Tag: Design

  • K Is For… Knitting! Again!

    K Is For… Knitting! Again!

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    I know I did knitting today on the main blog, too, but it bears repeating.  ~grin~  Besides, what if you don\’t, yet, knit?  How do you go from string to art?  It\’s like anything else.  Practice.

    Okay, so how do you know what to practice?

    Well, there are plenty of books and websites out there purporting to be able to teach you how to knit.  If you\’re reading this and nodding along, chances are that you\’ve glanced at them and they meant about as much to you as they did to me – which means, nothing.  Zilch, zip, nada.  I tried to learn to knit from books for almost ten years.  I just couldn\’t make sense of the stuff on the page as it related to the stuff in my hands.

    If this is you, then I have two solutions for you:

    First, find a teacher.  Local yarn shops and big-box stores like Michaels and JoAnns offer classes, as do park districts, senior centers, and adult learning centers.  There are Meetup groups, and knitters even put themselves out on sites like Craig\’s List.  Don\’t overlook your local university – fashion design programs feature knitting, because the designers need to know how to work with knit fabric.  I met my first teacher through my local yarn shop, and she is an adjunct professor at not one but two local universities.

    Second, look online.  YouTube has a wealth of videos on how to do anything from cast on (which is how you get the yarn onto the needle so you can start knitting with it) to complicated stitch patterns, decreases, increases, lace, cables, and all the other foreign-sounding words that are the stock-in-trade of the knitter\’s craft.

    If you haven\’t discovered it yet, Craftsy is a ton of fun to poke around.  They\’ve even got a bunch of free classes, so you can see how you like the learning platform.  Their basics series are good, solid grounding in whatever craft you select; they\’ve got a ton of intermediate (skill building) and advanced classes for you more experienced knitters out there.  You can select classes and add them to your wish-list, and keep your eyes peeled for their sales.  Might be just as addictive as doing the craft itself!

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What suggestions do you have for folks who want to begin a new craft?

  • Work In Progress Wednesday

    Work In Progress Wednesday

    Attempt the First

    It\’s Wednesday.  I figured I\’d share what I\’ve been crafting around with.

    My first item to share is the Emerald Keep Scarf, which will be a giveaway in the forthcoming Keepsake Tour starting March 8th, to celebrate the release of Book 2 in the Persis Chronicles, Emerald Keep.

    It didn\’t work.

    I mean, yeah, it\’s fabric, and it\’s knitted.  But that\’s about it. For one thing, the stitch said WS (wrong side) for both pieces, but either I misread it or it\’s a typo because clearly, it\’s incorrect – the edge stitches clearly are backward from the main lace stitches.

    Attempt the First, Backside

    This is a view where you can see the edge stitches are right-side up, while the lace is wrong side.

    Grr.

    Attempt the Second, Front and Frustration Both Start with F.
    So does my favorite swear word.
    Jus\’ sayin\’.

    Started over.

    And… I don\’t like my idea of the border.  You can\’t really see it well in this shot, but the edges pull in too much and make it look sloppy.  The reason I wanted a border to begin with is that this stitch has quite a bit of bias curl; however, the edging I picked (mistake-stitch rib) isn\’t working.

    I think either I\’ll throw an extra yarn over in to create a sort of gutter, or eliminate the edges entirely.

    Mancooking.
    Why move stuff outta the way when you can stand over it?

    I mentioned to a friend that we made candles last weekend and realized I neglected to take photos.  I planned to take pics of the cold pots, but we have to cook in our kitchen so they had to come off the stove.

    And, apparently, my kid thinks it\’s no big deal to stand over them rather than move them out of the way.  He\’s cooking a very lovely taco salad at the moment, (well, cooking the sausage that will go in the taco salad).  Yum.

    Soap! Curing!

    Our batch of soap that we made a couple weeks ago is curing very well.  It\’s a lovely creamy ivory color now.  We cut it this weekend to allow each of the bars exposure to air, so they can continue the curing process.

