Design idea breakthrough!

It's all due to aitapata - she posted a picture of a stripey shrug and it clicked in my head this is how to salvage my design. I don't have to rip out the two panels I've done, I won't have to buy any more yarn (although I did rather like the idea of having russet in there, to set everything off) and I will most likely wear it more often as a shrug than as a poncho.

I have two panels that are about 13 inches wide by 25 inches long. Those will join together to span my arms and across the back. They stretch to my forearms on either side, where they will be sewn together and then V area is where I'll add the collar/edging in mustard. In a sort of V-shaped cable-ish piece.

I think it will work. I'll have pictures sometime soon - it's Christmas, and Kathy is visiting, so I never really know what I'll be busy with.

Things that are finished - Hats. I started out doing one for myself, that actually didn't happen. I was using up old alpaca that turned out to be far too hot for a sweater and it wasn't spun very well or something because it kept coming undone. Well, I missed a spot in my hat and it came unraveled before it could even start to felt, so the brim had this huge strand-y hole. feh. Then there was the weird dyeing mishap that kinda came out interesting - it was supposed to be purple, but came out a sort of chocolate cherry. The recipient said she liked it, but I think she was just making me feel better :) One of them shrunk too much and that will be a prezzie for my sister in law who has a smaller head than I do. There's a green one for a friend on Next Exit who bought me tomato seeds whilst on holiday in Italy. That dye experiment turned out odd but interesting too.

So I might still make a hat for myself, but I don't like the colours of any of the wool I have in my stash. I think perhaps I'll try that Bamboo wool I saw at AC Moore.

Aran Poncho ideas

First off - argh! at Blogger for making the sign-in so damn frustrating. I don't have the brain capacity to remember every damn username and password - especially when I'm forced to use letters AND numbers! I don't blog daily, so I don't remember this blasted information!


All I wanted to do was babble about finally finishing up what began life as a shawl - only a thick one, not a lacy one. It started life out as a tree done in a diamond shape, was supposed to have "legs" of cables and vining leafs and it was supposed to be a thick V shaped shawl/wrap type thing.

Well, I could never get the tree right. It curls, it never lays flat and it just bugs me. So I don't want to rip out the other two pieces I have done, they're just fine, but I didn't want to do just a really wide, rather long scarf, so I'm going to rearrange the pieces into a V shaped poncho. I will probably need to buy one more colour to go up the neckline. Although I want to get russet to go with the Autumn colours thing I have going on (other colours are dark green, brown, mustard) and I'm not wild about red (ish) near my head.

I have to do measuring.

I have some cable motifs in mind - currently swatching Barbara Walker's Baroque Cable. I had to completely re-graph the thing though because her graphs confuse me! Is it because I learnt doing cables by graphs from doing an Alice Starmore Aran sweater? Starmore's graph make sense to me.

Duh du jour: I spent two nights graphing out a cable design from a knot design I printed out, only to discover that I basically tweaked a Saxon braid. sigh.

It's finished!

Actually I finished it about a month ago. I've worn it a few times and gotten several compliments, but I must say that it's not really "me". I just don't have the proper body to wear a shrug. Perhaps it's the colours, too - red is not a favourite.

I'm currently working on a to-be-felted satchel-type purse for Roberta. I'm using Patons SWS, which is a wool and soy blend. I had no idea you could make yarn out of soy? It felts quite nicely, if somewhat furry, and with cute little nubs.

I've also knitted up a swath of a Moda Dea yarn which is 65% wool, 35% acrylic. I have yet to felt it, I'll chuck it in with the satchel when that goes in. It's over half wool in content, so it should felt somewhat at least. Mostly I'm just curious. I like the colourways and I think it would make an interesting bag or backpack.

I told Mark that I'd make him a Dr Who scarf if he buys the yarn. I must be mad! :)

Actually, I've always wanted to do one, but never really knew anyone who would truly wear and enjoy it. Mark's a die-hard fan though, so I know it'll go to a good home. aitapata from the neil gaiman board found a great site [url]knitpicks.com[/url] and the Wool of the Andes yarn matches fairly well with the original scarf's colours - although it's extremely frustrating to match online pictures - and depending on the lighting for the old TV show, and which scarf was used (apparently there were several)... well, it gets down to... I'm picking this and winging it!

