I'm making this up as I go along

I recently learned how to make a crocodile stitch. Then, because I hate to do anything the way that I've been taught, I adapted it to work in the round to make several pairs of mittens:

For my next project, I wanted to do a cowl, but I had in my head the idea of making the crocodile stitches taller, to resemble feathers. I had this yarn that I had bought with the intention of making a shawl, though what pattern I had in mind has escaped me.

I still liked how the colors looked together though, so I went back to the drawing board to figure out how to make the stitches look the way I pictures. After a few tries, I got the first two rows of my feather stitch completed. It was suggested at this point that maybe I was making a Kermit the Frog costume.

But I forged ahead anyway, confident that eventually it would start to look the way I envisioned.

This project took about 2 weeks (the feather/crocodile stitches take a long time and use a LOT of yarn), but it is finally finished. Yay!  

The perils of workplace knitting

I bring my knitting to work, where it mostly sits on my desk all day because I am too busy to knit, but I bring it to lunch and use that time to decompress.  My co-workers mostly think I am weird.  Except for the ones that want me to knit things for them.

Recently one of my co-workers came to work wearing a simple hand knit shawl that fastened with a button, and my boss asked if I would make one for her.  Seemed easy enough.  She picked out and bought the yarn.  Her one concern was that the model on which I was basing my project was knit in stockinette, and curled at the edges, and she wanted hers to lay flat.

In my infinite wisdom, I decided that I would knit the shawl in seed stitch.  Which was fine, for the first 1/3 or so of the project...and then, it got incredibly boring.  Brilliant move!  I finally made a serious push to finish this after it had languished in my wips for 3 weeks, and knit half of it in 3 days.  Go me!

And I have to admit, it came out really nice. Soft, squishy and warm.  And my boss is happy, which can't be a bad thing, right?

The making of a sweater coat

About a year ago, my mother asked me if I would knit her a sweater. She told me she wanted it to be super colorful.  She told me she wanted other people to look at her and wonder what the hell she was wearing. She told me she wouldn't care, because she could wear what she wanted, and what she wanted was a "coat of many colors."

Foolishly, I agreed.

My original idea was for a sort of patchwork effect. So I started by making up a chart for myself:


This worked out okay, and I liked the overall look of it, but had tension issues, resulting in some gaps between the colors, which I wasn't happy with.



Also, I needed to invest in some bobbins, because this got old, real quick.


I tried doing some stripes, instead, but that did not appeal to me and I didn't even take any pictures of that step.

I wanted a more random looking color pattern, than what I was seeing with the stripes, so I took the lengths of yarn that I had from the first incarnation of the sweater and russian joined them together, until I had a nice ball of yarn and then started knitting.  When I ran out of yarn, I would put together another magic ball, and then knit some more. This was time consuming, but I was very happy with the end product:


Also, clearly, matching buttons was not going to work, so I went out and bought 7 different sets of buttons, and used 1 of each.





Perfect.

This was definitely a labor of love, that I am unlikely to repeat, but it was worth it when I got this picture of my mom, wearing her sweater.

She tells me all of friends want to know where they can get one, and she tells them they can't. Unless they have a crazy knitting daughter.

From the folder of good ideas

For some reason I decided to knit an afghan. I honestly don't know what I was thinking.  6 down, 94 to go.

Stripey Scarf

I always like those striped scarves with a solid color and a coordinating self-striping color, so when I saw these yarns, I knew exactly what I wanted to make.  Buying a yarn with a specific project in mind is more rare than I should probably admit, but it's always nice when these things work out exactly as you intended.

Stash busting hat

This past year, I have been trying to use some of my long stashed yarns. This is some wool/soy silk self-striping yarn that has been in a drawer forever and finally became a cute child's hat. I think I had intended this yarn to be a scarf at one point, but somehow misplaced the rest of the yarn...so we make do with what we have. 