    In case you\’re wondering, curing is letting the chemical reaction between the fat and lye to finish.

    This is raw soap and not milled soap, so it\’s not made in a mold.  You can use it as is, once it\’s cured, or mill it again and then pour it into pretty molds for a nice appearance.

    Candles, Dipped 2015

    I only made a half-dozen this year so far; I may fire up the pots once more before I put everything away.  I like the way these came out; they are nice and uniform.  They\’re also really long, which is my favorite (I have four different heights I can make).

    Basket-o-Candles, Bad Lighting.

    This isn\’t a very good shot, but it\’s of my candle stock.  I\’ll see if I can get a better one for you one of these days – but for now, it\’s off to eat dinnah.

    Yum.

    What are you making?

  • Make Something Monday – Bryce Canyon Hat I

    Make Something Monday – Bryce Canyon Hat I

    Bryce Canyon Hat, all done!

    I finished the hat late Sunday night.  I used a sewing needle bind off so that the edge is nice and loose.  It\’s very warm; reflects heat back against my head.

    Top View

    I love the way the top came out with swirls.  One thought I had is to continue the swirls down the body of the hat using decreases after each yarn over.

    Bryce Canyon Hat, Almost There

    Here\’s a shot of the rib stitch.  My next one, I want to do something more interesting on the body of the hat.  The ribbing is boring; I\’d like to try something more fun – maybe even patterned.

    In process, large enough to go on the double-pointed needles.

    It looks like a little bag at this stage.

    Top View, in process

    Here\’s the top before drawing all the stitches up.  A pom pom might look cute here, or even a bauble.

  • Stash Sunday: Introducing Aubergine

    Stash Sunday: Introducing Aubergine

    She has a name now!

    I\’m so excited – I settled on a name, and I\’m nearly done with the scarf!  This picture is a little too heavily slanted toward blue, but you get the idea.  I\’ve decided the name is Aubergine.  I should be done in another day or two.

    This is a fun project because the stitch is much simpler than it looks.  It\’s just a four row repeat, and two of those rows is to Purl across.  What could be easier?  This would be suitable for a beginner, as long as they know how to cast on and bind off, knit, purl, and do yarn overs.

    Pro-tip – keep your yarn untangled by moving the working skein around the waiting yarn on each color change.  Otherwise you\’ll have a wadded up mess before you go five or ten repeats.  No fun.

  • Work-In-Progress Wednesday

    Work-In-Progress Wednesday

    The Beginning

    I received my first commission as Knoontime Knitting!  I am making a scarf for a friend in two colors of purple, Royal Purple and Lavender.  Here is the beginning as it sits on my design pad after the starting swatch.

    The Middle

     Here it is after a bit of knitting.  It knits up quickly.  I am using 30 sts cast on for width.

    Still the Middle

    This is how far I got before I called it a night.

    I\’m looking forward to seeing how this shapes up.

  • Make Something Monday

    Make Something Monday

    What\’s In YOUR Wallet? or Bag?

    Happy Monday, Dear Reader!  I\’ve gotten some of my design mojo back and have been playing with some different knitting designs.  This morning, as I waited for the bus, I checked the Bus Tracker tool.  It said the next bus wouldn\’t be there for 27 minutes.  Aside from making me late for work, that meant I had time to get some knitting done.

    Then, mid-row, what do I see but a bus? Holy crap.  Try stuffing size 10 needles in an already over-stuffed knitting bag and grabbing everything to get onto the bus.

    MONDAY!

    WIP

    This is what I\’m making with my size 10 needles.  One of my books has an afghan on the cover that\’s made out of triangles.  I decided to take a twist on that idea and using a base of 35 stitches, make a sampler with leftover yarns and different textures.

    This is a Turkish Stitch done in Lion Brand Homespun.  It\’s a boucle-type of yarn and difficult to see stitch definition; however, I like the less dense look of the fabric.  I find the juxtaposition of the bias pull of the stitch with the decreased edge for the triangle to be an interesting opposition.

