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Category: Crafts

Craft projects of mine

Greek Key Jumper

Curse be damned; I knitted the Snook a sweater. This is my first seamless and patternless sweater and the first of my own design. The stripe pattern is from a woven scarf his mother gave him a few years back. (I just graphed it and worked it twice, once in reverse.) The sweater itself is green and the pattern’s in grey. It’s made of a thick Aran wool and it really absorbs the light, which makes it pretty hard to see here. It’s got a regular crew neck and raglan sleeves, which means the seamlines run up diagonally from the armpit to the neck (like a sweatshirt). My biggest problem was getting the cast-off collar loose enough to fit over his head! Here some more pictures of him in his favorite modeling poses:

The first is called “The Beach is That Way!”…

…and the second is “What Time is It?”. I make him do them whenever he tries something on, because it cracks my shit up.

June 16, 2003
Storm at Sea Quilt

It’s done! Today is the wedding of my friends Kenya and Sal, and this is the quilt I made for them. It’s a traditional American pattern called “Storm at Sea”. I started it just over a year ago (but I took a bit of break in the middle of the summer). The top was machine-pieced but I quilted the whole darn thing by hand. I also used a bias binding for the edge, which was a first for me. All in all I’m really proud of how it turned out. And isn’t the basket cute? I saw it in a shop yesterday and realized it was the perfect way to package the quilt.

Here’s a shot of the quilt pattern itself. As you can see, it’s all made up of triangles and squares but somehow they kinda fool the eye into seeing curves and waves.

The Snook is actually standing on a chair and holding the quilt up here (and hiding behind it) so you can get an idea of how big it is. It’s probably about queen-sized, I’d say.

I suck at embroidery, but it’s sorta tradition that you personalize the quilt for the receiver. Here’s my, uh, “rustic” attempt at adding their initials.

Like I said, I’m proud of it. And hey, that’s one more thing I can cross off my crafty backlog!

June 6, 2003
Sweater Sampler

Three-Legged Dog Sweater
Just kidding. It’s actually a Sweater Sampler from Jacqueline Fee’s book The Sweater Workshop. She recommends you knit this thing so you can practice all the different techniques you need to knit a seamless one-piece sweater (the Holy Grail of knitting, as far as I’m concerned). It has different widths of ribbing, increases, decreases, a cardigan placket with a buttonhole, a hidden pocket, a knitted belt, two-color knitting, and four different kinds of cast-offs. Fun, huh? It reminds me of a Thneed. It took me a few days but I’m a lot more confident now. Onwards and upwards!

June 4, 2003
Harry Potter Mini-Scarf Bookmarks

My friend Steph is a primary school teacher and a few months ago she was admiring the Harry Potter scarves I’d knitted. Since I had lots of the yarn left over, I told her I’d knit a mini-scarf to use as a bookmark for each kid in her class. They’re extremely simple and you can finish several in one night. I used a normal DK (8-ply) yarn and a slightly smaller needles size than recommended. (This makes for a bulkier bookmark.) Cast on 8 stitches in red, knit six rows, and switch to yellow. Knit six more rows and switch again, each time carrying the unused color up the side. When you’ve got thirteen stripes, cast off and weave in the ends. Add three tassels on each end, made from one strand of each color. Voila! And I even managed to get them done before the next movie comes out. 🙂

(Special thanks to Amy, who helped out by knitting some up from her own stash.)

May 13, 2003
Double Trouble Socks

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… 🙂

May 8, 2003
My First Sweater

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.)

April 24, 2003
Scarves Galore

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)…

April 20, 2003
Hello Kitty Underpants

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.)

April 16, 2003
Record Bowls

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.

April 14, 2003
Craftiness + Hoochiness = Knitted Bikini

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.

March 30, 2003