Rants, Raves, and My Knitting Obsession

Knotty But Nice Cabled Hat

2012-04-02T00:16:00.003-07:00

This is a hat I made during my knitted hats phase. I'm still in that phase a bit, but I've been consumed by embroidery and a bit of fair isle. The fair isle hat is turning out brilliantly, but it's been sitting in my craft closet for the last few weeks due to other craft craziness.

So behold, the purple cabled hat! It was easy and fun, but it's also what made me decide that I'm officially out of my cable phase. It seems like everything I've knit for the last two years has been cabled.

Peyote Stitch Beaded Beads

2012-04-02T00:12:00.000-07:00

I'm playing catch up a bit on all the crafting that's been going on here. I'm working on a new fair isle hat (and have finally worked out my wonky tension issues), made some awesome felt dahlias, been doing a bit of mod podging, and am working on a very ambitious embroidery project.

I made these beaded beads using a tutorial I found on youtube. The first bead was a little wonky as it took me a bit of time to figure out how to do the decreases and still maintain the pattern. I also had to adjust the pattern a bit as I was using size 11's. Incidentally, I discovered that there are several different ways of making peyote beaded beads, and next time I plan to try a new method. I read about a method where you make the two halves of the bead, then drape them over the wooden bead in the middle and join the two sides together. It seems like you can get a much more complex pattern using this method.

There's nothing more therapeutic after a long day at work...

2012-02-27T21:28:00.000-08:00

than watching movies and knitting. I'm working on a new fair isle project, using Knitpicks Palette yarn. It's the first time I've ever used Palette, and for the price, I'm very impressed. It has a tendency to split, as it is a bit loosely plied. But for the price, who can argue? And it comes in such great colors! I'm knitting mine up in a deep royal blue and white. I also ordered a fantastic violet and turquoise, which will be for my next colorwork hat. Who can argue with violet, turquoise and white?

I was even good and made a swatch! I don't think it's completely accurate as I finally overcame my tendency to knit fair isle too loosely once I started knitting the hat, but the swatch definitely gave me a general idea of what to expect. I'm a bit worried as I didn't quite meet the gauge of the pattern, and I'm already working on #0's so it's nearly impossible to go any smaller. I'm getting the right gauge for the yarn, but the pattern wants 9 sts to the inch while I'm only getting 7 sts. I think my gauge is a bit different on the hat so far than the swatch, so as soon as I finish the first chart I'm going to measure and do the math to see what I can expect. I have to increase 30 sts after the first chart, so I need to make sure that I can do that without making the hat big enough for an elephant.

I've also finished the Snowflake hat. I had to modify it quite a bit as I was not even close to getting the recommended gauge. Gauge is my enemy, as I hardly ever swatch. I'm so used to doing cabled patterns where I can simply add or omit repeats and cables as necessary that I'm still getting used to knitting a pattern that doesn't have that flexibility. On the Snowflake hat in order to get nice decreases I really should have started decreasing at the middle of the snowflake chart, yet that would have completely ruined the snowflake motif. Colorwork simply doesn't have the same flexibility as other types of knitting, so I think swatches are going to be required from here on.

For some reason, I have been knitting fair isle very loosely. I used Cascade 220 yet used a size 2 needle! Therefore I had to completely omit the third chart. Originally I followed the decreases in the pattern, but because my gauge was so different, following the pattern gave me a hat that ended a good 3 inches above the top of my head! Therefore I had to come up with a way of decreasing in half the number of rows that the pattern required. That's why the top of the hat looks a bit wonky. It's not my tension, which was actually pretty decent on this hat. There are a few slightly puckered areas that would be fixed through wet blocking, but the hat was already so big that I was not going to stretch it out any further.

It's even been tested in the snow when I went skiing.

