Make Ready

My Favorite DIY Gifts

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 04:25:00 +0000

Once upon a time, my handmade Christmas gifts were knitted items. I welcomed every October (far too late to start, as any seasoned knitter probably knows) with an ambitious list of gifts matched to recipients. I always failed to complete most of the list, but it didn’t stop me from repeating my habit the next fall.

Until last year. Having a Christmas baby changed the way I think about holiday gift-making and gift-giving. I knew well in advance that only a crazy person would try to knit gifts for everyone while preparing, and subsequently caring, for a new baby. Unless you count the many sweaters I knit for Adelaide prior to her arrival as Christmas presents, not a single person received a hand knit from me that year.

This holiday season, knitted gifts will be nearly as absent from my “to-make” list as they were last year. I do have a couple of exceptions – a stuffed brontosaurus for Addie’s birthday and a well-fitting winter hat and pair of mittens for her Christmas stocking. Since I’m knitting the latter two in miniature adult, they won’t take me much longer than a weekend (next weekend my ambitions self says), and the boogie woogie brontosaurus? With three weeks to go until the big birthday [party, he’s only lacking in the leg department. By December 8th he will have ample legs upon which to boogie. I promise.

Those who might have made it onto my knit list in prior years? They are still getting handmade gifts. Just not of the fiber variety. I’m not going to divulge too much, as prying eyes may be reading, but as a concession, I’ve put together a roundup of my eight favorite DIY gift ideas. My near-term weekend plans may or may not involve making a few items on the list. Tutorials are linked to the photos.

I adore chalkboard paint, especially when applied to surfaces that are not playroom walls. So I maybe swooned a little when I discovered this how-to. Added bonus: check out the link to a tutorial that shows you how to turn any paint into chalkboard paint

A good book ranks high on my list of ideal gifts for giving. Pair it with one of these adorable pompom bookmarks, and it’s even better.

This is one of the cutest felt boards I’ve seen. Sure, it requires a pretty significant time commitment, but the finished result is fabulous.

I know the “in a jar” trend is nothing new, but I’m still as in love with the idea as I was when I first discovered it. These jarred pumpkin pies look delicious and gorgeous – a perfect food gift for the holidays.

Keeping with the “in a jar” theme, I love the minimalist look of this Christmas in a Jar potpourri mix

And one more gift in a jar – homemade finger paint. This recipe uses common household ingredients that won’t harm little ones should they happen to ingest a bit of color.

If I had a decent sewing machine and few afternoons worth of time, I’d sew a stuffed fox for all the little ones in my life. The cuteness. It slays.

I don’t often consider making wall art to gift, but this tutorial, which shows you how to transfer images onto wood has me reconsidering.

Tutorial Tuesday: Stained Glass Ornaments

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:56:00 +0000

In case you’re not keeping track, only six weeks remain between now and Christmas. Whatever retail stores that had the dignity to wait until after Halloween to unveil their garish holiday displays have completed the terrible act. Now everyone’s flaunting faux evergreen, holly, poinsettia, nutcrackers, stars, snowmen, and dozens of other motifs that signify the season of spending is here.

And boy do I want to spend. This year, more than any other, I want to blow lots of money on extravagant gifts, buy decorations ample enough to turn our home into a holiday wonderland, and invest heavily in scented candles that make the entire house smell like orange and cinnamon and pine 24/7.

Last year, all the energy I might have poured into decorating our home, baking seasonal treats, and searching for the perfect gift instead went toward mastering breastfeeding, changing diapers every hour on the hour, and sleeping in stretches no more than two or three hours in length. This year I’m ready to jump in and binge while I can on holiday everything, and introduce Adelaide to the spectacle that is the Christmas season. I know she won’t remember much, if anything from this year, but I have a difficult time remaining rational.

In an effort to appease my appetite for all things Christmas without breaking my budget, I’ve thrown myself into Holiday DIY projects. You’ve probably noticed. It started with a garland of crochet Christmas trees and then a trio of evergreens made from felted wool sweaters.

