Confessions of a sewing machine virgin

I have a sewing machine; I’ve had it for quite a while. I bought it from my good friend Danger Badger (she’s awesome; follow her on Twitter) when she needed money for drugs*. So here’s my confession: I’ve never used it. I’m scared of it.

See, with knitting or crochet it doesn’t matter if you do something wrong. Most mistakes aren’t even noticeable and those that are can generally be rectified; even if you can’t fix something you can just rip back what you’ve done and start again. But sewing involves cutting. And once you’ve cut something you can’t just go back and do it again. I’m also a worried about sewing in a straight line. Really, how do you do that?

I know I should just get an old pillowcase and sit down one evening and practise - cut some fabric, sew some (not-so) straight lines. Which brings me to my other issue with my sewing machine. It involves so much work. With knitting, I just pick up whatever I want to work on, turn on the TV or stereo and curl up on the sofa. Simple. Chuck in a glass of wine (oh, OK, two. All right, the bottle) and you’ve got a perfect evening. With the sewing machine, I need find space for it on the kitchen table, get it out of its cover, plug it in, work out how to get needle and thread in it - it’s all too much. So it just remains in its cover, forlorn and unused.

But this is fast becoming Not Good Enough. I’ve been designing knitted and crocheted iPhone and Kindle covers and I want to line them, maybe making little interior pockets to keep money or cash cards in. I need to learn how to use my sewing machine. And due to the great customer service at Elna I no longer even have the excuse that I can’t find the user manual, because I emailed them and got a PDF version back the very next day.

*to move to Switzerland

It  doesn't look that terrifying does it? But it is. Photo by Idoru Knits.

Crochet project wanted

I’ve been thinking recently that I want to start a new crochet project, something big that I can really get my teeth into. The only crochet I’ve done for a while were the various iPhone covers I designed, but these were just, well, iPhone sized. I want something big. Not just big, though, complicated and lacy too. And made in crochet thread on a tiny hook, preferably in one piece rather than joined motifs. Masochistic much?

Last week I tweeted to this effect, and in a nice example of helpful the crafting community it, one of my followers retweeted me to one of her followers who suggested I search on Ravelry. OK, I probably should have thought of that myself, but I didn’t. Anyway, Ravelry has a great search function. There are more than 300,000 patterns on the site, and you can add all kinds of criteria to narrow your search- craft, if it’s free, if it has a photo, yarn weight and yardage used, among other options.

I selected the relevant filters and a selection of choices appeared. I now have seven new projects queued - all lovely big shawls, tablecloths or bedspreads. I just have to decide which one to tackle first.

This vintage shawl pattern is now in my queue;
I think it would look good in the blue.

Projects in progress

As I haven’t finished anything recently I thought I’d have a bit of a show and tell on the projects that I’m currently working on.

First up is lacy scarf that I’m designing. I’ve adapted a free lace stitch pattern from Knitting Daily, adding a fourth repeat and simple lace and garter stitch borders. This is a great way to practice lace - there are loads of free stitch patterns out there and it’s much easier to adapt one of these to make it your own than it is to create one from scratch.

The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Lace, a blend of 70% baby alpaca, 25% silk and 5% cashmere from SoSusie Yarns. I’m reviewing the yarn so more on this later. Suffice to say it’s really quite beautiful.

I really like the way this scarf is shaping up. The stitch pattern has worked really well and the garter stitch borders look good. Scarf and pattern will soon be on sale.

I’m also making another cat blanket using the stitch pattern I discovered a few weeks ago. I’m improving the pattern as I go, for example I’ve realised that if I knit really loosely the stitch pattern doesn’t shrink. For this blanket I cast on 201 stitches because the stitches tightened up so much in the last one that it ended up 20cm shorter than it started out at. This time the blanket hasn’t shrunk so much.

I really need to get on with this blanket. Sam loved his and Poppy is jealous. I keep going into the spare room to find her on his blanket. Although on Monday morning they were sharing it. So sweet.

Finally I’m making Champs Elysees wristwarmers. This is a pattern from Knit on the Net. It was free when I got hold of it, but it seems they’re going to be charging for it now. I’m using Rowan Kidsilk Haze that came free with a magazine subscription. Just a single ball, I wasn’t sure what to use it for, so this pattern was perfect. I haven’t got far with this project. It’s a complicated lace pattern that requires total concentration - this is definitely not one for pub knitting, or even knitting in front of the TV. Kidsilk Haze isn't the easiest yarn to knit with either; in fact it's a bit like trying to knit with spider silk. But the cobwebby result is gorgeous. These are going to be a present for my niece.

In which I’m impressed by customer service

The voucher in question.

