Flat-Pack Desk Tidy...

Thought I'd share a little project from my day job this time. I am an Art Technician at a North London secondary school so part of my duties include looking after all the equipment and materials. We have a little issue with going through pencils at an unbelievable rate so I thought I'd try making a desk tidy for the teachers to contain a basic class kit of supplies that they can quickly see how many are missing at the end of a lesson. I don't know if it will work but making it was fun anyway.

I designed the template on Illustrator and then cut all the pieces by hand out of thin cardboard, using scalpels and a compass cutter for the circular holes. My main interest in this kind of construction is that the pieces go together with no glues, and can be taken apart if needed. Using this technique and a cheap readily available material like cardboard means parts can be easily replaced if damaged. The tidy holds 20 pencils, 10 fineliners, some sharpeners and some erasers.

Anyway, it definitely works as a desk tidy, and only time will tell if we go through any less pencils... I'm intending to make myself a few variants of this in the future. I would really like somewhere to store my knitting needles in size order. Yeah, I'm that cool.

Knittens 2.0...

As I think I mentioned in previous posts, every time I make something I like to try something a little more challenging, and with a few new techniques. The last mittens I made were fingerless, knitted back and forth, with the thumb gusset created in the centre and then sewn up on the side. These new bad boys are knitted in the round, with individual tipless fingers.

The best way of understanding how they are made is to see them as a big tube with 5 little tubes attached. The cuff is 2x2 ribbing, you then increase in specific places to create the thumb gusset, put those stitches on some waste yarn and continue up the hand. As the gap between your little finger is lower than between the others you knit that one first, do a few more rounds of the hand and then the other fingers at the same height. This creates a truly bespoke fit that is not achievable in shop-bought gloves.

These are the hardest thing I've knitted, they were super fiddly work but I'm pretty pleased with the result and it shows the level of technique I've reached. They could easily be full gloves as decreasing on the fingers is pretty simple in comparison to the rest of the work. These were an xmas present for my old man, the yarn is Rico Essentials alpaca chunky, 50% alpaca superfine, 50% highland sheep wool. Knitted in the round on 3.5mm bamboo DPNS. Boom.

Miss Marsha...

Just finished a little commission for some very good friends to go in their swanky new Hackney pad. They wanted a representation of the delectable Marsha Hunt and her 'fro from her iconic silhouette image from the late 60s.

I'm sure I'm breaking all kinds of copyright laws but it was a one-off for some friends and it's not for profit. I did some tinkering to the image in Photoshop to get the levels the way I wanted and then did a whole lotta work in Illustrator to prepare it for a two layer laser cut using Murano papers. The original image is cropped square cutting off the top and sides of her hair, so I had to make that from scratch to get it nice and round.

I wanted to stay pretty true to the original in terms of simplicity and that classic chic look so stuck to using a very limited monotone palette. Anyway, haven't used the laser cutter to make an image like this before and was pretty happy with the result, stuck it in a black frame, bish-bash-bosh-job's-a-goodun. I hope it will adorn their wall for many a year to come...

Man hats...

This year I managed to buy only one Christmas present. Everything else was knitted. I ended up making 5 hats and two pairs of mittens, and all a week before the day itself.

My birthday is two weeks before Christmas and I got a set of KnitPro interchangeable round needles. They are pretty awesome and have sped up my projects considerably. When you knit on DPNs the gap between the needles causes a ladder as it makes a slightly wider hole, you can eliminate this by rotating the needles every few rounds but this takes time as you have to switch working needles and reset your hands more often. With circular knitting needles, knitting magic loop method, you work in two halves but there is no ladder at the gap, simply a reshuffle of stitches on to the correct needle twice a round. Anyway, they do the job.

The hat on the left is a 3x2 rib with a great decrease pattern than takes out one set of ribs earlier than the other, creating a star on the crown. Learnt some good decrease technique of when to k2tog or p2tog. Really nice pattern I thought, just chucked a few stripes on it. I found it here. Not sure on the brand of yarn but 50% alpaca, 50% wool, very soft, has a great stretch to fit snuggly on head.

On the right we have a broken rib bat in Freedom 100% wool. Got a good sturdiness and warmth to it. Broken rib is one row of k1, p1, and then a row of all knits, making a vertical 1x1 ribbing of stocking and garter. Didn't really use a pattern on this one, just did k2tog decreases. Wanted both hats to be definitely for guys.

One of them doesn't like his face on the internet so I pixelated them both...

Bespoke cake stencil...

It was recently my gran's 80th birthday. My sister, a skilled baker, wanted to make her a special cake for her party. I just made a set of stencils for the royal icing on the laser cutter, she did all the icing and decorating. Credit where credit is due. Very pretty, and it certainly made my gran happy so that's all that counts. I had also previously made some invites for the event with butterflies on them so stuck to that theme.

I first tried using polypropylene and it wasn't behaving the way I wanted it to so I ended up just making them in card. There was a long thin surround and a round one for the top, obviously one use only so did a few for practice runs.

Travel chess set...

Eeeek, I've been rubbish at updating for a while, but it's because I've been so busy making stuff. So gonna get back to business and do a whole run of posts set to auto-publish over the next few months...

Right. In Nov I took a little city break with a few old friends to Amsterdam, somewhere we had previously visited together over a decade ago when we were new friends. One is also a chess friend, so I made a dinky travel set. It was intentionally very simple, but I like to think as with Dutch design it is both basic and chic.

The pieces are all individually made by hand, from milliput black and superfine white. I finished them quite a lot with wet-and-dry paper so they are super smooth. Quite like stone to the feel, not as heavy but obviously tough. I want to change the King but happy with the other pieces. I think I might cast the best ones to make a reproducible uniform set at some point. Need to buy some liquid latex or silicone.

Board is laser cut and etched 3mm mdf, about 150mm square. No finishing required.

If anyone cares it's a few moves into a classic Queen's Gambit Declined opening... Played with the set a few times and I can confirm it works.

I have taken to keeping the pieces in a spare prototype cabin trunk box as featured in a previous post.

London calling...

Had a little wander round the London Bridge area yesterday and took a few snaps, thought I'd share a selection as been busy with my day job this week so nothing new is finished enough to show yet...

Photography, for me, is about documenting exploration. I'm not trying to change the world with my pics, or push any boundaries, but I enjoy how it makes me really look and appreciate the potential aesthetic of a scene. I also like the level of technology associated with DSLR cameras and post-production in Photoshop etc, so play about with that on occasion too although I happily remain an amateur.

Technical challenges of the day were the tunnel in the first pic en route to Borough Market, it was raining really hard and light was low, and the tunnel had these blue lights. Also tried a bit of night photography from Tower Bridge which was aided by a tripod and remote. As the photo contains running water and reflections finding the balance between aperture and shutter speed to capture it all took a few tries but I'm pretty happy with the result.

I use a Nikon D60, which as an entry level DSLR I think is pretty excellent, with 18-55 VR and 55-300 VR lenses. I take all my images in RAW format and tinker with them in Camera RAW.