Well - I promised I would relate the saga of my #Wovember knit once the new year was underway so here goes. For those who don't know, #Wovember is about "celebrating WOOL and the fine folk who raise and work with it, throughout the month of November". Wovember began in 2011 and you can read more about it here:
I wanted the pouffe to be grey to match the room it was to go in as it had to fit in with this:
and this:
So I dyed a wool blanket grey (cheat's tip - I used Dylon's Antique Grey machine dye which although not for wool worked out just fine!) and then cut it up to make a giant ball of wool ...
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| Dyed Blanket in Dylon's Antique Grey |
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| Blanket cut into yarn and rolled into a ball (please note autumnal leaves for #Wovember authenticity!) |
I took up my needles and commenced my project. All was going fine until my needles ran out of space before I'd finished increasing so I had to pause the project while I got some longer needles. (Top tip: if you get some needles like this it's as well to glue the wooden ends into the tubing as under any pressure they can pop off and you start losing stitches until you can get them back on again which is altogether a bit of a snag!)
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| Big circular needles (25mm) |
Some time later, longer needles at the ready and ends glued in, I carried on and promptly ran out of wool. Drat, drat and double drat! I dyed another blanket grey but hadn't paid enough attention to the texture of said blanket. Not suitable - didn't even bother to cut it up and set it to one side. Actually this bit has a happy ending but more of that later. Next I selected another blanket to dye (more suitable this time!). However this one came out much darker Antique Grey - wool is allocated to dye lots for a reason! Never mind this will just add some great shading within my creation. Remember: there are no mistakes just design solutions! Note to self: next time dye adequate blanketing all at once! And at last (a few days before Christmas) my pouffe was complete.
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| Finished Big Knit Pumpkin Pouffe (Note the great shading towards the bottom!) |
This is where the happy ending comes in because at this stage the pouffe needed stuffing. First I put in the spare dyed grey blanket (because you can see the colour of the stuffing through the knitting and I wanted to retain the grey colour.) What foresight - dyeing a blanket in advance specially for this purpose! You'd be amazed what you need to stuff a pouffe this size. In it there are a pair of floor length lined curtains (2 widths in each), 2 cushion pads, the aformentioned grey blanket and another blanket. The actual size of this pouffe is 55cm by 33cm. The pattern suggested it would be 45cm by 17cm so mine did turn out a little bigger but that's fine. Or perhaps I should have cut the wool a little thinner.
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| Grey Pouffe with Green Accents |
Final dilemma - having stuffed the pouffe - I discovered a dropped stitch. What to do now? I cut a piece of green blanket and made a feature tie (matches the other fabrics in the room!) and then added a piece of green in the centre to bring it all together. The question is, should I add more green ties or is one enough? What do you think?
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| Dropped stitch solution - green tie |
And finally, I'm not sure how long it took me to make this pouffe, what with the preparation of the wool, the delays with the needles and running out of wool and all that but I enjoyed making it, (although it was quite hard work moving the wool round the needles), I've learned from my design solutions (!) and I've found somewhere to put a whole load of things I didn't know what to do with! Not sure whether I'm going to make another though ....
