Led Astray

I didn't do much embroidery or knitting over the weekend. Why not? A friend gave me a pile of back issues of knitting magazines and I spent my time leafing through them. I read about things like illusion knitting that I'd never heard of. I like reading interviews with designers - how they started, what inspires them etc. I put markers in pages that I plan to come back to, so that I don't have to go through the whole pile again to find them. There's a pair of socks that I simply must knit!

No no

My triangle has come to a point too quickly. The pattern gives the space between decreases in centimetres, which I translated into rows, but clearly got it wrong. I will just have to unravel this and begin the front of my cardigan again. At least knitting is easy to undo!

First Stitches

I've made a start to my embroidery. I cut a window in the covering muslin to expose one flower. I'm not convinced my chain stitch is absolutely smooth, but I don't want to keep starting again. If I get to the end of the project and decide I can do better after a lot of practise, I'll redo it then.

After I'd worked my sample, I read Mary Corbet's post Hand Embroidery Tips for Beginners and Beyond. I followed a link there to read about joining in new threads and realised I hadn't used the best method in my sample. I used the Away Waste Knot method, basically leaving a strand of thread that I sewed into the back of the work afterwards. It's a bit fiddly, especially with a small frame like mine, and wasteful of thread. So now I'm following Mary's instructions for anchor stitches on a line. I make a few small stitches of back stitch that will be covered by the subsequent chain stitch.

The stitches should be closer together, but even so I can see the method is effective and uses up less thread. So, I've learnt something, thanks Mary.

At The Same Time....

I started knitting the right front of my cardigan. It's rather complicated. The sides must be shaped every 6 rows, the middle panel every 4 rows. The cables must be twisted every six rows. The buttonhole band is included, so the buttonholes must be made at specified intervals too. I've made myself a little rough sketch to show all these manoeuvres and help me keep my wits about me.

The pattern doesn't specify an individual designer, just 'Drops Design Studio', but whoever wrote the pattern must've given a lot of thought to how to explain all this in a succinct way. I think they did a pretty good job. Basically, the processes are given separately and the knitter must put them all together.

Preparing The Fabric

Enough procrastination, time to prepare my fabric for embroidery. First of all I shrunk the fabric by wetting it thoroughly. I cut a generous piece, quite a bit bigger than the design, and pressed it with a steam iron. Next, I used my sewing machine to neaten the edges:

Then I used a running stitch to mark the half way lines of the fabric:

Luckily I have a glass table, and with the sun shining today I don't even need a lamp underneath it. I taped the paper pattern to the glass table, then taped the fabric on top, matching the centre lines. Then I took a deep breath and started tracing the pattern onto the fabric, using a ball point pen:

The pen goes along more smoothly than the pencil I used for my sample and I was surprised how easily the job went.

The embroidery project is going to take me a long time and I don't want it to get dirty. So I've covered it with a light muslin, which I tacked down. I'll cut 'windows' into the muslin to expose the area I want to work on. So now I'm all set to begin:

Cardigan Progress

The first thing I did was to knit a tension square. This was especially important because I'm using a yarn different to that specified in the pattern.  It measures just what it should, so that's fine, I can carry on with the pattern without changing needles or making adjustments.

I've knitted the back up to the armholes. I marked the rows where I decreased and increased to shape the back. That helped me count the rows between manoeuvres and will help me match the pieces properly when I sew the garment together:

Again

Hmmm. I see the principle of muskaan's earring pattern but I found it quite difficult to get the earrings square and neat.