I lined the hat with fleece, which makes it a great snow hat while simultaneously preventing me from having an allergic reaction to the wool. I hardly ever wear hats outside of winter, so I've decided I'll simply line every hat I make. That way I don't need to spend hours hunting for a nice wool that will not set off my allergies, and at the same time it means that I don't have to spend hours and hours making a hat out of crappy acrylic. I despise the standard acrylic haze that items knitted out of acylic have. It also does not hold up well, and is more scratchy on my hands, even if it doesn't technically set off my allergies.

Emily

2012-02-12T01:28:00.000-08:00

Emily has progressed quite a bit since I last wrote about her. I had to modify the pattern quite a bit to fit the variety of yarns I used (Caron Simply Soft, Berrocco Comfort, Vanna's Choice). I recorded all the changes on my Ravelry page. I love Ravelry, it's completely replaced the need to keep a physical notebook of all my knitting projects.

She's not quite done yet, but she's nearly there! I just need to make the top part of her shirt and her hat. And of course, sew on the ringlets. I love how the picot edging turned out!

Tiggers are wonderful things

2012-02-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

I found some classic Winnie the Pooh cartoons on YouTube, which inspired me to start this piece. He's done completely in satin stitch, with french knots for eyes. I need to finish his body, then outline him with a single strand of black (like I've done to his head). I originally was going to write out the infamous Tigger song, but now I'm not too sure. What do you think? I definitely do need the practice embroidering letters.

I've been on a bit of a hat kick lately...

2012-02-07T02:12:00.000-08:00

First, I blame it all on the friend I visited up in Seattle. She is actually the person who inspired me to knit in the first place, even though she mostly crochets. She was over at my house about 6 years ago, and she brought both a knitting and a crochet project. She taught me to crochet, but we never got around to knitting. I really wanted to learn though, so after picking up a basic beginner knitting pamphlet at Joann's and failing to even get past the cast on I decided to take a beginners knitting course. And then my addiction began.

I went to visit her, and of course brought along some yarn and needles, even though I had no idea what I wanted to make. We decided to make hats (using different patterns), and she worked on this really cute cabled hat. It's kind of funny, as she is an extremely advanced crocheter. She seriously makes the most gorgeous stuff, and now I don't even remember how to crochet, but I'm an advanced knitter. So I showed her how to cable without a cable needle and admired the cool crochet blankets she's made since I'd last seen her.

The first hat I made was the triangle hat, using the Vegamot pattern. It was a very quick knit, and I finished it that weekend.

I even had time that weekend to start this hat, which I finished soon thereafter.

And tonight I finished the Knotty but Nice hat, in purple. Photos to soon follow. But of course I couldn't be satisfied with three hats, so I've cast on for what I'm calling the Snowflake hat, since I'm not doing the 'naughty' side.

Zombie Apocalypse

2012-02-07T00:46:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I went to a zombie apocalypse game. Armed with nerf guns, our job was to kill as many zombies as possible and stay alive for 24 hours. It was brilliant, and I had a blast. But of course I couldn't go with the standard bright yellow and orange nerf gun, that just wouldn't work. So instead, I decided to paint it. The orange tip needed to stay on for liability reasons.

Rainbow Bracelet

2012-01-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

This is as far as I've gotten on the Rainbow Bracelet so far. Since I've been on such a beading kick lately I hope to get it finished soon. It's been sitting in my beading box for ages!

Cabled Brambles Hat

2012-01-22T16:27:00.000-08:00

I made this in November. For being such an avid knitter, I have a surprisingly small amount of hats.

Progress on the Epic Pillow Project

2011-04-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

The Epic Pillow Project (E.P.P.) is going well. It's really starting to develop some depth. I'm slowly filling in the light purple border with stitching. I'm anxious to practice my long and short stitch (and shading) so I'll have to see where I can fit that in.

The design doesn't look it, but it's still relatively small. I'm planning to complete the entire front, bit by bit.

Rainbow Bracelet

2011-04-22T00:24:00.000-07:00

This is my current beading WIP. I'm using the great spring colored seed beads I got for my birthday.

