What do you say when everything was just ... perfect?

One week ago today I was in the car, driving through five states with a friend, en route to Squam Lake, New Hampshire.  The trip was easy, if long, and while we didn't see any moose ...

... we did see a deer fly off the hood of a car in the next lane on the highway.  Did you know that deer bounce when they hit the pavement at 65 mph?  Now that's something I never expected to learn at ...

Four and a half days of crafting bliss - just me and 150 other crafty people taking over a historic family summer retreat on an idyllic lake ...

... for classes, camaraderie, and (at least for me) a lot of this:

Our first class was at a cabin that was, as I fondly referred to it, at "the ass end of nowhere," which was reached via a brisk 10-minute hike through the woods ...

Luckily, I had a hearty breakfast that morning, so I even after the hike I was ready to tackle my first class - Latvian fingerless mitts in five color stranded knitting, with the incredible Beth Brown-Reinsel.  I've done colorwork before, but never with so many colors, and she really opened my eyes to some of the things I've been unintentionally doing wrong (can you say, "dominance? what dominance?").



Really, it's not that hard once you get used to the whole idea of controlled chaos on the back side of the piece.  Don't give me that look - you know you want to try it, too.  Look how easy it is - I didn't even break a sweat!

My class the next day was even farther away from our home cabin, which gave me plenty of time to gather inspiration from the woods around me.  I'll spare you the approximately 48,000 pictures I took of ferns, and instead show you the most interesting bit I stumbled upon:

I swear, those puppies looked so fake, I was tempted to see if somebody had hot-glued plastic mushrooms to the tree.  Anyway, I needed all the inspiration I could get, because I was supposed to be designing botanical-inspired things to print on fabric in Maya Donenfeld's awesome class.  I was also totally copying designs out of that Japanese book on the corner of the table :)



Squam wasn't just about crafting, though - there was plenty of time to enjoy the facility and its surroundings. I decided to use a free afternoon to drag myself up to the top of a mountain the hard way (i.e. on the shorter path that went straight up the side of the damn thing, which meant there was a lot of actual "dragging myself  up the hill" involved).  Luckily, the view was totally worth the schlepp.

My last class was only half a day, which was a shame because I really had a good time meeting Jared Flood and starting the blanket he designed.  The thing was so fun that I couldn't resist working on it more in the car on the way home.  

Luckily for me, wool is very absorbent, because there may or may not have been a few sniffles from my side of the car as we drove off into the sunset (well, actually just away from the sunrise, since we were heading west at an ungodly hour of the morning).

I'm not a normally effusive person, but I have to say, this was among my best vacations ever.  Nothing went wrong, everyone got along, I didn't forget anything, the people were nice, the place was spectacular, there was plenty to do, nobody thought you were weird if you didn't want to do anything but sit on a dock with your feet in the water, and everybody was crafty.  I'd go back in a heartbeat, and while I don't know if I'd say it was life-changing, it was certainly awesome.  And fun.  And inspiring.  And only slightly mosquito-filled.  So if you're even slightly crafty, go check it out.  You'll be glad you did.

I came, I S.A.W., I Squammed!

I'm still planning to put together my thoughts on the experience, but here's a video from Jen Grey that shows where I was last week.  I'm in the video (look for the red capris around 1:30-2:00) and my partner in crime is the lady in short overalls walking through the dining hall later in the movie.  Thank you, Jen, for capturing the experience so wonderfully and sharing it with us all!

teehee

Sewing humor - you have to love it!

Something that's making me happy

Check out the patterns here:

http://www.magpiepatterns.com/embroidery-patterns.php

Makes me want to drop my yarn, pick up my floss, and get started. If only I could ...

Damn, she photographs nicely

And for once, I'm not talking about the kid.

Shawls are usually so jammed up on the needles that it's next to impossible to see the pattern develop as I'm knitting, so blocking a shawl is almost always a delightful surprise. This was even better than most. Half an hour ago it looked like a big purple snotrag, but a quick soak and a bit of tugging revealed this beauty - behold, my Morpork Pi shawl designed by MMario:

Wow.

Now that's a rather impressive use of 3 1/2 skeins of sock yarn, wouldn't you say?

Closeup of the pattern near the edge:

Closeup of the center section:

Inspired by colors

Went for a walk in the Metropark as part of my 3-Day training yesterday, and the wildflowers in some areas were just spectacular. Acres and acres of forest carpeted in emerald green leaves with quarter-sized bright yellow daisy-like flowers on top. And just around the bend, it was completely barren - not a leaf or petal to be seen. Around another bend, big clumps of lily of the valley foliage were up, and a few rogue daffodils peeked out here and there.

