Socks! Tonight I finished my first pair of knitted socks. They’re big house socks for the Snook to putter around in. Since double-pointed needles scare me and I like to do things as quickly as possible, I used this “Double Trouble” pattern for knitting both socks at once on two circular needles. (That sounds difficult, but this page has great illustrations that explain it pretty clearly.) To the right there you can see the Snook modelling them. The wool was a German “Sockenwool” that I did on 2.75 mm needles to get a 10 st/inch gauge. It was dyed in varying colors which gives a nice mottled effect. Pretty sweet, huh? Here are two more pics of the socks on the needles to give you an idea of how it was done. (I did the calf section in 2×2 rib, which is why it looks so much skinnier than the body of the sock.)
I was most scared of “turning the heel” but this pattern makes it a cinch. I recommend it for you beginning knitters that are getting tired of making scarves! Just use a thicker wool than I did. The thin stuff takes ages to knit up… 🙂
My First Sweater It’s done! It’s slightly wonky and the fit is weird in places, but it’s wearable. (I think I’ll be able to block out some of the weirdness when I wash it. I should’ve done that first, but I was too excited to wear it.) The pattern is called “Sweet” and it’s from The Knitter’s Bible by Kate Buller. The wool is Jo Sharp DK 100% wool in “Plum”. The ruffle looks hard but – other than having to cast on 500 stitches – it was suprisingly easy to knit. The actual hardest part was sewing everything together at the end. I suck at that. The seams are a little bulky and non-symmetrical, which accounts for most of the fitting problems. I’m definitely going to knit my next sweater in the round so I don’t have to worry about that stuff. But it’s kinda cute, right?
(Edited to add: Yeah, ignore my glazed expression in the photo. It was 7:30 am and I’d overslept, so I’m a bit out of it.)
Scarves Galore The Easter Crafting Marathon continues. I’ve finally finished my red mohair scarf, which you can see below. The other two are scarves I’ve made in the last couple weeks.
First you have Snookums modelling my “Rock Star Scarf”, which is knitted out of Faux Fur. It’s this crazy yarn with lots of little hairs sticking off it that actually looks like fur once you knit it up. (Let me warn my fellow knitters: It was insanely difficult to work with. You can’t see any of the stitches so if you drop one, you have to start all over.) The second and third scarves are both made of mohair, which is incredibly soft and fuzzy and beautiful. I did the blue-green one first as a gift for my Dad’s wife Cindy, and I liked it so much I got the red to do my own. Pretty nice, huh? They’re both about six feet long and six inches wide. I can’t wait to wear mine outside (if it ever stops raining)…
Behold, my underpants. Okay, I’d like to start off by filling you single (and gay) guys in on a little secret: all girls have “granny pants”. These are the nice comfy cotton underpants we wear when we’re sick or out of laundry. No, they’re not sexy at all. Last Christmas my Mom sent me a nice pack of new plain white granny pants (as Moms are wont to do). They’re functional, though huge, and though I haven’t worn them yet, I’m not about to let them go to waste. They could be a little bit cuter though. That’s why I decided to try to liven them up a bit with some of this iron-on transfer paper (considering that I get a pretty nice staff discount). I wasn’t sure about a design until I came across a set of Hello Kitty brushes for Illustrator last week. With that, the plan was made.
The transfer paper was actually really easy to use. As I understand it, it’s coated in a kind of waxy stuff that melts when you iron it, thus coming off the paper and trapping the ink onto your shirt. That’s why you’ve got to trim pretty good around the image, because even where there’s no color you still get a layer of stuff. The design itself feels a little stiff right now, so I’m not sure how comfortable it’d be to wear a great big design. I don’t know how well they’ll hold up in the wash either, but quite frankly it’s not too big a worry. They’re only underpants. 🙂
(Hmm. Given that I officially got “on” the Net when I started college in 1995, it’s taken me about eight years to put my undergarments online. Geez, I’m like a porn star now or something.)
Record bowls! Well, that’s some progress. Starting from the bottom and going clockwise, that’s Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”, Culture Club’s “Colour by Numbers”, Stryper’s “To Hell With the Devil”, and the Carpenters’ “Now and Then”. I basically followed the Get Crafty instructions, and I really can’t stress how friggin’ easy this is. They recommend an oven temperature of 200F, but my oven wouldn’t even go that low. I just turned it down as low as possible. Put a bowl upside-down on a cookie sheet, whack the record on top, and set it in the oven for about five minutes. Pull it out (use a hotpad or you’ll burn yourself like me!), whip off the flimsy record, and shove it down inside another bowl to mold it. They don’t give off toxic fumes or anything, and they don’t get melty enough that you see fingerprints. (In fact, I think mine are somehow shinier now than they were before.) You’ve only got a few seconds to work with ’em though, so be quick. I went for a couple different shapes here. (It’s not possible to get them perfectly round, so don’t even try.) I think I’m going to glue some marbles to the bottom to act as legs and use a piece of tape to cover up the hole. Voila! Ultra trendy potato chip bowls. I’m so selling these at the Glebe Markets this year.
