Sock pair #34

Made for a friend ’cause she really likes hand knit socks and deserves the treat.

I had some beautiful bright crazy zauberball in red/pink/purple, but not enough for a pair. I had some more of the same kind of yarn, but I didn’t want the white. So I overdyed it. Can’t take the yellow out, so the orange had to stay.

Then wound off each colourway into halves

Toe, heel and cuff are knitted in a single yarn. The rest is done in alternating rows. I rather like the effect. Coordinated, not quite matchy.

 

Meh

I’m a bit sad. I had this lovely soft, shiny, prettily printed rayon velvet.

“Ah, that will make a nice summer* cover for the hexagonal cushion”…. or so I thought. It turned out ok but blah.

Part of the problem I think is that a hexagon is not the most elegant shape for a cushion. The reason I have this custom shaped, feather filled cushion insert is for this hand pieced silk tumbling block patchwork cover:

The other problem is that the size and shape lost the interest of the rest of the print, which was chinese lanterns. Oh well, I will use this for a while and maybe make a more interesting one later. I do like the fancy effect on the stitching used to create the border. It’s a double zigzag with two strings run through a cording foot. I might use this again elsewhere.

The closure is my standard shell button arrangement

 

*I only use the fancy handsewn silk patchwork covers in winter. I prefer to have more easily washable ones out in summer when they meet more bare, possibly sweaty skin.

 

 

Repeatery for linkage:

Goth Budgie Tshirts

Earlier this year I drew up a budgified version of a medieval eagle for a woodwork project. A few days ago I felt like doing a bit of painting, but didn’t have enough brain for design. So I took my gothic eagle budgie and copied him onto a couple of remnant pieces of lovely fine mercerised cotton knit fabric.

The first one was just painted black like the original (nasty quality paint)

The second one ended up a more colourful and somewhat realistic version.

Then I was inspired to finally take a pattern from the utterly comfy baggy tshirt that I couldn’t get enough of last summer. Colourful budgie took up standard tshirt design position:

I’m not actually fond of wearing tshirts with bold designs front and centre. So I decided to put goth budgie on one side at hem level:

I was delighted that I managed to sew down the neck band seams neatly. When I’ve tried this in the past, I always ended up with a mess. This is done with a twin needle. The original seam was done on the overlocker.

Here is one on me. See, baggy and cool, especially in such fine knit.

and here is a little collection of new summer shirts. I cut and ran up a couple of others while I was at it. The fabric was all bought as remnants, sized somewhere between a bit too little for a tshirt and a bit too much. Hence the occasional contrast sleeve and neck band.