AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

not quite speed knitting

I'm rapidly reaching the finish line on Cria, which I started for the Loopy Ewe Q2 challenge (knit something with cotton in it). I have wanted to use Riveting, Kollage's yarn line made out of recycled blue jeans, pretty much ever since I saw it, so this was a great opportunity.

Of course, because I didn't modify Cria for length, I won't be machine washing and drying the finished sweater. Machine washing and drying is supposed to shrink up the row gauge, much like you see in other denim yarns (I thought it would be different, because it was recycled and theoretically had been washed and dried many times, but according to Kollage not so much). Not a big whoopsie, but if I use this yarn I'll keep it in mind if I want to try out the machine washing and drying!

As I near that finish line, I am thinking about my next project. I'm bringing Color Affection (my Camp Loopy project 1) with me to Squam which is in just under a week. I can hardly wait. This weekend will be packing and making cookies and doing all sorts of prep work. I will admit that I'm looking forward to a few days off from work. You'd think the holiday weekend would make that feel less awesome, but Squam Art Workshops is such a great experience. Even more than going to knitting (which I've missed for fun reasons for the past couple of weeks), this is a group of "my people."

Tonight is Pints & Purls at Gather Here, which is the perfect spot for finishing my sleeve (last one) and doing the pockets. I'm putting fabric buttons on my Cria even though there are (at last calculation) 19 buttons. I think that the dusky grey blue fabric needs a little enlivening up. I'm not sure if I want to pick a brighter fabric, or maybe make my buttons out of a softer more feminine fabric. I could see making them with lace and a light gauzy lining fabric. There are tons of options!

[10 Tuesday] summer goals

This week's 10 for Tuesday is goals for the summer. I don't know how it is in other areas, but growing up in Old Orchard Beach summer "began" on Memorial Day weekend. It was the first big tourist weekend, so we were all pretty much either going to the beach or working at one of the various businesses (I worked at Venetias, a Greek restaurant).

Nowadays, it means usually that if I haven't gotten off my butt to plant things in my garden (I almost air quoted that too), that I'm really running out of time.

My goals are pretty modest this summer.

1. Continue being good about my sugar intake. At the beginning of May I stopped eating sugar and sugar substitutes. I dropped the fast on Saturday, because I was going on a chocolate tour with a friend, but started right back up the following day.

2. Walk more. Not necessarily a lot more, but each day I should probably get at least 2-3 miles of dog walking even if I don't do anything else. I don't need everyday to be like yesterday, when I walked Victor over 4 miles and then walked the 3 mile round trip to the grocery store (it has a great salad bar for lunches).

3. Finish things. I have a sweater that I'm making for Squam that I'm well on the way to finishing, but it is a new sweater. I need to work on some of my old sweaters that I put aside years ago. Without thinking too hard (or checking Ravelry) I can think of at least 3 that I either started this spring or years ago.

4. Sewing. I have a tote bag I want to line, and I need to cut and sew facial features and finish the accessories for the doll I made in the Design your own Stuffies class. If I want to make more stuffies, especially with the sherpa fleece, then I should get a graduated awl. Abby said it was the best tool for pulling the fleece that gets caught in the seams out, and making it fluffy again (otherwise, it looks like you have bald patches).

5. Skirt Week. I want to sign up for Skirt Week at Gather Here, but that might have to go the way of the dodo for me. I'm going to be auditioning in the next few days for Into the Woods. I don't know what the rehearsal schedule will be like at the end of July. Ooops, never mind. Skirt Week can only be done if I don't get into the show. The last week of July would be tech week.

6. Make a separate stuffy for my hubby. It was part of the requirements for taking the class, and I don't know if he likes the one I have from class to count as good enough.

7. Clean the craft room. I made a start on that this weekend, but I need to change how my sewing machine is set up and get some kind of basket or container for the larger sweater projects. I started the Ella Coat during the Knitalong, but I needed to work on it exclusively when I was home. That, in part, didn't happen, because I had too many balls of yarn that I'd need to carry back and forth.

8. Finish some gift knitting. Can't say more.

9. Take the garden planter thing I picked up a couple of weeks ago and refinish it. I took it from near someone's trash, and it has been outside this entire time. I want to sand it a bit, varnish or paint the wood, and add a fabric covered ironing board and then place it in the craft room. Part of my problem now is I don't have a safe place to iron. My ironing surfaces are all nice tables or card tables (with easily melted plastic).