Now I want to make a "spring in the park" quilt in those greens and yellows ... it would look sort of like the Emerald City exploded all over the Yellow Brick Road, but at least I would know what it was.

You didn't think I'd skip the fundraising message here, did you?

This summer I'll be participating in a very special event called the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. I'll walk 60 miles over the course of three days with thousands of other women and men. But as crazy as that sounds, that's not the end of it ... or rather, that's not the beginning. Because in order to survive walking 20 miles a day for three days, I have to train, and train hard. I'll be walking four times a week, every week, in every kind of weather, from now until the end of July. I'll be averaging more than 30 miles every week, for a total of more than 600 miles by the time I'm done. I'll be rearranging my schedule, fighting blisters and chafing and boredom, and dragging my 5-year-old "training partner" behind me in a wagon for part of it. Why on earth would I do this to myself? Because net proceeds from the Komen 3-Day for the Cure walk are invested in breast cancer research and community programs. I've been lucky so far - while breast cancer has touched the lives of my family and friends, so far it hasn't taken anyone I know. But unless something changes, it's only a matter of time. Consider these chilling facts: - Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and is the leading cause of death among women worldwide. - One person is diagnosed with breast cancer every three minutes in the United States. - A woman dies from breast cancer every 68 seconds. That's why I'm walking so far. To do something bold about breast cancer. With every step I take, I'll be helping to stomp out breast cancer. I hope that you'll share this incredible adventure with me - by supporting me in my fundraising efforts. I've agreed to raise at least $2,300 in donations. So I need your help. Would you please consider making a donation of $60? Keep in mind how far I'm walking - and how hard I'll have to train. I'm hoping to complete my fundraising by June 1, 2010, so that I can more fully concentrate on training as the event approaches. You can give online at The3Day.org. Just follow the link below to visit my personal fundraising Web page and make a donation. You can also call 800-996-3DAY to donate over the phone. Thank you in advance for your generosity! Sincerely, Gretchen Woods P.S. Ask your employer if they will double your donation through a matching gift program! Click here to visit my personal page. If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address: http://www.the3day.org/site/TR/2010/ClevelandEvent2010?px=5018396&pg=personal&fr_id=1464&et=Py5QUNZdp2wZculbOglr5w..&s_tafId=415331

For more information about the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure or Susan G. Komen for the Cure, visit The3Day.org or call 800-996-3DAY.

Breeding like, well,

This is what happens when I decide to make destash Easter rabbits for my daughter's preschool class ... they take over! That's fourteen rabbits, including the two evil zombie twins there in the back row. I'm partial to the decapitated bunny heads in the front rows, and not just because they took half as long to make :)

Anyway, the pattern is loosely based on my Zombie Bunny crochet pattern, which you can find in my etsy shop here.

New tutorial: Changing color in the Zombie Bunny ears

I had a question from a customer about how to do the color changes on the ears in my Zombie Bunny pattern.

Since it's really easy to do, just hard to describe, I went ahead and made a photo tutorial on flickr. You can find it here.

Feel free to let me know if there are any other techniques you'd like to see - if I can manage to photograph them without growing an extra arm, I'll be happy to post the pictures!

Another thing to do with your kid's artwork

When Lazy Kid painted some lovely watercolor fruits this summer, I knew I was going to have to do something special to preserve them for posterity. One scan, 10 minutes of editing/cutting/pasting, and less than an hour of sewing later, I've got two new placemats for our table.

I used the inkjet-ready, colorfast cotton pages you can find at most sewing and craft stores. I set my printer to print photos at the highest quality, and they turned out pretty sharp:

After I got the Lazy Kid fabric printed, I dug out some of my favorite stash, which I've used to make curtains for my last two kitchens, and which happened to coordinate perfectly with the colors of the fruit. Score!

I sewed strips onto three sides of the art to get it to be the right height for a placemat, then sewed the larger block onto the side to make it the right width. Grabbed some coordinating fabric scraps for the back, found some batting that was just large enough to work, and made myself an inside-out (quilt) sandwich. Stitched around the outside but left an opening for turning, turned it right side out, then topstitched around the edge to help it lay flat and close the turning opening. Topstitched around the Lazy Kid art to help it lay flat, and it was done!

Now, the fabric I printed at home is only "washable," not actually washable, so I'm going to have to Scotchguard the living heck out of these before I let Lazy Kid anywhere near them. But once that's done, I have hopes that these will be cheering our table for the rest of the summer!

This cracks me up

I've known about guerilla knitting for awhile now, but I never thought I'd see it in Cape May.

http://www.stylelist.com/2010/03/11/midnight-knitter-covering-new-jersey-town-in-yarn/

Props to my parents for pointing this one out to me.

