Train Track neckwarmer

For Christmas I bought a little bundle of five 20g skeins of hand dyed wool from Valley Maker. It was kind of a gift for A cause I knew she'd like the colours, and kind of a gift for me, cause I seem to like stashing yarn as well as fabric now.

Eventually I found a pattern that would suit it: the Train Track Neckwarmer by Robin Williams

I sort of followed the pattern, although I can't recall if I kept the same needle size. I think I might have gone smaller as I was using a fingering weight yarn and making it child sized.

What I did ignore was the number of rows to knit. I used my main colour yarn with a secondary colour until I thought I had a quarter of the length done. Then I switched the secondary yarn into the primary yarn position and brought in a new colour as the secondary yarn. And so on until all five yarns had been used.

I don't know how well it works to join the ends of a rectangular scarf into a cowl or neckwarmer. It kind of needs a triangular shape for that to work. But I was keen to try the buttonholes, which I'd never knitted before, and A liked the idea of it buttoning. And of course the perfect little wooden buttons were in the stash begging to be used.

Perhaps the most fun to be had with a knitted scarf is wandering around the house dropping it in places and photographing it!

And now, a gratuitous photo of our little mini lawn mowers - Albus and Remus!

The Birthday Dress

My not-a-surprise birthday dress for A was to be as follows:

A dark grey T-shirt dress, with blue flutter sleeves and a Ravenclaw Hogwarts badge. She saw the fabrics (all stash) and designed the dress using the Oliver + S Building Block Dress Book, but I did paint the Ravenclaw badge in secret.

 

To make the dress I used the size 12 Building Block dress pattern. the only changes being that I sewed it in a bamboo jersey and omitted any opening.

I wrote a blogpost ages ago about doing just that on the Oliver + S blog. Here it is.

I probably overestimated how deep those sleeves needed to be, but they're statement flutter sleeves alright. The neckline and sleeves are finished with strips of knit binding.

Then the fun bit is painting the stencil.

I think I've created an animation of all the progress pictures. Let's see if I can add it here...