My latest crafty endeavor? Stained glass ornaments made with wax paper and crayon shavings. Call this one practice for when Addie is old enough to join me in the holiday making. But even without a little one to help you sprinkle the crayon shavings just so, this is pure comfort food crafting. A little glue, kraft paper, crayons, and some paint – classic craft ingredients if there ever were any.

If you want to make stained glass ornaments my way, check out the tutorial!

Tutorial Wednesday - Recycled Felt Holiday Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 03:37:00 +0000

I haven't even started my November tutorial series and already I am one day behind my intended schedule. You can blame my tardiness on yesterday's Presidential Election. Once the returns started pouring in I couldn't tear myself away from the live coverage for long enough to post this first installment (darn you, Brian Williams!). I wanted so badly to maintain my fidelity to the schedule I announced in my last post that I briefly considered back-dating this entry, but that felt a little disingenuous and silly to me. After much hand-wringing (because I do fret over my admittedly nebulous blogging schedule), I resolved to put to use the option to schedule a post next time.

But enough with the excuses; I have a tutorial to unveil!
I know these little guys are not exactly ornaments, but they’re small enough to nestle in the branches of a larger Christmas tree without weighing it down.

I love my wooly trees, which will likely occupy the coveted role of dining room table centerpiece this holiday season.

You can find the complete tutorial here.

Goodbye Sandy, Hello November

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 15:50:00 +0000

When Super Storm Sandy barreled through the District earlier this week, we were prepared. Pasta, lentils, tomato sauce, and stock filled our pantry; a package of bottled water lay at the ready in the dining room; and I had queued up my knitting and craft projects. So I wasn’t surprised when Monday and Tuesday came and went without so much as a minute sans electricity. About four hundred thousand people in my area were not as fortunate, but that’s still a small number compared to the millions who are still in the dark along the east coast.

We weathered the storm on Monday with a succession of Christmas movies (I know, I know, it wasn’t even November. Oh the horror), homemade banana bread, and an ever-growing stack of crocheted Christmas trees. By Tuesday the worst of the storm had passed and I had strung the crocheted trees into a garland that, in a few weeks, will hang along our living room staircase.
Unlike Christmas movies, which I have no reservations about popping in the DVD player whenever the spirit moves me, Christmas decorations have no place in our home until mid-November at the very earliest. Besides, I am not yet prepared to part with my collection of ornamental gourds, my turkey pumpkin, and the autumn wreath I made a few weeks ago.

I may be waiting a little longer before I litter my house with fake evergreen and garlands ranging from the rustic, handmade variety to the tacky, sparkly, but with the crocheted trees began my holiday crafting spree. From now until December 24th I’ll be churning out ornaments, assembling gift baskets, knitting my fingers numb, and baking quick breads and candies until I am covered, head-to-toe, in a semi-permanent dusting of confectioner’s sugar. Although I will work up until Christmas, November is the best month for holiday make-ready, and I am celebrating with four weeks of Tutorial Tuesdays.

Starting next week, I’ll post a holiday DIY tutorial on the blog every Tuesday through the end of the month. This year’s theme is cheap and chic ornaments. Every project features supplies you probably already have lying around the house, or that you can buy for less than five dollars at any craft store. They may not cost much money or take much time to make, but I think the DIY project I have planned this month will add a ton of handmade cuteness to your holiday.

Little Red Goes Pumpkin Picking

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 01:24:00 +0000

Someone is going as red riding hood for Halloween this year, which meant, of course, that I had to make the requisite red cape. Since I had a couple hanks of Neighborhood Fiber Company's Studio Worsted in a delicious semi-solid red colorway (Old Town -- named after the home of my favorite Dublin-Style Chipper and beloved, though not oft visited these days LYS), it was only appropriate that I knit said cape.

I didn't just have the perfect yarn for the job. I also had the perfect pattern -- Capuchon, by Tagil Perlmutter. It's a wonderfully simple design with just a bit of texture around the border and at the hem, and it works up quickly with two strands of heavy worsted weight yarn.