    What are you working on?

  • The Eyes Have It

    The Eyes Have It

    The Sun

    Every year, I struggle with Christmas and the holidays and what they mean to me.  Much like my forays into 3-D, my forays into what the holidays \”should\” be like are colored by the past and by expectations.  I remember when my parents separated when I was ten, and I believed my mother \”ruined\” Christmas.  The magic was gone.  I couldn\’t understand why my father couldn\’t be there and we couldn\’t just celebrate like we had in years past.

    Tolstoy said that every happy family is happy in the same way, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.  Melanie Beatty said that in alcoholic families, everyone\’s angry: Mom\’s angry, Dad\’s angry, even the dog is angry.  That last one stuck with me – even the dog?  She\’s right; my dog knew something was \”up.\”

    Why do I bring that up now?  As I learn how to make the holidays mine after all these years, I\’m finding that the past is much with me.  Which brings me to the Ojos de Dios, or \”Eyes of God.\”

    The Huichol people believe that these amulets bring blessings and luck upon the person for whom they\’re made.  When a person is born, an ojo is made for them in the central temple.  Ojos are also made at the inception of new business projects, marriages, and other beginnings.  It\’s a way to attract the benevolent attention of the deities onto one\’s own life.

    Enlightenment

    A friend of mine suggested some years ago to make the ojos using cinnamon sticks and embroidery floss.  The idea caught fire in my mind and I love the shiny effect of the weaving.  By varying the weaves, you can create more complex structures; but just by using a simple overdyed yarn you can achieve beautiful effects with relatively little effort.

    Water

    I made these ojos for my office.  I wanted to bring blessings on our work, and to remember that it\’s the holidays.  I\’m trying to capture some of that sense of magic they had when I was little.  I\’m not sure what made it magical, which is part of the challenge; I don\’t know what I\’m searching for.

    Fire

    One year, my cat Marina kept batting down all the ornaments I\’d put on our tree.  She broke several of them and made a mess.  By end of the holiday, all the ornaments were grouped in the top 18 inches of the tree, leaving the rest to the lights.  The next year, I made ojos for the whole tree – a whole canister of them.  It made me incredibly happy to do.

    That\’s part of the magic, then – making things.  I think that we humans are crafty creatures and that making things with our hands is part of what satisfies us.  So our holiday this year has centered around handmade things – from food to decorations.

    What about you?  
    What makes the holidays magical for you?

  • A Journey Into 3-D Notebook – Hats!

    A Journey Into 3-D Notebook – Hats!

    So I\’ve been playing with knitting from the top down.  I started a sweater and have been wrestling with it (which I\’ll share later), but for now I want to share my newest creation:  a hat!

    My first hat was almost a decade ago.  A friend asked me to make a hat for her friend.  I did so.  It was large enough to fit her, her friend, AND me – and not just our heads.  It was not, shall we say, a success.

    Since then, I\’ve successfully mastered all kinds of things in knitting:  sweaters, sleeves, socks, lace, design…  So why not hats?

    I asked myself that and then gave it a shot.

    This one is fun because the increases are one-off from each other so that they swirl around the head.  I did the crown with a merino wool, then the sides with an alpaca and mohair blend that\’s fuzzy and whisper-soft.

    I even like how it looks on me.

    And you can see it from the back.

    I want to try making another hat that\’s a little smaller, so it stays tighter on the head. In fact, I started one, but that\’s a post for another day! 🙂

  • Stashbusting – The Ugli Bag

    Stashbusting – The Ugli Bag

    This picture is a bit yellow, and the middle of the bag is beige and not lemon.  But behold, my friends, the Ugli Bag.

    The top is super soft, fuzzy furry overdye with a thick central filament of a bulky yarn.  I didn\’t have much of it, so I couldn\’t at first figure out what to make; then I decided on a gift bag.

    Then I ran out.  What to do?

