Not much craft related going on today; I actually get to do some (real) office work and I’m on a break right now.
I’m thinking about hitting up the local Hancock fabrics tonight or tomorrow; the Mister’s birthday is at the end of the month, and there’s a few things I’m thinking of making him. I’ve got a 10% off coupon as well, and I’m not afraid to use it.
Since the Mister loves the outdoors (Eagle Scout and all that), I’m thinking I’ll make him a kite from One Yard Wonders, and perhaps the placemats for camping. I’m trying to come up with inexpensive stuff I can craft that he would like.
If I was super handy with a block of wood and a drill, I’d make him a cribbage board; we love to play when we’re camping, but we don’t have a board of our own. Sure, I know you can keep score with paper, but there is something nice about a self-contained unit that stores a deck of cards as well.
We’ve been dating a little short of a year and a half, and friends for about a year more, and it’s hard to come up with creative ideas for him. I don’t want to start giving him gifts that his mom is more than willing to take care of (socks, shorts, etc.); I want him to be genuinely surprised and thrilled with what he unwraps.
It’s a darn good thing he’s an even bigger geeky dork than me, since usually it means if it tickles my funny bone, it will his as well.
In a hopefully new and recurring feature around here, I’ve rounded up some ideas—be they craft related, or just plain interesting— that tickled my fancy and inspired a round of adjectives to describe them. This weeks happens to be light because I didn’t have a lot of free time this week between food prep and video prep for my grandma’s birthday.
Tiffany whipped up some pajama bags for her boys, and then some: “Along with the pajamas, I slip a book or two in there each night and the kids get so excited to see what I’ve selected for them.”
I love gnomes, and over at mama*made, Gracie Mae made an adorable one for Easter, along with sharing her source for wool felt (for which I am always on the lookout for.).
Knitty’s loss is our gain: Knits & Wovens has released Precipitous, a new pattern for “removable sleeves. Don’t take up too much room in the bag, pull out when needed.” The best part? It’s in worksheet form, so you can plug in the numbers from your favorite yarn/needle combo and come up with something awesome. Totally worth the low, low price of $3!
I love magnetic bookmarks, and …is five shares an awesome tutorial on how to make them yourself. Don’t be surprised if you see these pop up here sometime in the future!
And finally, found just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Vickie Howell has a tutorial up for a quick knitted shamrock, perfect for making into a lapel pin, or anything else you might want to attach it to.
Not much going on the craft front over here; I am mired in the time-suck that is video editing, creating a photo slideshow for my grandma’s 80th birthday party on Saturday (her birthday is today).
I’ve been working on the shawl in spurts on breaks from the video. I’ll be glad to be done. While my Macbook makes creating them relatively easy, I don’t particularly enjoy it. Especially the part where I’ll have seen the video about 50 times before I’m done.
While I think they are a great idea, as a crafter, I can’t help but to think I could make them myself for much less (it’s $5 a bag). It doesn’t help that the upper fabric in the picture is a fabric I saw at JoAnn’s last time I was there.
I suppose my first question to making this would be, where can I find a very fine mesh fabric? The second would be, what type of seam would I use to make them look clean and crisp?
I have been thinking about reusable bags quite a bit. I make lunch for the Mister every day, and we buy his lunch “snacks” in bulk, and self portion. This leads to using lots of Ziploc bags every week, especially if he gets more than one bulk item in his lunch (i.e. Cheeze-its and Teddygrahams). I don’t want the food to go stale after I portion it, but I also want it to fit in his lunch bag. Another container is out of the question, as his sandwich container takes up most of the bag already.
So, what I need to find is probably impossible. Something that functions like a Ziploc bag, but is easily washed for cleanup and reuse.
I am (nearly) without Internet this morning. We’re having AT&T’s U-verse installed—fiber optic speed, here I come—so my only connection to the net comes from my iPhone.
Hopefully the changeover goes smoothly, but if not, I’ll spend the day working on Icarus. Especially since I can’t seem to pull myself away from the internet on my own.
Because I apparently didn’t feel like I had enough lace knitting on my plate, I decided to once again start Delphine, the lacy cap-sleeved top. The pattern is originally from French Girl Knits (a book I am longing to add to my collection), but luckily for me, the pattern was also excerpted in the Spring ’09 issue of Interweave Knits.
In all, I think I’ve started this top about 10 times. The photo above is actually from the last time I started knitting it, when after about five inches I had come to the realization that it was never going to fit be, as I was in denial about what size I really was. All the other times I started it, I usually screwed up on the first two rows; sometimes I twisted the join, sometimes I didn’t have enough stitches, sometimes I completely screwed up the lace repeat. The yarn I’m working with, though, has held up nicely to the repeat man-handling. It’s Knit Pick’s Shine in the sport weight. I love how it feels and how it looks when knit up. I may never try a different type of cotton yarn.