About four years ago, my then boyfriend’s parents bought me a very generous present of a £30 voucher to spend at Stash Fine Yarns. I wanted to save it for something I really wanted, and because I’m rather forgetful this meant I ended up not buying anything. For years.

Then a few weeks ago I decided I wanted some really nice laceweight yarns. I’ve been thinking about designing lace shawls and wanted a yarn that would be really special for the new designs. An internet search revealed that Stash stocks some gorgeous silk and merino wool blend lace by Fyberspates, in absolutely beautiful colours. I wanted it. In at least two colourways.

It was time to use the voucher. It was at least four years old, but there was no date on it. The voucher was one of those ones with a code on to input when you get to the checkout. So I placed my order, entered my code and clicked ‘go’. It didn’t work. I tried again. It didn’t work. I was about to give up - the voucher was out of date, it was my own fault for not using it sooner.

But then I decided I really had nothing to lose by emailing Stash. So I did. And I quickly got a reply: could I scan the voucher and email images of it? I could and I did. Proof received that I really did have the voucher and the code was set up to work again. I ordered two hanks of Fyberspates Scrumptious and I will very shortly be designing a new lace shawl. I’ve already charted out the stitch pattern.

So thank you, people at Stash. I love the yarn I’ve bought with that voucher and I’ll definitely be using you again.

The yarn. Gorgeous Scrumptious Lace
from Fyberspates.

Knitting for Knit Now - my first magazine submission

For the past week or so I’ve been working on a new design for a magazine submission. Knit Now has called for original designs to feature in the Late Winter 2012 issue (January and February). The emphasis is on accessories and quick little knits, so I’m submitting a design I’ve had in mind for a while: a Kindle cover using knit and purl stitches to create a pattern.

The idea is that the cover uses less than one ball of yarn, so can be made using leftovers (good for post-Christmas pockets), it’s easy and quick to make and will be useful for anyone who got a Kindle from Santa Claus, or knows someone who did.

I’ve sketched out my design and made a chart and using this knitted a small section as a sample. I’ve got photos of all of this and written a short description and saved it as a single PDF. I sent the whole thing off today.

This is my first magazine submission and I don’t really know what to expect. Have I fit the brief? Will my idea be suitable? Will I hear back? I simply don’t know. Getting my designs in a national magazine is an important step in my nascent design career, though, so I’m hoping it works. Watch this space.

Inventing a new stitch pattern

The new stitch pattern looks like reverse stocking stitch, but is
the same on both sides and comes out double thickness.

I think I might have invented a new stitch pattern. This is exciting stuff. It was while trying to remember how to do the Chinese Wave pattern that a friend showed me at knitting group. I couldn’t quite remember what she’d said (wine might have been involved on the night), and I tried various combinations of the two stitches that make up the wave pattern: knit and slip stitch purlwise.

One variation that I particularly liked the look of was just ‘knit 1, slip 1 purlwise, repeat to end’, then repeat for next and all following rows. What you end up with is a fabric that looks like reverse stocking stitch but on both sides. Because you’re only using knit stitch the fabric lies flat, without curling up at the edges, while the combination of stranding the working yarn (the yarn you’ve got in your hand and are using to wrap around your needles to make a stitch) and the slipped stitch make a double-thickness fabric. This makes it ideal for blankets, placemats, shawls - anything that you want to stay flat. Best of all, of course, you only work half the stitches - what’s not to love?

Slip the stitch purlwise so that it doesn't twist.

At the moment I’m using up some old acrylic to make a cat blanket (my boyfriend thinks I spoil his cats; he may have a point) and I’m trying out this new stitch pattern. But I think it’s got great potential. It would make a lovely warm shawl, for example, which could be prettied up with a lace border. And if I can figure how to do colourwork with it, I think I could create some tapestry-style pieces that would make lovely cushion covers.

Free pattern

Try out the stitch with this simple free pattern to make a square with a garter stitch border. which can be adapted to create any size project, in any yarn you happen to have lying around - it’s very versatile. A thick cotton could make a surface protector to put a hot pan or teapot on; soft acrylic would make a cosy baby blanket; self-striping or self-patterning yarn could be interesting for a set of placemats. Holding two strands of yarn - maybe in different colours? - would add another dimension.

Taking the work off the needle means
you can see the doubled fabric.
It's stocking stitch on the inside.

Cast on an odd number of stitches; the exact number will depend on what yarn and needles you’re using and what you want to make. A chunky cotton on big needles to make a set of coasters might only need about 11 stitches. A baby blanket in double knit will require something more like 201. You could do a gauge swatch, or you could just cast on what looks to be the right number and then block the finished piece, which is what I did - be warned though, this is a very tight stitch pattern and your piece will shrink. Mine was 50cm at cast on but ended up as 30cm.

