I found a local miniatures group, and went to my first meeting last night. I've noticed that the brick-and-mortar shops I went to when making No.16 -- goodness, almost ten years ago! -- are all gone now, so there are even fewer places to go for hands-on advice and help, so I thought I should set about making enquiries. This group is very welcoming and friendly, so I'm looking forward to it.
One of the regular activities is a door-prize table, where the previous winners bring something to the next meeting, and I was one of the evening's winners, as it happened, so I am on the hook for an item for next month's meeting. The very-casual rules were "under five dollars, no kits -- well, and no junk"! so as I walked home afterwards I wondered what I might make, since I didn't want to buy something. I've been pondering miniature knitting anyway, having bags and bags of Paternayan wool left over from my three-times-too-much purchase for the Shirvan carpet, and then I remembered one of the books I've got, Venus Dodge's Dolls House Needlecrafts, and its chapter on miniature knitting.
After poring over it the rest of the evening, I decided on the scarf set -- scarf, hat, and mittens (thumb-less, but you barely notice at this scale) -- and this morning I got out the crewel wool and my 000 needles, but upon getting towards the tip of the mitten, decided that the scale was really just too big, and anyway the Paternayan comes in pre-cut strands, which are just not long enough for the mitten, so would definitely have to be spliced for the hat and scarf, and most importantly, it just looked wonky. Then I remembered the bag of Woolike from Michaels I stocked up on in a daze at their having anything finer than worsted. (Superfine! at Michaels! even though it is acrylic -- superfine!) And this turned out to work very well indeed! Being extraordinarily squishy, I could use those 000s and the knitting looked great, very even and tidy, and as small as I could manage at this point in time.
The mittens are knitted flat, turned right-sides-together, and sewn up. Yes, I thought about working them in the round, but 12 sts on 000 needles ... not just yet. I don't know now why mattress stitch -- which I tried and picked out -- didn't seem to work on this, but it didn't. Maybe the two edges didn't fold themselves under the right way? I would recommend, by the way, leaving a longish tail at the cast-on, and using that to sew up to the tip, instead of coming down the seam with the bind-off end, so that a) you don't inadvertently misalign the bottom edge (cough), and b) you don't have to weave in the ends of yarn, since they can lie invisibly inside the mitten with no-one the wiser.
I made the scarf next, such a simple piece of knitting that I entirely forgot to take a picture of it, thinking about working the hat in the round ...
Which I did, and because it was 30 sts instead of 12, it was certainly more suited to that. I actually used 28 sts, since I didn't need a seam allowance.
It didn't seem like a real hat without a jolly pompom, but I couldn't see myself just gluing one on, as the instructions have it, so with almost no effort at all I found a half-dozen tutorials online about making "miniature" pompoms using a fork. Most of these are just "really small" pompoms, not dollhouse-sized, so I dug out an old child's tableware set I've got, for as small a pompom as possible.
(Look at those sharp tines! Those were the days!)
This is actually the second attempt -- the first, with forty wraps, was too sparse and too loose, and the threads just slipped out. I tied the knot as tightly as I dared, but didn't want to risk the yarn breaking, so for the second attempt I not only made sixty wraps, but also used a length of sturdy buttonhole twist in addition to the length of yarn (which I kept for attaching the pompom later).
I realized in hindsight that it probably doesn't matter how big or small the fork is, since you can trim the resulting pompom as much or as little as you like, but there it is.
I wasn't at all sure that I could trim the ends of an acrylic yarn closely without it slipping out of place, so I've just left them like this, with secure knots. The color of the twist was intentional, to be honest, so that I could see it!
But these helped too. ("They come in fives? I'm getting some --")
So here is the full set, worked up in just a few hours, even with some false starts and cups of tea. The scale is a little big, I know, but it fits the brief! and I'm actually quite pleased with them. I left the fringes long and the pompom large so that the new owner can trim them to her liking.
Hurray!
Charming. Glad you've found your tribe.
Indeed.... FIVES???
Posted by: Susan D | January 10, 2017 at 08:24 AM
No wonder you needed the Fives!
Posted by: Toffeeapple | January 10, 2017 at 10:54 AM