KNITSTER

One thing I’ve always enjoyed when I have the opportunity to visit my local IKEA store is that they always have a display out (or at least this past year they have) of a makeshift yarn store, and how you can use various shelving and office furniture that they have for such a business setup. My son even knows to bring me to it, even though they use less quality yarn for the display, he knows I get a kick out of it.

I’ve loved IKEA, ever since it came to this country. I believe the first store was in Plymouth Meeting, PA, (and it’s still where the US headquarters are, as well as a revamped store). I remember as a teenager that a catalog came in the mail for my parents, and I would pour over it, and thought that it was such a cool concept. I think we eventually went over to visit, and while my parents weren’t that impressed (it was a lot more modern for their tastes, especially back then), I loved it. Ever since, I’m a devoted IKEA fan, and we have a lot of IKEA furniture and storage and other sundry items from there. With the presence of the internet, I discovered a site (no, not the IKEA site, although I look at that regularly) that actually has to do with IKEA hacks– in other words, people taking IKEA items, and reworking them in some way to suit their needs, like using the wall cabinets as a base to make a banquette, or taking different elements from different IKEA storage and bookcase units to make a bar– stuff like that.

And what does this have to do with knitting, you ask? Well, I was looking at the IKEA Hacker blog (which is a really cool site, by the way), and in this one entry, they talked about the versatility of a particular light fixture that you can use. In the article, if you scroll down to the bottom, you can see how knitting and IKEA can mesh together.

SWEET.

Now, if I can just find some other ways to combine the two….

Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by Dani
Filed under: General, Patterns, Projects | No Comments »

I’m still dawdling my way back to knitting, having made a couple more feet progress on the scarf I started over a year ago. My left wrist is acting up so I’m back to doing a lot of the physical therapy type stuff just on my own. I did lose 20 pounds, so that’s helping. But anyway, yesterday, on my way home I stopped off at the Centreville library, just off I-66 in Northern Virginia, and saw signs for a new store called “With Yarn in Front.” This is awesome! I haven’t ever had a LYS that was so convenient for me, and the fact that it’s not even out of my way (I stop by that library all the time) means I have access to good yarns without it being an event! I know, I know, I could order things online, but while i know better than to impulse buy yarn for anything other than simple projects, it’s nice to be able to put your hands on a yarn and say “I like” before making the commitment.

In the meantime, summer is here and I’m doing a lot of gardening-oriented activity, which does a lot to stretch those muscles on my icky skeletal bits.

Posted on June 21st, 2008 by Helen
Filed under: Shopping | No Comments »

No, that subject isn’t a typo at all.

I was looking at eBay, since I hadn’t been there for a while, just doing some window shopping, so to speak, and I came across this in my browsing….

This is a trading card of some sort showing Queen Victoria herself spinning on a wheel made by some dude in Belfast. Who knew that she was a spinner, or at least would be willing to pose as one? Being the big royalty buff that I am, I thought it was pretty cool.

In the meantime, believe me, I am still knitting, when I can! Life has gotten in the way much too much lately, so I squeeze in knitting and sewing when I can, but lately it’s been more knitting since it’s more portable. I’ve completed the body, head, and base of the Hedwig Owl that I’ve been making, and working on the first wing (which is almost done). I’ve also completed one fingerless glove with a short cuff for myself. Need to start the next one, since that’s an easy, mindless project to do and bring with you. But I promise, I’m still knitting! Really!

Hope all is well with all the Knitsters out there!

Posted on June 15th, 2008 by Dani
Filed under: Photos, Spinning | No Comments »

Well, if you are a diehard knitter who has more advanced skills than I do, perhaps you aren’t crazy. But for me, I added something to my queue on Ravelry…and in reality…as something that I wanted to do. It’s the first time I actually bought a pattern for something that didn’t come out of a knitting book of some sort or a free pattern from the web. This is it:

It’s called the “Mystic Waters Shawl” by Anna Dalvi, a Swedish-Canadian knitter. What I love about the look of this shawl is that it’s not…frou-frou looking. It’s not flowers and girly stuff, but rather geometric and organic, yet still feminine. That’s more my style.