I think that's everything so far.

update on peace of pi

after ripping out the sleeves (just to the armpit) and re-doing the descreases, I'm much happier with the new shape. It's tapered nicer and seems to curve halfway up.

I'm frustrated with flickr. can't remember my ID/password. sigh. So I'm migrating things over to photobucket, which actually seems faster and will let me display my avatar on next exit, so, yay!

my left shoulder hurts a lot.

I can't believe it's August already!

Work on the Peace of Pi shrug is progressing - I hate doing sleeves. I decided to carry over the ribbing effect and so I'm doing K1, P1 ribbing. It looks great, but man it's boring. So, since I finally have DSL I can finally check out the videos online about Continental knitting. Illustrations of this technique have for years left me going "uh?" and whenever I see anyone do it in public they just go too fast. And asking them to slow down and show me exactly how to work the stitches is kinda like asking a centipede how it manages all those legs. If a centipede could think like a human...

Anyway - my left shoulder has been hurting a lot lately and Continental knitting is supposed to be better for pain management. The knit stitch is easy-peasy - now worries - the purl stitch is a bit snarky. And wrapping the yarn around my left fingers is odd. But I just need to get used to it. It could seriously speed up work on felted purses, Which would be nice if anyone ever wanted to buy the blasted things...

Crowded House in 9 days!!

I finally got the circle to lay flat AND (mostly) achieved the spiral-y look that I wanted!





Now I shall work on the sleeves. I hate sleeves. :) I also have to dye that last skein. I wonder how the green will turn out.

Even though it's too hot to knit...

I just had to start in on the Peace of Pi :)

Adventures in dyeing

I was going to use Procion dyes, but they are rather expensive. Then I found Dylon dyes at Walmart and they were much cheaper. Especially since I wanted primary and secondary colours. Procion does have brown dyes and I might just splurge for those, for another project in the future.

Dyeing is messy, certainly, but if you have everything set out and ready to go it makes the job much easier.


I used a foam dauber thingy to paint the yarn. I did it outside and the hose was nearby. I probably mixed in far more powdered dye than I needed, but I didn't measure it out - I just guessed at half the packet. If I had used the whole packet I could have dyed about 20 skeins of this yarn.



That's the final product after washing out the excess dye. The white-ish bits are because the yarn is half acrylic and that didn't take dye. I rather like the effect though.

I like the Dylon dyes (so far, I don't know how well it will hold up to washings) and would consider using them again, especially if I find cotton t-shirts that fit me, but come in nasty colours. I do wish they had brown dye though.

Peace of Pi

I decided to call these design ideas "YABIs" (Yet Another Brilliant Idea) because I will get a design stuck in my head and there's no hope for it until I actually try and make it. Usually it fails, somehow, and I can at least tell that designer in my head to shut up for a while. But sometimes it works out OK. And this project is possibly one of the ones that will work out OK, but first I have to get some dye that will work on cotton. I thought kool-aid would work, but, alas, it won't - not on cotton.

The idea popped into my head on July 4th, which was damp and chilly here. I was wearing a t-shirt and wishing I had brought a jacket when I saw some girls walk by wearing shrugs. Shrugs are basically sleeves of a sweater, attached at the back. (I don't like the ones that tie right under the bust, that only looks good on a girl who looks more like a boy ) I was thinking that it'd be cool to have a Peace sign on the back and how would I do that? Cables? Naw - I-cord would be easier, but can I knit a flat circle?

Turns out the answer is "Yes". Elizabeth Zimmermann answered this question years ago when she unvented her Pi Shawl. The increases on her round shawl are based on pi.

And that just gave me the worst pun ever - The Peace of Pi Shrug!

I want to dye the cotton yarn in rainbow colours, then knit it up and attach I-cord in dark green for the peace sign and edges. I debated about just knitting it up and then tie-dyeing it before adding the I-cord, but I think I will prefer the colours all knitted up.

