K'Nex Spindles!

I learned to spin, just about a year ago, on spindles made from the building toy, K'nex! They are quite easy to make, and if you have children, then you don't even need to leave the house in order to gather your supplies! (Click on the photo for a close-up.)

Here you see me, about 10 minutes into my new addiction - a still shot -


and an action shot -



I'm using this spindle as a supported spindle - on an upturned coffee cup.

It works!
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...yarn....


Here is a picture of my very first ball of yarn!



I'm so proud! This ball is surrounded by some spindle options available - of course, there are many more possibilities. (See the yellow, green, red and white spindle on the left side of the photo - with the fiber on it? This is my favorite design.)

Here are a few more ideas, along with the spindle shaft.





Here you see my first ball of yarn, on its plying spindle. Isn't it sweet? LOL.


(Please, disregard the electrical tape which is hiding a hole in the piano bench *blush*)

The support spindle is very nice and all, but sometimes one gets the urge to take the show on the road, so I figured a way to make my little spindle turn into a drop spindle - -




...spinning at the Reservoir, at sunset, on a peaceful October evening.


Now, does it get any better than this? Nope.

This little spindle is so small, and it comes apart ( to a degree) without disturbing the already-spun fiber, so it is just perfect for taking on a walk. Stuff it all into your pocket, and off you go!

For the past few months, when I get around to spinning, I use the spindle shown further down this blog. I got to where I preferred to spin while standing up, and I *really* like the longer shaft on the beading-elastic-spool spindle, and on my CD spindles, and I much prefer to use a top whorl spindle while drop spindling. I can make the K'Nex spindle into a top whorl, but the shaft is really too short to work with the thigh roll technique. So, I use it as a bottom whorl drop spindle and twist it to make it spin, and this makes my hand fatigue really quickly. I think that I'll stick to support spindling with my K'Nex, and drop spindling with my other spindles. I love the rhythmic whirring that this spindle makes, as it twirls on its little coffee cup. Almost like it's purring, lol.

What's really the coolest thing of ALL is that this little K'Nex spindle can go from a support spindle, to a top whorl drop, to a bottom whorl drop by simply moving the little black clip from the top to the bottom and then... just doing it. A convertable spindle! Really! It works just fine! Cool or what???
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Magic Stripe Socks

Grace cleaned her room, and take a look at what re-surfaced! I knit these socks two summers ago, and they've gone missing for just about that long.... Grrr....

Anyway, these were great fun to knit! I love the yarn - Lion Brand Magic Stripes, I think. I really like how the socks are sort of alike, in that they are clearly a pair, but they really don't match at all. I've decided that this is the only way that I'm going to knit socks anymore. What's the point of knitting them to be exactly the same? You can go to any store in the land and buy two socks which are exactly the same! For my effort, they are going to be FUN! LOL.

I knit these from the toe up (Is there any other way? LOL.), with a peasant heel. I had experimented with different heels in the past - see my variegated merino superwash socks below - and I really like this heel. It's knitted in the exact way one would knit a hat, only really really small. One's heel is rather head shaped, isn't it? It fits the foot much better than any other heel that I've knitted.

I love how the heel ended up with a tiny spot of blue, right in the middle. Serendipity!

The sock looks rather deformed on my foot, because it's way too small. The only trouble is that it is way too small for Grace's foot, too. Grrr... It wasn't too small, back when I knitted it. Grrr...

Here is a link to the yarn - Lion Brand Magic Stripe in Jelly Bean Stripe. Too cute!

Grace's cute new purse!

 
 
 

Well, she's at it again! Grace designed and knitted this cute little purse out of Plymoth "Encore," a wool/acrylic blend. Isn't it darling? She held two strands of yarn together, to give the purse thickness. Notice her shoes? Notice the trim on the purse? (She also made a pony-tail holder, but it's not in the picture.) Now, isn't this a rather pulled-together outfit??? I forget the name of the yarn trim, but it's from Walmart and maybe it's an eyelash by Bernat? It has a "bird" name... Anyway, it all came together to make a really cute outfit! Best of all - except for the tweety-bird yarn from Walmart and the flipflops, also from Walmart, *everything* else in the photo comes from various thrift stores! I bought a HUGE sack of yarn from the Salvation Army, and in the bag were 12 balls of Encore, in 4 really nice colors, along with all sorts of other wonderful balls of wool - my spider shrug is knitted with wool from this sack-o-yarn, too. What a haul! The pants and the shirt are also from thrift stores.