That sound you hear is me pounding my head on the desk

As I think I've mentioned before, I have opened a second shop on etsy to sell my photos and related products. If you're not reading this through a feed reader, you can check out some of my new items over there <-- on the sidebar of the blog.

Getting this sucker ready to go has taken way more time and effort than I expected. After all, I already took the pictures - how hard could it be to get them listed? I didn't want to bother just listing one or two photos - nothing looks sadder than a store that's practically empty - so I wanted to be ready to populate it quickly when I was ready to go. That means that for the past few months, I've been going back through every digital photo I can locate, copying the ones I thought might be worthy of selling, and then winnowing the selection down to something reasonable.

I've been researching other etsy sellers to determine pricing, and shipping costs, and what sizes and products I might want to carry. I've been playing around with some different ways to present the photos, things that might set me apart from the 14 million other people shilling photos on etsy.

I've been editing the photos, cropping and color correcting and adding watermarks to keep the deadbeats from stealing my stuff.

And I've been procrastinating. The period of uncertainty at the beginning of any project is the worst for me ... I hate not knowing what I'm doing, I hate having to make decision after decision relating to things I know little about. If I could wave a magic wand and it could be DONE, that would be so much less stress-inducing. But that, of course, isn't possible, so instead I've just been ignoring it. I've been getting lots of knitting done, and cooking, and the house has been pretty clean for the past couple of months.

Until last week, when I realized that the two hours each week that I'm stuck sitting at the nature center while my daughter takes a science class is the perfect time for me and my laptop to have some quality time together. Two hours each week when I can focus, without any phones ringing or kids calling or wash that needs to be done.

I've been getting lots done, but my god, is it tedious.

open picture

edit to 5x7

correct color

save file

add watermark

shrink file

resave file

open etsy listing

copy and paste most of the description

manually select pretty much all the same options for the rest of the listing where I can't cut and paste

import pictures

save listing

repeat.

I just took a bathroom break to relieve the monotony - that's how boring it is.

But at the same time, it's really cool to go back through the files, picking the best of the best, seeing all the places we've been and things we've seen. Even if I never sell a single print, I've got some damn fine photos, and that makes me proud.

Proud of my princess

Lazy Kid is almost 5 now, so I figured it was time for her to try her hand at embroidery. Here she is with her first piece, about half of which she completed on her own, with my only help being to hold the hoop for her while she handled the needle and thread:

We used some leftover Aida cloth I had in my stash, and some perl cotton that my mother got at a yard sale or something (because I know I didn't buy it). We used a slightly sharpened tapestry needle - basically, whatever I could find that had an eye large enough for the cotton but was still small enough to fit through the holes in the cloth.

I got her started, making the knot and showing her how to handle the needle safely and make the stitches roughly where she wanted them. I did a cross for the center of the flower, and she filled in the rest. I did one leaf, she did the rest. I started the sun, she finished it. She was patient, moving the needle around until it came out exactly where she wanted. And she knew exactly what she wanted, specifying when I had to change the thread colors for her and even asking how to take out one stitch that didn't work the way she wanted it to.

And when she was done "drawing with string," she insisted that she had to sign her work. I did the "Z" and "A" in her name, and she did the rest.

I am unbearably proud of her. Now if she'd just show any interest in doing it again ...

Book recommendation

This week Lazy Kid and I are focusing on learning about art, so I checked some books out from the library to expand our repertoire of craft techniques. One of the books I'm most excited about is called Easy Art Fun, by Jill Frankel Hauser. This book is really designed for use in classrooms, but a lot of the projects lend themselves to home crafting, as well.

What I like best about the book is that it's designed to be used by early readers, so the format of each page is the same, and it's all really clearly spelled out. Each project fits on two page sides (which face each other, so there is no flipping back and forth to finish something), and each offers variations on the project to make it more complicated or with a different theme. There are sections that focus on coloring, cutting with scissors, making toys, making gifts, making things for pretend play, making music, and making wearable art.

Lazy Kid is not quite five, but she reads really well, and she was able to breeze through reading several of the projects to pick out one she wanted to do. The book is a great way to get kids some practice with real-life reading, rather than story reading - practical reading really does use a whole different subset of words and phrases that kids need to learn.

And the projects are quite nice, with several old favorites and quite a few that I've never seen before. Lazy Kid chose to make the Monster Mouth game, where you decorate a paper bag like a monster face and try to throw balls of paper into the open mouth. Personally, I want to make some bendy people (paper cutouts with baggy ties taped to the back to let you bend the dude into different positions) and a few other projects that are new to me.

