WWKIP Day

 Today we will celebrate WWKIPDay and will meet at 5pm 

in Frankfurt at the Fountain at Alte Oper

Come join us with your chair and brolly!

The Great Yorkshire Wool Hunt

The Great Yorkshire Wool Hunt

Bag is packed, ready to go! I have another couple of hours and then I start my journey to The Great Yorkshire Wool Hunt with Erika Knight. I am glad I finished my socks because it look like its going to be cold and blustery over there.

I am sorry to miss my weekly knitting meeting, try saying that three times fast, but I will have lots of news and tips for them when I return.

Tchüss

Recycle Men's Old Shirt

One of our many complaints in this modern era is that things are not the quality they used to be and things wear out much quicker because of that. We have to learn to recycle and up cycle all these articles and I have had fun doing so. I have made a quilt with some old shirts but wanted to do more, here is my first baby dress and knickers made from an old button down shirt.

It was amazingly easy, made some bias binding with my bias binding maker, no need to make buttonholes I just used the ones there, sew a couple of seams and Voila, a cute little dress! The knickers were so easy but they did use up a lot of the shirt, I guess the bigger the shirt the better. I will definitely give this a go again and now want to try and make something for little boy babies.

I am taking this to Frankfurt Knitting and Sewing group meeting on Thursday and hope to have some gorgeous babies model it for me. I want to see if its comfortable first of all and then find out if its practical.

An update on my UFO list

I have finished the vest I was knitting with King Cole Opium and am thrilled at the finished results. It knits up like lace, I may never do lace again! I have enough left to do a cardigan too.

My table runner is nearly finished but I am holding back so that I will have something to sew at my first AWCT Quilters meeting this Wednesday. I wanted to take something easy to sew while I met lots of new people and tried to remember names. The little leopard print embroidered change purse is in use and the other bits of knitting have been put away till cooler weather returns. I have knitted a blanket this week with Pom Pom Party, its a fun wool that knits up very quick and it feels like it might be useful for baby to lie on in the stroller/pushchair, very soft and pom pommmy!

Another item on my UFO list was a gift I was making for a very dear friend, Bette Paulin. It is an embroidery that reminded me of Bette's house and it was such a calm, friendly scene I think she would have liked it. Sadly, Bette passed away before I finished it so I hung it on my wall to remind me of her until I decided what to do with it. I am now going to send it to Maggie's Cancer Caring Centre in the Highlands of Scotland along with a donation in memory of a wonderful friend and fun companion. She was such a pistol!

Spring heralds the return of the Fabric/Stoffe Markets in Germany and I visited one last weekend to pick up the usual metres of fabric to make easy Summer dresses.

The fabric cost anything from 6-10 Euros and involves very little sewing. I cut around a favourite dress a few years ago and just keep making them for stay at home days, sewing days, clean out the chicken days... 

Talking of Chickens, they have grown so fast, sadly one of them has turned out to be a "dude", (to quote Severina!) so he has to go to a farm because we are not allowed Roosters in the neighbourhood.

Hope you are all enjoying The Great British Sewing Bee, till next time....

Keep your scissors sharp and your words soft.

U. F. O.s

I have only allowed myself two photos in this blog post this month; one is to embarrass myself (don't worry, no nude shots here!) and one is to explain myself. 

Heres the first photo, everything in this photo is an Un Finished Object! Lets hope this embarrasses me in to action. I have tried to become organised about it and have now declared NO purchase from any craft shop, or shop resembling a craft shop, will be allowed in this house until I have finished at least three of them. In an attempt to organise myself I have put all the knitting in separate bags so that I can just pick one up and take it with me. I have put the green knitting in a green bag, the white in a white bag and the blue in a blue bag. I suspect the blue knitting will be the last to be finished, I am knitting a lace shawl. The other two knitting UFOs are cardigans; the white one is coming out beautiful, I am using King Cole Opium and it knits up like lace, the green one is a simple knit anywhere cardigan but it has ribbed sleeves. I have never knit a cardigan with ribbed sleeves but I am hoping that its slimming.

My second photo is an attempt to explain away the mass of UFOs. My house is always busy around this time of year, Birthdays, Spring gardening and now.........

.....here's introducing; Emma, Nugget, Fox and Dog.

I am going to give myself 2 weeks and then will photograph all my UFOs again. Wish me luck! 

Christmas Present

Looking back on my blog I realised that I had the same problem last year as I am having this year....what can I blog that will not spoil someones surprise? Yesterday, this problem was solved!

I have been searching for an old Singer sewing table with the original iron work frame for such a long time that it's now second nature for me to scan all the notice boards in grocery stores, just in case. Well, yesterday I shopped in a relatively new store for me, "Globus", and lo and behold, a Christmas miracle! There was one for sale for a great price. I called the number and with my hilariously limited German, explained that I would be right there, and would like to buy the table.After finding the address I was met by a wonderfully friendly couple, who showed me a wicker set of chairs with a wicker table. I must have looked as sad as I felt until I spotted the sewing table tucked away in the corner. I had to convince them that I wanted the old, sewing table instead of the gorgeous new wicker set.

