One mitten

Remember my handspun angora?  From away back?  My beautiful, bulky, teal, thick-and-thin, fuzzy, wonderful handspun angora?  Here is what I made from it:

 

Yes, that is correct.  One K-sized mitten.  I know I should have made a scarf, I knew when I began the mitten that I would not have enough yarn for two.  I was banking on my provider having -- or being able to dye -- some fiber to match the fiber I had already spun.  Lesson learned:  do not bank.  So I am left with one bunny-fluff mitten to hang on the Christmas tree next year.  I think it will look natural there.

Necessary neatening, with audience participation

This is what my knitting needle drawer used to look like:

Mayhem had ruled my drawer for far too long.  This weekend, I took action.  Now I have a bag dedicated to crochet hooks and one dedicated to notions.

I have my circular and double-pointed needles in individual plastic bags, corralled in large zipper bags, one for each needle size.

And left over? My ridiculous collection of straight needles.  I do not knit on straight needles.  Ever.  One might reasonably ask why I have any at all.  I would, at this point, donate the ones I have, but I am saddled with the notion that I may soon be running a church knitting group where there will be ladies who will refuse to knit with circular needles, even if they're just knitting flat.  So for the moment I'm holding on to them.  I'm trying to think of something artistic or at least decorative to do with them, so they don't wind up just cluttering up a drawer. 

My questions to you are:  1) how do you organize your knitting needles, and 2) what have you done with your straight needles, if you are no longer using them?

Reduce, reuse, regift, recycle

This Christmas I was inspired by Soulemama to save some trees and make reusable fabric gift bags.

It was such fun making them! At least the first few...  I did them with the suggested French seams until I realized that Santa would never get his gifts delivered on time at that rate, then switched to regular seams and pinking shears (next year, I'll start earlier...)  And I improvised a method of attaching the ribbon by folding it and stitching it down in a box that seemed a bit more natural to me for tying the gifts.  By 2am, after Midnight Mass, I had given in and was using last year's leftover paper gift bags -- cause that's still recycling, right?  And since K woke up at 3, I was glad I did. 

 Aside from the ecological benefits of wrapping packages this way, I now have the bonus of being able to give any gift in attractive packaging, without hunting for the Scotch tape.  What could be better?  Plus, I had the opportunity to make use of some of the gorgeous vintage fabrics that have been languishing in my stash waiting for a worthy project.  

Want to try one?  My favorite is the bag near the middle, the one with the orange, green and navy flowers.  It started out as an extremely worn, extremely dated vintage blouse that I had been holding on to with no idea what I was going to do with it.  Of course I could turn it into a bag!  If you don't have one of these in your closet (and I bet you do), it's easy to find them on half price day at the Goodwill. 

The easiest way is to turn the shirt inside out, cut the collar and sleeves off just below the underarms, and sew closed, but if you need to you could narrow the sides and sew them closed as well.  Either way, for my friends who are afraid of their sewing machines, it is just straight seams.  Leave the bottom hem intact (it is now the top of the bag) and sew a ribbon to the center.  Done.  You've spent less than 10 minutes sewing, which is 3 minutes more than you would have spent wrapping, but your friend will think you slaved all day.  And you saved a tree.  Go you.

Second Sock Syndrome

 

I started a pair of Cozy Toes Socks on our New Year's trip to visit family in Wisconsin, and knitted the first sock happily by the fire with Aunt Mary.  What a joy, to work up a sock in no time with creamy soft alpaca yarn.  And when I tried it on, it fit perfectly and was cozy indeed!  As we packed for home, I began the second sock with all good intentions -- but since then, have I knitted a stitch on it?  And they're predicting snow for the weekend!  Clearly I have my work cut out for me.  Time to push past Second Sock Syndrome and finish the pair so I can enjoy them (and start a new pair, of course...)

Emerging

My, it's been a long time!  I've missed sharing my work and ideas with you and have made a resolution to do those things more regularly in 2011.  (Actually, I was intending to start back in on Monday, but you know how those things go...)

