Sock Knitting: Part 2 (and Craft Off)

This time I learned how to turn the heel. I've learned the short row shaping method and it's pretty fun! It looks properly 3D now. Here's the back of it (you can kind of make out the sock shape):

Here's my picot edge, I'm particularly proud of that!


Unfortunately, the first thing I had to do on my own after the class was to pick up stitches from the side and I think I picked up the wrong part of the stitch, thus resulting in a ladder effect. I think I've worked out what the problem was, but if anyone has any advice on this (or any other aspect of my sock) then please shout up!

Laddered bit:



In other crafty news, a couple of friends and I went to an event at the Malt Cross in Nottingham to celebrate the launch of the Spinsters Emporium website. The event was a "Craft Off" with the theme being cheese. We created a pastiche of the "Now That's What I Call Music" albums with some cheese puns on existing song titles as the tracks. Here's the cover (we also made a vinyl record to go inside, out of cardboard).

Sadly, we didn't even get a mention for our beautiful work!

Ebay Disaster!

I bought a vintage shirt dress pattern on Ebay the other day with the intentions of making myself a nice black shirt dress to go with the lovely purple patent leather shoes I had just bought. In my excitement about this, I failed to actually look at the sizing of the pattern and when it arrived I discovered to my size 10 horror that it was for sizes 18 and 20.

With this in mind, I have now put it for sale in my Etsy shop. See below for a pic of the pattern.




Now I'm off to find myself a similar pattern that will actually fit me!

Sock Knitting: Part 1

So, I went to the second of the John Lewis tutorials that I've signed up to on Saturday. This week I learned to knit in the round. I can't believe I've not tried it before - it's so much easier than it looks. I also learned to do a picot edge (not so easy).

I'm making them out of this wool:I love the way it's self-striping. Although I'm thoroughly baffled as to how it works!

Hopefully I can manage to knit my desired length of sock before the 21st when I head back to find out how to turn the heel.

Crochet Class

So, on Saturday I decided to go along to one of the free classes that John Lewis haberdashery put on. This week it was basic crochet. I now know how to do a crochet chain, double crochet, treble crochet, increasing and decreasing stitches. Very badly. I shall attempt to practice it (if I can remember how) and maybe I'll have something good to show sometime soon. At the moment though, the mess below is all I have created:

Next week....Sock Knitting! (part one of three).