It took me just a couple of days to churn out the one-year size, and I mostly love the finished result. The one thing that will force me to frog this sweet cape (once Halloween is over, because once I realized the error I had made, I knew frogging would put me dangerously close to not finishing on time) is my apparent inability to work a provisional cast-on. I admit, this is a technique I almost never use. I prefer the crochet method or the method that requires knitting a couple of rows of waste yarn before switching to the working yarn. My lack of experience with this cast-on, and my inability to see my mistake until I removed the waste yarn, resulted in a far from invisible seam at the nape of the neck.
We ventured out for Addie's first costumed Halloween activity last weekend - a visit to a local pumpkin sale. Barring interference from Hurricane Sandy, she'll be sporting her red riding hood ensemble this weekend and on Halloween night. Then I can set to the task of correcting my mistake. In the meantime, I think she looks pretty cute, visible cape seam and all.

Knitwear for Jam Jars

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 01:55:00 +0000

Since my early knitting days I have focused my stitching efforts on churning out garments of all varieties. Hats, scarves, the off pair of mittens, and my favorite: sweaters. Rarely did I cast on with the intention of knitting something that I or a knit-worthy recipient could not throw on before greeting a cool morning.

Knitted pillows? Lovely, but I couldn’t be bothered. Wooly throws? I adore the idea of having a few to toss over the back of our living room couch, but I can’t commit to knitting something that large. My inability to knit for the home has even put me off making that heirloom lace tablecloth I so badly want to conquer. Seriously – I planned to start that monster no fewer than three years ago, and I have yet to even attempt the cast-on.

So my most recent knitting project is somewhat of a breakthrough, because unlike my usual knitting fare, it cannot be worn. Well, it technically can be worn if you are a glass jar or aluminum can or some other round, container-shaped object. Yes, I made a knitted jar cover. But it is a knitted jar cover capable of turning a container destined for the recycling bin into a lovely vessel for flowers, pencils, and even, perhaps, knitting needles.

October 20, 2012

It’s a project small enough to keep me from throwing it to the ground halfway in and returning to my beloved sweater knits, and it’s a fantastic canvas on which to practice stitch patterns that might one day become part of a sweater, hat, or other wearable. It also features a method of working from the center out using an i-cord umbilical cord (thank you techknitting), and for those of you who are like me – with lots of leftover yarn in amounts too tiny to make much – it’s great for stash busting.

Want to know how I did it? The full tutorial is here!

Autumn is for Making

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 01:38:00 +0000

Last weekend the first wave of deliciously chilly weather passed through DC; it actually felt like autumn and we dressed accordingly, wrapping ourselves in handknits that had not seen the outdoors since sometime last spring. The knitwear, crisp air, and crates filled with winter squash at the supermarket (and at the farmer's market) – these are all reasons why fall is my favorite season.

I also love fall because it usually marks the beginning of crafting season for me. While I knit pretty much year-round, I don’t attempt many other craft projects. But with the Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas trifecta within sight, I can’t help but stray from the knitting path.

Crafting season must begin with a craft store expedition, so early Saturday afternoon I strapped Addie into her car seat and we embarking on our first mother-daughter shopping trip. We braved the Northern Virginia traffic (brutal, especially on a lovely weekend day) and stopped at not one, but two craft stores. I was tempted to visit all four of the local spots, but prolonged car trips do not mix well with a ten month old who is never thrilled about outings that involve a car seat and driving. We survived our two-hour journey beautifully; Addie loved taking in all the colorful fabric and seasonal décor at the craft stores and I emerged from each with provisions for several projects.

I’m devoting a lot of this year’s autumn crafting time to decorations for our home. It’s the first year I feel like I can really settle in – I don’t have a wedding for which I am frantically constructing dozens of paper flowers or making last-minute doily runners, and I don’t have blank nursery walls badly in need of wall art or a soon-to-be baby who needs just one more hand knit sweater. Okay, my soon-to-be one year old could always use a new hand knit sweater, but these I save for week nights after she has gone to bed.