Check out what I made! I felt like I’d been making scarves for years, so as a change of pace I decided to knit a bikini using Get Crafty’s fabulous instructions. It’s knitted with cotton, not wool, and as I used a double thickness throughout it’s pretty dense (and therefore ensures no nipple visibility). Unfortunately this design is just not the right swimsuit for my body shape. The trunks, which just barely manage to go over my thighs, are pretty cute, but they’re so low that I have major plumber butt (even though I followed the instructions for “more coverage”). And the top… Well, I think the main problem is that string bikinis aren’t made for girls with larger boobs. I’m a C cup, and the whole triangle thing just doesn’t work. Even if I made them bigger, they still don’t fit the shape of the breast very well. (I really need to figure out how to knit one with an underwire.) So needless to say, I shan’t be sporting this puppy at the beach anytime soon. It was a fun experiment though.Some notes if you’re interested in trying it yourself:
As I can’t get the kind of cotton recommended in the pattern here, I just went with normal DK weight cotton. Unfortunately I knitted a test swatch and my gauge was way higher than it needed to be. I was afraid to move up a needle size though, for fear that the weave would be too open (and I wanted to keep the nips covered). So I played around a bit and discovered that if I doubled up the cotton and went to a 5mm needle, I got the correct gauge and the fabric was nicely dense. Unfortunately that meant I needed twice as much cotton. Luckily I’d bought 4 50gm balls, and I used up just about all of it.
Another problem: I knitted the two boob triangles on different days and my knitting tension changed significantly, which means they’re slightly different size. I’d suggest that you knit them both at the same time to avoid this.
The biggest problem I had was the bit at the end of the pattern where it tells you to “single crochet” around the trunk elastic and the bikini chain. I posted a request for help on Glitter and was directed to this page of instructions. That’s for making a hair band, but I figured out fairly quickly to adapt it to what I needed to do. I did the bikini chain easily, but I decided not to finish the trunks since they don’t fit well enough to ever wear.
My Oscar Contest has officially stopped accepting new entries, so I figured I’d better show you all what you’re playing for. Meet Oscar the Sock Monkey! As you can see he’s all dressed up in black tie and silver sparkles. He’s got googly eyes and a big grin, and he’s even got his own little Academy Award!
As the response to the contest was about ten times what I was expecting – 144 entries? Who the heck are all you people? – I’m also providing regular sock monkeys for second and third place. The Awards start at 5:30 PM Pacific time Sunday, which means 12:30 PM Monday afternoon here. As I’ll be at work all day at the draconian, no-Internet unnamed printer company, you’ll have to wait til I get home for the results to be tallied. Basically, plan on the winner being named about five hours after the Awards start. Good luck everyone!
I’ve been obsessed with bags lately. (It offends my feminist pride to admit I carry a purse.) I keep accumulating them because I can never find the ideal one. I got a suede one recently that’s damn near perfect, but every time I carry the thing it rains. Anyhoo, last night on the train home I had a flash of inspiration – why not use one of my now giant (courtesy of the diet) pairs of corduroys to make a bag? The result is before you. It’s lined with a red bandanna and I appliqued felt hearts to the front. Isn’t it cute?
I’d seen several people on Glitter recommending the “chop off the legs and sew up the crotch” method of making a jeans purse. When I spread out my cords, though, I had to give up on that idea. I mean, they’re huge. I can’t believe my bum was that big. It wouldn’t be a purse; it’d be a duffel bag. So I decided to go halfway. I cut off the legs and then cut it in half vertically near the zipper. Then I spent a good half hour messing around with pins and basting to try and decide how to sew the thing up. Eventually I just said “screw it” and sewed a semi-straight line down the side. Then it came time for the bottom…
The bottom was the hardest part. See, jeans kinda “pooch” out more in the back to accommodate your bum. So I had more fabric on the back side than on the front. The solution, I eventually figured out, was to put a couple of darts (i.e. folds) in the back piece to make it work out. You can kinda see ’em on the picture of the back. Again, I just kinda eyeballed everything, but it came out looking much better than anticipated.
Next was the strap, which I made from one of the legs. I like a long strap, so I slit a leg lengthwise and sewed the lengths together to make one really long piece of fabric. Then it was just a matter of folding it together so the seams didn’t show and running a line of stitching along the edge. (I’m happy to report that my little Janome sewing machine handled layers of corduroy very well. My only problem was that occasionally it was a tight fit getting everything under the presser foot. There’s probably a way to lift it up higher though that I just don’t know of.) I sewed the straps to the inside of the waistband, trying out my zig-zag stitch for the first time. I figured there was no way to hide the sewing, so I might as well make it look intentional. 🙂
Looking inside the bag at this point, I realized I needed a lining. The front pocket was still hanging in there, and the seams and stuff just looked really messy. I had some bandannas in my fabric stash so I grabbed a red one and fashioned a pocket of similar size to my bag. (Because my bag is kinda trapezoidal in shape, I sewed the lining rectangular at first and then progressively angled in new seams at the top til the opening fit the waistband.) The I just stitched it in place inside the waistband.
Lastly I decided it needed a little decoration, so I pulled out a piece of felt and cut out some hearts. Then I just sewed them to the front panel (being sure not to go all the way through). They’re just tacked on, so they should be easy to remove if I want to change it in the future.
The whole time I was making this, I kept imagining that I’d ruined my pants (not that I could wear them anymore anyway) and that the end result would look ridiculous. But when the Snook got home and complimented me on it, I realized that it actually kinda works. I like the fact that it still has pockets and stuff for my mobile and train tickets. It’s yet another product for my eventual craft stand! 🙂
Here’s my latest knitting project, a stocking cap that I whipped up earlier this week. As you can see, I’m still trying to use up leftover bits of Harry Potter scarf yarn. The pattern is pretty easy to follow and it’s a good one to get familiar with using double-pointed needles (for knitting in the round). The only part I had trouble with was the tassel. Mine is all kinds of wonky. But the rest is cute, huh?
Well, the Walk Against Want was today, and unfortunately yours truly was too sick to take part. I don’t think this amoxycillin is doing the trick. Anyhoo, I still plan on tackling the distance (15 km) on the treadmill as soon as I’m able. To thank my three sponsors, I spent the day crafting sock monkeys for them. Aren’t they cute? They’re actually much better than the first one I made for the Snook (but don’t tell him that).
Socks!
