18 posts tagged “knitting”
I did this, and people like it, and I'm doing more, but I need to skip November and December (these take forever to write, I haven't had time to tackle them, and last year is kind of too long ago now). However, I already went through a week or two of November info, so here it is. Knitting patterns only, and it doesn't cover the whole month.
All of this stuff was posted to Knitting Pattern Central in November 2007; then I went through it, weeded out patterns I thought were on the cheesy or incomprehensible side, and wrote descriptions for what was left.
Sweaters
Easy Stripes Knit Jacket: Please ignore the absolutely blinding self-striping yarn (unless you like it, I guess -- it is cheerful) and concentrate on the shape of the jacket. You can make this in any plain wool yarn that knits up at 5.5 stitches per inch at its recommended needle sizes. (Though, keep in mind that the sweater itself is actually knit at 19 stitches per 4 inches; it's the yarn that has a recommended gauge of 22 stitches per 4 inches.)
Fitted Knit Jacket: Knit in a bulky weight yarn, this jacket continues the trend of large, deconstructed collars that were so popular in knitting patterns this past year.
Leaves Jacket: Really more of a cardigan. This pattern, with its leafy, trailing vines, is only available in one size. Unlike some similar freebies, the size is a relatively generous one (about an XL).
Red Summer Top: Light, lacy cables. I am not ordinarily a fan of this kind of square short tunic top, but it has been in fashion this past year.
Saddle Shoulder Pullover: From Unicorn Books. I think almost every man I know owns some version of this sweater. The ribbing on the side helps with the fit.
Seamless Baby Kimono: Available in versions for both regular and bulky yarns! Cute. Australian terms, but in this case that mostly just means metric.
Shawl Collar Short Sleeve Pullover: Something like a vest alternative, a very textured piece that's a bit more refined than the "Red Summer Top" above, though they are similar in shape.
Snowflower Cardie: Cardigan in two possible lengths with Norwegian motifs.
Southwestern Ornament Jacket: Again, more of a cardigan, with colorful panels on a solid ground. Fair Isle and some interesting cables.
White Cable Knit Sweater: A classic and feminine high-necked Aran design.
Headwear
Horseshoe Hat: Cables decrease in size as they climb this classic cap. (Ordinarily, I like to see cables that flow out of ribbing if the two are combined, but I cannot tell if that's the case in this hat without making it... the photos don't show enough.)
Jingle Bell Taos Hat: For babies, kids, and brave or carefree adults. A loose cap made with this stripey yarn becomes a jingling crown when judiciously stitched and embellished.
Oregon Rose Cloche: Picot edging and an interesting embellishment idea make this one extra-cute. Try different colors for spring!
R2-D2 Beanie: Should this be under "Whimsies"? Maybe. It's a beanie that looks like the dome of R2-D2's head, for all your favorite Star Wars fans (and for a very lazy costume, when necessary). Complete with protruding spokes. You need this.
Scarves and Shawls
Criss Cross: Basic scarf with interlaced panels, a motif that's been popular for the last couple of years.
Dragon Scales Shawl: Simple diamond lace. Try this after you've done a lace scarf.
Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks Scarf: "Simple and sweet, like holding hands and feeding ducks." Easy star-stitch scarf in a mottled yarn. Don't knit this one too tightly or use a yarn that's intensely colorful: you wouldn't want to distract from its quiet beauty.
Osiris Scarf: Lovely and intricate cabled scarf with a very high-end look.
Pink Ribbon Hat: Features the "pink ribbon" design related to breast cancer awareness. The designer, Carissa, suggests that you could represent many causes by changing the color. (And I suggest that, if you're adept at stranded knitting, you could change the colors of just the ribbons, or the ribbons and the small cables between the panels, for a two-color look. If not trying it in two colors, you might want to skip the suggestion that you use a rainbow variegated yarn: the cable design will not show up well in a variegated yarn with intense colors.)
Bags
Ballonnett: French for "Little Balloon" (I assume), this is a small, round, drawstring handbag with a ton of vintage charm and many possible uses.
Candy Striper: Glittery, stripey, happy candy-cane goodness, by Vickie Howell. Not just for winter, if you like to wear red and white like I do.
Socks
Pulsations Socks: Lacy ankle socks. The recommended yarn adds a fashionable jolt of color.
Sideways Socks: This design uses self-striping yarn and a provisional cast-on to create stripes that run up and down the leg. After the body has been knit, the sock is grafted into a tube and a toe is added to one end.
Whimsies
Baby Santa Suit: UK terms. This is terribly kitschy, but also cute, and I can imagine that some people will want one for their wee moppet.
Baked With Love washcloth: A shadow pattern of baking supplies. Make this one in light colors, so the motif will stand out.
Knitted Baby Set: A hat, blanket, and sweater. Hearts and dots and multiple pom-poms, for maximum adorability.
Loom-Knit Snowflakes: Well, why not? You can use these in ornaments, embellishments, jewelry, etc.
Poison Coffee Cozy: Yarr! Don't be stealin' me brew, ya scurvy dog! It's a skull-and-crossbone motif drink cozy knit with a stranded technique. That might mean poison, or it might mean pirates: you decide.
Ribbon of Hope Washcloth: In the same theme as the Pink Ribbon Hat above, this washcloth has a heart-shaped two-color Pink Ribbon motif.