A project comes together at last

Some time ago, I bought this really cheap cone of mohair yarn.  It was really cheap because it was a hideous mustard yellow color.  The-70's-called-and-they-want-their-yarn-back kind of mustard yellow.  And I was thought, "I can totally dye this another color and it will be awesome."  I threw some green dye on it, and well...the results were not pretty.  It looked like dead grass.  So, it sat in my yarn stash for a while, mocking me.  Then I thought, "Maybe it will looks less hideous once it is knit."  For future reference, if you find yourself saying this, your project is probably not off to a good start.  Then I knit this hood.  And it was still awful.  So back into the dye pot it went, this time, with copious amounts of dye, way more than I thought it needed.  And lo and behold, it actually came out pretty cool.  I am a sucker for a happy ending.

You want mittens? I got mittens.

I go through phases of making a lot of a specific item, so the last time I was in a fingerless mitten frenzy, I ended up making two or three (or a dozen or so) pairs.

Beachy - hand knit in self striping acrylic blend yarn

Cabled steel - crocheted, cabled mittens in acrylic yarn

Chain Mail - crocheted in wool/acrylic blend yarn

Dawn - crocheted in self-striping acrylic yarn

Evergreen - crocheted in wool yarn

Last Midnight - crocheted in wool/acrylic blend yarn with sequins.

Orchid - hand knit in wool yarn

Snow Fort - crocheted in wool/acrylic blend yarn with sparkles

Starlight - Crocheted in self striping wool/acrylic blend yarn with sparkles

Sunset - hand knit in a subtly self-striping acrylic yarn

Swamp Thing - crocheted in a bulky acrylic yarn

Syrah - Crocheted in self-striping, wool/acrylic blend yarn with subtle sparkles

Turquoise flowers - crocheted in a wool/silk blend yarn

Twilight - crocheted in a chunky acrylic yarn

Check out which ones are still for sale in my etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/inlerah?section_id=10575420

Hand dyed sock yarn

I miss dyeing yarn. There's something to be said for playing with color, and seeing how things turn out.   So here's a few of my experiments:

Autumn.  I like the mixture of autumnal colors, with the bit of slate blue.  I haven't had a chance to knit anything up with this one, but should be pretty.

First Light.  Bright turquoise really stands out against the lavender, steel blue and chestnut.

Peppermint. Mostly red, with patches of creamy natural white.

Seascape. Pretty oceanic colorway.

Christmas baking is on

I made these pumpkin spice cookies with a light orange icing today. I didn't make enough icing though. They're pretty good, even if they do look like they were decorated by the 2 year old. (They weren't. That's all me, baby.)

Craft fair aftermath

Today is for cleaning up and reorganizing after the craft fair this weekend. Then I need to work on finishing my Christmas presents.

My First Canned Applesauce

A few weeks ago, we went apple picking. At the entrance, you buy a bag, in your choice of the sizes. My companions asked what size we should get, and I said, "medium," figuring that would give us enough to make a pie or two,  maybe a little applesauce and eat a few.

I was distracted by something for a moment and when I turned around,  we had purchased 2 medium bags.

Here we are, three weeks later, with most of a bag of apples nearing the end of their natural lifespan. So I made my first ever attempt at canning, and have 3 jars of sauce cooling on the counter. Yum!

Consistency is a curse

Note to self: re-learn how to spin worsted weight yarn. Feel like I will never finish plying.

Can we fix it?

I've started cross stitching again, and what better way to return to the craft than by charting and stitching a snarky sampler for a friend? Weirdly, tiny hammers were easier to find than tiny liquor bottles, so I had to make do with martini stickers, but I'm pleased with the overall look.

Organizing my space

Now I have room for dyeing and the drum carder has a home. Already working on overdyeing some less than exciting yarns and fibers. Feeling productive this morning.

Spinning BFL / mulberry silk

Some more singles that I finished recently.   This fiber was hand-dyed by me and is probably one of my favorite blends to spin. It's so soft and shiny.

Spinning

I was very productive yesterday.  Spun singles from 8 ounces of fiber in two colors.

First up is targhee in the Blackberry colorway from Abstract Fibers

Next is some BFL in the Twilight colorway, also from Abstract Fibers. 

Companions x- stitch

Working on this little cross stitch piece. All done except for the back stitching. Gah! Back stitching is such a pain.

Handspun yarn

Did a little spinning this week. The green one is cormo with some BFL corespun randomly through it. A bit of an experiment for me, which mostly worked.  The other is merino, cashmere and mulberry silk in the Cathedral colorway from Frabjous Fibers. Yum!