45 posts tagged “finished object”
I had some success and some failure today. I finished the cap I started yesterday.
I found another hat that I made for myself last year that I never wear and I think will suit my friend's needs. At least, it will keep her head warm and it will be large enough! (She says she has a big head.)
I learned to use a warping mill.
And to thread the Beka Child's Looms that we have for school.
You may also be able to tell that I got my card reader to work again and was able to get photos off of my camera rather than just using my iPhone. The iPhone is great outside but inside it basically stinks.
I am thinking now that I should reassess my summary statement. I really only had one failure. The yarn I used to warp the loom is far too think. It gets caught on itself when I try to move the heddle up and down to, you know, actually weave. I have to say that I found measuring warp on the mill and threading the heddle one strand at a time with a dental floss threader to be surprisingly meditative. I was resisting doing it because I thought that it would be horribly tedious and much more complicated than warping my cricket loom which is done with a warping peg and the warp is measured directly onto the loom, basically. That way gets it all down to one step, more or less, but this was less stressful, perhaps because I could do the steps sitting down either in front of the mill to measure or at the table with the heddle propped between two books to thread. Having my friend Victoria's mill was key, clearly, as was her advice to use the lease sticks (the sticks you see in the above photo between where the yarn crosses itself) to maintain the cross. Excellent advice!
Tomorrow I hope to obtain thinner yarn and rewarp the loom I threaded and warp another one. I might have to give up on the idea of exclusively working with our school colors because I do have some cotton yarn that was far too thin for the Cricket loom which I think means it will be just right for the Bekas.
I have to say that I was worried that this month being our Arts Focus workshops at school was going to interfere with my daily blogging but it's actually given me more to talk about! If you don't mind reading about weaving, of course.
I finally (FINALLY!) finished the mermaid costume I was knitting for a friend's daughter's 5th birthday. It's the Splash pattern from Vickie Howell's book, New Knits on the Block. (Rav link to my project.) The 5-year-old in question loved it and put it on immediately and had it on for the next two hours that I was at her house at least. I hope she didn't sleep in it because I'm not sure it would be comfortable.
I want to make another one for another of the girls who was there because I didn't make her a birthday gift this year and she looked like she would love one too. I'm thinking of Knit Picks Comfy bulky in either sea foam or marlin. Thoughts? I wish I could stash dive for this project like I did for the purple one but I don't think anything I have is bulky enough or in my stash in large enough quantity to use doubled to make it the right weight.
Finishing things is always satisfying, of course, but finishing gift knitting even more so. Especially when the recipient is as enthusiastic as today's was! She could barely wait for me to finish sewing in the elastic before she put it on.
I have one of the looms warped for this week and a few picks woven onto it to get the kids started. I'm going to show it to my friend Victoria tomorrow, who is a much more experienced weaver, and maybe she can give me some tips. She also loaned me a warping mill so I can measure the warp for the other two looms. Look! I'm even learning the lingo!
I visited my friend who is about to start her chemo today and delivered her shawl. (I've also figured out a way to upload photos so you get to see it.
For the back I followed the pattern exactly (the Chunky Highland Wool Wrap from Elann.com) -- other than not using wool of course. If I were to do it again I'd change the cross of the top left cable of the fleur de lis pattern to make it so that it doesn't go over twice in a row. I'm not sure if you can see that in this photo or not.
For the front I changed the pattern completely. The cable they had on the front pieces was very pretty but it pulled far too much in this totally synthetic yarn (Crystal Palace Puffin). Since I couldn't block the pulling out it had to go. I fiddled with a couple of more simple cables but ended up just using a stitch pattern from Barbara Walker vol. 1. I like the way it turned out. My friend liked it too. She said that the nurse told her that some people get cold sitting in the chemo chair during the treatments and it would be perfect for that. I hope it is.
I need to dig out a chemo cap pattern. I'm thinking about making one from some Sock Candy I have. I'll have to soak it in vinegar before giving it to her though, since my Sock Candy always loses its color on the first wash. I need to get a good picture of my post-wash Holey Socks to show you. It's really astonishing.