Handspun angora

So I had been arduously spinning the angora roving I bought at the Garden State Sheep Breeders Sheep and Fiber Festival back in September -- on my spindle -- and I had worked through about four ounces in a month.  Along comes my spinning wheel and zoom!  I zipped through the second four ounces in less than a day.  Here I am plying the spindled yarn with the wheel-spun yarn with a little help from Kelsey the cat:

Winding a hank on the swift is much quicker and easier than using a niddy-noddy, in my experience.  My swift, when it's fully opened, makes a 36-inch skein, and I had about 51 yards of what feels and knits like a bulky-weight yarn when I was done. 

Here's the skein, all neat and tidy and soft and fuzzy.  I carried it with me and petted it all day today, but couldn't resist and by 4:30 was winding it into a ball so I could begin knitting K's Christmas mittens.  It is truly delicious, and I am utterly amazed that I am so far along in the process of turning fluff from a bunny into clothing for my child.  Incredible!

My handspun!

The stats: Natural Grey Border Leicester, 136 yards or thereabouts, somewhere between aran and bulky weight -- I did not measure wraps per inch because I forgot before I skeined it, but that's such a hairy unit of measurement that I'm not sure it matters much. It's got a nice soft hand; I think it will be suitable for a scarf, hat and mittens, which was my intended project for this fiber.

I picked up a pound of this nice Border Leicester at Rhinebeck the weekend before last when I got my NEW SPINNING WHEEL (the Road Bug by Merlin Tree, more to come on that soon.)  I have about twelve different projects going on, as usual, but would like to get a gauge swatch done on this yarn soon, so look for that and poke me if you don't see it.

UFO: Busy Stripes Quilt

I have no idea why this little quilt has been sitting in my UFO box for two and a half years.  A little stitching in the ditch, a little binding and it will be all set to go to a little fellow I know who will love to snuggle under its flannelly goodness. 

UFO: Slice Twice Sorbet Quilt

This one has been in progress in my studio for ages, and was meant to be bound and done last spring, but summer happened and I have been slip-stitching sporadically all these months.  It's the Slice Twice -- Isn't That Nice pattern that I picked up at Olde City Quilts with a Moda Sorbet layer cake. Something like Two. Years. Ago.  I sewed about 3/4 of the top together, let it sit for a year, and then came back to it when the guilt hit me like a ton of bricks.  I finished the top, made the sandwich, did some machine quilting and put a tie or two in each block for good measure, and sewed the binding on the front.  All in record time.

 

In the next few days I will be diverting as much creative energy as possible to stitching the rest of the binding onto this quilt I have come to love; then I will finally get to show you the finished product!

It's about the process

The project started because I had been in the hospital and a nurse, who was expecting a baby before long, had been extra kind to me.  Before I even got home I knew that I wanted to make the super-soft patchwork-bound blanket from Weekend Sewing for Baby C.  As soon as I was feeling up to it, I headed down to the fabric store and bought a length of beautifully soft wool/cashmere blend, and fearlessly tossed it in the washing machine to felt it.  The results were amazing, dense and plush and warm, exactly what I'd had in mind.

I cut the two pieces, but not carefully, and the blanket ended up being an inch short on all four sides because of it.  The blanket-construction and decorative zig-zagging went well -- a pleasant surprise for me because the other times I've made this blanket I've botched those.  Then I sat down with my bins of fabric to start creating the patchwork binding strips.

It was so hard to decide!  I wanted to use all of my favorites -- it took a long time to narrow it down.  Finally I worked out my patchwork panel.

 

 

I really like this method of making binding -- it leaves so much room for interpretation and creativity.  Here are the finished strips, ready to sew on the blanket:

Here is the bound blanket -- it doesn't look too bad, although the binding is not sewn on perfectly and there was some difficulty sewing through the thicker parts where the binding overlapped (this was done before my Kenmore came home.)

Had I left well enough alone, I think the blanket would have been gift-able.  But because I knew the baby's name, I wanted to personalize it.  This is where I ran into trouble.  

