Prepare yourself for a majorly image-heavy post.
First off, adventures in (purposeful) felting:
Here is the messenger bag before I put it in the washer…
I added a striped flap to make it more messenger-ish instead of just a bigger bag, but evidently I left it in the washer too long because here is what it looked like after I took it out and sewed on the button.
It looks more like a purse than a messenger bag and hardly fits the notebook that she wanted to carry around in it!
I like the pretty button she chose, though.
I made the buttonhole by cutting a slit near the bottom of the flap after it had been felted, and then just doing a simple blanket stitch around the edge of it to keep it from fraying.
The original pattern from the S’nBN book was called ‘Candy Stripers’ for the super-bright colors of the stripes, but Tab likes more earthy colors and wanted the body of the bag to be solid, so I’m not really sure what to call it. I did the seams as I went along by picking up stitches from the corresponding sides and then working them together with the first stitch of the next row. It sure saved a lot of time, especially since I loathe seaming. I also like how my random modifications turned out, even if it was a little small to begin with. The stripe pattern was just made up as I went along, and I kind of like it that way.
But that came off of the needles before I left for Ohio.
What knitting I did was mostly on the Clementine Shawlette, which incidentally hasn’t really grown that much:
It’s just a bit past six inches from the marker that shows where I stopped increasing. I’m a little disappointed with how narrow it is, but hopefully the yummy softness of the yarn will make up for it.
I also bought some yarn.
First, there is some Louet Gems Pearl that I bought when we went to Toledo (at a shop called Fiber Works…it was actually pretty cool)
One ball of Lilac, and one Cream, which I plan to use them for a pair of Endpaper Mitts. I don’t have the right DPNs for them yet, but hopefully by the time I’ve worked through my queue enough to justify this project, I’ll have been able to get them.
Also, at Sauder Historical Village (the one semi-exciting place in Archbold, where they have people hired to reenact various pioneer activities) there was a little spinning shop with a lady spinning and roving in baskets and skeins of handspun and hand-dyed yarn hanging all over and they were so pretty so I bought a little hank of undyed sport/DK weight-looking grey wool.
Isn’t it a beauty? The lady spinning said that somehow when it was being carded the roving got mixed with some pinkish other roving resulting in a subtlely variegated look that I just love. It’s really coarse, though, so I don’t really know what to do with it. There was no yardage indication, but I’m guessing between 100 and 200 yards. Any suggestions?
I really wish I could spin.
On another note, I am just 80 pages away from finishing The World is Flat. Huzzah! It’s been a really interesting book, but reading it just makes me tired. There’s so many statistics that I just get lost sometimes, and there’s just so much packed into each page that it takes forever just to get 20 pages done. And then after that I can get going on my gloriously shorter and less complicated fiction choice.
Have you seen this fall’s issue of Interweave Knits?
It’s Eunny Jang’s first issue as editor, and it is AMAZING.
I mean, I already liked the magazine, but now it’s my very favorite ever. I’ve been looking for it in stores for awhile now and just got it today (I want to get a subscription soon so I don’t have to worry about that).
I’ve already fallen in love with several of the patterns in it.
The Tangled Yoke Cardigan, the Tilted Duster, and the Composed Mitts are just a few of the designs in this issue that I just HAVE to make.
(I tried to picture-link directly to the photos by posting them on here, but for some reason this computer won’t let me do it)
This knitter asks, must they publish such great patterns when I already have so many other things queued? At this rate, I’ll be finishing my to-knit list at least a few years from now, and by then I’ll have a ton more!
Still, I’ve got to give a hand to the awesome people who put this magazine together. Great job!
Plus, this is sort of the ‘green’ issue, with articles about organic yarns, and how to reduce, reuse, and recycle in the knitting world.
I guess I can safely say that the contributors and staff of IK have another addict on their hands!
Well, we got to Ohio alright, but I although I can still get on the computer here to check email and write blog posts and read blogs, so far as I can tell there is not a way to upload photos. So, I don’t know if I’ll have any other reason to post this next few days, as there would not be much point in talking about my knitting without being able to SHOW you.
A few days ago I got a crazy urge to finish the almost-forgotten messenger bag that Tab asked me to make for her, so that took up most of my knitting, and I am happy to say that I have the thing ready to felt and off of those beasts of needles that I absolutely loathe (14-inch-long aluminum #15 straight needles, you could almost call them poles…so loud and clumsy and heavy…I would be so happy to never see them again)
That’s all over, though, and I can weave in the ends and felt it when I get back.
Oh, and speaking of that, I also have a most major lamentation to share!
When I was packing yesterday, I decided I wanted to bring my Mrs. Darcy along in case by some crazy chance it got cold enough here in the hot and humid to wear a wool sweater…but the thing is, I also needed a quick fix to wash it.
Our washer has a cycle labeled ‘Handwash/Wool’, so I figured I could just use that, it had worked for me once before. Then once it was done, I threw it in the dryer on medium for half an hour…I got it out and tried it on and it was a little snug, but then I just thought it was because I had just washed it.
NOT TRUE.
Tonight, I wanted to show my grandparents my precious first garment design, so I put it on.
I guess you know what happened.