Oddly enough, I am not making this for myself. I had the crazy idea that I am going to try to make this for my future SIL in an off-white color instead. I don’t know why I thought of it this way, but I did. But what’s crazier is that I’ve really hardly done anything lace-like before, let alone used laceweight yarn. I went to the Wooly Lamb last night, as it’s their 5th anniversary, and they are having some big sales there this week. They had something whereby you could go and pick a slip, and it would give you how much your discount would be. I was wishing for a big number, but as usual my luck was just okay, and I got a 25% one off, which is still not too bad. The problem too is that I still wanted to keep the yarn in my budget, and there wasn’t a lot of laceweight yarn to my liking, or else if there was, it was WAY expensive. I finally found something that I think will do, and I bought 3 skeins of Classic Elite Yarns’ Silky Alpaca Lace in Natural. My friend Sandy had some along, but she was saying that she didn’t understand why I just didn’t go to Michael’s to get the yarn. I had to explain that it’s the same reason she goes to the specialty quilt store next to the Wooly Lamb and not to the local JoAnn’s– better selection and quality. They don’t have laceweight yarn at Michael’s, let alone something that’s 70% alpaca and 30% silk!

Yes, I think I’m crazy to try to attempt this at all. But it’s pretty and if I can get through it, it will be like climbing a big mountain like Killimanjaro– a HUGE accomplishment. And I think my future SIL will like it. While I’ve only met her once, through my brother’s description of her design tastes and such, I think her tastes are similar to mine– she likes feminine, but not overly girly, and appreciates something that’s organic and geometric than flowery.

I don’t know when I’ll cast this one on…I’m still working on the Harry Potter’s Hedwig for Drew, and I have some sewing projects that I’m behind on, but hopefully I will this summer.

ETA - After looking at the whole pattern, I think I’ll be making the “small” size, which is still a good shoulder wrap size. The one shown in the photo is the “large” size, and I think it’s a little way too big. Yeah, the small one will suffice. And oh, if my eyes don’t get buggy from the charts, I’ll be surprised.

Posted on May 23rd, 2008 by Dani
Filed under: Patterns, Photos, Projects, Works in Progress | 3 Comments »

I’m fortunate that my son actually doesn’t mind wearing cardigan like sweaters, or really, I should say, sweater hoodies. For years before she moved up here permanently, my mother in law would buy these acrylic, densely machine knit hoodie sweaters that had all these Andean patterns on them when she was in Ecuador. Drew loved those sweaters, and people would always comment about them, how interesting and unique looking they were. Well, they were certainly unique to anything you would find up here. So, now that Drew had outgrown them all, and Abuela hasn’t been back to Ecuador in a few years, Drew requested that I make a sweater. It started out at the Hot Flaming Sweater, and turned out to be the Sweater from Hell that I frogged back. As I posted last, it ended up being what Drew originally asked for quite a while ago– he wanted me to make him a red sweater.

Since I really didn’t take any pictures of just the sweater by itself (I could, but I’m too lazy and busy these days with other things), why not show the sweater on a very cute male model instead?

New Red Sweater on a Handsome Boy

Drew loves the sweater. He wears it every day to school now, instead of some regular ol’ jacket. The hood, while it curls inward from the lack of better finishing techniques, is still big and roomy and he can hide under there. It’s a little big on him, but not so big that he’s swimming in it. Rather, just big enough that if he should have a growth spurt over the summer, it’ll still fit him in the fall.

I’m just glad he likes it so much. Makes it worth all the time and effort.

Posted on May 2nd, 2008 by Dani
Filed under: Finished Objects, Photos, Projects | No Comments »

Hello Knitsters!

It’s been a while since any of us posted, but let’s face it– spring is upon us. And does that mean we stop knitting? Of course not! Heck, in fact, we might be knitting maniacs right now, too busy to write. (Yeah, and it could be that we are just plain busy too!)

Well, you all remember the Flaming sweater than went down in flames? The replacement sweater, knit all in red, is done. Correction: it’s 99% done. And I’m a dweeb because I don’t want to take a picture of it until it’s 100% done. It’s been finished for almost 2 weeks already, except for one thing– the zipper. It’s a zippered cardigan, after all. I did have some problems with it too. I had wanted to follow the pattern for most of it, meaning the last part was picking up stitches along the front and the hood, and normally you’d have buttonholes on one side of the front. But I was opting just to skip the buttonholes and just make the ribbed edge, and it would look great. Now, we all know that I suck at picking up stitches. But this time, I kinda found a pattern within the stitches there where I could pick them up in a patterned way rather than a random way. Great, right? Wrong. I only had 6-7 rows to do, so you’d think that wouldn’t be bad, even if it was 250+ stiches per row. That’s fine, no problem, so I thought. Wrong. There were BIG gaps between where I picked up and started knitting. BIG HOLES. Consistent holes. Being that I made it out of cheap acrylic yarn, I think it got stretched, but naturally it didn’t stretch back. As Spongebob would say, “BARNACLES!” So, I frogged out that whole section after doing about 3 rows, and took a slightly different approach. First, after re-picking up the stitches, I knit a baseline of garter stitches, and along the way, I even did a K1M1, which doubled the stitches, but seemed to tighten up that gap, so I thought. Sure enough, when I went to do that second pass/row and start the patterning, the gaps were opening up again. Not as big, but still significant enough. Blasted! So, I asked Drew if he cared about having the ribbing along the hood and all, and he said, nah, it was fine with him. GOOD.