For my first craft of the season, I chose a yarn wreath, since our poor naked front door badly needed a cheerful adornment. Sadly, I cannot take credit for the brilliant idea of wrapping yarn around a wreath form. It is, apparently, a thing, as evidenced by the hunderds of results that return when you ask google to search for the term "yarn wreath." It's a good thing I wasn't trying to engineer a completely new to the internet DIY project.

I’m pretty pleased with the finished result. I chose some rust-colored wool and a bit of deep brown handspun Jacob from my stash, and instead of felt flowers, I made rolled flowers from strips of fabric leftover from a wedding craft project. To finish it off, I added a few leaves cut from mocha-colored cashmere scraps and tiny flag bunting.

Here’s to a successful first autumn DIY!

On Sundays We Bake

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 01:48:00 +0000

Sundays at the Make-Ready residence are anything but lazy. Thanks to charming little Adelaide’s habit of waking up before seven - even on weekends - we’re usually downstairs, dressed, and two cups of coffee into the day by eight. This past Sunday unfolded not dissimilarly from any other. After our early morning routine, which happily included a few rows of knitting for me, we packed baby into the stroller and enjoyed one of our other Sunday rituals: a trip to Shirlington Village. This visit we bought muffins and sandwiches and (more) coffee to eat en plein air and let Addie splash in the fountain before heading back home.

We could have spent the rest of the day basking in our disheveled living room, surrounded by clothes I had neglected to fold for the entire month of September, unsorted mail, and playthings that never quiet found their way back to the toy basket. I could have knit with abandon while perched on the couch, surveying my small and disorderly fiefdom. But that is not what happened. Instead, we cleaned and rearranged furniture and cleaned some more. This spate of housekeeping chores did cut into my weekend knitting time, but it meant more roaming room for an almost-walking baby, less mess to interfere with future knitting adventures, and best of all, a house that was clean enough for me to justify some baking.

Baking, my second love after knitting, hasn’t figured very prominently in my life since December 9th 2011 when, in between contractions, I made a loaf of banana bread that I was determined to finish before Addie arrived. (I did finish it, and it was the first thing I ate after a long, long labor and delivery). That banana bread will remain the most delicious thing I have ever baked, but I didn’t want it to remain the last. So after we put away the brooms and stowed the neatly folded clothing in their respective drawers, I spent the late afternoon chopping apples and mixing batter for a fresh apple and yogurt cake.

The recipe, which I found here, combines two of my favorite things: sweet-tart apples and whole milk yogurt. Add a brown sugar and cinnamon swirl into the mix, and the result is early autumn baking perfection. Addie wanted to help as I measured yogurt and olive oil and cracked the eggs into a long-neglected mixing bowl. I did let her sample an apple cube, but she’s still a bit too small to help mommy in the kitchen.

Once in the oven, it took about 50 minutes to bake – just as the recipe suggested – and the resulting cake had a deliciously moist-but-not-soggy crumb, and apples in every bite. It’s not terribly sweet, which allows the yogurty, lemony, apple-saturated goodness to sing. The toned-down sweetness made me and hubby feel a lot less guilty about enjoying a piece of cake for breakfast the next morning. There’s still a portion left in the fridge, but I doubt it will make it to the next sunrise.

In Real Life I Do Occasionally Knit

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:55:00 +0000

I’ve alluded to my knitting and even flashed a few long-finished pieces in my previous posts. That does nothing to prove I am still actively knitting and my blog is not a sham built solely upon past triumphs. If I had decided to start blogging about seven months ago, you would have been reading a knitting blog authored by someone who had touched neither yarn nor needle for nearly twelve weeks and was in no hurry to cast on for anything. It wasn’t that I suddenly lost my passion for fiber arts and really good sweaters. My longest stint without working so much as a couple rows of stockinette since I first picked up knitting happens to correspond with the end of my first pregnancy.

(I really do knit! Here's a picture to prove it!)

