Pumpkins and Autumn Giveaway

We're nearing the end of October already!  Today we had a family pumpkin carving afternoon and here is the result of my own efforts on our doorstep this evening:

I do love carved pumpkins!

In fact I just really like pumpkins, to look at, to carve... or to eat!

To celebrate pumpkins and the beauty of autumn,

I decided to have a giveaway

of....

yes, of course, a pumpkin shuttle!

This lovely shuttle is made from a vintage pumpkin purée advert.

I really like the contrast of the golden orange pumpkin on a black background.

Very striking.

To have a chance of winning the shuttle,

all you need to do is leave a comment.

(to make it easier to count for the draw, I will not answer comments on this post,

but I thank you in advance for your comments and for participating)

I will hold the draw on the 31st of October.

Best wishes,

Frivole

Tatting Old and New

I've finally been able to visit my family again after more than two years!  It's wonderful to be back and to spend time with family and friends I've really missed during that time.

It's been lovely to find that two doilies I made for my father several years ago are still in use and on display in his home.

The first one was a design by Renulek if I recall correctly.

And the second one is a design by Mary Konior

which I combined with a border by Jan Stawasz

(I write about it here)

During my stay I knitted a pair of sock/bootees

for my new niece.  It's a free design by Garnstudio

called "Mini Snow Boots"

knitted in very soft alpaca wool.

Next is a vintage small doily that I discovered one of my friends had.

It's a actually a piece of "cro-tatting" as you can see

the crochet stitches on some of the rounds.

I took a photo and might try to reproduce it.

Lastly I've not yet worked more on the edging from the previous post

but I started working on the motifs for the collar I also mentioned in the previous post.

I chose to make it in natural écru.

Autumn is on its way.  The maples are starting to turn their glorious shades of red, orange and yellow.  I hope all is well with you!

Best wishes,

Frivole

Priscilla Edging No. 8

Priscilla Tatting Book No. 2, what a great book!  It contains many designs I love, including the Victorian Lattice Doily which I have now made several times.  

Victorian Lattice Doily
(that's the name I gave it as in the book it's only called "Doily")

Many years ago I started making the collar from page 31 but never finished it.  I think I will tackle it again one day.  

It's a gem of a vintage book which can be found online here.

In the meantime though, I thought I'd tackle something a little smaller and edging no. 8 caught my attention.  

I like it but I'm not happy with it at the moment.  I like the shape of it but the round circles in the middle are really difficult to make neatly.  It's a rather large ring that has 41 stitches and when I pull it closed, it tends to distort and not look even and symmetrical.  I tried a few different things in the sample above and that's also why the edging doesn't look all the same (I changed some joins and tried the centre ring on a double core for example).  I also don't like that the small rings at the bottom stick out further than the picots of the large centre rings... if you were to sew this edging onto something, would you just sew the small rings down and leave the large rings unattached?  It seems to me it would be better if they were on the same line.

I'm planning on working on this edging some more to see if I could modify it a bit to solve some of those issues... and maybe even design a corner for it?  Perhaps it will go around the corner quite easily without many modifications by simply omitting the bottom small ring and joining three repeats together.  I need to test that.

Is the empty space of the big ring too large?  Should I fill the centre with another smaller ring maybe?  All comments welcome!

Best wishes,

Frivole

Fair Isle Jumper Finished

I started this back in January and was (as it turns out over-optimistically) hoping to have it finished for my son's birthday in May.  Sadly May came and went and I was still knitting.  I completed the body fairly quickly but the sleeves seem to take me forever!  Fair to say though that if I had been only knitting I might have managed to finish it on time but I always have lots of things going on concurrently.

Anyway, it's all knitted now and I'm just tying the gazillion ends at the moment and then I will give it a nice wash and block before finally giving it to my son.

Whalsay Jumper Design by Hazel Tindall / Ann Feitelson

The jumper looks kinda "brownish" from a distance

but it's made of many colours including

orange, purple and plum.

That's what I love about Fair Isles,

the beautiful play of all the different colours that make a design.

All those colours does mean that at the end, you have to deal with many many wool ends from all the colour changes.  However, Shetland wool has wonderful "grippy" qualities preventing it from unravelling easily and making possible also to just knot and pull off the ends.

Here's what my seam looks like with the knotted and pulled wool ends.

With washing and wearing, the ends will gradually felt into the body of the jumper.

So that's it for the Whalsay Jumper.

I'm already wondering what my next Fair Isle is going to be...

Does anybody reading this like to knit Fair Isle?

Best wishes,

Frivole

Orsi's Napoleon Re-Visit

A few weeks ago someone wrote to me asking about Orsi's Napoleon pattern.  I had made it back in 2011! (see this post).  The pattern is no longer available on Orsi's site but I contacted her and she kindly agreed to share the pattern and to let me show it here on my blog.

