Cozy Things

I love you, Davy Jones

2012-02-29T23:46:00.001-05:00

Michael Putland/Getty Images

Taking a moment to pause and remember. He meant a lot to me.

Wool blankets and calico edges

2012-02-28T17:55:00.001-05:00

Isn’t wool itchy? I hear this all the time, and it always makes me feel sad, because I think wool is possibly the loveliest thing anywhere, and that’s even with me remembering about silk, which is also nice. I know there are people out there with actual wool allergies (and if you are one of these unfortunates, I wish I could just give you a big hug right now) but I think mostly it’s just that some people find wool itchy. They just don’t like it. It makes their skin feel oogy or something. I don’t know how it happens that some feel that way (and I believe they do, which is fine because there’s more for me that way) and some feel that wool is awesome and snuggly and cozy and (maybe a little rough but never itchy) and almost always perfect.

So, knowing that there can never be enough wool, and that sleeping under a wool blanket is the very best--no matter the season--when I found these blankets the other day, while out on a thrifting binge with (blogless but crafty) Michelle, I greedily grabbed them up.

The satiny edgings were a little tattered and I don’t know if I saw this in a Cath Kidston book or not—probably I did—but they needed new bindings, and what’s cuter than calico? I held my breath and tossed the blankets into the washing machine (delicate cycle, no agitation) and then hung them to dry in front of the living room fire. The room smelled not unpleasantly of damp wool—it reminded me of wet mittens on a snowy day—and the next day they were dry, and had not shrunk at all, somehow. I think they’d been washed before, and were already felted a little, and are therefore even more cozy, if such a thing is possible. Then, I just cut long lengths of calico and sewed it on, presto. They are now, if you can believe it, just as cozy as before, but now they are crafty, too, and much cuter.

Two of them had this awesome tag, which made me hope I’d made one of those Antiques Roadshow-style finds, but it looks like these are just some ordinary but nifty wool blankets of the kind you would have slept under at camp.

Oh I love these. Love love love.

Honey Cowl

2012-02-27T08:48:00.001-05:00

Even though it was 60 degrees F and the daffodils were blooming in Central Park and the birds would have been singing if there had been any birds, and even though my mama (who is a Midwestern gal and knows a thing or two about weather) thought it was a little too warm, everyone on the street in New York was bundled up like they were heading off into a blizzard at the South Pole. The drag queen being filmed for an arty short movie in the park was quickly hustled into his fur coat between takes. The nannies on the Upper West Side were swathed in wool. The pouty-lipped and long-legged knee-boot wearers of Midtown were wrapped in three layers of puffy coat and cowls. These people look like they have been cold before and do not want to go there again.

New York is a city on foot. Here’s what I learned: if you walk as much as they do, blocks and blocks of walking; it might be several blocks to your subway station, and there are stairs to climb everywhere, then you can eat all the pizza, hot dogs, gelato, and foot-tall pastrami on rye sandwiches you can handle and still you will look like a million bucks. This is great to know.

Meanwhile, it is not 60 degrees F here in my neighborhood at home. It is still pretty cold. So I made this cowl, to wear while I walk and walk and walk. I used a gorgeous soft wool gifted to me by a very generous knitter, two skeins of Shepherd’s Wool, in “Beaches” and “Milk Chocolate”. The yarn was made in my home state of Michigan, where it is also still pretty cold. The cowl pattern can be found here, and as you can see, it knits up fast.

That thing is the soul of urban chic right now, and it’s cozy, too. I thought I saw Steven Spielberg wearing one of these last week. But it wasn’t him.

Love Letter

2012-02-25T16:48:00.001-05:00

Let us caption this photo. I will call it “Teenage Boy Being Patient.” I was not about to go to New York without visiting that incredible nexus of taste and style and visible demonstrations of color theory in action that is Purl Soho. It is small, but every inch of the store counts, and that wall of yarn up there? That is a work of art. It was so hard to know where to start, because I wanted all of it, and then it was so hard to know when to quit. In fact, I sort of want to live upstairs at Purl, with a view of the “Eat Your Veggies” graffiti on the building next door. I would buy coffee in the East Village and then bring it home on the subway (oh, the subway! Surprise, the subway in NYC is wonderful) and then carry it home to my loft on Broome Street in Soho, made of windows and brick and filled with all my crochet blankets and maybe a bunch of expressionist art painted by my bohemian friends. That coffee would be the best coffee I’d ever had, and I would walk to Chinatown and have dumplings for dinner. Then I’d come home, crawl out onto the fire escape, and knit and knit and knit. That’s the dream.

Rockefeller Plaza looks like this:

Strawberry Fields in Central Park looks like this:

That’s pretty nice. I’m just saying. Well done, New York. Okay, back to work.

Pieces of New York

2012-02-24T13:52:00.001-05:00

So much to tell. I love New York. First, some laundry.

Hand towels and corners

2012-02-18T08:46:00.001-05:00

And now I have a humungous pile of hand towels. This is the second half of a project I began back in August, after I ~~shockingly~~ ~~sadly~~ fortuitously shrank a two-sided cotton shower curtain in the wash. That episode was actually a perfect example of the way I operate: first, make a stupid mistake. Shrinking something in the laundry is rookie stuff, and this isn’t my first rodeo, so you’d think I’d have that one nailed down by now, but clearly not. Then, make lemons into lemonade by looking at other uses for the busted/shrunken/stained up thing of which I am suddenly in possession.

So, clutching my ruined shower curtain in my hands, I thought to myself, what besides a shower curtain is made of terry cloth and waffle-weave cotton? Well, towels! First I made these, and they worked out pretty well, except they are mostly white and therefore I don’t like to use them. Do you all have that problem? I have a serious problem with that problem. The other day, somebody used one of them to wipe the counter, and to myself, I wailed, What are you doing???? That towel is white!!! Of course, that’s what Oxi-clean is for, so I know it’s just me and I’m working on it.

The curtain yielded six hand towel sized pieces of this waffle-y woven cotton, which I cut out last summer, then realized they would need bias edging, and became overwhelmed by the prospect, so I stashed them in a basket on a high shelf and tried to forget about it. But a crisis revolving around the arrival of company, combined with an actual shortage of towels firmed my resolve and I finally got it together to finish them.

There are six towels, which means there are 24 corners, and so I decided to use this tedious chore as an opportunity to work on my miters. There were quite a few failures:

Bleah! But there were also a lot of successes:

There were more good than bad, I’m happy to say. I do love me a nice sharp mitered corner. I don’t make them often enough to really do it well, but I want to. Twenty-four corners later, I think I’ve got this.

I’ll be away for the next few days; my mom is coming for a visit, and together we are heading somewhere fun! See you next week.

The Knitter: a crochet story

2012-02-16T11:22:00.001-05:00

I finally, suddenly, had 400 little three-round grannies (oh, how lovely they look, all piled together in their neat stacks! I love them. I want to take them out to dinner. I want to smooth their bangs and hem their pants and teach them about life.) It’s time to join them together, and I’ve had so many brilliant suggestions about which color to use for the joining round. Lots of you, including a few people who have never been wrong yet about color, have suggested I should go with a lovely pale gray, but I can’t, and here’s why:

I already have a gray-bordered granny square blanket. (For the record, I also have a red one, you may remember the ice blue one, and I also have a chocolate brown one I haven’t even mentioned yet. The granny sickness is fully upon me.)

This was my first granny square blanket, made back when I was a Knitter. Not just a knitter, like I am now, but a Knitter, and one who didn’t understand the crazy impulses of others to use hooks and scraps and orange yarn. In my life as a Knitter, I once had occasion to be the owner of three skeins of Cascade 220 in bubblegum pink, and could not, for the life of me, imagine what I might ever do with it. Really. In my life as a Knitter, I had a big stash cupboard full of yarn that was either gray or brown or cream, or some variant of those colors. I don’t want to suggest that I wasn’t happy as a Knitter, but I will say that having both needles and hooks in my life has made me a much more fulfilled girl. I still knit things, lots of things, and I am still probably mostly a knitter, but I am not, any longer, a Knitter. Once, I would never have entertained the idea that crocheting a blanket might be worth my time, even though I loved crocheting as a child. It just wasn’t on my radar.

Then came Alicia, who made these granny squares, and my mind opened a crack, and I found myself at the yarn shop buying four bags of yarn in every color. And so it began.

All of which is to say that I have decided, in my arbitrary way, to use white as the joining color for this new scrappy, motley, super-colored granny blanket. I think there really, in the end, were too many different colors in this thing for me to be able to make a non-gray choice. White was the original intent anyway, and as I said before, seeing this really sealed it.

Progress is slow—good grief, there’s almost as much crocheting left to do as I have done already! But there’s me with my hook, and I am happy.

Little Leaf Whimsy

2012-02-13T11:26:00.001-05:00

I am constitutionally unable to leave any flat surface uncovered. There was a little table that needed a dose of something pretty, so here is this piece of whimsy to be of remedy. It was much more sharp and square before I removed the ill-advised ball fringe that I originally added around the edge, which certainly looked whimsical, but which, I eventually felt, added a little too much goofiness to the whole thing. Now it just needs a good pressing at the edges, and it will snap to attention.

This is a quilt block design called “Little Leaves” from this book, by Elizabeth Hartman. I used an assortment of scraps, mostly from my much-loved and ever-shrinking stash of Loulouthi, and pressed lightweight fusible web to the wrong side of the fabric pieces. Then I traced the leaf patterns onto the paper side of the web and cut them all out. Now, I think there must be a better way to remove the paper backing from the fabric at this point, because picking at it with my fingernail and cussing a lot didn’t seem to work that well and it took most of the morning. Anyway, once that was done, I fused the leaves to the white backing with a hot iron and blanket stitched around them with embroidery floss. Then I stitched the whole thing to a second square of white muslin and turned it right side out, pressing well. [At which point I added the aforementioned ball fringe, feeling all the while, sinkingly, that it was not working, and so this morning, I took it off again. I don’t know, now I’m thinking the ball fringe was kind of cool. Indecision!]

It is going to live with an art student whose current medium is charcoal, so I rather fear for it, and actually I assume it will not last long. Better enjoy it now.

You might want to see it with the fringe:

Oh dear, now I like it again. Sigh.

Gingham blanket progress report, and a few boot details

2012-02-11T10:03:00.001-05:00

Gradually, this pile of yarn is being turned into a pile of blanket. I’ve done six strips of thirteen squares so far, and I’m hoping to have the stamina to make eleven strips, though I may bail at nine. Then I’ll whipstitch them together and put on an unobtrusive border, and it’ll be done, after which time I’ll probably wander sadly from room to room, wishing I had a big garter stitch blanket to gently, mindlessly knit as my brain goes on about other things.

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my hexagon slipper boots! A few have asked me to write up a pattern, and while a whole pattern is beyond my abilities, I can give you the basics of what I did to modify the original.

As you know, I first made ten hexagons according to the pattern, in five pairs of scrappy color combinations. In other words, each boot is an assortment of scrap hexagons, but both boots are the same. Then I chose two different hot pink yarns and worked three additional rounds of sc (all terms are US) on each hexagon, alternating light, dark, light. So now, the hexagons are bigger than the pattern intends. Good thing I’m using the smallest hook they recommend—US F, or 3.75mm.

Next, I crocheted them together using the darker pink as called for in the pattern, and adding two more hexagons to the leg portion of each boot. At this point, I left the bottom of the boots open and worked on the upper leg, peering at the photo and figuring it out as I went.

I began at the back of the leg, joined with a sl st, and worked a few sc, then a few hdc, then a few dc, then one tc, then a few dc, then a few hdc, then a few sc again—in effect, using the graduated heights of those stitches to fill in the “dent” at the point where the two hexagons came together. I just improvised this as I went, so I don’t know how many of each to tell you—just work the single crochets where the hexagon is at its highest point, and work the triple crochet in the lowest point, and fill in between with the other stitches. The first round didn’t quite fill in the dent, so the second round was worked much the same way, using sc and hdc. These two rounds level out the top edge. Then, alternating colors as my whims dictated, I worked four rounds of dc3 clusters (as described in the original pattern) three rounds of dc, and one final round of sc. I toyed with the idea of adding yet another round of fancy shell edging at the top, and I still may do that, but it seemed like it was getting to be decorative enough already.

Next, I made the boot soles. You work them separately, and I made them strictly according to Priscilla’s instructions—this was a technique new to me, but easily figured out, if tough on the knuckles (if you try it, you’ll see) and when I sewed them to the boots according to the instructions and tried them on, the fit was not so great—closely fitted at the toe, but very baggy at the ankle. So I took the soles off, sewed the two hexagons at the back of the heel together at the bottom (I don’t know how to explain that any better—you’ll just see that there are two hexagons at the back of the heel, and if you sew the bottom edges of them together, you’ll have it) and then sewed the sole down on top of that. The sole went over the hexagons at the heel, and was seamed to the toe hexagon as called for in the instructions. The sole is double thick now, at the heel only, and the two hexagons edges come together at the inside of the boot, under my foot. I hope this makes sense—I think you’ll see what I mean when you get there.

Those are my modifications to this already very clever pattern, and the results are relaxed and comfy and fabulous! You’ll probably be able to wear these with socks, and might even be able to sew in a fleecy liner (somebody out there on Ravelry did that, I think) and you can forget being able to fit them in your shoes, but for snuggling up on the couch working on your endless miles of garter stitch blanket in three exciting shades of taupe, they are perfect. Good luck!

Many thanks, too, to the very talented Sandra for the lovely award--gosh, Sandra is crocheting circles around me. Muchas gracias, mi amiga!

Caravan Hexagon Boots

2012-02-09T09:03:00.001-05:00

I can’t even tell you how many times I have sat here in the living room with bare feet and wished I’d put on a pair of socks. “You should go get some socks on,” says Dean, looking at my purpling toes. “Yeah, I should,” I always say, not getting up. I’d put on my slippers, but since I wear those everywhere, including sometimes when going outside to the chicken coop, I have to keep them off the white couch.

So I was having a flick through Ravelry the other day, just browsing “granny squares” because I frankly love to look at granny square projects, when I suddenly saw these and time stood still for a minute. I needed a pair of those in the most desperate way. There was a flurry of yarn as I tore through the cupboard and then ten gorgeous hexagons were born. That was the easy part.

The original pattern (here) only calls for six hexagons to make ankle-length booties, which are cute but I wanted boots, baby! I wanted spectacular! Outrageous! The inspiration boots had no accompanying notes for modifications, so I had to figure them out as I went, by studying the photo. There was a lot of ripping back and a lot of re-doing.

These are just for wearing while hanging around the house. (Note to self: they are not for wearing into the chicken coop.) They are customized blankets for my feet. This is a pair of hot pink and scrappy visible symbols of my purely lazy nature—I do not like to get up off the couch, leaving the fireside and the warm room and go get a pair of socks. Now there is no longer any need, these are right here!

Now everything looks like it could be made up of hexagons. The sky is the limit.

Crochet Hexagon Love

2012-02-08T08:19:00.001-05:00

I have come to believe you can use hexagons to make anything. This might even already be a scientific fact.

I have also adopted this credo: when in doubt, make it hot pink.

I could have gone on and on with these, happily into the sunset, waving over my shoulder; but I only needed ten. I can hardly wait to show you what they’re for.

Thank you, Laura, for the lovely award! I’m passing it on to one of my fave bloggers, the Lovely Leah, whose new ripple blanket is giving me a huge case of the wants. If you don’t already know Leah, you should. Get on over there!

Fireside Alphabet Sampler

2012-02-06T08:50:00.001-05:00

It looks like I’m on a mission to see how many nail holes I can put in the walls. I guess I’m one of those people who can’t bear an empty space, because whenever I see one, I immediately make plans to fill it up with something. This sampler happened because we painted the room and when all the art and stuff went back up on the walls, it all kind of went into one corner, leaving the rest of the room looking pretty spare. So I set out to do something about that, and missing no opportunity to craft, I designed and stitched this alphabet sampler.

I have to say this was great fun, although I was more or less continually second-guessing everything I did. I had to resist the enormous urge to keep adding more colors to the palette, and to embellish every single square inch of the thing with french knots; and I had to make myself use the bold colors, even though they kept looking a little too bold. In the end, I think it worked out pretty well.

Here’s how I did it: as usual, start with the frame. Maybe this is a little like painting something to match your couch, I don’t know, but I just find it easier. If you’re making it up yourself, you can have it any size you want, and you might as well not have to go get a custom frame made, right? Anyway, choose a background fabric to go with the frame and cut it to fit, leaving at least three inches extra fabric all the way around. My frame is 11” x 14” so I cut a piece of fabric—it’s just quilter’s cotton—roughly 14” x 17”. Then I turned to the computer and started sorting through fonts. I was looking for a balanced mix of letters that were bold and plain; fancy and detailed. I wanted to give myself a lot of room to play with stitch patterns.

When I had decided on the letter designs, I had to make them all roughly the same size, and I’m sure there’s a better, more computery way of doing this, but I just find it easier to use a pencil, so I figured out how big each letter’s “space” needed to be, and how to arrange them on the fabric so they came out even and looked pleasing. I decided each letter would get a space of 1 1/2” by 2” and drew 26 boxes that size. Then I drew each letter in freehand, trying to eyeball it well enough to make them approximately the same size inside the box.

