The penguin with the pointy sticks

Simple but effective, perfecting an earring design

Just as with knitwear, as I become more absorbed by jewellery making I'm forever staring at strangers' earrings. Oddly enough, it was a plain silver pair worn by a woman at a knitting group that started me thinking about creating a very simple design caging a coloured bead or gemstone in silver.

In picture above you can see a few of the pairs I've been working on - I've been playing with different ways to contain the stone/bead and different lengths. It's quite therapeutic experimenting with the shapes although I have to contain myself from wanting to wear everything I might make.

Actually, I've been wearing these ones for great reaction. Now I'm happier with the idea and several different colours for myself, I will be starting to sell these and a few other designs very soon. I just have to have more confidence in myself and work out some pricing.

Inspirational colour

My 2012 yarn diet has reached March - although I think I may crack before too long. But it doesn't stop me recieving yarn gifts and recently the lovely Juliet Barnard of The Knitter gave me a stunning skein of sock yarn from Ripples Crafts.

The colour way is Assynt Ancient Tartan, a mix of deep brown, rich tan and a subtle leafy green. I fell in love with it right away and the skein has been resting on the end of the sofa from where I've picked it up dozens of times to contemplate. I was wondering what to use it for but in reality it was obvious. Every time I looked at it I thought of beech trees in autumn and the leaves we used to rake up in our garden when I was a child. 

So I started flicking through some lace source books and have started work on a long slim scarf that could be wtrapped into the neck of a coat or draped over a plain dress or sweater. I'm using the two leaf patterns below if it works to my satisfaction I'll reveal the full effect here soon.

 

 

 

 

Outside in or inside out - choices, triangles and shawls

All the triangular - and hexagonal - shawls I've made until now have been what I would describe as inside out. By that I mean they have started with few stitches that form the centre of the long edge and the pattern increases in two triangular panels either side of a central "spine" - as in the leaf pattern on this shawl.

But last week I made Blyth by Kitman Figueroa which works the other way. You start with the edging casting on, in this case, more than 300 stitches, and forming the shape by decreasing to create triangles on each side of the spine.

There are advantages and disadvantages of this method. Yes because each row is shorter, there is a feeling of the whole process speeding up. On the other hand with an inside out construction you set the initial lace pattern over a very few stitches and can then use preceding rows to help accurately place new pattern repeats. With the outside in approach you have to correctly place a lot of lace repeats over the 300+ stitches with nothing to refer to.

Each person will probably have their own view of which method they prefer but both produce lovely shawls so the choice may depend on what effect the designer wants from the edging.

Meanwhile my Blyth is looking great.

 

Fair isle fun

I haven't done much colour work over the last few years - perhaps due to my lace obsession - but a while back I bought yarn to knit Julia by Judy Furlong.     

 

By coincidence a friend also bought yarn for it, in the original colourway shown here - I'd chosen more red/browen tomes so no clash at least.

And that is as far as either of us got. Well no, I had at some point cast on 130-odd stitches and worked a few rows of the 1x1 rib for the back. But that was definitely it.

We occasionally bemoaned this state of affairs with little effect until my friend came up with a challenge. We would make it our knitting for the Six Nations rugby tournament this year. 

With hindsight this may not have been the most sensible combination - it is hard to keep count of stitches when you are leaping out of your seat due to a refs decision or a brilliant try. Also it is quite hard to leap out of your chair when you are knitting one colour in continental and one English style.

But with the back complete I am feeling happy about fair isle again and establishing a smooth technique and even tension. I've becaome more confident with floats - I've worried in the past about carrying yarn over more than five stitches without catching it but having spoken with a friend who is floaring for nine in another pattern (following a masterclass) I'm happily doing seven stitch floats (the most the pattern requires).

I don't know why I haven't been doing colourwork much, now I've returned to it, I'm full of colourful ideas.

 

Meeting a need: manly fingerless gloves

 

The long-suffering Mr Penguin was complaining of cold hands when he was working in our spare room/home office.  I said I didn't have the same problem but he pointed out that this was probably due to my collection of fingerless mitts.

 Ok so mine are fine, often lacy and possibly a bit girly, but eventually a pair of DK fingerless gloves (definitely not mitts - v girly apparently) was agreed on.

But a pattern search revealled nothing suitable. There were few men's fingerless gloves or mitts about and of those that I could find none passed the Mr Penguin test.

So it was out with the measuring tape, plus a sheet of paper where I drew round his hand, a calculator and a bit of swatching. 

And a few days later it was cosy hands all round.

The same day as the gloves had their first test run. we were out with friends when another knitter's partner mentioned he wanted fingerless gloves (with all the same caveats). A definite gap in the pattern market.

So I've written up the pattern and published it - yes really, I've had confidence in my designing and writing skills, to create a simple but hopefully popular pattern.

So if you know of a man with cold hands, help is at hand. Plus in extra good news, these are a stashbuster, using under 200m of DK yarn.

 

Having a rubber ball with bangles

 

 It may lead to be hanging about in plumbing supply shops, but inspired by something I saw on my recent travels and by various jewellery trends of the moment I've been experimenting with wire and rubber combos for jewellery. These are prototypes and experiments but they are leading to what will be finished pieces shortly.

 

Silver wire and odd earing

 

 Coloured wire coils

 

 

Torc type necklace with pendant...

 

 

From blank page to bangle: a day of silversmithing

 

As part of my plan to try out as many jewellery techniques as I could, I took a Beginner's Silver day at London Jewellery School early this year. During the day we learnt the basics of cutting, annealing, texturing with a hammer and soldering to produce a ring.