Well, that wasn't nearly as scary as I'd hoped

Yesterday was a momentous occasion for me - I cut my first steek! And, since I'm always driven to do things farther, faster, and longer than anyone else thinks is reasonable, it was 6 feet long.

I've been knitting a fair isle afghan in the round, and once all the main knitting was done, the big long tube of awesomeness had to be cut open so it would be less of a muumuu and more of a blanket. Now, I've heard all sorts of people talk about how scary it is to cut steeks, and how they held their breath and prayed the whole time, and how some people are too scared to even attempt one. There are a multitude of methods for stabilizing the knitting before cutting so that the whole thing doesn't unravel if you look at it sideways. But when the steek is 6' long, hand sewing down both sides of the area to be cut just isn't going to happen, and shoving the thing through the sewing machine isn't a good idea, either. So, no stabilization for me, just a pair of scissors and a blanket I've been knitting (intermittently) since October of 2008...

...And all of my sock club friends from River Colors Studio, who I drafted to help me. We were all new to cutting steeks, and everyone seemed to have some insane idea that I was either super-brave, super-dumb, or super-well-informed-about-this-whole-thing. In order to dissuade them of all of these notions, I figured I'd involve them in the process. So I brought all my cutting materials in to the studio yesterday, and everyone got a chance to cut about 10" of my steek. We are steek virgins no more!

For future reference, what I did was this:

Lay the blanket flat with the steek area centered on the top. Slide a long rotary cutting ruler in between the top layer and the bottom layer of the blanket, making sure it covers all of the area under the steek. Use sharp scissors to cut through the center of the steek section, about 10" at a time. After every 10", stop and stabilize the edges by wrapping a strip of packing tape along each edge lengthwise. This will keep it relatively unfrayed while you cut the rest of the steek open. When you're done cutting the steek open, open out the blanket and admire your handiwork - then whisk the blanket to a sewing machine and machine-stitch down each side of the steek to stabilize the remaining threads. Make sure to sew in the area that will still remain once the excess steek area is trimmed off later in the finishing, if that's what your directions tell you to do.

Since then I've been picking up the stitches along each side of the steek to make a binding to cover up the cut edges, and let me tell you, picking up like 300 stitches SIDEWAYS down a blanket is all sorts of fun. Really. But it's looking awesome, and the end is in sight. Whew!

******

Pictures? You want pictures in the post? Nope, sorry, that's going to have to wait for a while. There are secret things afoot around here ...

Lazy Dad's shawl pins, now available!

My very handsome and talented father has been carving for decades - actually, we can actually measure it in fractions of a century at this point - so it was no problem at all for him to whip up some shawl pins for me when I started whipping up shawls. They were so beautiful and functional that I encouraged him to make some extras to sell. And the owner of River Colors Studio in Lakewood agreed that they're awesome, so now you can buy them there!

Stop in and grab one before they're gone, because you never know when Lazy Dad will get sick of making these and then they'll be gone for good.

Really running behind with this posting ...

Check out how cute the Fairy Skirt pattern looks for raindrops for a school play!

http://juliespp.blogspot.com/2009/09/dancing-raindrops.html

Thanks for sending along the link, Julie, and I'm glad they turned out so cute for you!

Why yes, I am insane - why do you ask?

There's still time to order your custom Halloween costume ... mermaid tails are now available in a limited edition spectacular green scale print with purple backing.

Order ASAP for Halloween delivery, but definitely before Oct. 25.

Note to self:

Remember how much more pleasant it is to cut out ridiculously large quantities of fabric when you have a new blade on the rotary cutter. Swish!

Queen of Hearts and Alice in Wonderland Costume Set GIVEAWAY!!!!

http://grosgrainfabulous.blogspot.com/2009/10/queen-of-hearts-and-alice-in-wonderland.html

Okay, I sew pretty well, but there is no way I would ever be able to pull off anything as complicated as this without going completely insane. And she did it without a pattern! Gahhhhh!

You really should click over and check it out ... just don't enter to win it, because the only way LazyKid is ever going to get any costume like this is if WE win!

Look! Free press for Lazy Mama!

I am really excited to have been included in a listing of etsy costumes available for Halloween. You can find the link here.

While you're there, check out some of the other costumes. We've got a lot of really talented folks on etsy, so if mermaids aren't your thing, maybe the baby sushi or cupcake costumes will float your boat. Sooooo cute!

Well thank goodness!

Today was LazyKid's first day of pre-K, and I had almost two hours to work on whatever I wanted in my studio. You should see all the Play/Move/Store bags I've got cut out, and all the legwarmers that are hemmed and waiting for their ribbons and packaging.