I used a standard double knit on 4mm needles and cast on 125 stitches.

Rows 1-4 knit to end
Row 5 k4, *k1, sl1 purlwise, k1, rpt from * to last four sts, k4
Row 6 k2, *sl1 purlwise, k1, sl1 purlwise, rpt from * to last four sts, k4
Rpt rows 5 and 6 until the piece is square
Knit four rows
Cast off
Block if required

If you’re doing small pieces you could experiment with a thinner border - begin and end the piece with three knit rows and each row with three knit stitches, or two knit rows and two knit stitches. Because the knit/slip pattern is very tight and garter stitch is quite loose, the border will take on a ‘frilled’ appearance.

Experimentation needed

I want to experiment a bit more with this. At the moment I’m knitting every slipped stitch and slipping every knitted stitch in the following rows, but what if I knit the knitted stitches and slip the slipped stitches in one following row and then swap them over? Will look any different if I slip the stitches knitwise? Or alternate purlwise and knitwise slipped stitches? Or use purl stitches instead of knit?

I’ve got loads of cheap acrylic left over from when I first taught myself to knit. Now it would seem I’ve got a way to use some of it up. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has seen this stitch pattern before.

Finished cat blanket. I added a blue
stripe because it's for a boy cat.

What if meat were no longer murder?

Will cows soon be safe from the meat industry?

I’ve not eaten meat for 26 years, so it was with some interest that a few weeks ago I read an article in the Guardian Weekend magazine about ‘fake’ meat and how scientists are looking into ways to make it more ‘meaty’. The feature is now on the Guardian’s website.

Two means of making fake meat were discussed. The first was pretty uncontroversial: using plant material to synthesise meat, much the same as Quorn today but actually tasting and - crucially - feeling like meat. I can’t actually remember the taste and texture of meat, but I understand that any replacement meat products currently on the market don’t come close.

Well, I say uncontroversial, but that’s not so to the many companies making millions from producing and selling the real thing. To them this research is highly problematic. But not from a moral standpoint. The second method, however, is more complicated.

In the future we could all be eating meat grown in test tubes.

This involves in-vitro meat - flesh grown in test tubes. Take a pig, or a cow, or any animal for that matter, kill it and, using stem cells, grow some meat. It’s obviously a lot more complex than that, involving all sorts of science magic. It also requires killing an animal. But, the article says, one animal “could provide the seed material for hundreds of tonnes of meat”. This is obviously much better than is currently the case - about 1,600 mammals and birds are slaughtered PER SECOND for human consumption, according the Guardian.

According to this Time article, the average person in the industrialised world eats around 176lbs of meat a year. There are 2,204 pounds in a tonne. So just one tonne of in-vitro meat would feed 12 people for a year. Hundreds of tonnes would feed thousands. One animal for thousands of people doesn’t sound like too bad odds (unless you happen to be that animal).

The in-vitro process seems to somehow remove the act of killing from the production of the meat - that cow can’t possibly have anything to do with those lab-grown steaks can it? And it certainly answers the environmental questions. But is it enough? For me, no. I want to see a process in which no animal is harmed.

What if that were possible? What if, instead of killing the cow, scientists could just administer a local anaesthetic and chop out the bit they need? Patch the cow up and send it on its merry way. They could ‘borrow’ animals used for other industries - dairy cattle, sheep or goats raised for their wool and so on. The environmental arguments against the meat industry are again safely rebutted, so what about the moral issues? The animals are no longer harmed and there’s no need for factory or intensive farming; in fact the few animals that were bred for meat production could live in the lap of luxury.

Guilt-free steak?

It seems I would no longer have a reason to be vegetarian. I’m still not sure I’d want to eat the meat though. Why? I’m not entirely sure. Its provenance doesn’t bother me, although I’m sure it would worry many people. I think that, after 26 years of not eating the stuff, the idea of ingesting flesh just doesn’t appeal. That said, I’d happily eat the plant-derived stuff, even if the taste and texture were exactly the same as the in-vitro version.

Crocheted flags galore

A few weeks ago I blogged about my Union Jack iPhone cover and pattern, Fly the Flag. This got me to thinking. What about a whole line of flag iPhone covers?

Could Fly the Flag be the start of a whole range of
flag-inspired items?

