AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

The last Christmas reveal

I've definitely been drawing this out. Between being sick (yeah, cold!) and trying to get back into more regular blogging things just didn't really happen in any regularity. Well, other than sneezing my brains out. That is happening pretty frequently and even with regularity.

The last thing I made was sewing, a pattern from Zooguu.

I'd say guess which Zooguu I made, but this really does give it away.

I used fabric from my stash to make this. A really pretty pink Japanese fabric, which unfortunately frays like a mofo, and one of the first fabrics I bought Gather Here nearly two years ago. This is the first pattern in forever where I haven't used a class to get through the process of making the item. I'm just not that confident a seamstress. Over the course of about a week I made this toy, and while it was a little lopsided (silly fins) it was still really cute.

The basic pattern is really easy to follow. You need black felt, embroidery floss/yarn or safety eyes, and fabric. The pattern suggests a body color, a second color for the underbody and then a 3rd color for the tail. Later on the pattern suggests that you might want to make the undersides of the flippers and tail in the underbody color, but as written the underbody fabric is only used once.

I instead did the undersides of the flippers, tail, the underbody and the horn in Kokka fabric.

The horn has two sets of instructions: spiral and nonspiral. I used silver embroidery floss to create the spiral, because I wanted the sparkliest, pinkest narwhal.

The pattern is very well written. Rather than cut into my instructions, I took my Pattern Ease and traced my pieces. It is a bit longer to make with this step, but the pieces can be more readily reused to make another one.

And I enjoyed making this one, so there will probably be another one.

For anyone who is new(ish) to sewing, here is the one thing I would suggest that I wish I had done. Actually measure to place the flippers. Where everything went a little bit wonky was sewing on the underbody. My flippers ended up a bit canted, which gives the narwhal more of a gamine look. It isn't bad. It's just not as professional as I would have liked.

Because my husband is awesome, there are a lot more pictures. But there is one picture I need to leave you with.

Secrets of the gifting kind

The Yarn Harlot has said in the past that she knits during the year and just puts things in the gift box. It's a great idea if you would like to give handmade gifts, and one that I could conceive of doing though as time goes on I make myself more and more items and gift fewer and fewer. It's just hard to know who is going to like what, and especially as many of my knit (and other) gifts are sent via mail I just don't know how well they are received. It is a bit hard to spend all of that time for something that isn't liked.

So, now I make items and I decide as I am making them if they are a for me item, a gift item or a for me but I'm gifting it anyway item.

The last knitted gift of the year (which was I believe the first one done) is for the astute and knowledgeable a Honey Cowl. I loved this pattern. Working it should have been boring, but it wasn't. I don't know why it wasn't boring, but Kay of Mason Dixon has made so many of these honey cowls that they might have their own room!

I used a fingering weight strand of silk with a laceweight merino strand and it created this gorgeous depth of color. While I wanted it for myself, it is a perfect gift for someone I know. Off into the mail it went.

I do have a bit left of the two yarns. They are gorgeous and I might try to make something small with them, but I will make a second honey cowl. I like the fingering weight with the larger stitch count. I have a skein of Noro Sock (I don't remember if it is silk garden) in the lovely natural toned 269. I know there was a run on the color a year or two ago. A couple of patterns used it and became popular, which of course meant the color had to be discontinued. I believe there was a campaign to bring it back.

Of course, none of that matters. I have my one skein of sock yarn and that is good enough, right? This would also be lovely in a beaded yarn mixed with something with a bit of halo. The only problem is that most beaded yarns have limited yardages. I'm not sure you could make a substantial cowl from any of the beaded skeins I have seen.

No husbands were harmed or coerced in the making of this photo. I promise.

Yeah, I have been doing some sewing. I have a skirt that hasn't made the light of the blog yet, which I have worn to compliments.

I did some stash diving and found Japanese (or Japanese inspired) fabric that I bought at Winmill Fabrics back when I lived in Somerville. Umm, to be clear I'm pretty sure this is fabric I bought when I lived in my first apartment in Somerville. That would make the fabric more than 10 years old and moved more times than I want to think about.