Yes, somehow I have inadvertently felted poor Mrs. Darcy! It’s not to the extent that I’ll be felting the messenger bag, but just enough stiffness and un-stretchiness for it to fit extremely awkwardly and for someone my size to never wear out in public again!
My readers and friends, I am extremely sad over this loss.
Hopefully I’ll be able to find someone who can make good use out of this shrunken treasure.
Not much to say here, since I’ve been working mostly on La Chandail de Mystere the past few days (I’ve had to frog it twice to get things right). I wish I could share more of my ideas for it but I don’t know how strict Knitty is about their submissions being talked about before they’re chosen. I’ll have to check their guidelines again because I’d really like to at least post a sketch! Meanwhile, I’ve also been working on writing up the details of the version I am working so I can attempt to adapt that to sizes x-small-3X according to the CYC sizing standards. All I really hope right now is A. that I do all the math right and B. that all this work is actually worth it.
I’ve come to the realization this past few days that there are only a few weeks before school starts again and I hadn’t even started my huge summer reading assignment for my upcoming English class until last week (woops!). Two ~500 page books to read and respond to, not to mention one’s a complex book about economy (The World is Flat, by Tom Friedman) and the other is a classic about American pioneer times (My Antonia, by Willa Cather) before the first week of September. So, hopefully that will be what occupies most of my time on our week long family trip to see my maternal relatives in Ohio and I’ll be able to get a sizable chunk done, so I won’t be as stressed out when we come back with just over a week left before the due date. Speaking of that, I should probably get going so I can work!
This is the surprise FO.
I knitted a Brea Bag for Anna’s birthday and put chocolate and a little booklet I made of Jim’s pranks from ‘The Office’, compiled using the Jim Halpert page on Wikipedia. It was a pretty good knit, I should say. I hope she’ll get some good use out of it. I looked for a purse handle, but couldn’t really find a satisfactory one so I ended up making one out of ribbon and some metal rings.
The yarn I used was Cascade 220 Heathers in this really weird color: there were two plies of heathered green and two black plies. It made a really interesting fabric when I knitted it up doubled. I only bought that one because the store I went to didn’t have the color I had in mind, but no matter. I think it still looks good. Here’s what the yarn looked like in the ball:
The cables were fun, too. I had never done any sort of aran pattern before, so that was new.
Her party was fun, too. Almost everyone that came included chocolate in their gift, so she has a TON of it now. Probably will last for awhile.
Well, I think that’s it for now, I just thought I’d share this.
(referring to the time between FO posts)
Nothing new, I’m sorry to say, but I just thought I should check in because I’ve found that I’ve only been posting every once in awhile lately. I do, however have a surprise project (your birthday present, Anna) that I’ll be posting the day after tomorrow, just so it remains a surprise for her party tomorrow. It’s pretty good, too, I should say.
I also took away the progress bars because it’s really tedious to update them and I’ve actually taken to not updating them because of that, so now it’s pretty much a useless, out of date little sidebar widget. You can see what I’m working on from the recent posts, anyway, so why not put it out of its misery? Not to mention my number of WIPs has become a little bit embarrassing. One at a time, I guess.
Well, until next time, I have to transform a piece of paper into a bird ‘using only my wand’ (which is not actually my ‘real wand’ yet because Anna said that we would be getting those tomorrow, but I’m thinking of channeling my magical-ness temporarily though a decorated knitting needle). I’m excited. Last year her party was sort of mock-themed and sort of seriously themed after the kid’s show “Arthur”, since we had all watched it growing up, and this year, it’s MAGIC.
This blogger wonders: will a fair few photos make up for the lack of posts that resulted from her extended absence?
First off- I bound off and blocked the Mitts a few days ago.
I also read Harry Potter and I have to say that J K Rowling did a pretty good job on the ending.
I ended up staying up until almost 4 in the morning to finish it…
Austin was gone at the beach with his family on his birthday, so I’ll have to wait until the next convenience to give them to him.
I made the collage card, but it’s just one piece of paper that I wrote my message on the back.
I also did something very unlike me and made a couple of stash enrichments over the last few days. My mom and I took a tour of a few yarn shops in Portland. First we went to Northwest Wools, where I fell in love with and invested in a huge hank of undyed, handspun, fingering-weight alpaca:
660 yards of luscious softness. I plan to find a nice lacy shawl pattern to use it up for, maybe I’ll dye it first, maybe not.
We also visited a couple others, one of which was called Lint, which had every single item for 40% off since they were about to close. While browsing, not planning to buy anything, I noticed that they had two matching balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze sitting lonely on a shelf. You know, normally, that yarn would sell for about $15 a ball, but they were 40% off. So, I figured that I probably wouldn’t be able to find it anywhere else for that little, and snapped them up.
I love how delicately fluffy and soft the yarn is, and the pretty shell pink just adds to that. I looked up the color on YarnDex, and it said that this particular shade was called ‘Fondant’ but I could think of about 10 other names that might do it justice. I plan to use these for a Wisp, but not for awhile until I can finish everything else I’ve got going. This yarn is even thinner and more fragile-feeling than the laceweight I used before, so I’m looking forward to working with it.
