Tag Archive | crafts

What do you make for a Spring craft show?

How often can I write about baby hats and you’ll keep reading? For that matter, how often can I knit baby hats and still like it? I guess we’ll find out, because I don’t see an end anytime soon. I’m prepping for a craft show at the end of April and all I want to make is baby hats. Because it’s spring, I don’t think people will be tempted by warm cowls, hats or scarves. But babies are always being born, and a handknit hat makes such a delightful gift, doesn’t it? Like this little cutie:
I love this style! I may have made the long tail a bit too long, but since this is a newborn size I’m not concerned about the baby being able to grab it or get it in his/her mouth. And I am loving the gray/white color combo, so cute for either a boy or a girl! See, here’s another one:This is probably a 6-9 month size. I’m so proud of how it turned out. The stitches are so neat and tight, and I wish I’d taken a picture of the join edge, because I have to say, it’s the best I’ve ever done. You can hardly tell it’s there. I carried the yarns up, twisting them around each other with each row, and it’s practically invisible! How about that?? I love it when I can see improvement in my knitting skills.

This is the kind of stuff I want to make going forward, classic styles in good yarn with quality workmanship. And hats like this are a bit quicker, too, so I can build my inventory faster. I made the striped hat yesterday, all in one day. I did have to take a break in the middle because the tip of my middle finger went numb. It does that every once in a while, and I’m sure it has something to do with the nerves going from my wrist to my fingers. I should probably wear my wrist support when I knit for a long time. I won’t need to today, though, because today I have 50 million errands to run for my daughter. Okay, only three. And one for my mother. At least my son is still low-maintenance!

Cute little baby hats

Mar24

Oh good. It’s raining. Sighh. Gray skies, cold rain, muddy puppies. Can you tell I’m not a big fan of rainy days (and Mondays)? Seriously. I should be living somewhere with sunny days 90% of the time. But in lieu of that, I guess I’ll keep knitting. I finished the green and white long-tail hat. It’s toddler-sized and came out more Christmas-ish than I was expecting but I still liked it so much I started another one this morning, only this one will be a newborn size in gray and white. I’d bought some 12″ circular needles at the Yarn Barn and this is the perfect pattern to break them in.It’s weird! They’re so tiny! Such little bitty needles for a little bitty hat. It was a little awkward at first but I’m getting used to them quickly, and they’re still faster for me than DPNs. So let’s see if I can get it finished before I have to start the driving-around-for-other-people portion of my day.

Happy Blog-iversary!

Mar23

WordPress reminded me that a year ago today, I signed up for my blog and wrote my first post. Since then, I’ve written 179 posts and gained 154 fabulous followers. I’ve also found 115 blogs to follow, with so many delightful like-minded knitters and readers and nerds. I’m happy to be here, and I’m happy you’re all here too!

Now, on to the knitting. Alex and I spent the weekend in Lawrence and of course I had to go the Yarn Barn…twice. The first time, I just bought one lovely skein of Malabrigo worsted in blues and greens. Then we went to the bookstore and I found a book called Baby Beanies by Amanda Keeys. (This time I made sure the hats were knit in the round before I bought it.) With that, nothing would do but to go back to the Yarn Barn the next day and buy what I needed to make a hat. I came out with two skeins of soft acrylic/wool, Square circular needles and Square DPNs.I like the square needles but I’m not sure I notice I big difference. I do like the pointiness and the super-smooth finish. I also found these fun little socks and it was the last pair so of course I had to get them.They please me. It’s like I can have my secret superhero costume. That’s right, I am…Knitting Girl!

It wasn’t all knitting all weekend, of course. There’s also a great pet store, and we went in hoping to find something to prevent Grace from tearing the wood off the side of the house. Like any normal pet-owner, we found that and more. We got a bottle of bitter spray but we also bought a super Ruffhides chew toy. It’s made of really durable rubber and it has a tough Himalayan chew inside, but it’s designed so the dog can see and smell the chew but not chew on it! Hahaha! It drives them wild. My two puppies were going nuts trying to get to the chew…well, that and steal it from each other over and over. And guess what? They’ve been gnawing on it for hours and there’s no sign of any damage or wear. And these are dogs that can do this:I may never buy another brand of dog toy again.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go rest from my busy weekend and make some baby hats. Thanks for being part of my first blog year!

WIP Wednesday

Mar18

It *is* Wednesday, right? I hope so because here’s some stuff I’ve been knitting. This little black and white chevron scarf has been my go-to travel project lately, so I’ve got a good chunk done.
I’m really enjoying this one, both the process and the product. The yarn is silky smooth, doesn’t split, and when I almost drop a stitch, it doesn’t unravel too quickly. Plus it looks more complicated than it really is, so people are impressed with my mad knitting skills (which aren’t really that impressive). Everyone loves the bit of green on the end, and they’re sad when I tell them the green will get pulled out so I can stitch the ends together. I confess, I like the green too. But I want to be able to wear this with everything, which means no little pop of color.

