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May 30, 2004

New day, new WIP

I think I am going to give up on that cotton candy yarn. It is really pretty but just not me. Yesterday was the first time my real-life knitting group met and I found some pretty cotton yarn in earthtones that is very soft and much more my style. I have cast on the T3 tshirt from Knitty.

The knitting group is going to be fun. I put pictures of our outing in my photo album. It is so nice to be able to talk about knitting without the other person's eyes glazing over. There are only three of us so far (there is a fourth but she couldn't come yesterday), so we definitely need to recruit more knitters. I have put together a blog for the group but we still haven't picked out a name, nor do we have any sort of logo/banner.

I mailed off Kim's booga bag and she mailed the stitch markers, so both of us are anxiously watching the mail. There was a great reaction to the markers and I think she will be able to sell them. We researched some cartoonish sheep that she is going to practice making as well as other animals and flowers. She will also make some pretty beads for a cheaper stitch marker option. I will set up a page (linked from here) with a PayPal button for her so she can do the ordering and shipping stuff herself.

Now, I am off to order some Cascade 220 for more felting. Oh, I almost forgot, take a look at this stitch pattern. Isn't it gorgeous? I see a shawl/wrap coming on.

Posted by DebC at 08:42 AM | Comments (1)

May 27, 2004

Woohoo!

I finished my sister's booga bag just in time! She emailed a picture today of the stitch markers she made. She has just learned how to make glass beads and I thought they would be perfect for stitch markers. I had no idea that she was already THIS GOOD.

Ogle them, drool on them and soon, BUY them! That's right, I talked her into making sets that I will sell from my blog and eventually my yarn shop. So print out the picture and start dropping hints to all the right gift-giving people. She is going to expand on the fish and make flowers, plain beads, and assorted animals.

Posted by DebC at 06:21 PM | Comments (4)

May 23, 2004

Busy, busy, busy

I have actually done a fair amount of kni kni lately (according to my two year old). He is so funny. He will see that I am knitting and say MOM, you kni kni?!! Very much an accusation. I will then say "yep" and he always answers very cheerfully, "OH!" and wanders away.

So despite the fact that I have completely redone my older son's room and am halfway through my middle son's room (not to mention in the past two days, the baseball game, two barbeques and two separate rowdy games of dominoes), I have cast on two new WIPs.

The first one is a cotton tank that is not exactly my style of colors, so I am not entirely sure what will happen to it. I got the yarn (100% mercerized cotton) last year to make a tank for a friend. I am calling it cotton candy. I started to make a Berocco pattern - Abby, but the wild color pattern seems inappropriate for it. I think I will do the neck as a boat-neck with short sleeves instead.

The second project is actually almost finished and should be complete up to the drying point by today. Don't tell my sister but it is her booga bag. I ordered the Noro in the color that is on the booga website - #95 because Kim said she wanted cheerful sherbert colors. I think she will be happy but I wish it didn't have as much dark green in it. If I was braver, I would have deleted the dark greens but I was afraid I wouldn't have enough to complete the project.

The third project (make it stop NOW) is actually an UN-knitting WIP. Yep, you read that right. I found a link via a non-knitting friend detailing how to recycle a sweater. I immediately began looking for a sweater to try it on but found that my old, no-good sweaters are false seams (damn them all to hell and back). Just by chance, (okay, that's a lie, I browse for entertainment quite often), I was in the Navy store and saw this fingering weight, chenille sweater on the clearance rack. While not technically ugly, it is not something I would EVER wear. And it has true seams. Woo Hoo, off to the frog pond you go little feller. I will post my journey to recycled yarn later.

EDITED TO ADD:
Okay, all finished ripping out the sweater. I had thought that the el cheapo sweater's design was printed on. Oh nooooooo. Chenille intarsia AHAHAHHHHAHHHHHH run away, run away! And the darker of the two yarns in each design was at least several feet longer so it made for extremely uneven unravelling. I am very happy with the result though. I wound the two strands together (and will knit them together). The green/cream looks to be about 600 yards (wild guess), the blue/white is probably about 300 yards and the pink is about 100. The dark reddish pink trim is probably another 50-75 yards. I am thinking that I will knit that as trim for the pink. The green ball you see is the extra length from the uneven unravelling. I doubt it is more than 25 yards and I am not entirely sure why I bothered with it. Did I mention how dusty yanking out chenille is? Sneeze baby sneeze. Oh and one thing that woman that made the website for ripping out sweaters didn't really touch on, frogging is freaking messy. No wonder she did it outside.

I almost forgot - I bought this huge wicker trunk for a mere $20 the other day to hold half my stash.

Posted by DebC at 10:04 AM | Comments (3)

May 12, 2004

Clarification

The bag was huge before I felted it but afterwards it is the size of a bookbag.


I caught Seth midlaugh in the picture which is why there is the really cool "speed" effect hahahahahaha.

Posted by DebC at 07:03 PM | Comments (1)

May 11, 2004

Ooga Booga

Okay, so we had nice learning experience making this booga bag (which is a euphemism for "narrowly averted disaster"). I knitted the light gray (grey?!) and dark gray shetland together which gave me this neat tweed effect. I decided that I wanted a big bag so I doubled the pattern (translated from Deb speak is "got greedy"). Even so, it knitted up very fast. I had a feeling that I would run out just before the bag was as tall as I wanted, so I planned to use some red wool (Reynolds) for a nice contrast at the top.

When I was all done, the bag was enormous, so big in fact, that my two year old fit inside of it! (don't worry, there are plenty of pictures in the gallery) I had never made i-cord before but found it ridiculously easy. I don't know who ever decided that spool knitting was fun but they obviously have never made i-cord before. Very satisfying. Both my seven year old and nine year old can do the spool knitting - I am going to teach them the i-cord method.

Felting came next. This is the exciting part. I wasn't worried about the bag being too big because I had been reassured that it will shrink up and there were even before and after pictures on the web to prove that other people have made it work. Liars. After the first hot water washing, my mistake was apparent. The gray wanted to felt like no tomorrow but the red wanted to take its toys and go home. I put it through a second wash and it was no better (except the gray's stitch definition was totally gone). Badwordsbadwordsbadwords creative thought morebadwords idea coming onemorebadwordforgoodmeasure. Where's the scissors?

I cut the red off, leaving a bare inch for decoration. I was sad to see that the red had prevented the gray from contracting all the way at the top, which made the top of the bag very floppy. I decided I would skewer the sides with a cool decorative chop stick or something (Brittany Birch #11 DPN to hold its place until I could find just the thing). Then I realized that another chunk of knotted i-cord would be just the thing.

Click on the picture to get into the gallery. Click on the individual pictures to see the full size version and to be able to comment on them.

Posted by DebC at 07:42 PM | Comments (7)