a short break from totes

Andria is getting married at the end of the month and thought the knit clutches I make would be a nice gift for her bridesmaids. I took a break from all the tote bags I've been making recently to knit these up for her.



The pink one seems to change color depending on the light. I took this picture last night as soon as I'd attached all the handles.



And then took this one (and all the others that come after this one) this afternoon when I stopped at home to pick up the bags I was shipping out tonight. Interesting.



I like the lining for this one. It's cherry blossoms with little birdies on them, though I think the way this one turned out, there's only one bird showing (and not in this pictures).



Here's the red one. I like the way the stripes turned out on it.



And the innards for the red one.



And the green one. I guess this one looks different in the daylight as well.



And the lining for the green one.

It was nice to take a break from all the sewing - the way our living room is set up, my sewing area is perpendicular to the television so I can't really watch anything while I work, but when I knit I can sit in front of the TV while I work. These were made while watching lots of Law & Order, Deadwood, and the Jason Bourne trilogy. It's fun to be a productive couch potato.



The cats have a new fun game to play. It's called run in front of the camera every time I'm about to take a picture. I think this is George.

fetch!

I made a post the week before going to Boston mentioning that I was making a pair of fingerless gloves. I finished before going to Boston, and wore them there when my fingers were cold, and then failed to take a picture of them. And now that I've taken a picture of them, it's officially too warm to wear them in San Diego. (Really, there's only like a five week window of "winter" where knitwear is necessary, and it's only necessary if you've lived here long enough to acclimate to the climate. "Winter" here is very much like late spring in Seattle.)

Anyway, here is a picture that proves how unnecessary they are right now.



That's my hand. In front of a blooming cherry blossom tree. It's been like 70 here for the past week.

So if you look at the original pattern, you can see that there are three twisty cables around the model's wrist. If you take a look at the picture above, you can see (sort of) that I only have two twisty cables around my wrists. I apparently forgot to do the third set when I was knitting the first glove, and I didn't realize it until I got to the second, so I just made both with two cables instead so they'd match. They still were long enough to make it up into my coat sleeve, so they served their purpose.

ALSO! Stay tuned this month, I made a (small) mistake in sewing a (small) tote bag a few weeks ago (I used black straps instead of teal). When I finish my totebag making extravaganza, I'll have some sort of giveaway of the mistake bag. I also need to figure out how to run a contest through the blog, since I haven't done that before.

The giveaway will not be this bag (which I have been using for myself for the last week), but it will be similar to this bag:



As you can see here, they are good for holding paperback books and all other sorts of crap:

fetching

I've been planning on making fingerless gloves for awhile. Long ago, before I could knit in the round, I worked in an office in Seattle. They moved my team to the top floor, which had gone uninhabited for several years. We moved in the winter and the heat never really got going, but the air conditioner worked well enough in the spring and summer that I used a fleece blanket year-round at my desk. When I wasn't typing, I stuck my non-mouse-using hand inside the blanket. I refused to buy fingerless gloves for typing because I could, in theory, make them if I took the time to teach myself knitting in the round. But alas, I was lazy.

Last year I saw this pattern on Knitty. I'd started to knit my first project in the round (which I should make a post about another day...it went horribly, horribly wrong) and I had some pretty alpaca yarn from Churchmouse (an awesome yarn and tea store on Bainbridge Island, in Washington) that I'd bought purely because it was pretty and soft, but I got distracted. Then it was too warm out to think of needing fingerless gloves.

I've only really attempted cables once before, a few years ago when I thought about knitting a cabled scarf for my sister. I decided I hated the yarn I was using though (it wasn't soft enough and it made a weird noise on my needles) and bound off after a few inches, making a weird cuff thing which I then used to torment my cat.



Poor Gracie.



So this is my first real attempt at cables and my first real attempt at gloves. As strange as this may sound, I don't usually knit things for myself. I have a big orange purse, a pink scarf, and a purple hat, but that's about it. But my hands have been cold at work lately and I'm going to Boston this weekend, so I figured I'd use my pretty blue alpaca yarn and finally attempt the Fetching pattern from Knitty.

Here's what I have so far.





I'm about halfway done with the left one. My pictures suck, as usual, but I seem to only do well with natural light and it's almost 11, so whatever. You can sort of see the cables. They look pretty nice in person, all twisty and even and such. I think the yarn is Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk, but I'm too lazy to go into the other room and read the label on the other skein. It's quite soft and nice to knit with. I'm excited about wearing them.

