Puggy

As I mentioned in Christmas presents 2012, I made my sister a knitted dachshund due to being requested to make a pug by a friend of mine. This pug took over a fair amount of time during the Christmas-present-making-time, but was actually quite enjoyable to make. Possibly why I decided to make another breed of dog from the book.

The book in question is 'Best In Show: Knit Your Own Dog', and around the middle of November I received a quick snap of a page in the book with a message asking whether I'd be able to make it. I said of course I'd be able to (after having a quick look at the pattern to make sure I wouldn't be letting anyone down!), and set to ordering some nice wool. And, believe me, the wool was nice. 

Very soon after the wool dropped through my letterbox, I made a start on the dog. It had some stitches that I'd never attempted before and therefore I found sections of it trickier than I might otherwise have done. I also found that whilst knitting up the different pieces was mostly fine, the hardest part about making a knitted dog was the sewing up. I am notoriously bad at sewing projects up (I still haven't finished my wife's Birthday Blanket, but shhhh) but I obviously had no choice here. The pattern directions didn't really help with the sewing up in terms of the specific, and so I mostly relied on the pictures in the book. More particularly, I found the face very tricky to make, as I really have no idea as to what a pug reeeeeally looks like. I googled pugs more than a couple of times while working on this project just to look at their little faces.

In the end though, both my friend and her mother (who the gift was for) were really impressed with the pug, so I figure I did a good job. I also got some homemade truffles out of the bargain, and got to make something I probably wouldn't have otherwise. All in all, a good turn out, I'd say.

So here is the little pug that I knitted:

Another twenty-second birthday

Last Thursday was my wife's twenty-second birthday, and in true me-style I had to make her something. Simply buying a present is never enough. For quite a while I had no idea what to make her, then after looking on Pinterest, I found this, and decided that it would be perfect. 

After a quick trip to Wickes to buy supplies, I set to making the string heart, starting with a piece of timberboard:

I then spray-painted it in silver, trying to make sure I didn't get any of our bedroom painted in the process. After three or four thin coats I decided it was covered well enough, as I still wanted the wood grain to show through:

Next, I grabbed a piece of brown paper and sketched out a heart shape, trying to ensure that it filled as much of the wood as possible without being a very warped shape. This is the heart I ended up with, and then taped onto the wood:

 

Then came the noisy bit (which definitely confused my wife to hear); hammering in nails around the edges of the heart. I tried to make them evenly spaced around the shape, although this inevitably didn't quite happen.

Once I'd carefully removed the brown paper, this is what I was left with:

Now it was time to attach the string. I actually used some red double knitting wool I had lying around. After tying it around the bottom nail I proceeded to fill in the heart, making sure each nail was used at least once and then just playing it by ear to make a pattern that I found pleasing. To finish off the heart I wrapped the wool all the way around the outside of the heart to help shape it, tied the wool to the bottom nail again and then used a little clear nail varnish to help secure it.

After finishing the string heart, I had the slightly interesting job of trying to hide such a large present somewhere in our one bedroom flat without my wife catching sight of it, or any of the supplies I'd used to make it!

Here's a quick picture of my wife on her birthday, with the cake I made her:

A box for wool

While the majority of our belongings have been locked away in a storage facility back in England, we obviously have some stuff in our teeny apartment. This is an apartment where pretty much all of the storage is shelving, and where I seem to have managed to collect a surprising amount of wool for such a (relatively) short stay. I decided now was the time to do something about it, also bearing in mind that I know we'll have to be moving everything pretty soon now!

As we also have a very limited budget, and a huge stack of newspapers, picked up on the train every morning on my wife's commute to work, I decided to fashion something out of them. 

I started out by making lots of strips that I could weave together by folding individual pages into eight.

Then made a start on the weaving:

At this point I wasn't entirely sure how big I would make this wool box, so just kept going until I thought it looked the right size. This happened to be eight strips by ten:

Then time to make the sides:

After adding some more strips just by slotting them into each other, the box grew:

And grew:

Until I figured it was probably big enough. Big enough was eleven strips high, and then it was time to finish off the top edge. I did this by folding the ends of the strips into the middle of the uppermost horizontal strip and taping them down:

Main construction finished:

Then I decided to make a lining for the box so that the newspaper ink didn't get on the wool that'd go in the box 'cos that'd be no good. To do this, I just cut up a clear plastic bag to line the sides, and a square of a white plastic bag for the bottom, then taped them into place. The overlap of plastic at the top was then also folded into the middle of the top horizontal strip and taped down. To finish the box I taped the top edge up, and ta-da, done:

With wool in:

Those are 400g balls of wool, to give an indication of size, and the box ended up using ninety-three strips.