Then I cut all the squares out and arranged them to make the overall design. Once I had that figured out, I used my super-fancy light box—okay, I used the window in the front door—to trace each letter on the reverse side of the paper with a heat transfer pencil. After I had all the letters traced, I taped the squares together and used a hot iron to transfer the whole design to the fabric. At that point, all the hard work was done and it was just a couple evenings of cozy stitching beside the fire to finish it.

The thread I used was kind of a gamble—it is called Dee-Lite and it’s made for punch-needle embroidery, which is a mystery to me, but I had a lot of it somehow. I see these things in the thrifty craft store and they’re only a dollar for the whole bag or whatever, and I just know I’ll use it for something. It seems to be a little like a thin perle cotton, and it actually was great to use since I didn’t have to keep separating out two strands from the long tangled piece, I just unwound a length from the spool and started stitching. It gave me very little difficulty with knots, too, which was also a plus. And it didn’t keep breaking like crewel wool can sometimes do, so I guess I have to recommend it.

I’d do this again in a heartbeat. It was so much fun. I miss it already. There’s got to be another empty wall around here someplace.

Embroidered Alphabet Sampler, sneak peek

2012-02-04T23:41:00.001-05:00

I really love to embroider. I am not very good at it, but I keep trying.

Ever since I finished Alicia’s fabulous Daisychain ABCs Sampler, I have been missing it. I wanted more alphabet samplers. Needed them!

Ahhh, that’s better. Wow, that’s pretty wrinkled. I hope the iron is up to the task.

Paper butterfly collection

2012-02-02T09:36:00.001-05:00

I am so tempted by that wall of scrapbooking paper at the craft store. You know what I’m talking about, right? It’s so colorful and interesting, and all I can see is possibilities, and at twenty cents a sheet you can’t beat it for a bargain. I always buy a handful of them every time I go. It’s a good thing, too, because then when I get these mad ideas at midnight, I don’t have to lie awake thinking about it and planning my run to town; instead, I can just get out my scissors and start right away.

I love to stay up late, working on things, making a pot of coffee and listening to the radio—there are the weirdest radio shows on during the night, with those smoky-voiced DJs who sound like they’re half asleep themselves (are they still called DJs? I’m such a nerd), and the whole house is dark except for the circle of light around my work table. I think that’s so cozy.

This whimsical butterfly collection was so easy to make. Here’s what I did: First, I found the frame. I think it’s best to start there, so find a frame you like and then figure out how many paper butterflies you can fit in it. Decide how big you want the butterflies to be: I decided if I made them about 1 1/2” I could fit twelve in my 9 x 9” frame. I wanted a few different shapes, so I just googled “butterfly clip art” and then scrolled around through the free images until I found three or four I liked. I don’t have a printer, so I just went low-tech and traced them onto white paper right from my computer screen. (Who needs a light box, right?) Then I cut those out and traced them carefully onto different decorative papers. I carefully cut inside the pencil lines and then bent the wings up on either side of the “bodies” to give them a 3-D look.

Choose a background paper, and then measure to space them evenly, allowing for a little fake Latin name to go underneath—for that, I just used Google again, this time to translate a bunch of words I like into Latin: the two above mean “fairies” and “porch light”. Then I used a fine point felt-tip pen to hand write the pretend Latin names under where the butterflies would go, then glued the paper butterflies in place. Do the writing first, unless you really love a challenge. If you try to do the gluing first, you’ll probably find it difficult to write in the labels.

Then wait for the glue to dry and frame it up. That’s it! It’s a butterfly collection and I didn’t even have to get dressed.

Endless Saturday Socks

2012-01-30T09:59:00.001-05:00

Surely a lot of people have had this idea. If you’re a sock knitter, you have almost assuredly thought of doing this:

When the sock yarn leftovers basket reached critical mass, I thought I had it figured out. But when the tweedy linen stitch scarf did not deplete the pile in any noticeable way, I had to try something else. I had to get clever. I decided to do what I have really been planning to do from the beginning: make a whole bunch of stripey socks. But here’s me being a genius, are you ready? I will not stop with two socks, oh no. There will be no pairs. There will just be a whole bunch of socks, a big pile of unmatched but sort of related socks, meant to be worn in a mismatched way. The socks will just keep on a-coming until the yarn gives up the fight. It could take quite awhile, and I am in no hurry. I am digging in for a long siege on this one. It’s just me and my needles vs. the sock yarn leftovers, and if another ball of leftovers goes into the basket—and it will—I will not be discouraged; I will simply keep knitting until I win.

Everyone who saw these while they were in progress said, “You know, you can buy them this way now, mismatched like that.” I am so trendy.

To make these, I cast 60 stitches on my favorite US 1 dpns and work 10 rounds of k2, p2 ribbing. Then switch to another color and work 10 rounds. There are nine color sections of ten rounds in the leg. Then I switch colors again and make an 18 sl st heel flap/turn heel, switch colors again, and keeping the 10-round thing going, work the gusset decreases until I’m back to 60 stitches. Then I work five more color sections (eight total in the foot) and then switch colors again for the toe. That’s the nitty gritty, in case you want to take this and run with it.

I think victory is already mine. Look at all that stripey goodness!

Ruffle Rayon Scarf, a failure

2012-01-27T10:04:00.001-05:00

Is it fair of me to blog about something that’s already in the dumpster? I don’t know. This project had so much promise, but I should’ve known the minute I cut into this fabric that it would end badly.

You might be looking at it, wondering what could have gone so wrong that I have already thrown it in the trash?

See it now? It’s the “Make-Your-Own-Fun-Fur Scarf”! It shouldn’t have been this way, but I failed to heed the directions, which very clearly stated that I should choose a fabric that wouldn’t fray. Oh, what’s a little fraying among friends, right? Well, you see there. It looks like a wig for your neck! It wasn’t even the extra-hairy appearance of the scarf, either, that was the biggest problem, it was that if I wore it, or actually if I even touched it, it shed all over me and I looked like I’d been wrestling polar bears. Little teeny hairs of rayon just flew off this thing. There was a cloud of them. They were in my hair and in my mouth. They fully coated the work room, and everything I made for a week afterwards had strings of rayon all over it.

This could have been awesome, if I’d listened. I think the right fabric choice would still make this a great scarf. I don’t know. I might try again. The pattern, if you feel like taking a crack at this thing, is in the super-clever book Fabric-by-Fabric: One Yard Wonders. Seriously, look for a fabric that doesn’t fray very much. Really.

Vintage Flowers Quilt, the Reveal

2012-01-24T17:00:00.001-05:00

In an effort to have this not be about my two—yes, two—broken sewing machines, I will simply say this: plastic is not an optimal material to use for machinery gears. It seems obvious to me, and to you, too, I’m sure, but somebody out there needs to hear it. Parts have been ordered, but I am machine-less at the moment, which gets me a little panicky. Okay, let’s distract ourselves from that disaster:

The Vintage Flowers Quilt is done! Somebody asked me whether I actually use all my quilts, and I was able to honestly say that yes, I do, although you’ll have to include “it sits there neatly folded and looking pretty for my visual enjoyment” in the definition of use. I doubt any family of four really needs this many quilts and blankets, but I like to make them, so that makes them useful to me, and for many months of the year, it is cold here in New York, so there’s always room for another quilt.

One issue I did not anticipate: the non-cotton content of these fabrics meant that it was not a super fun sewing experience. They also don’t snuggle up nicely against the cotton batting, but rather hover over it, making this a puffier quilt than I usually strive for, and somehow it lacks stitch definition. At least I think that’s what the problem is.

For the backing, I used the only 100% cotton sheet in the pile, so it is still soft and nice on the side that faces me. One sheet was big enough, so no piecing, hooray! I love the binding, too—that print looks kind of Liberty-ish to me, and it’s probably as close to Liberty as I’ll ever get, alas.

As I worked on this blanket, suffering one machine failure after another, I realized that it was never going to be square, flush, plumb, a perfect grid or any other measure of a well-made quilt. It is crooked. The seams are crazy. The fabric biased a little. It is made of somebody else’s discarded laundry! I can make a beautiful quilt with perfect points and neat, even stitches, and I have done so, lots of times, but really, that is just not what I’m after, and usually it just happens by accident anyway, since I’m very lucky to have access to beautiful tools and a lovely space in which to use them.

I love this motley little mess. I love the goofy sashing and the knockoff fabric binding and the nostalgic weekend-at-Grandma’s look of the old sheets, and really, I love the hectic nature of the whole process of making a big, floppy, warm, cozy quilt. There’s blood, sweat, and tears, almost every time. That’s the mark of something worth doing.

Maybe you’ve noticed my new couch? We went to IKEA again (oh gosh, IKEA, how much I looooooove you) and brought home the least original couch in the world, the couch most loved by fabulous stylish bloggers the world over, and with very good reason, too, because it is the Perfect Couch—yes, we got an Ektorp.

Here’s the room now:

I can only photograph that corner of the room at any given time, because just outside the frame, to the left, is my husband’s chair, which is surrounded by computer cords and the piles of paper which are associated with his doctoral dissertation. In fact, if you look carefully, you can see his leg; he was diligently working on his formulas even as I clicked away. You can also see the new quilt, folded on the shelf of my new Hemnes coffee table (IKEA! Marry me!) and which is now the cat’s new favorite sleeping spot. See? Useful.

Don’t they look perfect together? Ah, bliss.

The Blob, or The Pillow that Ate The Couch

2012-01-22T16:14:00.001-05:00

Is it an eyeball? A rising lump of bread dough? Is it a deflated chef’s toque? No, no it isn’t. It is yet another pillow, which, as you know, is precisely the last thing we need. Also, this pillow is a whopper.

See it dwarf the furniture with its enormous fluffiness? When this pillow is on the chair, there is literally no room to sit down. Possibly I overstuffed? I do believe that’s part of the problem. Another cause is probably gauge, but I have to admit I will not pursue that line of inquiry because I have yet to unravel the mysteries of “gauge.” I mean, I know all about “gauge”, and sometimes I think I’m getting “gauge” but then the object I’m knitting continues to have its own ideas about how big it will be, so whatever. Anyway, there is now a massive pillow lurking in the shadows of my living room. Watching me with its Great Eye.

As usual, this effect was unintentional on my part. My thinking was to use Erika Knight’s very excellent Round Pillow pattern from her book Simple Knitting, and then stuff it—not too much, we’re not making bowling balls here—and use fabric covered buttons to tuck in the centers. I had a bunch of ecru cotton hanging around the cupboard, so I used that and a US 6 needle, and then spent two lovely days knitting it up. It was heavenly, too. But its just a little bit too big, I think.

Just a little bit.

Harvest Moon sweater

2012-01-19T09:57:00.001-05:00

I have made another sweater. Here’s what I think happens: I think that when the weather is cold, my brain goes to sleep and all I can imagine doing about the fact that I’m chilly is to knit something, never mind that I already have a lot (I mean a LOT) of sweaters. If it snows? I knit faster. If the wind blows through the cracks? I knit with one hand and cast on two more sweaters with the other. If there’s a blizzard and the power goes out and we all have to sit around by candlelight singing madgrigals in four-part harmony because the internet won’t work? I sing alto, while knitting in the dark. I guess that’s just how I am.

This has turned out to be the most perfect sweater I have ever made. It is Harvest Moon by Heidi Kirrmaier, and I love it. It has everything I want in a handknit garment—interesting details, great fit, and long stretches of plain knitting so I can keep my eyes on Downton Abbey while I work.

I’ve worn this sweater four times since I finished it. I wore it before it was even photographed. I wore it yesterday, and I want to wear it again right now. It is warm and flattering and comfortable. Heidi, I am your faithful servant. I don’t know which part I like better, the tidy i-cord bindoff (which rolled like a cinnamon bun until I blocked it, after which it just sat up straight and combed its hair and behaved itself like I can’t believe) or the cute little crescent-shaped pocket trims with i-cord edging:

Oooh, aaahh.

The yarn is Cascade 220 in charcoal gray, recycled from another sweater I made a few years ago and got tired of.

I love this sweater so much that I’ve already started another one just like it:

I can’t wait.

Vintage Flowers Quilt, the beginning

2012-01-17T07:54:00.001-05:00

I had a pile of old sheets—I don’t know whether to say they’re “vintage” because I don’t actually know how old they are, but they look vintage, so maybe they are. I’m so tempted by them, and they look so pretty, stacked there together. They are (mostly) not cotton, so I don’t think they’re very comfy to sleep on. So they just sat there, looking pretty, and kind of accumulating since every time I go to the thrift store, I look at the sheets, you know, just in case. The flowery ones just shout Take me home! So I do. Originally, there were wild ideas about smothering the bed in these sheets, mismatching the pillow cases and everything, but they were just kind of rough and itchy. But I kept buying them, and the linen shelves were groaning. And then there was this. After I started seeing the sheets as fabric, they suddenly got even more interesting.

Over the weekend, I got out the scissors, and I got this far before the poor old Bernina started limping again:

The gingham sashing was a lucky find—quick story: the inspiration quilt I saw used a dark chocolate brown solid, and I thought it was gorgeous, but I decided it might overwhelm the flowery lightness of the sheet fabrics, so I made up my mind to find a brown calico or maybe, just maybe a brown gingham, hopefully 1/4” brown and white gingham, but I can never ever find that, and if I do it’ll be brown and tan, or there will only be one yard left. You know how it goes. The first store I tried had nothing, not even brown and tan, but the second store had it, a huge bolt of it. On the clearance rack. So I bought the whole thing. Now you can look for this gingham check to show up all over the place around here.

If all the stars align, I might have a new quilt by the weekend. Fingers crossed!

I want to thank Sandra at Chaos, Kids, Crochet, and Cake for the lovely award—gosh, craft bloggers are so awesome. Her blog is beautiful, and chock full of craftiness. I’d love for you to go and visit!

Grannies, and a little about blocking

2012-01-15T09:48:00.001-05:00

The grannies continue to pile up. There are 260 of them now, and I have begun to think in earnest about the joining round color. I think there might be too many possibilities, actually. I’m still considering white, cream, the very palest shell pink, and now navy blue (check out some inspiration here and here) and this morning as I sat in my mustard gold chair knitting away, I thought that might be nice, too—gold. A little ironic, a little 1970’s, a little nod to nostalgia, but maybe fresh, too, if it’s the right shade and I pair it well with other border colors. Hide the avocado green, just in case. I’m having so much fun thinking about it, I have to admit. I lie awake at night considering the different options. I think that might be a little weird, but maybe it isn’t.

I’ve had a few questions about blocking. In a nutshell, blocking is the difference between this:

and this:

Much nicer! To achieve this, all I do is soak them a few at a time in a sink of tepid water--tepid! Not hot, or you’ll felt them, and your screams will resonate throughout the land. Then gently squeeze out the water and roll them up in an old bath towel to remove as much moisture as possible. Then just lay them out flat, nudge them into shape, and let them dry. That’s it. This is how I block sweaters, too, just a little water and a long, flat rest on the rug in front of the fire. The dog, happily, knows to lie down somewhere else, which is really a tribute to how smart she is, bless her.

To be filed under More Than You Wanted To Know, there is also steam blocking, which I use mostly for scarves and in garment pre-seaming. To do this, simply heat up your steam iron, lay the scarf on the ironing board, and then blast it with the steam. You don’t make contact with the fabric, you just let the steam whoosh out onto it. It’s pretty easy to burn yourself doing this—that steam gets very hot—so watch your fingers. The fibers just relax, go limp, and lie flat and supple and compliant. Mmmm, nice.

There’s also pin-blocking, which I only use for lace. I will say this: you can get away with shirking your blocking duties when making sweaters, socks, scarves, blankets, mittens, and almost anything else, but you absolutely must block your lace. The before and after is incredibly significant. Before=ramen noodles. After=gossamer heirloom worthy of your children’s children. After I blocked my first lace shawl, my daughter looked at it and said, “This is that blue thing you’ve been working on? Really???”

To pin-block, soak the finished object the same way as before, roll it in a towel to remove moisture, and then you stretch the heck out of it, pulling it as taut as it will go, and pin it along the edges. You want it as tight as a drum, with pins at every point. This is a little bit nerve-wracking the first time, because everything you know about lace is that it is fine and delicate and that care must be taken with it, and you happen to know you just spent forty-trillion years knitting this huge spiderweb out of what seems like thread—what’s with all the yanking???? Isn’t it going to tear? Yikes!!! I don’t want to give you a false sense of security, so I won’t say it can’t happen, but I have never damaged a finely knit laceweight object by blocking it, and I block it tightly enough to bounce quarters.

Aaaaand, back to the grannies:

I’m hopeless at restraint. I am making these squares ten or twenty or thirty at a time, now. I’ve also abandoned the “no color scheme” thing. Who am I kidding? There’s a little bit of a scheme now (which is apparently a little bit reminiscent of the patchwork curtain there, as it happens, hmmm…) and yesterday I took all the warm reds and soggy lawn-colored greens out of the basket. This thing has a mind of its own. I’m making my peace with it.

I want to thank the lovely Laura for the sweet award. Go over there right now and see what she’s making—there’s a crochet block I might have to start right now. Beautiful!