My little girlie is a devoted thrift store shopper. Want to know the reason why? Look in her purse, and you'll see what she saves her hard earned money for. BOOKS! I can die happy. 

Finished

 
 


My spider shrug is finally completed, YAY! Just in time for today’s prediction of highs in the 100’s! Well, when the weather does cool down, I’ll be ready for action, lol.


 

Felted Backpack

I made this backpack from a felted man’s sweater. I purchased the sweater at the thrift store, foolishly thinking that my husband would like it…. I was so wrong! No way! He wouldn’t even try it on. Sigh. So… I took off the sleeves, which was surprisingly easy – just pull the right string and Zip! off it comes! The sweater-body was just a cylinder, so with the sleeve holes sewed up, I now had a giant flat rectangle. I then used the unraveled-seam’s yarn to kitchener the sleeves together, so that the stitches wouldn’t un-knit themselves, and then I threw the whole business into the washing machine and felted the daylights out of it.

It was such a loosely knitted sweater, that it felted tightly and shrunk an amazing amount! Then, I squeezed it over a plastic-bag-covered Amazon.com box and set it aside to dry. While it was still wet, I sewed up the neck hole, and patted and shaped it into what I thought a proper backpack ought to look like.

When the project was in the washer, I was mentally planning how I was going to use the sleeves as outer pockets on the backpack – maybe a large front pocket with a cool button, and maybe a water-bottle pocket on the side…. Well… the sleeves, which went into the washer measuring something like 4 feet long by 2 feet wide came out of the washer really teeny teeny teeny tiny! So, instead of my grand plans for outside pockets, I used the sleeves as inside pockets. It works quite well, actually. I knitted the drawstring/backpack straps out of Lion’s Fisherman Wool and dyed them with Koolaid. All in all, it’s a pretty neat backpack. Too bad I never use it….



In the photos, you can see….

Look way at the bottom – you can see the neckhole and the tag – it was an Austin Reed Sweater. One of my friends assures me that the original owner paid much more than the dollar that I paid for this lovely wool sweater. What do I know? More to the point, what do I care?



Anyway, in the photo above, I’ve put tissues into the inner pockets so that you can see that there are actually three of them! One large one, one medium one and a tiny one (cell phone?) piggy-backing on the medium sized pocket.


I’d use this bag, except that I can’t wean myself away from my ancient blue backpack that I’ve slapped on my back nearly every day since I was 20 years old. Let’s see… yes, that was 26 years ago… I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to break the blue-backpack habit any time soon. Isn’t she a beauty? How on earth does the Eagle Creek company stay in business if a customer needs to buy only one of their backpacks, ever, during that customer’s entire life? I’m telling ya, it’s the best backpack ever manufactured!!!



I’ll try to use my new backpack, but I’m not making any promises. It was a fun and easy project, and quite amazing to watch this HUGE sweater shrink down to nothingness. What’s even more amazing is that the fabric is perfectly smooth. It wasn’t smooth, back when it was a sweater. There were these knit-purl diamond rows, there were blackberry-stitch rows, there were eccentric-gauge rows (you know, where one row is knitted with huge needles, so that the loops are huge in some rows, but “normal sized” in the rest of the rows?) and other textural things, but once fulled, it’s perfectly smooth. Imaginese!

Mission Accomplished!

I finished it in the nick of time! You know, most knitting patterns read something like this – “Continue knitting the k2p2 rib for 3 inches.” I don’t know if I’ve ever read one that instructed the knitter to knit like mad until 3 o’clock, but this is what I had to do! You see, it suddenly occurred to me that this wedding was to take place in Louisiana in April and not Colorado in April so the wool-shrug plan was just not going to work. Have you ever been to Louisiana in late April? Suffice it to say that it’s Hot and Steamy…. So – on to plan B! Knit a whole new shrug! I ditched the wool spider idea, and jumped onto the lace idea on the very day that I was packing for the trip, which is the very best time to decide on a big project, isn’t it?

I raced to my LYS and stocked up on some black Luster Sheen, which was the exact perfect shade of a black, with an almost reddish tint. I went to the store specifically to pick up some Sinfonia, but alas, the black Sinfonia was blue black and that simply wouldn’t do, lol.