Here’s the other thing I’m knitting. I restarted my pink and gray infinity scarf and it’s going much better. I decided to go with the addition of the white yarn, so I did a 4-row border before starting with the pink. I added one extra row of pink stockinette before switching to the gray. I think it will be lovely. It’s a pleasant knit but not as mindless, so this project stays home.Of course I have several WIPs I’ve been ignoring. I think I have a wee case of Startitis. And I also think I’m going to frog my Rikke hat. It’s pretty but I really really don’t like doing garter stitch in the round, which means I never want to pick it up to knit. And the Malabrigo Arroyo I chose for it deserves better than that. Yep. Just decided. I’m gonna frog that today.

Oh, and I bought this neat Knitted Animal Hats book by Fiona Goble, and the hats are super cute and I was so excited…until that night when I had yarn in hand and was ready to cast on. Every hat in there is knit flat and seamed! Who does that?? I know, lots of people. But not me. That’s part of the charm of hats for me, the ease, the quickness, the lack of seaming. I tried. I started one, the Mouse hat, and it wasn’t working for me. But I feel guilty returning the book, so I guess I’ll keep it for inspiration. I can always make the base hat however I want, and use the book for the ears, faces, etc. Anybody out there a fan of knitting hats flat?

“Now What?” Update: Old Favorite WIP

Mar12

Remember that pink and gray Hogan Infinity scarf I was struggling with? I started it a couple of days ago, didn’t have enough pink, and frogged it. This morning I blogged about *why* I was running out of yarn, and a couple of comments supported my instinct to reknit it with a smaller needle.

So I cast on this morning with size 9s (instead of size 10) and made it through 8 of the first 11 rows before weighing my yarn. I’ve used exactly half of the pink yarn. Yep. That means I don’t have enough for the last three rows of the pink section, not if I want to repeat it on the other side. Sighhhh. So now what?

I have a few options: 1) knit it as a single loop cowl. 2) Eliminate two or three rows in the pink section. Not crazy about this, because I love the full pop of pink. 3) Add a third color. I do have another ball of the yarn in a winter white named Snow, so I could do the outermost 5-row edge in Snow, then the Fuchsia, then the Shale. When I bought them, I envisioned using them together. So why am I resisting? I just love the look of the original so much that I’m afraid the white tone will change it too much. What would you do?

My NEW new favorite WIP

Mar11

Yep. Yesterday’s favorite WIP, the pink and gray infinity scarf, has been frogged again. 144 stitches was not long enough to double. And I kept going back to the pattern and the projects and I could not (can not) for the life of me figure out why my project is not working right. Everybody else was able to knit it with 50 grams or less of the accent color, so why not me?? Well, I did figure out part of it: I was using size 10 1/2 needles instead of 10; I just accidentally grabbed the wrong tips from my interchangeable set. Would that be enough to use up that much more yarn? Seriously. I don’t have a clue. Now, the pattern calls for sport weight, and I’m using DK, but other people have used DK with the same stitch counts and same amount of yarn, so I should be able to as well. So here’s my question: should I knit to the pattern with the 10s? Or should I go down a needle size? Will that use less yarn? You’d think I would know these things but I don’t so I’m counting on some of you knitting experts to help me out here.

Since that project stalled, I did go out to my LYS yesterday and it was very refreshing. I got to wander on my own for a while, and then the nice lady asked what I was working on. Well. I’ve been wanting a white and black striped cowl for a while now, and my SIL and I both want to make one with chevrons. I want to use a natural fiber. Well, she showed me every yarn she could think of that might work. Some had white but no black, some had black but no white. Some I liked, some I…didn’t. Some I liked but didn’t want to pay $14/skein. I told her I’d ponder for a while and kept browsing. This store is unusual in that it’s in a big warehouse, and it’s actually two yarn stores in one with a tape line dividing the two. I ended up on the other side (because you have to look at *all* the yarn, of course) and happened upon some Cascade Ultra Pima. DK weight, black and white, natural fiber, nice sheen, $10 for 220 yards. It was perfect for the warm weather cowl I’m envisioning. I felt bad buying from the other store when the first lady had spent so much time helping me but it was the right yarn, and that’s the most important thing, right? I did buy some Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande from her because it was on sale. It’s just awkward sometimes, having two stores in one place. We knitters are nice, thoughtful people, which means we are more likely to spend more so nobody feels bad. Maybe that’s their plan?!?