    The beige stripe is the leftover marino and alpaca blend that I used for a lovely scarf wrap that I\’ll feature in an upcoming article.

    Then I ran out of that.  Uh-oh.

    Enter the blue.

    Hrrrh?  The bag is a mixture of browns, pumpkins, and beige.  blue?  BLUE?

    Well, orange\’s complement is blue, and so it\’s a natural choice.

    Sort of.

    Then it hit me – do the strap in blue, too.  The prior picture shows the top of the strap so you can see the texture.  This one shows the bag.

    I didn\’t realize, though, when I put in a 2-stitch edging of garter stitch that I would cause the strap to fold in on itself.  It worked to my benefit, actually, because instead of being ultra wide, the strap is now just the right width and the double-thickness means it will be stronger.

    You can get a better idea of how obnoxious the blue is next to the orange, though, in this shot.  It\’s not quite as neon blue as in the image, but it\’s somewhere between muted and neon (how\’s that for precise?).

    I\’m going to line the bag with muslin to give it some strength and I\’ll show pictures once that\’s all done.

    Knit on!

  • Saturday Showcase: Elizabeth Brooks Answers the Question

    Saturday Showcase: Elizabeth Brooks Answers the Question

    Elizabeth Brooks is amazing.  She\’s talented.  She\’s a writer and an editor and a darn fine human being.  And when I asked her, do you craft, she laughed.

    Laughed.

    Here then, is Elizabeth Brooks and \”Sampler Platter.\”  Enjoy!

    Sampler Platter

    So Noony put out a call, asking for blog posts about all kinds of things, including crafts.

    Do I craft?

    Oh, do I! I\’m not actually that good at any of them, though, mind you, because I take a rather \”sampler platter\” approach to all kinds of crafts: I get interested in something, and I get deeply invested in it for a while… usually just long enough to learn the basics and assure myself that yep, I can do that… and then I lose interest and move on to something else.

    I\’ve done latchhook and needlepoint and embroidery. I\’ve made my own clothes (both everyday — which were mostly miserable failures — and some fantasy/sci-fi garb for cons). I spent most of grad school making a counted cross-stitch piece involving a dragon on a castle in a lake that was huge and gorgeous and by the time I was done, I never wanted to see another cross-stitch pattern again in my life. (To this day, I haven\’t seen a pattern that\’s made me want to pick it back up again.) I\’ve been an on-again, off-again amateur photographer since my parents gave me my first camera at the age of ten, and of course, with all those photographs, I got into scrapbooking for a good while, too.

    There are tons of other crafts that I\’ve toyed with, but never quite gotten fully into: cake decorating, jewelry-making, and assorted flavors of ethnic cooking, to name only a few.

    But yarncraft, oh my goodness, yes. I learned to crochet when I was 13, more or less shamed into it by my great-aunt, who made gorgeous pieces despite being blind. I learned to do little bits, then dropped it for a decade, only to pick it back up after that cross-stitch overload I mentioned. I\’m terrible at maintaining a gauge, though, so I mostly made things like afghans, where that\’s not quite as important. I made about four afghans (they make fantastic gifts when you\’re fresh out of school and poor), then transitioned to crocheting thread instead of yarn. I made a whole slew of lace-covered Christmas ornaments [photo at left] and some breadbasket cloths before dropping it again. After that, I decided I needed to teach myself how to knit, so I did — I made a scarf and a couple of Christmas stockings, but I found it lots slower than crochet, and then I had my first kid and my free time went away, and I put all the yarn away.

    But my kids are older now, and just a few months ago, the (unintentionally) combined efforts of several friends and acquaintances got me hooked (hah! I love puns!) on making amigurumi (crocheted toys, essentially).

    I love that they\’re generally small and easy to make — my favorite pattern is a palm-sized octopus that I can whip out in about an hour and a half, but I\’ve made dozens and dozens of different things in the last three or four months. I started with food, then made flowers. Then it was Easter time, so I made a bunch of eggs and bunnies.