And I get to do this three times a week!

It's good to be back!

Parenthacks: Painting without ruining your table

We're working on a dinosaur diorama, and I thought now was a good time to show how we set it up so that LazyKid can do crafts at our nice cherry dining room table without giving me a heart attack.

1. All craft projects are primarily done on some plastic serving trays I got on clearance at Target. This gives us a place (with a rim in case of spills) that she can be messy, but almost everything wipes off. Even dried-on "permanent" paint comes off with a bit of persuasion. And when we need the table for a meal, we can pick up the whole craft and move it out of the way.

2. I've been using heavy-duty foam plates as palettes for the paint, which lets her mix the colors together but limits the volume of paint she gets at any one time. The foam plates are easy to wash off and reuse over and over ... I just finally got rid of the set we'd been using for the past two years. Now we're using some disposable plastic drink cups. I cut the tops off of them so that each cup is only about 2 1/2 inches deep. This means that they're low enough to be hard to tip over, and again, it limits the amount of paint the kid can have. They're also low enough that LazyKid doesn't try to rest the paintbrush in them, which means she doesn't catch the paintbrush with her elbow and tip them over that way. These are wash-and-reuse items, too. We've also used styrofoam egg cartons as palettes, but that's harder to share among several artists, since all of the cups are stuck together.

3. Lots of paper towels, right there at the scene. It's much easier to clean up a spill if you don't have to run across the room to get a towel. Plus, if the towels are right at hand, it's much more likely that LazyKid will try to clean up the mess herself before asking me for help. We've also had good luck with using up some old packages of baby wipes as craft cleanup wipes.

4. Storage for the paints that makes them easy to carry without dropping or spilling. We've only got a few acrylic paints right now, so they're in a small shoebox that's stored with the rest of the painting supplies in a plastic tote. The plastic tote has all the poster paints, paint brushes, paint stamps, palettes, and stencils, all in one place. When we want to paint anywhere - on the easel in the basement, on the floor in the livingroom, at the dining room table, outside on the picnic table - we can just grab the tote and take everything with us in one trip.

5. Lots of supervision. If I'm not actually doing the craft with her (I helped paint some of the larger diorama figures above), I try to be physically with her at the table while I do something crafty on my own. I've got a number of mindless knitting and crochet projects I can grab to fill in a few minutes while LazyKid paints or works with clay ... things that can be picked up and put down a lot without getting messed up too much. I've found that trying to do things away from the table - like cook dinner or wash dishes - ends up with the kid making more of a mess than if I'm right there.

Hope some of these tips help keep you (and your table) crafty but organized!

Busy, busy!

Well, I'm halfway through the wrap I'm doing for my insanely ambitious first real lace project, and while I love the yarn and love the pattern, I don't love the two together. The yarn obscures the lace pattern so you can't even see the diamonds.

Oh, well - I am not so frustrated with it that I'll abandon it, I just have learned that I need to buy quieter yarn when I do intricate patterns. Who knew?

Also - I'm typing this from my couch, because I got a new laptop and a mobile broadband internet account, so I can blog from anywhere! Ostensibly, this will maximize the time I can work while LazyKid is in school (pattern design at the library, anyone?), but really, I just hated my old computer. The thing is basically an expensive paperweight. But I luuuuuuurve my new laptop :)

Worked on a new quilt pattern this week, and as soon as I can convince it to tell me what sort of border it wants, I'll get it live. It's a relatively quick-and-dirty one that's for a twin bed (with mods for a throw size), so it should be a welcome addition to my projects. Plus, it used up a lot of my stash fabrics! Twenty-one different ones, as a matter of fact ...

Finally - new merchandise!

Introducing the Play/Move/Store bag ... aka the "Stop Yelling At Your Kid To Pick Up The Legos" play mat.

Unfolded, it's a great place to spread out those toys with a billion pieces - legos, blocks, barbies, plastic tea sets, etc. It lets kids see all the pieces without having to dump the whole container in the middle of the kitchen floor. And the best part - when they're done playing, all they have to do to clean the whole mess up is grab the drawstring and pull. Voila! A very portable, very storable tote bag full of tiny pieces of plastic!

Now available in a wide range of colors and prints (which I'm listing gradually as time and LazyKid permit) on my shop at etsy.com . You can find them here. And if you have a color combination you'd like me to make up for you custom, I'd be happy to give it a try! Just contact me at lazymamadesigns@yahoo.com and we'll see what we can work out.

