Toodyay's Pitwillow Alpaca

Heavenly yarn, beautifully spun, interesting way it's been dyed - sort of mottley and it works well.

I have a sister up in Toodyay who's just too good to write about. She's just an incredibly lovely person and I wouldn't know where to begin, so I won't ... except that for my last birthday she lavished me with Pitwillow alpaca from the shop in Toodyay. I swear she must have cleaned them out, 'cause it's all down here with me now.

I wanted to get a bit of practice in before I put the Pitwillow onto my pointy sticks 'cause I didn't want to stuff it up. So I've made many fingerless gloves (FGs) in the last few weeks, given a bundle to the Guardian Angel/Salvo's program, sent some off as gifts to special people, and have stashed some in my new shop.

This pair: long tail cast on, used my favourite Addi bamboo 4.00mm circulars which are essential for slippery yarns, and a near jogless cast off at the end. Result: yep, okay, I'm happy.

Finished them last night, washed and dried them today, and they've gone in the post, on their way back to Toodyay.

Done :)

Upcycled bed sheets to cotton rag rugs

I enjoyed making these, probably 'cause I do "tedious" really well nowadays. The tedious bit, depending on your point of view, is ripping the bed sheet into one long 1.5cm wide strip.

This means you rip (or cut) down to almost the end, control yourself so as to leave the last 1.0cm intact on the edge, turn the sheet around, and start a new rip 1.5cm next to it, stop 1.0cm before the end again.

It's like creating a zig-zag up and down the fabric and keeping the edges intact. Then you wind the ripped length into one big, big ball of yarn. I wish I'd taken photos as I made these.

Then you get down to the crochet part. I use a 10mm hook and do a tight, dense stitch. This makes a firm mat which keeps its shape pretty well. It also means that the mat will be more durable.

I've only just sent my first cotton rag rug to the compost (it's now a weed mat) after it gave me seven years of service at the kitchen sink.

The other good thing about these rag rugs is they're machine washable. And being cotton, they're absorbant.

The yellow one with the green edging has gone off to the Naragebup Environment Centre. The metal ruler is my big 60cm one, so that might help with the scale.

Made It - Online Handcraft Market

Today I created my own Store in http://www.madeit.com.au/. This is an online handcraft market for Australians to showcase their handcrafted treasures.

http://www.etsy.com/ is a fine place to sell and to shop too, but it has a significant overseas market. Postage costs to overseas are fairly high, so that market isn't really a sensible one to aim for.

I'm so glad I found this Made It site. It's been going since about 2006 and has the potential to grow even more, especially in this current economic climate where people are appreciating handcrafted goods in preference to commercial products.

Guardian Angel 2010 Program - Knit for someone in need

Today we started a new group on Ravelry.com for the Guardian Angel 2010 Program - Knit for someone in need. The group is like a forum where knitters/crocheters interested in making items for this program can show off their projects.

It will hopefully provide a forum for inspiration for suitable projects and not be limited to those printed in the Guardian Pharmacies booklet.

So, as I'm pretty obsessed with fingerless gloves at the moment and thinking of cold weather+someone in need = cold hands, I thought these would work as my first offerings to the program for 2010. And this year I'm tagging mine. I'd be curious to see where they end up.

Recycled Ralph Lauren Knitwear

It was the pink mohair that drew my attention in the op shop the other day. It was the colour I was looking for, not the fact it was a Ralph Lauren polo neck. I can't bear clothing that touches my neck.

I had other intentions for this piece of designer wear. It was destined to be upcycled into fingerless gloves.

The piece was $6, and while that wouldn't normally sound expensive, I'm on an abnormally tight budget which means I'm mindful of every mouthful of food I get and every time I use electricity.

Nevertheless the jumper came home with me. I unpicked the seams that night - that's the first time I've unravelled something that someone else had knit - and I now have a small basket of 53% mohair/47% acrylic yarn. It's currently being converted into fingerless gloves, destined to be gifts for my nieces.

The FGs look sort of bumpy and un-neat, but that's mohair for you. I've washed them in hot water so they're not going to change their look or shrink, but it's the light fluffiness that makes them almost weightless and comfortably warm.

I'm happy with my op shop find!

Upcycled milk cartons

I love my milk.

Unfortunately nowadays it comes in plastic containers, not the reusable glass milk bottles that used to be home delivered by the milko.

I keep finding things to do with the bottom half of the container including storage, sorting, shed and garden use.

As an example, I've used the bottom of a 3ltr milk container to store my envelopes of home grown seeds. It just keeps things nice and tidy and it works.

The plant tags, by the way, are an ice cream container lid, cut roughly into elongated triangles. They're durable.

Icarus Shawl

This was the first shawl I knitted which incorporated some lace in the design. It's based on the Icarus shawl, designed by Miriam Felton.

The yarn is a soft spun cashmere with a single strand of silver running through it that's barely noticeable, but its subtlety is what makes it special.

The yarn is from http://www.colourmart.com/ which is the most extraordinarily superb place for buying yarn.

I don't have a place to block my shawls, ie a large floor area, so the washing line method had to be invented. I weighted the point of the triangle and despite it looking very crude as far as blocking methods go, it worked.

It's a case, once again, of "work with what you have".