Sunday 20 March 2011

Knitting and Card making



I've never really done any card making, but a work colleague has invited me to her wedding reception in June so I decided to have a go at making an invitation acceptance card.  She picked up her sample bouquet from the florists and showed it to us.  It had wonderful dark red roses in it, picked out with some soft lavendar flowers, hebe I think.  I spotted these little dark red paper roses in our local craft shop and that was it. 

I found the knitted lace pattern in Barbara Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  It's called Drooping Elm Leaf, but I have used it upside down for the card - I wanted it to look more perky than droopy.  It's knitted on 2.25mm needles with (I think) a no. 10 crochet cotton (lost the ball band).  Another time I would try a finer cotton.



The pattern is a multiple of 15 stitches plus 1 and although I only cast on 31 stitches I unpicked it 4 times before I could get the pattern right - and I still think there is something wrong with one of those leaves. 
I haven't done any lace for a while and I think you do get a feel for it if you practice.

Learned a lot from the card making.  Sticking double sided tape to the wrong bit of card, getting the wrong things stuck to the desk, stuck to me, stuck to pretty much everything.   I think that another time I would definitely go for a higher quality, heavier weight card.  I had some, but the size of the aperture was wrong.

Considering the amount of handling it had before I got it right, the card doesn't look too mangled.  I made some extra leaves for the bottom out of some green paper to balance it a bit and backed the lace with dark green card. Lots more could be done, perhaps, but I feel I should stop here before I do something that messes it all up.

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