    I\’m an enormous geek who\’s just gotten into a Doctor Who obsession, so I made a bunny with a fez and bow tie. Then I made a couple of Daleks in wacky colors, and a weeping angel.

    Then I found a little chibi-Cthulhu pattern (did I mention I was a geek?). And after I made one for myself, a friend of mine made some crack to me about Cthulhu porn (\”Cockthulhu: The Throbbing Tentacles of Pulsing Purple Passion\”) and just to punish him for putting that image in my brain, I made him a chibi-Cthulhu with penises instead of tentacles. (No photo for that. You\’re welcome.)

    Just about the time I was finishing that up, my friend Lynn showed me this picture of some adorable Elder Gods.

    It rather lit a spark in my brain, and now I\’m trying to make all of them, though since I\’m working without patterns (except for the Cthulhu, of course, since he was already done), it\’s a bit slower-going. I\’ve got Hastur done, and Nyarlathotep, and Yog-Sothoth. I\’m doing Shub-Niggurath now, though it\’s slow going because working in black yarn is hell on my eyes. I\’m saving Dagon for last, because he\’ll be the easiest, actually. But here\’s a picture of my Little Horrors family so far:

    …Yeah, I\’m not quite right in the head. I know. But just for enduring my wrongness, I\’m offering up a contest! Leave a comment, and in 1 week?, one random commenter will be drawn to receive an octopus in a color of their choice! (NB: you need to be willing to send us a private message with a working mailing address that can receive a smallish package.)

    And if you ask really nicely, I just might include a top hat for him.

    * * *

    Masquerading by day as an uptight corporate cog, Elizabeth spends her nights concocting gleefully smutty stories. She writes erotic romances for a wide span of worlds, genres, and orientations, and is also a senior editor for Torquere Press. When she\’s not writing or editing, she loves a wide range of generally nerdy hobbies, including reading, photography, tabletop games, geeky yarncraft, and silly smartphone games. You can find her online at her blog or on Facebook.

    Elizabeth\’s latest release is Foxfur, available from Torquere Press on November 13.

    Blurb:

    Pleasure-slave Cheng takes no particular note of the red-haired woman when she purchases his services. But the morning after her departure, Cheng is taken into custody by the Emperor\’s own guards and brought before one of the rare and terrifying Chained Mages. Already frightened and confused, things go from bad to worse for Cheng when the mage reveals the demonic nature of the red-haired woman. Now not only Cheng\’s life, but the lives of everyone around him, depend on their finding the fox-demon as soon as possible.

    As a Chained Mage, Jin is at best feared, and at worst, despised. But he can\’t allow his personal feelings to interfere with his mission, not even when his admiration for the slave deepens. In fact, Jin\’s love may result in a disaster. The fox-demon has placed a spell in Cheng, a spell designed to turn his sexual energy to a murderous ends, endangering himself and everyone around him. And worst of all, they\’re not the only hunters on the fox-demon\’s trail!

  • Stashbusting – The Purple Purse

    Stashbusting – The Purple Purse

    From some leftover purple overdye comes this little confection of a purse.  I had to laugh, though:  I showed it to someone at weaving class today and the first thing they said was, it\’s cute, but it\’s not big enough.  What would you use it for?  When I said it\’s a gift bag, they said they weren\’t that organized.

    Organized?  It doesn\’t take any organization at all to use up our stash in these little bags or other small projects.  Quite the contrary, actually.  If we use it up, then we don\’t need to organize or store it – and if it\’s a gift bag, we can give it away and get it out of our house, and make somebody really happy in the process.  A win-win, in my book!

    I figured out one thing, though.  I used the Woven Stitch from Barbara Walker\’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  If you\’re a knitter, get this book and the other three in the collection as you can.  They\’re a treasure trove.