France, Germany and Italy would be easy, as they’re just stripes - easier than the Union Jack, even. I think I could do the United States, if a white square would be an acceptable substitute for a star. A look at World Flag Database (the internet truly does have everything) revealed that there are loads of flags that would be as easy or easier than the UK’s. Sweden and Finland are crosses. Armenia, Austria and Romania are stripes. South Africa and Seychelles are more complicated, but again with some graph paper and patience I’m pretty sure I could work them both out.

France, the Faroes and Finland - all easy.

And why limit this to iPhone covers? I use 4ply cotton to make these small pieces, and it would be rather time consuming to use it to make anything bigger, like Kindle or iPad covers. But using a thicker cotton would seriously speed things up and make bigger items more feasible. I could even recreate Sherlock’s famous Union Jack cushion covers!

Social media and self-promotion

I’m absolutely fascinated by social media. I have my own Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest accounts, as well as running the Birdwatch ones for work. In all I must spend several hours a day on such sites.

I think they’re a fantastic resource - for news, contacts, promotion, sharing, information, pretty much everything, in fact. The power of Twitter was demonstrated to me in a quite personal way recently. When I got into work a few weeks ago (23 May) I checked the Birdwatch Twitter feed as I always do. I discovered a link to a blog post about Defra planning on awarding a shooting estate (or estates) nearly £400,000 in taxpayers’ money to use in ‘controlling’ Common Buzzard nests. This ‘control’ could include nest destruction and almost certainly would have led to birds being killed - Common Buzzard has only recently recovered in this country, previously being almost lost (mostly due to persecution from shooting estates).

The Idoru Knits Twitter page. Come follow me!

After a bit of research, we published the story on the Birdwatch website. We were the first ‘official’ news source to do so, beating both the BBC and RSPB. This was a moment of some pride for me. But what was even better was the groundswell of support on Twitter and beyond. The public was outraged and they weren’t afraid to show it. Major newspapers and the BBC picked up the story. Birdwatch had its busiest day ever on its website, with traffic coming from Twitter, Facebook and searches for ‘Common Buzzard’ or ‘buzzard’. As well as the news story, we also produced a downloadable letter that users could then adapt and send to their MPs. The outcome was that only days later Defra changed its mind.

It’s probably vanity to think Birdwatch - and by extension I - really influenced any this, but it does feel good to have had some part in it. What isn’t in doubt, though, is Twitter’s part in it. This kind of grassroots support has always been there, but without Twitter it was unorganised, fragmented. Another, less admirable example might be the use of BBM by rioters in London last year. Twitter and the like provides free, instant communication with a huge audience, a potential audience of millions, in fact - according to Wikipedia, Twitter had more than 500 million active users by April 2012, Facebook had more than 900 million.

The government and its associated departments and organisations (and not just in the UK) still underestimate the power of social media. They don’t understand it and they certainly don’t know how to control it, and this scares them. Defra’s u-turn won’t, I suspect, be the last of its kind. And I love that. I love the fact that the internet, and for the same reason social media, is so very unlegislateable.

Idoru Knits on Facebook.

It’s this grassroots power that makes social media so very important to someone like me. With my various social media activities I can reach many millions of people, and all for free. I enjoy knitting and crochet and I want to make some money out of selling both what I make and the patterns. I haven’t got the money to open a shop or run marketing campaigns in craft magazines. Instead I have to rely on self-promotion.

Think about it: as of today (18 July 2012) I have 130 followers on Twitter. If I tweet a link to my latest blog post and five of my followers retweet it and then five followers of each of them retweet and then five of each of them and so on, just 10 steps would mean that 61,035,155 people had retweeted me. And if each of those people had at least 100 followers, many, many times more will have seen the tweet. This does assume I’ve done the maths right (I’m pretty sure I have) and that there are no overlaps among all the retweeters (I’m pretty sure there would be). But, still, it’s a gobsmacking amount.

If I’m honest, I don’t really know how harness the power of social media - how is that some Twitter accounts get thousands of followers while others only get tens? Fame helps, obviously, and one way of getting my name known among knitters is to get my designs into the various knitting magazines. So one of my next projects is to contact all the relevant UK titles.

Pinterest is the latest addtion to my social media collection.
So far I'm loving it.

But fame isn’t a prerequisite - there are plenty of non-famous people out there with hundreds and even thousands of followers. A reason to be tweeting must help - in my case this is knitting and crochet design. Being witty or interesting - or ideally both - is also important, and I do try.

I do know that people get very tired very quickly of endless self-promotion. Constant links to ones own blog or Folksy page are just boring - you need to engage and interact. Say something funny, something interesting, something controversial, something important, just say something. Retweet and reply. I’m currently following anyone crafty, and hoping they’ll follow me back.