Now, I’ve recently started up with a new hobby, much related to this– sewing. (I’m getting my first machine on Tuesday– got it on eBay. Oh, and I’m starting a sewing blog as well– Windsornot’s Threads. But anyway….) Rather than have the semi-disaster that I had in sewing in the zipper by hand again, like I did with JC’s sweater, I decided that I want to machine sew in the zipper this time. Problem is, I haven’t figured out/learned how to do that yet. So, the sweater sits here on my desk, along with the zipper, waiting for the parts to come together. That zipper is the 1% I haven’t done yet. It’s otherwise ready to go.

I’m such a dweeb. Like I said, I don’t want to photograph it until it’s ALL the way done. So there you go– I do have an FO, it’s just in hiding. :-S I think I have to learn how to put that zipper in soon, or if not, hand sew it in before Spring flies by and he can’t wear it! I will say that it does look pretty decent. I’ve had Drew try it on, and he’s happy with it so far. I did make it a little bit bigger so that it will still fit him in the fall, should he have a growth sprurt on me over the summer (he usually does!).

I promise I’ll have pics soon. Really.

My next project in knitting is that I hope to make a toy for Drew. He got in trouble this week at school, so I wasn’t exactly in the mood to knit something fun for him if he was being a rotten kid. So maybe I’ll start it soon. I’m taking the Errol pattern from Charmed Knits, (hence, making a toy owl), but instead of Errol, I’m making Harry’s owl, Hedwig. I have the cheap white yarn, and I found this fun fur type yarn that actually looks feathery, so that should look pretty cool. We’ll see if I have enough of that stuff! I think I do.

Tune in soon, and maybe you’ll see something exciting!

Posted on April 17th, 2008 by Dani
Filed under: Finished Objects, Works in Progress | No Comments »

there’s been a lot of spam slipping into the moderation queue lately (thank goodness it hasn’t been making it through to the actual blog).

i’m going to upgrade akismet tonight, and I hope that helps.

Posted on March 25th, 2008 by Helen
Filed under: Admin | No Comments »

Okay, let me explain…

I finally finished a long overdue UFO. Or I should say, it’s an FO now. Last year, I was always freezing at work, as my boss wouldn’t have the heat kick in until an hour before I left, which would be several hours after I arrived. I’m also a person, whom I swear is pre-menopausal (okay, TMI, sue me), so atmospheric/environmental temps are important to me, and in the winter, I like to feel toasty. When your fingers are getting so cold that they feel arthritic INSIDE, you know it’s too cold. And even with long sleeved shirts, I still felt cold. Not having many sweaters to my name, I decided that most of the time, if I just put another layer over my arms and shoulders, I was fine. Hence, the idea to make my own shrug was born.

I wanted something with some texture to it, so I looked in my Vogue Stitchonary Volume One, and chose the Flying Geese stitch pattern. It has a certain brocade-y like look to it. I chose my yarn– Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky in Duck Egg Blue. I got a basic concept in my head of how I would do it, and it’d be one piece going wrist to wrist. So, to say the least, this was the first completely, totally, original design I’d ever done, and it was freestyle to boot. Well, mistakes were made along the way, but it still came out looking okay.

Here’s me wearing it, a look from the back (don’t look at my big ol’ butt)

And here’s me with it from the front.

And here it is, without me in it! (It’s more the color of the first two photos, but you can see the detail of the pattern better in this one.

Essentially, the stitch pattern is in multiples of 10, so I cast on a multiple of 10 that I knew would make it around most of my arm. When I got to the shoulder, I increased the stitches by another multiple of 10, and when I was leaving the other shoulder, I decreased it by 10, and then finished until I got to the other side. In other words, this was made in one piece, wrist to wrist. Then, just to make it look more finished off, after seaming the sleeves, I picked up the stitches that were left on the “inside”, and did a 3X2 rib pattern in the round. And that was that.

