Kaffe Fassett at the Fashion & Textile Museum

I have been meaning to visit this place for about nine years so was very happy to finally get here today with Liz from Knitting on the Green. This is the second exhibition we have been to together (the first being the A-Z of Crime) and it is so nice to have someone who knows what you mean when you remark on what he did for introducing large motifs into fairisle. The exhibition itself was quite splendid.

You started downstairs with a small room of historical bits from his early years and then were straight into the good stuff. As Liz pointed out, they hadn't been precious about grouping his work by when he did it or by which collection it came from (or from which book it was in). This was a celebration of his work and the only groupings I really noticed were that downstairs was more the warm reds and jewel colours while upstairs was more greeny. Quilts hung alongside knitting and embroidered panels. Glass cases showed waistcoats beautifully made up alongside professionally handmade slippers.

Huge pillars downstairs (no idea of these are always there or were there for use in this way) were delicately wrapped in panels demonstrating his designs, such as these beautiful wonky mitred blocks.

You could also see both sides of a lot of pieces. Years ago I read a criticism of a V&A exhibition of his knitwear saying you couldn't see what he'd done with his ends. Well, none of that here.

Liz said how it was like he'd left that cardigan on the back of the chair and would be back with it in a minute. This section was my favourite - a few 'props' like carlton ware teapots and layering of the textiles made it look extremely voluptuous.

The exhibition was a really good size. You didn't find yourself getting used to the beauty and the curation has been done so that the feel upstairs is very different to downstairs which is very effective and engaging. It was definitely inspiring and a good way to start the build up to the Festival of Quilts in August.

These were hanging downstairs and the next two photos are closeups of them. The backs were all visible too - lovely machine quilting. 

This one was a tapestry hanging and about 2 metres tall. 

This one greeted you on your way in. I think most of us can imagine thrifted men's shirts being turned into a bit of this. 

Lastly, what really caught my eye - so silly when you consider the size of some of the things - was this tiny pin cushion tucked inside a slipper!

I adore all the colours on it. I would definitely recommend this to anyone with 2 hours to spare near London Bridge. £8 to get in and on until 29th June.

Crafting Tired

I came home last night and picked up a pin cushion I was halfway through making. I sewed the back and front together the wrong way round, so I unpicked it and put them the right way round and sewed them again. This time I forgot to leave a gap so I unpicked some of the seam and turned the buggery thing inside out. Then I realised I'd forgotten to add the hanging loop. I put the pin cushion down and walked away.

Today I am even more tired and only had half an hour to craft. I decided to stuff and sew up the hole in the pin cushion. The nice oval pincushion is now a kind of kidney shape. I'm just not intended to include this thing with the pouch swap parcel. So instead, here is that handbag I made a few weeks ago.

I put *a lot* of work into this and have put it through a test drive following which I can confirm the frame has a fatal flaw and it is too small for my use.

The handle being on just one side means it is liable to flop open if there is too much in it. Whch there will be because it's not big enough for even my minimum swag. Plus, behold the reason I hate sew in frames.

So messy. Not like my nice glue ones. But despite this...

...I really do rather love it. Hand sewn hexagons with my favourite pebble style machine embroidery on top.

Two different variegated threads - one on each side.

Nice.

I am so tired because this week is epically busy at work. I have to give a talk tomorrow too. Put me in front of a group as the sole trainer for a training event and I'm fine. Put me in front of a group of people as part of a panel each giving a talk and I'm much less fine. Plus it's streaming live on youtube. Now who's bright idea was that? Oh yes, mine.

Man, I'm awesome. Craft on mofo's.

Sunshine and Nature

It has been a warm few days but with only small amounts of sunshine. I did manage to capture this though on my way to the station.

The trees along the road are in full bloom and while these don't smell very strongly there are other smaller plants that do so there is a little sensation zone as you progress down the road. I was also stimulating my sense of taste at the weekend with my first ever Frittata.

It looks fairly ghastly but tastes delicious. I used goats cheese, sun dried tomatoes, salty black olives and then aubergine and shallots oven baked in olive oil beforehand. Six eggs and a glug of milk and voila! I made it in a bread tin to get the depth without having to make a huge quantity.

When thinking of sunshine and light I remembered that I invested in a cheap one of these...

