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.

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.

knit-o-rama

I've been a knitting fiend since my last post. I made a little baby hat for Eden (Lorne's cousin's daughter, who just turned one and is adorable) but I failed to take a picture of it before giving it to her for her birthday. Here are some other things I've been working on though.

Big Red:
I finally have a better picture of the big red purse. You can see the knit pattern a little better in this one.

Outside of purse.


Purse innards.

I love the fabric I found for the lining. I want to make more things that are red and orange just so I can use more of it. Anyway, all that's left for this one is to attach some handles and some sort of closure for the top (if it needs it).

Less Big Blue:
I knit a chunk of fabric up in this pretty blue/teal color with some parallelograms on it. Guess what it will be? Surprise, another purse. I can't decide whether to line it with stripey pink fabric or stripey blue fabric. I also made this one a little smaller than the red one.

Beginnings of blue parallelogram purse.

Baby Blanket:

I have the border completed! And a few rows of the center.


Close up of blanket.

I still can't get a good picture of the yarn color. It's a really soft buttery yellow...pretty much nothing like what it looks like in the pictures.

Cleaves:
Sleeve one is almost complete!


Lying flat.


Up close.


On a weird looking lady.

I hear the pointy-sticks-coming-out-of-your-arm look is in this fall.

cleaves and other things

I finally started working on Cleaves, the project from Knitty that I told Lisa I would make for her for her birthday. In February. This is what the finished item will look like. I, however, only have part of one sleeve.

Here is sleeve #1. No, that is not my hairy arm holding it up, that is Dr. Lorney's hairy arm.

Part of the reason I waited so long to start it was the whole wedding thing...planning a wedding obsessively took away from a lot of knitting time. But mainly I was afraid of knitting in the round. The tutorial I read about knitting in the round (ie, knitting with five short pointy sticks instead of two long ones) said that at first, it felt a lot like "knitting with an unruly hedgehog in your lap," but that after that you got used to it. Well, they were right about the first part. It totally felt like knitting with an unruly hedgehog in my lap. They lied about the whole "it gets better" thing. I'm going faster, but I still stab myself with the needles I'm not using repeatedly. It wasn't anything to be afraid of though. I'm considering trying to make a pair of socks after I'm done with this.

This, however, is my hairy arm.

I also decided that knitting some purses would be neat. I saw a bunch of cable knit purses on Craftster and thought they looked neat, but I'm not a huge fan of cables. So I knit up the fabric for a purse in this funky pattern.

The beginnings of a purse.

However, because I am a terrible photographer, you can't really see how neat the pattern is. This is what it looks like in real life:


I need to get something interesting to line it with and attach some handles, but it knit up pretty quickly and that pleases me. Both this and the thing for Lisa are knit with Lamb's Pride Bulky. I love Lamb's Pride Bulky. It's easy to knit with, it looks pretty, it's soft, it comes in millions of colors (okay, not millions, more like 30, but whatever), and it's readily available. Well, it was in Seattle. Only one store in San Diego sells it (Needlecraft Cottage, the only store worth visiting in Pacific Beach), which annoyed me, but two stores in Encinitas supposedly have it, which makes moving up there a little more attractive to me. But anyway, back to the crafting.

Lastly, here is a picture of the finished purse from the last post.


As you can see, I have attached the second handle and filled it with my junk. It fits my giant wallet, keys, checkbook, cell phone, requisite deck of cards, various lip moisturizers and colorants, and compact pretty well. I give myself two thumbs up.

things I am working on

Thing 1:
Our friends Michael and Megan are going to have a baby. Well, Megan will give birth to the baby, but they will both be in possession of the baby after it is born. I like Michael and Megan a lot and I suspect I will like their baby a lot as well, so I am making them a baby blanket. Specifically, I am making the "Big Bad Baby Blanket" from the Stitch N Bitch book. They don't know the sex of the baby and I am too slow a knitter to wait around for that sort of information, so I chose a neutral buttery yellow colored yarn. Here are some poor quality pictures for you!

Here are the first 10 rows or so. I have more than that now, but I am too lazy to take another picture.


Here is the ball of yarn I am making it from. As you can see, it is bigger than my head!

Thing 2:
This is the first purse I have attempted to make. I made up a shape I thought would look neat and drew a "pattern" on some wax paper I had in the kitchen, cut it out, and went at it. I put a layer of felt between the outer and inner fabric because the interfacing I had didn't feel sturdy enough. I still need to attach the other handle, but after that it will be done.

This is the front of the purse (or the back...they're identical). I sewed the ribbon on there and attached the handle with the ribbon as well.


This is the inside of the purse. I found the awesome old-timey map fabric remnant at Joann Fabrics for $2.

I may have been a little ambitious for my first purse...not using a pattern...attaching the handles with weird pieces of ribbon...and many other things that resulted in my ripping out a lot of seams and re-sewing them, but I learned a lot (I think) and it actually looks pretty cool (I think...if you don't think so, please keep your opinions to yourself so I can continue thinking that I am awesome).