The return, and knitting owlette's knitted/crocheted wedding

Hello... I am still here... I have unfortunately been afflicted with a horrible disease which has stopped me from posting anything. You may have heard of it? Its called laziness...

Its been a very busy 7 months, with working full-time and planning a wedding, but that's no excuse. I will try and be better!

So yes, big thing happened, got married back in June. Of course my first thought (well, after "fuck,  I now need to plan a wedding") was that I needed a knitted bouquet. Other than Mr Owl, no one else was really sold on the idea (no flowers at the wedding? will they really stand up?), but I ignored them as usual.

I started playing around with patterns on Ravelry and dug out a book that I won on a WI raffle but had never looked at. Then, after seeing this (there was a lot of pinterest and googling going on), I decided I absolutely had to have lavender, and bought the book that the pattern was from.

As you can imagine, I ended up with a ton of rejects that I wanted to somehow use. I had a first crazy idea to do some sort of wall piece but the scale of that seemed a little too much. Mr Owl then suggested that I make mini bouquets to tie up on the aisle chairs as decorations. And that became the plan. I was excited. Of course at the point I had not realised the scale of that task. Each bouquet had to have at least 6 flowers otherwise it would look sad. We initially had decided to do 10 rows of chairs, so that's 20 bouquets. Which means 120 flowers plus foliage plus the actual bouquet plus the buttonholes.

I'm not going to describe how at some point I lost the will to live and cursed myself for my crazy ideas. Instead, I'll pretend it never happened and just share some pretty photos with you, taken by my lovely photographer Hannah.

If you are wondering about the flowers, we have daisies from this book, the lavender, campanula and leaves from this book, a generic flower pattern from this book and a carnation I found on Ravelry. There's also a dark purple flower that I honestly have forgotten where its from but probably from one of the first two books.

I used florist wire for the stem, which I anchored through the base of flower and then twisted in itself, essentially halving its length and doubling its width. I don't remember the size (width and length) but medium width and long length is a good guess. I found that the really fine wire was just too flimsy and the very thick wire was difficult to use.

I toyed with the idea of knitting an icord to cover the stem but quickly decided that it wasn't necessary and just used washi tape instead. But beware, when I ran out of washi tape I bought some florist tape and it was a nightmare to use as its not as sticky...

As I wanted a more wild-, natural-looking bouquet, I didn't stick the flowers in a styrofoam ball, like others have done before. I just tied the whole thing together with string and then covered it with a crochet lace ribbon.

The mini bouquets are basically the same but have some other random flowers and leaves in them too (from the two books). I ended up using 7 flowers in each but did fewer bouquets.

And finally, the lavender buttonhole was made in essentially the same way but I used much much shorter wire of course.

Some final thoughts. Crochet is definitely better for flowers than knitting. Especially for anyone making as many flowers, crochet is so much faster and produces a much tighter/stiffer flower. The only one that was worth doing as a knitted flower was the lavender.

If anyone reading this is thinking about it, my advice is do it, even if just for the bouquet. Yes, there was cursing, yes I had to go to the pub with my yarn to stay on schedule, but I now have a beautiful bouquet in my living room that will always remind me of my wedding day. Plus, all the bouquets disappeared from the chairs as soon as the ceremony was over, which made it worth the effort! 

A hood obsession

I have developed a slight hood obsession, quite possibly because we had quite the rainy winter here in the UK. Not only rain, but wind too, which usually means that there is no way you can hold an umbrella up.

Yes, hoods are clearly the answer, but not all my coats have hoods, so what is a girl to do? Well, knit one (or two) of course!

The first one is the Under the cover of midnight cowl from the vampire knits book - not really a hood per se, more like a giant cowl that you can pull over a head to cover your hair. I made this over Christmas but have just been too lazy to write about it for some reason.

The yarn is Colinette One Zero, a bulky loveliness that I picked up at the Alexandra Palace knitting show in October. At the time I was torn between this cowl and the Woodland hoodie from the Woodland Knits book (also picked at the Alexandra Palace knitting show), and so I bought 5 skeins, a compromise between the 4 skeins of the midnight cowl and the 6 skeins of the woodland hoodie.

As it turns out, only 3 were necessary, although I have a vague memory that I may have stopped a little short than what the pattern actually called for because I was on holiday away from home with 3 skeins and wanted to finish it before I got back.

Warding off vampires by covering the neck

As a hood

As a capelet

close-up of the cable

The second hood is actually a crochet hood plus scarf combo - is that called a scood? or a harf? No idea. Anyway, I saw this in Mollie Makes issue issue 37, and it is originally from Aran Nordic Fair Isle translated into English from the original Japanese.

