This woman who has done the Mom job for me for over half my life is so like me in so many ways. As we traveled to the fiber fair together I could not help but reflect on ways she has influenced my personality for the better. I also had to reflect on the fact that we have both been a big influence on the other’s crafting personality.

In the years after we first met, the only craft that I ever saw her do was needlepoint on those plastic canvases. At the time, I’ll admit I thought it was a little lame, although I would never judge another’s craft so harshly now. I was a young teen and had dabbled with some kits, sewing, a little jewelry-making and polymer clay. As a little older teen, I got more serious about sewing.

Halfway through college, I started petitioning for a spinning wheel and she helped my Dad find me both a wheel kit and lessons. Not long after, she taught me to knit, which until that point I didn’t even realize she knew how to do.

From then on, it became a craft journey shared, although I didn’t recognize it at the time. It has helped us bond tremendously over the years. We encourage each other, share tips and processes, share equipment and stash, share laughs over the pitfalls of overcrowded craft storage. And we also seem to share a passion for dabbling, a desire to learn all the techniques, a propensity to be inspired broadly and be undaunted by the prospect of learning a new skill. Who learned that from whom?

The credit for my creative life goes to both nature and nurture. My Dad, the Mom who had the first part of my raising, and the Mom who has had the rest of my raising have all been very creative and very encouraging of my craft explorations. As an adult though, what I value most is getting to share the creative journey with the people that I love.

Until next time, keep those needle clicking…

Brother Knitting Machine KH 800 in action

My Mom was given a knitting machine by a friend who was cleaning out her basement, it sounded kind of fancy.  I offered to teach my Mom how to use it, but our recent get-togethers were focused on other things (eg. I am expecting).  When she came over to help me bake traditional Slovak Easter foods for the holiday, I figured I could at least set up my Knitmaster and show her the basics.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts and on the associated info page, my Knitmaster is a very humble sort of knitting machine.  It’s a standard gauge (meaning it can handle lace-weight through DK), but it’s functionality is limited to plain stockinette unless you are willing to do some very tedious hand-manipulation.

I had considered upgrading to a punch card machine last year, but I really couldn’t justify the expense.  My humble Knitmaster was an eBay bargain at $46 including shipping.  I’d likely have to pay at least $500 for a gamble on a basic punchcard machine.  Spare cash being limited as it often is, I gave up on the idea after a few months of Craigslist and eBay stalking.

So last week I showed my Mom the wonders of machine knitting on my Knitmaster.  I demonstrated various techniques on a piece that started as an attempt to machine knit a baby cardigan.  She also got to try out casting on, binding off, and basic rows.  My crafty buddy Emily also stopped by and got to try out the knitting machine.  Emily is a scientist by trade, so I think the precision and mechanical nature of the knitting machine were intriguing to her.

The next day I got a call from my Mom.  Maybe it’s the impending grandma-hood and the baby sweater I was trying to create, maybe it’s the fact that my Mom just won a circular sock knitting machine from ebay, or maybe it was the fact that my machine is kind of simple and her machine was a bit more complex.  Whatever the reason, she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.  She asked if I would like to swap knitting machines with her!  So the pic above is “my” new Brother KH 800 Knitting Machine, “on semi-permanent loan to my collection” as we like to say.

So far, I am thrilled!  The Brother Knitting Machine had been in a friend of my Mom’s yarn shop, then it was given to another friend of hers who does charity knitting but apparently never got into the knitting machine aspect of production knitting.  A basement needed cleaning, the machine went to my Mom, and voila!  A free upgrade for me!  It is in fairly good shape (a few needles are missing, apparently swapped out and moved to the ends when bent).  It has a lace cartridge and takes a 12-stitch punchcard.  Alas, the couple of books that I have accumulated on knitting machine patterns are for 24-stitch punchcards, but I think most can be modified.

Compared to my Knitmaster, there are a lot of pieces to set up on this machine.  Flipping through the PDF manual I found online, I was able to figure out most things.  I am slowly building up my abilities with the new functions.  I like making hemmed edges on it – the cast on is so easy it feels like cheating!

The only major difficulty I am having so far is that the punchcard mechanism is not “reading” the cards correctly.  Some of the needles that the card says should be selected are not selecting – I can do it manually, of course, but that sort of defeats the purpose.  The PDF manual is missing some pages, but it doesn’t appear that it ever had a page that detailed troubleshooting the punchcard.  Hopefully internet research will help, but I may be relegated to taking things apart and seeing what happens.

I’m heading for a day-long knitting workshop this weekend with my crafty buddy Emily.  A couple of classes and a vendor area… Watch out now – I’m heading into the danger zone!

Until next time, keep those needles (and needle beds) clicking…

Safe travels.

At the rate I’ve been posting, you would think I haven’t been crafting. But no, the sad truth is that I’ve just gotten terrible at taking pictures of what I’ve been doing lately. So as I suddenly remembered to take pics today, here you have a post at last. I restarted my frogged top-down lace cardigan, and it’s going much more symmetrically this time around. I spun some funky art-yarn (not pictured, sorry) with my lovely lincoln longwool locks and some sari silk fibers, and then made two wall hangings (also not pictured, again sorry). What reminded me that I’m a craft blogger and I’m supposed to keep to a regimen of taking photos of my processes and projects, is the absolutely stunning colors that came out of my drum carder last night and today… But I also didn’t take pictures of the drum carder, the carding, or the batts… Again, sorry. The good news is that as I was oooing and ahhing over my beautifully saturate and multi-hued singles, my husband said ‘hey, you should take a picture of that’. Suddenly I remembered that I should have taken some pics earlier in the process. Blogging is hard (no, not really, I just forget sometimes).

