cross-stitch scarf

Here's another knitting project:


A few weeks ago I was admiring a cool sample scarf in a stitch I'd never seen before at a store in the neighborhood. The woman who had knitted it wandered by and told me what book she'd gotten it out of. I considered buying the book, but it was $18 and I'd just been laid off, and, well, it seemed like a dumb way to use my savings. So imagine how clever I felt when I checked the local library catalogs and found out that D.C. and Montgomery County each had dozens of copies! This is the book, if you want to try it yourself. You knit it by crossing stitches over - you reach around the first stitch on the needle, knit the second stitch, knit the first stitch, then pull them both off. It makes more sense in the book.

I was really very pleased with myself for thinking of the library thing. I normally don't get library books, because I find they lead inexorably to fines. Now that I have lots of free time and can actually make it to libraries during their opening hours, I'm giving the library another try.

I gave this scarf to my older stage kid and made another one out of the same yarn for his stage little brother. So as not to incite inter-kid jealousy, we're supposed to sneak presents to the parents, not give them directly to the kids. I did that, being a good rule-follower, but it does kind of take away the fun part of the gift-giving, you know?

knitting

Yesterday I did NO KNITTING ALL DAY. I know. First time in weeks. Now I need a new project. Any ideas? I mean, yes, of course I have another hat that I'm working on, but I'm not happy with less than two or three projects at a time.

knit, then, wherever you may be

Like I said, yarn is expensive. A few weeks ago I found a sweater pattern that I wanted to make. Patterns are usually written for a particular yarn. You can substitute, of course, but it happens that the store up the street from me sells the yarn. I checked, and the yarn for this sweater would've cost $64. Uh, I could buy a better sweater for a lot less. Also, I just got laid off.

I asked my facebook friends how to get cheap yarn. One suggested a cheap brand but said, also, it feels cheap and it wears cheap. Then another said: buy thrift store sweaters and unravel them. I'd read about this online before but hadn't actually heard of anyone who'd tried it. So I read some tutorials and hit the thrift store.

Next thing I knew, I had 800-ish yards of baby blue cashmere and Swallowed My Flea had a new baby boy. I found a pattern online and knit for basically a week straight. I used circular needles so it didn't take up much space and carried my work in a little cloth bag so I could hide it in corners backstage during the Christmas show. I took it to the hospital (my dad was in the hospital - he's fine now) and knitted for hours. I knitted at restaurants. I knitted on the metro. And behold:

Totally cute cashmere baby blanket for less than $5 of materials. Aww yeah.

still obsessed

Don't worry - I may not have mentioned it lately, but be assured that I'm still knitting obsessively.

I made this wacky hat for She Gre:

The yarn comes from this awesome Japanese company. Noro makes really lovely hand-dyed yarn in all kinds of interesting color combinations, and there's a store nearby that carries a bunch of their stuff. She Gre says she gets many compliments.

This hat is for one of my former colleagues:

The gray is alpaca and the blue/yellow is another Noro yarn, doing its color-changing thing. Super annoying, though - so I started at the bottom of the hat, right, and the blue was a nice contrast with the gray alpaca. Then the blue started changing color and I realized it was going to change to gray. Which, uh, not so much with the contrast. I decided to cut it and jump to the next color, and I'm not as into the yellow. But anyway.

That hat took me two days and this scarf:

...took me a month. I think I just got bored with it (do one stitch, repeat for five straight feet of fabric). Anyway, it's done now and can make its way to its rightful owner.

yarn porn

This knitting world, it's crazy. The other day I went to the fabric store to pick up a bunch of pink yarns (so I could make this hat for myself) and the check-out lady was all excited about how I got needles and a bunch of yarn for under $10. There was a sale, woo, and they also carry Lion Brand yarn, which isn't very expensive. And the checkout lady said, ooh, have you signed up for the Lion Brand mailing list? And I said, no. And she told me all about how they have a ton of free patterns and got the catalog out of her purse to show me. She may have used the phrase "yarn porn." Multiple times.