I never intended to abandon my knitting for as long as I did. In fact, leading up to Addie’s arrival, I spent a lot of time thinking about all the knitting I would accomplish during my twelve weeks of leave. About eight weeks into said leave, I realized how wishful that thinking was. (I am ever the optimist when it comes to fitting in knitting while also taking care of a wee one.) I had exchanged working a few rows of this sweater and that blanket for napping. Or planting myself on the couch as yet another wave of exhaustion hit me. Those, I discovered, happen a lot when there’s a newborn in the house and you’re getting acclimated to running on fewer hours of sleep a night than you thought possible.

When my girl was about ten weeks old, I began to feel that familiar itch to make something, anything. But when I returned to work just a week later, learning to balance a full time job with being a mom and managing my fair share in the household duties killed that desire . Fortunately, I did get my knitting mojo back, but the going is slower than it was before baby. A lot slower. Sometimes an entire week passes before I realize I haven’t so much as fondled a hank of yarn. I hate those weeks, because the lack of knitting usually corresponds with an especially hard run of an already difficult-to-maintain schedule. When I do get to pick up my needles and work a few rows of garter stitch or a single repeat of a colorwork pattern, I think of my daughter and express my love for her in every stitch. Every time I steal a few stitches I am filled with love and my busy mind goes quiet. I like to think that when Addie wears the knits I’ve completed in the past few months she is enclosed in a love note written in wool, signed by Mommy.

That is what keeps me returning to the design notebook, and then to the knitting needles. It guarantees that WIPs like this one, her newest dress, will not remain a WIP for too long.

Yes, that is a fold-over hem, latvian braid, and even some snazzy houndstooth colorwork. I'm excited about this little dress, and I hope to finish it in the next couple of weeks.

No Knitting in New England

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 11:21:00 +0000

Last week Addie and I escaped the DC metro area’s persistent humidity and headed to New England for a family visit. I foolishly thought I would do a lot of knitting and packed accordingly – a partially completed dress for Miss A and a couple of balls of fingering weight yarn for a new hat design. In the days leading up to our departure, I happily daydreamed about a serene train ride with baby sleeping comfortably in her ergo carrier and me quietly knitting through Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. The baby, apparently, did not share my daydream. She spent nearly the entire ride climbing over our seats, slapping the window, and peering down the aisle for a victim upon whom to unleash her babyish charm. And when she slept it was in my arms, ergo be darned!

This set the stage for our entire trip. Over six days I think I managed to knit 15 rounds of the in-progress dress and a partial gauge swatch for the hat. Considering it was in addition to a visit to Maine for a family reunion at Swan Lake State Park, and once we returned to Connecticut, an afternoon of apple-picking and visits with various relatives, I’ll call that success.

In lieu of fiber-centric content, photos from our week of family fun.

Swan Lake. Gorgeous, isn't it?

Addie takes a dip.

Fun at the picnic. This is Addie mid-raspberry. Very ladylike.

A lone Macintosh apple, growing too high for anyone to reach.

Inspiration: Garter Stitch

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:36:00 +0000

Usually when you learn to knit, you begin with garter stitch. As I mentioned previously, I actually began with what I suppose is reverse garter stitch – purl every row as opposed to knit every row – but I have since corrected the error of my ways and now claim garter stitch as my favorite knit texture. The bumpy surface, decisive bulk, satisfying squooshibility; garter stitch is what I’d choose for that oversized sweater I’d wrap myself into on a chilly, gray day. (I also imagine myself wearing legwarmers. Chunky, wooly legwarmers that are not at all like the ones people used to wear to aerobics in the ‘80s. But that is for another inspiration post.)

I cannot introduce a collage of my current favorite garter stitch inspiration without mentioning its modern champion, Elizabeth Zimmerman. She knew exactly how to make this humble stitch sing, and featured it in patterns that remain perennial favorites – like the tomten (why yes, I will take this opportunity to show off the tomten I made about three years before Addie was born. Yes, it is still sans buttons, but that will change shortly). There’s also the baby surprise jacket, which is close to, if not, the most knit pattern on Ravelry and the February baby sweater, another contender for most-knit pattern ever. (I know, my kid. Cuteness.)