All I could understand from the couple was that it had been the Grandma's sewing table for many years, as I knocked against it it seemed very heavy, could there possibly still be the original machine inside....YES! Most sewing machines are taken out, disposed of, and then the table is made into something like a nightstand, or coffee table that would look good on Pinterest. The machine was still there and the drawers were full of little treasure tins with original bits in! 

I quickly paid the full price, loaded it in the car and now it sits, pride of place in the middle of my dining room. 

  

.....wait till you see what was tucked away inside.

I searched through the drawers and found various bits to interest me. I found the original instruction book dated November 1919 and a page torn from the Yellow Pages of Brussels, that would explain why the instructions are in French. 

The machine is still in good working order, no electricity needed, just foot power. I really want to make something with this baby I just have to decide what. 

As for my Christmas presents.....they are all still a secret!

The Great British Sewing Bee Re-enactment!

The Great British Sewing Bee Re-enactment

Summer has come and gone in a mighty blur of creativity, I accomplished so much that it will be tricky getting it all on one blog. The highlight was spending a week in The Creative Sanctuary re-enacting the Great British Sewing Bee without the fear of elimination. We worked from the book that accompanies the series and with the ever cheerful, Jane Conway, as our teacher and cheer leader we measured, cut out, altered patterns, inserted zippers, ate cake, drank tea and generally had a wonderful time. Imagine having all the time you want in a fabric store, all day to sit and admire fabrics and notions then pick the right one for a dress, tunic or skirt. The photo below tells the story; four very happy ladies wearing their creations, but look behind us, we wandered amongst fabrics all day! 

Modeling our dresses

We all learned to add piping and pleats without stress and with the aid of tea and cake. Sadly, Angela has had a flood at the store but she will be back to normal very soon and after the success of the course I am sure she will do more.

Another highlight of the Summer was visiting knitting stores in Kansas and Houston. The most popular knitting in America over the Summer was lace knitting. Luckily I spent the day with some experts in Kansas and they taught me all about "lifelines". This is a wonderful way of threading a line of yarn through your work so that if you make a mistake, I made plenty, then you can pull your work out to the lifeline and start again. My daughter has asked for a shawl for Christmas but she hasn't said which Christmas, or rather I haven't said which Christmas. When and if I get any lace work accomplished you will all be the first to see it. In Texas the craze was knitting skirts, I met one lady who has knit 16! 

Here's the BIG news........drum roll please......I finished the Debbie Abrahams Mystery Blanket! 

I drove it down to Switzerland last week and donated it to a Cancer Clinic to help keep the chemotherapy patients warm and snug while having their treatments. Soooo, thats it! I have learned to blog, finished my blanket and now all I have left to accomplish is the Patchwork Quilt. That has been a W I P (work in progress) for a while now in the corner of my sewing room. I have found lots of other things to distract myself with; during my travels this Summer I visited a Tea Room and found it was next door to a wool shop, it would have been rude not to pop in! I managed to get so distracted by the wool that I put my rental car keys down under a magazine, bought my wool and then went for a sumptuous tea next door. During tea the owner of the wool shop came in to say goodbye and off she went. Mom and I had our tea and then spent 15 minutes looking for the car keys. When we realised what we had done the story only became more hilarious: there was no phone signal up in the hills and the owner of the tea room tried calling for a taxi but wherever the taxi driver was had no signal either. My rental car had to be back in the morning and I had to be on my return flight to Germany. As all this chaos reigned a voice of calm came from the Tea Room, "Let me drive you down the hill to the Wool Shop owners house and you can get signal there to call your dad and he can drive you back up with the car keys." Mission accomplished and all was well. I felt I had to make the ladies a little something to say Thank You, so I made them some bunting with tea pots on. Then I discovered Debbie Abrahams made a mystery cushion too so I have started that. Oh and I have some lace knitting to get done. Looks like I am going to be blogging for a bit longer!

            

Baby Hoodies

This month has been so hot and glorious here in Germany that I haven't really sat in the sewing room much at all, I have become addicted to knitting hoodies for babies. I ordered King Cole Candystripe yarn from wool4less and after some confusion I ended up with King Cole Candystripe and King Cole Comfort. What's a girl to do? May as well knit it all up. I have knit with Comfort first and am looking forward to trying the Candystripe.

I found the pattern in a magazine and have made several adjustments to the original, they had me casting off the stitches on the back and then picking some up for the hood!  I have promised my knitting buddies on Knitting Paradise that I will put the pattern on my blog as soon as I get it right. I have just emailed the pattern writer, Angela Turner, and she has the rights of the pattern returned to her in September and she will put it on her sight, I will be informed and then can inform everyone.

Next week is the Sewing Staycation week at The Creative Sanctuary so you will either hear a lot from me or nothing at all. I may be too busy to blog! We are making clothes which will be so great for me, I need all the help I can get with measuring and fitting.

Enjoy the Summer everyone!