Because I bought the wrong kind of interfacing (Wonder Under instead of single-sided fusible) I had to cut out the 'C' three times before I accepted the fact that I was going to have to fuse the thing on in one layer and machine-applique instead of stitching the letter to the fusible, turning the thing inside-out, ironing it on the blanket and doing a decorative stitch by hand.  Enter the dreaded zig-zag stitch.  Although I tested it on a scrap and thought I had it right, I accidentally set it too wide and too short, making for a very sloppy stitching line around the 'C.'  Hoping to disguise my messy work, I satin-stitched an edging around the letter with an embroidery needle and pearl cotton.  You can see the result below:

So I'm not at all sure what to do about this.  Give it away?  Cut it up for scraps?  Make another one with the fabric I have left over?  The truth is that I don't like it very much.

Thoughts?

Just Make It ... Sew

When I was picking up my "new" sewing machine the other day there happened to be a reporter from the Burlington County Times interviewing the shop owner, so I had to wait a minute or two while she talked to him.  JoAnn and I chit-chatted while she rang me up, and the reporter noticed and asked me for a quote, which -- liberally paraphrased -- appears in this article.  Look for more about JoAnn and her shop (including photographs, I hope) in the future...

Up and running

Just a quick post to let you know that my Sears Kenmore 1430 Zig Zag is back in my possession, and after some fiddling and studying I have it humming nicely on some scrap fabric.  K is home "sick" (read: needing Mama time) today so I haven't been able to do any real sewing, but I will post when I get a chance to zip through a quick test project.

The word, through the fabric store owner, from the repairman, is that I have a good sturdy machine with a pretty stitch that, if I take care of it, will last me a lifetime.  Cost:  $50 for the machine at the thrift store; $84 for repairs.  Score!

Vintage Kenmore

Earlier in the week, I found this at my favorite thrift store:

 

I noted the model number and did a little research on the thing.

There's not a huge amount of information readily available, but apparently the Kenmore 1430 Zig Zag was a pretty popular model somewhere in the vicinity of 1972 and is an all-metal workhorse that can sew easily through several layers of denim and even leather (demonstrated here on YouTube) and has "6 quarters" of room underneath the presser foot -- great for quilting. 

Just the same, the machine I found was not in working condition and cost a fair amount of money, so I passed on it.  But it stuck in my mind, and I visit that thrift store several times a week.  Yesterday when I was paying for my latest finds, I looked up at the marquee where they advertise the day's sale tag color -- blue.  Of course, nothing I was buying had a blue tag.  But.  The vintage Kenmore sported a blue sticker.  I asked the saleslady if that counted, and she gave me the nod.  Half of a fair amount of money seemed reasonable to me -- if the thing could not be fixed I could sell it for parts -- so I nodded and she rang it up.

Now I am totally beside myself.  I rushed the machine to my favorite fabric store in downtown Burlington -- they have a man there who comes in to do repairs, and he'll be in on Tuesday.  I can't wait to hear from him!  In the meantime, I have joined the Kenmore Vintage Sewing Machine group on Yahoo Groups (yes, of course there is one -- search for "vintagekenmoressew" if you are so inclined) and am combing Ebay for parts and accessories.  What fun!

K's duvet cover: a taste of independence

In the interest of putting K in charge of making her own bed, I bought her a twin-sized duvet some time ago.  Not wanting to spend $39.95 or more on a cover for it, however, I let it sit in the linen closet and rot.  Despite the fabulous collection of vintage bedsheets toppling the bookcase in my studio next door.  Somehow flower power just doesn't fit the image I have of my girl.

Not long ago, however, I happened upon a complete set of twin-sized rosebud-print sheets from Target's Simply Shabby Chic collection in the Salvation Army store -- a guilty (because I have more than once paid full price for this line) favorite of mine.  I snapped them up and set them aside, waiting, waiting.   And lo and behold, the other week, it happened!  A different sheet from the same line popped up in the Linens section and made its way into my hot little hands.  Woo-hoo!

I used the tutorial at the "Decorating: a journal"  blog that I have used before -- it is straightforward and simple and requires no fasteners, which has worked well with the first duvet cover I made.

