Thursday, October 14, 2010

Mixed frills

My shoulders have been playing up and the last item of machine knitting I finished was the purple frills. This piece was full of frustrations as the colour was perfect but the yarn was not of great quality despite being pure wool. It was made to go with 'Curly' and they were birthday presents for 2 little girls. In the end, it turned out ok. There were lots of broken ends to weave in, which is NOT my favourite task!


I was also keen to try out this version of the silk/stainless steel yarn and wool. However, I was also aware that more machine knitting is not a good idea. In the end, Christine had very generously offered to knit this up for me!
She is a real champion of the craft - generous with her time, equipment, enthusiasm and most of all encouraging with novices. I admire her energy at the MAKV stand, promoting machine knitting at craft shows, demonstrating alternative styles of knitting with simple shapes and interesting yarns.

This was knitted with some Avril grey silk/stainless steel yarn and a merino(70%)/cashmere(30%) variegated shades of grey by 'the bunny lady'. This is her nickname by another friend and I have adopted it. Once I remember the 'real' name, I will let you know.
She makes wonderful spaced dyed yarn in this mix and also beautifully dyed fleece for spinning and felting right here in Victoria (Australia)!

4 comments:

Meg said...

Knitting on the move? I do like the purple color.

neki desu said...

i want to get as good as you two. NOW!! :)

sampling said...

Neki
Both are straight forward stocking stitch. The silk SS/wool is every other needle with the wool slowly introduced but the variegated colours makes it look more interesting.
The purple is hand-manipulated with stitches carried over onto the 6th rows or thereabouts. The book on hand-manipulated stitches is quite good but can seem daunting at the beginning.

sooz said...

So sweet! I love the frills.

And I must agree wholeheartedly about Christine - what a champion she is!

I thought you were long gone to Japan already - are you blogging from afar, or actually still here??