While I was very pleased with my end product, I found the day very hard and wondered if these techniques were really for me. But then I had a revelation - I had been walking round, sawing, hammering, etc with a fractured vertebra (I'd previously been told my back was just badly bruised), which may have impacted on my silversmithing experience.

So I signed myself up for the intermediate workshop. This is a major step up because it isn't a case of following along with the tutor - albeit making your own variations - on a single project. This time each of our group of five had to come up with our own project and design, within the constraints of available materials. Then the tutor Melissa Hunt then worked with each of us to identify the techniques we would need and indeed it the idea was feasible.

The one thing I was sure of was that I wanted to make a cuff-style bracelet.

Plus I like spirals, coils and curves - in metal, fabric, etc - and have often used them. Working in wire recently has seen me play with those shapes a lot.

The question was how to bring this elements together. But as I was sketching and thinking I noticed the ring I was wearing, which had a small coil of wire soldered to it.

That helped me with one element - I would use silver wire to make raised coil end pieces for the bracelet.

On the left you can see a test coil in copper as I played with width and shaping.

But then I was stuck. I wanted to reflect these motifs on the body but couldn't see how.

Melissa had the answer. I could try making a series of scrolls in copper wire and use a roller print technique to impress them into the silver. Roller printing involves annealing (softening) the metal and then placing it and a texture between two large rollers to press the design into the piece.

So the first jobs were to cut the sheet metal to length and to test the roller printing idea on a scrap of copper. I need a lot of sawing practice but with a bit of vigorous filing I did produce a neat piece.

As for my test piece:

 There was some distortion but that was useful in working out the settings for the real piece.

Plus it showed that there is no chance of reusing a a copper motif.

So after a spot of gentle scroll rolling it was time for the moment of truth. I attached my motifs to a strip of sellotape and alligned them on the annealled bracelet metal.

Then the moment of truth - the whole thing went into the rollers. I didn't get it quite right at the beginning - so admit that one end of one scroll impression isn't perfect (the pictures avoid this little blemish) - but over all it worked.

Then all that was left was shaping the ends, crating and attaching the ends and shaping the actually bracelet with all the intermediate heating, cooling and cleaning stages.

Plus Melissa had a new challenge for me. We'd orginally talked about soldering the wire motifs to the bracelet but she now reckoned I should consider riveting them instead. This meant working out how to build pins into the centre of my spirals (as in my test copper cols, left) and drilling holes into my piece. 

The drilling worked with a lot of help from Melissa because we had trouble with fine enough drill bits and then it was time to rivet the piece. The drilling is the scary bit - if the pins fit in the holes (and they did) the rest is about good soldering and finishing.

Silver soldering involves painting your joint with borax flux, heating the area with a small blow torch in one hand and adding tiny pieces of silver solder with tweezers.

Then you snip of the excess pins and file down the bumps. This is another worrying moment. My joints held but one of my fellow students managed to file through one of hers and had to start again.

And then there is plenty of polishing and cleaning up to do before a final shine up in the tumbler to produce a pretty piece.

The domestic goddess needle roll or more than one use for a tea towel

There's something about a new tea towel - the crispness of the fabric and the interesting colours and prints. It is a strange thing that we put so much design effort into something for wiping plates.

In fact my Gran used them for décor as well. Every new year a bright calendar tea towel went into the plastic poster hanger on the wall and the old one entered drying rotation. And as a drama school student years ago I had a tea towel print of Shakespeare’s First Folio on my bedsit wall because I couldn’t find it on a conventional poster.

The designs often catch my eye and I found myself wondering if they could put to other uses. Then I saw one particular design while I was casting about for the perfect project for a handmade gift for a particular individual - and suddenly inspiration struck. 

Fold a tea towel into thirds length ways and you can see it becomes just the tings for storing double pointed knitting needles - well it certainly looked like that to me.

So I embarked on a test project for myself with two tea towels (spotty for the lining), some interfacting and bias binding.

 

It’s a simple design, creating an envelope and flap and then stitching divisions into the pocket.

 

With my own test roll, I found a tea cup button, to secure a ribbon tie. 

All that was left to do was to organise my DPNs - good news for my partner who is now less at risk of a dnagerous encounterwith a stray pointy stick.

It worked so then I could make the gift,. the “Tunnocks Teacake special” – a design chosen because the friend is a fan of the snack.

This one is lined with some toning fabric rather than another tea towel but the same principle applies.

I was so pleased with the result I was tempted to keep both but in the end I delivered the gift to a happy reaction.

 

Isn’t it great when a plan comes together?

 

 

 

Shawls tested and revealed

I recently blogged about some test knitting I'd been doing - now I can reveal what they were.

First is the Frosty Diamonds Shawl from Anniken Allis's easy lace collection. 

And the other is South Kensington from One Hand Knits aka Anna Richardson. Both required a single skein of sock yarn.

 

 

Testing Testing

I've been busy in recent weeks test knitting shawls for a couple of pattern designers.

Test knitting is perfect for me. Firstly it's knitting and I'm rarely without my needles, but this has the advantage of me having a challenge without spending hours agonising over yarn and pattern choices.

But it also uses my professional editing skills and my experience of teaching other people to knitor helping others with challenging projects.

Test knitting is about checking that the pattern works as intended as well as spotting any potential pitfallsin the way the pattern is written. For example you may raise a query which leads to a charting error being spotted or report issues with the yardage for the project.

I try to think about how less experienced knitters might approach the pattern or if there is any potential for confusion based on the problems I've seen people have with, for example lace.

It's about enjoying knitting but also having an eye for detail and for the customer/user's needs.

As yet I can't tell you what the patterns I have been working on are because they are yet to launch and have only included some teaser images. Watch this space to find out them when they are available.