Other than that, I suspect it’s a combination of just keeping at it: being active, trying to keep it interesting (and mostly on topic) and plain old hanging in there. So I’ll be carrying on with my Tweeting, blogging, Facebooking and Pinning. I hope you’ll all join me for the ride.

Flying the flag

Recently I figured out how to use two or more colours in a row of crochet. I call this technique tapestry or Fair Isle crochet. I googled the terms and found that this isn’t a new way of doing crochet, in fact it’s been around for a long time. There are various ways of doing it, including my version of carrying the yarns along the back of the work. This means that with a flat piece of crochet the back is a mess of strands of yarn. Other methods fix this, so I’m going to give them a try.

Stranding the different colours along the back of the work
does produce something of a mess.

Anyway, I decided to use my new (to me) technique to create an iPhone cover in time for the London Olympics. The obvious motif was the Union Jack. So I sat down with some 4ply cotton and dutifully made my gauge square. This is important with tapestry crochet, as you need to know exactly how many stitches and rows you have to play with when designing your image.

Just in time for the Olympics!

Next it was a case of finding a picture of the Union Jack and drawing it onto grid paper. This is the simplest part - one grid square equals one stitch, so you just draw a rectangle with the right number of squares to stitches. Then draw a few straight and diagonal lines to make the flag. Next I copied the grid onto an Excel spreadsheet so it could be saved as a colour PDF.

Plain blue back.

I followed the grid to crochet a Union Jack, and Hey Presto! I had the front of an iPhone cover. In order to save time, the back of the iPhone cover is plain double crochet, which can be done in red, white or blue, for obvious reasons. The edging is single rows of double crochet in, again, red, white and blue.

Available from my Craftsy store.

The finished article in use.

Free pattern and a how to

Everyone likes free stuff, right? Well you’ll love this post then, because I’m giving away a pattern for an iPhone cover. Well Covered is a simple crochet cover done in double crochet throughout in cotton, with a choice of edgings.

The cotton I’ve used is Rico Essentials DK, which is available from SoSusie Yarns for just £2.50 a ball. She’s at Archway market every other Saturday, so if you’re around pay her a visit. There’s a cupcake stall at the market too, if you need any further encouragement to go.

For your free pattern, go to the end of this post, click on the image of the pattern and the right-click (or Control-click if you're an Apple Mac user) and then save the image. If this doesn't work work, email me and I'll send you a press-ready PDF.

The Well Covered iPhone cover, with edging I
(back cover in red) and edging II (front, in blue).

The cotton is actually a really lovely yarn. It’s mercerised yet still really soft. It’s hard wearing, so will protect your beloved iPhone and it’s machine washable. It comes in some gorgeous colours. Double crochet is the easiest of stitches and there’s no shaping, so even if you’re a complete beginner this is a very simple pattern to follow. In fact the most difficult bit is the picot edging, and you don’t even have to do that. If you want to give it a go, however, here’s a how to.

How to picot

I’ve got a pattern for a lovely lacy crochet top. It incorporates a picot stitch, which I had never done before, so I looked up how to do it. I couldn’t work it out, so I left the stitch out. Recently I decided I wanted to do a picot edging on an iPhone cover, so I looked it up again: chain 3, then chain into the first chain. It still didn’t make sense. I can’t see how chaining into that first chain works. You’re going back on yourself, which is surely going to be very difficult and look very untidy.

So I had a look on YouTube and found plenty of video tutorials on the picot stitch. I watched the videos and it didn’t look that complicated, so I gave it a go. And I was right - going back and chaining into that first chain was incredibly fiddly and didn’t look good. I watched the videos again, tried the stitch again. Same thing. It was time to start looking at the construction of the stitch.

Normally with a crochet stitch you work into the upperside, inserting your hook under the two strands that make a ‘V’. This is what I was trying to do with the picot. But it’s also possible to work into the underside. Try making a few chains and then turn them upside down. Each stitch has a single loop making up the underside. So instead of trying to go backwards and into the top of the first chain, move your hook as if you’re going to work the next stitch in the row and insert your hook into the single loop of the first chain in your picot. As you’re now working forwards, the stitch is easier to complete and looks much neater.

Nead and tidy picots!

Maybe everyone already does their picot stitches like this, but nowhere did I see it described as such and it certainly didn’t look like that on the videos I watched. With my new technique perfected, I could do a picot edging for my Well Covered iPhone cover, and I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

Free pattern: Well Covered iPhone cover. Please
click on the image, then right-click
(Control-click) and save the image to download.