Mother's Helper

Oh, the joys of knowing a 13-year-old who will come and play with Lazy Kid for money while I get massive amounts of work done. In two four-hour bursts, I have:

- designed a new product for etsy (all that's missing are decent photos and a good name)

- made half a dozen of said new product

- finished up and published a pattern that's been sitting on my desk for months, just waiting to be proofread and listed

- listed and relisted almost a dozen items

- got together another submission of my Awesome Underappreciated Quilt Design, which goes out in tomorrow's mail.

- possibly spent a little too much of my "work" time on Ravelry, looking for "inspiration." Yeah, that's it! Inspiration!

Here's hoping she can come back next week so I can get these new dealios listed on etsy and write up a couple of extra patterns and edit some photos I might try to sell online and ... oh, crap, guess I'm going to need more than one day, huh?

Rapunzel braids now in the shop

You can find them here.

Free pattern - Circle towel

I picked up some inexpensive linen yarn while I was on vacation earlier this summer, and I had grand visions of making it into some sort of hand towel.  All of the patterns I could find seemed to involve rather a lot of mindnumbingly boring stockinette stitch, so I decided to modify a cool sock pattern to see if I could make a towel that had a nice texture and a pattern that was fairly easy to memorize.  

The modification was a little challenging since the sock is worked in the round and the towel is back-and-forth, but I managed to get my head around it all right. As a bonus, the back side is nice and uniform and looks presentable enough that it won't be horrible when it's seen during use.

Don't be freaked out by the 20-row pattern repeat ... it's actually just 10 rows with a slight jog over to make the second 10 rows, and there's a lot of "do the same thing, only K instead of P" in there, too.  Trust me - once you've gone through it once or twice, you won't need to look at the instructions for the rest of the towel.

So, without further ado, here's how to duplicate my Circle Towel:

Lazy Mama's Circle Towel:

Finished size - 17" wide x 12" tall before washing and blocking; size after blocking will be added once this makes it through the wash :)

Yarn - light worsted weight or DK weight linen or cotton yarn.  I used every bit of 100 grams of Euroflax Athens by Louet Sales, which is approximately 200 yards.

Needle - whatever gives you a nice medium-firm fabric in stockinette stitch.  You need it to be a bit loose to comfortably carry the slipped stitches up seven rows in the pattern.  I used a US 2.

Gauge - not important.  Just make sure you're not making a super-lacy cloth, or it won't hold up to actually drying your hands.

Pattern stitch (multiple of 8 stitches):

Row 1 - Purl across

Row 2 - Knit across

Row 3 - Purl across

Row 4 - (P3, sl 2 st with yarn at front, P3) across

Row 5-  (K3, sl 2 st with yarn at back, K3) across

Row 6 -(P3, sl 2 st with yarn at front, P3) across

Row 7 - (K3, sl 2 st with yarn at back, K3) across

Row 8 - (P3, sl 2 st with yarn at front, P3) across

Row 9 - (K3, sl 2 st with yarn at back, K3) across

Row 10 - (P3, sl 2 st with yarn at front, P3) across

Row 11 - Purl across

Row 12 - Knit across

Row 13 - Purl across

Row 14 - (sl 1 st with yarn at front, P6, sl 1 st with yarn at front) across

Row 15 - (sl 1 st with yarn at back, K6, sl 1 st with yarn at back) across

Row 16 - (sl 1 st with yarn at front, P6, sl 1 st with yarn at front) across

Row 17 - (sl 1 st with yarn at back, K6, sl 1 st with yarn at back) across

Row 18 - (sl 1 st with yarn at front, P6, sl 1 st with yarn at front) across

Row 19 - (sl 1 st with yarn at back, K6, sl 1 st with yarn at back) across

Row 20 - (sl 1 st with yarn at front, P6, sl 1 st with yarn at front) across

Note: after your first pattern repeat, the first row of circles may look a bit flat on the cast-on side.  This is normal, and will not occur in any of the subsequent repeats of the pattern.

Actual instructions:

• Cast on 80 stitches.
  
• Knit two rows of garter stitch (knit each row).
  
• Begin pattern instructions, KNITTING FOUR EXTRA STITCHES AT THE BEGINNING AND END OF EACH ROW TO MAKE A GARTER STITCH BORDER.
  
• Repeat pattern instructions a total of five times (100 rows in pattern).  If you are using a larger skein of yarn than I did, you may wish to keep repeating until you're almost out of yarn.  Just make sure you end on row 10 or 20 before you finish the rest of the towel.
  
• Knit two rows of garter stitch (knit each row).
  
• Cast off all stitches.
  

If you decide to make one of these, please share it with me on Ravelry!  Thanks!

Yeah, that was a disaster. Look! Pretty scarf!

