Tag Archive | crafts

Making Stuff. Also, being smarter than the puppies.

Guys, the bag I’m making for my sister is SO cool. I’m loving it and am totally going to make one for myself too. BUT. I still can’t show you, I’m so sorry. I’m about halfway through the knitting portion, then I have to find fabric and line it, then attach the handles. So it might be a little while still. In the meantime, the cotton/linen Juniper Farms Zooey yarn I ordered arrived yesterday and I’ve already cast on. This is a custom order from Etsy so I want to get it done promptly. I’m making the hat on the cover here.The pattern says to start with a cable cast on. I tried it. Didn’t like it. So I said the heck with it and went back to the long-tail cast on. It’s fine for hats, never had a problem with it. Stay tuned, this should be done in a couple of days.

Oh, and hey, here’s the scarf I finished a few days ago. I finally managed to snap a couple of photos yesterday. This is Oh, Helen! and I LOVE it! It’s as simple as can be. The slanted edge happens naturally with the pattern and it’s just so lightweight and airy. This is with pima cotton so it’s nice and soft too. I’m already in the process of making a light gray one too.

Besides knitting, I did a bit of rearranging yesterday. The puppies are kind of destroying the couch that sits in front of the big window. They love to lay on top and growl at the dogs and squirrels and people and cats and leaves. They love to bound through the house and LEAP onto the couch. So yeah, this couch has seen better days. But I’d like it to last another couple of years, so the girl and I moved things around.
It looks weird to me, and the couch is blocking the fireplace now, but we never use the fireplace and even if we did, it’s too warm now. The important thing is that the puppies are not abusing the couch now. Oh, they still jump on it and lay on top, but it’s a much lower level of activity. They’re not thrilled with the change.Their view is impaired now. They can’t see as well over the stone wall of the porch so it’s more difficult to maintain their guard dog duties. Ah well, we all have a cross to bear, right?

Thank Goodness for Grandmas

May4

Not my grandmas, though. Mine both died when I was quite young, so I don’t remember them very well. And I don’t think either of them were knitting grandmas, either. No, I’m talking about benefiting from other people’s grandmas. When I first started knitting, my Crochet SIL shared some of the metal needles she’d inherited from her grandmother, and it was a wonderful way to start my collection. Then yesterday, a friend of mine is preparing to move and is cleaning out her stash, all needles and yarn she got from HER grandma that she doesn’t need. These weren’t free, but the price I paid was ~~ridiculously cheap~~ very fair. How lucky am I? I snatched up this collection of circular needles.I counted 20 circs in there, including 8 Clover bamboo and even one Knitter’s Pride Nova! The rest are vintage plastic (I’m guessing that’s what they are. Or resin??) and Bernat aluminum-nylon. Those I won’t use as often, but they’re there if I need them. Plus I got that nifty case! Maybe not the fabric I would have chosen, but I do appreciate functionality as well as appearance. With all these needles, only two were duplicates, and they’ll go to my Knitting SIL. She’ll also get these two skeins of sock yarn, which I don’t use. 10 BALLS of Rowan Biggy! Craziness! Hello, my new fall blanket project.And 10 balls of Berroco Chinchilla in this bright purple. I typically don’t care for the fuzzy, textured yarns like this; I find them hard to work with. But they are so soft, and this was purple! So now I have over 700 yards of it. What the heck am I going to make with it? Teddy bears? Chemo caps? I could knit it with another strand and make a wonderfully soft, dense blanket. Hmmm, that’s tempting.I didn’t get a bit of knitting done yesterday so that’s first on my agenda today. I did manage to make my homemade bitter apple spray. I used apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, and a touch of cayenne pepper. Then I coated my kitchen chairs with them, and we all turned up our noses at the horrible smell permeating our house for the day. And after I did that, my Knitting SIL came to borrow our kitchen table (long story) so the chairs will be put away for a while and I didn’t even need to spray them. Sigh. The puppies now have a little bedroom of their own.Of course, that’s only for nighttime. During the day, puppies must sleep where mom is, right?

Yarn Shop Day

May3

First, let me say this: sadly, I do not live in the UK. Here in the states, or at least in my neck of the woods, we don’t celebrate May 2nd as Yarn Shop Day. That’s a darn shame in my book. Around here, May 2nd is Free Comic Book Day. But the comic book store my husband and son wanted to go to just happens to be near two LYS, so I decided I would celebrate all by myself. As you will see, I should not be allowed to go yarn shopping alone. Restraint is not my strong suit. Here’s what I got at the first shop. This yummy purple Simpliworsted will be something for me, a cowl I think. I love this yarn, this is the only local store that carries it, and it was the only skein in this color. Fate!The white is for a slouchy hat for the girl, the gray is for….I don’t know. Something. I love gray. I love gray enough that I bought a pale silvery gray of this yarn and immediately wound it so it could go the baseball game with me last night. This will grow up to become a mesh scarf for me. I need something to wear when I do craft shows, and since I don’t wear hats, this neutral scarf should come in handy.