Squiddy: This felted squid is not as small as you might think, but he is kind of cute.
Stewie Griffin Doll: As suggested in one comment, Stewie's dreams of world domination have finally come to fruition as he joins a select group of recognizable cartoon characters rendered into knit amigurumi form. Now, practice your best Sheridan Whiteside voice to go along with him.
I also chose a couple of mitten patterns, but I have no idea where to put them.
http://knitwithkt.blogspot.com:80/2007/11/basic-mens-mittens.html
Lady Moss Mittens: Thrummed mittens are extra-warm.
I need to stop drafting posts and then not actually posting them.
I haven't been posting much lately because I'm super-duper busy as heck. Both the lead bloggers at DIY Life (one is darkmatt3r) stepped down at the beginning of March, and a couple of other ladies and I replaced them (the fact that it took three people to replace two harried ones, and the fact that all three of us are still very busy, might give you an idea of how much work we're talking about).
I wrote two long things in March, too. My article about Hinamatsuri, a holiday I think is really nifty because it involves super-fancy dolls, didn't get a ton of hits (but maybe people will discover it over time). There are some craft patterns at the end... a paper diorama, little cloth dolls, etc.
I also did a free knit/crochet pattern round-up for Easter: bunnies and lambs (or, if you prefer, rabbits and baby sheep). More cuteness per column inch than I knew what to do with. I want to make just about everything I listed, but I can't justify doing so. Anyway: Bunnies and Lambs to Knit, Bunnies and Lambs to Crochet.
I'm getting back on those "best free patterns of the month" columns, but skipping a few months. I have notes for a month that I'm not going to cover, so I will post them here. Later today, probably.
W/r/t my last post, I haven't yet bought any dolls. I did find that my local Japanese market is selling a few basic Re-Ment sets, so I bought one (single, not case) box of "Kawaii Kitchen" and one box of some food-based set. I don't think these are the new Americanized versions. Most of their other candy toy sets are based on, like, Power Rangers or some kind of mecha.
I banged my finger up pretty good last week, and in doing so, learned something: if you have a choice between Hello Kitty Band-Aids and non-Hello Kitty Band-Aids, get the Hello Kitty ones. They're bigger than the WaterBlock style anyway, and they will make you smile (at least, they will if you are me). I've been covering my bandaids in porous clear tape, then wearing a rubber finger cot every time I have to wash my hands.
I have managed to get a friend totally obsessed with Death Note. Now we are having long philosophical debates about A) whether or not we would use the Death Note, and how, and B) our deep, abiding love for L. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you clearly spend your leisure time more wisely than I do. (To be fair, though, everyone I know who sees the show becomes mildly obsessed with it. This includes my previously-animation-hating mother, who has also fallen hard for Ratatouille and anything from Studio Ghibli.)
(I'm also giggling at the moment, because Law & Order: Criminal Intent is on, and the suspect's last name is Morrissey, so they're saying things like, "I DON'T THINK MORRISSEY COULD HAVE PLANNED THIS ON HIS OWN," and I'm like, NO, HE WAS TOO MISERABLE, HE WILL BE CAUGHT WHEN JOHNNY MARR TURNS HIM IN....)
As some people know, I write for a relatively new blog called DIY Life... I've spent most of the last month working on a big intro/tutorial about amigurumi. I came up with so much material that it turned into four posts, only one of which is an intro/tutorial. The editors decided to call it Amigurumi-o-rama. I think that you can probably learn anything you'd want to know about amigurumi there, if there's anything you don't know.
(I'm adding this to the amigurumi group even though I'm pretty sure that they do indeed know everything in the articles.)
Please check it out! I really hope that people like the posts, and that you can get something out of them, because I worked so, so hard on them, and I got to feature some work that I totally admire.
The tutorial is based on the Amineko pattern, because Best Bunny is behind a registration wall at Lion Brand, and the doll at Stitch has all that hair to root... it's, "crochet along with me, these are some potential pitfalls, hey check out the shapes you're learning to make." There's a post with links to animal patterns, one for food patterns, and one coming up today (10 August) with pop culture patterns like Daleks, Yoda, and Pikachu. The tutorial is crochet-based, but the articles have both knit and crochet stuff in them.
(I've been a member of this group since way before I was asked to write for DIY Life, but I never had anything I was proud enough to post about until now! & next week, I hope I'll be posting a free pattern of my own.)
I just found a few free knitting patterns, thought I'd pass them on. Maybe you've seen these already?
Small Dolls - Jezze's pattern for "small dolls," which in this case are more like monster-creatures. This pattern is technically written for the "magic loop" (a circular knitting needle, generally used by people who are afraid of DPNs), but I don't think that's necessary... it looks like you could just as easily use it with DPNs, if you put 10 stitches on each needle. The dolls look a little odd, and therefore, of course, are adorable. (via CRAFT.)
Yeah, DPNs can be a pain to cast onto. I usually cast onto one DPN and distribute the stitches, or else cast onto a long, non-DPN and distribute the stitches from there. But other than that, if you get the needles arranged properly, they're not that hard to knit with. It frustrates me that certain designers say, "I made this a non-DPN project so it would be a little easier!" (not the case with Jezze here, just something I saw the other day).