My next big design project

I love charity shop finds. Over the years I’ve bought Sisley and Coast dresses, an Armani top, Fly London shoes and all for less than a £10 each. One of my favourite finds, though, is a Comme Ca crossover T-shirt. I wear it a lot, and this means it’s fast wearing out. The seams have started to fray, and while at the moment it’s fixable, it’s a timely reminder that my beloved top isn’t going to last forever. So I’m thinking of making a replacement.

The top in question. It looks pretty simple to reconstruct.
(Famous last words ..!)

 I’ve never made a crossover top before, but I’m assuming it’s much like a cardigan. That said, I’ve never made one of those either. It can’t be that hard, though. I’m planning to just copy the dimensions and construction of the top I’ve got - really just take some measurements, knit a gauge square, do the maths and start knitting. This is generally my take on design - I don't go in for all that sketching things out on graph paper. It's worked for me so far.

I want to do it in Rico Essentials merino DK, in a nice chocolate brown with a cream trim. Time to go shopping, methinks.

Patriot games

The stripes are shaping up well.

With Liz II hitting 60 years on the throne, England doing well in Euro2012 and the London Olympics fast approaching, it’s surely time to get patriotic. So I’ve designed a red-white-and-blue iPhone cover.

This striped cover is crocheted in double knit cotton. It’s double crochet throughout, but going only through the back loop. This creates a stretchy fabric that’s crochet’s equivalent of ribbing.


Stripey fabrics, whether knitted or crocheted, are a bit of a pain in the backside (that’s a technical term). Not only is there all that swapping of yarns, there’s a whole lot of ends to weave in when you’ve finished, and let’s be honest, none of us like weaving in ends. The yarn swapping can’t be helped. Unless you get a self-striping yarn, which, quite frankly, is cheating. The plethora of ends, however, can be.

The strands running along the edge
of the fabric can be disguised with a border.
Take care not to tangle the yarns - untangling
can get annoying.

When you do Fair Isle knitting, you don’t cut the yarn every time you change colour - that would be silly. Just think of all that weaving in. On second thoughts, don’t. So, I asked myself, why cut it every time I change colour with stripes? I can just keep all the yarns attached and when I need to bring a new colour into play, run the yarn along the edge of the material. And it works. When you take up a new yarn, just give it a bit of a tug to keep the crochet nice and tight, making sure not to pull too hard so the fabric doesn’t pucker, then yarn over and pull through the loops on the hook. Simple.

It leaves strands of the yarns along the edge, but these can be disguised at the sewing up stage or if you create a border. With the iPhone cover I did a border of one row of double crochet in each colour, and hid the strands behind this.

The Go Team GB iPhone cover is available on my Folksy store for £10 (plus p&p), while the pattern can be bought from Ravelry, Folksy or by emailing me, for £2.50. A colour PDF will be sent via email.

The finished item in use.

Well covered

When people think of knitting they tend to think of winter woolies, gloves and hats and cozy blankets. Which makes selling knitwear during summer something of a challenge. So recently I’ve been thinking of things I can make that don’t conjure up thoughts of open fires and hot chocolate.

What I came up with was iPhone covers, and then I decided that I wouldn’t knit them after all - it was time to get out the old crochet hook and cotton. I’ve come up with three different iPhone designs so far: a plain double crochet one; a ‘RING, RING’ one; and a lacy one that I’m going to line. The first two are cotton, the final one was made from a bit of leftover wool.

Plain iPhone cover. This is a simple double crochet design in cotton.

Double crochet (or single crochet in American) is ideal for iPhone covers. It creates a nice thick, tight fabric that will protect the phone, while cotton is hard wearing and machine washable. The plain cover is simple: make a chain that’s about the same length as your phone and then do double crochet rows until the fabric is long enough to wrap around your phone; join along the edges and bottom. I also did a double crochet border in a different colour along the top to provide contrast.

The back of RING, RING. The trick, as with knitting colourwork, is to make sure
you don't pull the threads too tight.

RING, RING was much more fun. I wanted to write ‘RING’ into both sides of the cover, using crochet rather than embroidery or Swiss darning. So I would be using two colours in the same row, kind of like crochet Fair Isle. I’ve used crochet to make stripes before, but I’ve never actually done colour work using crochet before. This was going to be interesting.

I remembered from doing stripes that the trick is to use the alternative colour to do the final step of the stitch, so with a double crochet, you insert the hook through the stitch below, wrap around in your main colour and pull through, then use the second colour to complete the stitch. You now have a finished stitch in your main colour and a loop on your hook in the second colour.

It worked! One RING as ordered.

The next step was to work out how to do the actual writing. This involved working out how many rows and stitches are needed to make one side of the cover and then drawing this onto graph paper, with each square representing one stitch. Then I drew out the letters, and it was time to start crocheting. That was when it got complicated.