10. Take more naps. I don't seem to sleep too well at night (though this morning's 3:40 a.m. wakeup was in part from my sunburn), so I pretty much need naps at least a couple times a week to stop myself from being a Grumpasaurus Rex.

I'm pretty sure I won't be getting all of these things done over the summer. I'm doing the virtual Camp Loopy again, and get to start my first project (Color Affection, which might be the only non-sock knitting I bring with me to Squam) as soon as I finish Cria. This takes up a fair amount of summer craft time, but it is a lot of fun! I also work well with deadlines.

Taking a class with Abby Glassenberg

For the past 2 Mondays, I have been taking this awesome class at Gather Here with Abby Glassenberg (While She Naps). The class, Design your own stuffed animals, has been a blast. We came in with some ideas (or not) and Abby greeted us with freezer paper and tons of reference materials from catalogs to childrens books to animal guides. We got to see both one of her stuffies in pieces and a finished one in person and look at the way the seams were shaped.

Then we got down to drawing.

Now, I'm not the best artist no matter how many sketch books I've filled, so while the rest of the class were making manatees and hippos and narwhales, I created something sans limbs and I'm happy for it. The first class we went from a drawing, to creating a pattern and building a prototype. Abby walked each of us through adding gussets (in my case) to gussets and darts to create a three dimensional look. I loved it, and went home last Monday with a prototype and some homework.

Of course, procrastination is still my strongest suit, so I didn't get all of my homework done. So, I came into class last night and she went over the things that still needed to happen for people who needed to change part of their patterns. Because mine was so easy, there were no pattern changes, so I got to work with Sherpa fleece. I cut out pieces and carefully sewed them together. Maybe if I was quite so careful with the rest of my sewing projects they would look super cool and come out right more often.

I'm not quite done yet, but I'm getting there. I have an accessory that needs some ladder stitch (which is the same as mattress stitch except for fabric) and top stitching, and to cut and sew facial features. I probably won't get done until some time over the weekend, as I have deadline knitting to do as well. I already have ideas on how I can make more of the dolls, and some suggestions from Abby on creating the patterns. While mine was not necessarily as superbly awesome as the manatee made with quilting fabric (which created a beautifully patterned surface) or the roundness of the narwhale, I love it to pieces, and given the niche I live in (Japanophile who likes paranormal things), I'm sure I can make more of these either for just my friends or even for my sad Etsy store.

Abby gave us a ton of great tips from her favorite tools for stuffing (hemostats) to what she uses to pull a fleecy fabric like mine out of the seams (graduated awl). She had a lot of information about using fleece and designing and creating patterns with freezer paper. Of course, I have freezer paper ostensibly because I cook, but really because I had read about making stencils using freezer paper a few years ago. Now I enjoyed this enough and have enough ideas that I completely plan to make more items with my freezer paper. Though, next time I might graduate to limbs!

(I'd talk about what my design actually is, but I figure it will be a lot more fun to show off the finished one.)

Just a quick one: Word Realms!

I really want this game.

I spend a lot of my non-crafting free time playing Kingdom of Loathing (don't ask how many Avatar of Boris ascensions I plan on doing), and I love word games best of all games. This is on my list to support. Boo ya!

Now, it is off to work and then a sewing class. I really need to ramp up my sewing skills. Time to suggest a class to Virginia.

[10 Tuesday] to do lists

Today's 10 for Tuesday is 10 items on my spring to do list. Now, I don't have to do lists like that per se, but I do have a few things that I'm trying to get done by the end of the month. It will have to do.

1. Plant the pumpkins. While I do need to plant the rest of my seedlings, the pumpkins need to take precedence. They look supremely vigorous even in a blurry cell phone (or similar) picture. This is on the list tonight, even if I have to plant them in the dark after walking Mr. Victor.

2. Finish Cria. This is the sweater I'm doing for a Loopy Ewe challenge. I'm enjoying it, and I want to be able to wear it to Squam. However, it is cotton which isn't always happy for my hands and I haven't finished the body yet. I'm going to be hard pressed to get it all done!