Well, DPNs aren't hard, and if you fear them, you should give them a try, rather than taking a designer's word for it, or the word of people on some board somewhere online. I used to knit socks on a 12" circular needle, using DPNs only for the heel and toe, but I don't do that anymore - it's DPNs all the way now, and DPNs for hats and other things knit in the round. There's a way to hold DPNs that makes knitting with them easier, something I'll try to post about the next time I'm working on something in the round.
Still, I wouldn't blame you for using a circular needle to knit a sweater in the round! And circs do help avoid the "ladders" that can happen between needles.
Mead Scarf - downloadable pattern for a lace scarf, from a blog called Stash Amassed Beyond Life Expectancy. The blogger/designer, Elizabeth Morrison, may be familiar to a few people from her patterns that have been published in Knitty over the last few years. (via Knitting Pattern Central.)
Also - just a quick thing - I am SO THRILLED that Eunny Jang is the new editor of Interweave Knits! I've long thought that Eunny is the best knitblogger out there... lots of focus on the craft itself, from someone who has good technique, great ideas, and a wonderful sense of design. There are other knitting bloggers who have at least two out of three of these attributes, but sometimes the lack of the third can be a problem for me, and sometimes the bloggers lose focus and go from knit-blogging to just... blogging. Like, pictures of pets and kids, descriptions of trips to the lake with the sister-in-law, not that much knitting content past an occasional picture of what they're making. And some of the knitting bloggers I loved a few years ago essentially abandoned their blogs.
The publishing industry has been cherry-picking bloggers for the last few years, and for a while I thought, "Why hasn't anyone snatched Eunny up? If she wrote a book, I'd definitely buy it." Then I saw her design and article in this past winter's IK, and I thought, ah, it's nice to see that they're publishing her stuff, I hope they keep publishing more. And then... boom, they put her in charge! How wonderful. (I think I have a bit of a knitting-crush on her, if you can't tell. :)
First of all... the lack of posts around here is illusory; I've been working on filling in the archive with content from my old blog. I also wrote a FAQ, but haven't posted it publicly and wanted to look at it a lot more before I do. (Sometimes my sense of humor doesn't read well on the internet.)
Last night I actually went to the craft store and spent money, which is notable for two reasons. One is that I never have any money. The other is that I don't usually go anywhere alone, particularly since that car accident a few months back, and since nobody ever wants to go to the craft store with me, I haven't set foot in one in a while.
So, this was a trip to Jo-Ann Etc, where they're having a big sale. I went in armed with the usual 50% off coupon from the mailer. Nothing I bought was earth-shattering, but I thought people might like to come along with me for the ride anyway.
I was looking for this fabric, which I saw there a year ago, couldn't afford, and haven't been able to find in a store since. It's by Alexander Henry and it's called Star Sign. It is my number one fabric crush. One day I will get a yard or two of this fabric and make a tote bag or pillow or quilt or something, and then the madness will end. I'm not even into astrology; I just like the style of the illustrations. (I borrowed these photos from Cia's Palette, to avoid direct linking.)
Can you see and feel the cuteness? CAN YOU? At any rate, I struck out again this time. It doesn't seem like they've restocked any "hip" novelty prints (Alexander Henry, Michael Miller, etc) since last year, alas. It's a good thing I picked up "Mini Calaveras," below, at that time, in a pink colorway: I could only afford one yard of fabric, and I was looking for something to line a small purple bag with. "Mini Calaveras" has gold glitter accents just about everywhere that looks yellow in the scan. I didn't pick up the pink and white "Flora de los Muertos" faux-lace pattern, either, and I regret it.
I still haven't lined that bag, primarily because I now want to use the pink "Mini Calaveras" in a much more visible manner. It's so cool that it would be a shame to hide it. I think Alexander Henry is my favorite fabric designer.
But the subject of this post is supposed to be last night's trip, and all I'm saying is that they didn't have any of these fabric designs that I was looking for, so I left the fabric department and headed for patterns. Butterick patterns are on sale for 99 cents, but it happens that all the patterns that interest me right now are by Simplicity. I looked at a few pattern books for a while, then moved on to yarn. Well, I detoured in scrapbooking and beading, but wasn't really into looking at those supplies last night.
I have a serious lack of basic, plain, worsted-weight, solid-color yarn in my stash. There are amigurumi I've wanted to make and/or design, but I haven't been able to do anything about it due to the sheer scarcity of appropriate yarn at my disposal. I wanted to take advantage of the sale to remedy that. Unfortunately, I was completely unable to make up my mind, and running out of time, so I ended up with a skein of ecru Red Heart Soft and another of Mushroom brown Wool-Ease. Not very exciting at all, but appropriate for things like bunnies and deer and Totoros.
Knitting needles and crochet hooks are mostly 40% off, but a few were on clearance. The clearance needles were Jo-Ann's store-brand tubular plastic needles in very large sizes. They normally go for about $7-10, but are currently less than $2. They have #17, 19, and 35 for sure; not sure about 15 and 50. I've needed some #19 needles for a while, to knit a single small project, so I picked some up. I don't know how the quality is, but since I'll only be using them for a few hours, I'm not too concerned.
