Making Dresses

This week I have been working on my dress collection. I felt I needed some glamour in my Sylvanian collection and I began to create some pretty frocks. The first dresses are knitted with 2mm needles and either 4ply sock yarn or lace weight, giving every knitter the opportunity to knit these designs. Here is my lacy dress, worn by Mother Rabbit.

The lace pattern is loosely based on a Shetland design, depicting the wavy effect left on the sands by a receding tide. The sleeves are knitted at the same time as the bodice, avoiding a seam and too many ends.
 When choosing a simpler design for the beginner miniature knitter I picked another 2mm/4ply combination and created this flared dress (modelled by Miss Rabbit and her long-tailed friend) which relies on the chosen yarn for its stripey or textured effect.
The dress on the right is knitted in a 4ply crepe. I couldn't resist adding borders of feather stitch on to the turquoise dress - I have a delightful book 'Dorset Feather Stitchery' by Olivia Pass, published at least thirty or forty years ago which I used to take out of the public library on a regular basis just to gaze at. Just recently, I bought myself a copy on Amazon so that I can now enjoy the clever use of a simple English traditional stitch.

I used a technique found on modern Shetland shawls when knitting-on the edging: to join the backs to the fronts as I worked, thus avoiding yet another seam.
Today was a lovely day, sunny and warm, and I broke off my knitting to go and work in the garden. I tidied the compost heap, starting a new heap adjacent to the winter's contributions, which I covered with a layer of soil and some flattened cardboard boxes to keep off the rain - the heap is quite wet enough already! As I was trimming off the front to enable the front wall to be added, I saw something red move in the rotting weeds. Red; I couldn't think of any wildlife that was red, so I gently moved the weeds aside and discovered a red frog. He (it wasn't big enough for a 'she') moved further into the vegetation so I couldn't really look properly without destroying the compost heap. Most of our frogs are green or shades of yellow.
When they eventually go into the adjacent garden pond to couple and lay their frogspawn I shall look out for a red frog. The male frogs are easier to see because they hang on to the females' backs and are therefore on the surface of the water; that is, unless they see you coming when they both will gently duck under water for a couple of minutes.
Usually the first frogspawn is produced in February here in our part of Dorset, but it is 1st March today and so far there are no frogs in the water. Tadpoles will be late this year. The toads usually follow about three weeks later.
My next task is to test knit another dress; this one is in fine yarn and No17 (1.5mm needles)

Neatening the neck

One of the methods of knitting a neckline in Woolly Woodlander patterns involves casting off a few stitches in the middle of a row, to separate the two shoulder bands. This can give an unsatisfactory finish to the neckline, with a strange droopy lopsided effect to one side.















There is a way to neaten the neckline and to create a prettier effect. On the example here the instructions say 'K4, cast off 3, k to end'.














To make my new neckline, cast off also the last of the initial K4 stitches, so that the row reads, 'K3, cast off 4 ...'

Stop at this point and slip the last stitch off the right hand needle back on to the left hand needle, you now have only the first 3 sts on your right hand needle.

Push the point of the right hand needle into the first of the cast off stitches, from the back to the front.
Continue with the pattern instructions but on the first of the decrease rows to the neck edge of the right shoulder which in this example is a wrong-side row, check that you make a p2tog through back of the loops, thus twisting the stitches to give a left-leaning chain effect when viewed from the front (or slip 1,knit 1, pass slipped stitch over if a 'right-side' row). An opposing p2tog (or k2tog) on the second shoulder will complete a neat and attractive neckline.
This method can be used when casting off for any reason in the middle of a row; for a pocket, a sleeve etc. and I use it frequently, even on items of clothing for real people!
Please send me a message from the Contact page on my website http://www.woollywoodlanders.co.uk if you have any queries.

I begin knitting ...

A few months ago I needed an hobby for a few weeks of enforced rest. What should I do? I considered reading (I didn't need to be THAT still) and writing (but I'd just finished a 2-year career as a freelance journalist and really wanted a change) and so I thought I would return to my long-time activity of knitting.
After several pairs of socks, I needed a new project and decided to knit clothes for some of the members of our Silvanian clan who looked decidedly naked after rather rough handling by youngest grandchildren. I no time at all I had a few dresses and trousers.#
"Oh, good", commented husband. "Now you can start using up the trunk full of wool you inherited from your mother!" But more interestingly, grandchildren loved the new clothes. I sent a selection of 9-year-old Estella in Sussex, and her mother told me that she opened the package, squealed with delight and ran up to her Sylvanian world, not to reappear until suppertime.
I knew I had a winner.
So I started making a range of clothes to fit all the sizes of families, and wrote the knitting instructions. I made each item several times, checking the details and sizes, simplifying the directions until I was happy with the result. I too was delighted with the finished pattern, to be named Rustic, as the style of the clothes was decidedly rural.

"You need a website", I was told, so I set about building one. It took a lot longer than I anticipated as the webbuilder I chose worked in an unusual way and the html it generated was very complex - very different from my first website which I wrote in Notepad some fifteen years ago.

So woollywoodlanders.co.uk was born - and is growing each week. Do visit it, please, so that my stats can begin to climb.