The pattern came from one of my beading magazines.

The Epic Pillow Project

2011-04-22T00:09:00.000-07:00

Here's the embroidery project I've been working on lately. The carousel horse towel still isn't finished, but I got started on the Epic Pillow Project anyway.

It's a white on white pillowcase with an awesome paisley pattern. The paisley pattern is so subtle that it's barely discernable, so I decided to embellish the pattern with embroidery. I'm ecstatic with how it's turning out, and I hope that by trying lots of different stitches and patterns I will be able to maintain my momentum and embellish the entire front of the pillow.

Colors: 3371, 848, SU1, 3822, 721, 3806, 718, 553, 824, threadworx 11382, threadworx 1154

Flashing My Embroidery Floss Stash

2011-04-18T17:37:00.001-07:00

The new project photos are coming soon, I promise. In the meantime, I thought I would flash my stash. I'll add in my ribbons and hanks of floss in a bit. So here's all my DMC.

As a refresher, this is what it looked like before I found all that thread at Goodwill.

Here's what it looks like now. It has a lot more depth now instead of staying in my favorite color ranges (*cough*jewel tones*cough*).

The empty spots are from the colors I'm currently using in projects. I have a lot of projects going right now: the new project, the carousel horse, and finishing up another new project.

Sneak Peak

2011-04-17T01:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a sneak peak of what I've been working on lately.

More to come soon.

How to Organize and Store Your Bead Collection - Part Two: Beads, Findings, and Tools

2011-04-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

Last time I talked about how I stored my seed beads, so now it's time for other beads, findings and tools! My system is pretty basic, but it's the best I've found and works well for me.

I have one of these, and bought it it several years before they started selling them in craft stores. I bought mine at Fred Meyer. They are a lot cheaper at non-craft stores, Fred Meyer, Target, and I think Wal-Mart sells them. It's technically a tackle box, so they're in the Sports and Fishing section.

This thing is fabulous. The clips are strong and easy to snap and unsnap, and the tackle box is very portable. It keeps all my non-seed beads, findings and tools in one place. The bottom holds four individually sealed trays with customizable slots. It's great because when I bead I don't usually work at a table. I'm usually on my bed or sitting in a chair, and individual trays allows me to only remove the tray I need. Best of all, the tackle boxes come in a variety of sizes. While it was a tight fit when I had all my seed bead tubes in the lower tray, without the seed beads I have plenty of room to expand my bead collection. When I do fill it up I can easily buy a size up.

I keep my tools in the top portion. The top compartment is pretty deep. It easily holds 3 rolls of wire, 3 pairs of pliers, 1 cutter, a wire jig, beeswax, plastic bags and a variety of other items.

Each removable tray has customizable compartments. You can only change the size widthwise however, which while slightly annoying does make sense from a construction/durability point of view.

The first tray has my Nymo and beading thread, needles, precious stones and clasps.

The next contains all my silver beads and findings.

The third is my main beading tray, with lots of fun colors. You can definitely tell how easy it is for me to get locked into the blue-green-purple color scheme. I'm working on expanding that range.

And the fourth is the overflow, as well as some jump rings and beads without tubes.

How do you store your beads?

My Fabulous Quilling Present

2011-04-01T20:44:00.000-07:00

My sister made this for my birthday. It now has a place of honor on my wall, next to my embroidered butterfly.

Isn't it beautiful? I absolutely love it. I've never tried quilling, I don't think I'd have the patience for it. But she makes such gorgeous designs out of paper!

I never knew you could make so many different pattern just from rolling paper! It's very intricate, beautiful, and in all the right colors.

The Birthday Addition to My Beading Stash

2011-03-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

My birthday was this week, and look at the pretties I got!

My mother took me bead shopping for my birthday, which was greatly appreciated! I picked out some fantastic spring colors.

