Category - Getting Crafty

My friend Shanti and I are at it again.  Crafting, that is.  We’ve been crafting buddies since the very late 80’s.  This time we’re having a knit-along together.  Several people wanted to know what I’m making with my Noro Silk Garden – well it’s for the entrelac scarf that Shanti and I are each knitting.

I cast on yesterday –

I love the way that entrelac looks like it’s strips of knit fabric woven together, but in fact it is not.  It looks tremendously difficult, but again, it is not.  If you know how to increase, decrease and pick up stitches, you can knit entrelac.

As for the Silk Garden, well, what can I say?  I found it online on sale and I had a coupon code. I saved $3 a skein, which only makes me love it more.  It feels sort of scratchy in the skein, but when it gets knit up it seems to soften.  I’ve read that with a good soak before blocking it’ll soften even further.

Did I mention that entrelac is addicting?  I keep wanting to finish just one more block, then one more row, then oooo! a color change is coming up, gotta keep going to see which color it is!  I don’t think this scarf is going to take long to finish!

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Sorry about the big silence last week.  My parents were visiting and I had to spend less time on the computer and more time making it look I was doing housework or being busy.  I did get a lot of knitting time in, with a couple of completed projects to show for it.

I made a dishcloth – woohoo!  No stunning feat of knitting prowess here, just a stash of cheap yarn and the need to get out from under the massive projects I’ve undertaken of late.  Very quick, very satisfying.  You can find the pattern here:  Ballband Dishcloth.  That’s the yarn company’s actual website, but aren’t my pictures way better?

And then I started this:

No, not a ghost with a hat, but a snowman without a scarf.  I’m still working on the scarf, then I’ll show you the finished product.  He’s just too cute not to share right now.

But before I started either of those projects, I finished something that is a surprise, so if your name is Jenn and you had a baby on Christmas Eve, you need to click away right now since this is the last thing in this post, or at least act surprised when you see this in person.

Really cute mock cable baby hat and…

a soft, warm blanket with a matching crocheted edging.

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FELT!

Remember this bag I started on?

Well it only took me a few days of knitting it during snatches of free time.  I embroidered a trailing vine and some berries so then it looked like this:

Just a bag, really.  But then my friend Sheril, who had been crocheting a wool bag of her own, came over and we felted!  Stuck the bags in pillow cases, put them in the washing machine with HOT water and an extra long cycle, then sat back an knit other projects.  Every 10 minutes or so we checked on them until the bags had felted.

Behold

How cute is that?

I love how the embroidery gets totally incorporated into the bag.

The pattern can only be found in the Fall issue of Interweave Knits magazine.  Or you can buy a kit from the designer on Etsy: SheKnits for Knitters.

She sells complete kits to make the original Dumpling Bag and the Double Dumpling bag, which is what I made.  I’m all about letting other people do the shopping and letting all the supplies I need arrive at my front door.

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Not too long ago, Boo, Pumpkin Girl and I were sitting on the couch doing school.  We were studying animals and Bip came up to us, peered over the edge of the book, saw what we were reading and said, “Me like alligators.  Hmph.”

I hadn’t known he likes alligators so much.  He likes to see them at the zoo, on TV, in books, anywhere.  So what’s a mama to do but knit her little boy an alligator scarf, in green, his favorite color.

How cool is that?

Love the face!

It only took me a couple of weeks to finish.  The whole time Bip would say, “You finish my alligator?”  I’d tell him I wasn’t quite done and he’d say, “No fair!”

Silly boy!  He was very happy when I showed him his finished scarf.  Now both of us can hardly wait for the colder weather to set in!

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The title rhymes, by the way. (La clap-oh-tee, say fee nee) It means – The Clapotis scarf, she is finished!

Remember back in January, when I started it? It was just a few rows on a needle. I bet you forgot all about it. I’ve been plugging away at it for for six months, almost to the day. Would you like to see it?

Voilá!

C’est moi! It’s longer than my arm span, but I’m only 5 feet tall, so maybe it’s not all that long.

Here she is sunning herself on our teak rocking chair.

It was a hot and humid day, which is hard if you’re a wool scarf/shawl thing. She needed to rest on my lawn.