Garter stitch looks great worked up in any yarn, but it’s near transcendent in rustic wools and hand dyed semi solids. My favorites. The gorgeous garter stitch below makes me want to curl up with some yarn and knit every row all afternoon.

1. I don't think Jared Flood, the knitting photographer behind Brooklyn Tweed, has ever designed a piece of knitwear I don't like. I especially love Cobblestone. It's simple shape and grater stitch yoke and side seams add up to a modern classic. I love this pattern so much I knit one a few year back, and I'm not opposed to knitting another.
2. Sometimes an unexpected detail can turn an otherwise mundane piece of knitting into something special. The stripe of color and interesting edging on Martina Behm's Leftie does just that.
3. Garter stitch and cables are meant for one another, and nothing illustrates this better than Melissa LaBarres's Lawrence.
4. A hand dyed semi solid yarn plus garter lace equals autumn perfection in Ann Hanson's Hazeline.
5. Paired with an interesting lace yoke pattern, textured garter stitch adds structure and substance to Carol Sunday's Acorns.

Design Diary: Respect the Swatch

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Like most practiced knitters, if I’m making a garment where fit matters, I knit a gauge swatch. You know, that little 5X5 square (admittedly, mine usually end up being rectangular on account of overzealous cast-ons) that lets you figure out how many stitches, and less crucially, rows, fit across an inch? When I follow a pattern, that little swatch is my Rosetta stone – it lets me know if the sweater with a 42-inch bust measurement really will accommodate a 42-inch bust or it lets me know if I need to make modifications to ensure a good fit.

Naturally, I started my first design project with a gauge swatch. 5(and a half)x5 inches of Mirasol Yarns Lachiwa on 3.5mm needles later, I had a lovely little almost-square to wash, block, and measure. This modest bit of handiwork would serve as the foundation for what I knew would be a masterpiece of clever design and impressive craftsmanship.

And then I cast on. Well, first I worked out the math – determined how many stitches I would need to achieve the correct chest measurement, decided where I wanted the neck opening to fall, and figured the appropriate number of stitches to start with. Then I cast on. When I finished lopping the yarn onto my needle, I faltered. Even though I had not knit so much as a single row, I could tell that my garment – a baby dress with a knit bodice and fabric skirt – was going to turn out much smaller than the 12 month size I had planned. So I cast on a few more stitches for good measure and began to knit.

Once I strayed from the path I had carefully devised via simple arithmetic, I did not return. I intuited my way through the sleeve shaping (raglan increases) and arbitrarily decided the armscye depth. Pretty early on, I could see the bodice was going to be too big. But I persevered. The dress was, after all, intended for a growing baby. If she couldn’t wear it now, then surely she could in a few months time. Only after I knit to within a couple of inches from the hem did I realize how long it would take for Addie to grow into her dress. My panicked addition of several stitches had resulted in a bodice generous enough to fit a two-year-old.

She looks thrilled, doesn't she? In fairness, tolerating a photo shoot while wearing an ill-fitting dress isn't my idea of fun, either.

I resolved to finish, rather than frog the too-large top. I guess I wanted some artifact of my first attempt at designing so that years – maybe even months, depending on how quickly I improve, from now, I can laugh at my novice decisions. In the couple of months since I bound off and sewed on the fabric skirt Addie has grown; her dress is no longer clownishly humongous, but it still hangs off her.

Before the end of the year, I’ll knit a second version of this dress and this time I will respect the swatch and listen to what it tells me. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

To My UFOs: An Apology

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 21:01:00 +0000

Somewhere in my mother’s closet, a novel is waiting for its ending. And its middle. That novel is my first unfinished object. It’s a little more than loosely based on Homecoming, a young adult novel which begins with a mother abandoning her four children in a Rhode Island shopping plaza parking lot. In my novel, a mother is forcibly removed from her home while her children hid in the rafters, and rather than making their way down the east coast to grandma’s farm, my protagonists headed for the woods. But the premise was pretty much the same. About twelve notebook pages in, I lost interest. And so began my long career in starting but not always finishing.