This will suit Miss K well and be comfy and cozy to boot.  I'm looking forward to many a toasty morning snuggled up with her, planning for the day to come and maybe goofing off a bit?  And she will be so proud to pull up the covers and have a neat and tidy bed in no time!  I think it was worth the wait.

Questions from the Tooth Fairy

K lost her first tooth last night in her sleep (is she really that grown up?), and with her sharp little six-year-old eyes managed to find it nestled in her white chenille bedspread (thank goodness!) -- leaving us with an important task:  Finishing the Tooth Fairy Pillow today so that it will be ready for tonight's hijinks and hullabaloo.  Originally we had cut the pieces out of wool felt with the idea that K would sew the pillow herself, but she assured me that she would not be offended if I assembled the thing while she was at school, so I set to work.

I tried to keep the stitching neat and sturdy but still childlike, as though K had had a hand in it -- not hard since my hand-sewing skills leave a bit to be desired.  I wanted to stuff it with wool batting but chose K's favorite bamboo since she's the one who has to sleep on it.  I do hope she likes it.

Now.  Questions. 

1. What is the going rate for baby teeth these days?  K said something like "maybe a dollar?" but my fairy is just not sure.
2. Would a little present be appropriate along with the small amount of money the fairy is likely to leave?  Like a new toothbrush, perhaps?
3. How on Earth does my fairy get the teensy little tooth out of the pocket without waking the excited child?

Garden State Goodies

Last weekend was the Garden State Sheep Breeders' Sheep and Fiber Festival.  I drove out on Sunday all by myself! It was fun to pet the angora rabbits and talk to the baby llamas, and I ran my fingers through tons of raw fleece -- but much to D's relief came home with neither fleece nor llama nor bunny.  (Though I will be looking into raising angora rabbits.  How much trouble can they be?  And how totally worth it would it be to grow my own fiber?  Really!)

I did bring home some beautiful alpaca worsted to knit into Katie Himmelberg's Best-Fit Jumper from Simple Style, which I have been drooling over for a while now.  (The pattern calls for an alpaca-merino blend and my yarn is just alpaca, but I am going to knit the ribbing with a smaller needle in the hope that it will retain its memory -- I'm testing it out on the swatch.  If it doesn't work I have no doubt but that I can find some other use for this delicious yarn!

While you're admiring the yarn, take a gander at my new swift!  Life has recently become significantly less arduous for the wool-winders in the Martin household.  I think D agreed on my purchase (special sale at Knit Picks!) because it freed him from his bondage to the almighty skein -- possibly more so than as a reward for my hard labor driving K to camp in the Pinelands and schlepping her to the beach all summer.  In any case, I am loving it!

(Stay tuned to see the other goodies I brought home from the festival, as well as progress on the Wonky Blocks quilt...)

Wonky Blocks

I'm sorry for disappearing these last few months; it has been a crazy summer, with trips to visit aunties and Alma Maters, a lovely vacation at the beach and many weeks of driving long distance to (totally worth it!) day camp in the Pinelands.  Thankfully, school starts up again tomorrow and things are settling down again.  I have many projects to show you! Let me start with my latest passion, the "mystery quilt," to which I will give the working title "Wonky Blocks."  (An appropriate homemade gift will go to the person who can guess the actual name of the quilt before it is finished -- I will be dropping hints along the way!)

I am working entirely with pieces from my scrap box and from pre-cut (homemade) charm squares and jelly roll strips so far -- I will need to purchase fabric for a border, backing, and possibly for binding as well.  The process of making the blocks has been quite liberating -- I started making geometrically precise little blocks with the pre-cuts, and finished by sewing the tiniest scraps together in any way they would go and cutting the results into squares.  I'm loving the results!

Putting the quilt-block puzzle together is exciting and hurts my head, and is taking up the living room where D will want to set up with his computer as he is working from home today, and I am not half done yet.  There may be turf wars to come.

Still to do:  piece quilt; determine a size for the quilt (how wide do they make quilt batting, anyway, and can you sew two lengths of batting together to make a larger one?); determine type of border to use and amount(s) of fabric to buy; and so on, and so on. 

