matter because it still worked and its going to be very cozy when walking my dogs on a cold day soon.

 I have never yet managed the basic knit of making a scarf. I just find it so boring. I did manage an infinity scarf the other year but really that was because I was making a jumper that is knitted in strips and decided to go down a needle size ( and it even then worked out huge!). I decided to just start again when I did that and did not bother unpicking the original strip so ended up with this small piece that made for a good infinity scarf when the ends were joined. I have worn it as well so worth keeping what would have been a scrap bit of knitting otherwise.

You can see that huge jumper here. I do not seem to have a photo of the snood but its in the same multi coloured stitch as the side strips. This was a very easy beginner pattern in fact though maybe a smaller needle would work better next time. I watched a You tube video that explains what happeed here. I matched the needle to what it says on the yarn and not what the pattern says. Pattern says 6mm needle,  yarn says 10mm though I actually used 8mm but still its too big to get the tension right. Never mind a lesson learned with that one.

 

 

It does work when I want to just curl up and be comfy but its not really the best jumper I ever made and not even the best version of that pattern I have made because like many jumpers I knitted recently already knitted that pattern back in the 80s and more than once!

Anyway back to this. My perfect as in no dodgy bits anywhere aran. I actually spent loads of time with this one unpicking large amounts. sometimes it got ripped back for the last 3 days worth of knitting when I realised there was a mistake. I am I think getting much better at knitting and back to what I could do in the 80s when I was always knitting something. I am hoping these jumpers will now last until I have time to do this again so probably in about 12 years when maybe if they do not again change the rules on me I will get to retire. Thats if I can still knit with my old hands by then as well. Ah well, at least I will have lots of nice knitwear for the next 10 years or so.

And these are the instructions in case anyone 

wants them

 

I was trying here to show you my very much hard work ribbing so ignore the silly face please!

The hood is knitted as a strip. You are told to increase on both sides but thats almost certainly wrong. Then you fold in half,  sew up one side and pick up and knit along the front edge with normal ribbing. I did stripes again. The pattern has a button fastening but I think probably it could come updone when wearing so I just joined it and knitted in the round.

This is where I just picked up and joined via knitting. No sewing!

 

The front showing ribbed edge. Its stripey tho that is hard to see here.

I am proud of this though its not really very interesting but this hood really seemed to go on forever.

If I had not included the other purple shades in the ribbing I would not have had enough yarn so beware if you knit this in mohair you need probably 13 or 14 x50g balls to be on the safe side. I actually do not know how many extra balls of yarn I used because I have lots of bits and just got on with this.

Its a very "pixie" pointy hood and tucks inside the polo neck very well.

I am going to enjoy this one though. I have had to wait nearly a week to get photos which has meant I did not wear it just in case I ruin it somehow. Now I can start to enjoy this properly.

By the way the green faux leather leggings were made here

https://brackencrafts.blogspot.com/2017/05/elvish-green.html

Take care

Bracken

More Lovely underwear

 

 

Here is another pair of knickers using the free Megan Neilson Acasia pattern. The bra is Sierra from Madalynne and its another free pattern. I have made both patterns before but these versions are slightly different. The thong is Rebecca Page basic thing pattern. Again I have made this before and all 3 are very good patterns.

 

The knickers, because I used swimwear fabric left over from my (non-swimwear) Voodoo dolly dress have a cotton gusset but this is just a scarp of Tshirt and I did the same with the thong, and the bra is similar to the last lace trimmed Sierra I made but I went back to bikini fasteners because having tried both plastic bikini clips and proper bra hooks I prefer the bikini ones and after all this is my creation so convention can go out the window here.

 

 

 

I am not going to show you the thong on me I am afraid but the big knickers and the bra are OK. 

 

I have a bit of a problem with where exactly to join the leg elastic (lace) so you cannot see the join as you can see here in the photo below. Its not very neat on me because you can see the join on the back leg.

 

I have yet to sort that little problem but they are not uncomfortable and they were very much fun to make.
 

This is The free Sierra bra. 

 

Its lined with bright blue power mesh. I used this before on my other Sierra Bra versions and it works well and have have loads of it that I picked up in a sale years ago. 

 

Its not actually wearable for much else but I suspect will be lining my swimwear and undies for many years to come unless I can find something else to make from it that uses it all up. Since I think there are about 12m of this that would actually be a very good thing. I just cannot chuck it out though despite lack of space though I think really I did get a bit carried away I think when I bought all that! It was so cheap though at 99p for 6 plus metres. I actually have made a double layer ballet skirt from it

 and a top ( that started out as a dress until I added elastic in the sides). I do not think I have a picture of this as it is now but it has gathered side seams. Its more wearable as a top though still has little wear really but then it takes up minimal space in my drawer so I have kept it. The other dress I used this for was the Partly Sunny Frock

Anyway its versatile this fabric but as a top or dress so far not quite wearable. The blue skirt is great for ballet practice though which I got into during our first lockdown earlier this year.

 

 

Hear you can see the inside of the Sierra. 

I am feeling quite happy with the neatness of this one

 

And one last selfie:

Take care and stay safe

Bracken