For a change I actually bought the recommended yarn, Drops Karisma, which is insanely cheap for 100% wool and fairly decent, although not as soft as what I would normally go for (I bought it online so lacked the tactile element of the buying process, which normally involves me gently rubbing the skein against my face, weird!).

I thought I had checked my gauged properly, but as I was making it I realised that it was much bigger than what the pattern said,  thankfully early enough to not do two pattern repeats at the top/middle bit of the hood. Similarly, I made the scarf ends shorter (instead following the length directions, although one side is shorter because I ran out of yarn). I also added a slit at the start left scarf to pass the other end through, but it's not been incredibly helpful.

close-up

I can't decide if I like it or not, it doesn't quite look like a scarf when worn (I was jokingly called babushka because it looks more like a headscarf), and the scarf bit of it is not especially warm, so a little pointless. 

Emergency procrastination - short and sweet bolero

This was running the risk of becoming a graveyard of unfinished knitting projects, but thankfully I have finally finished something. And no, it is not the Petrie shell or the sweetheart jumper. I decided last weekend that I needed an emergency bolero or shrug to wear to a wedding this past Saturday. Which meant that I had to be done super quickly. Which meant a crochet project.


When I first learnt to crochet a few years ago I picked up the "happy hooker" stitch 'n bitch book to get to grips with the basics and to practice with some projects. I think one of the first things I ever made was the fit to be tied bag (made twice now) as a cute an easy project, and then became more adventurous and attempted the cupcake top (which I occasionally wear, although the bamboo yarn means it had stretched out a bit). But one of the projects that I always had my eye on was the short and sweet bolero, as a cute little cardie to wear in the summer.

So the choice for which bolero/shrug to make was easy. And yes, it was in fact pretty speedy, although it did involve some furious, non-stop crocheting on the whole of that Sunday to get the body done (achy hands!), plus a couple of hours on the Monday and Tuesday to do the sleeves. I had some issues following this pattern which are not new apparently ( I found quite a few helpful comments on Ravelry), and when making the right front I ended up following the chart rather than the written pattern. Otherwise it was pretty easy to do and memorise.

The yarn is rico cotton, which is aran weight rather than worsted, so I decided to go for the smallest size (naughtily did not check my gauge) and that worked out great. Although I did find that, as a result of the weighty yarn, the bolero was heavier than expected. This means that it holds its shape very well though, but still I think I may have preferred to make it with dk in a bigger size. Incidentally, that was my plan, as I have a tunic in dk weight that I never wear, but despite my efforts I totally failed at picking it.

Anyway, the good news is that I have a decent photo of me modelling it for a change,  so you do not have to endure yet another grumpy-looking selfy! Thankfully taken after only two glasses of champagne too :p

yay! she smiles at last

Crochet bow headband

Procrastination continues, this time in the form of a crochet headband. This is based loosely on the construction of the knitted one I made last time, which I thought was pretty clever.

The idea was that it might be handy to have a cotton one that is much thinner than the knitted one I made before to keep my hair in control when the weather is warm. I was probably a little spurred on by the fact that I am going on holiday to Peru (yay!) very very soon. I figured that a crochet version would be much much faster to make than another knitted one, so I decided to have a stab at designing one myself. I tried a few ways of doing it and this was the best and easiest one. This is obviously very very basic, as I haven't quite ventured into the designing world yet. So bear with me if the instructions are crap.

Yarn: (I think) Pattons cotton DK
Hook: 4mm

First, ch10, then hdc on the second chain from the hook and across - 8hdc
For the next row, chain hdc across, and continue until the headband is the desired size (mine was 56 rows). At that point, join the two edges together using slip stitch. You can obviously stop here for a plain one.
For the flap of the bow, turn and hdc along the next 5 stitches, turn, hdc on the same stitch and across (5 stitches). Continue for 10 rows. Cut the yarn, leaving quite a long tail, and secure the last stitch on the hook.
For the bow itself, ch8, turn and sc across (8sc). Continue for 17 rows, and then cut the yarn, securing the final stitch.
Place the bow on the headband so that the flap runs across its middle, then turn the flap under the headband and then over the bow. Line up with the edge of the bow and of the headband and sew it on. If this makes no sense whatsoever, have a look at the pattern for the seedy bow headband, she had helpful pictures showing how to do this.

Hard to tell with black yarn, sorry!