Okay, okay. I got home with my new yarn, and in talking to my SIL, we decided we both wanted a reversible cowl, one knit like a tube so the stockinette was all the way around. I played around with a lot of stitch counts and pattern repeats until I finally FINALLY ended up with something that pleases me. It’s fun, and it’s really cool that I just doing these simple things and out comes this nifty pattern. I mean, it’s just increases and decreases! How easy is that? Plus! Since it’s knit in the round, I don’t have to worry about carrying up the yarn neatly because it’s all inside. I did have to learn the provisional cast on, which was fine since I crochet and have picked up stitches before. And I will have to learn kitchener at the end to graft the two ends together to make a seamless circle. But I’m not thinking about that right now. So yeah, this is my new favorite WIP. It will travel around with me today on all my errands, and maybe tomorrow I’ll have lots of progress to show off.

My new favorite WIP

Mar10

Yesterday was kind of a rough day. I had errands to run and insensitive comments to absorb, and the latter was a bit difficult. It didn’t help that I didn’t get much knitting time, and what time I did get was spent mostly frogging and starting over.

My newest project is the Hogan Infinity Scarf, which is this really striking cowl done in dark pink and gray with a lovely lacy chevron pattern. I happened to have some Rowan DK in my stash in just the right colors, and supposedly the right amounts. I immediately cast on the 198 stitches and set about knitting. It has a border of pink on both sides, and I noticed as I finished the first pink border that my ball of yarn was awfully small. I weighed it and discovered I’d used 35 of the 50 grams on just one border. Clearly I wouldn’t have enough for the second. Well. I had to think about this.

The pattern makes a rather long scarf, and it’s done in multiples of 9. I did some math that made sense at the time (but seems suspicious now) and decided I would start over with 144 stitches. So I frogged the 11 completed rows and now have 5 rows with the new stitch count. The nice thing is that it knits up quickly, so if I get more done and it doesn’t seem long enough, I won’t mind too much starting over again.So yeah, this bit of knitting didn’t do much to improve my state of mind. After dinner I decided to go to Joann for retail therapy. It failed miserably. They didn’t have the handles I want for my blue/pink silk bag. They’d sold out of the clearance yarn I wanted to get more of. And none of the full-price yarn called my name. I tried. I picked up skein after skein and nothing happened. I didn’t want to buy yarn just to buy yarn. I left the store empty-handed…but with the understanding that I would visit my LYS today. Good solution, isn’t it? I’ll let you know tomorrow what comes home with me.

I’ll finish by sharing some beauty shots. Puppies had a photo shoot the other day and they posed wonderfully.

Jack

Grace

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Yodas

Mar9

Oh my people, I have been gone for days and I have missed you! I had some crazy busy days that sadly could not involve much knitting, let alone writing about knitting. See, here’s the thing: the girl turned 15 yesterday! Yikes! Big, wonderful day. For her birthday present, she wants to redecorate her room, so last week we did some shopping for bedding. Then of course I had to do some solo shopping because she *had* to have some presents to open on her birthday (EOS lip balms, chocolate, bobby pins, headbands, just little things).

I also took Puppy 1 to the vet to get his nails trimmed, and that was an adventure. He’s not a fan of the nail trimming. The vet tech handed me a muzzle, and I was all offended, because my puppy is not mean. He was just scared. And he didn’t want to wear it. So the guy helper hoisted him onto the table (he’s a big dog, around 70 pounds, I think. Guessing because he was too scared to get on the big scale). Somehow this process ended up expressing some certain glands that other dog owners are probably aware of but I wasn’t, really. I am now though! Anyway, he held puppy down, I talked to puppy, and the nails got trimmed. And he was fine. Didn’t even try to snap at anyone; his tail was wagging the whole time. (I TOLD you my puppy’s not mean.)

So! That’s why the end of last week got lost. And on Saturday, the girl (who is a flutist extraordinaire) had a solo and ensemble contest. She was taking both a solo and a flute quartet, so we spent the day inside a high school filled with musicians. It was actually pretty fun. I really love band/orchestra kids. They’re so interesting, so strange and often so confident in their quirkiness. Maybe lots of teenagers are like that; I know theater kids are too. And the hallways were full of funny flyers, and this one was my fave.Obviously my girl is not evil, just fabulous. I know this because despite all her fretting and worrying, she scored a 1 ranking on her solo (rankings are 1-5, one being the best) which means she gets to move on to the state level. Woohoo! Of course I did knit that day while we waited and waited. I worked on little Yoda hats. I worked on little Yoda hats yesterday too, with the little knitting time I had. Since it was the birthday, we had to do presents, go bowling (I won 2 out of 3 games) and go out to dinner. But with all the little bits of time here and there, I managed to knit three Yoda hats, and this morning I sewed on the ears and they are complete.I only love them a little. Ok. A lot. It’s a happy little baby family of Yoda hats. They’re Ravelled here if you want more details. My only sadness comes because this used the rest of my Yoda green yarn, and that color’s no longer available. I will have a find a new Yoda yarn. These little hats will probably go on my Etsy shop, and if they don’t sell there, they’ll travel to a show I’m doing at the end of April.