Sugar & Cream kitchen cotton was on sale for $1.79, so I picked up three balls. I've wanted to make some washcloths for a while, not because I enjoy washcloth knitting (dear god, NO), but because I like the finished product. When I finish these, I probably won't even post them here, because they're really not the sort of knitting you brag about much. My favorite pattern is the plain, diamond-shaped garter stitch one with a square of eyelets around the edge, because the first knitted washcloth I ever had - made by a relative - was in that pattern, and I think it has an elegant simplicity, as utilitarian household items go.
I bought this yarn because I have it in an unbleached shade, but the pattern is so mindless that I can't actually bring myself to use that color... YAWN. I made it in a purple/berry blend a couple of years ago, and that was tolerable because I at least got to see the color blend happening. Solid beige yarn requires something much more difficult, maybe a lace swatch.
Anyway, here are the colors I chose: Swimming Pool, Summer Splash, and Beach Ball Blue. They go together pretty nicely, and they will go with my bathroom gear. Erika at Red Shirt Knitting did some "garterlac" cloths with what looks like the first two.
The store was about to close, so I only had time to pop into the embroidery department to pick up a pattern I've wanted for a while: Clover's "Animals." Clover's patterns are made for their punch embroidery tool, but they're just heat-transfers like any other embroidery patterns, so you don't necessarily have to use them with the tool. I like Sublime Stitching's patterns as much as the rest of the kids do, but these Clover patterns are also very appealing, have a different, quirky line-drawing style, and are maybe not as hipster-trendy. They're identifiably craft products from Japan, with the cute style that implies, but you can probably actually buy them at your local store! (Or you can, indeed, buy them at SuperBuzzy.) This pattern retails for $3, so I used my 50% off coupon on it and got it for $1.50. Almost everything else was on sale!
No time, alas, to look at buttons and patches.
Total spent? About $15 for 5 balls of utilitarian yarn, a set of #19 needles, and an adorable embroidery pattern. This satisfied my desire to add a few little new things into the mix, without completely breaking the bank.
Here are the other embroidery patterns that I know of in Clover's line: Kitchen, Garden, and Flower. (All the Clover embroidery pattern pics are lifted from the Hancock Fabrics site.)
Have you gotten any craft bargains lately?
A few weeks ago, those Envirosax bag sets, large polyester fabric shopping bags in a variety of prints, were being pimped on half the blogs I read. They also make hemp bags, which might be less objectionable. One of the blogs had been discovered by someone from the company that makes the bags, and I wound up getting into it with him a little bit, because I really didn't appreciate his attitude. Here's why, and here's what I think you can do about it.
I don't think anyone can disagree that reusable shopping bags are a good thing, and I think that can be extended to most basic eco-friendly measures. However, the way that "green living" is being pushed these days... it's an issue of privilege, to a large degree, and an issue of trendiness and consumerism, and that bothers me. That is, being or at least appearing eco-friendly is a trend these days, one that also surfaced in the early 1970s and early 1990s. That seems antithetical to the spirit of green living... cognitive dissonance ahoy! I don't want, as it seemed in this instance, for someone to preach environmentalism to me primarily because they want to sell me something.
My friend Maggie points out that in localities that ban plastic bags, people who don't have enough extra money to invest in reusable shopping bags all at once, and who have to walk or bike their groceries home, or choose to do so because of the environmental impact of driving, are kind of screwed when they're stuck using paper bags, particularly if it rains. Paper bags are even less eco-friendly than plastic, though they biodegrade more easily. Sometimes while you're using them. I would link to Maggie's Livejournal post about this, but it's friends-only.
On a similar note, I live in a notoriously wealthy district that has free recycling, but charges residents by volume for trash collection. We pay by purchasing special stickers at local grocery stores and putting one sticker on each of our (33 gallons or less, 50 lbs or less) trash bags. These stickers now cost over $3 and have gone up $1 in the three years since I moved here. Sometimes the collectors behave in a discretionary manner, refusing to pick up a bag that's "too heavy," but taking its stickers, even multiple ones meant to cover for its weight.
The end effect is to force recycling on the lower-income residents of the area. This plan is overwhelmingly favored by wealthier residents, who never have to choose between having a house filled with garbage and eating or going to the doctor, and who presumably can afford to "throw money away" if they choose not to recycle. (In my house, this plan is resented on principal, although we recycle a lot regardless, and usually only throw away 2 to 3 bags of trash per month, making it way cheaper for us than flat-rate municipal trash collection would be. Mostly we miss having helpful trash collectors.)
Anyway, it distresses me that the eco-friendly message that is filtering down to the masses is mostly consumerist: you can buy this and this and this to be eco-friendly, and for a while, it won't be fashionable to be without these things. What happens when being eco-friendly goes out of fashion again? Is it only in fashion because Bush has such a low approval rating? Because some celebrities are doing it... not just the wacky pothead ones?
In England, Sainsbury's, a retail chain, sold a cloth bag designed by Anya Hindmarch for a few dollars each; there were lines around the block when it was introduced, and some of the bags went for hundreds of dollars on ebay. There is a move to issue a slightly different version of the same bag in the US, because the launch was so successful. The punchline? It was made in a Chinese sweatshop, and the materials used weren't organic.