I’ve been very lazy about passing these awards along, I’m sorry about that. I do appreciate them, very much. It’s mostly that I don’t know how to do the fancy html code thing for the award button. Excuses. Anyway, apologies since there’s no button here for you, but I pass my awards on to the very wonderful Lynne at Pieceful, who’s beautiful blog is full of quilts, wee scrappy projects (is there anything I love more?) and lots of witty writing. It’s one of my favorite daily reads. Go see!

Cedar Souvenir Ring Box

2012-01-13T21:57:00.001-05:00

When I was little, I had a shell-colored jewelry box where I kept all my treasures. There was a plastic ballerina inside, with one plastic leg in a spring, and when I opened the box, she bounced upright and twirled around to music. I think maybe a lot of people had a jewelry box like it, but I have never seen another one since then, so maybe not.

I remember a cameo ring I had back then that my Grandma gave me; I think it came from Avon. It was carved white (plastic) against a light blue background, and it was so, so pretty. I wish I had a cameo now, I think they’re so beautiful.

When I grew up and had some nice jewelry, I wanted a nice place to put it, but nothing ever came along. Once, I screwed some cup hooks right into the wall so I could hang necklaces there and they wouldn’t tangle. Eventually, everything just went into a small drawer, and it was pretty hard to find anything.

The February issue of Country Living (US) featured a tutorial for something like this little ring box, and what could I do but drop everything and make one? Mine differs a little from their version, so in case you’re interested, here’s what I did:

I had this cedar box already; it has been biding its time in the bins for many a year, because I just knew the right project would come along eventually. It is similar to those wee cedar boxes I used to see in roadside souvenir shops when I was young, with “Sault Ste Marie, Michigan” or “Niagara Falls” woodburned into the lid. This one didn’t have any lettering, but when I sanded it, it for sure was cedar—oh, right, sand the box. I made sure to remove all the varnish. Then I painted it with two coats of what just happens to be Stonington Gray by Benjamin Moore (our paint store carries that line in teeny little sample pots for $2.49, so I have a few colors. They are brilliant for things like this!) You can remove the hinge, or paint carefully around it, or heck, just go ahead and paint the hinge if you want.

For the lining, I cut two pieces of decor-weight cotton and one piece of cotton batting just a smidge narrower than the width of the box’s opening, and sandwiched them with the fabric’s right sides together and the batting on top. Then I machine basted it on three sides, turned it, pressed it and folded it like an accordion. The folds are about 1/8” shorter than the height of the inside of the box. As I made the folds, I tacked them at the bottom edge, like this:

When it was wide enough, I stopped folding, cut the end off, shoved it into the box—no glue—and it was done!

The hardest part is waiting for the paint to dry. Wow, I am so impatient…I think you can buy little wooden boxes like this one in craft stores, so you don’t have to go all the way to Niagara Falls to get one.

Trim spool

2012-01-11T23:01:00.001-05:00

Since I’m in as big a hurry to get out of trouble as the next guy, I think I’ll just get busy and show you something cute:

Here’s where it becomes apparent that my photography skills are sorely lacking. I don’t know how to style a wooden spool so it looks awesome, I just know how to make it bigger. Too bad there isn’t a bunch of incredible detail there for you to feast your eyes on. (Feel free to print this out in poster size if you want, though, I think that would look great over your couch…)

This was another one of those four-second projects that would’ve taken me twelve seconds if I’d had more wooden spools. Amy at Nana Company made some awhile ago (I just tried to find a link for you and failed) and I loooooved them. I went right away riffling through my boxes. A couple quick circles of scrapbook paper applied with Mod Podge (oh Mod Podge, I really do love you) and a little end bit of rick rack, and it’s done!

Sweet little things like this remind me of something I saw awhile ago in this book by Cath Kidston, which I loved so much: she uses a pretty old china teacup to scoop her laundry soap powder. I saw that and just went YES! Why not, right? Those gorgeous little cups are less than a dollar in the thrift store, and who cares if they have a chip or two, and then your laundry day is made a tiny bit happier. I just love that. I think these spools (and these from Liberty ooooooh!) are like that, too. I think I’d like to hunt down some thinner spools (so more will fit on it) and do this for all my trims, isn’t it lovely? Make your life sweet, wherever you can.

Specimens

2012-01-10T19:52:00.001-05:00

I think this is the year of the butterflies. Have you seen the new Design*Sponge book? Mark Montano’s Big Ass Book of Home Decor? Even Anna has one in her new banner (which also makes me want to needlepoint so bad!) And after I wrote about Luna Moth, I wanted some, too. I love all different kinds of weird things, and old glass cabinets of curiosities is way at the top of the list. I once saw a museum display of “exotic” specimens collected in New Guinea by the Captain Cook expedition—just the tiniest birds you ever saw, frozen in time. (I did have to feel a bit sorry for the birds, I admit.) I also have a bizarre admiration for taxidermy, especially when it’s silly, like mice sitting around a table having tea, which may surface unexpectedly in these pages someday, who knows. Anyway. Ever since my failed high school biology project, I’ve wanted a beautiful butterfly collection, so when I saw this, I decided it was time. Originally, I was going to use fake butterflies, made of feathers, but they just didn’t look, I don’t know, real enough.

I thought to just wait for summer and collect them myself, but I am such an impatient little magpie, and besides, unless I wanted a whole display of just monarchs (which are plentiful in our part of the world and which, come to think of it, would be awesome) I had to turn to a professional. Goodness me, there’s some great stuff out there in internetland. In the end, I bought four unmounted butterfly specimens from this etsy seller, and I’m not really sure what a “mounted” specimen would be like, but these four had their wings already spread and looked ready to stick somewhere. They showed up so beautifully packaged, with little labels telling me the Latin name for each, and careful instructions detailing how to open the package without wrecking any delicate wings.

We assembled our tools: x-acto knife, tweezers, glue (I used E6000) toothpicks, paper towels and a plastic stick, normally used for who knows what, that looked like a dental instrument. The glass dome is a light fixture cover, found at the thrift store, and the wood base was custom crafted by my husband to fit it. The twig is from the ground in my backyard. I found I needed an extra pair of hands for this, and it ended up being a little like building a ship in a bottle, since the opening of the glass dome is so much smaller than the interior of it. We planned our strategy carefully, but there was a lot of me saying, “Is it in the glue? Wait, be careful! Ahhhh! I can’t even seeeee!” and a lot of him calmly saying, “Here, let me do that.”

In the end, we broke off three antennae, but the bugs sustained no major damage, and I am pretty happy with the results. Apart from heading off to Costa Rica with a net and probably also a handful of government permits, this seemed like the best way for me to do it. I’ll admit, I had a moment of feeling a little uncomfortable about using something that used to be alive to decorate my home. Elton John singing “Butterflies are free to fly” came into my head, and I felt a pang of remorse.

In fact, real-life reaction to this project has been mixed, ranging from “That is amazing!!!” to “Er,…they’re dead.” Dean said this: “They’re pretty, but it’s not very cozy, is it? Dead bugs?” Wherever I go, he just goes along, bless him. I should also point out that none of these particular butterflies are members of a protected or endangered species.

They’re not playing poker or riding motorcycles or anything, but I like them anyway. What do you think?

Monogrammed Mittens

2012-01-09T09:21:00.001-05:00

When my girl was very little, I knit her a pair of mittens, in purple yarn, and she wore them to nursery school where, one day, another kid put them on and said they were his. I kind of thought it was great that he wanted some purple hand-knit mittens that much, but when I pointed out that it was very sweet that he liked them but that the mittens actually belonged to my daughter, the boy’s mother said, with a straight face, “Nope. Those are Jeffrey’s mittens.” This was a long time ago now, but thinking about it still makes me feel indignant, and I don’t mind telling you that I totally helped her steal them back from him.

There can be no confusion here. These mittens do not belong to Jeffrey. I think Mrs. Weasley knits her monograms right in to the fabric, intarsia-style, but I cheated and used duplicate stitch to put the N on these. (There’s a great article on the difference here, if you’re interested.) Pretty cozy, huh? Now I’m imagining my whole family in monogrammed mittens, each pair a different color, just marching down the street covered in hand knits like a bunch of Weasleys headed for Diagon Alley. Better start knitting.

Grey Cabled Scarf

2012-01-07T16:37:00.001-05:00

Another scarf came off my needles yesterday. This one has been lurking in my unfinished projects basket for quite a long time, and I’d just work on it here and there, when I didn’t have anything else pressing to do. I guess it ends up being a good example of how a little bit every day (or every now and then) can make a difference.

I started this scarf about three years ago (maybe?) in a different color, was unhappy with it and ripped it out, started it again in another color, was still unhappy with it and ripped it out, and then finally started it in this beautiful putty-colored Mission Falls 1824 wool, which turned out to be a good choice and so I finished it, finally.

The pattern is something I saw at Jared Flood’s old blog (he’s moved now, and I sure do recommend you check it out—the photography is stunning.) He wasn’t selling his patterns at the time, so I just looked at the photograph of the one he made and figured it out. (Actually, I just now searched his website, and I can’t find a pattern for this scarf, or I’d link it for you.) It looks a lot crazier than it really is—it’s just a combination of two-stitch cables and four-stitch cables that give the impression of being very complicated simply because they’re next to each other.

There, that might be enough scarves for awhile. It’s 45 degrees F here today, I don’t even need a scarf. Not that I’m complaining, not a bit.

I want to thank the lovely Stel for the very kind blogger award, and you should all go over to hers and see the stunning hooky things she’s been making. Those cushion covers! I want. Thank you, Stel.

Linen Stitch Scarf

2012-01-05T09:55:00.001-05:00

Finished, and fabulous! This scarf is perfectly me—hippie-ish but also a little bit tweedy. It’s wild, but only when you really look at it up close. Otherwise, it seems kind of subdued, vaguely colorful, just interesting. It’s also another one of those stash-busters I love so much—what is it about a project that turns leftovers into something beautiful? It’s the best thing ever.

The pattern is easy—I found it here—and you can make it any length or width you want (or your scraps will allow.) Here’s a look at the stitches up close:

I have a huge pile of sock yarn leftovers. As in, for every stripe of color you see there, I have a pair of socks, and there’s always a little bit leftover, and you know you can’t just get rid of it, so into the cupboard it goes. It’s such pretty yarn, you never know…sometimes an excellent idea will come along. Like this one. Right, anyway. So, this is knit in linen stitch, which is basically knit one, slip one with the yarn in front, etc. Then on the back row you slip the knit stitch and purl the slipped stitch—only I realized a few rows in that if I added a new color on each row, I would only have to work the right side every time! (What?) I know, this is weird…okay, each row is a different color, and I used a different yarn. Normally, doing that means you have to weave in a whole bunch of ends and ugh, that’s a pain. But this scarf is worked end to end, the long way, so the ends just hang there, waiting to become the fringe (clever, right?) So after finishing each row, instead of turning it around and working the back side of the fabric, I just broke the yarn leaving a five or six inch tail, then pushed all the stitches back to the other end of the long needle and started at the beginning again. Right side row, every time. Once I figured that out, this thing was a breeze.

When I decided it was wide enough, I just bound off the (450 stitch!) last row and then tied the fringe, trimming it to about 3 1/2” , then steam-blocked it to straighten out the edges.

You can use any kind of leftovers you have—I think one done in colorful worsted-weight would be so spectacular. Might do that one next, stay tuned.

Granny, New York style

2012-01-02T09:28:00.001-05:00

How do you like this bag? It’s a little bit Granny, a little bit New York, don’t you think? The story began on Thursday, when the strap broke on my favorite shoulder bag. Everyone said, “Awwww, that’s too bad. Hey, now you can make that granny square satchel you’ve been longing for!” They were right, too, I was not a bit sad to see the old one go.

I began with this pattern but made some modifications, mostly to allow for yarn differences. I used Debbie Bliss Chunky Merino, which is the least lofty yarn I have ever met in my life. Honestly, I think if you knit that yarn at a tight enough gauge, you could make a bulletproof vest. It is hearty. It is substantial. It makes you feel like you have got some yarn, sister. I made a sweater from it a few years ago, wore it a few times, realized it was so heavy it made my shoulders ache, and unraveled the whole thing. So it’s been sitting in the cupboard ever since, being slowly carved up into hats and mittens (for which it is perfect) and now, happily, this bag, for which it is also perfect.

Essentially, you crochet a big granny square—the pattern calls for 30 rounds, but I only did 22, after which I didn’t have enough yarn of any one color to make it all the way around again. Which was okay, because I think it’s big enough at 22 rounds. Then I made two straps out of 3 rows single crochet and stitched the ends together. I folded the giant square, stitched up the sides about 2/3 of the way, folded the top edges over and whipstitched them down over the straps.

At this point, you have a big weird trapezoid. The bag has two huge pointed corners, which I didn’t like, so I just folded the corners up and tacked them at the point on the sides where the “mouth” opens. All of a sudden, it’s the right shape and I like it.

I lined the bag with a plaid cotton I had in the cupboard. I thought making this lining was going to be insanely tricky and almost didn’t bother, but I just cut it to size, turned the top edges under 1/2”, stuffed the lining into the bag, and stitched it down at the top edge. Somehow, it worked.

Literally the entire time I was working on this, I was thinking, This will never work. This is gray with mustard yellow! This yarn is like a steel cable! How will the lining ever go in right? How is a big granny square the size of a lap rug ever going to be a stylish bag of any kind?

Friends, it just worked. I don’t know how. Perhaps it is not for me to question these things.

Warm Room Curtain

2011-12-31T11:14:00.001-05:00

This doorway separates the living room from my work room. During the cold weather months, we light the fire in the living room every day and hole up in there, watching television all squashed together on the couch, or I sit in the chair in the corner and play with yarn. Sometimes they turn off the TV and just watch me knit. I know! It is that fascinating. Awhile back, I was sitting there, starring in The Yarn Show and shivering, and it occurred to somebody to hang a blanket over the doorway, to trap in the heat. Dean found a curtain rod in the attic and hammered it up there, and we threw an old coverlet over the bar, and it quickly became obvious that this is the thing to do in a New York winter. It was so cozy. (You mean I don’t have to wear long underwear in the house?) The living room turned tropical. We never wanted to leave it. We ran to the kitchen for snacks and then hurried back to the warm room, and everyone else yelled, “Shut the curtain!” The warm room became home base for the months between Christmas and Easter, and we lay on the rug in front of the fire, playing board games and watching all the Lord of the Rings movies in a row. We napped together in a big pile, like hamsters. The teenagers hung out with us in there, because it was the nicest, warmest, coziest place in the house. That curtain brought us together as a family. I cannot overstate this. It did, a blanket hanging over a curtain rod made my teenage children spend time with me. I just realized that, just now.

So it stayed there all winter. That coverlet was pretty ugly, though, so this year I got around to making a real curtain.

I pieced 4” fabric squares into 15 columns x 22 rows, and backed it with a thrifted bed sheet. This had to look good on both sides, and I loved the soft tiny roses on white for the flip side, the warm room side. I didn’t use any batting, since I wanted the light to filter through it a little, and I also didn’t want the weight of it to bend the curtain rod. I laid the top and backing out on the floor with the right sides together, tucked some folded lengths of grosgrain ribbon along the top edge and pinned it. Then I stitched all the way around, leaving an opening at the bottom for turning. That’s it, there’s no quilting.

When spring comes, I’ll take it down, fold it up and lay it on the shelf, and I’ll be so glad because the house will feel huge again, and lighter, and the kids will retreat again to their lairs. Or maybe they won’t.

Living Room

2011-12-29T11:00:00.001-05:00

I love christmastime so much. The twinkling lights in the snow and bright packages and eggnog and cocoa and having as many as possible of my favorite people around my table all just make me so happy. But apparently, I have a pretty specific tolerance for my holiday decorations. On the third Saturday in November, we drag the boxes out and deck the halls, and on the morning of December 26th, I just have to take them all down. That seems a little rigid, now that I’m thinking about it, but what can I say? I come in the room and look at that beautiful tree, and all our happy little Saint Nick ornaments and stockings and crocheted baubles, and I just want it out of there. Moving on! Not that I’m not still enjoying all the outdoor lights; you can leave those up all year long and I won’t complain for a second. Is there anything more lovely than a tree full of fairy lights? And when next November rolls around, I’ll unpack it all and it will be so lovely all over again.

So the tree was gone and the room was empty and echoing and scrubbed clean, and I made a quick decision to paint the living room. When is there a better time, right? My husband did it all in one day, bless him forever, and after dinner, we dragged all the furniture back in.

Except the old sofa, which we threw out into the yard where it was almost immediately collected by someone who needed an old sofa, I guess. Now the cat has been wandering sadly around, looking for his favorite napping spot, and I have told him it’s gone forever, but still he pines. I brought my antique couch into the house and layered it up with pillows, and hammered a whole mess of nails into the not-quite-dry paint, and it all just looked so fantastic. I experimented with the ISO settings on my camera to see if I could capture how amazingly cozy it all looked. I couldn’t, not really, but maybe you can imagine it a little bit?

Here it is in the daytime. My mother is going to be appalled at all the stuff on the walls, but I love a little cozy clutter, don’t you? It’s a new dawn, and a new day, and I’m feeling good. Have a happy New Year, friends.

I want to say thank you to lovely K at Aurora Blythe for the sweet award, and to encourage you all to hop on over there for a visit. Her holiday decor is giving me deep pangs of jealousy.