When I should have been packing my bags, I was instead surfing the internet in search of the perfect lace pattern, and I found it here, Print O' the Wave Stole , and here in pdf - I love this lace pattern, and as you can see, three repeats of the main portion of the lace was a perfect fit! I knitted all the way from Colorado to Louisiana, then knitted in every spare moment on the day of the wedding. Based on my experience with the interrupted Spider Shrug, I knew that the cast-off step would take about 30 minutes, and this is why I gave myself the 3pm cut-off.

I followed this shrug pattern, Circular Shrug - here in pdf - but I changed it a bit. For the spider shrug, I provisionally casted*-on, knitted the back with the lovely spider, then folded it over, picked up the cast-on side, and knitted in stockinette, in the round for about ½ inch, then began the k2p2 rib.
(Here you see the shrug just before the ribbing was started.)



Well, this idea worked perfectly well, but it was way too small! In the planning stages, I decided that the original shrug would be too long, since it was intended to be worn with a summery dress, so I’d simply knit the back shorter. Only… this doesn’t work. Each of the 20 inches called for in the pattern are necessary, so don’t scrimp – knit every single inch! Lesson learned.

This is how I knitted my black lace shrug - I provisionally casted-on, knitted the lace pattern for 20 inches, then folded it in half, picked up the provisional cast-on edge, and knitted twice around in stockinette. Then, I began the K2p2 border by knitting a stitch, backwards-loop-increase one, purl a stitch, backwards-loop-increase one, and so on around. Then, continued, until 3pm (ha!), in k2p2 ribbing, then cast-off in a real big hurry, because I still had to iron my dress, and apparently I also had to burn my left fore-arm, as you can see in the photo. The wedding was an hour away from my family home, so my sister, the mother of the bride (see photo), rented a bus to drive all of her friends and family to the wedding. I’m so glad for this hour, because it was on the bus that I sewed up the arm-holes, and worked in the various ends of yarn. As this was Luster Sheen, and ickycrylic, I was afraid that the ends would work their way back out, so I sewed them down with black sewing thread. My mom loaned me the little circle pin (thanks mom!) and provided the thread and needle (thanks mom!) and I was ready just in time! Whew! However…. The knitting until 3pm part didn’t provide enough time, so I’ll search for the end of the yarn (how much you want to bet that I’ll have to cut???) and rip out the cast-off, and then knit a couple of more inches onto the edging. I think it will look better with a larger collar.

Now that I know how this shrug pattern works, and that the 20 inch measurement is truly the magic number, and that the 3 inch arm-hole seam is another magic number, I’ll fix the spider shrug by ripping out the k2p2 edging, continue knitting in stockinette in-the-round for 3 more inches, then knit the k2p2 edge for 5 inches, then I’ll be done, yay!!! I hope to be able to wear my spider shrug this summer – who knows, maybe even with the dress that it was originally intended for! We have cool evenings all summer long, so maybe I will.

Here you see the shrugs, and you can see how much shorter the spider one is from the underarm to the center front.






*Knitting Grammarians – does one say “casted-on” or “cast-on?” I don’t really know, but “casted-on” sounds kinda silly, and “cast-on” doesn’t have that past-tense flavor that I’m looking for here. Hmmmm…..

Shrugging along....

 

My little spider is coming along nicely. She should just about cover my back. I'm pleased!

I couldn't be happier with the colors of the yarn. I started with baby pink yarn, which I dyed burgundy, and I dyed a small bit with black Wilton's, but the color came out more of a raisiny color - sort of red black. It's the exact colors of my dress, and I'm thrilled!

Who am I trying to fool, though. This is for a GARDEN wedding in LOUISIANA in APRIL and I'll probably wish to be completely stark naked, not to be wearing a shrug, even though it is going to be darling...

I am knitting the Crafster Circular Shrug - and here are the directions - http://momcast.blogspot.com/2006/01/craftster-circular-shrug.html

Isn't this a really cute pattern? (This is a really good blog, too!)

I'm Cooking Up A Shrug!

Naw, that's not actually my shrug in the pot! My shrug is on the needles, and you'll be the first to see it, once it's completed. In the pot is the pink yarn being dyed with burgundy Wilton's icing dye.



Just a little idea of what's going to be on the back of the shrug, and a look at the color that the yarn was before the dyepot.

Folks around here are either amused or horrified at the spider. When I tell them that I'm going to wear the shrug to a wedding then pretty much everyone is horrified. I tell you, I feel like an idiot, but I honestly don't get it. Someone said that if I wanted a bug, then knit in a ladybug. Please - tell me why this makes a difference? I could see if I were to knit in an image of Satan or something, but honest to pete - a spider? And why does the idea of spiders and weddings get everyone all worked up? There's a message here but I don't know what it is. At times like these I feel like Temple Grandin when she says that she feels like an anthropologist on Mars. I am *immensly* amused by the whole thing, however.

