Ruby Shoulders

Our work holiday party was this month, January.  My friend gifted me a cute maroon velvet skirt and black sequins tank top.  I want to wear this to the holiday party.  I know that the air conditioning will be on or the night air may be cool.  I wanted to knit up the Sidhe Shrug from Vampire Knits pattern book.  I wrote about my challenge in this post as #2:

• Vampire Knits

My challenge is to knit my way through that book.  I love that book!  Anyway, I went to the yarn shop to get yarn for this project, but giving the fact that I was only just starting the week of Christmas, it was unlikely that I would knit a lacy long-sleeved shrug in a few weeks.

Instead, I bought a unique hank of yarn that is a combo of several different novelty yarns tied end-to end to make this one hank.

This is Alp Dazzle (Mixed Content), hand tied yarn by Feza yarns.  This yarn is made in Turkey.  This is not cheap yarn, but since one skein will make one decent sized shawl, I bought it.  I figured, the outfit was free, my shoes were free (had credit at the store, so no money spent), so, to spend money on this yarn, I felt okay with it.

Vince was a good sport and held the yarn while I balled it up.  The shop owner told me that the ball winder does not do a good job winding this yarn.  I will take her word for it and just ball it.  Even though Vince was not convinced that it could not be wound on the winder. 

I am using size 13 circ needles.  The pattern is simply, cast-on 20 stitches (if you want a triangle point, only cast-on 3 sts.  Knit each row (garter).  At the beginning of each row, increase by 1 (Make 1).  The shawl will grow and grow.  Knit until you run out of yarn.  Simple!

I started it as a rounded edge and I did not like it.  I unraveled it and made it a triangle.  It is very eclectic.  I did this much watching movies with Vince one evening.  I needed an easy project that would work up fast.  

This is the completed shawl.  It self-stripes, you just knit and it does all the work!

 A few samples of how different, but alike each yarn type is.  Comes out very elegant.

Here is me at the holiday party, trying to be a model...I really should not quit my day job...

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The shawl was a big hit and it came in handy under the chilly weather we have been having.  Thank you, Crystal, for a super-cute outfit.  That was a big hit, too! 



More Coffee Cup Cozies

I have knitted a total of 7 coffee cup cozies for the Relay for Life Charity I spoke about in an earlier post:

• Coffee Cup Cozies

Here are some of the other finished ones:

I thought this one was going to look a bit dated, 1980's or something, but I really like it.  I has a nice stretch to it.  I held two different strands together.

 

I tried doing a horizontal cable and the cable pattern was too elongated for my liking.  Eh, not so much on this one.  I can definitely can improve this design.

This is my second attempt at cables and I really like it!  This is actually a cable made without a cable needle.  Very clever, I will not reveal the secret stitch just yet.  This is one of my favorites.  Since it is cabled, I can charge a little more for it.

I have made a few of this style already.  This one is cotton self-striping yarn that I had in my stash.  Each one will stripe a bit different.  It has an ombre look to it.  Very chic.

I had a yard sale a few weeks ago and here is me modeling my coffee cup cozie:

I was totally working it!

 

I bought one ball of yarn to knit more with (I will use the rest of the yarn from my stash).  It was Bernat Mosaic in Psychadelic (100% acrylic):

 

 

How cool is that?!  I think they were emulating Noro yarns, which have extremely vivid, saturated colors.  I made one with this and each one will end up looking completely different due so the vast color differences in the skein.

 

 

I made two cozies from the rainbow yarn and here is the other one:

So, they will have completely different colors.  Neat-o!

A fellow Relay for Life crafter let be use some of her Red Heart Super Saver to knit some up.  At first I poo-pooed the Red Heart, but they came out really neat.

This one is also Red Heart.  Excellent elastic memory, I do have to admit.  How fun!:

The last one I have made, then I will see how they sell, is a another cabled one:

I'm taking orders!  Let me know what idea you have for my next Relay for Life craft project!

Fetching Fingerless Gloves

I finally started and finished a project in the same month (of the same year)!  Hooray!

I knitted a pair of fingerless gloves for a friend as a birthday gift.  She lives in Mass, so she may actually use these when it gets nippy out.

The project is called Fetching from Cheryl Niamath.  I got the pattern from Knitty.com.  Fetching are fingerless gloves that have a few row of cables around the wrist and on the knuckle.

The yarn I decided to use was Sheep(ish) from Vickie Howell for Caron.  I will have to be honest here:  I really do not like this yarn.  For this purpose, it was not the best yarn choice.  While knitting it kept splitting and there is not much of a twist or wind to it, so it was not the best for cables.  Please forgive my photography, I took most of these at night with the flash on.