I'll have pictures, whenever I have anything to take pictures of.

more knitting ponderings

I have a possible hat pattern stuck in my brain and the idea is simply not letting go, so I must attempt it! :)

I'm imagining it in suede, but I'm not quite willing to rip that stuff out yet - or look for the remaining ball.

I have some variegated cotton, although I truly doubt it's enough to do what I want. But as I'm really just messing around I'm sure I can fudge it a bit. If I get desperate then I'll go in to walmart! :)

I have to try and calculate how many stitches to cast on and work with this pattern. I think I'll do 120 stitches - size 8 needles - peaches & cream cotton yarn.

Knitting update

I'm working on the last panel of the poncho and decided to try out the applied I-cord that I had planned for the edging. I'm doing this for several reasons:

1. The yellow I have is in many small balls, so, if I used just that there would be a great many extra bumps in the edging.
2. I probably don't have enough yellow to do what I want.
3. Because I don't exactly know how much I will need, I'm doing a bit more than 12 inches and then I will rip that out and measure it.
4. I needed to actually try out the stitch and see if it looked OK.


#4 backfired on me - it looked awful. I could see a line of the panel colour showing through where I attached the yellow! I tried several things last night, adding a yarnover, applying it with the wrong side facing me, with the right side facing me, nothing looked good.

So I just set it aside and worked on the last purple panel. This morning I got the brilliant idear of doing a line of crochet (I'm pants at knowing what stitch I'm actually doing, I'm sticking the hook into the ladder between knit stitches, hooking a loop, bringing that loop up and then through the loop already on the needle) (this procedure is done with right side facing me) THEN with the right side still facing me, doing a 3 stitch applied I-cord. This method gets the result I wanted!

Now I just have to find the wrappers so I can determine what colour I have - there are two yellows in this Silky Wool - sunflower and gold. And it's difficult to tell which one I have from the teeny pictures I see online, plus the inevitable colour changes that occur when you post pictures on the net and view them through different monitors.

See - this is why I save all those wrappers! Although they're strewn about the house, so it's not really doing me much good at the mo! :)

It's March!

And it's actually windy! I think this is the first time in several years that's it's been windy during the first part of March. It's a cliche to say March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb. Well, it hasn't happened that way for at least three years, it's been backwards, and we've had simply awful growing years.

Dare I hope that we have a good gardening year? I'll let ya know in October :)

I still haven't felted that blue purse. Haven't sold the brown one either, but that could be because I'm using it. :)

If I ever get my connection sorted out I'll upload some pics to flickr. The last time I tried it was just disastrous and I have been lax at trying again.

Been grooving to Boston Legal Season One thanks to Netflix. Been knitting Tilted Ladders with Silky Wool and it's just gorgeous. The plan is to make it a rectangular poncho.

Still undecided about what cable to use for the Tree Shawl - the library found me two of the Harmony Stitch Guides, but that half-remembered cable that I think I saw last year isn't in either of the books. :(

I should be copying stuff off my harddrive. I finally ordered Tiger OSX for Angus and as it's the full install, not just an upgrade, well, there's stuff I wanna save.

Maybe later. I'm hungry.

halfpast february...

I ordered seeds! Why are there just sooooo many yummy sounding tomatoes? And no matter what we grow we always fall back on Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter. But, we won't find the Absolute Perfect Tomato unless we experiment with new seeds! :)

I get very excited over planning the garden - trying to decide what gets grown where, what we have to keep separated to save seeds.

grumblegrumblegrumble

I have pictures I want to upload and I keep getting disconnected...

The Strangely Lumpy, Oddly Bumpy Felted Tea Bag

This started out as a different design and eventually morphed into this:


I could see the bumps, but thought perhaps felted would take care of that.




It didn't. Instead it seemed to enhance the bumpiness.


You can see this especially from the top view:



But, well, it is roomy! :) I think it needs some sort of closure at the top, but I'm not sure what that will be.