3. Some other knitting. I have a couple of projects, including one that I need to somehow procure scraps (I estimate about 10 grams) of sock yarn in tons of colors. I'm not sure if I can get that project done before the end of June, but it is worth a shot. There are also a few gift knitting items that I would like done.

4. Camp Loopy starts at the end of May, and I think I'm going to do Color Inflection (Affection, Infection, Affliction, etc.). I've seen tons of them, and they are almost always awesome looking and I need a bigger shawl than the one at my desk.

5. Homework! I took Abby Glassenberg's Design Your Own Stuffed Animal class yesterday, and I have homework to do before the next session. The short answer is that the class was awesome, but worthy of a more complete write up.

6. Singing. I need to prep two 32-bar selections for auditions at the end of the month. I'm still waffling, which is a bad spot to be because I would like as much time as possible to relearn the music (some of it is music from shows I've been in, though not my part). Into the Woods is one of my favorite shows, and I would love to be in it. Heck, if they are doing it like the Wellesley HS production did it, then I would even happily be the cow!

7. Clean my craft room. It looks like a yarn bomb or yarnado invaded the room and just died there. I have absolutely no space to sew, because I have a project that I haven't finished cleaning up, and there are a few other things that are questionable. Fine, just bad. This is also the room that we used for the Christmas tree. It's still up, because we don't care and it is a tiny amount of corner space. However, part of me feels uncomfortable being the room with the tree still up. It's just weird.

8. Continue not eating any sugar. My fruit for sweets diet is still working fairly well, and I'm losing a small, but significant, amount of weight each week. Part of that is increased exercise (dog walking mostly) and smaller portions over all. However, the amount of weight lost is definitely high enough that my sugar habit was definitely a contributing factor to my weight gain.

9. Go Swimming. We have a membership to the local pool and while it is very affordable for a year, I would feel better if I managed to go at least once or twice a week. That hasn't happened in a while. The adult hours are a bit inconvenient.

10. Get some kind of netting or tulle to put over my strawberries. Unlike last year, I would like to eat more berries than I donate to the local wildlife.

Oh, and one last thing... a constant thing with our large yard. Mow, mow, mow!

Sunday afternoon delight

I am really bad about celebrating certain holidays. Yesterday was Mother's Day in the United States. I celebrated (if you can call it that, because I was bad and didn't call my mom) by buying top soil, puttering around in the garden, doing some lawn mowing, walking a dog and adding lady bugs to my yard.

It wasn't all work though.

We have wildlife.

There were birds.

Well, more birds than that.

And a dog.
It was a gorgeous day, and I pretended I knew what I was doing by hardening off my small number of seedlings on the picnic table and watching the dog, the birds and enjoying some sun.

This year in my pathetic attempt at a garden (#3), I'm growing Swiss chard, habanero and red bell peppers, ornamental pumpkins on a stick, and two different kinds of non-ornamental pumpkins. I'm growing the pumpkins in the compost heap with a little added top soil to give them a little more to root in. Everything else is going in my tiny grow bed.

Last night after we watered the lawn, I took the lady bugs and shook them out of their little plastic container into the various bushes and plants around the edges of the yard. I hope they like it here, but even if half of them move away it will be good for the neighborhood to have a few more ladybugs.

I took Victor out for his 2.5 mile spin around the neighborhood this morning and there were at least 2 ladybugs making their way around a potted plant near the front door. Very nice.

Tonight I'm taking Abby Glassenberg's class at Gather Here. I've read at least part of her series on Elements of Soft Toy Design, and have started getting into (slowly) making at least knit dolls. I'd like to be able to do  the same with my fabric stash as well. I'll have to clean up my craft room this week, because undoubtedly I'll have homework, but crafty homework is the best!

[10 Tuesday] Always a comedian

This is my dog, Victor. This is my dog, Victor, on glasses. Any questions?

My apologies for blurry cell phone pic, but sometimes you just need to take the pictures as they come to you. Doesn't Victor look smart in glasses?

This week's 10 for Tuesday is favorite comedies. Well, this is probably my favorite genre, barring musicals, and my tastes are, hrm, broad to say the least. What I consider a comedy is probably not a comedy to a lot of other people.