In the years since I penned that partial novel, I’ve gotten worse and then better about completing the projects I begin. Once I took up knitting, it was only a matter of time before I began to accumulate UFOs of the fiber variety. In my years of knitting I have shunned tens of sad, uncoupled fingerless gloves, ill-fitting single mittens, horribly bungled lace stoles, and even a few well-intentioned sweaters that fell victim to too many flaws, lack of sustained interest, or both.

I feel for these poor unrealized knits, I really do. Their un-actualized potential – to warm chilly extremities or envelop a body in wooly goodness – inspires guilt. So I have decided to take action. Rather than allow them to languish for time immemorial in the bottom of a basket, obscured by balls of yarn I’ll likely never touch, I’m resurrecting them from their fibery graves. Every month, I will salvage one sad, unfinished knit until I don’t have any left. I will give each project closure either by repurposing it, frogging it and assigning the yarn to a future project, and maybe even by finishing it. My UFOs deserve this; just because I never completed them it doesn’t mean I knit each stitch with less love or care.

Embarrassingly, I have more than enough UFOs to shine the spotlight on one each month for at least a year, but I must not be the only one with a shameful collection. What half-finished, too-soon abandoned craft projects keep you up at night? Tell me about them, and we can wallow in guilt together. And then we will do something about it.

Inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:53:00 +0000

This summer was brutal. We racked up eight 100-degree plus days through late June and early July and nearly 50 90-degree plus days throughout the summer. It's not over yet, but lately cooler morning temperatures hint at the crisp Autumn days to come.

Naturally, this has me dreaming of cozy fall knits. Sweaters are my default late summer projects, but if I wanted a fall sweater this year, I should have started last spring. Since spring came and left without me so much as casting on for a cardigan, I'm focusing on hats. For inspiration, I've gathered some of my current favorite hats from Ravelry and around the web.

1. I love the slip stitch colorwork pattern on Triona Murphy's Check Slouch. The finished hat looks like a difficult knit, but the pattern itself is easy.
2. The simple and striking colorwork motif on Full of Fluff's Augustine adds just enough splash to an otherwise simple hat.
3. Alex Tinsley knits a lot of hats, but a most bespeckled hat is one of my favorites. Her choice of color and the slouchy shape makes for a whimsical and ever-so-wearable piece.
4. Po Lena's Tears of Bronze features a simple but arresting cable motif that sings when paired with a semisolid yarn like the madelinetosh lysaknits chose for this version. And the pattern is free!
5. Another example of non-traditional cabled motifs, Ysolda's Oxidize features lots of single-stitch cables snaking over a stockinette background. I especially love it in a semisolid yarn like the one Saz chose for the version above.
6. If Terhi Montonen's garter stripe beanie isn't the definition of knitting comfort food: simple stockinette stitch worked up in gorgeous yarn and a stripey garter stitch edging, then I don't know what is. Even more comforting -- this is another free pattern.

Now to decide which of these darlings to add to my knitting queue. And get to work on designing a hat that embraces the spirit of simple, but well-chosen details.

Design Diary

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 01:33:00 +0000

I hadn’t been a knitter for long when I decided I might like to design my own knitwear. Developing ideas, hoarding them in a notebook – I’ve never found that difficult. But during those early years, and even in recent years, I always stopped short of executing my designs. A lot of it had to do with fear. What if everyone hated it? What if the fit was all wrong? What if I, lacking the skills or experience to puzzle through a design issue, got stuck mid-sweater? What if I hated it, and after all those hours, not to mention expensive yarn, committed to a failure of a project? Clearly I based my speculation on failure, not success.

Then, a couple of years ago, I knit myself a sweater sans pattern. Before you congratulate me for overcoming my fears and starting down the path to successful knitwear design, I should admit that while I did not follow a pattern to the letter, I did base my work on Elizabeth Zimmerman’s EPS system. (An aside: if you are a knitter and you do not know of Elizabeth Zimmerman, get thee to Amazon or your local bookstore and buy Knitting Workshop or Knitting Without Tears. They will change your life, or at least, they will change the way you knit.) Even using the EPS to figure the math, it took me three tries to knit a wearable garment, and the finished sweater was not perfect. After a few wears, I grudgingly recognized that additional shaping might have prevented the sag of extra fabric at the middle back. A few weeks after that, I regretted my decision to nix the planned colorwork yoke after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to squeeze in too-large motifs. And now, as I look at the photo, it's obvious that a round yoke construction absent of bust darts isn't the most flattering choice for my, ahem, ample chest.