The color I chose was Gun Metal(ish), which is a very dark gray.  I will admit they have such great colors to choose from, very vivid and saturated.  I knitted the gloves with a size 6.

I needed double pointed needles (dp), a cable hook (the U looking thing), a marker, darning needle and a row counter. 

While I was casting on, the yarn broke.  Ugh!

For dps, you cast on the required number of stitches, then with the other dps, transfer over several stitches, then with the 3rd dp, again.  You should have split up all the stitches so there are about the same number on each dp.  The first round is the most critical, because you must be careful that you do not have the stitches twisted.  If twisted, you will be knitting a Mobius and you don't want that.

I will then knit the gloves in the round.  Dps are good to use when you have a small number of stitches, but need it in the round.  This will have no seams (yea!) and just a few strands to weave in at the end.

In this pic, I am knitting some cables.  They will be around the wrist and arm.  To cable, you take your cable hook and slip 2 sts onto it.  Hold it in the back or the front (depending on which way it is going to twist) and knit the next sts on the main needle.  Then take the cable hook and knit from that hook.  You now have the start of a cable.  Then you knit in pattern (knit the knits and purl the purls) until the cable row again.  Really, it is easy.

Another feature I want to show you is the thumb.  I was instructed to take waste yarn (a different yarn and color than the yarn you are using) and knit with that as the main yarn for 7 sts, then transfer them back to the left needle and knit them again, but dropping the waste yarn and knit with the main yarn again.

You will have something like this, with the waste yarn showing.  I will carefully unstitch the waste yarn, revealing live stitches.  I will immediately place the live stitches onto two double points.

Slowly unstitch each one and place onto the needle.

I will now knit this little opening in the round to make the thumb.

 

I finished by cabling around the knuckle and loosely bound off with a picot bind-off.  It created little bumps along the edge.  These did not come out as fabulous as I had hoped.  I don't know if I can really blame the yarn entirely, though.  Maybe if I adjusted how much I knit after the cable on the knuckle, or if my hands are too small for these gloves.

They have been sent off to my friend.  Hopefully they will fit her better or look better on her.

I'm sure she will be able to use them on the next blustery New England day.  Enjoy!

Coffee Cup Cozies

At work we are a sponsor of the American Heart Association's charity Relay For Life, Westshore chapter in Tampa, FL.  Last year a group of us created a committee to form Team Xcelience, and we must fundraise leading up to the event, which will be in April of 2014. 

 

One of the fundraising ideas we had was to create the Xcelience Yellow Pages, which employees with a skill or talent can "sell" their skill or expertise for a fee and donate the fee to the charity.  It was a big hit.  I had an "ad" which was Sewing by Nancy  or something like that and I was able to earn over $70 just mending people's pants and repurposing t-shirts and all other sewing-related tasks.  Not too shabby, if you ask me!

 

I will do the same this year and also have a second "ad" with a few coworkers to make crafts to sell.  I wanted to come up with an idea that was easy, fast and cheap.  I came up with Coffee Cup Cozies.  I will knit them in a ribbed pattern.  I plan on making a few and see how well they do, then consider making more.  I have made a few already:

Well, not exactly a coffee cup, it is basically a sleeve that will go on a hot cup of take-out coffee, instead of using the cardboard sleeve they offer you at the café.  This is a greener way to drink coffee!

 

I have made a few in a variegated cotton yarn and one in Lion Brand Homespun.  The Homespun is the pink one in the pic.  It was my prototype and came out cute!

I am working on another one now that I am holding two yarns together to give a confetti look.  I'm not sure I am crazy about the colors I chose to go together, sort of 1980's looking, with the neon green-yellow yarn, but I will continue it.  you never know who will like it.

Here are the balls that I am currently using:

I have a TON of yarn that I will use up.  I really do not want buy new yarn, only because I really can't charge too much for them.  Each one takes roughly an hour and I was going to charge either $3 or $5.  How much is too much??  And will anyone even buy them??

 

Right now, I am only doing a k2, p2 ribbing in the round, but I do plan on changing it up.  Stayed tuned.

Books - Quarter 3 - Part 1

Wow, we are in the home stretch of the year right now.  Unbelievable.  I actually got through a few more books than expected, so I am going to split Quarter 3 Books into two separate posts.  Here are the ones I have read so far:

3. This was an engrossing scientific novel, typical from Michael Crichton.  He takes the concept of shrinking machines down to micro level and takes it one step further and shrinks people (scientists) down to micro level.  A lab in Hawaii has engineered this technology and they are recruiting.  A leader int he recruiting group is involved in a boat explosion and it appears he has died, but it is too suspicious and the scientists try to figure out this whodunnit.  During this time, the scientists are dubbed into the shrinking room and get shrunk.  This is not an accident and they are then transported to a forest where they are forced to fend for themselves against an insect world where Mother Nature rules.  It is very interesting to see the brutality of the insect world and what the scientists had to do to defend themselves.  Their goal is to get back to the shrink room in the lab and reverse the effects.  That was not going to be easy.  Great scientific spin on a classic theme.