Now, I started this about a year ago, and finished it up yesterday. Did it take a year to make? No. I started it, then put it down for a while and did several other projects, and then decided that I needed to finish this one up before the end of this winter and/or spring.

It was certainly a learning process, and it taught me that I still have a lot to learn about making garments! But it was a good experiment that came out looking okay. Lessons I learned were:

The problems I had, I think, were fixable, or could have been better done with a better design, but that’s part of the learning process. I’ve realized that I would’ve preferred tapered cuffs that I could’ve put that same 3X2 rib on, and it wouldn’t looked REALLY tailored. I learned that where my armpit is needs more ease than the rest of my arm, so I should’ve increased stitches sooner. The bottom part, under my shoulder blades, originally bunched up when I wore it, and I think that with some breaking in, it’s starting to flatten out. Still, I wonder if I could’ve made it differently so that wouldn’t have happened.

In the end, it serves its purpose well, and I am toasty warm in this very, very soft yarn. Maybe someday I’ll work the kinks out of the pattern, and I can get it on Knitty or something like that. That would be cool. But at least it’s done now, and I can enjoy it. I think it’ll be a while before I do another shrug. And hopefully it won’t take a year between starting and finishing it.

Posted on March 24th, 2008 by Dani
Filed under: Finished Objects, Patterns, Photos, Projects | 3 Comments »

Me! Me! Me!

Oh my goodness, I am about to burst! My wonderful husband just put in the order for  an Ashford Kiwi from The Woolery. It comes unfinished and I have to put it together… and the, of course, I have to learn to spin on it. But! Beautiful yarn at a faster pace is in my future!

… knitting? I’m a little slack with my knitting but should have a FO to post soon. *tantalizing hints to keep you on edge of seat*

But! A spinning wheel! Yay!

Posted on March 19th, 2008 by Xiane
Filed under: Spinning | 2 Comments »

I finally completed yet another pair of wristwarmers. Although I could use a pair myself, I think I’m done with doing them for a while. Since November, I’ve made 5 pairs. FIVE. Can you believe that? And that’s in between everything else! And that doesn’t include the actual mittens I made. I’m glad that project is done. I’m being paid for them, so now I can send them out, and since I was prepaid, now I feel okay if I choose to spend the money I earned for them. It didn’t feel right to do it before.

So now I’m left with two projects that I’m actively working on, namely the Flying Geese shrug of my own design (which we’ll see how that turns out), and the red sweater that was the revamp of the Flaming Sweater of earlier that I frogged. Now that I’m not working on the wristwarmers, I think I’ll be able to make more progress on these two projects. I’m going to do my best to stand firm on not starting anymore projects for a little while if I can help it. I really want to finish these two projects soon! The shrug was started about a year ago, and put aside for a very long time. I want to wear it before summer this year! And the sweater, well, I want Drew to be able to wear it for the spring, and still fit into it!

In the meantime, I went to a local craft fair this past weekend. It was an interesting experience, as in the past, I was just looking around casually, and usually I was another vendor there with my Body Shop at Home stuff. Now that I don’t sell that stuff anymore, and I don’t work the shows like that, I was on a mission to see what was there, of course, but especially to see if there were any knitted goods, what they were, and how much they charged. It was very interesting to see the differences betwen the three vendors who did do knitted pieces. One of them did everything in Lion Brand Fun Fur, and I could tell because I have some and recognized the colors they had! All of them had very simple designs really, but because all of them used novelty yarns of various types (some higher end yarns, some not so high end), they made them look interesting to the amateur eye. I mean, one used higher end ribbon and other novelty yarns, that I could tell, but all it was was a short neck scarf of 10 stitches across, all done on large needles for about 20 inches, with fringe of said yarns. And that was it! Well, I could probably mass produce those too! But that’s not what I would want to do. I’ve toyed with the idea of having my own craft business of some sort, but of what? Sometimes I’ve thought of having an online yarn shop, but they are a dime a dozen. And there’s Etsy, so it’s not like I wouldn’t have competition that way either. I don’t know…it’s still in the thinking stages, since I’m not sure exactly what I would want to do just yet. Knit little things? Make home dyed yarn colorways? Have an online LYS? Open a yarn store? I don’t know. But I’m starting to feel that one of my possible callings might be in that direction. I need some creative outlet and be able to reap some sort of reward for the effort, you know? Hmmm….more thinking needed…..

Posted on March 10th, 2008 by Dani
Filed under: Finished Objects, Projects, Shopping | No Comments »