That first store didn’t take long. The yarn selection is a bit limited and I was the only customer, so I was out of that store within 20 minutes. The second yarn store was much better, and much busier. Lots, lots more yarn. More brands, more variety, and just more yarn! Shelves lining the store, reaching up above my head. Mmmm. Heavenly. I browsed for a quite a while, petting skeins here and there and pondering. I picked up three, then I found the winners and the first three went back on the shelf. Here’s what I couldn’t resist.
I have a bit of a Malabrigo obsession. This color is called Lettuce. Don’t you just want to eat it up? Yum! This will be a hat. I think Barley.

But that’s not the best thing. I splurged a bit. This might be my Mother’s Day present. I kept picking up these skeins that were so gorgeously rich and vivid, and each time I did, they were this brand called Baah, which makes hand-painted yarn. Yes, they’re as beautiful as you can imagine. But they’re also as pricey as you can imagine. I could resist, with a soft, wistful sigh…until I found this. You can’t really tell from this photo, but the colors are a bit darker, a true red with darker variations. It’s called Chocolate Cherries. My dad absolutely loved chocolate covered cherries, so of course this makes me think of him. I will have a scarf made from this, hopefully with a pretty lace pattern, maybe something with circles that evoke cherries? This will probably be the most expensive scarf I ever make but I will love it.

So that was Yarn Shop Day for me. I can’t wait to see what all my UK people got to do. Maybe when I grow up and open a yarn store, I’ll start a US Yarn Shop Day too!

The puppies are still being much like toddlers. They’re great one minute and monsters the next. This is what I got up to the other morning. Yep. Banana bowl bit the dust. And they got a nice snack of three bananas. All that was left was one slimy brown stem. This is why I can’t have nice things. But then they go and do something like this and I remember why I think they’re cute. Somehow Jack ended up on the wrong side of the gate. “Hey, uh, Grace, can you help me out here?” He tried to jump over and of course that didn’t work. So he just gave me his charming little puppy grin until I took pity on him. Silly dogs!

Today I’m going to try making my own batch of bitter apple spray to deter the monsters from completely destroying my kitchen chairs. Here’s hoping. And maybe some knitting? If I’m lucky!

Some Selfish Knitting

Apr29

Thanks to a doctor’s appointment and a grocery story trip, I didn’t have much knitting time yesterday. But with the time I did have, I worked on two projects for ME! They’re both ones that have been hanging around for a while, and I’m getting eager to wear them. One is my black and white chevron infinity scarf. I met a fellow crafter for coffee on Monday night, and took this with me. I thought it would be easy enough to knit while talking, but I didn’t do well. Last night I had to frog back about 10 rows to get rid of stupid mistakes. I was going to try to live with it…but, no. So now it’s back where it was and I’ve got the pattern set in my head again. I should have taken this super simple mesh scarf I’m making with some Pima cotton. It’s just a YO, k2tog repeat. Hard to mess up, though of course I have. It doesn’t look like much here, but blocking will work wonders, I think. This was my waiting room knitting.I worked a little bit on a bag commission too. This was my “sit outside with the puppies in the afternoon” knitting. This is the one that will mostly be a secret, but since this is just the bottom of the bag and it doesn’t look like much, I don’t think I’m giving anything away.I’m getting to the good part now, where I can start working the nifty pattern and where I’m working in the round. Maybe it’ll go quickly!

And the puppies. Oh, the puppies. Bit of backstory: we have a large patch of dirt in our backyard. We’re in the process of getting it prepped to lay sod, but until then, we have a lot of dust and dirt being tracked in the house. It’s a mess. Add that to two puppies who like to get on the kitchen table, and I’m washing a table every day. Plus the dirt and puppy paws are hard on the table. Easy solution, I thought. I went to Big Lots, bought a cheap vinyl tablecloth, problem solved. Right. Here’s my tablecloth after the doctor appointment. Jack says it’s not HIS fault.And I tend to believe him. It’s this one who’s the troublemaker, and she was on a roll yesterday. Ate the plastic pulls off the kitchen window blinds, ate a long plastic straw out of the dish drainer, tried to eat the hose and sprinklers in the back yard (multiple times), dig dig dig in the peat moss and dirt, ate the hostas…sigh. Alex and I finally took them for a long walk after dinner and it was a good thing, because only then could I remember why I wanted puppies. They’re so much nicer when they’re calm and cuddly. So fine. I’ll try to walk some silly puppies today.