That's why I went at it with the Envirosax guy... I explained several ways in which plastic shopping bags are useful (example: most dog owners find them incredibly handy*; they are used in my house for that, and in place of other plastic trash bags that would be thrown out anyway) and that many supermarkets have recycling bins for them, and he replied that "they all end up in a landfill anyway, and recycling is hard on developing countries" (the latter might have been his only really valid point, and there are a couple of other good arguments against plastic bags: for one thing, free-roaming plastic bags are bad news for wildlife). But when I mentioned both that my family already has a pile of plain canvas bags and that Whole Foods sells great, cheaper fabric shopping bags, he called canvas bags unfashionable and claimed you wouldn't want to use them for anything but shopping. (As if you don't probably already have three bags you can take to the beach.)
That's the point where I got really ticked off, and thought I'd rather eat my own hat than buy one of Envirosax's bag sets. There is nothing particularly eco-friendly about having a manufactured product shipped to you, particularly if you slip from using it for its intended purpose after a few weeks or months. He also never (at least, not before I did the virtual equivalent of storming off in a huff) addressed my point that a bag that holds at least twice as much as a regular plastic shopping bag and is carried on the shoulder might not be the best thing for people's backs. Regardless: using what you have or making something yourself is almost certainly much more green and much less consumerist than buying "fashionable" shopping bags online just because they're cute and you can.
So, in response to all this consumerism and greenwashing, here are a few patterns for shopping bags. Some of which recycle plastic shopping bags, so they won't end up in a landfill for a long time, if ever. Plain tote bags are a pretty simple thing to sew, so I'm not going to try to include sewing patterns.
- Reduce Reuse Recycle in Magknits, May 2007 - Knit from "yarn" made of plastic shopping bags.
- There's a similar crocheted bag, "Bag O' Bags" by Diane Bromberg, in Tsia Carson's book Craftivity. (Which I really mean to get around to reviewing one of these days.)
- Love To Shop Shopping Bag, at SpunMag, seems relatively large. Another bag made from plastic shopping bags, carefully melted to "block" it into shape. (Can those fumes possibly be healthy?)
- Knit Net Shopping Bag by YarnDemon.
- Reduction Tote in CrochetMe, Spring 2007 - a string mesh tote with a relatively solid bottom panel. This bag is designed to fold into the pocket on the front, for easy carrying.
- Also worth looking at: CrochetMe's Sack Dress Sack, a bag crocheted with "yarn" that was recycled from an old dress by cutting it into strips. You could adapt this into a basic tote and use sheets bought at thrift stores to make the yarn.
- Check out the "Bags, Totes, and Purses" category at both Knitting Pattern Central and Crochet Pattern Central; make a point of looking at anything labelled "Shopping Bag" or "Tote Bag," since many bag styles are represented in this category. "Mesh" isn't a bad keyword either, and there are a bunch of linked patterns for large felted solid "market" totes, too, if you'd prefer that. (Here's another meshy Shopping Bag.)
- One of the companies known for linen yarns, probably Louet, has a free mesh shopping bag pattern on the yarn label. This is usually advertised in the back of magazines like Interweave Knits and Vogue Knitting.
As to which yarns you use... well, hm. There was an eco-friendly yarn post on Treehugger recently. The trouble is, once you add in shipping (to yourself or a local store), and the manufacturing process even on organic yarns, it can be hard to decide what's actually eco-friendly. For example, a ceramic mug would seem to be the better choice than a throwaway cup, but studies have shown that given what it takes to manufacture each (and keep the mug clean), the mug doesn't begin to be a better choice until you've used it to replace 300 cups, and doesn't actually outstrip the cups until the 600+ mark. So if you drop the mug in the sink and break it after you've had 30 cups of tea out of it, you haven't been as eco-friendly as you thought. The numbers vary based on whether the cup is paper or styrofoam, but not that much, and there are, unbelievably, some respects in which styrofoam is the most eco-friendly up to over 1000 uses. Ceramic is still better - and when it breaks, you can still use it in other ways, like as a pencil holder (if it has a hairline crack) or in a mosaic (if it's really shattered). But it takes a long time to realize the actual benefits, and it works best if you only own the one mug and use it all the time.
(A few of these links originally came from CRAFT. Some of the environmental information came from replies to Maggie's LJ post about banning plastic bags, which is friends-only. I am particularly indebted to "chaotic_heat"'s well-researched comments on that entry. Also, anyone who uses plastic shopping bags for dog business ahem ahem might want to look into the Doggie Dooley, an enzymatic breakdown system for dog waste. If you have a 2'x2' square of yard available to you, you can use it. It costs around $40 and has the side effect of fertilizing any plants around it.)
Oh, as far as me? No, I'm not an environmentalist or fair-trade guru or someone who manages to completely sidestep consumerism. I try to do what I can when I can do it, and sometimes that isn't much. I try not to use animal-tested cosmetics of any kind, and I'm trying to use non-toxic cleaning products in my house, eat organic foods when possible, look for fair trade goods. I'm also trying to at least question and fend off the worst of my own consumerist impulses and to DIY (DIM?) when I can.
If you're really in need of shopping bags, have money to burn, and don't resent the statements made by the company's rep, you could probably do worse than to buy the Envirosax, particularly the hemp ones. But you'll note that I'm not linking to them. I've been told that Trader Joe's also has inexpensive fabric shopping bags that last a long time. I'm not stumping for the eco-friendliness or fair-tradeitude of the Trader Joe's or Whole Foods bags, only their accessibility and the fact that nobody involved with either company has ever tried to shame me on the basis of fashion into buying their bags.
