Over the weekend I rented a vintage Swedish floor loom called Lynn at ExMateria in Sydney to weave a hallway runner. I bought several kilos of recycled wool from Bendigo Woollen Mills and had an extremely ambitious goal: a 4.5m by 80cm rug!
Meet Lynn, the vintage Swedish floor loom.
This was far too ambitious. At the end of hour 20 I had made it to 2.15m and I was spent. I learnt a great lesson: crafts that involve leaving the house, whole body effort, and rent paid by the day are much less relaxing than knitting on the couch watching Bones.
In other news, I finished spinning the 100g of fibre I bought from the Auckland Handweavers Guild. It's quite wonderful to compare it to my first cake of handspun and see how much I've improved. It's still lumpy and full of knots because it snapped in a few places while I was plying, but I'm so proud.
The finished handspun.
Slightly less fun news: I went to the Sydney destash market. I bought two little ziplock bags of fibre so I can keep spinning, but I was also given a bag of angora rabbit fluff! So soft, but on closer inspection it was FULL of MOTH EGGS!!!! Worst nightmare come true! It's currently in the freezer, so please send anti-moth vibes my way.
Talk soon,
Hazel
Coding & Crafting: Getting Ready to Launch Knit Toolbox
Posted 28 September 2026
Hello hello!
The rest of my craft supplies have been brought over from Auckland! Some family came to visit this weekend and brought the rest of my yarn stash and my drop spindle. Getting back to spinning has been so great! I need to find a good place to buy carded fibre in Sydney. I've always just bought it from the Auckland Handweavers guild yarn wall but I'll need to fin a local source over here.
Over the last few weeks I've been working on an Android app "Knit Toolbox". It's almost ready for release (just doing a final round of testing). It has handy caculators, project management and row counters, and now links to ravelry to list and access all of your purchased patterns and existing yarn stash. I'm reall proud of how it's come together and I can't wait to release it publicly!
The Knit Toolbox home screen.
I'm also planning the full sized hallway runner that I'd like to make after catching the weaving bug from the intro class I did in August - so stay tuned.
Exciting times!
Hazel
Craft adventures in Sydney
Posted 20 August 2026
The last few weeks have been rich with crafts!
I chopped and grafted my boyfriends 2025 birthday present cream cable jumper to make is about 18cm shorter. I've now taken that unravelled yarn and I'm making myself another Maggie cardigan!
I've also finished knitting (but not finished seaming) my very trendy Dot Top. There are a couple problems with it so far. The wool that I used is very visually pleasing but very coarse and not suitable to be worn directly against the skin, so I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to style it. The other problem is much more amorphous. I really enjoyed knitting the top for the technical and visual interest but I don't want to be seen wearing it. I think it's kind of cringe that I fell for this trend and it feels so attention grabbing that I feel like by wearing it I'd be digging for compliments! This is a very strange feeling and I'm finding myself drawn back to making basic/staple/'wearable" pieces so that my crafts can sneak under the radar and avoid perception.
In terms of non-knitting crafts. I went to the ExMateria weaving studio for their floor loom 101 class and made a gorgeous little rug that now greets everyone at our frontdoor! I loved being able to change up my colours on the fly and watch them come together in much closer to real time than in knitting. I already have plans to rent some loom time with them and make a full hallway runner.
I've been finding decorating our new apartment very inspiring but also very tiring. We have a constant stream of cardboard boxes and packages that send our living room into chaos every few days. But! watching out space become OUR space has been very rewarding. Our project for this weekend is hanging the acoustic curtains to block the drafty door, heat/cold from the single glazing, and hopefully muffle some of the noise from the dynamic and bustling street below.
Best,
Hazel
Welcome to hazelknits.co.nz!
Posted 23 July 2026
Hello and welcome to the brand new hazelknits website and blog!
I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to write here but I hope this can be a place to keep a more indepth record of my knitting projects, process and things that I learn and discover along the way. I think a blog is quite fitting for hazelknits as it gives me a space to talk about the narrative of my work and how much goes into the garments I make.
As anyone who knows me in person will know, I recently moved to Sydney! This is a very exciting new chapter in my life. Before leaving NZ I had to massively downsize my yarn stash and most of my stash made the long journey across the Tasman in some very full boxes. It's been really rewarding to be reunited with the yarn and be starting a whole new adventure, plus I have some space to start thinking about what new projects I want to start.
Currently, I'm working on a blue on blue striped "Dot Top" that went super viral on instagram (yes, I fell for the hype). I've never made a whole garment with shadow knitting and it's really challenging but visually so satisfying! I'm excited to finish it (albeit with some reservations about actually wearing it…) and I'll be sure to document it here.
I'm going to aim to update this blog at least monthly (???) but honestly, who knows.
Talk soon,
Hazel
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