If you've never heard of an alpaca, here is a picture.



They're like super hairy llamas.

chianti clutch

Alishan asked if I could make a clutch similar to the one I made for Nicole, but a little darker.



So the yarn color on this one is called chianti. Oh wine. I'm going to miss you for the next nine months.



Somehow when I was cutting out the fabric for the innards, I cut two of them. Why? I have no idea. I've been making this bag/variations on this bag for about year now, but this is the first time I've done something so off. At least I just have an extra and didn't cut it half-sized or something instead. I'm going to blame little Hobo for sucking the smart out of my brains. (Hobo is our embryo...our friends are planning on teaching it the hobo ways, and I've eaten a lot of beef stew since finding out I was pregnant.)



I really need to learn about taking better pictures. These look sad compared to Kyle's pictures below.

I'm sorry if this blog seems a little disjointed. Again, I blame Hobo.

green clutch

I took a brief break from orders to finish up some bags I'm going to attempt to submit to a purse book. Eep! Kyle, my awesome photographer friend, is going to take some pictures for me so that my horrifyingly awful photography doesn't immediately disqualify my submission.



I really like this yarn color and I was ridiculously pleased with how this one turned out. At various stages of its creation I would hold it in front of Lorne's face to demand praise.



I was running out of yarn when I attached the handles. The deadline for book submission is mid-October, but I'm sending the bags up to Kyle in Seattle for photograhy, so I didn't really have a lot of time to spare. And I'm pretty sure this is one of the colors I had to order from the internets, not available in my local yarn stores (LYS, for the knitting nerds). I finished with three little scraps to spare. I was freaking out when attaching the last part of the second handle, I was afraid it'd be an inch short. But it wasn't. Phew.



P.S. The blue vinyl strips the clutch is sitting on are straps from a forthcoming tote bag. I was too lazy to move them.

apple cozy

You may find it hard to believe, but I've never made any sort of knitted cozy before. Unless you want to call hats head cozies or baby blankets baby cozies. But I don't, because that would be weird. Anyway, Kristen saw a picture of an apple cozy and asked if I could make one. I'm willing to try anything (craft-wise, that is), so I said sure.


objects may be less blurry than they appear

Once again, please excuse my horribly bad photography. This was knitted in the round, on five small double pointed needles. Every time I start something on dpns (that's the knitting community's way of saying "double pointed needles") I get really frustrated. I drop things like needles and stitches, both of which are important for knitting in the round. I stab my fingers and lap and eyes. I swear a lot. But once I get going I actually really like it. (I'm writing that down mainly so that next time I start a project on dpns and I'm angry and swearing, I can read that to remind myself that it gets better.)


I like the orange button.

When Kristen asked me to make this I'd never heard of such a thing before. I'm still not entirely sure what its function is, other than to make your apple cuter. But preliminary research has indicated that this cozy makes your apple 379% cuter than a naked apple. That's a lot of cute to resist. I might have to make one for myself.

In other news, today I ran to the craft store to get some green yarn to make the leaf. I had a hard time finding anything that actually looked leafy, and not like a neon light vomited in yarn form. The only color I found that actually looked okay was this brand:



Yes. That's Vanna White, of Wheel of Fortune fame. Yes, Vanna White has her own line of yarn. It's 100% acrylic, just like her.

P.S.

risque apple, flashing some stem

what's this?

Another purse? What a surprise. Lori from the Knot asked for a black knit purse. She said she liked stripes. Why, I also like stripes! So much so that I have a bunch of striped fabric all stockpiled for future purses and skirts and the like. Would you say that I have a plethora of striped fabrics? Yes, El Guapo. You have a plethora of striped fabrics. Anyway. She picked out the lining and away I went.



For the outside, I went with diagonal stripes. You know...to tie it all together or something.



And the inside. The lining fabric reminds me of a Mexican serape (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, click here or here). Which is why I started quoting the Three Amigos above. I'm not insane, really.

quick update

I'm sleepy and my legs ache, but today was productive and I would like to share some of the fruits of my labor.


Outside of the fuschia bag.

A girl I know from the Knot saw my blog and asked me to make a bag for her upcoming vow renewal. Nicole picked out the outer color, then I sent her pictures of fabrics that would compliment it. It turns out that one of the colors she's using is kind of a burnt orange, and I had a lining that would go well.