10 Comedies that others would consider Comedies

1. Addams Family Values. My favorite of the Addams Family movies.
2. First Wives Club. It's so snarky. My favorite is the daughter.
3. The Incredibles. It's adventure and comedy!
4. Never Been Kissed. Yeah, also romcom.
5. Kick-Ass. We watched this from Netflix and it was a lot of fun!
6. Despicable Me. It was cute, and I'd watch it again.
7. Tangled. Yes. I like animation. And?
8. The Princess Bride. This led to years of funny Christmases.
9. Clueless. It is completely brainless, and sometimes that's a good thing.
10. A tie between Shaun of the Dead and the Buffy movie.

Obviously there is a lot that could have gone on those lists. Pretty much all of the Monty Python movies with a special nod to Life of Brian and Holy Grail, a few more comedic animated films, Wayne's World, etc.

Then there is my special list. Like my list of holiday movies, these are comedies mostly to me and the overlap between the two lists is pretty high. Some of them are actually meant to be comedies, and the rest are just me being, well, me.

10 Comedies for Me.

1. Sweeney Todd. Hey, even before I was in it, I thought it was funny. It's about eating people. Besides, if you watch the Johnny Depp one and close your eyes, you can imagine that it is Jack Sparrow singing about eating people.
2. Delicatessen. Vegetarian vigilantes, and a sex scene involving one of those containers that you flip and it goes moo. Enough said.
3. Moulin Rouge!. Weird movies often come across as funny and this one is no exception for me.
4. March of the Penguins. I know it isn't a comedy, but when you spend the entire movie exhorting one of the penguins (we call him Bob) to get back in the circle, well, it becomes funny.
5. Avatar. I'm not sure I'd watch it again, which would normally get it the boot from the list, but USB aliens are inherently funny. Similar could be said about Watchmen, because of some cinematic choices.
6. A Clockwork Orange. It's dark and while it isn't meant to be funny, some of the horribleness goes so far that it flips briefly to the other side.
7. Boron, sorry, The Fifth Element is funny for a lot of reasons, including the black hole of evil.
8. Dorkness Rising. It's funny for gamers, and possibly friends of gamers. Not sure if it expands past that.
9. Starship Troopers. Hey, it's got Doogie Howser in it! You know, from before Dr. Horrible.
10. Being John Malkovich. You know it is something when an actor is so stereotyped as kooky that an entire movie is based on the premise. This movie is tied for me with I Heart Huckabees.

I just have to say that without either the Netflix instant queue or the genre listings at IMDb, these lists would be 3 entries long. I tend to watch the same movies over and over, and I forget titles fairly easily. And now I'm going to try to survive on super subpar sleep (and take my sleeping meds tonight).

Crossing the finish line

One of my friends ran the Boston Marathon this year. She finished faster than Tedy Bruschi (go her!) and did really well in her age bracket (heck, she was just over 4 hours, which to me is double awesome because my half marathon time is around 2.5 hours).

Less than 2 days before the race I decided that something like the Boston Marathon deserved something special, so I went and got some yarn and learned that skin tones are hard to find.

So, my finish line was almost 3.5 weeks after the race. I blame my ambivalence to sewing. Here is my friend's mini-me.

I finally finished her clothing, her laces, and her facial embroidery on Wednesday night and gave her a bit more spine. My hair technique (and any mistakes I made in the process) gave her a wonderfully full head of hair, which was a little too much for her neck and torso to carry.

Here she is, sitting at the office. Doesn't she look ready to take on the world!

Materials:
1 skein Panda Cotton
1 skein Debbie Bliss (I will update with actual yarn name/color)
< 10 yds Regia Silk (red)
DMC Floss (red and brown)
Scrap of white wool felt
Scraps of yarn (white and green)
Pipecleaner
Stuffing
Black tech fabric
Black thread

I need to refine my technique for making doll clothes. I used the same method as I used in ~1994  to make my houpelande for the Gods and Godesses Ball, and it just doesn't work. Not even for a doll.

My technique (or what not to do) is to place the doll on a piece of paper (I used an envelope for the shorts and a page from a grocery store circular for the top, so really any paper will do), and outline the doll. Then draw a wider outline around the doll in all dimensions.

