Sunday, June 28, 2009

Not too proud

We interrupt our normal knitting to bring you a couple of quickies. I use the term, "quickies," loosely here because they took much longer than they should have. Here is something you may not know about me, and you may not like it. I'm not proud, not too proud to crochet. I knew sooner or later Amigurumi was/were gonna get me. This is the one: Mop Top Mascots (regular link). A friend's granddaughter is going away to her first overnight for 2 weeks camp tomorrow and it is also her and her sister's double birthday party. They've appeared here before.

Emma, who is now 10, needed a camp buddy. Voila! It only took me almost all day.
Emma says it's a boy and it's name is Bobo. Naturally, I had to finish it at the party and Emma was quite interested so we looked at the others in the Ravelry gallery. She has dubbed the race, Funkies.

I used Sugar & Cream & Peaches and Fun Fur. Now if you think it is hard to knit with fun fur, you are correct. But let's give a what ever we give people to show we appreciate and respect their accomplishments (maybe a Huzzah?) to our sisters in crochet, because crocheting fun fur is much harder than knitting with it.

When Bobo was finally finished, Sophie, the now 4-year old, who copies Emma fiercely, appeared with something I had forgotten about. I sort of remember crocheting the gold lame* sweater directly onto the pig at an earlier gathering. Sophie was probably an infant, if she even existed. I am most impressed and amused by the teeny tiny arms. Plus, I got to hear this yelled today: "Sophie, put the sweater on the pig!" Now there's a novel sentence. I also crocheted a swimsuit onto a bear. It turned out to look like underpants. Actually, they may have been underpants, but Emma was young enough to be embarassed by that and called them swimming trunks. Don't despair! Despair not! Knitting is here also. And sewing. Sewing with repurposing. I suppose it was willful of me to cut up a shirt about which I actually have gotten compliments, but it actually matched the yarn. You may be familiar with the yarn. It's that orchid colored bulky cotton I've got. There were things in my fabric stash that kind of matched it, but not well.
It's somewhere between pink and lavender. To be honest (it's not like I'm lying), I didn't like that shirt because anyway it looked old lady or something. Shut up, I know. I borrowed the top from a free dress pattern, which I'm not linking because I changed it so much. I wanted an opening in the front because I thought I'd be using a shirt with buttons and then the dress would button all the way from the top to the bottom. But before I even finished knitting, after it was too late to frog (another time), I decided it was too small. Therefore, I closed the buttonholes in the bodice and butted the front bands together and sewed them with a mattress stitch so they'd line up properly. I also cut off the button bands from the blouse and sewed it shut. Using a shirt was a fabulous idea, mainly because it's already hemmed. If I were to make another, I'd knit some sort of border that would hold better than plain ribbing in cotton. I would like it to have a horizontal orientation in order to hide the sewing better. I would have preferred to have sewn above where I attached the skirt to make the seam allowance lay flatter. I didn't because I thought the line of stitching would ruin the look of the ribs. I had thought the ribbing would be better because it would stretch. That's wrong for cotton, exactly wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.Sophie likes the dress. She carried it around for quite a while before donning it. I think she wanted to give equal time to the dress that Aunt Janie gave her. It's driving me crazy that the edging on the arm front is curling under. I steamed it and it was laying fine. It's happening because Sophie keeps moving her arms. Why can't these children just stay still! I learned some new things on these 2 projects. One was the magic ring, which is a crochet technique for making a holeless circle center. It doesn't start with a slipknot, so you don't get the lump. I think I've seen something similar used in knitting. I tried to invent it, but I was married to the slipknot. I also learned that stuffing toys with waste yarn doesn't mean you have to chop it up or save up little bits for years until you get enough. It means you can take acrylic yarn and pull it out of the skein and just mush it in. Not only do you get rid of some of that acrylic stash, but you can use a color similar to your project, so it won't show; it's much easier to handle than the polyfil and likely equally enviromentally evil. Win, win, win.

**Sorry, I don't know how to make an accent mark.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

So far, so good

This sock has a nice texture. I copied a pattern from Ravelry. I'll link it when I finish the socks. The inside, which is smooth of course, feels so nice that it's still on my toes a half an hour after taking the picture. Never mind that it's 10 p.m. and 89 degrees outside. It's not 89 degrees inside, thank goodness.
I'm wondering how it would be to rent a car with air conditioning for the summer. There's nothing wrong with the car I have now except for the lack of a/c. It's 16 years old and so I probably should be worried that it's not long for this world, but as I've said, there's nothing wrong with it. Well, it could use an oil change and the muffler's starting to get a bit loud, and there are some cosmetic issues, but that's it. Do I tempt fate? Hope not!