Yes, of *course* I went home and signed up. Lookie, there's even a Lion Brand blog. I'm excited about posts like this one - she tells you basically how to make a hat, so you can mess with the pattern and make it up as you go along.

knitting fiend

I made a hat for my dad. I was kinda saving it for Christmas, but I couldn't wait, and he did just have a birthday. Here he is modeling it in my apartment tonight:


Note that it has a tassel. He wears hats inside the house so I figured I could make something pretty ridiculous and he wouldn't mind. Then when I finished I decided it was so great I wanted one for myself. Mine's pink and stripey and only about 2.5 inches long so far.

This knitting thing...it's fun. I love making stuff, and it's fun making stuff that is actually useful and doesn't just take up space. I really like how I can sit in one place and wiggle some sticks around for a while and end up with a *thing* that is both nifty-looking (if far from perfect - I'm not selling these) and functional.

create

Yeah, I'm liking this digital TV over the air. I still have to go to someone else's house for Project Runway, but not only do I get Universal Sports, I also get Create. Twenty-four hours a day of commercial-free cooking, knitting, crocheting, quilting, painting...thanks, PBS! This is one of eight public TV channels I get now - WETA has four, MPT has three, and WHUT has one.

I realize that there are cable channels about food and whatnot, but I've never heard of a knitting channel. Anyway, if there was one, it would be 50% commercials and would include a reality show in which young women with underdeveloped social skills live in a house together and try to impress the judges with the improvement in their Fair Isle technique while drinking heavily and picking fights. I prefer the nice slow-talking southern ladies with limited changes in camera angle. Much easier to learn from.

new crafty obsession

Before I went out to Oregon, I decided I wanted Kay Ray to teach me how to knit. She was actually re-teaching me - my grandma taught me about 20 years ago, but I'd never learned how to cast on or actually made a project or anything, just kinda practiced with needles and yarn. So on the Friday I was there, on her lunch break, we went to this super-cute yarn store near her house and picked out yarn for me (she had needles I could borrow).

First I did a bit of practice knitting, which was semi-successful, on this random yarn Kay Ray had left over from something else:


Then, I started on my real project. Kay Ray cast on the first couple of stitches, I did the rest, and then I knitted and knitted and knitted and knitted. I knitted as we watched most of the Lord of the Rings movies (extended editions) on her apartment. I knitted in the car going to Crater Lake. I even knitted *at* Crater Lake, when I got cold waiting for Kay Ray to finish taking a picture:


And Sunday night, I finished the dang thing! It's a totally cute scarf! And I am so hooked! And ready to start something new!

squid!

Yesterday J.Chu and I sold stuff at a craft fair. It was fun, and I sold about a dozen scarves - two to a Christmas show friend, one to J.Chu's grandmother, and the rest to complete strangers. And, more importantly, I spent less than I took in. Woo! The main thing I couldn't resist was these squid:
It's a squid...dressed as a cat! For Halloween! See many more squid products at the squid lady's etsy site. They're all totally cute. I also bought a squid tote bag with this on the side:

pumpkins

Greenfield Village was already decorated for Halloween last weekend, with jack-o-lanterns everywhere. It was pretty cool. (Also in this picture: my parents.) Carving pumpkins is definitely my favorite thing about Halloween - I don't really like dressing up and I can kind of take or leave the candy. But I haven't carved a single pumpkin this year, and the carving season ends Wednesday! And I can't do anything between now and Saturday except sew things on scarves!

fair of crafts

At the beginning of November, J.Chu and I are selling at a craft fair. For a long time, November seemed a long way off, and now suddenly it's not anymore. This is even more true of the beginning of November. So this is how I've been spending my free time:


These are all ready to be sewed up on the machine, then I have to do the really time-consuming part: sewing on dinosaurs and flowers and chemicals and whatnot. Yikes. And I have, like, four free nights between now and the craft fair. I'd better get sewing.

alias

Something - maybe seeing pictures of Jennifer Garner with her totally cute baby - has recently made me absolutely obsessed with rewatching Alias. So this Sunday J.Chu brought me season 1, and I've already watched the first 15 episodes.