I backed it (which cannot really be seen in the photo) with fabric I bought at Gather Here the first year they were open. I used some for a maneki neko. Well, I had bought more with the idea that I was going to sew up some gifts. That didn't happen then, but it finally happened now.

Of course, after Tuesday, I can actually have finished photo shots rather than the stitch patterns, and bits and bobs of finished items.

Until then, happy holidays!

sewing the dress

At the beginning of the month I was in this dress class at Gather Here: the Hazel Dress. The Hazel dress is a wide strapped dress with a fitted bodice, a gathered skirt and an invisible zipper. Now I'm not super good at the sewing. Lack of practice means lack of skill don't you know. But in 2 sessions, Virginia was able to coax a respectable dress out of me. It was fun to make and fun to wear and I will be making another one. (with something funky for the bodice).

(Yes, my hair is wet out of the shower. When your hair is this short there is no point in doing too much. Just a little gel or spray wax to spike it up a bit.)

The Hazel Dress is a Colinette dress pattern and I have to admit that I loved the format. The little booklet was a lot of fun, almost like reading a magazine, which is good when you feel a bit intimidated.

The first step was to cut out the pattern pieces and transfer them to Pattern Ease. Now, Pattern Ease is this thick paper-like material that is woven or extruded or something in a way that it doesn't mess with scissors like normal paper. It is also much sturdier than the tissue paper this is my bane for most commercial patterns. So, we cut around the pattern pieces at the largest size (and not cut out, just cut around) and then transferred our size to the Pattern Ease. Now, I am a rectangle. Almost no indentation at my waist and certainly not as much as the pattern required, so we graded the bodice so that the bottom would fit with a different skirt size.

Grading is kind of fun and kind of, well, terrifiying. If you don't love sewing then the idea that you don't know how it will turn out is a bit freaky, so we sewed a muslin of the bodice. My bodice came out perfect in the muslin (the grading worked), but others had to make adjustments there.

That was the first session.

Between sessions we were to cut out the dress fabric, sew the bodice, sew the straps, and sew the skirt. Attaching the sections, gathering the skirt, adding the zipper and hemming were all part of the second session.

My husband was away that weekend and it was hot! So, I mostly worked on my dress in the day before and the morning of the class.

This dress is awesome, because it has gloriously roomy pockets. However, my markings (or lack of markings) meant that one of my pockets was off and I ended up doing a lot of seam ripping. I also flubbed the bodice because I somehow had set my needle so it wasn't in the middle and had consistent 1/2 seams. Darn!

Despite those issues, I did end up leaving the class with a finished dress that fit, looked cool and was really wearable. However, for work I wanted to hide my back tattoo, so I plopped on my sweater (which I'm not sure I ever blogged about) that I finished before Squam. Cria is made out of the Riveting yarn, recycled denim, and is a great match for the dress!

[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.)

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!

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!)

Merry Christmas!

Today has been an amazingly wonderful day. It started off with some gift opening (which included a terrific raffle prize from Gather Here), and then moved to pumpkin waffles, cooked eggnog french toast style. Victor got some Dog Nog, which made him so interested in drinking his water that he had a little accident. I made this trifle, using the Barefoot Contessa red velvet cupcake mix. I also cooked a few sides: garden pea risotto, mashed potatoes and these awesome biscuits from Smitten Kitchen (pictures of those tomorrow, because the excess was full of hilarity).

I didn't really give my husband much, but this year was the first year I did most of my gifting from Etsy. Soap for my MIL, lip balm, and some geeky things for my husband. While I had some good gift giving, my best was still this.

A simple envelope style pillow using a couple of tutorials (Kaufman fabric, because I'm not smart enough to write down what the fabric is when I buy it). The monkey is done in reverse applique, and while there are a number of great tutorials (like this one), I did something a bit different.