Grannies, blocking

2011-12-27T15:26:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, while the family was huddled around Season One of Ice Road Truckers, I decided to block the first half of the grannies. I thought I had done two hundred so far, but a rummage in the bag revealed I have actually done 210—that was a nice surprise. In the end, they’ll have another round all done in the same color as I join them, and I don’t know what color yet. Originally the plan was to use white, but now I’m leaning toward very light pink; what do you all think? Too girly? Or just girly enough? It might end up coming down to how many skeins of the same pink I can put my hands on when I’m ready to start. That’s just my way, I like to spend six months painstakingly stitching something and then make a hasty decision at some uncritical moment that I will likely later regret.

They almost totally covered up the table. This is half of them. Yikes. So many scraps. So, so, so many. And still, my love for the grannies is undiminished.

Wishing you

2011-12-24T12:01:00.001-05:00

Dear blog friends, I wish you all the happiest, yarny-est, hooky-est, and brightest of holidays! Thank you so much for stopping in here to visit with me, it means so much, and I have had so much fun getting to know you all. I can’t wait to see what we all make in the new year! Blessings to you and yours.

Love,
Kristen

A whole bunch of patchwork

2011-12-21T08:32:00.001-05:00

Even though the workroom is freezing and I really wanted to be knitting beside the fire, I spent a little quality time with the sewing machine the other day. I got this far on a long overdue project, but the scraps pile was so pretty and so tempting that I got sidetracked:

and there went the morning, just like that.

No reason, just felt like it.

Knitted Radishes

2011-12-19T07:56:00.001-05:00

I’m going to file these under Cutest Things I Ever Made. Or maybe Pointless but Adorable Things I Have Made. I am madly in love with them. I literally sat here all day yesterday, watching holiday specials and knitting radishes, and kept having to stop after each one and cuddle it a little. Look at the leaves! The i-cord stems! The little yarn roots!

What to do with a complete set of handknit radishes? I am taking suggestions. I’ve thought of putting them on the Christmas tree, but that’s about as far as I got. If there were a way to wear them, I would do it. (This line of thinking led me here, and I am so going to do that. Luna, you are such a hero.)

My friend Leda brought me the pattern, and I totally abandoned the ~~boring~~ sweater I was working on to rummage through the sock leftovers for radish-colored yarn. Of course I had all the right colors, although reflection on real radishes makes me think they might be more pink than red, but that is beside the point. The search through the stash revealed that I had some perfect radish-colored yarn (which means I have socks in all those colors. I don’t remember the green ones?) It also revealed that I have far too many sock yarn leftovers, and it is time for a de-stash project. Luckily, I have found one.

Posy Ring

2011-12-17T16:20:00.001-05:00

Much inspired by the lovely Tamar, I have been making sweet little frilly, flowery things that would look so wonderful on somebody else, somebody who didn’t wear black turtlenecks, a teensy gamine haircut and statement glasses (me.) This little rosy crocheted ring should be worn by someone in a floaty white dress and loosely braided golden hair, with a daisy behind one ear. Or, since it’s a bit on the small side, a little girl.

I guess this is one of those times I make something just for the fun of doing it. Do you all do that, too?

The darling pattern is here.

Acrylic Pendants

2011-12-15T08:18:00.001-05:00

These might be the most rewarding thing I’ve made in a long time. These look so real, so great, that nobody said, “Did you make that?” Because they in no way look like something a person could just whip up at home. But that’s exactly what I did! Leah made something similar a couple weeks ago, and I thought it was so beautiful, so I took myself to Hobby Lobby and bought the gear. You need the bezel findings (is that what they’re called? Bezel? I know nothing about this and obviously the packaging is long gone.) They’re the metal part of the jewelry, and they’re kind of shaped like a dish with a flat bottom. Also, you need two-part acrylic, which you have to mix in equal parts like epoxy (I used this one.)

I cut out some circles from a piece of scrapbooking paper, popped them into the metal findings, and stuck the pieces in this dish of rice to keep them level. Then I poured the mixed acrylic into the bezels. It automatically formed a dome shape and there are only a few tiny bubbles. (Maybe I didn’t wait long enough after mixing?) Then the hard part—waiting three days for it to dry and cure, without touching it! Wow, that was hard. I must be about six years old.

As usual, I want to make about a hundred of these. I think some black and white photos would be so fantastic. And cute portraits of the kids. And tiny paintings—wait, no, tiny pieces of crochet! Oh dear, I might not be able to keep the lid on this one. Maybe I’d better go watch an episode of Hoarders…

A little knitting and some dinner

2011-12-13T17:21:00.001-05:00

Is it a hat or is it a hairnet? I guess, with the way I wear a hat like this, you could make a case for its being both. There are days—every Saturday and Sunday, for instance—that I just want to cover up my hair and not have to look at it at all. Girls with long hair can wear a pony tail, and girls with short hair can wear a cute hat. A hat like this is how I get out the door at all.

This is the fascinating Scallop Lace Hat by Ruby Submarine, and I used a stray ball of Classic One-Fifty. I love that dusty blue color; it’s like mist on mountains. This design looks all tricky, but it’s really wonderfully easy. That’s the best kind of project, isn’t it?

I had a day at home today with a dodgy tummy, but I’m feeling better now, so I made the easiest, trickiest-looking dinner in the world: Chicken Pie. This is what it is--chicken in a pie. With gravy. That’s it. I know this is revolutionary, but there are no vegetables in it at all, nothing to sully the chicken and pastry goodness. Feel free to put some veggies on the side, but leave them out of this pie. Here’s the “recipe”:

1. Roast two chickens. (You already know that’s the easiest thing in the world right?) 350 F for an hour and twenty five minutes, or until the leg twists easily. You can test this by having a teenage boy, who will be sniffing around the oven anyway with a hungry look in his eye, attempt to steal a drumstick. If he gets away with it, you’ll know they’re done. Shift the roasted chickens, which at this point are browned and delectable, to a cooling rack or tray. When they’re cool enough to handle, pull all the meat off the bones.

2. Wait, don’t throw that pan into the sink yet! You’ve gotta make gravy. Come on, gravy is a cinch. Combine about 3 Tablespoons of cornstarch with about 1/4 cup water and stir well. Heat the pan with the drippings and cracklings and little stuck-on chicken bits (yum!) on the stove top. When things start to bubble a little, whisk in the cornstarch mixture and keep whisking until the gravy thickens. Now is the time to add salt and pepper.

3. Make a double pie crust. Line a pie pan with one crust, put all the meat that will fit into it, pour the gravy on top, and cover with the second crust. Crimp the edges and poke some holes in the top. Bake 45 minutes at 350 F.

OR:

Buy two rotisserie chickens, a jar of gravy, and two ready made pie crusts. Spend thirty seconds stripping the carcasses and then assemble the pie. Bake one hour at 350. Same result, and you can still make stock from the bones.

Yum. Try it, you’ll get raves from your family, and you hardly have to do a thing. Thanks to my friend Michelle for showing me the way, Chicken Pie-wise.

Lovely chaos

2011-12-11T09:27:00.001-05:00

I have two hundred of these now, which is halfway to the goal. As you can see, I haven’t been pacing myself. I just love to make these in big gulps of a dozen or more at a time, and I’m not sure its even busting the stash, either, since I keep finishing other things and then adding more yarn to the basket. The Woodstock Blanket scraps alone almost doubled the pile. I’ve started thinking about which color to use for the joining rounds, and although I had mostly decided on white already, seeing this sealed the deal. Anna Maria talked about it a few days ago, which led me to Sandra Juto’s lovely blog, and then I got all fired up about this blanket. Maybe I can’t just make a few squares here and there? I might not be able to do that, I might be the kind of girl who just has to fling herself into things until they’re done. It’s not really the worst problem to have.

I don’t know if this kind of thing happens to you all at Christmas:

This is a picture of the inside of my brain. Patterns, yarn, failed mittens (the brown tweed) and a few other half-baked ideas are just everywhere, and never have I been more grateful to have a dedicated work room, otherwise all this would be on the kitchen table and we’d be eating off our laps on paper plates.

Part of me hates the chaos of this, all the jumble of stuff that isn’t put away, and part of me loves it, loves the spread-out creativity. Being able to see it all at once is kind of nice. It also makes me want to get cracking. So much to doooo!

Fair Isle Wrist Warmers

2011-12-08T11:53:00.001-05:00

So the other day, I brought home the movie Crazy Stupid Love. First of all, whoa, Ryan Gosling? I did not know about him, but I do now, yessir. This shall now be known as the Time After I Found Out About Ryan Gosling. At also roughly the same time, I brought home the pattern for these wrist warmers, and then I tried to put the two together. Well, all I can say is I was so fully distracted by that stunning chunk of humanity that is Ryan Gosling that I did not notice that I had knit the whole first wrist warmer backwards. Maybe upside down? I don’t know, but the purple part was green and the green part was purple, which seems like it wouldn’t matter, and it didn’t until I got to the chart, which of course required a tad more concentration and so was knitted correctly, as in the purple part was purple and the green part was green. I had the whole thing done, and I kept peering at it, and the colorwork section, which was right, just looked so weird, but I could not see the problem until after the movie was over and I had sighed a deep, contented sigh because I have now found Ryan Gosling. Then my head cleared and my vision unclouded and I saw the mistake. I just slapped my forehead, Three Stooges-style, tore it all out and started over. What else are you gonna do, right?

I had two perfect vintage buttons in my stash (I just love it when that happens) and sewed them on. Then it rained for a week and it was as dank and cheerless as a dungeon in the house. I really would like to learn to take lovely photographs, even when the sky is black and filled with doom. Must find a class somewhere.

I’m not sure what the point of wrist warmers is, since my wrists are rarely the part of me that gets cold. Wearing fingerless mittens always makes me feel like Jo March, huddled in a chilly attic room working hard at something artistic, suffering a little. Cold fingers clicking away, meager fire in the grate. Only I will be huddling at my trusty Bernina, hopefully finishing a linen pencil skirt. Hopefully. If I can tear myself away from the Christmas movies. Tim Allen, you are the very best Santa Claus, the very best.

Circus Tent Pillow

2011-12-04T10:43:00.001-05:00

This stripy, holiday-at-the-seaside pillow is probably going to be the first of many I will make, in lots and lots of different colorways, piling them around the house with breathless abandon, little caring that (as I’ve mentioned before) what we really don’t need around here is a few more pillows. But, as you can see, they are fantastic! How can you stop with just one, I’d like to know?

The pattern is Wheel of Colour Cushion by Jane Brocket, from her book The Gentle Art of Knitting (though I think there must be a few versions of this pattern out there, even vintage ones, since this design has been around awhile.) I cribbed the colors from Jane, too, so enchanting are the photos in the book. I had one of those moments where I just wanted everything in that picture. I know you know what I mean.

It’s an easy pattern, simple to memorize, and then it’s the perfect project to work on as you find the time. There will be a lot of ends on the back, but I was rebellious and didn’t weave any of mine in. I know! Lightening may strike me at any time. Well, who’s going to see them, right?

It’s been the best week—my extremely talented son played the role of Mr. Applegate in a local community theater production of Damn Yankees, and I am just as proud as pumpkins. Bravo!

The last month has been a tornado of rehearsals, and organizing programs, and publicity, and I took on the very exacting task of putting out the homemade cookies during intermission. Tough duty, that. Now I just have to wash the red hairspray out of all his shirts and then get back to work.

Busy!

2011-12-02T10:22:00.001-05:00

Well, it’s been an amazingly productive week! I hardly know where to begin. Here, let me show you:

I made this.

Actually, I’m being modest. I don’t want to brag, but really, here’s what I made:

I’m just exhausted from the effort, as I’m sure you can imagine.

Okay, so really, I tried to make some stuff, and all of it just failed miserably. There was a project bag, made with a very cute piece of brown and white linen print and pink gingham check and—really, this is inexplicable—a piece of red and orange upholstery fabric. There was a pink corduroy and calico print handbag that I somehow failed to measure as I cut and which ended up the size and shape of a business envelope. There was an extremely simple pencil skirt with nothing more than a side zipper to worry about, but either I am about ten sizes larger than I thought I was, or else I managed to cut it out somehow in miniature. Twice.

So all I have to show you, apart from a lot more rows of brown and white knitting, is this pink pompom, all done, with no disasters. I think it deserves one more look:

Feast your eyes on that! It’s less craft, more art, is how I feel. Don’t you agree?

Clever Cardigan

2011-11-28T10:33:00.001-05:00

How clever do I feel today? Pretty clever, indeed! You may recall that I have a fabulous new dress that I want to wear, but alas, it is sleeveless, which, despite our freakishly warm temperatures lately doesn’t play at all in New York in November. So I hunted through the closet, looking for a cardigan I could pair it with, but found none. I did, however, find a cashmere (cashmere!) crewneck pullover scored from the thrift store several years ago (years!) and have never worn (not once!) because the neckline was way too high and I felt stupid in it. It survived quite a few wardrobe purges, though, because, and did I mention this already, it is cashmere. So I got out my scissors yesterday and made it into a cardigan. Whaaat? I know!

As usual, I didn’t take any pictures of the process—it appears I usually get these brainstorms after dark and so the light was too dingy for a photo tutorial. It was easy peasy, though, and here’s how you can do this to your own clothes:

1. Fold the sweater in half from side to side to find the center. (Alternatively, you could measure, but measuring is really not my style, what can I say.) Make a small snip at the hem edge and carefully cut, following the column of knit stitches, up to the collar. Be careful to cut only the front layer.

2. Turn the front edges toward the inside 1/4” and pin. Using a matching thread, handstitch the hems down. I used a small blanket stitch, which makes a tidy edge. Just as with steeks, you don’t have to worry about it unraveling. The stitches aren’t going anywhere; you just want the edge to look neat.

3. Choose some excellent buttons and the same number of snaps. Decide where you want them to go, and sew them on; snaps first, then buttons on top. They’re not functional, they’re just there to look pretty.

That’s all there is to it. It’s a bunch of handsewing, but you’re crafty! You can do it. No fine gauge pullover is safe from me now. I’m looking at a lot of my clothes in a whole new way.

Deck the Halls

2011-11-26T18:44:00.001-05:00

I decked my halls today, which is one of those things I love/hate. I am not a big fan of upheaval, and moving all the furniture around, thus exposing all the dust bunnies and spider webs that have lurked underneath chairs all year always triggers, along with a lot of sneezing, a big fit of cleaning. Which takes a long time, time I’d rather be spending sitting with an eggnog, listening to Andy Williams. (Isn’t that just the best song ever? Andy, I love you. And watch that one all the way to the end, too, it’s totally worth it. If you’re doing outdoor lights, I say go big or go home.) This is our first year with the new FAKE tree, and I can’t say it was a complete success, but it shows my collection of antique tree baubles to their absolute best advantage. Doesn’t it look like something you might see in a fancy shop window in A Christmas Story? Oh, love love love. This is the tree I would never have dreamed I’d want—I have always been a Charlie Brown tree sort of girl. I’m the girl who dragged her whole family across the giant expanses of howling tundra to the very edges of the christmas tree farms where the trees never got pruned and so looked scraggly and forlorn. Then the kids would say, “Why can’t we get a pretty tree?” So the love part happens when I’ve got all the dust swept away and even though this is a big white FAKE thing that only pretends to be a tree, just represents a tree, really, and I open the box with the ornaments—the antique ornaments that I scored in a yard sale a few years ago, after mice invaded our ornaments box and I had to toss most of it, don’t make me talk about it, it hurts too much—and the lovely old glass is hung, one plastic branch at a time, and the tree, yes, now it is a real Christmas Tree, don’t let anybody tell you differently, the tree just glitters. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Circus Pillow, started

2011-11-25T11:41:00.001-05:00

I’m knitting a pillow cover that looks like a circus tent. These have totally captivated me. Jane Brocket, you seductress! I’m supposed to have been baking pies and stuffing turkeys!

This was a lot more fun. Wacky color striping, and then it’s useful at the end? That’s everything I want in a project.

Stripey Cotton Dishcloths

2011-11-21T10:21:00.001-05:00

Some days, especially now that I’m knitting a giant taupe blanket that seems to reach out forever--not that I’m complaining, because I adore me an endless and simple project--some days, I just take a big breath and yell, “Give me some color! Now!!!”

For times like these, I keep a medicinal stash of cotton yarn nearby, so I can crochet a dishcloth at a moment’s notice. You know, stat. As soon as the hot pink and chartreuse combo hits my bloodstream, I just feel goooood. You all know what I mean.

Yeah, that’s the good stuff. I’m laughing a little at the extreme photo angles here, which we all know is the result of a feeble attempt to disguise the fact that the dishcloths are staged on a footstool in the living room. Which is where the light was! It was just dingy in the kitchen, what can I say. How about this one:

Haha! No, don’t look at the rug, I haven’t vacuumed yet! *crop*

I don’t even know how this one happened. I must have been clinging to the wall by the suction cups in my feet like Spider-man. Well, they’re colorful and useful, and in these pre-Thanksgiving days of prep and frenzied cleaning, that’s all that matters right now. Whoops, you can see the rug in this one. Sorry about that.