A bit before my last post here, the one from March, my fiance and I got in a car accident. The car behind us was hit by a drunk driver. That car then hit us. We've had varying degrees of whiplash: Tom is bigger and stronger than me, and has a healthier back in terms of fitness, so he was better within a few weeks. I seem to have wrenched the entire right side of my back from neck to lumbar. Things are improving but I'm still really uncomfortable. I definitely can't knit, crochet, or embroider: I'm right-handed, and all those things cause me to be tense in the shoulder, and I can't handle any more shoulder tension than I already have.
(I imagine I'm doing better than the passenger from the car that was hit and then hit us: she had to go to the hospital wearing a cervical collar and strapped to a board immediately after the accident.)
That said, I picked up some knitting for the first time tonight, and I did OK. Still working in an intermittent manner on Knitty's "Branching Out." Recommended pattern: easy, relatively fast if you do a motif or two each night, good introduction to lace. I ought to have finished it ages ago, but it's a project I pick up for a few nights every couple of months. This time, no serious pain for me, so I can probably get back to a restrained amount of knitting.
A few days after my last post, I came down with a really bad cold, and have spent the last few weeks getting over it & fighting off a secondary sinus infection. I think that's all OK now. Ironically, I'm pretty sure I caught the cold when I was in the emergency room; colds usually take 10-14 days to take effect, and I came down with mine exactly twelve days later. It delayed physical therapy, which is one reason I'm still in so much discomfort.
In the second week after the accident, along with my last post, I was working on some stuff for my commonplace book (I feel pretentious calling it an "art journal," because I'm not very good at drawing). I have a stack of tea-stained photocopies dating back to a 2-D Design class that I took in 1999, and among them was a cool anatomical engraving of a pregnant woman by Pietro da Cortona. I thought it would make an interesting cover for my journalbook, on a dark green background, with gold edging, so I covered it in gel medium that I tinted a sort of sepia-gold after some trial and error. (The only paints I own, aside from a tube of Interference Gold, are black, white, raw umber, primary cyan, primary yellow, and primary magenta, so I mix up every color I use... it's nice to know how, but it's also honestly kind of tiresome when you aren't really a painter!) I set it aside to dry, but then I couldn't find a sheet that was the right size and color for the background of the cover of my journal. I was still thinking of that when I got sick.
(In the meantime, I'd taken the background of the engraving and put it over a page from an old prospectus from the Museum School in Boston, which was itself a repro of something from someone's sketchbook, that showed through in the shape of the female figure I'd cut out. I think it's pasting it into my book which makes the whole exercise disturbingly meta. YOUR sketchbook in MY... thing. I Don't Sketch. It's Not A Sketchbook. Or an Art Journal. Etc.)
I didn't do anything for a few days, then came downstairs one morning to find out that my dog had found my little cut-out anatomical drawing and "investigated"* its shoulder. Square one. I wasn't upset, except that I have since discovered that my current library system does not have the Pietro da Cortona book (you can see more of its engravings here), and that I think the similar engravings they do have, in a book by Vesalius, suffer by comparison. Vesalius is justly famous, but he doesn't deal with women much in his work, and his engravings, supposedly executed by the studio of Titian, tend to have stockier proportions and less harmonious layouts than those by da Cortona. Vesalius was a very great medical practitioner and professor of the mid-sixteenth century, and his anatomy books were done, not precisely by him, to provide a reference for his students. Plenty of da Cortona's work is redrawn from Vesalius, actually; it's just that I think he's the better artist, compared to the executors of Vesalius's drawings.
(And if you have enjoyed the last paragraph or two, you will probably enjoy Medical Sight Lines, a blog about medical illustration. "Knowledge Pictures," the most recent post as of this writing, is probably the most relevant to what I've just written, and includes a copy of one of the most admired of Vesalius's plates. It should be noted that Vesalius's work was in the form of woodcuts, the original blocks of which were destroyed in WW2, whereas da Cortona's was in the form of engravings, allowing for more detail. Since I'm more interested in elegance than medical accuracy, you can understand my preference! Also interesting: Visionary Anatomies, a splendid essay by Michael Sappol presented by the National Academy of Sciences, which contains the following: Given the complexity of the interior of the body, you couldn’t just describe it, you had to show it. And what was shown was the dead body. Early modern representations of the anatomical body took death head on: the dead mocked the living; the living mocked the dead; the cadaver was an effigy. It served as a reminder of our mortality, our fallibility, our folly — the fragility of human life and civilization.)
On the other hand, I'm about to have access to a scanner again, attached to the computer I actually use to post! I lent mine to my fiance a few years ago, on the premise that I'd sometimes come over and scan things, which I never do. This new scanner around the house means that I may actually start to post more images. Or not.
Newer people, I swear I usually talk about pretty yarns and beads and whether or not certain books suck, rather than illustrations of dissected cadavers. But for some reason, just after my injury, the idea of using a historically-distant anatomical illustration of a woman appealed to me.
*Chewed. But she's a very well-behaved dog and rarely destroys anything that doesn't belong to her!
(Originally written on February 7, 2007, with new material added today.)