Poncho Directions

Remember this post - Poncho Fever? One of my pals asked for directions, so here they are! First, admire the smiling poncho wearer…



OK, now we’re ready! This poncho is knitted from the neck to the bottom. I used Caron’s Simply Soft in their “Brights” line of colors, and I held two yarns together as I knitted. I think that I used #10 needles, but they might have been larger. Since I make my own needles, I am not really sure of the size. So – Swatch! If you click on the photos, you can see a larger version, and the ruler markings will be apparent.







With the yarn held double, I got 13 stitches, and about 21 rows, over 5 inches in stockinette, and about 19 stitches over 5 inches in k1p1 rib.



This poncho fits my 10 year old daughter. She’s a tall one at 5’2” but is a skinny gal at 80 pounds. I tell you this so that you can have some idea of the size.

Cast on 42 stitches. When I made this poncho, I used the Cable Cast On, which is a lovely cast on, but in the meantime, I discovered the best cast on ever. It can be found on page 132 of the Principles of Knitting – the Double-Needle Cast on. Since it’s copyrighted, I can’t duplicate the instructions here, but it involves a long-tail cast on, two needles and a twist. It’s the BEST EVER so trot on down to your local library, find the book, and learn it for yourself. I’ll never use another cast on for as long as I live. Even though it is quite complex, it is the only cast on that I teach to my newbie-knitter friends. It works with every stitch pattern there is. It stretches sooooooo nicely. Learn it.

OK, I digress. Cast on 42 stitches, and k1p1 until the neck is as long as you like it. If you do only a couple of inches, you won’t get this turtle neck effect, but it will lie flat. Emma’s poncho has a 5 inch neck.








Switch to straight stockinette, and knit one round. (On Emma’s Poncho, I changed color here, and changed colors every 10 rows.) From now until the very end of the poncho, you will increase at opposite sides of the poncho (front and back), and you will increase 4 stitches, every other round. Here’s the easy way – put a stitch marker on either side of stitch #1, and on stitch #22 - - but this is a special stitch marker – it is a “red light green light” stitch marker, that my darling daughter Grace invented. Make a loop of red yarn, plenty large enough for your large needle to pass through. Tie a loop of green yarn in this loop, so that the two yarn loops are united as in a chain. Now, put the green loop in front of stitch #1, knit stitch #1, put the other marker, then knit around to stitch #22, and put the markers in front and and in back of the stitch. Knit around, and when you get to the marker at #1, increase one stitch, pass the marker, but pick up the RED loop, knit the stitch, increase, pass the marker and so on. Now, next time you come around to stitch #1, you will see that the red loop is on the left needle. This means “stop!” or don’t increase. Pass the markers, picking up the green loop. Knit around. When you come around to the green marker again, it means “go!” or increase on this round. This will make sense if you just do it, lol. When you get to the red marker, pass it to the green and keep knitting. When you get to the green marker, increase, pass the marker to the red side, knit the marked stitch, pass the marker, increase and go to the other side. Get it? You must keep the marker on either side of the marked stitch – don’t let the increases happen between the marker and the marked stitch. Trust me, this will all make sense when you do it. Friends of mine who have knitted since forever are now fans of Grace’s Red Light Green Light. Anyway, back to your knitting…. Increase every other round, on either side of the center back and the center front stitch until the poncho is long enough, then bind off. You are increasing 4 stitches, every other round. You must put the increase stitches into the bind off row too, otherwise, it will pucker at the bottom. That’s it! Voila! Done!

I’ve included photographic evidence of yet another of life’s little knitting lessons…. When changing colors, and when knitting in patterns, one must knit the first row in all stockinette, otherwise you get THIS - -




Instead of this - -



These pictures are upside-down to the direction of knitting, but this is how it lies on the wearer. In the top pic, you see that I knitted a blue stripe in stockinette, then switched to red seed stitch. See that oh-so-not-lovely dot and dash thing going on here? It annoys me every time I see the child wear the poncho, lol. See the bottom picture? How well behaved that color transition is? I knitted the first row of the blue in stockinette, even though I fully planned on knitting in another variant of seed stitch. Lesson learned…..