This is the one I made from the pattern she sent me.  I realised afterwards that some joins were missing and also some picots on the outside trefoils, if you were going to join several motifs together.  I now believe it's because the drawing she sent me was for a doily she made with this design (a small version can be seen here and a larger version here on her blog).  From her drawing, I made a new one with the small changes:

And here is a written version:

R8-4-4, R4+6-6-4, R4+4-8, rw

C3-5, JK10, rw, C10-3, rw

*R8-4-4, R4+6-6-4, R4+4-8, rw

C3+10, rw

JK10, C5+3, rw

R8+4-4, R4+6+6-4, R4+4-8, rw

C3+5, JK10, rw

C10-3, rw

Repeat from *

Here are four of them joined together

(taken from a 2011 post I'd published about this design)

If anyone decides to try it, please let me know if I've made any mistakes in the diagram or written pattern and I'm glad this lovely little square will now be available again to tatters.  Thank you Orsi!

Added 26.08.21:  Anke kindly gave us a link to Orsi's original blogpost about this pattern which contains drawings, it can be found here:  https://web.archive.org/web/20120202182128/http://spulni-blog.blogspot.com/p/mintak-patterns.html

Best wishes,

Frivole

Couture Champêtre

Following on from my previous post... another lovely thing about vintage sewing machines, manually powered, is that you can easily take them outside to do your sewing on a beautiful sunny day!

I love that.

This one is my 1937 Singer 27.

I bought it for peanuts and it's in such beautiful condition!

The decals are nearly pristine and it sews beautifully.

To go with a nice vintage machine,

it's great to also have some vintage accessories.

I found a vintage buttonholer attachment which does a fantastic job.

Look at that neat buttonhole!

Thanks for telling me about your own vintage machines in the previous post.  I'm in the process of finding a couple of replacement parts for my Frister & Rossmann and I think we're so lucky to have internet nowadays to be able to find specialised things like vintage sewing machine parts.

Happy sewing everyone!

Best wishes,

Frivole

The Delights of Vintage Sewing Machines

I love old sewing machines.  They are wonderful feats of engineering, are incredibly sturdy and hard-wearing and they look great to boot!  I have three.  I'm trying hard to be reasonable and stop there because who needs more than three sewing machines?  (Actually I have 4 as I also have a modern, electronic machine).  

What got my love story started was when I found an old Frister & Rossmann for £15 in a charity shop several years ago.  Then I bought a beautiful 1937 Singer 27 hand-crank which was in perfect condition.  And lastly I thought I really needed a treadle machine and that's my 1913 Singer 15 with oscillating shuttle.  They are all great machines and I treasure them.  

However, this blogpost is about a new machine.  My youngest daughter decided she'd like a sewing machine of her own, one she can keep and take with her when she sets up her own home.  A few weeks ago, I saw one again in a local charity shop...  I went in and turned the crank but it was really stiff and barely moved, the machine was dirty and I couldn't quite tell how well it would run.  I returned to look at it again with my daughter and after a bit more examination, she decided to purchase it.

I had not heard of this make before:  Mundlos (a German company) which was sold in the UK under the name "Royal".

It was a bit dusty and dirty... but the metal appeared in good condition everywhere.

Interestingly, it says "Foreign" on the back.

Some of the parts, caked in old oil didn't move at all.  But after a good cleaning, dusting, wiping, oiling, and spinning, it turns out this was a good buy!  Everything works on it and it's now shining and running smoothly.  It's a nice compact machine and I know it will give my daughter many good years of service (no doubt her lifetime in fact if she looks after it!).  I'm pretty sure, from looking up its serial number, that it was manufactured in 1938.

It has an interesting pattern on the metal plates which can be found on that small front plate, on the face plate and on the back one:

At some point in its life, someone had glued (I think?) a small metal pin cushion on the lid of the side container box.  Update 05.11.21:  Thanks to Anke's comment and her pointing me to a website about these machines, I now know that the pin cushion was an integral part of this machine.  They were sold like that, with that small pincushion attached to the lid of the side container.  Neat!

It had saw dust in it but had become so hard over the years that it was practically impossible to push pins into it.  The old pink velvet was also in bad condition so I removed everything and made a freshly filled pincushion to put back into the metal casing, in green.  There is it, ready to be used.

All in all a very good machine.  It has a reverse gear and even an unusual little lever to lift the bobbin up from its carrier.  It can be seen next to the bobbin winder in the main photo.

I bet there are several of you, reading this, who also own vintage machines.  I'd love to hear about them so please let me know what you have!

Best wishes,

Frivole