Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Fabric and Fiber arts’ Category

This is our grandbaby Aiden in his Halloween costume.  He’s a gnome, like a garden gnome, although without a beard.  :)

On his feet are little pointy toed red felt gnome shoes that I made from the felt we didn’t need for the hat.  I just sort of cobbled those together, but they didn’t need to be walked in anyhow.  :)

I meant to post this photo in the last blog entry and forgot.  Oh well!

:)

hugs,

Vyx

Gotta have a kitty photo once in a while.  Stubby likes to come in the house every so often, and because we know he won’t spray, we let him.  He tends to pester Rita a bit, but mostly he just wants to nap on something soft like carpet.  :)

I think he has really grown up to be a handsome cat.  Beautiful blue color, with a cream tinted chin.  For some reason he reminds me of an otter… I think it’s partly the short tail, and partly the teeth I can see when he’s sleeping.

We are finally out of the kitten business.  All the adult females are spayed, so we won’t be having any more kittens here.  Have one adult male to neuter, and 3 boy kittens.    The adult male is Tonic, who has to be one of the wimpiest male cats I’ve ever known… but from his point of view I’m sure it was just a survival tactic.  If your own momma runs you off, backed up by 3 other momma cats… I guess you run away and hide.  We have finally coaxed him back into the herd, and he actually comes up on the porch again.  Just don’t try to pick him up.  Gonna be hard to get him to the vet.

Finished my purse with the twill I dyed while on vacation.  All the sewing machine work was done before vacation was over… and when I got sick midweek and ended up staying home I did the hand sewing one afternoon when I was feeling slightly better.   Still don’t know what is wrong with me, but at least the doctor I saw on Wednesday didn’t say heartburn and not listen to me.   He gave me something else to take, and set up a ct scan for today.  Got to take my new purse out and about to be admired.  :)

I love how this fabric came out, and changed up the purse quite a bit for it…  no quilting, for one thing.  I put some sturdy fusible interfacing on the insides to give it a bit more stiffness,  plus made the outside pocket big enough to take over one whole side instead of that wimpy little pocket that the pattern has.  Oh, and longer handles.  It still has the whole lining with built in pockets…  I do like this purse pattern for the most part.  Takes quite a bit of work, for something that should be fairly simple.

Of course I didn’t realize when I enlarged that pocket so much just how much of the side it would be taking up…  and forgot to leave room for handles to be sewn on.  Plus, I covered up some really nice fabric, darn it!  It also isn’t sitting straight… but neither are the pockets on the inside.  I was lazy and not using a lot of pins.

But as you can see, that double pocket is quite useful now… deep enough for reading glasses and deep enough that stuff won’t fall out.  Not sure I need the whole side in pockets like that, but for sure it’s more useful than the previous version.  I mostly carry my little reading glasses in that case in the left pocket… but I have to dig in my purse for them.  Now they are out and handy.  Heck, I can carry a few pairs now…  in case I forget I’ve got some stuck in my shirt and need more.  :)

The pocketless side of the purse.  Click on that and look at it… isn’t that fabric absolutely lovely?  I never would have thought that those two colors went together if it wasn’t for my friend Rabbit.  She wanted a shirt with those 2 colors and one other… and I thought ugh, mud.  But it came out so lovely I actually did another for myself and then decided that I wouldn’t mind the purse in those colors, either.

Ron and I are both on day five of no smoking now.  I’m using the patch.  Ron is using nothing but will power.  He seems less bothered by not smoking than I feel… I get that 2 min craving but I don’t see Ron doing =anything=.  I’m sucking down lots of cinnamon and coffee candies… Ron isn’t even chewing nicotine gum.  Heck, even with the patch I want nicotine gum.  (but I know not to)  I think we’ll both be fine…    I know I needed him to quit because I am easily tempted if there are cigs around.  He knows he needs to quit because it’s a dang money drain he can’t afford.  Me, I’ve been wanting to quit again for years, so I just really needed Ron to get on board.  Together we can back each other up, and it’s working out well.  Yay for us!  (and thanks for all the encouragement from my friends!)