It turned out that I needed to knit a few more rows before I could bindoff on my socks so I did that last night and didn't end up knitting on my sweater at all. I have a cool new pair of socks though. I love them so far. I am curious to see how this yarn holds up because I have definitely durability issues with some cotton sock yarns. Time will tell!
These are the Upstream Master pattern from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways book 1. I think it might be my favorite architecture. The increases happen on the sole and there's something about it that makes a sock that hugs my foot well.
I also finished a woven scarf today. I started it waaaaay back in May when I first got my loom and just kind of lost my oomph. I will be teaching the kids at Niels' school how to weave this week, though, so I need my loom for the class and had to finish off the project that was on it.
My sweater continues to grow. I have started the waist decreases but the edges of the fronts continue to increase more rapidly so the quantity of stitches is still growing fairly quickly. I can take it though. I'm tough like that.
I left someone out! My holey socks. The name of the pattern is Bosnian Toes and Turkish heels from one of the old issue's of Knitter's that my aunt gave me. I will always call them my holey socks, though. I was ready to post about them last week with this photo.
They're a little slouchy around the ankle but I think if they weren't in this yarn they'd never fit over my heel. I might try this pattern again in Fixation at a smaller size. I'm not sure what Fixation would do to those holes though. We might see, some day.
Where have I been! It's been more than a month since my last post. Sorry about that. Although, in my defense, that last post was written the day after school ended for Niels, so things have been off-schedule, in good ways and bad challenging ways.
What have I been working on? Well, I crocheted a coaster because I couldn't resist a ball of Sugar n Cream Stripes at JoAnn.
The other knitting related thing that happened was that I gave my mother my February Lady Sweater. I just didn't like the way it looked on me. I don't like having to fasten my cardigans all the way to the top so a cardigan that only fastens at the top is just not a good plan for me. I'm not sure now why I thought it was. I got swept up in the February Lady Sweater excitement, I suppose.
I haven't had many editing clients recently. I don't know if fewer people are publishing patterns because fewer people are buying patterns because the economy sucks or if everyone else is as swept up in summer as I am. I'm hoping it's the latter so that in the fall when the kids are back in school maybe I'll have more to do. Time will tell, I suppose!
In the midst of caring for a chicken poxy child (the younger) I knit up a pair of birthday gifts for my friend's Tucker and Jennifer who share a birthday which also happens to have been my grandfather's birthday. He would have 101 this year! Anyway, I knit up mitts for Tucker (Rav link) and bike ear warmers for Jennifer (Rav link). I'm thinking of kntiting a pair of those for myself. They look like they'd be good at keeping the cold breezes out.
Susanne's babies like these so much she asked me to make two more to have one in case one needs to be washed or such. You know I'm a sucker for bunnies, so I was happy to oblige.
It was nice to see the bunnies after they'd be used and loved and washed for a while. The yarn really bloomed up in a lovely way. The ones in the front are the new ones.
So, I've been wanting to weave. I think it started when I heard Brenda Dayne talking about the Ashford Knitter's Loom on Cast On. Then Faith got a Schacht Cricket Loom. This post in particular intrigued me. (Scroll past her very impressive pregnant belly there.) I then found out that the Textiles class at Niels' school owns a loom. I thought it was a big floor loom model and had decided I would figure it out over the summer, having never actually seen it. I took a close look at my friend Victoria's floor loom (which I think is a Schacht Baby Wolf) and panicked. I happened to be in Purlescence last week (funny how you know even now that this sentence ends wth me buying something, don't you?) and looked again at the Cricket looms and, as you guessed, brought one home. Yesterday, I assembled it.
I got out my copy of Creepy Cute Crochet to look for instructions on how to make the general body shape I wanted for the Mystery Animal. Stefan had other ideas, though. Stefan said he wanted "the green guy", otherwise known as Cthulhu. Luckily, he's a lot more friendly looking in a small crochet version.
The part that amuses me about all of this is that Cthulu (yes, without the second H) was Erik's screen name on the MUD where we met so I feel connected to that name. Stefan still calls this "that green guy" though, which is super cute. Also, he doesn't seem at all bothered by That Green Guy's lack of eyes.