I'm trying to build up my stash of 11/0's, so they're all 11/0s.

This is what my seed bead stash looks like now. I'm trying to add some bright and lighter colors to my mostly dark blue and green seed bead stash.

How to Organize and Store Your Bead Collection - Part One: Seed Beads

2011-03-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

As I posted about how I organized and stored my fabric collection and supplies, I decided to do the same for my beading collection. I love reading about everyone's methods of storage and organization for various crafts, whether it's fiber, beads, or paper. Some stashes are absolutely drool worthy and some methods of organization make me squee in glee.

Why Organize?

I enjoy organizing, and I am an incredibly detail-oriented person. Add in gorgeous colors and craft supplies and I'm in heaven. I love to see not only someone's method of craft supply organization, but also the reasoning behind it. I fully believe that good organization encourages and promotes more frequent crafting as well as streamlines the crafting process. I have a hard time being creative when I live and work in a messy and chaotic space. In my apartment my room is my haven, and as soon as I walk into the room I feel relaxed and serene. While I might not be big of feng shui, I am a big supporter of good organization.

This becomes especially important when you have a lot of craft supplies and several different crafts you like. I like to say that I don't believe in craft monogamy, and I partake in a multitude of crafts. I knit. I embroider. I sew. I bead. I like paper crafts. I love drawing and draw with multiple mediums, mostly watercolor pencils, pen and ink, and charcoal. Every craft has it's own supplies, and without some method of organization I would quickly become lost in my various stashes.

How large is your collection?

It's very important to consider the size of your craft collection. Use something that is large enough to leave room for you to add to your collection, but at the same time doesn't take up half the room. Think about your crafting process. Do you like to amass a large stash, or do you work with hardly any? How are you going to store your containers? While one or two of these containers is fine, what will you do when you have 6 or more? Sometimes the answer is: Find another method of organization, and that's fine. But if you think that in two months you'll need to completely redo your organizational system, then it's probably not the right system to choose. At the same time, don't buy a ten drawer rolling cabinet if you have a grand total of four seed bead tubes. Choose what's appropriate for your collection.

My bead collection is medium sized. While I would love to have enough beads to need a cabinet organizer to store them, I am nowhere near that point. Right now I have two separate containers for my beads, one for seed beads and the second for all my other beads and supplies.

My Seed Beads

The first container is your generic type of sterilite container with a lid, except that it has two handles on the lid that you snap down to lock the lid onto the body. I love the fact that the lid actually locks on rather than snaps on like your basic sterilite container. Even though all my beads are contained in their own little tubes inside the container, I feel a lot safer with a lid that locks.

This container holds all of my seed beads. Like most beaders, I have a variety of different sizes of seed beads, so I made dividers out of cardboard to separate the box into three different sections. The first holds all of my 6/0, 8/0 ,and 10/0 beads. The middle holds the 11/0 beads, which I have the most of. I've found them to be the most versatile size for bead stitching. The last section holds the 15/0 and a few tubes of bugles.

Every color and type of bead is in it's own container. Most are in bead tubes, which is my preferred method of seed bead storage. When I started beading I mainly purchased czech seed beads which are sold by the hank. When I redid my seed bead storage last week I took each hank and put all the beads into tubes, and when I ran out of those I put them into little bags. I don't like the bags, I think they take up too much space and they are not nearly as uniform as the tubes. However, I didn't have anything else on hand. Eventually I'll go and purchase some empty tubes so that I can get rid of the little bags.

I tried making a holder for the tubes so that they could all stand up vertically, but I found that this obscured their colors. The tubes in the middle were hidden by the other tubes of beads. As I do everything by color, standing the tubes up was simply not a viable option for me. Others have found it a suitable method of storage, so your mileage may vary.

I don't mind digging through the tubes a bit to find the ones I need. When I have 50+ of each size of seed beads it will be a different story. When that happens I'll probably switch to a smaller sterilite container for each color family, or use a container or two to hold a single size of seed beads.

