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6 Months of My Handmade Year

We’re six months into the year, so it’s time for an update on my self-imposed challenge to wear at least one item from my hand-made wardrobe every single day. And I’m pleased to report that so far, I have a 100% success rate. …

Parsing the Past

I have been blogging for a very long time. I started for real in 2006; before then I’d been a heavy user of MySpace, but there just wasn’t enough room in a post to fit everything I wanted to say. So I used the html and css skills I’d learned from customising my MySpace profile to throw together a ‘zine on GeoCities, and set to publishing on a weekly basis. …

Blue Saltburn Cardigan

I’ve already written a little about the souping-up of my craft tracking, and I wanted to add now that it’s already starting to provide useful insights. One of the main reasons I wanted to start it was to help with project planning, mostly by making sure that the things I make are actually going to get worn consistently, both because I like the shape and the colour. …

Souping Up My Craft Tracking

At the beginning of the year, I started my hand-made wardrobe challenge, attempting to wear at least one hand-made item every day, and logging my choice so I can analyse my hand-made wardrobe for trends and insights. Up to this point I’ve been using a spreadsheet to track my progress. It’s a bit unwieldy, though - I have to type in the right garment name every time, I’ve had to put together some truly heinous formulae to try to get to the information I need, and - not to put too fine a point on it - Numbers just kind of sucks. …

Gemma Crochet Cardigan

As you may have gathered, I’m a fairly dedicated knitter, but I do occasionally branch out from the One True Craft to experiment with others. A couple of months ago it was crochet’s turn, after I saw this pattern on Threads and was really drawn to it. (Yes, believe it or not, the algorithm did occasionally cough up a gem or two for me.) …

Blanket Tracking

Toward the end of last year, I promised my mother I’d knit her a nice cosy blanket, and I set myself a slightly risky challenge: I would start it on New Year’s Day, and I would deliver it by Mothers’ Day (30th March, this year). …

Starting my 'Year in Craft' for 2025

A couple of years ago I ended up doing a crafting challenge, my Year in Craft 2022. tl;dr, I tried to spend at least one minute every day doing some crafts, tracked it in my bullet journal, and created an unconventional data visualisation from the results. …

Site Updates 2024 11

It’s that time of year again; no, I’m not talking about the festive season, but the roughly biennial moment when I realise that I have once again abandoned this blog for months on end, and decide to remake the whole thing from scratch. …

Chonky Pink Winter Set

A few months ago I wandered into town of a weekend, just to have a bit of a poke around the shops. And what should I find in the main shopping centre? A surprise craft fair. Now, while I’m no hoarder, I do try not to buy yarn for which I have no specific project in mind; but it seemed rude not to buy something given they’d set up a whole fair specifically to delight me on that particular day. …

Yellow Saltburn Cardigan

In my monthly perusal of The Knitter (courtesy of my local elibrary, blessings be upon them) I came across Saltburn (rav link), a long-ish gansey-style jumper with a fun textured pattern of diamonds and zigzags. I’d recently snagged some nice tweedy yarn in a delightful shade of mustard yellow that needed something textured, but not too textured, and so I thought this might fit the bill. …

Ice Cream Dreams

Part of my never-ending quest to get my stash to actually fit into the four boxes it’s supposed to. I’ve had a stash of multicoloured acrylic yarn lying around for years; so long I can barely remember the project I bought it for. A couple of years back I realised that some of the colours went together surprisingly well and made some pompoms out of them, as part of my quest to spark more joy. …

2022 Year in Craft

A few years ago I spotted a course on Domestika called Data Visualization with Alternative Mediums, in which a designer was creating data visualisations with embroidery. This hit me hard; I watched the course and loved the idea of melding my two great loves - data and crafts - but at the time I couldn’t come up with an idea of what I could visualise. …

Onion-Flower Pleated Dress

At some point in the last few years I picked up a couple of metres of this cheerful onion-flower cotton print. I don’t know if they’re actually supposed to be onion flowers, but that’s what I think of when I see them. Or maybe chive blossoms. I don’t know. Either way, pretty, fluffy flowers in pastel shades that make me think of deliciously savoury flavours… which is exactly what you want in a strip of fabric, right? …