    But I digress.  So, Woven Stitch.  It calls for a K1 before the repeat begins on Row 2, and a K1 at the end of the repeat on Row 4.  I wasn\’t thinking, and knitted the bag on 3 needles in the round like a sock.  I did each pattern repeat distinctly, one on each needle, not thinking that when I took it off the needles it would be a tube.  In the front left of the image above, immediately to the left of the handle, there\’s a vertical stripe of stockinette (stocking) stitch going up the purse in the midst of the Woven Stitch; it\’s echoed on the other side as well.  I actually like the effect but had a \”derp\” moment when I took it off the needles and realized my mistake.

    If you\’re reading that and trying to figure out why it\’s a mistake, consider this:  even though you\’re knitting on three needles, you\’re knitting in the round.  You don\’t need the edge stitches to keep the integrity of the design the way you do in back-and-forth flat knitting.  I should have just omitted those extra knit stitches on either side of the design and then you\’d never be able to tell where I began and ended the row repeats (which, since I was knitting in a circle, were rounds and not rows).  Clear as mud?  Good.

     
    Here\’s a bigger picture so you can see what I\’m talking about and use my thumb for scale – it really is a cute little bag.  But, honestly, I would use it for keys and cell phone if I was going out for the evening somewhere casual but where I didn\’t want to drag my planner and ubiquitous backpack.

    The woven stitch when knit flat has a curl to it, so I decided to do a seed stitch for the handle instead so I didn\’t have to worry about edge stitches to keep it flat.

    Here\’s a detail of the handle and a look inside the maw of the bag.  Rowr!

    One more stash down; a lot more to go.

  • A Journey Into 3D Notebook – What I\’m Working On

    A Journey Into 3D Notebook – What I\’m Working On

    November is coming, and with it, NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.  During the month of November, NaNo-ers write 50,000 words on a draft of a novel – some more, some less, and the madness that ensues is infectious.

    I wish we had a NaKnitMo, National Knitting Month.  Wouldn\’t that be awesome?

    I was lamenting recently to Rachel Wilder, my partner in writing crime, that my stash is reaching epic proportions.  I typed up what\’s under the bed in bins and showed her pictures of my shelves in my office, which overflowed from the huge apparatus over there to the top of the filing cabinet over here.

    Unperturbed, she said, \”Just think of it as hours of pre-paid entertainment.\”

    Blink.

    LOFF!

    In celebration of that, I figured I\’d share a few of the things I\’m working on or have recently finished.

    This is an Ojo de Dios, or \”Eye of God.\”  Made by the Huichol peoples of South America, they are prayers of blessing and good fortune.  Ojos are made and placed in the central village temple for blessings on a child, a new business venture, a marriage, and many other occasions.

    This one was fun to make since I usually make much smaller ones.  This one is about 12 inches on 1/2 inch dowel rods.  I sanded the dowels and then stained them using a combination of varnish and stain.  I skipped the recommended steel wool sanding in between the two coats and I think, in hindsight, I wish I had done it; on the next project I will use that as part of the preparation.  Overall, though, I like how the dowels came out.

    I used a large, bulky yarn with an overdye pattern, which is what accounts for the color variations.  I also varied the weave in making the ojo itself, which is what accounts for the visibility of the dowel in the middle of the design in parts.

    At the October Nightweavers meeting, a chapter of the Weavers Guild of the North Shore, we made snowflakes for the upcoming Fine Art of Fiber taking place at the Chicago Botanic Gardens November 8-10, 2013.  The designs are surprisingly easy to put together and look quite pretty in white paper.  I am across some colored origami paper that\’s white on the back, so I decided to try the design using six sheets of that, instead.

    The white added a depth to the snowflake that I didn\’t anticipate and like very much.  I think it would look pretty, and very different, when done on paper that has designs on both sides, especially if the designs aren\’t identical.

    I nipped its ear when I was punching a hole to hang it with; you can see it on the tip of the red ear here.

    If you\’re curious, the location where it hangs is the Pumping Station: One, a hackerspace here in Chicago.  This is the art room and the view in the background is to one of the consoles for one of our 3-D printers.