If we'd had a colder winter before now, I'd have finished these sooner, but our winter was mild until a week or two ago. It wasn't until the cold weather made me want to pull out my commercially made stretch terry wristwarmer bands and wear woolly legwarmers around the house with polarfleece pajama pants that I thought, "It'd be great if I finished those cashmere armwarmers so I can wear them before it warms up again." (Incidentally, my wristwarmer bands are mismatched, decidedly non-fabulous things, one featuring an embroidered design of Hello Kitty as a really adorable pirate in red/white/black, the other the Adeline Street logo, which is a skull over crossbones that have a heart in the center, done in olive green. They are "cool" in theory and unflattering in practice, but they do the trick.)
So, I finished these tonight. I started them in September, put them aside a few times, and basically finished them over a month ago (I needed the needles for a Xmas present I wanted to make). I just had to knit the 4 rows of thumb onto the second armwarmer and do all the finishing. The pattern is in Stitch 'n Bitch Nation, a book I always intended to use and, until recently, never did.
I made the Hurry Up Spring!s in Artful Yarns' Virtue, a 100% cashmere yarn made of what seems like 5 laceweight plies, each a different color. The shade I used was "Prudence" (purple/red/fuchsia/tan/silver-grey). Not really the best choice for cabling; I used it because I wanted to make armwarmers with the cashmere and I liked the pattern. It looks all right, though I think the pattern would be best in a solid color of a nice merino yarn; not even in Noro Kureyon, as the designer intended.
If you don't cast on and off very loosely, these may be a little uncomfortable, depending on the size of your hand.
I think the thumb starts too low on the pattern, making the end of it come further over my fingers than I'm comfortable with. If I ever made these again, I'd start the thumb on row 34-35 rather than row 30. I actually had to rip out the second armwarmer when it was 90% done, back in late October, because I forgot to reverse the thumb placement. Don't "pull a me" if you make them.
I tend to read charts and basic instructions, and then completely ignore finishing instructions, because "I know how to finish things" (well, I do! I've been knitting as long as the freakin' host of TV's favorite knitting show!) - I don't advise this for others, because even if you read them in the beginning before you started knitting, if you don't finish the project in a few days, you'll probably forget them by the time you should be putting them in motion & just go with your instincts. That's definitely "pulling a me" - and most of the time it works, if your instincts are OK, but sometimes the best instincts in the world won't save you from missing something really important.
On another note, I also chose not to bother to reverse the cable chart for the second armwarmer. Since no reversed version was provided, nor were any instructions for how to reverse a cable chart, it seems like most knitters who opt to make these and then post about it are choosing not to do the reversal. I don't think it makes much of a difference if you aren't obsessive, but it might be a nice extra touch.
Overall, these were relatively quick and easy to make, with the exception of a few punishing stitches (k3tog by knitting into the front, back, and front again of the group of three). They require some close attention, but only for 1/3 of each row, so it's easy to do other things while you make them, and they don't take long to finish if you aren't ripping out the entire second half of the project and then getting bored 20 rows into the reknitting of it.
Edited in April 2007 to add: I wound up wearing these out of the house, and the first time I did, I snagged the first one I made in the ribbing near the cast-off, so I'll be pulling it back a few rows and redoing it. This may be a blessing in disguise, since it also seems that I cast off a little too tightly... just enough to make it annoying around the base of my fingers. The yarn is really too silky for the woven-in bits to want to stay woven. Overall, I would definitely not recommend Virtue as a good yarn for this project... use Kureyon or Paton's Classic Merino. I'll be using the latter to make a second pair for outdoor wear next winter.
I know I said that I suspected most of these things as I was knitting, but after wearing the mitts for a while, I can confirm them. However, the mitts are pretty comfy and warm. There are simpler cables from Harmony Guides: 450 Knitting Stitches: V. 2 you can use on the back with a similar width, if you're interested:
Replace cable chart with 48 rows of the following:
Downward Claw Cable
Row 1: Purl 1, knit across, purl 1
Row 2: Purl 1, knit across, purl 1
Row 3: Purl 1, C4L, K1, C4R
Row 4: Purl 1, knit across, purl 1
To reverse this to an upwards claw cable, replace row 3 with
P1, C4R, K1, C4L
I'm not sure which would work best.
(C4L = Slip next st onto cable needle and leave at front, knit next 3 sts from left needle, knit sts from cable needle.
C4R = Slip next 3 sts onto cable needle and leave at back, knit next st from left needle, knit sts from cable needle.)
OK, so, I wrote this long post about the cabled armwarmers I knitted, and haven't posted it yet because I wanted to add a picture, but I'm having picture problems. It has since occurred to me that I don't have a userpic on this blog. Bad, bad me!
I finished the earwarmer headband, and am working on a pattern. I don't know whether to include a pic, or to make a second headband: the headband that I finished was kind of experimental. I didn't have enough yarn to wash the gauge swatch to see if it would bloom... it did. So, the headband is wider than I'd like, and I had to pull it out half a dozen times to get it to the right length. I'm pleased with the final product, in that I've been wearing it all the time, but if I had it to do again, I would almost certainly make it a little bit narrower... it sticks out at the back of my head.
So I can post a photo, but only with the caveat that nobody else's will look exactly like mine, because the instructions are to produce something slightly different. If I make a second example, I'm not sure which bulky-gauge yarn to work with this time, maybe just Lamb's Pride Bulky. Something variegated would be nicer, more fashion-forward. But these are one-ball stash-killer projects. I have some Berroco Chinchilla I want to use up, but I am afraid it would be way too slippery to work as a headband.