This time, I seem to be going along well. I’m about four inches in, and I haven’t majorly screwed up the lace pattern yet. I seem to have a hard time remembering the yarn-over before the purl stitch on the first row of the pattern repeat, but I usually catch myself, and yarn-overs are easy enough to pick up on the next round when you see you’ve got them.
I’ve had to lay down a few rules for this top, though. Since I’m knitting the Icarus shawl at the same time, and that one has a definite due date (May first, to wear to a wedding), I’ve sternly told myself that I can’t knit on the top until I’ve finished at least one pattern repeat of the shawl that week.
So right now, I’m staring longingly at the top while I forge on ahead with the 4th pattern repeat of the chart I’m on. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to work on the top by Wednesday. It makes good TV knitting for me since I find the four-row pattern repeat easily memorized, and easy to work on while not looking.
When I first learned to knit, I didn’t have anyone to learn from. I forgot that my mom knew how (she doesn’t knit much at all anymore), and no one else I knew knit either. YouTube didn’t exist, and a high-speed internet connection was just a hope and a wish instead of reality. I learned how to knit from a book designed for children (I was 18), and supplemented my knowledge with my ever-growing knitting book collection.
The best thing ever to happen, though, was the creation of YouTube, and with it, the knitting tutorials. With how-to videos, I could finally figure out how to do that cast on that pictures didn’t do justice, how to knit a sock on one needle by watching someone do it, how to knit with a yarn in each hand.
I thought I’d round up my most valued YouTube tutorials for knitting. These are the videos I go back to for reference, or that taught me a new technique that I wanted to learn. I didn’t embed them here because some don’t allow embedding, and I think it’s much better to see them on the YouTube site. The related videos that get listed on the right of the screen are just as good, and may often show you a different way to do the same technique.
Favorite YouTube Knitting Tutorials
Twisted German Cast On by theknitwitch: I can’t seem to remember how to do this cast on when I need it, but this is a great cast on for socks. It has the right amount of stretch to hold your socks up but not hold on too tight.
Knitting on Two Circular Needles by Cat Bordhi: This technique is much easier to understand when you see it done, but it allows you to knit any diameter circular project with out double pointed needles. I liked it for knitting socks until I learned magic loop knitting.
Magic Loop Knitting by thelazyknitter: Another technique for knitting in the round, with only one needle no matter the object circumference. This is my preferred method for circular knitting these days.
Continental Knitting by ackwood: This type of knitting is done by holding the working yarn in your left hand. I usually hold my yarn in the right hand, but I used this video to practice continental knitting so that I could to stranded color-work with a yarn in each hand.
Yarn Harlot Knitting by cuteknitter: The Yarn Harlot, aka Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, knits using the “Irish Cottage” method which is different from both english and continental styles. She’s wicked fast with her knitting, and makes me want to try it too.
These are my top five favorite knitting videos, but I come across more all the time. If you want to see what I mark as a favorite (almost usually a craft video, but sometimes something else that strikes me as awesome slips in), feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel (my user name over there is Unsympathetic)
What are some of your favorite YouTube videos, knitting or other craft related? Feel free to leave them in the comments below!.
This year, my Grandma is celebrating a banner year—her eightieth, in fact.
In tribute to her and for an awesome birthday present, I decided to knit her an elephant. She loves elephants. My cousin counted all the elephants in grandma’s house once and came up with over 100. I’m sure the number has climbed even higher since the family is continually gifting her items swathed in the pachyderm.
When I ran across the baby elephant pattern by Hansi Singh (link to pattern on Ravelry*), I knew I had to knit it for her. I always have trouble finding her gifts (I feel like I shouldn’t encourage the elephant gifting, as my family had me trapped into penguin-gifting for awhile), but she didn’t have an elephant especially handcrafted for her by family. That makes it okay, right?
*I wouldn’t usually link directly to Ravelry since it requires you to login (and thus join) to see anything, but right now Hansi’s Etsy shop is empty, and the only sure-fire way to purchase her patterns is through the Ravelry pattern store.
Pattern Notes:
Very quick to knit up, two pieces (head and body).
Think the head alone would make a very interesting brooch, if you’re into that sort of thing.
For some reason, when I picked up the stitches to make the belly (4 stitches from holder, pick up 18, repeat) following the instructions directly afterwards would have centered the decreases on a diagonal from leg to leg. Instead, I knit 4 stitches and then followed the directions which gave me the decreases centered between the legs.
It reads like you pick up way too many stitches for the tail, but it looks okay once done.
I did the bottoms of two feet, knit the belly to the kitchener stitch, stuffed, kitchenered, and then used the other two open legs to completely stuff the body full before knitting them closed.
While it seems silly to bind off in the CC at the legs only to pick up stitches in the CC to knit a row and pull tight, it really looks and works better this way for the legs. Gives it a definite edge instead of rounding.