Despite the flaws and coulda, woulda, shouldas, I’m still pretty proud of that sweater. So it makes no sense that instead of building upon this baby step toward designing my own knitwear, I retreated. Once again I grabbed a pattern as I reached for the yarn and happily followed along, knowing the whole time exactly how my finished garment would look.

It was the birth of my daughter, Adelaide, that finally inspired me to keep going even after I had fully realized a design on notebook paper. I have knit her many sweaters from patterns, but the ones I’ve designed myself are special. They are truly one-of-a-kind, and I poured my love into them even before I knit the first stitch. Now that I have actually completed a few designs from concept to finished object, my knitting choices have changed. I can’t commit myself to knitting from someone else’s pattern, but I approach each of my new design projects with excitement and high expectations. I’m now wondering why I waited so long to begin designing, and I am glad I’m not waiting any longer.

In the Beginning ...

noreply@blogger.com (Heidi) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 15:37:00 +0000

It started with a worm. Rather, it started with several worms that eventually met their deaths in a bathtub as my sister attempted to “clean” them. At twenty-seven years old, my sister doesn’t seem like an accidental worm assassin, but when she was younger she had a habit of sharing her baths with worms that ventured topside. Most people would get the correlation between earthworms emerging from their subterranean tunnels during a rainstorm and why they might not survive tub time, but my sister is not most people (a steadfast believer in the “if you put your mind to it you can achieve anything” paradigm, she probably figured they would evade drowning by sheer force of will). Every time she lifted a limp, water-logged annelid from the basin of the tub she wondered why he had not survived what seemed like a pretty fun bubble bath.

After a particularly harrowing incident involving a night crawler and too much Mr. Bubbles, I decided it was time to end the cycle of senseless earthworm death and my sister’s resulting emotional turmoil. Fortunately, during our last family visit to West Virginia, my great aunt Paulette taught me how to crochet. I admit: I was not the best student. I promptly forgot how to work double crochet and took to creating long crochet chains rather than the granny squares she hoped would be churning from my hook. But to appease my sister’s penchant for bathing with segmented friends, the chain stitch was all I required. A couple dozen chains and a tuft of red yarn secured to one end (for the tongue. Because all fiber-y worms have tongues), and I had completed my first finished object. FO for those of you who understand internet crafting speak.

I presented the worm to my sister wrapped in a Kleenex because it was the closest thing I could find to gift wrap. I don’t remember what she named that curling bit of knotted yarn, but she did name it, and it did take many baths with her. I crocheted several friends to accompany that first yarn worm, but I never managed to move beyond the chain stitch.

Once my sister was old enough to transition from baths to showers, I stopped crocheting altogether. My flirtation with fiber arts did not resume until I started graduate school more than a decade later. This time, a friend taught me to knit. Well, she attempted to teach me to knit. What I picked up from the lesson was how to purl and so I made my first knitted item, a chocolate brown scarf in some Bernat boucle I found at Hobby Lobby, exclusively in purl stitch. Even though that scarf is the ugliest thing I have ever made, it started me on the path to obsessive knitting and sometime crocheting.

It’s been eight years since I started knitting. I’ve since finished graduate school (let’s all cheer for the useless MFA). The Hobby Lobby where I bought that first skein of atrocious boucle yarn is now gone, flattened by a tornado during the devastating 2011 storm season. And instead of knitting for myself, these days I usually have something for my eight-month-old daughter on the needles. I’ve learned a lot since those first crochet chained worms, but I still have a lot left to learn. My next foray in fiber arts? Knitwear design. I’ve followed a lot of patterns – now I want to try creating some of my own and sharing them with other knitters.