Stitch, Brinn, Stitch!

FO: Leah Vest, Short Version

May 5, 2011 in knitting, life | Tags: finished object, FO, garment, knitting, life, rayon, stargate atlantis, vest, yarn | 2 comments

So I have finished up a couple of knitted things this week because, like I said, it’s dead week/senior week, so all the soon-to-be graduates are chilling on campus for a week before graduation, partying, sleeping in, and generally laying about. I have been knitting, my boyfriend Joe has been putting together a self-published album of his orchestral/piano compositions (he’s good; I promise) and together we’ve been watching Stargate: Atlantis on Netflix (which is delightful, by the way. We’re about halfway into season two and I LOVE IT).

Anyway, during the many episode of SGA we’ve been watching, I’ve gotten a lot of knitting done. Like the shorter version of my Leah vest.

Pattern: Leah, which I am currently working on writing up.
Yarn: Reynold’s Tiara, three skeins I’ve had as long as I’ve been crocheting (ie, a long damn time), probably from a yard sale or something.
Needles: US 6/4 mm

So guys? I TOTALLY LOVE THIS VEST. I really didn’t think I would care for the cropped version but OMG it is so cute. It looks great over blouses and I think it’ll look good over some dresses and t-shirts too. LOVE LOVE LOVE. The points came out exactly how I wanted (just under the bust) and the neckline is perfect. I originally tried to put in too many buttons/button holes but when I reduced them from five to three, it came out perfectly. Seriously LOVE.

Also the photo shoot was fun. My camera guy (Joe) is great and I love him.

As for the yarn: It was just a bit thinner than I would have liked. Ravelry says worsted, but it’s more like a dk. Anyway, it’s discontinued, so I won’t be recommending it for the pattern (probably I’ll just say a cotton or rayon blend worsted weight). Tiara is rayon and silk and the rayon was very splitty and the silk very pilly. The finished vest is quite pretty, but I wouldn’t recommend this yarn to anyone, especially if it’s been sitting on the bottom of your yarn bin for several years. It is a pretty color though and I did use up just about all of it, so it’s out of my stash.

I believe I mentioned before I was working on a cotton summer hat — I’ve finished that too and will have some details/pictures in the next post. Suffice it to say that it’s awesome and basically the best hat ever. That post will not be tomorrow as tonight is Cinco de Mayo and I will be drinking tequila. Yes.

FO: Hexagon Tote

May 3, 2011 in crochet, swap | Tags: bag, crochet, finished object, FO, ows, swap, tote | 2 comments

So I finished a thing for OWS. I actually finished several things but like a dummy forgot to take pictures and this one I haven’t sent off yet (so if you’re Quaggy on Craftster, you should probably not look).

Anyway, I made a totebag, based off of this one on her wists. I tried to copy it at least in spirit, though I’m pretty pleased with what I came up with:

Pattern: I made it up as I went. Might put together a pattern. Might not. It’s pretty simple. Make hexagons. Sew them together. Make handle.
Yarn: Acrylic from an estate sale (which I suspect to be Red Heart Super Saver). The purple multi is Jo Ann Sensations Rainbow Boucle, which I actually bought at Jo Ann’s a few years ago. Cause I’m classy.
Hook: (yep, this is crochet! Gasp!) I/9 5.5 mm. I crochet kind of loosely though.

So I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve got going on here. It was pretty quick to make (I made up a couple of hexagons per day in between other things and crocheted them together as I went). I haven’t made any large-scale crochet projects in a while (and I don’t usually, as I prefer knitting). It was nice to use different hand muscles, though I must admit I overdid it on a couple of days and make my hand sore. : /

I lightly steamed the body of the bag to make it less stiff, but the gauge is tight enough that I don’t think it needs a lining. I didn’t steam the handle because I wanted it to be stiffer/more sturdy, and I think I accomplished that.

I also finished another thing, knitted this time. I made a shorter version of my Leah vest to work out the shaping (and also cause I wanted it). I still have to take proper pictures of it, so I’ll leave that for another post. In the mean time, I’ve cast on for a hat with a nice big brim for shading my face from the sun.

Also, there’s that graduation thing happening on Saturday. You know, no big. : )

FO: Sockettes

May 1, 2011 in knitting | Tags: finished object, FO, knitting, socks | 2 comments

(insert high kick)

Anyway, yes I’ve been doing some knitting, as I mentioned. I started a small project to have on me and I finished it up in just a couple of days.

Pattern: I made them up as I went. The second is better fitting that the first. They’re toe up and a short row heel.
Yarn: The Sanguine Gryphon Bugga! left over from a batch of WWFY knitting.
Needles: US 1, the same sock needles I use for all socks.

