Re-purposing

Autumn draughts are coming under the door.  I had a pair of rough, scrappy, yarn arm warmers on my display hand - they only have openings for the thumb.  I sewed these, up then the two lengths toogehter and stuffed them.  Voila, a draught excluder.

The Colours of October

 Not much knitting going on as the whole house is being painted.  The paint company has called one colour "glistening grey" and it is pure lavender!

Friends of Elf

 Finger puppets.  I now have to make up a story around Goldilocks and the One Bear, the 'armless wizard and his black cat, a boy in over-sized dungarees, a very long-eared (but not floppy) bunny, a snowman and a pirate with an eye patch.  Good luck with that, Mary!

Elf

 'Elf and safety?  S'elf help?  No, just a plain lil ol' elf in handknitting.  Fun, but SO fiddly!

When Life gives you lemons..

 🍋🍋🍋...the only thing to do is make lemonade.

In a single day, some of my ideas for sale were rejected - but they will make Christmas Gifts.  And I was sent a huge bag of yarn, some of which cannot be used on the CSM - so I am handknitting some socks.  The added bonus of this one is trying out a pattern for tabbed socks which a fellow cranker has adapted from the original CSM pattern to handknit, both toe up and cuff down.  It should be quicker than normal a) because they are shorter, b) because the yarn is thicker.  Will also incorporate the "no wrap, no turn heel" - once I re-work the maths!

Plus a clearout of desk drawers revealed ancient 3 and 5 inch floppy discs and re-writeable dvds.  The latter gave me a storage lid and a device for centering circular labels, both of which are perfect sizes for coveing the top of CSMs.  Not so much to keep dust out as to protect my sleeves from the needles when I reach over them to get into cupboards.

Cleaning up for a sock

 

The white picot frills on the clown showed me the machine needed cleaning.  The cylinder was black, the base of the cam shell oozing black oil.  Soon done, plus extra oil on the uplift cam lugs.  And lo and behold the right uplift cam is now behaving itself so I can knit backwards and forwards without having that to worry about.  I tried out tabbed short socks (meant for wearing in trainers).  Each one has sort of three heels - a small folded one for the tab, a deep one for the heel and a normal one for the toe, so the machine got a good workout.

Next thing to try out is integral pockets.  Plan is to lift all needles out of work except 12, knit on those for 20-30 rows, knit all round again. Finishing edge will have to be done by hand.  The intention is for socks with teddy pockets.  Then to make mini teddies on the Knitmaster.  

I have some brown tweedy yarn, rather stiff, so has to be washed before sewing up.  The handknit pattern has to be adapted.  Due to the small scale of the arms, I decided to knit them wider and roll instead of stuffing them. 

Hung out to dry

 

One kitchen curtain.  Washed, stretched and lightly spray starched in hte vain hpe that it will be the correct size for the windom, which isn't loking likley!