Episode 7: Scratch and Dent

 Chit Chat

       o   Very little Chit Chat today.  I've had some ick in the house.

       

Knit Chat

       o   FO – Irish Coffee by Thea Colman (aka Baby Cocktails on Ravelry)

•    Paton’s Wool in Currant colorway
•    Size 8 needles - Knitter’s Pride

      o   FO -  Basic Tube Socks Recipe

•    Red Heart and Sole sock yarn in the Mellow Stripe colorway
•    Size 1 needles - Addi Turbo - 40 inch
•    Knit 2 at a time, toe up

      o   WIP – Mesh-enger Shawl by Stephanie Shiman

•    Knitting from stash yarn. Main Color is a lovely sliver mystery yarn purchased from LYS scratch and dent sale.  And Contrast Color is Knit Picks Simply Cotton in the Dogwood Heather colorway
•    Size 8 Knitter's Pride needles 

Sew Chat

      o   New book The Sewing Machine Classroom by Charlene Philips

      o   Making plans to sew pajama pants.

Episode 5 - It's Been A Long Time

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Chit Chat

• Vacation! Walt Disney World was a blast!  We had so much fun.  They make everything so easy. 
• Kittens! Merry and Pippen.  They have taken over the house. Adopted from FurKids. Highly recommened.  They were wonderful.
• Husband travel and work and taking care of kittens kept me on my toes and not knitting as much and having little time to record.

Knit Chat

• FO – Mitered Hanging Towel by Cristina Bernardi Shiffman
•   Knit using Lily Peaches N Cream Yarn from stash. Mix Match Button. Ha!
• FO –  Helmikuu Boot Toppers by Sunshine Ravioli Knits
• Knit using handspun. Ewephoric Fibers BFL 80/20
• Pattern states to cast on 80 but that was too large.  So I went down to 64 as others stated for a much better fit.
• FO – Boy’s Gone Loopy by Bethany McRae
• Preemie hats.
•  I left off the loop.
• Knit out of donated yarns.
• WIP -  Irish Coffee by Thea Coleman (aka Baby Cocktails on Ravelry)
• Paton’s Wool in Currant colorway
• Size 8 needles - Knitter’s Pride
• At the waist shaping and I’m really enjoying knitting it.  Can’t wait until it’s finished.
• WIP – Mama Vertebrae by Kelly Brooker
• Cascade 220 fingering weight in dark red
• Size 5 - Hiya Hiya’s
• Focused on getting through this knit now that the sleeves are separated.

 

Spin Chat

•  Mohair N More – Etsy Shop
• 4 oz Peppermint.  I’ve spun 2 of the 4 oz
• 4 oz Café Au Laitte.
• Do I spin 2 and 2 then ply single color.  Or 4 and 4 and ply two color.

Sew Chat

• Project Bag! I think it’s my best yet!
• Need to decide on fabric for a couple of new projects.

Book Chat

• Poirot and Me by David Suchet
• For those who love Agatha Christie and have seen the Poirot movies with David
• I highly recommend

• Considering signing up for Audible…

And Sew On

Hi everyone! I hope this has been a great week for all.  I've had a pretty good one myself. There is always so much to do and so little time it seems like.  However, when I reflect back on the week, I feel like I've accomplished a good bit.

I finished one of my works in progress (WIP) and it looks even better than I hoped. Yay!  I also knitted some on my Happy Street shawl this week, which makes me happy as well.  Making progress.

But the thing I think I'm the most excited about is my sewing.  Awhile back, I ran across some Christmas themed fat quarters at Hobby Lobby.  Now, I have to admit, I've acquired some fabric stash over the years.  Not a lot because well, let's face it, I'm not a great sewer. But I do love a nice looking piece of fabric.  So when I came upon the Christmas fabric, I bought it.

That fabric has been in sitting in my fabric bin for almost a year.  Awhile back I made an attempt at sewing some project bags for my knitting projects with "meh" success. They were not awful, but certainly not what I would call good, quality bags.  And I really wanted to sew a nice bag.