The problem with this technique is simple. This doesn't take account for the depth of the doll (or person's body). It worked fine for my houpelande, because I was using a stretchy fabric. For a tech singlet and tech shorts, not so much. This angle doesn't make it clear, but this doll is having her circulation cut off by the right leg of her shorts. Whoops!

Just in case people ask, I did this doll completely free form. I remembered some of the techniques from making a monster doll last year, but for the rest it was almost completely based on sweater techniques. There is waist shaping, short rows for the bust, raglan shaping for the shoulders along with more circular yoke decreases, etc. My happiest knitter moment was when I used a bit of short row shaping to give her a chin.

I will probably knit more of these. A couple of coworkers think I should sell them, and I might. It's not like I don't have an Etsy store full of, well, nothing. It certainly fills the sweet spot of interesting to do, relatively affordable materials, and hard enough to make to not interest every knitter or crafter. 

Of course, I should work on my sewing a bit first. Knitting is easy. Sewing is hard! I have a ton of fabric, so this would also be a good way to use some of the more fun fabrics I have.

(I did try to find a pattern first, but I couldn't really find what I was looking for on Ravelry. If you see something awesome on Ravelry, let me know. Sometimes my searching fu just doesn't measure up!)

[10 Tuesday] bulletin boards

Today's topic is 10 items pinned to your bulletin board. Now, I'm going to have to go with pinning, aka Pinterest for this one, because I don't have a bulletin board at home and the one at work, well, it is covered with work. I don't think you need my account numbers or procedures for things, and I wouldn't ever post those anyway. Just isn't going to happen.

I'm on Pinterest as qarylla (but probably also findable via my first name), and most of what I pin is food. I have boards for holidays (mostly full of food), boards for sweets, boards for dinner items, and boards for alcoholic drinks that I will probably never try.

Since sometime last year (I cannot find anything on Pinterest that gives you an idea of when you started pinning, boo!), I have been adding things in fits and spurts. So, here are 10 items from my Pinterest boards.

1. (Gluten Free) Ice Cream Cake (pin | original site). This might be the most popular repin on my boards. I pinned it when I got tired of searching for it to find it. The original recipe isn't gluten free, but it involves a cake mix so I tried it with a gf cake mix and a dairy free ice cream and it was pretty awesome. Very moist!

2. Pomegranate Vanilla Sangria (pin | original site). I made this for hanging out at game a number of months ago, and just finally threw out the fruit in the past couple of weeks (it still looked and smelled good, but was way past my comfort date). I love pretty much anything with pomegranate in it.

3. Cute bunny pic (pin | original site). I have a board for animals, both cute and funny. It is nice for when I am having a rough day to spend a minute looking at all of the adorableness.

4. Pineapple Upside Down Cake (pin | original site). I have made this cake from Smitten Kitchen at least twice this year. While I know some people have problems with her recipes (or recipes that she has modified from an original) based on the comments, I've never had any issues. This one was as delicious as I have come to expect. And well, dark rum!

5. Glitter Shoes (pin | original site). I made a pair of similar shoes a month or two ago, and while it was a fun process there are definite flaws in using the cheapest shoes from Payless to attach copious amounts of glitter paint to. Of course, I might walk around occasionally dropping a piece of glitter from my feet, but I still wear them and enjoy them.

6. Rolo Caramel Fudge Brownies (pin | original site). I made these and they were a huge hit. Super addictive and now that I'm cutting out sugar (to curb my sweets addiction) I won't be making these again for a while!

7. Lemon Cupcakes in a Lemon (pin | original site). I haven't made these yet, but I so want to!

8. Black French Manicure (pin | original site). If my nails didn't look like I worked constantly with my hands, I would do this!

9. The Traveller's Guide to the Duat (pin | original site). My friend Kiya wrote this and I couldn't be more proud of her! So, I pinned it, so I couldn't forget.

10. The Tokyo Subway Map Quilt (pin | original site). This quilt has started my quilt dreams. Now, like many of my dreams I haven't done anything with it yet (except buy some fabric). I fully expect that I won't get around to quilting until a few more of my craft ideas have run their course. Oh, and I have created a better set up for sewing or have decided to sew my quilts by hand...

My boards also have knitting, a lot of things from Craft Magazine, art, story boards for a sweater coat, etc. I know that Pinterest has its own problems, but I do enjoy it.