Got a bit of cooler weather again and rain today, so I got out my knitting.  Instead of finishing the fingerless glove I was working on and got tired of last winter….  (after making one pair) I decided that I needed to knit my grandbaby  a little hat.  So, that’s what I’m doing, a blueberry blue hat in acrylic yarn.   Just sort of winging it without a pattern, sort of like the last acrylic hat I did.  I cannot do ribbing any more for some reason.  That switching back and forth from knit to purl just makes me crazy with having to pull the yarn this way and that.  I’m sure part of that is that I totally forgot how to knit continental again… my hands just automatically do it the way I learned when I was 5 or so.   Having something to do with my hands is nice when I’m quitting smoking though…  so I’ll work through this hat and then probably go back to something simple where it won’t matter so much about the knitting/purling thing… because it will be felted.  Hmm, that’s a thought, maybe I should just knit the baby a big wool hat to felt up.   :)

Well, this is all the news I can think of now….

hugs,

Vyx

Yay, I’m done! I did the three needle bind off of the bottom today, then did the I-cord handle. I did the handle differently than the instructions…. I picked up 4 stitches from one side, knitted until half the length… and then cut the yarn and picked up stitches from the other side. Joined them in the middle with another 3 needle bind off. I just didn’t like how you were supposed to bind it off and then tie it to the other side. Bleah.

So, it’s not exactly like the pattern. If you know me and how I cook, this is actually logical. I’ve got a little bit of knitting under my belt now to just change things up.

I didn’t have 4 stripe colors, for one thing. So I had planned to repeat one of the other colors, but decided not to… really wanted to finish this and start using it as my old quilted purse is about worn out in the handles.

It all knitted up fairly easy, and I figured out how to not twist the yarns when doing two colors. If I do this pattern again (which I probably will) I’ll change it even more… after felting you can hardly see that the stripes are little points at one side. I expect that part of that is that this isn’t the exact yarn the pattern called for… it felted up pretty much all the way in ONE cycle of the washing machine. I let it go through again for another cycle, just to make sure it was done.

Getting it out and straightening everything up was nearly impossible. Felted really well. I love this yarn, it’s a single ply bulky and is really easy to work with…. except when the yarn just comes apart! Had that happen when I was sewing a bit extra yarn in today… my strand just disintegrated. Did I mention it felted REALLY well? I just can’t make it all square for the life of me… and I suspect that knitting in the round doesn’t help with that!

So, here are a couple pictures… purse is still wet, I hope it’s dry by morning. It’s big enough to hold my normal sized wallet, although I don’t know why that is so important to me any more. :)

Happy it’s done…

hugs,
Vyx

So, today while cooking on the smoker…. there is a lot of time I don’t need to be doing anything but keeping an eye on it somewhat. Add wood when needed, otherwise not a lot to do.

Good time for knitting on my new purse. I decided it was also a good time to switch to continental style knitting. Yarn held in left hand, right hand keeps the needle and isn’t always jumping around with the yarn. Basically, you never let go of either needle if you can keep stitches moving on and off needles okay.

Well, I’m hooked. It’s faster, cleaner, and my right arm doesn’t get tired so fast. Not to mention I’ve quit manipulating the needles with my fingertips, so no more sore fingers!

As my sister Val said in a comment about the purse update… it’s almost more like crocheting but with knitting needles. After doing it this way all afternoon she HAS to be talking about knitting like this. I do know there are various styles of knitting… throwing the yarn with the right hand and Norwegian style are two others that I’ve heard of but never seen. I believe Val was referring to this style knitting… and it’s not hard to learn at all!

Drawbacks… well, I seem to be knitting a lot tighter than usual. Videos of this style show people wrapping the yarn all around fingers and such to control tension… I can’t do that because it makes it worse. Not that I’m pulling stitches tight as I do them… it’s more that when I do the next stitch the yarn pulls on that one.