Like I said, the second one fits way better than the first, which is a touch too long and a touch too wide–I accidentally did too many toe increases. I’m pretty happy with the fit, though I did have to sew the ends of the back of the heel to the border on the foot so they’d be tight enough.

I’m not really sure how to remedy that without the sewing. I wanted to do a flap/gusset heel but I also was feeling iffy about the stripes (I had very little of the green to work with, so that’s why they don’t match) and I like toe up socks, so I just did them that way. I think this sort of sock is a great way to use up sock yarn scraps (and in fact, I’m planning another pair from the remainder of the Manly Aran socks) as well as being very functional–I wear open topped flats a lot and my commercially knit socks for them are wearing a bit thin. Plus I only have like, three pairs anyway.

Since finishing these, I’ve started working on a shorter version off my Leah vest to work out the shaping (and cause I wanted a shorter one). I’m using Reynold’s Tiara, a rayon/silk blend I’ve had in my stash basically since I learned to crochet (I got it at a yard sale). Glad to have a purpose for it (or some of it at least). But more on that later.

Stash Times

April 29, 2011 in stash | Tags: cashmere, recyling, silk, stash, wool, yarn | 5 comments

GUYS GUYS GUYS I FINISHED ALL MY EXAMS FOR COLLEGE AND I’M GRADUATING IN A WEEK FROM TOMORROW. More on that later. Just so you know, expect my writing this week to be a little… less than perfect. Generally it’s safe to blame vodka but Thursday is Cinco de Mayo, so you should probably blame Tequila. Cause I’m DONE WITH COLLEGE and that means it is CELEBRATION TIME.

Anyway, In case you were wondering, I have been knitting. A little bit. Working on two pairs of Manly Aran socks in a row burnt me out a little bit, so I haven’t been doing as much knitting as I usually would. What I have been doing though is acquiring yarn at an alarming rate. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Weren’t you just talking about graduating and don’t you not have a job or any money?” That would be correct; however, I already sort of had the yarn. Which is to say I had some sweaters.

As a poor/cheapskate college student, I like cheap things. You know what’s cheap? Thrift store sweaters. You know what thrift store sweaters are made of? YARN. I’ve had the sweaters for a while and have been on an unravelling binge. I haven’t weighed any of them yet, but suffice it to say there’s a lot of yarn here.

What exactly have I unraveled? So nice of you to ask!

There’s this Shetland wool sweater that I got at a Good Will outlet (1.20 a POUND, people). It had tags still on.

It frogged into a lovely laceweight, but Shetland is a very sticky wool, so I had to roll it into balls instead of onto the niddy noddy like I usually do.

There’s a 80/20 wool nylon mix, the perfect shade of white for dyeing:

Five skeins of fingering weight yarn that will probably become socks (though I’ll probably hold it two strands at a time for strength). The little skein is from the collar, which alone yielded 140 yards.

There’s a very shiny linen/cotton mix (60/40) from a large tank top:

About dk. Not sure how much for enough for a tank top and a sun hat, which is the goal. I’ll probably also dye this.

There’s this Talbot’s 100% silk pullover:

Silk, by the way, frogs like a DREAM. It’s super strong so it doesn’t break every couple of yards like the Shetland was wont to. Ton of lace weight yarn here. There’s another skein I can’t find, so pretend there’s three. I want to dye it and make a huge shawl out of some of it.

Finally, there’s the creme de la creme, three wonderful, beautiful, SOFT skeins of 100% cashmere:

Also lace weight but will probably be doubled or tripled for… something.

Sweaters, as you know, have a front, a back, and two sleeves (except for that tank top, which was a cardigan so it had a back and two fronts). But there’s only three skeins of silk and cashmere (well, the cashmere sweater had this weird tie front thing, but it gave four skeins and we’re pretending about the silk). With the second sleeve of the silk and part of a sleeve of the cashmere, I wound up one skein with the blend:

It’s going to be a bitch to wind since the yarns aren’t plied, just held together. But it makes for the loveliest combination of shiny and soft:

I’m probably going to dye most of these skeins before I work with them (maybe I’ll make some white socks). I’m still in frogging mojo, so I’m basically frogging down my entire thrift store sweater stash. I’m currently working on a wonderful Express sweater of lace weight merino/viscose/angora/cashmere. So soft. I’m thinking shawl.

None of these sweaters were over $5 and I’ve got easily over $100 worth of yarn here. The cashmere alone would probably be at least $50, and I paid $3.60 for the sweater. Truly, it makes my ~~cheap~~ thrifty heart sing.

Manly Aran Two: Electric Boogaloo

April 27, 2011 in knitting | Tags: finished object, FO, knitting, socks, swap, wwfy | 4 comments

So I finished knitting the second pair of Manly Arans which means I can MAIL THESE SUCKERS OFF AND KNIT FOR ME ME ME ME!!!!!! (Okay, I have some OWS stuff, but it’s little things.)