Okay, so apparently ugly + ugly = "oh my god, it burns!  it burns!" ugly.  The socks have been frogged, the yarn thrown out, and then the whole mess set fire to, for good measure.  I am done wasting time on that.

But let's not dwell on failures, shall we?  Especially when I have such pretty pretties to show!

Yep, I've jumped on the Noro Striped Scarf bandwagon, this time with Taiyo, a cotton/silk blend from Noro that's ohh soooooo soffffffffft and smooooooooooooooooshy.  And did I mention the colors?

Oh Taiyo, I am so glad I have enough of you left over to make a matching hat ...  which I will not allow anywhere near any washing machine that is set to "hot," I swear!

ugly + ugly = ?

No photos yet, but I wanted to let everyone know what I was doing with the Fugly Yarn of Doom.  Various swatches with it proved that while the dye improved the look of the resulting fabric, it's still no beauty queen.  With that in mind, I searched Ravelry for a pattern that might either disguise or highlight the peculiar fug I've got.

That's when I found Bellatrix (Rav link).  It's got a pattern of deliberately "dropped" stitches, which make an allover design of really gnarly holes.  And so far, I'm liking it.  I mean, boy, is the combination of this yarn and that pattern a LOT of fug, but I'm hoping that it will somehow balance out and become magically infused with some awesomeness.  Barring that, at least I'll have used the yarn up, and I'll have socks to wear when cleaning up cat puke.

What happens when you forget about the load of felting in the washer?

This used to be about 10" tall.  It was supposed to felt and get smaller, but I wasn't aiming for something that's too small to hold my cell phone.
This used to be a hat.  A very, very big hat.  Now it's a bowl.  A relatively small, very attractive bowl.

And the fuzzy red slippers that I had previously felted to be slightly too big for my feet, which I was trying to refelt to be a little more snug?  They're about 3/4" too long ... for my four-year-old.  Oops.

Oh, hai! Guess I should post once in a while, huh?

The solution to the yarn issue from my previous post? Find a pattern that only needed the original number of skeins of yarn, and use a completely different color to finish it. Thank goodness for Dahlia!

Now, I just need to find a use for the extra five skeins of yarn in the powder blue lot ...

So very, very disappointing

After scoring a good deal on some Rowan Summer Tweed yarn at the local yarn store, I realized that they didn't have enough of the purpley-blue color for the sweater I wanted to make. I hopped on Ravelry and found a couple people who had the same colorway in their stashes, and I arranged to buy them for even less than I paid the local yarn store. Double score!

The additional skeins are different lot numbers than the original purpose, which usually means you're in for some minor variation in color. So you can imagine my surprise when the first of the additional skeins showed up and looked nothing like the color with which I had already started the sweater:

Yes, they are the same colorway (at least according to the labels). No, the lighting isn't a factor - they look this different no matter what lighting I use. This is just the worst dye lot variation I've ever seen.

I'm hoping that the other four skeins that are coming from Scotland will be somewhere in between these two colors, so that I can fade gradually from the purpley into the powder blue. Or that they're powder blue and I'll have enough to make the top part of the sweater without the three skeins of the purpley yarn I originally bought.

Or that I get up the nerve to just knit with it no matter what color it is, then overdye the whole thing black or really, really dark purple or something.

Crud.

Fun with drink mixes

So I had this really fugly yarn that looked awful no matter what I did with it, and a couple people on Ravelry suggested I overdye it. The easiest overdye for wool is - get this - Kool-Aid drink mix. I had bought some intending to use it to dye some cotton for my etsy shop, but since Kool-Aid doesn't actually work on cotton, I decided this was a much better use for my $0.20 of food coloring and citric acid.

Before:

After one packet each of Cherry and Grape, plus about 6 ounces of vinegar to help it set, and about 8 minutes in the microwave:

Still damp, you can see the variation in the top and bottom halves of the hank. And you can see how cute my cat is.

I'm hoping it will be dry tomorrow so that I can use the ball-winder that has finally come in for my at my local yarn store. I've got a swatch left over in the "before" colors, so it will be neat to see them side-by-side.

And if it's still fugly, it's hitting the trash.

But the overdyeing was fun ... definitely will have to try that again in the future.

This looks like a really cool idea

photo from http://www.spiraleyeneedles.com/index.html

Has anyone tried them? I'd love to know how they work.

I also love the idea that you can buy them enclosed in a greeting card. Now that's unique marketing!

Look how pretty!

My Leyburn socks, which I'm knitting from the same yarn as the emergency wedding shawl (and the socks I made for my sister-in-law). Look how pretty!

