Baby It's Cold Outside - Part 3 of 3

Chunky wool knit is the fabric that keeps on giving! Somehow even after the poncho, I managed to get this hat out of the remaining wool. Six-pieces, lined with elastic all the way around. It's altered from another hat pattern I've made...but for some reason have never worn.

I've named this my rasta hat because it can be properly poofed up to achieve fantastic volume.

In reality, it gets worn to work on a regular basis so it's normally a bit more conservative and acceptable as a slouchy beanie. Plus, if I wore it poofed up at work, people might ask how I got it to look like that. Then I'd have to show them the secret:

Baby It's Cold Outside - Part 2 of 3

In making T's gloves, I bought about half a metre of the blue wool, which was luckily just enough to make this sweater vest too:

It's supposed to be a v-neck but I don't think the scoop looks too fudged and I'm actually really happy with it! The pattern is an altered version of my favourite t-shirt. The innards are a little untidy but I'll tidy them up once the vest has been worn a bit.

Just as a comment on how tight it was to get this out of the scrap piece: the whole thing is cut without seam allowances and the banding is pieced to high heaven. It's great though and will hopefully remain a good barrier against the ongoing winter!


On a side note, there's a load of cool cultural stuff coming up:
- Steptoe & Son at the Lyric theatre. Kneehigh are coming to the end of their tour, but there are still some shows coming up
- ROH broadcast day! Royal ballet's Alice in Wonderland being broadcast live around the world on the 28th March (including at my beloved Regent Centre)
- And The Rest Is Noise at Southbank Centre. American weekend coming up...
- Andrew Nemr....
- Joe Bonamassa at the Royal Albert Hall

And of course, end of the month Fridays in museums!

Baby It's Cold Outside - Part 1 of 3

As I write this, it's snowing again. That's pretty good news for me and also for T who requested (for some reason) back in January that I make him some fingerless gloves to wear when he's in the library. Apparently it's still gloves weather in there too.

I have a bit of a history with fingerless gloves. They were part of my very first project and then as part of a mad drive to resist throwing out a much loved pair of socks. Both pairs have been worn about twice. Both pairs have also been technically very simple.


But these gloves are different. They're special. Not only must they be fit for someone else to wear on a regular basis, but he's probably not the kind of person to appreciate gloves made from old socks. These gloves also needed to reach up to his knuckle joints without restricted movement.

Drafting and completing this pattern has been a bit of an intellectual exercise. The geometry is not something I'm very familiar with, and the pattern I drafted had 32 pieces once all the fabric was cut. The whole thing is hand stitched too. Shoving something so intricate through a machine would have been a recipe for disaster.

I drafted the pattern based on the information in a latex glove I basically used as a hand sloper. Stick it on T's hand in the middle of a busy cafe, and mark glove length/fit and also rough size/shape of the gussets. Then this got transferred to paper where I remembered the absolute importance of notches to match different bits. Oh well.

I did cut, stitch and begin to construct a lining but I ended up scrapping it because it was far too bulky, so that was a bit of a bugger.

The saving grace of this pattern was the fabric. It's a gorgeous chunky wool from M&W, which unlike the green stole wool, has some sort of weave in the back.

Ultimately, the weave meant the tiny parts didn't fall to pieces when they got wrangled around and unpicked. It also made the (dodgy) hem job a lot easier. And hopefully it's volume is going hide a lot of the stitches.