Taught by Swatches

When I started knitting, I was much more interested in how knitting worked, than I was in actually knitting a project. One of the very first things I did was to knit up these little swatches. How smart I was to do this *first* because it gave me a great understanding of how the basic knit stitches behave. In the first picture, you can see the swatches in the order in which they were knitted. All were knitted on the same needles (US5, I think), and with the same yarn, Caron’s Simply Soft. This was an excellent learning experience, and I highly recommend that other beginners do the same.




All of these swatches are 30 stitches across and 30 rows deep. I wanted to do the same number of stitches across as the number of rows so that I’d knit a square. Well… the very first lesson learned was that knit stitches are rectangles and not squares, as witnessed by the first swatch, the pink curly number, which is clearly a rectangle. Lesson number two was that plain stockinette curls one way at the sides, and the other way at the top and the bottom. I knitted another swatch, this time with a seed stitch border all around, so that it would lie flat. The stockinette portion is still 30 stitches across by 30 rows deep with the border added, so that the swatch is now something like 38 stitches across by 40 rows deep. I couldn’t get over how different the two swatches were – the pink one is so unruly, and the green one is so well behaved. The only difference is the border – lesson number three – stitch patterns affect the behavior of their neighbors!



Next, I knitted a swatch of garter stitch – 30 stitches across by 30 rows deep. What a difference! As you can see in the picture with the garter swatch on top of the stockinette swatch, the garter stitch one is much shorter and a tad bit wider than the stockinette one. Also, it is quite evident, even from this small swatch, that stitch patterns “feel” different – this garter stitch swatch is very floppy and drapey – much more so than the stockinette swatches.



Next – seed stitch – wider still than the garter swatch, and taller too, but still not as tall as the stockinette swatch. Not as floppy as the garter stitch, either.



Next, I studied how the different rib stitches work. As you can see, all of the rib stitches are taller than the stockinette swatch, and *much* narrower. Of course, I knew from an entire life of wearing sweaters with ribbed cuffs, that rib stitch would be narrower than the corresponding stockinette, but I was completely surprised that the rib knit was also taller! The swatches start with a k1p1 rib, and continue to a k4p4 rib.









My final swatches involved specialty stitches – one swatch of Shaker knitting, from Katharina Buss’s Big Book of Knitting, and the other swatch with a simple cable. The Shaker knitting swatch is quite interesting – I knitted it on the same needles as the other swatches, but look at how much larger the stitches are! One would think that I used a larger needle, yes? But, I didn’t. It is how the stitch pattern is made – it involves knitting into the row below, and the row above it sort of comes undone. If you count the rows, it appears that there are only 15 rows deep, but there are actually 30 – this is simply how the stitch pattern works. The result is a very three-dimensional stitch pattern, which is very loosey goosey and sort of floppy. I don’t particularly like it in Simply Soft, but I bet that it would be awesome in wool, and with better attention paid to needle size.



My last swatch is a cable – the seed stitch borders are in addition to the 30 cross-wise stitches. Just *look* at how much lateral space is taken up with a cable! That one cable takes in as much, laterally, as a k1p1 rib, all the way across! I was amazed. Imagine how many stitches one would have to cast on in order to have a man’s sweater with cables all the way across!



If you are just starting out, I urge you to do a little swatching – you will *really* understand the architecture of knitting, and you will understand the reasons why some things work and won’t work. Also, in my little swatch lesson, I practiced different binding on and binding off methods, and I urge you to do the same.

My New and Improved Spindle

The Improvements?
I turned the "whorl" around; I took the wire off and replaced it with 6 hair ties; I made the hook open in the other direction, and voila! A nearly perfect, nearly free spindle! I stole the 6 hair ties from my daughters' hair-fixing drawer, so I still count all of this as free, LOL.

My reasons?
~Well, it winds so much better with the flat side of the empty beading-elastic spool facing the cop, duh. When it was the other way around, the winding-on process was a mess, as everything was slipping into the hollow back of the spool. Now, the cup faces up while spinning and it works great!

~The hair ties are much prettier than the knobby old wire, and this is plenty reason enough for me.

~The spun-fiber winds so much better with the hook facing the way it now faces. It was backwards before, and when I tried to unwind from the hook in order to wind onto the shaft, I just got all tangled up on the hook instead.

I'd like to be able to snip a bit off of the end of this hook, but I don't have the necessary cutting tool, darnit. This is a steel eye hook, what I had on hand. A small, brass eye hook would be much easier to work with, and it would look nicer too, but this steel one is all I had.

Near perfection. Ahhhh..... Try it!