Meet Hank

Here 's my first homely hank of homespun, made with my Ashford spindle and plied from a center-pull ball that fell apart in my hands after the first yard or so.  I did not take note of its length because I was too concerned about the yarn untwisting itself to measure it before I skeined it up.  However, given Hank's diminutive stature (not to mention its highly variable level of twistiness -- is that a word?)  I think that in the future I will wait to ply until I have spun two cops, and ply from two balls under a couple of flowerpots until I get hold of (or make) a lazy kate.

For all its obvious imperfections I'm in love with this yarn!  I love the colors and the twist, the bulk and the softness, and I fully intend to work with it when I have finished spinning the batch.  I can't wait to see how it knits up!

Spinning hand dyed merino

Since we took our class together at the Sheep and Wool Festival, K has been itching to spin some real yarn.  I've not wanted to hand my Golding spindle off to her because that's MY ball of yarn and I don't want anyone else to mess with it, thank you very much! 

So I went down to Woolbearer's to look for a spindle for her, because although I could have made her a toy wheel spindle, I knew she wanted the real thing.  I found the perfect beginner's spindle there (selling for peanuts) and some variegated purple merino roving that I knew she'd go crazy for, and a book called Spin to Knit: The Knitter's Guide to Making Yarn.  I brought home the book, 8 oz. of the roving and two spindles and sat down to fiddle.

I knew, getting into this, that the merino would be harder to spin than the coopworth.  Its shorter fiber length makes it slippery and easy to pull apart, and my impatient tugging didn't help; my roving kept drifting into little clouds.  But I loved the merino's springiness and soft hand, and I enjoyed working with it. 

When K got home we took the guinea pigs outside and put them in their pen, then sat down in lawn chairs to spin.  We had a rough start because I got fussed about making sure she drafted in a particular way, and I couldn't see that her drafting was fine; it just wasn't the same as mine.  (In fact, it was better; her fiber never drifted apart.)  There were tears and there was some shouting, but once I realized my mistake I quickly apologized, and soon K was brightly saying, "Isn't this fun?" and chanting, "I'm makin' ya -- arn, I'm makin' ya -- arn!"  And she was.  She got the hang of drafting and twirling the shaft and managing her fiber and she did a fine job.

(We plan to make hats with the yarn we spin and be Purple Hat Buddies.  Also, I have signed up for a spinning class at Woolbearer's that starts this Saturday.  Oh boy!)

Festival fibers and a spindle!

Yesterday we went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in the blazing sun and heat, and I had a blast picking out my very own drop spindle and fiber to go with it.  There were sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, bunnies, and sheepdogs to see, and lamb delicacies of all kinds, and beautiful beautiful yarns, but I was on a mission.  I'd been reading Respect the Spindle: Spin Infinite Yarns with One Amazing Tool, and I was convinced that I could spin yarn.

K and I took a class called "Exploring Simple Spinning" where we used a homemade drop spindle made with a dowel and an old compact disc when we first arrived.  We spun absolutely nothing with it.  The thing was useless, or we were, I wasn't sure which.  But I had a good idea of what kind of spindle I wanted (high whorl, 2 oz. or so, rim-weighted and notched) and I sent D and K off to the sheepdog demonstration while I searched for my spindle.

After nearly giving up hope and purchasing the wrong (oh so wrong) spindle in desperation, I asked at yet another roving vendor's booth where I might find a spindle to spin their fiber, and was directed to Golding Fiber Tools in the Main Exhibition Hall.  There I found this beauty:

See the little sheep faces carved into the whorl?

It's exactly what I was looking for, and this morning I spun this yarn with it:

They tell me I won't be able to spin yarn this interesting looking once I get better at spinning!

I'm so excited! I bought 12 oz. of undyed Coopworth roving (I have yet to learn what makes Coopworth different from other kinds of wool, but the woman who sold it to me said it supposedly spins itself, so I will look it up in my copy of The Knitter's Book of Wool later on) and some beautifully dyed "art" fiber that seems to have a little bit of everything in it, because that is what the woman who helped me find Golding was selling.

I'm looking forward to finishing my first ball of yarn, learning how to ply, and seeing if I can knit with what I've made.