To change colours in a row, you run the different threads across the back of the work, making an unholy mess of the back of the work; however, when you get to the end of a row, you turn your work, making the back now the front. This meant I had come up with a new way of crocheting so that the mess remained on the back. Crocheting on the right side was simple - just go ahead as usual - but with the wrong side showing I had make sure the non-working thread was at the front of the work. The working colour I could use as normal, but once I’d finished with that thread I had to pull it over the work and hold it tight to the front of the fabric, then bring the new working colour into play by pulling that over and to the back of the fabric, and then crochet as normal.

The finished article. This was the test piece, done in what I happened to have handy,
so the contrast isn't great, but you can see what I'm aiming for.

Have I created a new way to crochet? Probably not - I’m certain that I’m not the first person to think of this, but does open up a lot of possibilities with crochet colourwork. I’ll be crocheting Fair Isle-style jumpers before you know it.

Luscious lace

I recently finished my first ever lace shawl. It’s Ishbel by Isolde Teague, and a quick look at Ravelry shows that it’s certainly a popular design - more than 11,000 completed projects. Wow! I knitted it in Sea Silk by HandMaiden Fine Yarn, a silk/seacell mix, in a variegated purple. I bought the yarn ages ago at Stash in south-west London when some knitting chums visited. I had no idea what I’d do with it, but it was so soft and silky and purple that I just had to buy it. And it turned out to be ideal for Ishbel, so how’s that for serendipity?

The finished piece. Prior to blocking, the lace isn't all that impressive.

It did take a while, mostly because I kept getting sidetracked by other things (designing, mainly. Designing is so much fun). But also because of a few mistakes. The biggest one was in the simple stocking stitch section. That’s right - the section that should have been easiest. To make the shawl a nice triangular shape, the centre stitch is flanked by a yarn over on either side; somehow I managed to move my centre stitch and yarn overs combo by one stitch. This meant there was one too few stitches on the first half (and conversely one too many on the second). I didn’t notice this until I got to the lace sections and there weren’t enough stitches for the pattern repeats. I had to undo the whole thing. Damn.

Blocking really brought out the lace pattern
and pointed edging.

But undeterred I carried on. My advice? Use a stitch marker! I don’t know how that stitch shifted but if I’d had a stitch marker in place it wouldn’t have.

The pattern is easy enough to follow - the lace sections being a set of repeated stitches to the centre then the same stitches in the reverse order to the end. Once you’ve got the repeating bit for each row in your head, off you go. My only criticism is that stitch counts aren’t given at the end of each row, just each section, so it can be difficult to keep track of things. In the end I figured that if I’ve got the right number of stitches to repeats then I must be doing OK, and this seemed to work.

The problem is that when you do make a mistake - and I made two - you don’t find out until you’re on the next pattern row (there’s a purl row between each), and when you’re knitting more than 200 stitches this can take rather a long time and involve quite a lot of counting, undoing and redoing. Both my mistakes involved missing out a yarn over, which was easy to spot so I could just make a stitch in the appropriate place and merrily carry on without too much fuss. If you’ve forgotten a k2tog or psso, however, it’s going to be a tad more frustrating as you will have to undo (and redo) nearly three rows.

This is a project that needs to be blocked. Once I’d cast off (nice cast off method, by the way: k2tog, slip stitch back onto left-hand needle and repeat. I’d never seen that before and it creates a lovely cast off edge), the lace section looked, well, a bit rubbish. All scrunched up and ugly. But after a bit of work with some pins and an ironing board, the lace really came into its own - a pretty, leaf-like pattern with a pointy edge.

I’m certainly pleased with the finished object and I’m planning on taking it on holiday with me as a posh evening cover up. Now I just need to go somewhere posh.

Lovely! Now I just need an invite to some place posh so I can wear it.

Yarn review: Manos Silk Blend

Composition: 70% extra-fine merino and 30% kettle-dyed silk
Tension: 22sts x 30 rows
Length: 270 metres per 100g hank
Colourway: Candyfloss
Price: £15 (from SoSusie Yarns at Archway Market)

Now that my Ishbel is done, I’ve been able to concentrate on testing out a yarn I’ve had for a while. Manos Silk Blend is, as you might expect, a gorgeous mix of silk and merino from fair-trade organisation Manos del Uruguay.

In progress: the colour and stitch pattern are shown off nicely.

Manos del Uruguay is a non-profit social organisation which, since 1968, has provided jobs for craftswomen living in Uruguay rural areas. The yarns are hand made and dyed in small lots, and the collective also produces clothing and artisanal goods.

