do you mind if i knit

The Alpaka Tunic by Deborah Newton - finished!

Finished! One lace dress.

A lace marathon, or that's how it felt to me.

I think the best thing I can do is get straight down to pictures, don't you?

So that's the lace dress with a fabric dress underneath.

I'll be telling you about the fabric dress I'm wearing underneath the knitted dress, next week, it's something I'm really pleased with, and want to share with you.

The next day, I wore my lace dress over jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt, for a slightly different look.

Which look do you prefer?

With dress?

Or trousers?

 I think I prefer the dress underneath, I love the colour contrast.

I'm not sure whether I enjoyed knitting this dress, the experience is a bit hazy. Because I had to concentrate when knitting it, I had to knit in fits and starts, a few rows here, a few rows there, when I had a quiet moment, and it seemed endless. I loved watching the lace pattern develop, that was wonderful. And I like the colour of the yarn, which I'd describe as burnt orange, but everyone else sees as red.

I would knit a lace garment again, despite the frustration and pain, purely because it seems like magic knitting. With a few yarn overs and knitting togethers and so-on, you get lace! MAGIC.

This pattern is called the "Alpaka Tunic", and it's by Deborah Newton. It's available to buy on-line from Interweave, as a single pattern, here.

There are some lovely photos of a beautiful lady wearing a grey version of the dress here.

I used 4 mm nedles to knit this, because the general consensus when looking at people's Alpaka Tunics on Ravelry, was that it comes out quite big if the 5.5 mm needles are used.

The yarn I used was "Scappa" DK, which is 100% wool, spun and hand dyed in Scotland. After washing, this yarn softened up.

My major modification to this dress was to not knit the sleeves, I felt it looked nicer with out them.

I started this dress 28th October 2011, as evidenced in this blog post. It was finished and blocked on 14th April 2012, so length of time to knit it? About five and a half months.

Thank you very much to Hugo for patiently taking the photos of me, he did a great job.

I'm going to go and put this on my ravelry page, here. On Ravelry I'm vanessahc, you can see all my other knitting projects here.

Righty-ho, I'd better be going, things to do, you know how it is.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Vanessa xxx

The Hare's Reflection in a Puddle.

Hello!

I was beginning to wonder where I'd disappeared to .......................

I've not been on holiday, or ill, I've just been working to the exclusion of everything else, I'm very sorry I've been so neglectful of my blog and not explained sooner.

So where did I leave off?

I think in my last blog post, I said I was going on a Screen Printing course, and so I did.

I had a WONDERFUL weekend, loved every minute. There was a group of eight of us, and the people on the course were so nice, everyone was very good natured and interesting. The tutor was lovely too, and a very good teacher. I plan to return and do some more Screen Printing soon.

The course was a gift, my family and Hugo all clubbed together and gave it to me for my Birthday, what a fantastic thing for them to do, I'm very grateful to them, such a wonderful present.

The image I'm showing you, is the piece I finished the weekend with.

There are four colour separations in this print, you can see the different layers I painted and drew on acetate, for each colour.

And above is the paper showing my working out the colours for each layer.

When I was at art college a long time ago, I did a little etching and quite a bit of Lithography. I'd always regarded screen printing as something you create bold graphic images with, and lots of flat colour, and that didn't really interest me. But when I saw Gerry Turley's screen prints, it changed my view of screen printing completely. You can build up fine layers, like with lithography, so I'm very enthusiastic about screen printing now.

This print fits quite nicely in an Ikea frame, always a useful thing in terms of keeping the costs down on framing.

Everyone on the course did an edition of six prints.

I haven't signed and numbered my prints yet, I must do that.

I quite like the idea of doing a set of four prints along the same lines as this piece, based on my sculptures.

Screen printing is so exciting, watching the image materialising as each layer is printed, is magical. There's a lot of practical stuff that goes in to the making of each layer, many different stages, but then you're rewarded with the end result of a picture, it's very gratifying.

I did my course at Edinburgh Printmakers, and I'd recommend them to anyone, it's a fantastic set up. Their website is here.

Before I go, I thought I'd give you a hint of my blog post for Friday, just to prove I'm not running off in to the mists of time and getting lost again.

On the 28th October last year, 2011, I did a blog post (here) about starting to knit a lace dress.

It's now finished!

And that's what my blog post on Friday is going to be about, showing lots of photos of the finished piece.

Cheerio!

Vanessa xxx