Well, semi-watched - of course I'm crafting at the same time. Making napkins from real live cloth. I realize that the steps this requires are (1) cut a square of cloth and (2) hem it, but I'm still totally proud of myself. It's really hard to make it look right! I have no idea how people make *clothes*.

Anyway. Alias? SO GOOD. I love that show. I'm thinking about dropping my Netflix subscription for a few months, and watching all of Alias would be one of the many ways I could entertain myself while taking a break from the tyranny of the red envelope.

wool sweaters

I'm constantly on the lookout for wool sweaters. So, a public service announcement: If, as the weather starts getting cooler, you discover any old wool sweaters you don't want anymore, you should send them to me. I'll pay for postage. I love wool sweaters. Love 'em. Wool blends, too. As long it's not more than about 15-20% synthetic, I love it. Especially if it's not scratchy. (I think I'm going to start making scratchier ones into bags.)

I saw the baby!

Here she is: the baby!

A little self-portrait I took. (Miss Shirley was wayyyy too tired to work the camera.) Note my shoes. Subtle, aren't they? I can't tell you how cute she was with the little head and the bundle of fabric. Yep - she's my new favorite baby. Here's a picture that actually shows her face (looking at her mom - awwwww):

recycled silk

Sometimes I click on the random ads that come up at the top of my Gmail messages. (Thus playing into Google's little trap, but what can ya do?) I like how some of them are from tiiiiny businesses. This one makes me wish I could knit. Isn't that silk beautiful??

crafty!

Today J.Chu and I sold crafts at a little craft fair being run by her employer. Or tried to sell crafts. I sold one scarf, to her mom, and she sold two pieces of art - one to her boss and one to a little girl who kept coming back to look at it, so J.Chu cut the price in half. I think the girl's parents were a little surprised by how happy we were. Nobody was selling anything - it wasn't all that well attended, and people weren't in a buying mood. But it was a beautiful day, and I had fun sitting outside while people came by and admired my scarves. (Everybody loved them, they just weren't spending money. So, whatever. I got validation, and that's almost as good as cash.)

mmmmm

Know what smells like wet dog? A washing machine full of wool sweaters.

bring me your sweaters

Hey - if any of you want to go through your closets, like, in the next couple of days and send me your old wool sweaters, I'd give a shot at turning one of them into a scarf for you. (And keep the rest so I can turn them into scarves to sell at a craft fair next month with J.Chu! I know - what idiot sells scarves in June? Probably no idiot, which is why I'm declaring victory if anyone picks one up to look at the price.)

Here's what I look for:

1. A soft sweater. Scratchy sweaters are still scratchy after I turn them into felt. Those thin lambswool sweaters from the Gap or Old Navy are perfect.
2. 80% or more animal fibers. This can be some combination of wool and angora. 70/20/10 wool/angora/nylon makes the best scarves ever. The thrift store had a run of these in XL last winter. (Big is good.)
3. Materials that don't felt well: merino wool and cashmere. A cashmere-wool blend might work - I haven't tried that.
4. No pattern knit into it. I take that back: cable knits come out *super* cute. But sweaters that have the ski-style thing across the top don't work, because that section has more yarn and it felts up tighter, the thing comes out uneven, and it's a big old mess.

So, if you have some old sweaters that you really ought to get rid of anyway, let me know!

nerdtastic crafts

I know it's not exactly scarf season anymore - or shouldn't be, we'll disregard the fact that it's been in the 40s a few recent mornings - but last night I finished a new masterpiece. It was made from N.Lu's favorite sweater, and here she is modeling the scarf at happy hour tonight:

Ok, I'll give you a giant hint to the nerdiness of this scarf and tell you that the last time I had lunch with her, we talked a bit about atmospheric chemistry. So. What are those dots?

tree sweater

Somehow I missed the tree sweater when it originally came up on Cute Overload.