Knitting

Well duh!

How can one not love a good button collection? Here’s my set of One Of A Kind Buttons; handmade in Portland by Candace!

One Of A Kind ButtonsOne Of A Kind Buttons

Candace will be having a month long trunk show at Pearl Fiber Arts this month starting on the 3rd. Not only will these buttons and pins be available, but also shawl pins and these gigantic coaster size sew-ons! You can see other creative ideas for these unique buttons on Candace’s Website. There’s a knitting project bag on there that I’ve been meaning to make and One Of A Kind buttons are perfect embellishments and for the strap closure. A button is a button so of course use it as a button! hehe…

Also, don’t forget to use your Supportland Card. Get them points!

The theme for the trunk show is Portland, Oregon. Here are my Portland themed pins:

One Of A Kind Buttons - Portland

The bicycle one lives on my backpack which I use to ride around on my bike, obviously. Yep.

The bird one I’ve yet to delegate to a location or project. It is likely to end up matched with the chicken. Yes, chicken buttons! (There are also octopi, dragon flies, animal paw prints, inspirational quotes, William Shakespear’s face, and cat pins/buttons) XD

I’m not sure yet which button I like best for my Seeds to Flowers shawlette.

Seeds to Flowers with Butterfly Seeds to Flowers with Little Bee

Date Completed: August 1st, 2015

Project: Seeds to Flowers

Yarn: Zauberball in the 7 Wolke colorway

Difficulty: Beginner-Intermediate

Notes: Butterfly…Little Bee…Butterfly….Little Bee…decisions decisions… lol The pattern itself is written exceptionally well. I generally don’t gauge swatch for shawls, but I used pretty much the yardage noted for the small size. Beads used were a size larger too. Since this is my first project using beads I really didn’t mind the size. Larger beads = easier to work with, imho so far anyways.

I also picked up this handy tool to string the beads into each stitch called a Bead Aid. Yet again, another awesome tool for making my knits more awesome by a Portland artisan!

 

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IMG_1136Date Completed: July 22nd, 2015 RAV

Project: Paulette

Yarn: Vixen by Thoroughly Thwacked

Difficulty: Beginner-Intermediate

Notes: So many purl stitches! This is a test knit I did for my good friend Noriko. Her pattern is being debuted at the Thoroughly Thwacked trunk show at Pearl Fiber Arts this weekend. Super excited to show off my completed project to the crowd!

A number of people seemed to have issues with the total yardage to complete the project and were running out. I ended up with leftovers. Not a whole lot mind you, but enough to not feel the squeeze when it came down to the last of the lace repeats and the bind-off.

By weight I have 0.33oz(approx 9g) of Menthol and 0.20oz(approx 5g) of Royal Blue leftover.

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Since I was using a cable that was too short for knitting shawls I was really shocked when I was doing the bind-off. The shawl itself is very very large. Probably the largest I’ve ever done so far in my knitting experience.  It really hit home after soaking and laying it out to block. I had to remove the middle pad so that I had enough wingspan to get the top edge as straight as possible.  It took up the whole half of the dining table!

Stacey of Thoroughly Thwacked did some new  color dyes for this project and for her trunk show. Menthol was one of her previous colors, but the Royal Blue is a new one. I really love how rich the color is, even the Menthol though it is quite a bit lighter. The silky sheen is best seen in my pictures of the leftovers. Vixen so soft and light you’d almost mistake it for lace weight!

There are some other really great color combinations in the test knit group. I’m not sure if I will knit this one again since it is so large, but I did enjoy the simple repetition.

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The weather is still a bit too warm to wear at the moment. If it gets down to the 70’s…like it’s supposed to this weekend, I could wear it during the trunk show! =D

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I have 620 projects in my ravelry queue.

Most of these projects I will probably never even attempt, but many of them are in the general range of intermediate/advanced area which keeps the project interesting enough, and complex enough, for me to want to finish them. I guess now though that may never happen due to student loans entering repayment. *Sigh*. I only have myself to blame, and I feel quite a bit frustrated and overwhelmed by the monthly payments.

I don’t think I will ever stop knitting. It’s the only tangible thing I’ve ever produced since all my work work is digital. The feeling of accomplishment from graduating college I thought would last longer than this too. Overall I guess I’m a bit forlorn.

So here’s a picture of Lucy glaring at me from this weekend because I wouldn’t let her snuggle on top of me. She really enjoys laying on these plastic bins.

Tub Glaring

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Oh man, where to begin.

I’m currently working on a sweater. It’s been a while since I made a project that took a while…although I do have a very large circular shawl in hibernation. It is rather same-same status as far as other things go.

Still haven’t purchased a gym membership. =/ (I really need to get on this)

I do have a number of projects I’m looking forward to though!

a) Paulette Test Knit – Shawl by Norichan
b) Fall sweater – Kyra Boatneck Pullover
c) Winter leggings – Fyne
d) Fall coverup – Pontos Cardigan

I still have the office planter. It’s a giant round glass terrarium that I’m undecided about. Put in plants or put in a beta fish?

Too much to do!

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In continuation of my goals this year to be better all around at my knitting craft, I have taken up making my own stitch markers.

The current selection I have either —
1: goes missing like hair ties
2: is too small or I don’t have enough of once size
3: is made out of cheap plastic

If you’re curious about how to use stitch markers there is a good basic explanation of them by Northern Lace. One type that is missing in the blog is the removable stitch marker which is basically a glorified plastic safety pin.

Here are my stitch markers.

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Each marker is made with gold colored beading stringing wire 0.38mm and gold colored clamp beads. For the beads themselves I used cream/pink hue fresh water pearls (man made, obviously lol), and the offset bead is made of rose quartz.

 

 

It did take quite a few tries to get the right size of the wire. The first few attempts were not measured. They are still usable as markers, but for up to size US6 needles. After the first few tries I decided on 5cm length wire was sufficient to work with to create the five pearl bead stitch markers. Since these beads have a hole drilled into them smaller than the rose quarts I am using two clamp beads to hold the pearl in place and to create the loop on top. Getting the wire placed in a semi-middle area when clamping was a little difficult at first. I’m still not sure I have the trick down, but thankfully these crafting materials are relatively cheap.

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For the rose quartz I used 6cm wire to accommodate the height of the bead and since it is supposed to be an offset, the slightly longer length to the loop seemed appropriate at the time.

 

 

If I end up getting into this aspect of knitting I think I will want to invest in a good crimping pliers. This will result in a nice round finish rather than the flat finish that results from using basic crafting pliers. Not that I don’t like the flat finish, it doesn’t look bad, but I will test the set I made and hopefully it won’t snag the fibers!

 

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Date Completed: April 23rd, 2015 RAV

Project: Adama

Yarn: Tosh Vintage in Composition Book Gray

Difficulty: Easy

 

 

This may be the easiest cowl I’ve ever knit! Also possibly in the running for the fastest. It took maybe a weeks time, about 20 hours. I would definitely recommend this for someone who is starting out with lace knitting, knitting in the round, reading charts, or learning tab cast-on for shawls.

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