Kiss Me Pillow

2011-11-19T09:07:00.001-05:00

It always surprises me how some people love a whole bunch of pillows and some people just hate them. I live with some of those who hate them, and so I often find my pillows—which I painstakingly stitched by hand—flung disdainfully aside. Well, okay, their backs are still young so they haven’t fully developed a need to prop themselves up with a bunch of lumbar support and all that, bless them. Their day will come. And when it does, I will be ready! Me, I love a huge bunch of throw pillows. I like to build a big pillow nest around myself and then recline there like Nefertiti, requesting peeled grapes. I also haven’t forgotten the sage advice (source unknown) which instructed me to have at least four pillows of different colors and textures—the pressure!—on my sofa. I’m always looking at my sofa, thinking about texture and whether there’s enough of it. I lie awake nights, thinking about the texture levels of my pillows. In my favor here is the fact that our sofa is roughly the size of an aircraft carrier and can therefore accommodate four pillows very easily, along with four people and a dog, too. So I’m always making pillow covers and then begging the family not to fling them around into the dusty corners.

Here’s an actual transcript from a recent conversation:

Me: Look what I made!

Him: Nice.

Me: Isn’t it cute? It says “Kiss Me”!

Him: Mmmhmm. Why do we have so many pillows?

Me: Because ever since the cat threw up on the one that said, “What’s Up, Pussycat?” there hasn’t been enough pillow texture on the sofa!

Him: There’s no room to sit down! Enough with the pillows, huh?

I exaggerate. Really, he just said, “That’s cute,” and went back to working on his dissertation. Well, I think it’s cute, too. I freehanded the letters out of a mix of scraps, then appliqued them to a piece of oatmeal cotton using fusible web--Wonder Under, I think? I embroidered around the letters using a mix of stitches and colors, and added a 1” gathered ruffle around the edge. That’s color and texture, all in one place! Whew.

Cashmere Citron Scarf

2011-11-15T17:22:00.001-05:00

Behold the beautiful Citron, designed by Hillary Smith Callis. This looks so much better on the dressmaker’s dummy than it does on me that here’s where it lives for right now. Right there. Oooh, aahh.

I love those beautiful bands of simple ruching. So clever, so perfect.

This yarn is 100% cashmere (I know, right?) by Jojoland in an ethereal color very poetically named “C255”. (Why do yarn companies do that? Don’t they know how persuaded people are by the awesome color names of things?) Well, it’s light blue. I doubt that’s any more interesting than “C255”, come to think of it. Let’s do the fun work for the designers at Jojoland and rename color C255. How about “Summer Saturday”? “Newman’s Iris?” I can’t think of any others…

This scarf is so beautiful, in every way, and the yarn is softer than baby bunnies. It’s the little things, isn’t it?

Martha’s Gingham Blanket, part 1

2011-11-13T13:58:00.001-05:00

It happened last week. I was just innocently flipping through the November issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine, probably also watching an episode of Downton Abbey, probably still wearing jammies and a bathrobe, when I was suddenly, and without warning, inspired. I saw that picture and everything just stopped. You know that feeling? Before I even had time to finish my coffee, I was racing to the yarn shop to buy an armload of yarn to make another blanket. Actually, more than an armload:

Enough? Too much? It turns out I actually have no idea whatsoever how much yarn goes into making a blanket. I’ve always just used scraps. This seems like a pretty enormous amount of yarn. In fact, it’s so much yarn that there’s absolutely nowhere but right there on the table to put it, which is why it was in a bunch of last week’s photos (you guys notice everything!) It is all Patons Classic Merino (Erin, how did you ever spot that? This girl knows her Patons) in three sock monkey colors, which made me laugh, wondering if the cashier thought I was planning on some kind of sock monkey bender. That’s it, everyone I know is getting a handknit sock monkey for Christmas! That would be kind of awesome.

There’s just these three colors, and that’s it. Cream, taupe, and a marled cream/taupe mix. A little subdued, no? It may require a zen-like discipline I don’t currently possess to accomplish all that garter stitch in nothing but three very neutral hues, but it never hurts to grow a little, right? I’ve already had to counteract it by crocheting a bunch of circus-colored granny squares and dishcloths, but I’ll tell you, this blanket is so amazingly comforting to work on. There’s nothing I love more than an endless, mindless project. Martha, you had me at hello.

Leather Wrap Bracelet

2011-11-11T10:08:00.001-05:00

Because I am a total slave to fashion (I hope you can detect the irony here) and because I wanted one of these leather wrap bracelets with a fierce and burning passion, I went ahead and made one. Do you want one, too? I think you do; you’re all very fashionable people, I can tell.

It was very easy, and required no special tools at all—the only thing you may find inconvenient is coming up with the long piece of leather. I think you could do this with a thrifted bag or belt, if you could find one. I already had a long enough scrap of leather lying around here, so this project was the work of an hour at most. (I wonder if leather scraps could be got from a shop that makes shoes by hand, and I know of one in my vicinity, so there might be one in yours, too?) I’ve had my little bag of scraps for a long time, bought for two bucks in a crafty thrift store sale mainly, at the time, for the purpose of making mini Santa Claus boots.

Sorry, I ramble.

Here’s what I did, and you can do this too, and there aren’t any pictures because this whole thing was finished before I even thought about it: You’ll need two jump rings and a jewelry clasp of some kind, a likely piece of leather, and some serious glue—I used E6000. Using your rotary cutter and acrylic ruler, cut two strips of leather the width you want (mine is 3/8” wide) and of a length sufficient to wrap three times around your wrist, with the amount of ease you want, minus about an inch. Mine is about 14” long. Cut 1” off the end of one strip. You now have two long, skinny strips, one shorter than the other. Spread a thin layer of glue on the suede side of the longer strip and stick the suede side of the shorter piece to it, leaving 1/2” at each end uncovered. Quickly now, before the glue dries—no pressure—wrap each end through one of the jump rings and stick it down to itself, bringing the end of the long piece up against the end of the short piece you already glued down. Dang, this needs a picture:

See how the two ends sit next to each other? You can probably sew that end down if you feel a need to do it—I’ve worn this several times already, and the glue is holding it down pretty well. I’ll sew it if it starts to come apart, but so far, it hasn’t.

Now add your clasp and wait for it to dry. That’s the hardest part for me. Then go ahead and wear with pride. You made a leather wrap bracelet! Woot! Take that, world.

Sleep Mask

2011-11-10T10:03:00.001-05:00

What a diva I am. I can’t sleep unless it’s pitch-black in the room, and I’d also like it to be completely silent, as well, which is, of course, impossible. And since there is a storage barn across the road with about twenty huge halogen lights which (seasonally, thank goodness) blare out their tremendous wattage directly at my face while I’m trying to sleep, I have had to cover the windows with some completely terrible blackout curtains—oh, they’re so ugly—and even then, I felt the need for even more darkness. What’s a diva to do? I can’t just lie there squinting all night, can I? Well, make myself a sleep mask of course, dahling! Preferably from a soft, awesome flannel by Anna Maria Horner, if possible, oh yes.

All I did was draw and cut out sort of a bean-shaped shape from two pieces of flannel and three pieces of cotton batting, quilt them together, and attach a satin ribbon at the sides. Very glamorous.

Wearing this does make me feel a little bit like Eva Gabor, but, bless me, it’s dark at night. Ahh.

Lillehammer Cardigan, all done, and some Deep Thoughts

2011-11-08T16:58:00.001-05:00

Naturally, the minute I start mooning about winter, the sun comes out and it turns as balmy as May outside. Well, I wore this sweater anyway. It will be winter soon enough, and I will be skiing around town wearing this and other woolies, with snowflakes staying on my nose and eyelashes, so I am not complaining about a nice day, not a bit.

The dressmaker’s dummy has much narrower shoulders than I do, although they are weirdly wide going front to back, which I don’t understand and can’t adjust, so she doesn’t show off the yoke to its best advantage. She also lists to the side like a drunk, which makes me laugh a little every time. But without her, you get this:

(This is the latest in a photographic series featuring my chest, all part of an effort to immortalize my impeccable collarbones, which is, of course, the first thing one notices. Right?)

When you are reduced to bragging about your collarbones, you know there’s not much left to brag about. At least this one has my face in it, looking severe as a mean old auntie as usual, but it does not actually show you the sweater…

This pattern is The Charlemont Cardigan [Ravelry link] by Elizabeth Parker from the Fall 2011 issue of Knitscene. I don’t know what “charlemont” means, so I’ll probably call it something else. This was a speedy knit, and the result is very cozy.

I’m often asked how I manage to finish things so quickly, and I was as interested as you in knowing the answer, so I pondered it for awhile, and I think I’ve figured it out. It was not always thus—back in the 1990’s when all I was knitting was men’s XXXL sweaters (for myself! I know!) I hardly ever finished anything before I got bored and just gave up. I once spent a whole year making a supremely hideous brown pullover that never even saw the light of day—the sleeves were something like two feet wide, and I just got so sick of working on it. I don’t know what on earth moves a fashion trend toward something that insane, but it seemed at the time like you just couldn’t have a big enough sweater. They seemed snuggly and cozy, and since wearing them was like walking around in a sleeping bag, they sure were cozy, you bet. But not very practical, and also difficult to finish. (I do sympathize with those of you out there who must knit for a very large husband. My husband is nicely mid-sized, and he doesn’t actually want me to knit for him anyway, so that works out pretty well.) Anyway, so part of the reason I get stuff done fast is that I almost always make the XS or Small size. I like a sweater with very little ease, so there’s less knitting to do.

Also, I have learned to knit without looking. This only works with plain stockinette or garter stitch, but there is often quite a lot of that in a sweater or scarf (or blanket or sock) and it is probably the cleverest trick in my arsenal. It was well worth the effort, let me tell you. I can work on a project and do other things, too, like read or pay attention to a movie with subtitles or look someone in the eye while we talk. That helps me get a lot done.

The last reason, also the biggest, is that I am a very fast knitter. I’ve been knitting for more than thirty years, and as I go, my hands are a blur. That’s just me reaping the benefits of a LOT of practice, and the fact that I am always, always doing it. (Hmmm, I also begin to wonder whether knitting has become a compulsive habit—must look into some therapy.) Then there’s the fact that since I’ve made so many sweaters and socks and hats and stuff that I am pretty well acquainted at this point with how they go together, and so don’t have to spend too much time squinting at the pattern. I just grab the needles and go. It’s taken a lot of time spent with yarn to get to this point, but there you go.

So there’s that answered, and I’m glad you asked, since I wondered, too.

Lillehammer sweater, in progress

2011-11-06T17:40:00.001-05:00

Ever since the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, I have been pretty much besotted by winter. I love the Winter Olympics, so much! I love the strange and mostly old foreign places, the lovely little cobbled cities, the alpine scenery, the snug TV stage sets with fake crackling fireplaces and smushy leather chairs, and there’s me at home under a big pile of blankets, watching rosy-cheeked people from all over the world play in the snow. It’s my favorite thing, the coziest thing ever. According to the TV, it is customary in Lillehammer to get around town, running your errands and whatnot, on skis. If you should have a baby along, you strap her into a pretty little wooden sleigh and push the sleigh along the ice like that, your little baby snuggled up in there like cozy a loaf of bread, and you ski along behind the sleigh, waving to your neighbors, or stopping for a bit of chitchat or a hot coffee, and then you ski home. And the snow sprinkles down and your baby coos happily, her cheeks rosy, and you are pink-cheeked too, and you did not have to scrape the snow off your car or dig out the driveway or wait for the plow to go by just to get anywhere. Seriously? Just thinking about living that way makes my heart turn over. We woke to frost the other day, and all I can do in the face of that is knit. It’s all I want to do.

Knitted Rose Brooch

2011-11-03T08:49:00.001-04:00

There’s the way I want to dress, and then there’s the way I do dress. The first is a mix of California gypsy bohemian with poet’s shirts and long patchwork dresses, and Edwardian tea party with fitted, high-necked blouses and pencil skirts. The second, the way I really walk around, is jeans + t-shirt + cardigan. So, I have a bunch of clothes in my closet that lean toward the first, but they mostly just hang there, looking pretty and waiting. I guess I will eventually face the fact that I am a jeans and t-shirt sort of girl, and gauzy, white, off-the shoulder peasant blouses are mostly not going to suit me, but, for now, I am holding out the hope.

Anyway, along the lines of the first, I have made another knitted flower corsage, because I am, deep down, a little bit theatrical, and I want every day to be my birthday, and also, when I’m just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, sometimes a little dab of pink is just the thing.

The pattern is from Debbie Bliss’s book The Knitter’s Year. I love that book, the styling is so beautiful—if you’re on the fence about knitting, are thinking about maybe taking up a new craft, Debbie will seal the deal.

Annis Scarf

2011-10-31T09:56:00.001-04:00

This scarf is part of my latest attempt to learn to Dress Myself. Maybe at forty-three, I can become fashionable!

I recently purged my wardrobe of two lawn and leaf bags full of stuff I never wore. I don’t know why I thought I needed four jeans skirts. I did need more of this kind of thing, though. This scarf is so perfect, adding color without a lot of frou, adding that extra something that gives a gray pullover and wool pants a reason to be smashing. Just putting it on the dressmaker’s dummy made me feel a little bit French. The pattern is Annis by Susannah IC. I finished knitting it last night while I was watching the best Halloween movie ever. Johnny, I love you!

I love that with just a few yarnovers and k2togs, I can make something that looks like that. I can’t wait to wear it!

Fall kitchen, with sunshine

2011-10-30T14:42:00.001-04:00

There is something so good about a clean kitchen on a sunshine day. A bucket of hot sudsy water and a cotton rag transforms not just the floor, but also me, somehow, too.

The Varsity Sweater

2011-10-28T09:25:00.001-04:00

Well. This isn’t the sweater I wanted to make. I hope this isn’t a trend. I have to take the full blame on this one—I made a poor yarn choice. Not that it isn’t a nice yarn, this tweedy DK-weight combination of silk and wool, because I’m sure it works out well for some people, but I have to say I am just not a fan. And it definitely isn’t the right yarn for colorwork.

This was supposed to have been Oranje by Ann Weaver. I’m sure you’ll notice right away that there are some significant differences between her very interesting design and the sweater I ended up with. Here’s what happened: several years ago, I was tempted by the sumptuous raspberry color of this yarn, and I bought a heap of it and made a sweater. It took ages on size four needles and was really design-y, if you know what I mean. It had a whole bunch of fancy techniques and weird shaping and even though it turned out well, I just never wore it. I am, it turns out, a plain old sweater kind of girl. The raspberry sweater was unraveled and the yarn rewound, and went back in my cupboard to await Plan B.

Much later, I saw this and was a goner. A turtleneck cardigan? With colorwork? I thought that was just fascinating, and I wanted that sweater with a burning passion. The search for the right yarn began, and I eventually concluded for some reason that the raspberry yarn would be just the thing. Most likely because I already had it in the house. The clarity of hindsight can be bitter. I dropped everything and cast on, knitted four hundred miles of stockinette stitch in the round, made both sleeves, with these interesting lined cuffs:

Then I joined them together at the yoke and started the color section which is where the first band of stripes shows up and where the first signs of trouble appeared. Oh dear. It was just not good. It was bad. It was a mess. I hacked my way through four of the charts (and by the way, three colors in one row? No!) and finally I just had to rip it all out. I decided to leave the stripe and just work the yoke in plain one color stockinette, threw in another stripe, gave up on the turtleneck because by that point I knew it was going to be huge, and knit all the way to the bind off, still trying to decide if it would be more work to rip it all out again or just go ahead and finish it. Since I am ultimately lazy, I decided to finish it. Here’s what you have to do to finish it. You have to take your scissors and cut it in half. Whaaaat? Okay, first you assemble your supplies:

Then you take your scissors and you cut it, from hem to collar. I don’t mind telling you my hands were shaking.

So now, at this point, there’s no going back. There’s no unraveling this hopeless yarn to be re-used yet again, so going for broke and getting it done is the only option. Backed into that kind of corner, I did the only thing I could do. I knit the button bands and called it a day.

It looks like something Richie Cunningham might wear. It kind of looks like your boyfriend’s sweater. Your boyfriend the basketball player, who is taking you to Inspiration Point in his dad’s DeSoto. He sees that you’re a little chilly, so he gives you his varsity sweater to put over your shoulders. He’s hoping to fog up the windows a little, so he wants you to be comfy. And you are, because his sweater is big and sloppy and wooly and warm. Just like a sweater should be.

Oranje, I’m not through with you yet. We will meet again.

Teensy Books

2011-10-26T18:04:00.001-04:00

I love tiny things! The more I say this to people, the more I hear that everyone else loves them, too. I have still not gotten to the bottom of why I love them, though I think it might have something to do with portability, I don’t know. Anyway, if all my books were as small as these, I’d have a lot more storage space for yarn, is all I can say. I always wanted a dollhouse, too, and spent too much time sitting on my bed with a notebook, doodling unreasonable furniture plans (hand-carved Queen Anne table legs?) and wondering if functioning light switches would be possible. I would worry later about the problem of how to become small enough to actually live in it. Details, details.

Somehow the dollhouse never happened, and now it just seems like I’d rather apply that kind of planning and effort to my regular-sized house, but it hasn’t stopped me from loving the tiny. So I saw this sweet little project on Craftster last week and went kind of nutso with teeny stuff love.