The yarns really are luscious and Silk Blend is truly gorgeous: soft to the touch, smooth and warm. It has a very high ‘squish factor’, as I like to call it - a yarn’s ability to produce that need in all knitters and crocheters to grab a yarn and squash it, stroke it and hold it against our skin.

A very simple k2tog/YO pattern was used to create the lattice effect. The merino blend combined with the open-work stitches should produce a very warm yet lightweight hat.

This is not a very tightly wrapped yarn and I was slightly concerned it would be splitty but it’s not all. It’s actually really nice to knit with, although I would suggest that metal needles would be better than wooden or bamboo. I used a metal circular and the yarn slid along it nicely, but I suspect it might stick on the rougher surface of wood or bamboo. It knits up nicely and the stitch definition is lovely.

The lacy cap I designed to test the yarn shows off the variegated colour well, I think, and the super-soft blend of silk and merino means it’s safe for even the most sensitive of heads. The pattern will be available shortly via Ravelry and as a kit from SoSusie Yarns - watch this space!

The finished hat. It would make a great gift for a baby or little girl.

Shawl thing

I have a confession: I’m a little bit tired today. You see, I stayed up till gone 1am to get my Ishbel shawl finished. We’ve all done it - just a few rows to the end, so you might as well carry on. But when those rows are around 300 stitches long, it takes a tad longer than you might hope. But at least it’s done.

This really is a project that will benefit from blocking. At the moment it doesn’t look that great. The lace is all bunched up, rather than light and airy, which a good blocking will sort right out. I'm pleased with it though, and I've decided I really do love knitting lace.

The finished shawl. It will be much bigger and much lacier when blocked.

Lace detail. It will look much better when blocked.

Easy stocking stitch centre section.

The drugs do work

For those who don't know, in July 2007 I was diagnosed with severe depression. I was signed off work and prescribed Citalopram. I knew nothing about this drug other than what my GP told me: it's a selected seratonin re-uptake inhibitor or SSRI, the same family of drugs as Prozac. A scary thought - I've read Prozac Nation.

Severe depression means that it was bad. I hadn't just thought about killing myself, I'd planned how I'd do it. So when I say that Citalopram saved my life I'm not being melodramatic.

Citalopram, an SSRI. Photo by Fimpelman (commons.wikimedia.org).

Mental illness is not well understood in the UK. And depression is one of the most prevalent and least understood. (Along with alcoholism, but that's a whole different story.) I kept my depression hidden from most people at the beginning, telling only a select few, most of whom were very supportive. Even my own father thought I should have been able to just myself out of it, that it was a matter of choice.

My boyfriend of the time didn't really get it either. He tried, but there were days when I could barely get out of bed and he would get home filled with silent resentment that I hadn't done the housework. It's difficult to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it just how exhausting even the tiniest things can be. At times just sitting up in bed was completely draining.

Citalopram gave me my life back. But it also cut me off from myself. It was like being two separate entities. The human being who went to work, paid bills, was a productive and useful member of society. I'm deliberately avoiding words like machine and automaton here, because it wasn't mechanical. It was organic, autonomous. It just wasn't informed by that other part of me, the feeling, creative part that in my depression had become my enemy.

I couldn't write. I couldn't create. I was studying for an MA at the time and after four days stating at a blank page I had to come off the drugs in order to write an essay. My brain went haywire. I felt dizzy and spaced out, but my 5,000 word essay was written in a matter of days. It probably goes without saying that I did this without my doctor's knowledge.

But the worst thing for me, as a wannabe novelist, was that I couldn't write fiction. The words just weren't there anymore. For as long as I can remember I've written fiction. It's part of who I am. My brain was forever coming up with new ideas for novels, stories, plots, subplots, characters, even a screenplay once, and I got huge pleasure from making these real through words. And suddenly I couldn't do it anymore. That part of my brain was no longer accessible. I hated it. Right from the beginning I wanted to get off Citalopram.

It’s taken four and a half years of slowly decreasing my dosage, with a few setbacks, notably last January when things got really dark again, but a few weeks ago I stopped taking Citalopram. So far it’s been fine.

Life is certainly harder without Citalopram. Being on it is like being in a bubble that protects you from life’s sharp edges. It’s like having a nice comforting barrier between you and what’s happening to you. Life without Citalopram is more raw, more real. Emotions are more vivid. Sometimes I find myself crying for no reason, the final episode of the latest series of Being Human was a total blub-fest. But there are also moments of joy, just at the wonderousness of life. And I’m writing again. Short stories, two whole chapters of a children’s fantasy novel, and of course this blog post. 

I've gone on quite a bit, so as a reward for getting to the end, here's a cute picture of a cat. Own photo.