So there you go! Now you know why I’ve been MIA for several days. But now you’re stuck with me because I’ve got a new WIP that I’m in love with so I’ll be sharing that in the near future. Until then, happy knitting!

We had a knitting casualty

Mar4

Yesterday was a sad day in my house. I had to bid farewell to a Knitter’s Pride knitting needle. These are the size 7 14″ needles from the big set I got as a gift last year. I love these needles. But if you’ll remember, I have two puppies.They’re both around a year old, between 60 and 70 pounds, and they love to play. I was sitting on the couch yesterday, knitting along while chatting with my SIL who’d come over for a crafternoon, and the puppies started roughhousing. They love to chase each other around the house, nipping and chewing and falling and bumping. They jumped on the couch where I was sitting, and rammed into me. I was irritated at first because they made me drop a few stitches. I pushed the dogs off, picked up the stitches, and knit on to the end of the row. As I turned the work to start the next, I noticed the needle was bent. My dogs have more power than I realized. (My mother’s reaction: “Do you realize you could have been seriously hurt?”) Anyway, fortunately I have another set of metal size 7s, just not the fancy Knitter’s Pride, and I was able to continue on my Gradient Cowl.That’s the extent of my knitting yesterday. It was not a good yarn today. I do hope today is better. But I will share the photo of my finished Heartbeat Cowl.The pattern is called River Deep, Mountain High but the red made me think of heartbeats. It still needs blocking and will look much better after that, but I adore this color. Makes me want to start wearing red so I can keep it for myself!

Nothing to do but knit

Mar2

Gosh, there are so many things I *could* do this morning (go buy milk, go buy more dog food) but I can’t. Thanks to a minor fender bender in which NOBODY WAS HURT (thank goodness) my husband’s truck is out of commission. Since his job kind of pays the bills around here, he’s driving my car today and I’m stuck at home. I’d pretend to be sad, but really, it’s fine by me. I like to be home by myself anyway. What to do with my time but knit?

I went out to one of my LYS yesterday to get some Eucalan. I’ve never used it and I’ve read it can help with the felting process, so I’m going to give it a whirl. I love felting, and I’ve been so frustrated with my lack of felting skills that I’ll try almost anything. But I can’t start felting my silk bag yet because I still don’t have the handle issue sorted. I want to do wood handles, but I need to get them so I know where to sew on the handle tabs before I felt the bag. Plus I’m thinking, the bag will shrink when it felts, so if I sew on tabs beforehand, won’t they be in the wrong place after felting? I’m not sure about this. Has anybody done this before? Obviously if I bought handles that could go through the felting process, it’d be fine. I guess I just need to wait and see what I can find at Joann.

Until then, I’ll console myself with the Malabrigo I bought yesterday. Come on, you didn’t really think I’d go to a yarn store and not buy yarn, did you? Just two skeins, though; I was good! One skein of pink wool from the sale section, and then the Malabrio. It’s Rios in Ravelry Red. How can one resist it with a name like that? I wound it as soon as I got home, found a pattern I liked, and cast on last night.This will a River Deep, Mountain High cowl. I’ve got the ribbing and two pattern rows done and anticipate making much progress today. And speaking of progress, I knitted more on my Gradient cowl yesterday and got two more sections done. It’s coming along quite nicely. I must take a picture and show you tomorrow.

Oh, and yesterday I did something else fun but not knitting-related at all: I bought tickets for us all to go to Planet Comic-Con next weekend! The husband and kids are so excited because Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) will be there, and I’m excited because Cary Elwes will be there. I have a copy of The Princess Bride (the book) that I might take for him to sign, if I decide I want it badly enough to spend $40 on it. John Barrowman was supposed to be there too, but he’s canceled, sadly. And Mitch Pileggi will be there too, which is really only cool for me because he’s been on Grey’s Anatomy. Anyway, should be fun. My son’s already planning to dress up at the 11th Doctor, and my daughter will wear her nerd girl glasses. I will not be in costume at all, I’m sorry to say. I will be the one marveling at all the other people in costumes. But until then, off to my knitting!