I decided to take the tutorial a half step further and make little wee-tiny signatures, rather than just stacking loose paper into the centers of my books. I thought that would make them look more book-like (and also help the binding to be squared, rather than just folded.) I made the pages with actual book pages (don’t hate me, I love books) and the covers from leather scraps (I have a small stash of leather scraps. I said don’t hate me) and used Mod Podge (is there anything Mod Podge can’t do? Seriously!) to glue the signatures to each other and to the insides of the book covers. I clamped them shut with binder clips, and waited about twenty minutes for them to dry. Then I punched a hole through both of them together with a hammer and a small nail. Watch your work surface if you do that! Don’t go getting all caught up in the excitement of making teensy books and wreck your table. It almost happened to me is why I’m telling you. There was a last minute save, and everything’s okay, but it was close.

I stuck a head pin through the hole and strung it on a chain. Squeeak! It’s so tiny! Oh man, I just love it.

The Woodstock Blanket

2011-10-23T12:02:00.001-04:00

I’ve never had to think so much before. As you know, my usual way is to toss a bunch of yarn into a pile, grab whichever one rolls the closest to where I’m sitting, and just start. You know, whatever happens, happens. This time, I made some rules for myself, and it ended up being kind of a headache. It really happened because of this. The yarn happened to land that way when I dumped it on the table (see? This is really how I work) and as I stood there looking at it, the idea for this blanket jumped into my head. I wanted to move from one color to the next, allowing them to merge and overlap, and I didn’t want them to go in rainbow order, and I wanted it to go from cool to warm and I wanted the colors that were next to each other to look great and show themselves off to their best advantage, because that really is critical. Trying to make leftovers and scraps gleaned from the back corners of the yarn cupboard conform to an intricate calculus of color theory and design was a lot trickier than I anticipated, but I love the way it turned out.

I more or less abandoned my plan somewhere between the green and the purple and went back to my usual method of just using the next color that looks good, though I did try to maintain the general move from cool to warm.

I couldn’t believe how hard it was to move from one color combination to the next. The first two rows of everything just looked completely wrong and I’d spend the next hour freaking out and ripping back and tearing at my hair and clothing. (Blogless) Sara said, “Even if you think it is not right. By the time you have got some more rows down, it will be.” Jacquie said the same kind of thing in this post, and they were both right. But it was hard.

The stitch pattern I used is a version of the Catherine Wheel, called Harlequin, so named (I guess) because an extra ch1 at the top of the clusters makes them square instead of round. I started there, inspired by a design called Greenway, from the book Comfort Knitting and Crochet: Afghans by Norah Gaughan and Margery Winter. If you follow that pattern, you’ll want to know that it doesn’t tell you what to do after you finish the last row of squares and the edge is all pointy, which doesn’t match the beginning edge. I figured out on my own how to square it off—here’s what I did: after finishing row 4, turn and ch 3. Work a 3 dc-tog and then 3 sc in the side of the cluster. (I think that would make sense to you when you got there.) Now, work 1 sc in the ch 1 space. Work a 6 dc-tog, 3 sc in the side of it, sc in ch1 sp, and so on, to the end. I hope this works for you—let me know if it doesn’t and I’ll see if I can help.

Anyway, I also didn’t like the edging the pattern suggested, a simple round of crab stitch, which looked great in the photo, but all the sc-ing into the side of my rows just looked awful and I couldn’t stand it. I did want a plain little row of just one innocuous color so as not to compete with all the hectic color going on, so my solution was to work one row of ch3, skip next 3, sc etc. and one row of 2 sc, ch2, 2 sc in each ch 3 space. (I’m sorry, I’m not great at writing down crochet directions.)

I love that depending upon how I fold it, it looks like a different blanket!

What, you feel like a little pink today? No problem!

I’ll be honest; that right there is the whole reason I keep making blankets. I can’t even tell you how much I love looking at that teetering mountain of yarny, granny loveliness. I also love that when my daughter’s friends visit for the weekend, she tells them, “If you get cold, there’s a blanket pretty much everywhere.” That’s right, I’m keeping the whole world warm, one handful of college students at a time.

I don’t know of anything more satisfying to make than a lovely cozy blanket, put together using accumulated detritus and a little brainpower. This blanket is tie-dye technicolored, recycled and repurposed. It was an experience. Tell them about it, Jimi.

edited: Neicee found the Greenway pattern free on Ravelry! Here it is. It looks like there’s an errata page, too. Ravelry, I love you so much. Thanks, Neicee!

Almost finished

2011-10-21T09:55:00.001-04:00

I’ve got this now. Almost there! *goes back to hooking*

Woodland Cowl

2011-10-19T17:47:00.001-04:00

I am smitten by the designs of the fantastically dramatic Kalurah, who dreamed up the Through the Woods cowl and also wrote down the rules for this extremely simple but still somehow amazing piece of knitwear, called The Woodland Cowl. There’s nothing to it but garter stitch and a few buttonholes, but I never would’ve thought to make it so BIG. And BIG is what makes this delicious cowl what it is.

I used the yarn called for in the original pattern, one skein of Lion Brand Thick ‘n Quick in “glacier”, and four vintage coat buttons from my button jar. This is a new yarn to me, so I don’t know how it will wear, but it seemed pretty yummy for the hour or so it took me to knit this. Okay, speaking of that, seriously, if you have ever thought you might like to knit something but didn’t think you could? Or you think you don’t have the patience for a whole scarf? I am begging you, try this one out. This yarn is light and soft (my first attempt was with wool yarn, held double, which produced an object which was so durable and thick it felt like a piece of medieval armor) and it will take you hardly any time at all to end up with this fantastic cowl! Right? Come on, try it.

Yum.

Sunburst Flower Granny Bag

2011-10-16T18:24:00.001-04:00

I was prowling around Pinterest last week (I love Pinterest! I mean, I reeeaaallllly love it! I have to pry myself away from there, because the awesomeness just keeps on coming. This world is so full of fabulous creative people and their fantastic ideas) and I was just happily pinning away when this stopped me in my tracks. I’m sorry, that’s a Ravelry link—if you haven’t found Ravelry yet, what are you waiting for? I dove immediately into my bottomless yarn cupboard for a pile of assorted tweedy-looking yarns and then spent what turned out to be the last gorgeous weekend of the year sitting in the backyard making squares.

The sky was endlessly blue, and I wore a sundress. There was cold beer. The curling crabapple leaves fluttered down into my lap, and the chickens puttered happily under the table. It was, somehow, summer again, marvelous. And at the end of it, when it started to act like October again (I do believe there was a little sleet today) I had this lovely fall bag--and a little bit of a tan--to remind me.

There seems not to be a published pattern associated with this bag, so I’ll give you the quick details, in case you want to make one, too. (I can’t help you score a beautiful weekend, but maybe the sun is shining where you are, anyway.)

The crochet motifs are called Sunburst Flower Granny Squares, and the photo tutorial for that is here, but it’s in German. You can use the google translator, but here’s a sample of how that looks:

"{ envelope , bite through the mesh and thread pick up.
Renewed envelope and pull through first 2 sts on needle.}

I had to laugh when it told me to “transshipment the yarn,” and I ended up deciphering it a little bit wrong, so my squares came out on the small side. The photo tutorial is good, though, and anyway, I think the same pattern can be found in Jane Brocket’s new book, in case you can’t figure out what it all means.

So, make 17 squares in total, and then crochet them together, setting them on point, in alternating rows of two and three. It makes a little bit of a rectangle shape. (Crikey, I should’ve taken pictures of this as I went.) Hang on, here’s a diagram:

See how they go together? Now fold it in half with wrong sides facing and crochet it together at the A edges, and then fold up the corner and crochet it together at the B edges, like this:

Make a lining in the same shape, folding up at the corners the same way, and stitch it into the bag.

I made the handles by twisting 12 long lengths of yarn together until they doubled up on themselves, and attached them to the bag using four small bone rings I had leftover from something else.

Very cozy for fall, no?

Abacus Bracelet

2011-10-15T15:09:00.001-04:00

This is something I’ve been needing for years, only I didn’t know I needed it because I didn’t know there even was such a thing, until I was deep in the patterns on Ravelry and came upon it. It’s a Row-Counting Abacus Bracelet! (My scientist husband said, “Do you know how to use an abacus?” If this is an abacus, then yes!) Here’s how it works: the smaller beads count as one, and the larger beads count as ten, and as you complete your row, you scoot that little ring of teeny silver beads, which is on an elastic cord, over the first small bead—one row counted. When you get to the tenth row, you scoot all the small beads back under the ring and move the first of the big beads through it. Then for row eleven, you have one big and one small bead; for row twenty-three, you have two big beads and three small ones, and so on. It’s all about how many of which beads are all on one side of the ring. Brilliant! This thing is going to save me, like, two bucks a year on sticky notes…and now I can hear you all thinking about how much you need one of these, too. The tutorial I followed is here. I just used whatever beads I had around here that had holes big enough for the cord to fit through, which is why it’s a bit of a mishmash. It’s a little bit motley, which is just the way I like it.

Too cool for comfort

2011-10-14T15:24:00.001-04:00

I’m trying to get back on track with the Harlequin blanket, but am failing. You can see I have just about every color under the sun there to work with, minus the greens which have already gone in, and having carefully studied Lucy’s master class in choosing colors for blankets (whoa, she’s good!) I dragged this out of the corner where it’s been sulking for a few months and tried to reconsider it.

These yarns are all orphans and sale bin impulse purchases and I apparently have them in every color of the rainbow, which is good because I’m not content with anything that sits on one side only of the spectrum, but that’s where the blanket is sitting right now. It’s sitting on the cool side. It’s firmly entrenched on the cool side, all happy and comfy there, perhaps finding the cool side of the spectrum just a little bit too cozy, because when it came time to add some warm colors, you know, just to make it balance out, it kind of rebelled. The blanket kind of rejected the warm colors. I know I could just leave it on the cool side, let it be a cool side blanket, but that just seems…well, it’s too hard for me to do that. It wouldn’t be motley enough. I like a blanket to have a good dose of scrappiness, and right now it’s just way too orderly.

And in spite of the fact that my yarn cupboard is groaning with yarn, bursting with it, to the point that I have to wedge the door shut with my hip to make it close, I still hiked off to the yarn shop today to see whether there might not be some sort of bridge color, you know, something to ease the blanket into the warm side of things, nothing too sudden, I don’t want to shock it. Just something cooly/warmish. But what? Nothing jumped out at me. I am stuck.

I’m moving away from the purple and hoping to start in on a pink and brown cycle, am leaning toward either the dark red or the pale pink, and am quite sure I’m over-thinking this thing by about a country mile.

Pink Cardigan

2011-10-11T20:29:00.001-04:00

There’s another new sweater in my closet. You know how, sometimes, things just go totally according to plan, and you have all the right yarn and the pattern is easy to memorize and the exact buttons you hoped you’d find turn up, right there in the button jar, right when you need them? Yeah. That didn’t happen with this sweater. In fact, this sweater is the opposite of that. I had to rip back twice because something on the TV distracted me and the cables went weird. Those cute buttons? There were only three of them, so if my bellybutton gets cold, there will be no help for it, none. And the yarn, which I bought all at once, in the same store, and from the same bin, is not all the same.

Would you believe me if I told you I did not notice that until it was actually finished and blocking? I know.

I’m trying really hard to love it. Okay, it’s a wooly cardigan, right? There is almost nothing cozier than that. (Let’s check the list: wooly socks, wooly hats, hot cocoa, hugs from your grandma, wooly cardigans…) Yes. It is the color of ~~Bazooka bubblegum~~ ~~the inside of your mouth~~ a peony. The three-button effect is very fashionable, too, leaving the long fronts to flare open in a casual, insouciant way. As if to say, I just threw this on, I don’t even care what I wear. The bizarre multi-toning could be thought of as a design feature. An intentional, ombre effect. Yes, yes! It’s working!

Oh, odd little mis-dyed sweater. You will not go to the Goodwill. You will keep me cozy this winter. You will make me want to bake cookies and wash the floors and be a good person. I can tell that about you.

I should own up to the fact that the pattern is mine, my usual top-down raglan. I borrowed the cable panel pattern from here [Ravelry link]. Heck, I guess it does actually fit. The button thing—yeah, that was just lazy.

Luna Moth

2011-10-09T09:49:00.001-04:00

Everyone in my high school biology class had to spend the summer of 1983 collecting bugs. Some people did this the right way and went into the woods and meadows with their butterfly nets and kill jars and their field guides, seeking out the correct host plants and habitats, and then they built beautiful wood and glass display cases, mounted the insects with utmost care on tiny pins, hand-lettered labels that read Lepidoptera: Actias luna and then got an A in biology. The way I did it was to spend the summer of 1983 reading Tiger Beat magazine in front of the fan and picking dead moths out of the porch light fixture.

Some of those other kids had a Luna Moth in their collections, and I was just stunned. Luna Moth looked like something you’d find in another world. They were four inches across, and had incredible, shifting, translucent, alien green-colored wings. I had not a clue that something like that lived in my neighborhood, visiting other people’s porch lights at night like luminous ghosts. They were as big as my hand. It made me sort of snap to attention in biology, this knowledge that I had missed the boat completely, bug collection-wise, and that with the right kind of effort, I could have bagged myself one of those moths, mounted it properly in a glass case, and then kept it forever, displaying it like a Victorian explorer returned from the wilds of Borneo.

I found this pattern, called “Winged Flowers” by Mary Ellen Designs, copyright 1980, in my thrifty craft store (I know, right?) and stitched it on a napkin (also thrifted) that turned out to be just the right size weave—maybe about 18 ct? I even had half the required DMC floss colors in my stash already, so there wasn’t any stopping me. Would you believe I also thrifted the frame?

Sitting outside by the bug light at Mary Moon’s house past midnight would’ve been a good way, back then, to capture one of these, but this, now, is wonderful, too. Not to mention being a lot nicer for the bugs.

Nutkin Socks

2011-10-07T20:54:00.001-04:00

This picture has nothing to do with the socks I just finished. I was just so happy the sun was shining, and the socks are knit in dark navy yarn that sort of absorbed all the light in the room—you can see there was some—and so you’ll never be able to see them.

My mom is thinking, get your feet off the table! Sorry, Mom.

You’ll just have to trust me that these are pretty cool, although they are a teeny bit too small for me. They look like they’re covered with cables, but they’re really not, it’s all done with smoke and mirrors, and with k2 tog and YO. The lovely pattern is called Nutkin, available free from Knitzi.com, and I used (I think) some kind of sock yarn from Cascade—I started these a really long time ago and I can’t remember. These socks might be the last of the pre-blog projects to finally be finished. And that’s it for socks for awhile, I’m pretty sure. The sock drawer is full to bursting again, but it was eighty degrees today and wearing socks seems crazy. I love New York! I might spend the whole day tomorrow sitting in the sun and embroidering. Does that sound like heaven, or what?

The X’s have it

2011-10-06T11:20:00.005-04:00

I am fully captivated by cross-stitch right now. As usual, not being satisfied with just one project of a kind at a time, I went on a link-following bender, starting here which made me swoon (Radish’s Mum! You’re so right!) and then across the blogs to feeling stitchy, into the shiny happiness of this, finally landing in the brazen and beautiful cross-stitch underworld, like here. And this blew my mind. Whoa, you guys! I had no idea. The internet is a marvelous place. These are not the teddy bears, nor the endless variations of Home Sweet Home, nor the wise and/or witty sayings I remember about cross stitch. This is edgy, daring, modern, brave, fantastic. I felt so much cross stitch love that I crafted a special Cross Stitch Project Zip Bag, even using up a chunk of my precious Denyse Schmidt fabric for the lining.

I’ll never stop being amazed at all the different ways a person can make something wonderful with just needles and string.

edited: I got too chicken and took down one of the links. I laughed, but it wasn't cozy.

Cross Stitch???

2011-10-05T18:22:00.002-04:00

edited: I realized that in trying to be funny, I was inadvertently combative in this post, which was not my intention, but I got some lovely comments and suggestions, so instead of deleting it altogether, I'm leaving the photo behind. Can you tell what it's going to be?

Vintage Hats and a Curtain

2011-10-03T10:09:00.001-04:00

We ventured into the thrift stores this weekend. Usually, I avoid them in the fall, since thrifting at Halloween time is like going to the mall at Christmas, which I also hate like the plague, but there was a need in the family for some costume pants, so off we went, and lo! Looky there! Chucked in with the plastic Darth Maul masks and popsicle green curly wigs was a little collection of vintage ladies hats! I was a happy girl, I can tell you. Look at this one:

That one has a label that says, “Oscar de la Renta” which doesn’t mean it didn’t just come from Macy’s or anything, but isn’t that big glob of posies just delectable? My teenage son was a little bit appalled since I’d already bought a pair of burgundy heels that he thought were pretty ugly and he was afraid I would be wearing this chapeau around to the grocery store and whatnot, and whoa, do I kind of wanna, but for two bucks, I’m happy just to look at it. Sweet old lady, thanks for your hats. I love them.

More and more, my lovely, airy, light-filled workroom is resembling a junk shop, as I chock it full of things like this. But I looooooove it!