And the scarf I made for Lazy Kid, which was a really fun short-row knitting project that used Soy Wool Stripes from Paton.

She wears it tied around her waist like a cummerbund. At least that way the static electricity it generates doesn't mess up her hair :)

Last-minute greeting cards

Okay, so the package to the Lazy Grandparents needed to be in the mail today, and Lazy Kid wanted to make a Valentine's day card to go with it. Glitter glue wouldn't dry in time, so I hauled out Plan B: punching designs in cardstock with a hammer and nail.

1. Put a piece of corrugated cardboard on a solid surface (one you don't mind nicking up a bit if someone gets a little too excited with the hammer), then put the paper to be punched on top. I used regular cheapo cardstock for Lazy Kid's card, and some commercial blank greeting cards for my versions. Make sure you're looking at the inside of the card, poking the holes toward the outside of the card.

2. Use a lightweight hammer to force a thin nail through the cardstock into the cardboard (but hopefully not into the table under it), punching a small hole in the card. Repeat the process, placing holes no closer than about 1/4" apart (much closer together and the paper will tear, and then the kid will cry, and that's not the point of this, now is it?). You can lightly trace a design for the child to follow, or tape a pattern to the paper and remove it when all the holes are punched, or just let them wing it. Or, if you're really dumb, you can hold the nail while the kid hammers, which lets you control where the holes will end up, and also really, really hurts. Don't ask how I know this.

Lazy Kid's card, made with me aiming the nail (ow)

The bumps made by the nail pushing through will be different sizes depending on what size nail you use and how deep it penetrates, so if there's a specific look you're going for, play around with it on a piece of scrap paper before you let the kid go to it.

One of my cards - the outer heart followed a pattern, the inner one was done freehand

If you use a fairly large nail, you could even glue or tape a piece of colored paper behind the holes so the color would show through (and your traced pattern would be covered up), but it's really the texture of the holes that makes this so fun. I've made a bunch more this morning, whenever I could wrest the hammer away from my daughter. I love that our craft session included the sentence, "I want to make another card - where's the hammer?"

The last of the cotton market bags

Pattern can be found here: http://cerdeb.googlepages.com/SuperSelfPouchingStringShoppingBag.pdf

The construction on this is really nice - there's a double bottom that isn't joined all the way around, so you can flip the whole thing inside out and stuff the bag into the bottom to keep it tidy when it's not in use.

I think I've got one more market bag left in me before I'm done with this for a while, and I think I'm going to combine the bottom of this bag with the sides of the sea shell tote, just to see how they work together. Wish me luck!

Looky what I made

Lazy Kid likes her Rapunzel braid so much, she wore it to the mall on Sunday, and she would have worn it to school today if I hadn't tackled her on her way out the door. It's on a ponytail elastic, and the boucle yarn is lightweight enough that it doesn't pull out immediately, even on her straight hair. I may have to invest in some extra colors of yarn and see if these will sell in the etsy shop.

What I've been up to

Well, first of all, I've been dealing with the near-record January snowfall (around 40" ... just in January) here outside of Cleveland. The snow has come regularly in large quantities with no thaws in between, which is why both sides of my driveway look like this:


The snow is so deep that Lazy Kid hasn't been able to get out to play, since every time she tries she either gets stuck in a waist-deep drift or loses one of her boots somewhere in the side yard. This means we're all going stir-crazy, which may be why these have been so much fun:

I went stash-diving and came up with a whole bunch of kitchen cotton and leftover Paton's Grace mercerized cotton, most of which has been crocheted into reusable shopping bags. I made these two ... on Sunday. God, I love crochet. It's fast and uses lots of yarn, which is a good combination when trying to clear out stash.

You can find the pattern for the top bag here: http://shepherdscrookcrochet.blogspot.com/2008/05/she-sells-sea-shells.html

And the second bag here: http://momles.blogspot.com/2008/05/old-fashioned-string-bag.html

The first bag is cuter, but smaller, while the second bag holds a lot more but looks more utilitarian. The load in the second one during the photo shoot: fourteen library books and seven CDs. The librarians were impressed when I got there - it was like one of those clown cars where more and more people keep getting out, only in my case it was almost-overdue library materials.

I have a third bag in process that should be finished tonight or tomorrow, and it's both gigantic and a HUGE suck on my yarn supply, so this may be my last one for a while. Unless I can make shopping bags out of leftover sock yarn ... hmm ...

Sqam

http://www.squamartworkshops.com/index.php

Anyone participated in this program before? I know some of the crafty bloggers I read are teaching this year, and it looks like an excellent vacation idea ... but I'd like some feedback from people who have actually gone before. So pipe up if you're a Squammer!