In all, I really like this pattern. It’s really well written, easy to follow, and not entirely sure that my problem with the belly decreases wasn’t my own fault (for all the completed projects on Ravelry, no one complained about a problem). I will probably make this again; the dogs go crazy for it when they see it, and it’d be the perfect size for a baby toy.
In addition to dreaming about a new dress to sew, I’m also longing to knit myself a sweater.
I knit up my first one last October/November, and have been in love with it ever since. Except for the part where the yarn I used is so increadibly itchy. (That’s what I get for buying yarn online and for not knowing what I was getting into, having made the purchase only a few months into my knitting life.)
So, I’m dreaming of a sweater. And while I know I probably won’t start on it until the middle of summer—having to save up for whichever sweater I choose—I can’t help but want to start planning ahead of time.
Right now, I have my eye on three patterns, all of which I have the patterns lying around for. Which only makes me want to knit them even more.
To be perfectly honest, this is the sweater I’ve been coveting the longest, and the sweater I had originally bought the itchy yarn for. I bought the pattern over five years ago, and pull out my copy once and awhile to look at it in all it’s lovely glory. I love the cables. I adore the kangaroo pocket. The hood is just brilliant. I know I will knit the sweater; it’s really all just a matter of when. Do I want to knit it first, and know it will take me the longest to do, not because it’s hard, but because cables require attention to be paid.
This sweater just calls to me. I love the owl detail along the yolk. I love the added detail of the little button eyes. It seems like everyone and their sister knit this sweater up this winter, and that doesn’t dissuade one little bit. It’s a bit more plain than the other two sweaters, but that’s part of it’s appeal. Until I reached the yolk, I could knit it while watching TV with the mister. I would probably buy the updated pattern, even though it was originally free, because I think that people should be rewarded for things I find awesome. And this sweater really tops the awesome scale. I also really like the variations I’ve seen with shorter sleeves.
From the Fall ’09 Interweave Knits, I fell in love with this sweater immediately after I finished my itch-fest. I adore cardigans, since I’m often pulling sweatshirts on and off when it’s not ridiculously cold out, and I love the cable details at the pockets that flow up and around for the shawl collar. Every time I pull on Girl Friday I wish it had pockets even though I know pockets would never ever work with that pattern.
I’d like to think that over the course of the year I might be able to knit all three of these sweaters. First I’d have to be able to purchase yarn for them, but then I’d need to not procrastinate enough to get it done. If you had a vote, though, which would you most like to see me tackle on this here blog?
Last week we were talking about her birthday, and I said I wouldn’t be able to get her anything, what with my lack of a paycheck to purchase anything. That’s when she mentioned that she’d rather I make her something.
Turns out, she was jealous of all the gifts I had been making for the rest of my friends. It never occured to me because, well, my sister doesn’t seem like the type to value hand made. Anyway, since it was a request I could easily handle, I decided to sew her a couple of things with what was in the fabric stash.
First up, but last made, is a box pouch I made her. It’s not the best, mostly because I lacked rulers and a t-square to make sure that the pleats made a perfect box. I added a handle, and decided to do the pleats on the outside, for visual interest.
Usually, the box pouches you see have the sides sewn facing inside, but I have a makeup bag that has the pleats on the outside, and I really like the way that it looks. The lining has the inside sewn like you normally see it, so that there is still structure for the bag.
Also, I made her a dog coat for her puppy FredFred. I actually made it twice, because the first one was too small (turns out he’s a small, not an extra small). The pattern came out of the bookOne Yard Wonders, and was super quick to whip up. It took me probably an hour from cutting to finishing. Good thing, since I made it twice.
The smaller one that I made first assuming FredFred was an extra-small, is sized exactly right for my ninja to fit in, and he enjoys wearing it and pretending he is superman.
I think I did okay for my sister. I would definitely make more dog coats for FredFred from the pattern. The small size fits him exactly right, and is adorable. I could see it in a yellow vinyl for a rain coat.
I picked up this pattern last week when I ran into JoAnn’s to pick up some elastic for the bloomers I was making, though I didn’t really need to bring a new pattern home. I just couldn’t help myself into looking through the pattern books, and fell in love with this one.
I am thinking about styles A and B in particular. I think this dress has just the right amount of playfullness for me, while still being grown-up enough to wear to work, and not feel like I’m over dressed. I have no fabric yet, just an idea. Things that need to be decided:
Sleeves or no sleeves? (I already know I’m going with the shorter skirt.)
What type of fabric? (cotton, linen, something else entirely?)
Solid or patterned?
I’m sure there are many other things that I’ll need to figure out, but while I sew little projects with my fabric stash, this is the one that will be on the back of my mind, keeping my eye out for the perfect fabric, and the right time to get it done.