And speaking of tension… I learned long tail cast on because I’ve always hated the way a simple cast on knitted up. ALWAYS too loose, if you pull that tight you can’t knit it. Long tail works better. So, this pattern had me cast on stitches to make the main body of the purse. No way to do long tail, although I probably could have knitted them on if I could remember how to do that. Instead, I did the simple back hand loops and now that edge of the purse makes me hate it when I look at it. Too fluffy, too loose and it wants to curl badly. I tried to figure out how to tighten that up today, but instead just made a couple spots worse. Not sure what to do about it…. Yeah, I know it’s all going to be felted, but this is going to be the edge of the purse that will be open to use. What I’m thinking is taking a yarn needle and doing an overcast stitch on that edge. Pull it all a bit tighter and hope it doesn’t shrivel up when felted. Or maybe I can do the yarn thing after it’s felted if it needs it… and give it one more wash. I’ll figure it out some how. I guess. :)

I’m sort of excited to be knitting faster and easier… I wonder if this new way will help me purl better? I hope so… I have a problem with purling and it being a LOT looser than my knitting. If I knit tighter this new way, I should purl tighter, too, right? :)

The purse is progressing… but I have a ways to go. About to start on 3rd color. May skip 4th row of pattern and just finish it… I’m already way bigger and longer than it said… but I planned that, sort of. I like bigger purses.

Hugs,
Vyx

(I’m trying a new browser for posting, hopefully the photo uploader will work better)

I hadn’t worked on the purse since last weekend. Okay, I maybe knitted 2 rows at work this week. Somehow breaks don’t seem as long as they did, and I do NOT like to stop in the middle of a row.

But because we got a cold front moved in, today was a good day for doing stuff indoors. I managed to get one of the stripes in the round knitted, and the color changed again before my fingertips got too sore. Am I the only person who knits like that? I seem to do a lot of poking at the knitting needles with my fingers, and my right forefinger gets darn sore after a little while.

I’m liking this pattern a lot better now that I’m knitting in the round. It’s a fairly simple pattern, some color switching but I also figured out how to NOT get the yarns twisted. It’s probably doing bad things on the back side, but who cares? It’s going to be felted anyhow and definitely has a wrong side and right side.

I expect y’all want to see it now… be prepared for VERY odd colors. One of the problems with ordering yarn online is that you can’t really be positive the colors you are ordering are what you are seeing on the screen. These were all pretty close, but the purple is lighter and the lime green is more yellow. Part of that is also that these are not solid colored yarns… they are spun out of various colored fibers! Can’t blame everything on my camera or the lighting in the house, lol….

Here we go…. you can see my one wrong row in there. :)

A close up of the detail of the stripes next.

And a photo with the 3rd stripe color ball of yarn. It was supposed to have 4 colors of stripes. I’ll repeat either the pink or the lime green to make up for that.

Well, shoot, I forgot to turn it inside out and take a photo of the mess of my color changing and tails hanging everywhere. Not that there are that many tails… I’ve already woven most of the flap tails in. That’s tedious, so I like to do it as I go, somewhat. Like, um, when they get annoying to me. :)

I know I’m not the best knitter. For instance… when I’m just changing colors…. I tie the yarns together in either an overhand knot or a square knot. I’m pretty sure you aren’t supposed to do that, but I don’t care. This is gonna be felted, the knot probably won’t be noticeable. I am kinda worried about the color swapping in and out… I can weave those ends in, but they aren’t tied to anything.

Will work on it more tonight…. I should at least get the next pink row done and swapped out to purple again. Oh, in case you are interested… the yarn colors are: purple is Petunia, green is Kiwi, pink is Raspberry, and the blue is Blueberry. Raspberry is pretty solid, blueberry a little less, and the other two are mixtures of fibers as I said above.

hugs,
Vyx

P.S. Goodbye to IE whatever for posting to my blog. All the things that have annoyed/plagued me disappeared today using another browser. Say hello to Google Chrome! Yay!