So, I after my first attempt at sewing some bags I did what many other in my shoes would have done, I turned to social media.  I jumped on the Pinterest train and starting seeking out project bag patterns.

There were many.  Some more difficult than others. Some just right out of my novice comfort zone.  But all superduper cutearific!

As much as I loved all the bags I saw, the patterns to create those bags seemed a little bit, who am I kidding, a whole lot overwhelming.  Kind of like the first time I looked at a knitting pattern.  So I kind of just put my bags on the back burner again. With all my super cute fabric wasting away.  Which is a pretty sad thought, right?

Luckily, I found fresh mojo when I saw the super cool fabric and images via Instagram that Jasmine from the Knitmore Girls podcast was making for her projects.  I was compelled to follow the link she provided to this super neato tutorial on the In Color Order blog.

After reading through the steps, I hopped right to it.  I already had my precut fat quarters and since I'm in the middle of knitting Christmas goodies and Christmas socks, I decided they needed a perfectly cute Christmas project bag to nestle in.  So I got to work.

As I mentioned, I'm not a good sewer, but I do think there's hope of me becoming a better sewer with practice.  And since I am in love with these project bags, I can see myself practicing a lot in my near future.

This is my first finished bag. It is quite roomy.  I have two one skein projects down in there. I'm loving it.

Faults or No, I Like It!

Before I dive right into what I was going to blog about today, I wanted to mention that the other night we grilled steaks for dinner. They were so good. But we had two huge steaks left over. I told C$ that we should make steak fajitas. So that's what we did. And oh my... what a great way to jazz up them there leftovers. They were soo yummy!

Anywho, that's not really what I was going to post about today, but I had to just go ahead and toss it out there.

What I'd planned to talk about today was one of my latest projects. See, I bought a sewing machine awhile back, when I found out I was pregnant. I had this crazy notion that I would make my own maternity clothes. Maternity clothes wasn't the only thing I was going to make, naturally. I was going to sew baby clothes andlearn to quilt and just do all kinds of super cool things.

And believe it or not, over the last year I have made a few things that have been kind of cool. But there is always a learning curve. And I am pretty much teaching myself to sew on a trail by error basis. That's why when something turns out pretty cool, I'm pretty darn pleased.

So today, I'm going to share with you one of those pretty darn pleased moments. Even with all it's faults, it pleases me.

To give some background, my adventure started out with the purchasing of a pattern for a cute summer outfit that I am in the process of working up. My goal with this outfit was to try and create something that could be used both for home and work. While I was out shopping for the materials needed to make the new outfit, I stumbled on some scrape cloth on clearance. I loved the color and so I bought it too. It wasn't that much and I thought, surely there is something I can make with this.

It's a very light green, with swirls of white throughout. After thinking about it, I decided that it would make a really cool contrast to the cranberry material I picked out for the outfit. So the idea to make a scarf was born.

I didn't have a pattern pattern, but I remembered seeing one I liked by Amy Butler that I thought was really cute. I had to make a few modifications from the original pattern. First I didn't have beads. So I just did a straight angled finish on the ends.

Also my cloth was not long enough to make the sash/scarf in one long solid piece. To remedy this, I measured out enough of the material to make two strips the same length, then halved each. Combining one half of one strip to the middle of the halved primary strip gave me just enough length to make the sash.

My thought, even with the now three pieces sewn together, it will still be cool.

So on with my sewing I went.

This is where my story starts to show just how newbie I am when it comes to sewing. First, I didn't seem to match up the sides just so. As you can see by the pictures below. The seems were off when I attached that middle strip of fabric (First photo). This caused a pucker on one side of the sash (Second photo). (Yes, I used pink thread to sew the seams. I loved the look against the green fabric).

Still, even with the faults, the sash is super cute and I think it will work and the pucker will be easily disguised. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Now I'm thinking about making another one. One with a beaded fringe.