...for Knitting and Crochet Blog Week where you were supposed to do a day on a skill. Mine was going to be photography since I've long noticed that my iphone photos were looking better than the ones with my proper digital camera with all sorts of settings. Having read a few tutorials this seemed like the best option and was about £9 on ebay. I used it to take some of the photos in yesterday's post.

I need to play some more and practice but it does help with the light. Here is another of a WIP.

I am knitting the Norwood Monkey for my niece-in-progress. That is the face, in case it is not clear.

My last thoughts on light prompted me to take a photo of my Succulent Garden which has now been settling down for a week after planting.

Those two succulents I planted which had been all closed up are bow open and looking beautiful. I love the range of colours! But I do feel I need a small dinosaur or two. Very small - like railway person sized. I will keep an eye out for one.

Bank Holiday Weekend

I haven't put so much thought into a swap since Secret Pal had it's heyday. I signed up for the 'advanced' category for this Pouch Swap and then got the heebies about whether I was good enough or what I was planning was advanced enough. I'm almost done and hope it's ok.

I laid out my arrangement for the clamshell side then did needle-turn appliqué to secure them. I haven't done a lot of this so was worried it didn't look neat enough. So some Perle 5 and chain stitch later...

For the other side of the pouch I wanted to continue the scrappy theme and the linen but try something different. I drew my design on some scrap cloth and then sewed the pieces straight onto it - like paper piecing (but not 'english' paper piecing like I do with hexagons).

I had a lot of scraps to choose from. My partner seems to like rainbow colour schemes so red yellow orange on one side meant blue green purple on the other.

The green's weren't working though so I ended up with this.

I appliqued a linen circle, this time using the freezer paper method which wasn't as time consuming as I'd thought, and chain stitched with more variegated Perle 5.

I really hope she likes it! And that just leaves me with the lining - which will be a plain fabric - and adding the metal purse frame. Phew!

I had a lovely time with the Romford Knitters yesterday which also meant I got hold of the last of my SkipNorth haul which I'd managed to leave at Nickerjac's house.

I also got a box frame from Hobbycraft while I was there so will finally have a chance to do the button display I've been planning since at least February. Which reminds me. I pinned this earlier:

Good idea huh? I'm tempted but then home is where I relax so I don't want to feel pressured with a to do list looming over me. Will think about it though.

Thinking About Japan

It is 70% likely I will have the chance to go to live in Japan for a year - in or near to Tokyo. This is clearly a big thing. I have known about it for a week or two but I only started taking it seriously yesterday lunchtime. There's a lot to think about.

I have never been there myself but know the sorts of things most people know. 

The biggest stumbling block is being dependant on someone else for a year. I am not psychologically compatible with the idea of being a kept woman. 

I would really like to be though. 

If you heard it was 70% likely to rain, you'd take your umbrella. They have umbrella lockers in Tokyo. 

And umbrella vending machines. It makes you wonder - they don't even have those in Manchester, and it's always raining there. 

Pretty Pouches

My partner in the Pouch Swap seems to be an expert at this kind of applique.

So I'll be avoiding that. I am quite taken with this kind of thing:

But it is a bit simple. Plus I've been thinking of this kind of patchwork.

But then I also like the idea of a pocket on the outside. Plus I was thinking of having embroidery on one side. See what I meant in my last post about over-egging the custard?

But there are so many cute ideas in my head...

Or maybe I mean on Pinterest!

But then that is exactly why I like Pinterest. You can tuck those inspirations away for when you need them.

Oh but then maybe this?

Or...

Pinterest - angel or devil?

I Made 34 Envelopes

No reason at all. I don't write a lot of letters.

Bit odd. Just had an urge.

I am not considering only making it to day 4 of the knitting and crochet blog week as a failure. It is 57% completion. That could even be an A* in a bad GCSE year.

I had a very quiet weekend as I'm exhausted from work and I have a cold. I finished off the knitting on a cardigan and picked out buttons and then did a tiny bit of sewing.

It's my first ever attempt at clamshell patchwork and used a technique described here.

I decided it was too jerky for me. I've since tried needle-turn instead and that was much smoother. It's an experiment before I begin seriously planning the pouch I'll make for the Pretty Little Pouch Swap. I have so many ideas but I don't want to over-egg the custard.

My other project this weekend was finally putting together my succulent garden. I've been planning this for a year now and had been waiting for the growing season to start so I could be sure the succulents would take root properly. I had the Journey to the Centre of the Earth type sets in mind. 1959 I mean, obviously. Only a blurry shot of the whole.