4. This novel is a suspense mystery that I got into right in the first page.  A former detective, Elena, is living her life in solitude to atone for a drug bust gone bad in the past.  Her actions caused the death of another detective working on the case.  She had decided after her own medical rehabilitation, she was going to lay low and work at a prestigious horse stable in West Palm Beach, FL.  She had ties there and knew that she could remain hidden there, until a young girl seeks out her detective skills to help find her missing sister.  The older sister worked at another stable and unexpectedly quit and moved to Ocala.  After an internal battle with her inner demons, Elena takes on the case, even though she no longer has a police badge or a PI license.  She finds out more than the actual cops in the county.  The story revolves around the horse show trade, where horses are worth hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars and what people will do to ensure they win and stay the best.  All of the characters come to life and tell a story that is riveting and full of lies, deceit and a plan gone bad.

 5. This book is a book that I have had for awhile and believe it or not, I have a signed copy!  When Janet Evanovich published this book, she promoted by doing a book signing tour.  She was going through Boston and I got my friends Kj and Fatima to go and stand in line and wait forever to get me a signed copy.  It was awesome, I think Fatima may even have gotten a pic with Janet.  Anyway, I'm a fan of the Stephanie Plum series and am really behind in reading them.  Ms. Plum is now on her 19th numbered book and I think my last one was 10.  Got to catch up!  So I got my Plum fix by reading a "between-the-numbers" novella which was a super fast read.  It was cute and she is somewhat getting better at this bounty hunter thing she is trying really hard at to make a living with.  This took place around Valentine's Day where in order for her to get the skip, she had to play match-maker in time for Valentine's Day.  As usual, Stephanie evoked a chuckle or two from me while she was running around the 'Burg with Diesel.

 6.  This adolescent novel was one that I read in elementary school, I believe.  I came across this book at either a used book store or a yard sale.  I was feeling nostalgic, so I decided to buy it, not really knowing when I would get around to reading it.  As I was reading it, I really do not recall one thing from it, which strikes me as odd, because I was so compelled to buy it.  The title alludes to a summertime romance, but in actuality, it is about sibling rivalry with the title coming from a quote in the bible, "Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated."  Here are twin sisters, Louise and Caroline.  Caroline is painted as the perfect child, talented in music, beautiful and intelligent.  Louise is her older sister by mere seconds and has felt in Caroline's shadow ever since that moment.  Louise has held in her feelings of anger over Caroline seizing all of the attention for years.  This is Louise's struggle to find who she is and what her true calling is despite her bitterness .  I loved reading this book in which my heart went out to Louise on all the occasions that she felt wronged, down to her childhood friend falling for Caroline and not herself.  Although Louise never allows herself unity with Caroline, she is able to capture the life she was meant to lead.  

Related Links

• Books - Quarter 1
• Books - Quarter 2

T-Shirt Tanks

Happy 4th of July!

I know that the official day of summer already occurred, but the 4th always licks off the summer with a bang!

I have been sitting on this project for a few months.  I promised to work on this for a friend and kept putting it off.  But now, no more excuses!  I have completed this project and think that it was a quick and simple project.

My friend got this idea from Pintrest and I found the source of the project.  It started off as a no sew t-shirt tank project, but I only use fusible webbing for when I'm in a pinch or when a needle is not the most practical way to go.  My machine will make it more durable, so that is what I did.

The project is from the blog Crafter Hours and it is how to make a t-shirt into a tied tank top.

First you take a t-shirt you don't mind cutting up.  But pick one that you would wear to the beach, the pool, hanging around the house or running errands on the weekend.

Cut the neck off straight, then the sleeves and a few strips from the bottom.  I threw away the very bottom edge that has the hemming.  Cut 2 more strips from the bottom.

Then seam  the top cut edges where the neck is big enough to form a casing for the tying strips.

Snip the strips so they are long and thin, not a circle.  Then thread the strips, one in the front and one in the back.  Bunch the fabric up a bit and tie on the shoulders with the strips.  Trim away any excess striping material once you have the ties at a good length.

I left two out of the three shirts I did with the cut raw edge at the bottom.  Once that is done, then you are done!!

Another one:

And one more:

This one I also put a casing at the bottom and threaded another strip so that it can cinch on the side.  This t-shirt was a men's XXL, so I had to take it in at the sides.  I had plenty of room at the bottom to do the cinching.

There you go, go forth and cut up all of your husband's t-shirts so that you can have some chic beach shirts and all-round comfy tees.