Originally it was inspired by the mitre squares from my son's blanket. I rather liked the V shape of a half-finished mitre square, but didn't like pointy bit at the bottom. So I though perhaps I could knit extra sections. I still may try that, just for the halibut, I can get another skein of wool using the AC Moore coupons.

it be friday...

and it was another $80 for another teeny bottle of eye drops. that aren't working either. I've now spent almost $250 on eye drops and office visits, not even counting the future bill bomb for whatever the deductible will be, and I still have a red eye!

I had to pitch my lenses and now I don't have enough money to buy new ones.

Anyway. Knitting things! I finished the heart/cable design, only took me three ripouts and graph changes! :) this is a sucky picture, maybe I'll do a better one soon.

yet another brilliant design idea

The felted purse got rearranged so many times! It's finally almost ready to chuck in the washing machine - just have to I-cord the last of the yarn for the straps. And remember to take pictures!

And yesterday I had another brilliant idea that has gone through three graph changes and to rip-outs already. I suppose I should have taken a picture of the last attempt, but it's too late now! :)

It will be a 6-7 inch block with a cabled heart. I think this last design will work out. I wasn't taking the extra stitches into account and it threw off the graph, which is why it got ripped out. Also, it was a wee bit too long/big.

I promise pictures soon.

actual postitude

Astonishing, I can actually log in and post something! Been trying all week it seems. Of course, I've been having phone line problems as well, so just when I get into something I'll get disconnected.

I'm working on a new design for a felted purse. It's changed several times already and gotten half ripped out once. And it's due for ripping out again, I don't like the top bit. But it'll only be an inch or two.

My vision is wonky again. My eye is still very red and it's been burny and itchy since Friday. I can't see the doc 'til Tuesday. He told me last week if it didn't clear up he'd give me some stronger drops. I do hope those work and that it's not yet another $80 for this medication!

Will post pics of the new bag soon.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

More pictures

The Tea Bag: pre-felting:


and post felting...


She seemed to like it when she unwrapped it.


I have an idear for a new felted purse - a lightly different design. I tried dyeing the wool in coffee and was underwhelmed with the results. I think I'll re-do it with tea.

I'm going to dye my hair tonight and hope that this thing in my eye goes away!

Pictures

So, If I ever figure out how to integrate this blog with my flickr account... it keeps asking for my user name and password and then telling me that the info I typed in is wrong. uh? So, maybe this will work:

Close-up of Devlin's blanket:



If you compare the blues you'll see why I changed them. This blue, Cobalt, is much more subtle and flows better with the brightness of the greens and the tones in Corinthian - the multi-colour with the Candy Apple Red.

Needle size: 13
Pattern: Mitre squares, Cast on 57 stitches
Finished squares: 13 inches square
Yarn used: 1 skein each Lionbrand Homespun

Candy Apple Red
Corinthian
Cobalt
Delft Blue
Grape
Fiesta
Spring Green
Florida Keys Green

Not entirely sure how long it took me to complete. 2 months? I did it in between other projects. The nice thing is, I can add to it when he gets bigger or if I just feel like it. 'Twould be interesting to add orange and yellow to it.

it be thursday

Thanks everyone, I just read your comments!

I prefer my mobius scarf to hats, 'cos I can wrap that around my head and then my neck. That keeps me warmer.

My darling hubby gave me a hair cut. It's vaguely Scully-ish, from about season 7 of the X Files, but my hair is much more unruly. A woman in walmart today exclaimed that I "have gorgeous hair" so, yay Goldwell! :)

I'm still working on pulling in all the ends on Dev's blanket. Will finish it tonight whilst watching telly. Ugly Betty has been a fun new show. It's nothing fabulous, but it's at least not some Law and Order spinoff or CSI Boise. I do wish Boston Legal would come back with new eps soon.

I tried coffee dyeing some wool. The effect is... not as good as I'd anticipated. I much prefer tea. So I'll prolly re-dye these skeins. I also have a new purse design floating in my brain, so that's the next project.

I do have some pictures to upload. Probably tomorrow. of the "Tea Bag" pre-felted and felted and Dev's blanket.