Also, I have been talking about knitting too much lately, because that's what I've mostly been doing. Rest assured, I have other, non-knitting things to talk about. Perhaps tomorrow, even. We can talk about DIY decorating projects, right? Hint hint.
Among other bad girls: Nikol Lohr, of Thrifty Knitter, who wrote the book Naughty Needles. I'm waiting for the library to get it to me - I usually review books that come from the library, and as such, I have to wait until they actually decide to add them to the system, then I have to wait until the book arrives from the reserve list. I could get this particular book any time in the next month, as they didn't have it a few weeks ago and do have it now, and I am next in line for a copy, but the check-out period is three weeks.
I'm sure the review will be generally positive: I liked what I saw in the bookstore, and I particularly appreciated the array of models, all of whom are pretty, but most of whom are also curvy.* I've always liked Nikol's site Disgruntled Housewife, as well as the others she's worked on. At any rate, Naughty Needles has a website, and there are a few extra patterns there... some are even pretty innocent, like a technique-teaching purse pattern, or a pony hat for kids (cute, and way less costumey than the adorable unicorn getup in Vickie Howell's New Knits on the Block.) Nikol also wrote that trippy Katamari Damacy earmuff pattern that ShojoBeat offered for free this winter, & that I went on about at length.
* Lots of knitting books feature models who are very thin or very, very, young. For example, the photos I've seen from Pretty In Punk, an upcoming book, mostly feature garments that won't work on figures that have much in the way of curves: a tiny ruffled tube skirt, a sweater with big horizontal stripes. These are cute, but unflattering for most people. I love Teva Durham's Loop-D-Loop book, but it's another that seems limiting in flatterability (most of the stuff that looks good on boobtastic people like me is not actually offered in boobtastic sizes). It's not fair to say, "These patterns shouldn't exist, because they're only for stick figures!" - some people are that thin, and they need patterns too! But for sure, the patterns won't work for me. The majority of the patterns in Naughty Needles do indeed appear to have been designed for an array of body types.
It was cold and snowy today, around 12 degrees Fahrenheit with what seemed like about 4" of snow. Because my mind was on cozy things, I spent the evening knitting - finished the "Hurry Up, Spring" Armwarmers from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation, which have been sitting around for a couple of months waiting for a thumb. That only took about 30 minutes, so I was able to devote some time to a project I've had on my mind lately - an earwarming headband in a particular style.
It seems like every knitting mag, online and off, had an "earwarmer headband" pattern in it this winter, made of various kinds of yarn. The ones in Interweave Knits and Knitscene (which have the same parent company) were very similar cabled bands. The one on Knitty, Calorimetry, was a ribbed short-row version that was made from front to back rather than side to side - I really don't like the yarn they used for the pattern, the Filatura di Crosa one that makes tiny stripes, but you could substitute another basic wool yarn. Knitty also had one a few years ago called Coif, designed by Megan from NotMartha.
The one that I really liked, though, is the "marled sweater earwarmer" that's an Urban Outfitters offering this winter (catalogue page - the first link is to the expanded photo view). So I tried to do something based on that, with a yarn I got a single ball of in a swap a few years ago... Swiss Chalet Froehlich-Wolle. It looks sort of like a handspun, with two single-ply yarns twisted around each other. It's not really a thick-and-thin, but there is some variation in texture. In some areas the plies are the same color, and in others they're two different colors. The color is mostly black, charcoal, heathery grey, and one or two shades of violet, with a very occasional spot of rusty maroon. It's probably most similar to Coif or Calorimetry in shape, of the pieces I mentioned above, but it's still my own (ridiculously simple) design. Calorimetry is made differently, and Coif is tied under the chin, and the other magazine styles tend to tie under the hair, whereas my band is longer and will button like the one Urban sells (and like Calorimetry). I have very long hair - not ultralong, but now down to the small of my back and quite fine and tangly - and I don't like to try to tie things under it. The button was one of the things that I liked about the Urban design.
Still working out some uneven increases, but I'll probably post the pattern later, possibly when it's finished. For the $15 that the original now costs, I could just save myself the effort... but that would be uncharacteristic of me. & I decided I wanted to work something like this up before they reduced the price - it's just that the holidays got in the way.
(Photo of Froehlich-Wolle shade cards stolen from this post on Black Dog, only to avoid direct linking. I'm using 8686. If you visit the post, you can see a photo showing what a ball of the yarn looks like, albeit in other shades.)
The other nice cold-weather thing I did this evening: cocoa chai! I like Oregon Chai's "Slightly Sweet" concentrate - everything else seems, well, cloyingly sweet in comparison, though I have to admit that when I started drinking it, "Slightly Sweet" didn't seem nearly sweet enough. For a while I was adding a teaspoon of sugar to every cup I made. The result was still less sweet than almost any other chai concentrate you can buy.
It's also ideal for sweet mix-ins, and you can have a nice cocoa-spice drink if you add 1 tablespoon of Ghirardelli hot cocoa mix to your hot chai when it's ready to drink (that is, milk and concentrate mixed and heated - I used 1 cup of each). I've been considering trying hazelnut Torani syrup mixed into chai, but it seems like it might not come out well... I'd have to try making it in a very small quantity, to avoid waste.