I did make something over the weekend:

A plain, white, muslin curtain. Try not to keel over from the excitement. In truth, I made four of these—no, eight, since the first four were kind of skimpy and I decided to redo them. While I was pressing and sewing the forty straight seams on the plain white cotton fabric, I realized something—I actually don’t want any curtains, and I’m really tired of making them. I wouldn’t even be able to guess how many sets of plain white cotton curtains I have made for this house; how much ~~boring~~ plain white cotton muslin I have ironed and sewn. I use muslin because, apart from sheer curtains (I’ve had those too, and what’s the point of a curtain if the people going by on the street can still see you?) they are the least there curtains I can think of. Having curtains on the windows make my rooms feel shrouded. No, it’s cozy! Right? I go back and forth on this one all the time. What do you think?

Maybe if I add a crocheted lace trim to the bottom edge? Hmmm.

Through the Woods Cowl

2011-10-01T09:02:00.001-04:00

How’s this for cozy? This is the Through the Woods cowl [Ravelry link] by Kalurah, and it does kind of make me want to load up a basket full of goodies and head into the woods, bound for Grandmother’s house. It’s perfectly cuddly, and also a little spooky—I think that effect is being heightened by the insane weirdness of the Alien Head—but you can probably see this, like I can, worn with a long black cape by an otherwise shapeless figure carrying a guttering lantern and disappearing into a shadowy forest. Brrr!

I love how dramatic it is. This cowl has got a mysterious secret, a secret that could be dangerous. This cowl has got a gothic backstory, and angst, and maybe a boyfriend who has a crazy wife in the attic. Wear with caution!

Coffee Date Dress, finished

2011-09-29T08:49:00.004-04:00

Are you ready for a few headless fashion photos in which I might look chubby-legged or even preggers (which I am emphatically not, good heavens!) I just can’t wait to show you this dress I made. Standing in dappled light and shade of the apple tree made this show up as an odd purple color—weird, since the fabric, a rayon/cotton blend, is black with a teeny red and white floral print.

This shot would’ve been okay except for the view of the wheelbarrow in the background…well, that’s life around here. Enough about the bad photography, did you see this dress I made? Can you stand how cute it is? How ruffly-necked, and how aging-knee revealing it is? Yes, I would’ve lengthened it about three or four inches for perfect comfort if I’d had the extra fabric, but this pattern used every scrap I had, and even then I had to piece some bits together to make the ruffle.
This is the splendid and FREE! Coffee Date Dress, again by the Selfish Seamstress, who, I’m starting to feel, is most likely not all that selfish after all, who may in fact be quite generous. Did I tell you this pattern is free? She has several free patterns at that link, you might as well go make them all. Selfish, you’re awesome.

This is a simple little sheath dress with an invisible zipper in the back, and a super-clever method for attaching the bodice facings, but it’s this adoooooorable jabot ruffle at the neck that made me grab my needle. Oh mercy, I love that.

Wait, let me show you my hand-rolled hem—this is a new thing I learned, check it out:

This is how you’d do an edging on a little handkerchief, or on anything sewn in delicate floaty fabrics that you don’t want to have the usual 1/4” turned hem weighing down the edges. How it’s done is this: you machine stitch 1/4” from the unfinished edge of the fabric, then trim the fabric to 1/8” – 1/16” from the stitching. Yikes, that’s close! The closer you can trim it, the better. Then you take up your hand sewing needle, flick on the tv to that channel that shows old gems like The Odd Couple and Mary Tyler Moore and get comfy. You will then fold down the first inch or two of the (still unfinished) hem to just past the stitching, put your needle up through the fold and then back down, keeping the stitch perpendicular to the edge, and catching only a thread or two, wrapping the raw hem edge under the stitch. Keep the stitch loose. Work about four or five of these in a row, and then gently pull on the thread to tighten them all—the raw fabric edge gets rolled right up inside and hidden, and you have this awesome, teeny-weeny, barely-there hem. Ta-dah! This is my favorite new trick.

This dress might have to ride out the winter unworn, what with the exposed knees and all, but it will surely see some play next spring.

edited: The link is fixed now. Thanks, Lynne!

Taking Time to Smell the Granny Squares: Not a Progress Report

2011-09-27T07:43:00.001-04:00

There are a hundred of these right now, making a nice counterpoint to all the neutral knitting going on. They’re so cheerful! So amazingly technicolored! It’s difficult not to keep a continuous tally of the total, though, to do the quick math to figure out how many I still have left to make, and then go out to buy new yarn for this project, and I’m really trying to avoid rushing it this time. But it’s so hard! For one thing, I love to work on these, love it like crazy! These little squares are really where it’s at in my head right now. And I’m rather in the habit of wanting to git ‘er done. I always want to keep counting them, and planning and arranging and calculating.

But that’s not what I’m trying to do here. I am in no hurry. I don’t need any more blankets. Nobody around here is cold. I want these little squares to last me all winter, to gather colorfully in a basket beside my chair where I can quietly, and without any rushing, make one or two now and then, as my whims dictate--my whims are accustomed to cranking out as many as possible in a mad-dash effort to the finish line—to actually deplete the large store of teeny balls of worsted I have accumulated, and to have, eventually, eventually, something to show for it in the end, something lovely, thoughtfully and restfully made. Not right now, but eventually.

Success or Failure? I can’t tell.

2011-09-25T09:25:00.001-04:00

I am loving this look in a major way, and a quick analysis of my thrift-store/bargain bin/rudderless melange of clothes collection reveals that I am completely hopeless at dressing myself. Not that I don’t know exactly what I want to wear—I do, believe me, and if I could find any of it, I would look incredible, every day. Now, I’m thinking to myself, could I make my own cargo pants? The answer to that, of course, is no way. I can make a t-shirt, though!

Oh, jersey knit fabric. Why are you so unruly? Simple enough, this plain little design, just a few pieces to stitch together. It got so hilarious. Every seam I attempted—even with the sewing machine manual in one hand, the special stretchy jersey seam stitch machine setting activated, the special machine needle in place, and lots of careful pinning, I could not sew this fabric. It just wouldn’t let me sew it! I finally had to leave the edges raw. I will probably not be wearing this perfectly adorable tee anywhere where people might see me. It just looks totally homemade.

It turned out really well/awful. It’s a great little pattern and it fits beautifully. But. I want to topstitch that bodice join so badly, but…I can’t. I want to turn under that neckline hem, but I can’t. It’s a beautiful fit, but I’ll never wear it. As an aside, what the heck is that print? It looks animal-ish, but it also kind of looks like alphabet soup. I feel like if I squint at it, I’ll decode a hidden message.

If you have better luck with jersey fabric and you want to make this tee, the free pattern is here.

The Friday Night Cowl

2011-09-24T10:08:00.001-04:00

As much as I’d rather be chilling on a beach somewhere, there’s no denying that the Cozy Season is upon us. It is very English outside this morning; damp and gray, and atmospheric. If I think of it that way, this weather feels charming and snug. I feel a sudden need to put on some wellies and go for a long walk on the misty moors, then hang my woolens on the Aga and scrub a pine table until it gleams. The British Isles are so cozy, with your pubs and your tea and your sheepdogs. [Reverential sigh here.]

I digress.

This is The Friday Night Cowl, pattern by me—as if you’d need a pattern. The story behind it is this: a few years ago, I knit a long piece of striped fabric using lots of different blues, reds, and browns because that’s the yarn I had at the time and because I was in desperate need of something, anything, to knit. I thought to make several long strips like this and then stitch them together (much in the manner of this blanket, which came later) but before I got any further than 42 inches along on the first strip, I began pilfering the yarns for other projects (along with getting mighty bored) and the strip went into hibernation.

Yesterday, I wanted the needle it was on for something else and so I extracted it again. Too short for a scarf. I thought, briefly, about ripping it all out. Then it hit me…a cowl! I mattress-stitched up the long side, joined the ends together, and it became something, finally. So easy!

Wrapped double around the neck like this, that’s four layers of warm, soft, wooly knitting, and of course the beauty of the cowl is that you don’t have those long scarf ends to bulk up the front of your coat, hang down into your mug of coffee, or get caught in the car door. Where have cowls been all my life?

If you’d like to make one, here’s the simple pattern: Choose eight or ten different yarns in worsted weight. I really believe you will want 100% wool for this project—the point of this cowl is it’s super-duper warmness—but choose yarns that will not be too scratchy. I used Cascade 220. Using a needle that will give you a gauge of 4.5-5 sts per inch (although gauge isn’t that important for this project) cast on 50 and work in stockinette stitch, changing colors as your whim dictates, until the piece is 42 inches (or so) in length. Seam up the long side using mattress stitch, and then seam the two open ends to each other the same way. (Don’t sew them shut first—seam them to each other.) That’s all there is to it! Give it a quick steam block and you’re all ready to bundle up.

Now you’re ready for Friday night—a high school football game, a mug of cocoa, and maybe a spooky hayride through the woods.

Patchwork Pin Cushions

2011-09-22T10:28:00.001-04:00

This is why I like to have a big basket of fabric scraps and half a bag of stuffing lying around the house at all times. There’s been so much neutral knitting happening here lately and I just felt the need of some color in my crafty life, and this little project didn’t require any decision-making or trips to the store. Perfect! The buttons (I’m so glad I kept those) are from a bag of somebody’s castoffs, bought last fall for $1, which mostly contained those little replacement buttons that come in a teeny ziploc bag with your clothes and which will almost always outlast the garment itself. I doubt she—whoever she is—still has that orange suit. Usually I think, I don’t need these weird orange fabric-covered buttons, what am I going to do with those? You. Never. Know.

The pattern is from Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson—such a gorgeous and inspiring book—and I can tell you it’s easy peasy, except you may wish you had a hemostat to get that embroidery needle pulled through the center. I have a few of them and who knew medical supplies could be so handy for sewing? Yeah, if you ever find yourself in the emergency room getting your chin stitched up following an inelegant but still spectacular half-gainer at the ice rink, ask if you can keep the hemostats they used on you. You really never know! Armed with the extra grippy-ness of a blood vessel clamp, you can haul a big needle through almost anything. (That’s not very cozy, is it?)

Ooooh, pretty!

Mister Rogers’ Bathrobe

2011-09-19T11:41:00.001-04:00

Thank you all for your very kind comments on my fab new coat! While I was stitching away on that and tasting the sweet nectar of victory, this sweater was sprawled on the living room floor, taking three days to dry.

Somehow I keep ending up with this color yarn in my stash—it’s Ella Rae Classic 124, which I think they are optimistically calling “coffee” (if my coffee were this color, I would throw it down the sink) but which I will more accurately call “Mice”, or maybe “Old Wigs”. It is, actually, pretty much the exact color of my own hair as it turns from brown to gray, so could be I decide subconsciously that it will match me or something. Anyway, it’s sort of a taupe. (I am getting desperate for some color—must medicinally crochet a couple granny squares.)

You might be able to see here that it’s hanging off the dressmaker’s dummy like a bathrobe—note to self: always, always make the XS, even though self is not XS in any way. This is doubtless (as usual) my own fault, though I did make a gauge swatch, and I always think I need to lengthen the arms but then end up with built-in mittens when it’s way too huge. Most people would live and learn…anyway, even though it is the color of dishwater and has sort of a pipe-smoking grandpa vibe, I love it anyway. It completely covers my backside (hooray for small miracles!) and will go with everything I own. The pattern is Snowbird by Heidi Kirrmaier (look how nicely hers fits! Maybe I can do another one of these in oatmeal? Because I don’t have enough brownish cardigans!)

I also made the shirt:

This is The Minimalist Cowl by The Selfish Seamstress (see, I told you I was hooked!) I made it using a leftover piece of jersey—the other shirt I made using the rest of it met an early demise after tangling with some olive oil.

Look, it’s a nice, simple cowl top, rendered as though it came from Old Navy!

Obviously, I don’t know what I’m doing with sewing t-shirt fabric. Well, practice and learn, right? I don’t even want to tell you that it only has three pieces to sew together, but I still had to pick out the same seam twice to get it right. It’s a simple pattern, but I am just that way.

The Elton Coat, finished

2011-09-18T15:25:00.001-04:00

Score! I love the sweet smell of success. Look what I made!

As I’ve said before, I am not so big on following a pattern, and most of the time I get away with it because either I’m knitting (which I have pretty well figured out) or because whatever it is I’m cobbling together doesn’t really have to fit somebody when I’m finished. Not so, of course, with sewing clothes, so when the time came to turn a piece of satiny furniture upholstery fabric into something I could wear, I went and got McCalls 5525, on the advice of MaryMargaret, who had seen a beautiful coat made from that pattern by The Selfish Seamstress (that blog is my new favorite thing. I keep laughing right out loud, making my family keep saying, “What is so funny over there?”) and thank you all for your fantastic suggestions! I kind of want to make one of each of them now. Well, I just might, you know me.

I decided on this pattern because it looked like the one I would need to do the least amount of tinkering with. My seamstress tinkering skills are not really up to code. I’m thinking of the difference between a cook who always uses a recipe and follows it to the letter, and someone who just knows what will work and just tosses stuff in the pot, with lots of sniffing and tasting and adjusting. The recipe cook will probably make a nice dinner, and it’ll taste pretty good, no complaints. But the cook who really knows her ingredients and techniques, and can use a recipe as a jumping-off place—she just might end up with something wonderful. Of course, it could also end in some kind of huge mushroom cloud, but she takes the chance, right? Well, with sewing clothes, I’m still pretty much a recipe cook, but I have aspirations to the next level of mastery.

This thing just gripped me in its jaws and would not let me loose! For the past two days, I have done hardly a thing besides pin, baste, iron, and stitch this jacket. I missed a couple meals, and may have lost a couple pounds, too, although some of that may have been water weight, due to the flop-sweats I suffered while putting in the buttonholes. Buttonholes intimidate me. This tutorial was a huge help. Full disclosure: two things kind of went wrong with it, both of which were my own fault and which I had coming to me (see discourse above, re: me not following the pattern) and which happened mainly because, looking at Elaine’s coat, I made the early decision that I wanted mine to have, like hers, a slim fit, and that to make that happen, I should “take it in at all the seams.”

I mentioned I’m a recipe cook?

It’s too small for me. I know! My own fault. There was plenty of fabric, and if I had just made it in the size I am, which is the size I cut out anyway, before I sewed it together with an astounding seam allowance, it would have fit and been great. So that’s the first thing that went awry, the second being that knowing it was going to be too small, I failed to make the lining as small as the outside part of the coat. I know! What an idiot! I knew it was wrong, as I was sewing the lining with a more realistic seam allowance, and I could visualize the bunching, and also the wailing and rending that would follow after I painstakingly hand-hemmed everything and tried to put it on, but I just couldn’t stick to my guns. So the lining is a little bunchy at the hem and the sleeves and back are tight.

It’s so tight, I can’t wear it to the symphony (like I was ever going to do that!) because I can’t clap my hands. I probably couldn’t even turn the pages of my program. If I wear it too long, my arms will fall asleep! I can’t even put it on in the first place without performing a couple advanced yoga postures, and I’ll need the help of a lady’s maid…I tried to put it on by myself and pulled a muscle in my neck…

I exaggerate. Actually, I think it really looks pretty great. I said I wanted a fitted back, and boy, did I ever get one. Look at that! Oh man, I love that. It looks just like I wanted it to look.

This thing fits me like a glove. This is a garment with structure. This is a coat that makes me feel like I hang out with Lord Byron. This is a coat a girl wears if she doesn’t mind suffering a little for the sake of looking fabulous. If only I didn’t need to move my arms.

Don’t forget to look at the lining! Whoo, that’s so pretty. So here’s what I did: I started with McCalls 5525, intending to make the long version, minus all the flaps and tabs and epaulets (for heaven’s sake!) and so I cut it all out and sewed some of it together. Then I decided I’d rather have the hip-length version, so I chopped the ends off all the body pieces—which, surprisingly, didn’t come back to haunt me at all. And then I pretty much left my family to fend for themselves while I put the entire coat together in a two-day marathon of sewing. Dishes piled up, they ordered pizza, and now I have this.

I feel like a rock star. I think Elton would be impressed.

The Last of the Earflap Hats

2011-09-17T23:55:00.001-04:00

This photo shoot was so riddled with angst and egregiousness that I invested two bucks in a styrofoam head. The face is a little bit alien-looking, and the neck is almost as skinny as my wrist, but at least I don’t have to hunt around for somebody to take my picture every time I knit another hat.

This is another of my favorite earflap hats from Tiennie Knits, in KnitPicks Wool of the Andes “Dill Heather”, worked on US 5 needles. I have lost track of how many earflap hats I’ve made; I think it’s safe to say I’m all done with them now. There was one last person who wanted to feel the wind on his face but not in his ears, so this hat is for him, and I just have to tell you, this guy can run fifteen miles an hour (I dare you to try that) and at those speeds, the earflaps on this thing will be sorely tested. But it does look mighty cozy.

Distraction

2011-09-16T07:51:00.001-04:00

I am so easily distracted! This stuffed beach ball (why?) is so adorable and patchworky, and I have no power in the face of such things. The pattern is at the always seductive Purl Bee. I have three sweater/sweatery things this close to being done, but I see something clever and simple like this little ball (it comes in three sizes! Eeeeee!) and it only takes an hour, and I just can’t help it. Although, until a baby somehow wanders in the door (and none are imminent, are you kidding me?) this will sit on the shelf looking cute, and someday probably the dog will get ahold of it and that will be it. In other news, I have bought the pattern (Mary Margaret! That’s the one!) for the Elton coat, and today is the day. In fact, I’m chomping at the bit to get at it. See ya!