Part Two: Storing Other beads, Findings, and Tools

Spiral Peyote Beaded Bracelet

2011-03-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been busy around here. Three members of my family, including myself, have birthdays in March. I made handmade presents this year, and got a bit too ambitious with my sister's birthday present. I decided to make my sister a beaded bracelet, and after a bit of research decided to try spiral peyote. This was the first time I've done the peyote stitch, as well as the first time I did peyote in the round.While the pattern was simple, it took a lot more time than I anticipated. I got a very late start, beginning only a week and a half before her birthday. No matter how much I beaded, it was only half done by the time her birthday rolled around.

Luckily, she's a crafter herself and was very understanding. I continued to work on the bracelet, finally finishing after another massive beading session (14 hours). It's definitely the most complex beaded project I've done so far and although it was easy it was incredibly time consuming. Every single silver bead represents a round on the bracelet. I was tempted to count them for future beading reference, but I think it would be too depressing to know how many rounds are in that bracelet! It's a wide, chunky/modern bracelet, which is my sister's style. In case anyone is interested, the pattern is 1 4mm bead, 1 size 6, 1 size 8, 2 silver size 11, 2 purple size 11, 2 silver size 11, 6 black size 15.

I also had a couple of false starts. I tried two different combinations of beads until I found the right ratio of black to silver to purple. I had a spiral peyote pattern that I was basing this on, but due to different bead sizes and amounts I made some major modifications to the pattern. Then when I had the right combination, I realized I didn't have enough purple beads. As I purchased the purple beads many years ago in a different city, I didn't think I would be able to find them again. So in the end I purchased a different color purple, and had to start the bracelet yet again.

The Carousel Embroidery has Begun!

2011-01-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

I'm finally making a carousel horse using my embroidery pattern! I did end up making a few minor changes to the pattern, so I will upload the updated pattern shortly. I'm thinking of converting it into a pdf. If you download embroidery patterns, do you prefer jpegs or pdfs? I'd love to hear what you think.

I have these scrumptious towels that I found at Kitchen Kaboodle that I've been waiting to embroider. I'm using Nature's Kitchen Towels by asd living. They're 100% cotton. They have the same thickness as flour sack towels like I made my owl on, but they have a slightly more crinkly surface. I love their texture. The pack I purchased had three towels: white, black, and this gorgeous blue. I've decided since I want to make a white carousel horse the blue will be the perfect color.

I printed out my pattern and traced it with my iron-on pen.

Note that I traced out just the outline of the rectangles on the breast collar and sashing. My iron-pen did not have a fine enough point to do further detail. I will probably end up satin stitching them, so I just needed an outline.

Then I ironed the design onto the towel. I was debating resizing it to be a little smaller, but decided to keep the same dimensions. It's large but these towels are 28"x36" and I'm working on the short side, so I wanted the embroidery to balance out the long length.

Owl Quilt

2011-01-25T17:42:00.000-08:00

In an effort to get back into photography I was perusing the photos on my hard drive when I discovered pictures of the owl quilt! So now you all can see what I'm talking about when I mention the owl quilt. It's still a WIP, I haven't even finished cutting out all the owls yet. The blue and purple owls are cut, I just need to cut out the green ones.

Last time I tried to work on this I was distracted by organizing my sewing room, so I still need to set aside some time to do this!

My First Crayon Tinting

2011-01-24T20:11:00.000-08:00

I embroidered this lovely mushroom. This is the first piece that I've crayon tinted.

Tips for crayon tinting:

Color the fabric with medium light pressure. When I read how to crayon tint, everyone said to use light pressure. Evidently my light pressure is a lot lighter than theirs. Mine was so light that I couldn't even tell if the crayon wax had melted because it was so light. I ended up coloring another layer on top of it and re-ironing. Then it was the desired shade.
If washing or wetting at all, color the fabric with medium (not medium light pressure). I used a washable blue pen for some of the lines and once the piece was finished I soaked it to remove the markings. Some of the wax color left as well. Not much, but enough to be noticeable. Therefore next time I'll color a little darker.