Stitch Treasury Blanket

I’ve written before about how I started to incorporate the suggestions from Joyful into my home; rearranging furniture so I can always see the sky, making sure I have some kind of greenery in my eye-line no matter where I’m sitting, creating visual harmony by ordering my bookshelves by colour, and so on. I’d also been introducing more yellow into my home as an instant mood-lifter, but only small elements in patterns on duvet sets and e.g. my bee embroidery. I wanted more, and what better way to do that than with a huge, cosy, bright yellow blanket. …

Fisherman's Rib Jumper

Many years ago, when I was just getting into knitting, I disovered the joys of buying job lots of knitting patterns from eBay. Part of the thrill of this was not knowing what quality of pattern you were going to get; would any of it be wearable? Or would it only be good for laughing at gurning models attempting to look sophisticated while wearing the itchiest wool known to man? …

New Labels

One morning, a few weeks ago, I was seized by a sudden and violent need for custom-woven labels to sew into my handmade stuff. …

Joyful - Ingrid Fetell Lee

When I’m a bit bored, maybe a bit down, and I don’t want to do any of my actual projects or read anything in my actual to-read pile, I have a browse of my local e-library. I pick something with an interesting name, or a pretty cover, and just give it a go. Because I’m not in any way invested in it (as opposed to something that’s been on my to-read list for five years) I know that I can say ‘oh wow no this is not for me’ and stop reading. It’s a good way to defeat the sense of obligation that comes with something I’ve paid cash for, and just relax into a read. As such I don’t expect much, so it’s especially sweet when I find something that I like; let alone something I absolutely love and may actually have changed my life, like this book. …

Site Updates 2022 05

It’s time for the six-to-twelve-monthly flurry of activity on the website/blog front! Since my last update post (Dream. Believe. Sparkle.), a fair bit has changed on here. I was woeful about the sad, dry website I’d ended up with and inspired to create something better, something more representative of me and my first love - making things :yarn: - while also giving me a playground to exercise my other love - being a massive nerd :nerd_face:. …

Yoga Socks

You ever have one of those moments when you think you’ve had an incredible idea, a brand new thought, the first of its kind? Then the briefest, most cursory search reveals that actually the thought in question has been had a million times before and you’re really not so special for thinking of it? …

Flapper Girl Cross Stitch

This one is an ancient WIP I found lurking in the depths of my craft stash, almost entirely forgotten. I was digging through my embroidery drawer looking for I’m not even sure what, and came across a suspiciously bulky magazine. Inside lurked this gal, unceremoniously taken from her hoop and folded in half between the pages of her pattern (note: don’t ever do that!!). …

Floral Georgette Dress

This was… a bit of a spicy one. I was on something of a high from finishing a dressing gown in a weekend, so when the next Friday rolled around I decided to tackle this. …

Yellow Dressing Gown

For years I’ve been thinking ‘I’d quite like a new dressing gown’, but because my old one wasn’t literally falling apart I kept talking myself out of it. But it cost like £15 from BHS 10 years ago, it was a grotty mauve-y taupe colour that made me a bit tired and sad just to look at, and what I’m saying is that did not spark even the tiniest amount of :sparkles:joy:sparkles:. It was time for it to go. …

'Ruby Thursday' Socks

I had a sudden urge for a pair of red socks, so I made it happen! I used the Ruby Thursday Wollmeise I had leftover from Margot, and a stitch pattern I’ve used before and really liked. …

Slipped Stitch Cropped Vest

This is knit from a pattern in the now defunct Knit.1 magazine, from the single copy of it I bought back when I decided I could save some money by knitting my own clothes (and before my tastes in yarn got ahead of my budget :joy:). The edition is from 2007 so it’s getting close to being a ‘vintage’ pattern… not sure how I feel about that though. …

'Eloisa' Dress in Floral Rayon

Last year I bought a couple of books by Named Clothing as a birthday present to myself. The basic premise of both books is giving you a base design and then different elements to switch in and out as you see fit; sort of a mid-way point between carefully following a pattern to the letter and self-drafting. …

Bee Embroidery

I’m a big fan of bees, with their fuzzy little bums and nectar-drunk bumbling, so when I saw Craft Pod had done a bee-themed pod I just had to get in on it. This one is from Summer 2019 - yes, yes, it did take me two years to actually start - and it had: a bee pin, a recipe for honey-cake, a honey-tea teabag, and the kit for this embroidery (designed by Emillie Ferris). …

Dream. Believe. Sparkle.