Coat Thinking, and Wool

2011-09-13T22:07:00.001-04:00

While the coat idea simmers away (and it is, oh, it is! I have lounged away almost an entire day scrolling through a whole new world of sewing blogs, penned by some extremely talented and superhilarious people who would surely scorn me and my slapdash ways—wait, it takes more than a day to finish a sewn garment? Huh…) and please don’t stop with the suggestions, if you still have them; I love to hear from you, and if this coat is a success (it could happen; it’s theoretically possible) then of course I will want to make ten more, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…anyway, while that whole thing has been percolating in my mind, I made this:

That’s 360 yards of handspun, from a few batts gifted to me by the always fabulous Debbie, giver of the Cody’s Lambswool. This is the hair of Liam, a charcoal ram of unknown parentage—Debbie adopted Liam from the Humane Society, and she doesn’t know what the heck he is. His wool is looooooong, though, and was a bunch of fun to spin. I think I’m getting the hang of the spinning! Debbie, you’re awesome. She gave me five more bags of wool, too, one bag of each of her flock. It’s getting wooly around here.

Big Idea

2011-09-12T09:49:00.001-04:00

The Great Ideas just bubble over, but this time I have not the skillz to make it happen on my own, so now I turn hopefully to you lovelies for some guidance. I have found this succulent piece of upholstery fabric, and it looks exactly like some weird, slippery chairs I saw years ago in the ladies’ room at a Chinese restaurant, so of course I bought it and brought it home. And I’m thinking it would make such a fantastic coat. Right? With some excellent pink floral cotton lining? I know! I’m jumping out of my skin right now, wanting to start cutting and sewing so I can wear the coat I have in my mind—I even know exactly which boots I’ll need to go out and buy somewhere, and the lacy knit scarf I can loop around my neck, and when my hair gets a bit longer, I will look. So. Fabulous! But I need a pattern for this one. (Aargh, if only I could knit a coat out of this fabric!) I scoured the archives at Angry Chicken, maker of all fantastic, vintagey children’s coats, but hers aren’t quite what I’m after. I want something along the lines of this, with no belt, all fitted in the back, in this gorgeous shiny gold brocade chair fabric. Actually, this is pretty close. (Tom Hulce, what have you been up to, anyway? I miss you…) I want to make Elton John turn and look at me with envy next time I see him. I want it to be the kind of coat that makes a girl want to throw out her entire wardrobe and start over, you know what I mean? The kind of coat that just spells out exactly who you are?

Of course, I’ll go over to the fabric shop, where I’ll sit hopefully with the pattern books, amidst the moms looking for Spongebob Squarepants Halloween costumes (why do I always want a new pattern right at Halloween time?) and I will search the books and maybe find something close. More likely, I’ll end up here, and that, my friends, is a daunting prospect.

If any of you amazing crafty peeps out there have seen such a coat pattern in your travels, would you please please leave me a comment? Thank you, I love you all.

Granny Circle

2011-09-11T17:45:00.001-04:00

Lately, I am loving the white doily, but I have such a creeping dread of ending up in a dusty house (full of cats, of course) with plastic flowers everywhere, a gigantic bottle of orange mouthwash beside the sink, and a doily on every flat surface.

No worries here; this simple and modern take on granny’s doily collection is so perfect. The worsted yarn makes it much less fussy, and though I admit to being gobsmacked by the delicate handwork in those teeny crochet doilies and I can’t imagine being able to see well enough anymore to accomplish one, it just isn’t my thing. This pattern is from Whit at The Purl Bee (oh my, I do love that place) and actually, it’s a placemat, which means I can make another—but only one more, because my table is so small that even three will overlap each other. Cozy living!

Folded Flower Bowls

2011-09-09T10:25:00.001-04:00

This was a very easy, very quick little sewing project. These are the Folded Flower Bowls from the book Sewing in a Straight Line by Brett Bara—in fact, check this out. These cute bowls were brought to my attention by my (blogless) friend Michelle, who has the best taste of anybody. These little things are so cute and so simple; they’re just a variation on the fabric trays made by tacking up the corners of a rectangle. It’s that, and then just one more step! Don’t even tell me you can’t do it, because you totally can.

There are three sizes, and they nestle together. I mean, come on! Isn’t that great? I bit the bullet and used some of my treasured Loulouthi fabrics for this set. Delish.

I had to do a little tinkering, because the written instructions produce results that don’t match the project photo, and the project photo is what makes you want to make these in the first place, so if you do a set of them, study the photo and then go ahead and make the easy adjustments.

I also made a couple using upholstery remnants. If you do this, you won’t need to bother with the interfacing.

These are all kinds of useful, or they’re simply pretty just sitting there empty.

La Boheme Chair, with Monogram Pillow

2011-09-06T07:45:00.001-04:00

This is a photo of my imaginary atelier in Paris. You have to mentally add the floor-to-ceiling windows yourself, but that’s easy enough. I think it’s mostly that La Boheme-ish chair that puts me in mind of being a French starving artist—it was a $5 junk shop find; the shop sold mostly VHS tapes and outdated sports equipment, so the potential for finding the perfect chair wasn’t very high, and I think we only stopped in there on a whim anyway, since the guy who runs that shop tends to sit around inside on an old couch chain-smoking and watching TV, which doesn’t make the stuff he’s selling very appealing, and I wasn’t even shopping for a chair—but we went in anyway (I once found the perfect coffeemaker in that shop) and there was the La Boheme chair, standing alone in the middle of a room, kind of up on this slowly revolving dais, with a spotlight on it, but the chainsmoking guy had marked it $50, and as I was leaving, casting one last longing backward glance at it, he said, “I’ll make you a deal on that chair.”

What kind of deal? I said.

I’ll give you that chair, plus those two drawings of the Argentinian dancers you were looking at, for twenty bucks.

Done.

It took a lot of Febreeze, and a whole lot of the deep kind of vacuuming I usually reserve for places where the cat sleeps, and even then, for awhile, there was a certain reluctance to sit in it, but I have overcome that now, because this chair is a delicious and comfy place to tuck up my feet and knit for awhile, oh I love it so, an now it sort of has our own family dirt on it, you know?

I made this pillow yesterday, and as soon as I’d finished it and tossed it on the chair, I knew it was a perfect match. That gold upholstery loves the hot pink, and the hot pink loves it right back. This cushion is made from a thrifted linen L.L. Bean dress and a scrap of hot pink velvet appliqued on with fusible web, then embroidered. Ooh la la!

edit: I forgot to tell you, the “J” is from a font called “Snidely.” Isn’t that just the best?

Raspberry Crush Handbag

2011-09-04T09:34:00.001-04:00

This is the Red Cross Bag from the lovely book Modern Log Cabin Quilting by Susan Beal. There are a lot of really tempting projects in that book, but this one really grabbed me. I love its simplicity, and I love how it looks like…well, like a real bag. I’m always fighting with this worry that my crafting will fall into that murky hole of craftiness, you know what I mean? Once, years ago, I bought a picture frame at a craft fair; one of those puffy padded fabric frames with the glued-on, scratchy plastic lace edging, where I lovingly placed my boyfriend’s school picture, and now I keep a scary visual of that thing right up in the front of my mind, so I never forget what not to do. Anyway, I think this beautiful and modern handbag is very far away from the padded picture frame of my nightmares—it is fantastic.

The log cabin blocks are made in corduroy, and the light/dark contrast is achieved by using the back side of the fabric for the first few courses of the block, and then switching over to the textured side to finish. Isn’t that just so clever? It’s all the same fabric, you just use the reverse side too. Wow, I love that. And, rather than go and buy new fabric, I went out and bought a (it must be said, tragically terrible) corduroy shirt at the thrift store.

It was an XL, so there was plenty of fabric. I cut the shirt apart and trimmed away the zipper and all the seams, then pressed the pieces.

Then I chopped them into strips, making sure to align the edge of the ruler with the wales of the corduroy, and pieced the log cabin blocks, using the teeny pieces first and adding the longer ones as the block got bigger.

The bag is lined with calico, and the button is covered with the same fabric. As usual, I had the most trouble with the strap (during which time the sewing machine actually had an opinion about the thread I was using! The audacity!) and at one point, I hollered in frustration and threw it across the room, prompting Dean to ask me if I was still having fun, but eventually, I conceded that I was going to have to stitch that part by hand, and the ship righted itself. Curling up in a comfy chair with a spot of handstitching and a creamy vanilla iced coffee is very soothing.

Alphabet Sampler c.1976

2011-09-02T20:42:00.001-04:00

I’m sure there are a ton of people out there working on this sampler (or maybe you’re all done with yours? I got a little sidetracked after the K) but it is every bit as beautiful as I hoped it would be. Alicia, you are a super-genius. This is Alicia Paulson’s Daisychain ABCs Sampler, which I made from a kit—if you haven’t gotten one of Alicia’s kits, you don’t know what you’re missing—and I fell so hard for it, right away. I thought the W was a little arduous, but it was worth it in the end.

The K is my favorite letter—something about that shape makes me think of Charlie Brown holiday specials, or maybe my fourth grade teacher, or, somehow, The Partridge Family. I kind of feel a little proprietary about the letter K, like it’s mine all mine. I’m even worse about my name, there’s almost an unwillingness to share it. What, I’m not the only Kristen in the world? Huh.

I magically had a frame to fit this all ready to go, so after an hour spent bending the ironing board with the effort of trying to press out all the wrinkles I’d put in this while working on it, I framed it up and hung it in the kitchen, where it looks completely, utterly perfect. Alicia, I love it. Thank you so much.

The Slouchy Hat of My Dreams

2011-08-31T19:33:00.001-04:00

I’ve wanted a hat like this what seems like forever. Not a hat to keep my ears warm in the winter (I have a million jillion of those) but a hat to cover up my hair. You know what I’m talking about, a hat for when it’s Saturday and there are errands to run, or for when you are doing as I am doing and trying to let your short hair grow a little and it really starts to look pretty awful. (Is that why I look so grumpy?)

There are “slouchy hat” patterns all over the place, but none of them were quite right, so I just went ahead and made this one up. The yarn is KnitPicks Palette in Green Tea (leftover from the Summertime Cardigan) and I used one ball and a little bit of another. I’m thinking you could maybe shorten the length by an inch or so and get away with one ball; then you could make this hat for $1.99. There are a ton of color choices there, too. Nice!

I’m sorry my expression is so grievous—I was probably thinking about all the weeds in the yard and how I am no fan of gardening but it’s fixing to eat up my entire weekend.

Anyhoo, if you’d like to make this hat, here’s how:

Materials: 1 ball (maybe plus a little) KnitPicks Palette fingering weight yarn, 16” circular needle US size 3.

Gauge: 6 stitches per inch

Cast on 120 stitches and join for working in the round. Place a marker and knit two rounds. Purl one round. Switch back to knit and work around until piece measures 2” from cast on edge. On the next round work an increase every 12 stitches. Work even in stockinette stitch until piece measures 4” from cast on edge, and work increase round again. Work even in stockinette stitch with no shaping until piece measures 12” from cast on edge (or until your yarn runs out—save enough to bind off.) Close the top of the hat with a three-needle bind-off and break the yarn, leaving a longish tail. Poke the needle through the work at the corner and bring it up on the inside. Turn the hat inside out and sew the two pointy corners together on the inside. Weave in the ends.

If you don’t like that seam on the back, you can Kitchener the hat closed instead of the three-needle bind off. Up to you! It was so easy, ridiculously easy. I want one in every color.

Cozy Nook

2011-08-30T19:20:00.001-04:00

I have caved to the pressure. I went out and got an e-reader. Something sort of scares me about these things, and I’m not one of those old girls who will tell you they don’t want to make the leap because they just love the smell of paper and all that, but jeez, books are just so easy. But you have to change with the times, right? Plus, it’s a gadget, and I can stitch a cozy little cozy for a gadget. Say no more!

It’s not really floating on water; that’s a glass-topped table. Cool effect, though!

This is my own modified version of a pattern found here, changed to suit the different dimensions of my gadget; 6.5” x 6”. It’s just a padded and lined envelope with a leather loop and vintage button closure. The lining fabric matches the strip on the front, and the cover is a scrap of oatmeal linen I had leftover from something else.

This was an on-the-fly project, so I think this is what I did: I think I cut the lining, the batting, and the linen to 6.5” x I dunno, longer than it needed to be—maybe 18”? Probably. Then I sliced off one end of the linen and patched in that piece of contrast fabric, and then lined up the outside piece and the batting and quilted them together “in the ditch” along the contrast patch. Then I folded each piece short-wise, seamed up the sides of both pieces, tucked one inside the other (pinning the leather loop in place—between the layers, loop side down, on the back side of the envelope) cut away the extra length at the top edge (maybe an inch?) and stitched around the top edge. Then I clipped a small hole in the bottom edge of the lining fabric, turned it right side out through that hole, pressed everything, and stitched the hole shut on the right side. Then I tucked the lining inside the bag, pressed it again, topstitched around the opening, and sewed on the button. That’s it!

Baroque Poet’s Cardigan

2011-08-27T18:44:00.001-04:00

Are you a middle-aged librarian with a wardrobe full of age-inappropriate dresses from Forever 21 and super-long arms? Or maybe you’re looking for just the layering piece to go with your high-necked Oscar Wilde ruffle blouse and colonial jodhpurs? Either way, this is the sweater for you!

I have long harbored the dream of doing a sweater from the sheep on down, and short of raising a sheep myself and learning to shear him (my friend Debbie did all that dirty work for me, and gave me this beautiful fleece) I have done it. I made this sweater myself, in every way possible.

There was a lot of spinning; the fleece never seemed to get any smaller, but I was getting a lot of yarn out of it. Looking at the not-diminishing pile of fleece, Dean said, “Why does the world even need more than just the one sheep?” Eventually, I started knitting--without knowing where I was really headed—a pattern I made up as I went, beginning with measuring myself and working a top-down cardigan with no front increases. I originally knit the sleeves with a ruffled cuff and right away knew that was wrong, so I unraveled that and then finished the body of the sweater with no clear idea in mind about the edging. But it had to be something good, something more than just ribbing or seed stitch. It had to be something befitting all the hours Cody, Debbie, and I had put into the project. Oh yeah, I love crochet! That’s it!

I settled on an edging from this book, and crocheted it in rounds all the way around the sweater body, centering one of the points at the back neck and figuring out the front corners on the fly. Then I did the cuffs too, knowing it would make them ridiculously long and not being one bit sorry. I love love LOVE how it turned out! This sweater is dressy and romantic. It is more than just a cardigan.

After it was all done and the ends were sewn in, I knew it needed blocking, and I was scared to death to put it in the water—Cody’s Lambswool wants to stick to itself so bad—but it survived a quick dunk in room temp water before laying flat to dry. Blocking is key, people, don’t skimp on the blocking. It’s the difference between handmade and homemade.

Makes me want to go off and write a bunch of poetry or something.

Hand-pieced Hexagon Pillow

2011-08-26T12:28:00.001-04:00

I don’t know how many more porch-sitting days we’ll get this summer, but I never stop hoping for at least one more. (Today isn’t one of those days, though. It’s pretty gloomy out there this morning. Maybe later, though, right? I’m making some lemonade, just in case.)

I finished this pillow cover today, after what felt like a hundred million years of hand sewing, and believe me, I am not one to shy away from a long-term project, nor a lot of hand sewing, either. I don’t know what it is about these hexagons that makes me love them—and also hate them—quite so much. And I don’t know what can make them take so loooooong. They are so much fun, but they’re so ennervating. They’re enchanting, but frustrating. They’re dear, but they are still there, after a week of sewing. I don’t know what to make of it.

I’m also not sure what possessed me to make this pillow cover (yes I do) especially when I already had this:

…which I made two years ago, on a machine, in about an hour. How different are they, really?

Wait, I see it. Yes, the hexagon one is definitely great. I get it! Can you believe I didn’t get it until it was done, until I looked at the two of them together? The whole time I was sewing, and love/hating the hexagons, I was thinking, “Why am I doing this? I already have a pillow that looks just like this!” I see now. I do have a boundless love for anything patchworky, and this falls right into that category, so therefore I couldn’t help myself, and now I’m glad.

Road Trip Socks, With Cat

2011-08-23T18:29:00.001-04:00

These socks have lingered unfinished long enough, and I finally got back around to them yesterday, three weeks after they were all done except the toe. Who knows why that last toe is a stumbling block for me, but it is. So close to being finished, but I stuffed them in a bag and went on with other things. These are my usual plain stockinette socks which I usually start when I’m faced with a long road trip (hatehatehate) done on US 1 needles and 60 stitches. The yarn is from my dwindling stash of Koigu KPPPM and the colorway is something lyrical like P865 or whatever—actually, it’s a number I can’t remember, because of course I’ve lost the ball band. (I know. I don’t know what to do with me, either.)

The cat, who already knows his girl has left home and is feeling it deeply, would not leave me alone.

Poor boy. I know, I miss her, too.

Since the color geniuses at Koigu refuse to be fanciful, I’ll name this one for them: let’s call it “Withering Hydrangeas.”