Ahem. I’m pleased, in case you couldn’t tell.

Pattern: Manly Aran Socks by Wendy Johnson
Yarn: Cascade Heritage Paints
Needles: US 1, 40″ (for magic loop)
Mods: None.

They are more or less exactly like the other pair. I knit the cuff as long as I thought I could (turns out I was a little off and I have a tiny bit left over). They are too big on my feet (obviously), but they are DONE DONE DONE. They just have to be mailed off.

I have since cast on for a pair of sockettes (socks for wearing inside flats) and see it as a marker of self control that I haven’t cast on approximately a billion things.

Evolution of a Hat

April 25, 2011 in knitting, life | Tags: class, finished object, FO, hat, knitting, life | 2 comments

It’s finals week! Boo! I had two finals today and I have one on Wednesday and two on Thursday, plus a final paper due on Thursday. Basically, this week is full of the suck. The finals I had today were Women in Opera and What is Time?, the latter of which is relevant to this blog.

Basically, the final was to create a project that was interactive/could be experienced in some way and explored the concepts of time we discussed in the class (the class being exactly what it says on the tin). Being the knitterly sort, I chose to involve knitting in my project. I knit a hat, photographed it along the way, and strung the photos together into a stop-motion video. This is the hat I made:

Pattern: Aaron’s Hat
Yarn: Paton’s Rumor
Needles: US 8/5 mm

I steamed the hat as it came out a little short (and Rumor is mostly acrylic with a touch of alpaca). It turned out pretty well and will either go into the gift pile or warm my head next winter. One of those. Rumor, incidentally, is a metric fuckton softer than the similar blend Bernat Alpaca blend, which is scratchy and full of guard hairs. Rumor is nice and soft, though it did shed everywhere.

Sorry for the quality of the photos in the video; I had to take a lot of them. Here is my finished product:

The numbers:

I took a photo after every dpn (4 per round)
The hat has 36 rounds.
That’s 144 photos total (plus extras when the photos were blurry or my camera strap got in the way)
Under normal circumstances, this hat would have taken one hour to knit.
Knitting and photographing took approximately five hours.
It’s all condensed into just over one minute.

It was a huge pain in the ass, but I’m pretty pleased with how it came out (even though the pictures are crap). I think it was fairly well received.

Also, in case you were wondering, the music was composed by wonderful boyfriend, who would like me to mention that he threw it together in a couple of minutes cause he’s great (okay, that last part was me).

Spinning FO

April 22, 2011 in spinning | Tags: fiber, finished object, FO, spinning, stash, wool, yarn | 6 comments

I know what you’re thinking. “I didn’t know Brinn was spinning anything. Does she even do that any more?” I know. It appears that yes, I do in fact do that anymore. And the reason I didn’t mention it was because there was no time. On Saturday afternoon I spent some time by myself and decided I wanted to do some spinning. And not the thin solid colored singles I have on my smallest spindle. No. Big singles. To make big yarn. Or at least biggish yarn.

I wanted color. I pulled out this fiber, 4 oz of corriedale from Lakehouse Loft (on Artfire):

I grabbed my giant spindle.

I spun quickly, not paying attention to thickness or evenness. I just spun, figuring I’d ply it eventually. I spun for hours. I spun for like four hours. Then I took a brief break. Then I spun some more. I spun and spun. I went to bed. I woke up, ate lunch, and spun some more.

And then I plied because I finished the singles in less then two days of more or less continuous spinning. I plied and plied. My shoulder was hurting and my boyfriend was off at a choir concert I didn’t go to (he tells me not to; it’s a class requirement for him anyway, and anyway I am Not a Fan of choir) but I watched several episodes of series E of QI and kept plying.

And then it was plied. I skeined it up, threw it in a bath with a little wool wash, and smacked it on the table a little. Then I hung it over a chair under a vent to dry.

On Monday, I took pictures.

I spun four ounces of yarn to roughly worsted weight in two days. I made a two-ply yarn of about 140 yards in less than 12 hours. On my spindle. On my enormous spindle.

I think that’s quite an accomplishment.

Whedon Swap: Part One

April 20, 2011 in embroidery, sewing, swap | Tags: art, buffy, cross stitch, finished object, firefly, sewing, swap, whedon, whedonverse | 2 comments

So my partner recieved my Whedon swap package the other day, and I have to say, I am EXTREMELY pleased with what I made. It’s been a while since I’ve done a proper swap cause I’ve been busy, but this swap was just the thing to flex my themed-crafting muscles. Plus I’m totally obsessed with the Whedonverse, so this was perfect!

