Tag: Knitting Projects

  • F Is For… Fancywork

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    Fancywork.  It means fancy needlework or crochet, even tatting, that is decorative.  It was popular during the Victorian era and brought us all sorts of neat things like tatted lace edgings and crochet doilies and such.  For anyone interested in textile arts, fancywork comes up in the lineage of our art even if what we do now is ultra-modern.

    Interweave Press, the popular publisher of many different kinds of textile arts books, magazines, DVDs, and sites (Knitting Daily is inspiring even if you\’re an occasional knitter), re-released the historic needlework collection, Weldon\’s Practical Needlework.  What I found fascinating about the collection is its emphasis on figuring it out oneself.  There\’s a lot of knowledge that\’s assumed, that for modern craftspersons isn\’t necessarily part of the repertoire.

    And then came Jane Sowerby, with Victorian Lace Today.  She looks at several historical sources, including Weldon\’s, and reinterprets them for modern artists.  While the book focuses on knitting, it gives a fascinating look into historical craft and gives modern interpretations that are sure to have you reaching for your needles.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What historical craft speaks to you, even if its skill isn\’t within reach right at the present moment?

  • Stash Sunday

    Stash Sunday

    I am working on the Emerald Keep scarf for the Keepsake Tour, which of course means that I instantly want to play with something from my stash. Doesn\’t that always happen?

    So here\’s what\’s on my desk right now, that\’s not the Keepsake scarf:

    Top left is my character binder for the novels currently in progress, (Sealed by Duty and Sapphire Dream, in case you\’re curious).  Under that is my Franklin Planner.  On its side is some pretty Caron Simply Soft Paints yarn, which I bought when I bought the yarn for the Emerald Keep scarf but am not using in it.

    Which begs the question, what shall I make with it?  ~rubs hands together~

    Next is my keys.  This is important.  Hard to get into the house without them.

    Don\’t ask me how I know that.  I don\’t want to talk about it.

    Moving right along, we come to the Caron ball band for the light green yarn in the Emerald Keep scarf.  The glue failed and it fell off, so I brought it in here to make sure I have it up on Ravelry before I discard it.

    The grey is for a possible pair of Quill\’s Socks, which were featured in Emerald Fire and remarked upon by every editor who worked on it as well as several fans.  Yes, Teeka finished the socks, yes, Quill liked them, and yes, I\’ll feature a pattern for them when the website redesign goes live – and I might even make a pair of them to give away at some point.  Though, in all honesty, I probably won\’t have time to make them for this Keepsake Tour.

    Next is the yarn I bought to make Rachel a pair of fingerless mitts she can use in the hot climate of the Nevada desert.  I\’ll use some kind of lace pattern on them, probably but right now I\’m just sketching with it.

    I realized I caught the edge of my little post-it note with Rule #11 from NCIS:  \”When the job is done, walk away.\”

    On the right of my desk, I have two needlework kits that I\’m looking forward to starting.  One is a ladybug which is in honor of the fictiious Ladybug Bed and Breakfast.  The other is a lovely peacock I bought while visiting Rachel last month – I adore peacocks.

    What\’s in your stash?

  • 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.

  • Yarnglee

    Yarnglee

    So, I\’ve been on a major yarn hiatus.  I\’ve been doing calligraphy like a madwoman; I\’m filling notebooks with the stuff (and no, that\’s not a typo; yes, I mean more than one).  Let\’s just say I had to order a second set of practice markers because I used up the ink in the first set.  See what I mean?

    But I\’m feeling the bug again.  I\’m beginning to see that this is part of my normal pattern (which only took me fourteen years to figure out, but let\’s not go there, kthxbi).  I seem to set knitting aside around May or June and pick it up around September or October.

    We celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary this year – yay! – and went down to southern Illinois and St. Louis to poke around.  One of the shops had some lovely Lana de Oro and I had to get some.  I\’m thinking socks.  50% wool, 50% alpaca.  Michael picked heather grey, I picked heather lavender:

    The lavender has bits of other colors in it, more as shading than a true ombre.

    The lighting is weird because I took these outside.  I tried to get a close-up and the camera changed the coloring.  Sigh.  Must.learn.Photoshop.

    Can you tell I\’ve been playing with the grey hank?  ~blush~  But this is the grey with the lavender; I\’m thinking that I\’ll use a small mosaic in the cuff of each sock in the opposite color.

    It\’s really not as pink as it seems in this picture.  But I\’m excited.  I may even use the toe-up technique, though I think I should do the first set with practice yarn first.  We shall see.

  • Happy Friday!

    Happy Friday!

  • 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 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.

  • Stashbusting – The Jewel Scarf

    Stashbusting – The Jewel Scarf

    I have named my little scarf:  I shall call it, mini-scarf.  No, kidding.  The Jewel Scarf.  Why?  There aren\’t any jewels in it, and no beads, but the colors are shiny and remind me of jewels.  Ergo, the jewel scarf.

    Sadly, since it\’s metallic, it\’s tough to photograph because the lighting gets wonky; here\’s another shot with the flash so you can see it a little better.

    This pattern is kicking my butt, though.  It\’s deceptively simple:  Row 1, K1, *YO, S1 WYIB, K1, PSSO*, K1.  Easy peasy, right?

    Okay, if you don\’t read knit-speak:  Row 1, Knit the first stitch, then the pattern repeat is:  yarn over, slip one with yarn in back, knit 1, pass the slipped stitch over the knitted stitch, repeat until only one stitch remains; then knit 1.

    The purl row is identical, just with purls instead of knits.

    That\’s where the problem is – I keep forgetting to slip that first stitch, or I forget the yarn over, or I end up with 3 extra stitches by the time I realize I have a mistake.  I\’ve pulled this silly scarf out about five times so far and am about ready to throw my shoe at it.  Today I seem to have gotten it, though, as you can see.

    Stashbusting, I\’ve got your number.  🙂

    What are you knitting?  (Or crocheting?)  (Or making?)