Out here in Wales, still working from home in the age of COVID-19, I don’t have access to a stationery cupboard. Thus left to my own devices, I’ve bought a succession of cheap but serviceable plain notepads for my scribbled work notes. Job done. …

Out With the Old

Until last night this domain was home to a long-lived but sadly neglected wordpress blog. It was ugly, badly-organized, and needed a lot of work. I didn’t want to add anything to it, and I didn’t want to fix it either. The prospect of trawling through hundreds of posts to work out which if any were worth keeping was so unappealing, in fact, that I’d left the blog untouched since 2014. Six whole years. …

'Volt' Lightning-Bolt Sweater

A couple of years ago now I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show at… the Olympia, I want to say? I can’t remember exactly. A sample of this pattern was on display and kept catching my eye (hard not to really, look at it!). Eventually, I could resist no longer and swooped in for the purchase. …

Huge Garter-Stitch Blanket

Literally just a huge garter stitch blanket with a couple of mixed batches of acrylic from LoveCrafts (LoveKnitting as it was then). Something like 40 stitches wide, and I made two uneven not-squares from each ball of yarn, then pieced it together at the end. …

'Waiting for Rain' Scarf/Shawl

I really liked the look of this pattern when I spotted it on Ravelry; the mixture of textured garter stitch with inset swoopy panels of lace looked fun and interesting. …

'Boardwalk Blouse' Top

Super-cute semi-cropped top with horizontal garter rib for texture. The colours on this don’t really work for me but it’s a nice shape! …

Margot Cap-Sleeve Top

This is a bottom-up, seamless tee with lace yoke and matching lace trim at bottom, and a keyhole detail at the back. It was loosely inspired by Margot’s scarlet dress in ‘Dial M for Murder’ (lacy bits, solid bits, Dangerously Red). …

'Bradway' Chunky Scarf

This is a really nice chunky triangular scarf in lovely light and fluffy wool. Gloriously warm and bouncy, and the textures of the different sections are particularly pleasing. …

Toe-Up 'Pucker' Socks

This was a really interesting and fun pattern to knit; it looks super-complicated but it’s actually not that bad once you get into the swing. It showcases the variegation of a Zauberball beautifully. …

Randi the Tiny Unicorn

Randi is a tiny unicorn who turned into our team mascot (our team name at the time being Research and Insight, hence RandI). I don’t remember why exactly but I was happy for it to happen. …

'Offhand' Gloves as Convertible Mittens

I had a mighty need for some convertible mittens, but most patterns just have a cut-off hand rather than the hobo-style partial fingers I prefer, so I adapted a full glove pattern to get what I wanted (that pattern being Offhand Gloves by Susan Iding.) …

'Pluie' Intarsia Cardigan

This is a pattern I saw and immediately wanted to make; I bought the pattern and yarn, was thrilled throughout the making… …

Short Shorts of the Floral Variety

You may or may not know that England is currently Quite Warm. So warm that I am running out of things to wear. Normally my melded autumn/winter/spring wardrobe can make it through summer with the addition of a pair of flip-flops and a single sundress for the one day it doesn’t rain. But now, after three or four days over 20C, the whole ‘being able to feel my toes all day long’ thing is going to my head and I’m finding myself thinking about developing A Summer Wardrobe. …

'Murderpigs' Colourwork Cardigan

This was for the Redacted Renegade Games back in 2014. Old-school LSG will know but for background: Ravelry was going to run a community event where people compete in teams to make different types of projects, kind of like the [redacted] Games that happen every 4 years, and with a similar name. Then the actual [redacted] Committee got in touch and said ‘use our name and we’ll sue you’ :unamused:. hence the Redacted, both for the knitting event and this blog (can’t be too careful!!). …

Lace Trimmed Top Butterick B4685

This is probably one of the fastest projects I’ve made. No sitting in the corner making me feel guilty for weeks! Woo! …

Double Heelix Socks

Last week I MADE SOME SOCKS. I’d been working on a self-designed piece for a while and needed a bit of a break from all that thinking. For some reason, I decided that a pattern rated ’extra spicy’ would be good for this. I’m smart like that. …