In addition to the Willow doll I made that I showed you last week, I made two other things, both involving the same craft (plus another one). The first thing I made after Willow was a cross stitch:

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! Plus dinosaurs (which I just sort of made up as I went). I used a font generator (I used the Amsterdam font) for the quote pattern, and I have to say, I love the look of this font in cross stitch.

I did some coloring in of the dinos with pastels as I did not want to fill them in with cross stitch (that would take FOREVER) and I didn’t want them to just be white. I think it came out pretty well.

The last thing I made, which took me til Tuesday to figure out and til Wednesday night to finish making (and the swap deadline was Thursday) was a zipper pouch:

With a cross stitched Kaylee from Shindig! I used this pattern for Kaylee and did the same pastel shading for her face cause I didn’t have white girl flesh-colored thread. Though I did pick some up at Michael’s the other day.

The lining is just some polyester muslin-type stuff I pulled out of a thrift store curtain.

I super love how this came out, cause guys? THIS IS LIKE QUILTING. I notoriously lack the patience for quilting because you need like, straight lines and corners and constant pressing. Who has time for that? I’d rather just crochet an afghan. But I managed to piece the front of this pouch together without too much trouble (and I did press everything often). I also actually used my zipper foot to install the zipper which made it approximately a billion times easier to do.

Still working on the giant man socks. I’m almost halfway up the leg. The end is in sight!

Whedonverse Swap: Part One

April 18, 2011 in embroidery, Misc. Crafts, other people's crafts/cool things, swap | Tags: angel, btvs, buffy, dollhouse, firefly, joss whedon, swap, wash, whedonverse | 2 comments

I received my package for the Whedonverse swap (on Craftster) from FiberAlchemist today! It’s the best thing ever and she’s great! Seriously people, have your wisting fingers in the upright and read position.

She sent me magnets!

Dollhouse! Bufffy! PUPPET ANGEL.

She sent me a hooped embroidery!

This is my favorite thing Cordelia Chase has EVER said in all seven seasons of Buffy and five seasons of Angel. She says it in the Buffy pilot.

She sent me paintings of the Scooby Gang!

They look amazing! Just like the characters! AMAZING.

And finally she sent me the best swap thing I have ever been sent EVER:

It’s a pillow! With Wash! And so many tiny stitches! And so many words! And SHADING. And soft soft dinosaur fabric.
So basically, FiberAlchemist is the best thing ever! Hence all the exclamation marks! YAY.

Sewing FO: Messenger Bag

April 17, 2011 in sewing | Tags: bag, finished object, FO, leather, messenger bag, purse, sewing | 4 comments

So if you read the post about the last purse I sewed, you’ll know I have A Thing for leather messenger bags. Which is to say I love them and my idea leather messenger bag is the unicorn of purses and does not actual exist in the world (much less for a price I’d be willing to pay).

Being the crafty sort, this of course means I have to make it myself. While my ideal purse is soft, supple red leather lined with a funky cotton print and an adjustable strap, the one I finished making yesterday is closer than I’ve gotten yet:

I’m pretty pleased with this one. It’s very sturdy and sits up on its down (as opposed to the last one which just sort of… squished). The pink leather is from a swap claim and I got it with a bunch of other fabric samples. The lining is blue canvas, which I got at a thrift store. Which means the total cost for this purse was like… a dollar. Actually, it’s a little more because I broke like, three sewing machine needles in the process (at a couple of points, I had to sew over three or four layers of thick leather and Leah, my sewing machine (pronounced LEE-uh, like the girl’s name) was Not Having Any of That).

I actually managed to plan ahead in some places, so there are pockets on the sides:

It’s top stitched mostly all around, including the strap (which, despite the messy stitching on the blue side is actually really awesome), which I think looks really good cause I have a desperate love for top stitching.

There is one place where it is not top stitched though.

I tried for like an hour and a half to sew the strap into this side. The thread kept breaking and I broke a couple of needles and the layers of fabric were too thick… it was a nightmare. And then I gave up and glued that sucker in there.

I used a really strong fabric glue called Fabri-Tack, which is machine washable (not that I would machine wash a leather bag but still) and will basically glue anything to anything forever. I mostly use it for felt because it doesn’t get absorbed like most glues do with felt, but it’s also amazingly strong. I’ve been yanking on the strap where it’s glued into the bag side and it isn’t budging. I suspect I’ll have to re-glue it eventually, but for now, I’ve thrown all my stuff in the bag and it seems to be holding up pretty well.

So: yay, new bag! I am also still working on the gigantic man socks (up to the heel turn!) and I should have some swap stuff soon. I finished and sent my Whedon package (and the one to me has been sent), plus I signed up for another round of Ongoing Wish Swap and made a claim. So yay! Swap!