Time for a Break

Apr28

Saturday was craft show day. It was from 10-4 and it was in a more affluent part of town, with the promise of lots of shopping moms. I had a friend with me and she helped me create a more compelling table display than I’d done the last couple of shows. My hopes were high. Oh, and did you notice, I played with my hair again? Apparently I’m no longer a natural blond (I know, who knew?) so I’m trying to grow out all the processed stuff and find my real color. I had some leftover bleached blonde, so my fabulous hairdresser MIL gave me teal tips. Love them! Of course, my own mother’s reaction was different: “What happened to your hair??” LOL. Can’t win ’em all, right?

Anyway, yeah, I thought the table looked good. I had a selection of bags and lightweight spring hats, as well as spring mesh scarves and some cute baby hats. Too bad people decided they didn’t want to attend this show. It was slow all day long. I had three super wonderful friends from my old Coldwater Creek days show up, and that was such a treat. Plus they bought a couple of things! Other than that, I had ONE sale. Sigh. There just wasn’t much traffic. One vendor packed up and left at 1:30. But I did make table, and I had fun with my friends, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

It also clarified something for me: I’m slowing down on shows for now. It seems clear that spring/summer months are not good for the kind of things I love to make, and I don’t want to completely change my crafting outlook to cater to that. Plus, I was stressed out before these last two shows. I was worried about whether I’d have enough stuff, or whether it was the “right” stuff, and I felt guilty working on anything for myself or my family. That’s not what I want my knitting life to be, and I’m so grateful that I have the ability to step back. So for now, I’ll be knitting for fun. I’m still going to work on my Etsy shop, and I’ll still do the Etsy at the Exchange events when I can, but no more paid craft shows for now. I’m signed up for a big one in October and I might just let that be the next one.

I had another epiphany of sorts over the weekend, too. Another Creek friend, Terri, invited me to a dinner theater show, and we had a marvelous time catching up. We hadn’t talked one on one in ages, but she said she loves to follow along with what I write on Facebook so she felt like we were still close. At one point she asked me about the retail memoir I’d been working on. I’ve been working on that thing for that last four years, I think, and I keep working and leaving it and coming back and leaving again. But Terri’s question, and the fact that she’s not the only one who’s said they’d love to read it, made me realize that I’ve got something going on with this writing thing. No, I’m no literary genius. But I do love it, and I think I do connect with readers sometimes. So I’m bringing writing back into my life, more than just this blog, and I’m going to do my best to finish revising my manuscript. Maybe then I’ll be brave enough to start querying agents, or maybe I’ll just share it with friends and family. Who knows. I think for me, the process is the most important part.

Thanks for listening, friends. I know this was a more introspective post, less fun knitting talk, but I promise, there will be fun stuff in days to come. Still yarn, always yarn, but writing talk too, maybe even manuscript excerpts. And puppy photos, too. Today is Captain Jack, my furry little baseball fan.

Crazy for Crochet

Apr22

I can’t stop crocheting lately! Ever since I learned to knit, I’ve preferred it to crochet. Knitting is easier on my wrist and I love the fabric it creates. But I do still love the quickness of crochet, and it’s the perfect way to use all my cotton yarns. I made another small cross-body bag, just kind of made up my own pattern, and this one has a flap and a button closure. I debated between a dark silver button and a white flower. The flower was cute, but made the bag seem more appropriate for a young girl, and I wanted this to be more versatile. It’s something I would definitely carry. I’ve been working on a custom order through Etsy, but the other day I got a request for a couple of chemo caps. In my book, chemo caps always go to the top of the list. I used soft, washable acrylic and made them a small adult size so hopefully they’ll fit snugly. This is the Shelbi Hat pattern, and I’ve made it several times now. It’s very quick but looks intricate and interesting. I especially like that the pattern comes with four different sizes. It’s not a free one, but it’s absolutely worth the money for me.

Oh, and I had a wee knitting crisis the other day! You know I’m making a bag for my sister, right? Well, I picked it up and (GASP!) found this: I have no idea what happened. These are fixed-tip needles from Joann, so I’ve asked my handy hubby if he can fashion a new tip on it. Nothing to lose, right? In the meantime, I switched to my Knitter’s Pride Nova interchangeables, and actually the metal works much better with the cotton blend yarn anyway. Knits much faster. THIS is why I have so many needles! (Well, that and they’re really cool and I just like to buy them.)

Finally, puppies. We bought a fire pit last year and it sat outside all winter long. The puppies found it recently and Grace has fallen in love with the basin. She pushes and pulls it around the yard, tries to flip it, and especially loves to sit in it. I’m not sure we’ll get to use it again as a fire pit.