But then...

This one goes pink along the edges if kept in direct sunshine.

Most importantly - very hard to kill both succulents and plastic animals.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day 4 - Colour Review

First, let us be clear. It is c-o-l-o-u-r not color. There is no 'you' in color. No 'u'...you know what I mean. There is a u, clearly. Colour.

Many years ago I went off to a Specialist to "get my colours done". In fact I blogged about it back in 2007 and the business I went with is still in operation. It seems hard to believe now that up to that point I didn't wear purple and was actively trying to include more pale pink in my life. Although it was a luxury I found it very worthwhile and I still have the little wallet of colour swatches - and in fact took it to SkipNorth with me.

Colour is something I think about a lot both as a knitter and as a sewer. In fact I selected this image for my inspiration mosaic for a swap recently.

It is from The Embroidery Thread Lovers Group on Flickr which is for people who like looking at pictures of embroidery thread. DON'T JUDGE ME! I lead a quiet life and have no cats. I adore all of these colours. I can imagine wearing layers of clothing in these colours and striding around in a light breeze looking all exotic. Imagination - awesome.

I find choosing colours for fairisle highly problematic and have tried using tools like colour palette generators to help. The idea is simple. Take a photo/image with colours you like in it (I've chosen this one just as an illustration)...

Upload it and get your palette...

It is difficult though because this doesn't exactly translate to yarn colours automatically so you still have to go and find yarns that match. The best bet (especially for fairisle) is to try Jamiesons of Shetland. They have 220 colours in their gorgeous yarn but it is not ideal (for me at least) for wearing next to the skin - so what if you don't want to commit to always wearing a long sleeved, high neck top underneath? Plus you really need a shadecard to see the colours for real to choose them - and their shadecard is £12. Probably worth the money considering the work it must take to create one but...£12.

All this means that I do not do half the fairisle I would if I had more colour confidence. What I do knit ...

...tends to do the colour for itself. And when making quilts...

...I tend to stick with a particular colour group.

It is strange to me that I am more than prepared to dive in and try something, prepared for it to be awful, when thinking about a concept. But when I have the concept or idea and am confident about it, I am not willing to take a risk on colour choices. Perhaps the moral for today could be to be prepared to take more colour risks in the knowledge that when I do that with overall projects it often turns out quite well. Or I get over it if I have to throw it away once finished.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day 3 - Visually Speaking

The challenge for Day 3 is to create an infographic. This is actually something that interests me and, if you are also a geek, there have been an interesting series of articles about them on Harvard Business Review Blog recently. However, life has been busy and so I cheated and went with a Visual.ly template based on the google analytics for this blog. That's not to say it's not pretty cool.

I need to think about this a bit more to work out what it means. Clearly I'm distressed my page views are down 0.6%. But on the other hand I'm delighted 21.76% of you are coming back for more - hi!

Here is a quick widget for you to 'hi' back - or you can leave a comment of course.

And in other news...dig my handbag - my latest FO.

I am going to have to do a proper post on this once KCBW is over. It deserves its own post. It is q-u-i-t-e awesome. Quite.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day 2 - Project Planning (4KCBWDAY2)

Day 2 is about thinking of or researching a project that embodies your house. I have just the thing...

I have joined a swap on Flickr for a small purse/pouch. To join you had to post an inspiration mosaic for your Partner to use when deciding what to make you. This is mine.

If you click on the image you'll find the links to the individual photos on Flickr. 

I've always found these mosaics (which anyone can make here) a useful way of gathering ideas. There's one from 2010 on resin pendants here. I've been putting a few together after seeing my partner's mosaic and very brief questionnaire. 

I am also a great believer in letting the sub-conscious mull over a problem/idea and letting a solution occur over time. For instance I've been wondering what to do to with regards to quilting my hexagon handbag. During my 4am coughfest I decided pebbles was the way forward. 

It is one of the techniques I tried when I did a machine embroidery course and a bit of practice on scraps should get me back to a suitable standard again. 

The niece-in-progress is rapidly approaching FO status. I have therefore whipped up a couple more of these.

The nursery has a seaside theme and the father is doing up an old VW van. I've followed this tutorial again but have added an end strap for hanging on to them.

You just pop it in when sewing across the corners of one end of the outer fabric. A handy addition.