Colors: 824 | 3765 | 945 | 321 | 3853 | 600 | 3765 | white

Super Secret Embroidery Swap Project

2011-01-19T14:17:00.000-08:00

I sent out the super secret swap project, and my swap partner has received it! Unfortunately I mixed up the date (I thought the send outs were 1/15) so it's a few days late. I feel really horrible about it. It was my first swap, and I'm one of those swappers. As soon as I discovered my mistake, I emailed the moderators and my swap partner. Hopefully she's not too upset with me. Fortunately, I'm very proud of the project I created for my partner, so at least I won't be a swapper who sends a project that they spent 20 minutes on.

I used a design I found in her wist. I saw that her wist had a lot of gnomes and several rainbow projects. I decided to combine the two.

The most time consuming part of this project was the roof. I filled it in using parallel rows of backstitch. The window is done in satin stitch.

I used this great tutorial in order to cover the back of the hoop. I traced the inner hoop onto the green fabric, cut it out, sewed it right sides together with a 1/8" seam, turned it right side out then ironed it. Between sewing the seam and ironing the backing ended up smaller than I would have liked, so next time I'll trace the outside of the outer hoop. That should leave me more allowance for the seam and ironing.

Before I sewed the two green pieces of fabric together I embroidered the name of the swap and my username on the back. Next time I need to do the embroidery first, before I cut out the circle. Trying to embroider a 3.5" piece of fabric was not fun. I used my tiny 2.5" embroidery hoop but I had to keep moving the hoop as I stitched additional letters. This made my letters really wonky. I definitely need more practice embroidering letters.

The outer hoop is outlined with a rainbow braid. I wanted something to tie the colors together, and emphasize the fact that it's made with colors of the rainbow. I braided one piece of red, orange and yellow together, three pieces of green together, and one strand of blue, indigo, and violet together. Then I braided all of them together, creating a fantastic rainbow braid.

I really hope she likes the project! I spent a lot of time on it and I was almost tempted to keep it!

Colors used:
550 | 820 | 702 | 973 | 721 | 304 | 718

Center Square of Yggdrasil Afghan is Done!

2011-01-13T21:17:00.000-08:00

The center is done, and it's gorgeous! I'm ecstatic with how it turned out. My one skein of Loops & Threads Silky Soft (300 yds) almost lasted through the entire center square. It lasted up through row 71.

The center panel is approximately 26" x 26".

Delia was supervising as I stretched Yggdrasil out. She is an intensely curious kitten. She especially loves anything knitted or anything that has strings on it.

It was really hard to keep her off of the afghan. I'm not sure what I'm going to do once the aghan is completely. I'd be terrified of her clawing the afghan and stretching out the stitches. She's really hard on her toys, so rough with them that I won't be knitting any more toys for her. Any toys I make her will be sewn from now on. She has a harder time ripping through those.

Yggdrasil

2011-01-10T20:24:00.000-08:00

Yggdrasil is coming along very well. In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is the world tree. Nine worlds exist around Yggdrasil. It was hard to stop knitting long enough in order to take it off the needles and take photos. I'm finally in the "purl zone". The most complex parts of this tree are in the beginning (the tree branches) and the end (the tree roots). In between are the purl rows which create the trunks of the trees. The purl rows are zipping on by; it's amazing how nice mindless knitting can be. It's been such a long time since I've knit something completely mindless. Andrea's scarf was repetitive, but I still needed to keep an eye on the chart.

I love trees, whether it's sitting under them, climbing them, or drawing them. When I saw this pattern on Ravelry I knew immediately that I needed to knit it. I found the perfect color of green acrylic yarn at Michaels.