None of these pictures do justice to the actual color of the yarn or the awesomeness that is the drop stitch design. Here’s a close-up:

I finished it 4 months before I thought I would, which is pretty impressive considering all the projects I started and finished in-between. The best part is, it totally matches all my blouses, which I realized just the other day consists entirely of Land’s End t-shirts in short, long or 3/4 sleeves. Regardless of my lack of wardrobe originality, I’m going to look so great on the sidelines of the soccer field this Fall! I my mind, I’m sitting there in my camp chair, ginormous sunglasses shielding my eyes and my Clapotis flung carelessly across my shoulders. People gather in groups and whisper, “Who is that? Eva Longoria? No way – it’s Boo’s mom! Wow, I can see where he gets his good looks!”

What? It could happen!

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the mice will craft!

Pumpkin Girl took advantage of our mostly testosterone-free week by making me craft with her. She’s working on basic sewing and sort of pre-embroidery skills. I’m not at my finest teaching her fine motor skills type stuff, but I powered through it, trying to remember how patient my aunt and grandmother were teaching me how to embroider. While Pumpkin plugged away at stitching, I cast on for another sock. It was a Little House on the Prairie moment. Sorry, no pictures yet.

Last night I tackled a long overdue project while the chicken nuggets were being heated in the microwave.

A bazillion years ago, my parents gave me these old ladder back, rush seat chairs. They’d had them since the dawn of time and I needed chairs. I’ve never liked the look, feel or sound of rush seats and these were falling apart but still functional. Then the three of us visited a Shaker village and I saw the really cool Shaker tape chairs they had. This was back in about ’95, before the internet became THE source of all knowledge, but somehow I managed to find a source for Shaker tape and a booklet of instructions.

I cut off the old rush seat, sanded and stained the wood chairs, then wove Shaker tape seats. Very nice. They held up well for 10 years until the Great Bathroom Flood of ’06 when they got hit by water and ceiling plaster. They actually dried out just fine, but the tape lost some of its starchiness and started slipping apart. After a year and a half they were no longer usable. Then Bip the Destroyer got to them and starting unweaving them. Here’s one coming apart:

So I got online and ordered new Shaker tape. As luck would have it, I found the little how-to booklet. Pretty amazing for 12 years and 6 moves later!

First step was to remove all the tape.

In between the woven seat is a little cushion I made, following the book’s instructions. The glue on the edges had loosed so I removed the cushions completely, shook them out and reglued them into place.

Now the weaving. Here’s all the warps (or is it the wefts?) in place.

And now the weft (or is it the warp?) gets going.  Once you’ve got a couple of rows, you add more warp (?) on the left and right to account for the bottom rung being wider than the back.

All finished. Nice.

When Bip saw it he said, “Oh, pretty!  Me sit on it?”  Then he went to the second chair, still waiting for it’s new seat. “You do this one, too?”

“Yes”, I said, “I’ll do that one, too.”

“When?  Later?  After naps?”

(Hmm, do you think I’ve been putting him off a bit lately?  Telling him “later, after naps” a bit too much?  Guess I’d better go remind myself about what I learned from Coconut Syrup.)

So one chair is done and I have plans to finish the second one before the boys return tonight.

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Two year old Bip says “uttern-nun” for “another one”. If he wants two cookies, he’ll ask for a cookie for his “utter-nun hand”. If he can only find one shoe, he’ll say he’s looking for his “utter-nun shoe.” And look, I made an utter-nun sock!

You all cracked me up in the comments about my first sock, by the way.

I used Knitting Pure and Simple’s Beginner Socks with worsted yarn.  This is my second or third attempt at learning to make socks.  I couldn’t figure out what was wrong until I learned a couple of days ago that my first pattern  was full of errors.  I located the corrections easy enough, but that pattern was the only one in the whole book that I had to download 2 whole pages for.  Not good when you’re attempting your first sock.

Honestly, socks are easy.  As long as your pattern is accurate, that is.  Despite my best intentions not to maintain a stash of yarn, I have a nice selection of sock yarns that are calling me.  They are going to have to get in line behind a whole slew of utter-nun knitting projects.  My friends keep getting pregnant and their babies need handknits from yours truly.  It’s a little scary the number of people I know who are having babies.  Something’s in the air here.  Do not read anything into that sentence. I avoid going outside, remember, so I don’t breathe the air.  Besides, I just don’t have time to knit for any more little people.

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