Some people say I could be a hand model.

She's going to add on some beaded handles herself, so my part is done. Hopefully she'll share a picture of what the end result is.

zigzag pillow

This is my little sister, Margie.


She graduated from high school a few weeks ago, in the top ten percent of her class - notice the little medal around her neck? What a nerd. I flew up to Seattle to see her graduate. My intent was to have her graduation present completed in time to give it to her then, but the woman on the airplane next to me was not terribly happy about my knitting needles, so I stuck them back in my bag and read a book instead. I probably wouldn't have finished it anyway, as it turned out to be more knitting than I thought it would be and I was around 5/8 done when I got on the plane.

Anyway, in the fall she'll be moving into the dorms. She picked this out as her bedding for her dorm room.

With my keen, orange-obsessed eye, I immediately spotted the tiny little orange stripes on the comforter. I decided to make this pillow for her dorm room.



In my head the pillow form I got wasn't much larger than some of the purses I've made lately, but in reality it was about twice the size.



I like the color a lot. It reminds me of construction signs and sunsets and Cheetos and orange juice, all things that are wonderful. Except maybe the construction signs.


Pillow propped up against sewing/knitting library.

long time no blog

I failed to update my blog for a long time, mainly because I am lazy. Anyway, Lorne is working on building a website for me to sell various vinyl and knit bags and pouches and other items. I'm working on stockpiling items so there will be inventory to sell on the website.

But in the meantime, I made my first sale! I made a red clutch for my friend Tiffani for her birthday last year. Since then she's been getting a lot of compliments on it, so she asked me to make one for a friend of hers. Her only request was that it be kind of lavenderish. So this is what I came up with:



After I finished knitting it, it reminded me of rock formations in caves, so I'm calling it the stalactites and stalagmites bag.



I shipped it off to Tiffani this morning. I hope her friend likes it.

pursey goodness

I haven't posted pictures of things for awhile, but not for lack of making things. Well, I didn't make much after getting back from Seattle on Monday night. I started a scarf on the airplane with some really pretty Jo Sharp yarn I got at Churchmouse on Bainbridge, and I worked on nothing but that all week, only to find on Saturday that I hadn't bought enough yarn for how wide a scarf I wanted. This is why I need to plan projects out before I just go buying pretty yarn willy nilly. Now I have to scour San Diego for Jo Sharp yarn.

Anyway, here are some new things:

tealy blue vinyl purse with birdy cut out
I enjoyed working with the vinyl. Vinyl is fun. But I used a normal needle on this and normal thread, and I suspect I should have used a leather needle and upholstery thread. I have purchased those items for my next adventure with vinyl. I'll keep you posted.


innards of birdy purse (the pocket is a little high)


red clutch for Tiffani


innards of red clutch (I haven't attached handles yet)


blue parallelogram purse


and the innards


finished big red (Heidi's birthday present)


the wood is not so glaringly white in real life


and the innards


green purse with pink ribbon thing


better image of pink ribbon thing


innards of green purse with pink ribbon thing (this one still needs handles too)


this will be pretty much like the big red one, but orange


and pretty much like the teal one, but green and with different stripey lining

Also:
Living in a one bedroom apartment and using that one bedroom to sleep in and store things like clothing and a bed means that the dining area has become my sewing area. And it's become a rather messy sewing area. All the fabric I buy tends to stay in the bag it came in on the dining room table or on one of the dining room chairs. I have a big brown bag of yarn in a closet (with a tear that is ever-increasing in size) and another plastic bag of yarn on the shelf above the brown bag. My ribbons sit in a pile on the table, finished or half-finished projects are usually on the ironing board, and all my little supplies, like my pin cushion and lint brush I use to clean the sewing machine are wherever I sat them after using them last. Thread and bobbins are in a drawer in the living room (when I leave them out the cats like to eat the string). After finding Gracie fast asleep in my swath of interfacing on Saturday, I decided that I need to organize things.

Much of Sunday was spent hobbling (thanks to my messed up ankle) around the cavernous innards of Target and Home Depot for organizing and making supplies. We got some big plastic bins (one for yarn and one for fabric) and a little plastic drawer thing at Target (along with lots of various other non-craft-related crap), and some wood, sand paper, and varnish stuff at Home Depot (after spending about a half hour trying to find the dowels) for purse handles. I also got a utility knife. Yay!

Perhaps I will post before and after pictures of the clean up effort. Perhaps not.