I free hand drew a monkey similar to the ones in the fabric on a piece of white felt and then cut the felt out as a template. I then outlined the felt on the blue fabric and cut out the monkey in the blue fabric. A bit of handsewing, backstitch actually, around the monkey and to secure the fabric and then I used this awesome floss I have from almost 2 million years ago to do a whip stitch around the edges to protect the fabric from fraying. The hand work was what took the most time. I finished the pillow early Christmas morning (1am-ish) on the sewing machine. While I am not the best at sewing I'm proud of this pillow and my husband seems to really love it too. Yeah!

I'm glad that I have tomorrow off. It will be time for some relaxing, sitting around, and cleaning up the mess from today.

Iron Craft 33: The days of summer

Summer time for me growing up is flying kites (we had the cheap plastic ones), going to the beach, collecting rocks, and a lot of swimming. We also collected recyclables to redeem for cash, read books (mostly me, my siblings aren't as much into reading as I), and fished.

The Boston area has been more spring-like than summery this week as we have had rain pretty much each day since Sunday. So, I did what any respectable New Englander would do and I made a kite.

I used this tutorial, but used fabrics and ribbons instead of plastic bags.

Click on any of the pictures to see the full size on Flickr.

My materials:
2 bamboo skewers
1 fat quarter (or less) of fabric
2 yards of 7/8-inch ribbon
cotton thread and needle

1. Print the template to fit an 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of paper. Fold over the bottom, and hand sew a hem on the bottom with tiny pockets in the bottommost corners for the bamboo skewers to fit. Fold over and sew a single width of fabric, no greater than 1/8th inch, on each of the remaining sides to clean up the edges.

2. At the two topmost points, sew on two triangular pieces of scrap fabric to help hold the skewers into place.

3. Next place the skewers over the fabric and marked where to cut them to fit the kite. Cut the skewers at the marked area with a pair of scissors. Insert skewers into the fabric pockets. Sew the skewer to the fabric by sewing around the skewer near the middle of the fabric.

4. Cut 2 strips of ribbon about 1.5 to 2 inches long. Fold in half and sew to the outer most points of the fabric base.

5. Cut the remaining ribbon in half and sew around the bottom of each skewer.

6. Attach crochet cotton or other light (the lighter the better) thread as per the tutorial. I would err on the side of too much thread for the bridle. Mine had a harder time in flight partially because my heavier material, but also because the thread was a little too tight to allow the easiest lift.

7. Fly!

I used a gauzy ribbon, but was hoping for some happy monkeys or beach themed ribbon.

This was a fun little project, which I think I will refine over the upcoming week. While it flew sort of, I'm sure I can make sure it goes a lot better!

real sewing!

When my mom was visiting, I signed us up for the Patchwork Placemat class at Gather Here. We definitely needed something to do, because my darling husband was out playing Magic at a tournament down in Providence.

I brought a bit of fabric with me (two or three colors), but I didn't need to. Virginia had a selection of fabric pre-cut into approximately fat eighths (or something similar). There was a bit of a scrum as we all looked at and pawed over the beautiful fabrics.

I used a tiny amount of one of my own fabrics: a kimono fabric from when I was buying too much stuff from Ichiroya. I loved making my own kimono from actual kimono fabric, and while this fabric had unknown provenance (it was a sample) I decided it had to be part of my floral motif. The kimono-related fabric is the white with red and pink flowers.

It was a great amount of fun as the four of us tackled the process of using mats and rotary cutters to cut strips and sew strips. Many of us had to go back and add more strips, because we just didn't have enough fabric. That was OK, because we had plenty of time!

At the end of class, we all had a finished placemat, plus the fabric and backings to make 3 more. I haven't made my other 3 yet. I've spent time bemoaning the fact that my iron is a nasty old thing that spits out strange little hard water mineral crud whenever I try to use it (though it might be that I am using the steam setting). It makes it awfully hard to press fabric.

 

I'm hoping that the class is going to be part of a long and wonderful relationship with my sewing machine. It's not like I don't buy fabric after all! I'm looking forward to adding another class for next month as soon as July's class list is up too. Virginia was informative, helpful and willing to let us find our own way rather than dictating each part of the process. Super fun even for me, the definitely not a champion sewer (sewist?).