The next project is in keeping with the green theme of '08 and '09. It looks like a sweater sleeve. I'm not saying whether it is or isn't. The round thing in the next picture goes with it.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

The Knitting of the Green

Green has never been a favorite colorofmine. (<--sesame seed under the space bar, fixed now) I most often go for reds and blues. Yet I find that the last several things I've knit have had at least a little green. First there is the new washcloth I've made myself.
Next is the yarn for a secret project. 100% bamboo, 250 yards/100 grams.
Here is the greenest soaker ever made. This is vintage wool. The texture is verry, verry springy.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Madison Man to Run Grueling Marathon

He is a survivor of cancer and is running on behalf of Gilda's Club in Madison. Read about it on Molly Bee's Attic. Thanks.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Irish Hiking Floozie--brown

As a fundraiser each classroom at my school and the staff is compiling a basket for silent auction at our school picnic. This year the staff's theme is relaxation. I wanted to knit something. I tried soda can cozies, but my heart wasn't in it. Then I came across a UFO. I had begun a pair of felted slippers from the book, Knit 2 Together (Rav link) I had finished one and the sole of the 2nd. I know that I stopped because I had a bit of trouble with the number of stitches to pick up and plus also I got distracted, too. So I finished them last week, but of course they turned out kind of different from each other, since I couldn't quite remember the modifications I had made on the first one. For once, my photo shows them to be much nicer than they are. Since they look somewhat woggity, imagine how bad they really are. I'm going to throw them in the washer and dryer a few times more and then at least maybe I can get them down to my size.I went back to the thought of a soda cozy with the some of the leftover wool from the slippers. It was Boku, which I thought would look very nice in cables, but cables would not work very well for a soda can/beer bottle cozy. I knew there would be wine in the basket and just one cozy seems enough for a wine gift, but soda cozies ought to come in sets. Bonus. I hiked off into Irish Hiking territory where so many have hiked before. It's a nice, smoodgy looking cable, but simple. It would be good insulation without needing to be felted. After only (for me) a small amount of experimentation, I settled on double stranding the yarn and casting on 48 stitches. I thought it was a nice fabric and I didn't rip out and start over one last time when I wondered if one strand with 60 stitches would be better. Are you proud of me? At some point, I realized I would probably not be able to find the other 1 or 2 skeins of brown Boku that I have in stash. That's when I thought that for the neck I'd better increase to 60 stitches and switch to a single strand. I had already decided to rib that section in the hope that it would pull in, which it did, but not that much. Therefore I made eyelets and a short I-cord to pull the top snug. I had not constructed a bottom, thinking that I would pick up all around the edge and knit one on later.I had already learned from my experimentation with soda cozies that it was easier to make the bottom flat if you added it after making the sides.

I remembered a some felt I had made out of a piece that I was making for a vest that I had abandoned when I kept having counting problems. (Counting=The hardest part of knitting) The colors would be perfect. Just like my father before me, I knew that it would come in handy some day! I cut out a circle and marked my centers and quarters and pin basted with plastic safety pin stitch markers because who the hell knows where the real safety pins are, then sewed it up using embroidery floss, all six strands. I would have used yarn, and I did save just enough, but this yarn is a single and not strong enough for this function. A contrasting yarn would have been nice also, but I didn't have any good colors to hand. I used quarter inch stitches and allowed the knit edge to flatten on the felted base. I wanted to sew a bit in from the edge because I didn't think it would be wise to sew right on the cut edge even though this base is very densely felted. It only took a few minutes. I am quite pleased with the finished object. No doubt that it is the last minute, but it is done!

I'm not much of a wine drinker, so here it is being modeled by a half a jar of 3-year old dry roasted peanuts that I found behind a lot of stuff in the cupboard that is probably just as old or older. It will look better with a wine bottle to hold up the neck. The Irish Hiking Floozie is quite a fun project. I think it's quite handsome. Why I want to make another one, I can't say for sure. Why don't I want to knit sweaters like other people?
Danny--A soaker is what hippies use for cloth diaper covers. The wool breathes yet
acts as a moisture barrier (I guess).