It’s Cotton Season

Apr19

Everything I’m making right now is cotton. I’m so ready for warmer weather that I can’t stand the thought of playing with wool or alpaca. I think other people feel the same, so since I’m prepping for craft shows, I’m trying to make things that will be appealing. You’ve seen some of the hats, now four in all. But I also made a lightweight mesh scarf. It’s either TARDIS blue or KC Royals blue, however you want to think about it. And this morning I finished a simple little purse with a long strap so you can wear it across the body. It’s perfect for baseball games, theme parks, amusement parks, anything where you just need your wallet, phone and keys. It’s got a snap inside to keep it closed. Best of all, it’s cotton, so if it gets wet, it won’t hurt the bag! (Might hurt the phone, but that’s not my problem!) It’s cute by itself but it’s even cuter with a little flower. I’ve got some gorgeous raspberry-pink cotton that might become my next little bag, and I’ve got another custom order hat to do in a cotton/linen blend. Looks like my cotton fixation won’t be ending anytime soon.

Thrift Store Finds

Apr14

Today, while I was running errands, I hit two thrift stores in search of good fixtures to use as displays for my craft shows. One was a bust, but the other yielded several goodies. Check them out:I don’t really know what most of them are, except the taller metal one in the back which I can tell is a candlestick. But now, they will display my handknits!That gold one on the left will be great for purses and scarves. I’ll set it up on a box, higher than the table, so the pieces can hang down nicely. The others aren’t perfect hat stands, but I think they’ll show the hats off better than just laying flat. I can’t wait to do my next table display now!

I also stopped by the LYS to get some yarn. I had a good reason, I promise! My sister has commissioned a lined project bag with wooden handles, and I needed to get the yarn for it. I have the perfect handles and the perfect closure and now I have the perfect yarn! I wish I could show them off, but she reads my blog (I think) and I want it to be a surprise, so you’ll have to wait along with her. I’ll do my best to knit fast, but it won’t go as fast as these hats:I have two more I want to make, a red and a blue, and then I’ll be ready to move on to something else. This is the first pattern I’ve made so many times. Guess it must be a good one!

Bam! Another Hat Done

Apr13

I finished a hat this morning. I am so in love with this pattern. It’s called the Combination Summer Hat and I have now made three of them. The body is all loose, airy crochet, but then you pick up stitches and a knit a ribbed brim. I tell you, I think it’s brilliant. Part of the reason I like knitted hats better is that they seem to have more elasticity, but I love the look of crochet for spring and summer projects. Add in the fact that I can make one of these, start to finish, in a couple of hours, and yeah. This is perfection. This one was made with Berroco Weekend, which is mostly acrylic but has 25% cotton, enough to give it some stiffness and a great drape. I’ve got two more colors ready to go!

We had a fair bit of rain this weekend, which made for muddy puppies and muddy floors. Not great. But it also made for a funny photo op when the puppies found a new source of water.Hopefully the rain is done for a while. I’m ready for some sunshine and a drier backyard!

Another Craft Show Done

Apr12

Yesterday I had a little craft show, another Etsy at the Exchange for local Etsy vendors. Here’s my little table display:I want to start hunting for display options at some thrift stores. I need some height variation, some visual interest, and if I could find a good way to hang purses, I’d be thrilled. These shows are short, just four hours, but they’re free and I think it’s going to keep growing into something big and cool. I sold a couple of things, gave out several business cards, met some interesting fellow vendors, and the local paper was there taking photos, so that could lead to some good exposure. Both my Etsy traffic and blog traffic were up yesterday evening. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I also bought something. I just can’t resist Wonder Woman.This was made by Rosete’s Thread, and she had a ton of neat stuff made with pop culture fabrics: potholders, dish towels, baby sets, dog bandanas. There was Walking Dead, TMNT, lots of superheroes, and some other stuff I didn’t recognize. She also had really cute ruffled scarfs and fleecy shawls. If you’re interested, you can find her on Facebook or on Etsy.

After the show, I found some solitude and worked on a hat, a custom order from Etsy, and this morning I finished it, except for closing the top and weaving in tails. This is a pattern I’ve made before, and I found it much easier this time around. I even managed to do some of the cabling without a cable needle! It was a little scary, but it sure made it simpler.

But the best thing about yesterday’s show was it helped me find my short-term focus. I need to build my inventory of warm-weather knits. I think a lot of people walked past my table because it was 70 degrees and sunny, and they didn’t want to think about hats or cowls. My next show is in two weeks, so that’s how long I’ve got to make some spring hats, skinny mesh scarves, a market bag or two, maybe another purse. I’ll display fewer items and make sure they’re all perfect for higher temperatures. I better get busy!