So here are the three beautiful rovings (when I finally remembered to take a pic I had terrible lighting and a short leash on my uncharged photo device). If the colors are hard to discern, they are blue/light-blue, muted blue/light pink, and blue/purple/bright pink. The fibers in them are largely assorted alpaca that I had dyed blue/purple/green/red with my friend Emily earlier this summer. A dash of mohair and linoln longwool from the same dyebath, some KnitPicks roving for stability and color depth, and a tiny bit of angelina sparkle. Using the awesome Deb Menz Color in Spinning book as a guide, I carded two of the rovings for a subtle blend, and one of them for a blend that should have some long but subtle color variation.

Alright, lousy pics are almost worse than no pics at all. Anyway, I started spinning up the singles from one of the rovings and I am really excited about the color. I’m going to try 3-plying a bit of it for a hat, and then the rest might be left as singles for a bolero ala the Craftsy lace cardigan style. Next time I’ll do better about the pics. Until next time, keep those needles clicking…

The big mistake! The increases are all screwed up here

Let me start this story by explaining that typically, I am not much of a “Type A” knitter, especially if it’s something I’m knitting for myself.  If there’s a mistake, I’ll think of ways to correct it as I go along, or see if it can be ignored.  I embrace the wabi-sabi, let go of ego, accept that the screwy details are rarely noticeable when the whole is good, etc.

There is a very old “meme” if you will, one that predates the intertubes – it’s about humility.  I had heard that it was from quiltmakers, but googling implies that it’s just a story fondly embraced by crafters the world over.  The story goes that great quiltmakers (or Persian rugmakers, or Native American beadworkers, etc) would intentionally introduce one flaw into their nearly perfect work as a sign of humility because only God’s (or gods’, or Great Spirit’s, etc) work could be perfect.  I have always joked that I never need to worry about spiting the gods with my excessive perfection, because my work is full of mistakes, but if the gods are equally concerned over excessive mistakes, I might be in trouble.

This time, however, the mistake demanded instant frogging.  This one was too big to finagle my way through with stitch witchery.  So what did I screw up?

I’ll do a full review of my first Craftsy class experience later, after I’ve completed more of the class, but here’s a quick sum up of the Crazy Lace Cardigan class I have started taking:  Great class, terrific hand-outs, engaging teacher, but having some issues with their mobile site.  On the mobile site, you can’t (currently) fast-forward, skip ahead, or otherwise navigate through the different “lessons” in a single video.  The class as a whole is divided into 14 videos, but some of them are over an hour.  My lunch break is only 1hr, and that includes procuring and eating food.  I want to do Craftsy class on my lunch break.  This has all conspired to make me impatient with the classes on occasion.

Its not that the classes are poorly paced either, it’s just that the class is meant to teach a broad range of experience levels, and sometimes they go on for a few minutes about stuff I already know, and on my tablet I can’t skip ahead.  But you know what is awesome?  When I sent tech support a message to let them know I’d like to see them improve that aspect, they told me they already had mobile apps in the works and ready to release in a few weeks!  So hooray for Craftsy!  I can’t wait to see if this new app addresses my issues!

So that brings me to my problem with the knitting.  I was heading to a fun craft night with one good friend and a bunch of gals I hadn’t yet met, and I was debating what project to bring.  I wanted something that would really keep my attention, in case I was out of the social loop, but nothing that would look too rarefied because I didn’t want to weird anybody out on the first meeting.  So to prepare, I skipped ahead a little on the Craftsy class.  That’s where the Big Mistake came in.

I reviewed the cast-on, and then grabbed the pattern and did a quick scan to see if there were any techniques I needed to know.  Rather than watch that section of the video, I just grabbed a good stitch reference book and headed out the door.  It looked pretty good, and I was cruising along feeling that this was a very pleasant pattern and that I would be done with the top yoke part in no time.

Today at lunch, I noticed a couple of small mistakes.  A missed increase, and an extra yarn-over.  But maybe it would all come out in the wash, so I counted some stitches… that’s when i noticed that the increase sections on the two front points of the v-neck didn’t look symmetrical.  Uh-oh!  I started catching up with the Craftsy video… there it is, there are supposed to be double yarn-overs at every marker.  If you look at the image above, you will note that there are only single yarn-overs.

But here’s the kicker… the pattern is not wrong.  The video would have helped me not make the mistake by carefully reinforcing what the pattern says, but the pattern is written correctly.  This is what I get for ambitiously trying to jump ahead, not reviewing the pattern and stitches carefully, starting a new pattern stitch in a busy social environment, and in general NOT paying enough attention!

So here’s the moral of this story, even though it’s common sense and I really, really ought to know this by now:  read all pattern instructions carefully and really pay attention to the instructions while you are setting up a knit.  And let’s hope that the knitting gods aren’t inclined to smite cocky, hasty underachievers any more than they seem to be inclined to smite those unhumble perfectionists.

Until next time, keep those needles clicking…

Steampunk style 1

My embellishments to the jacket I made last year really elevated it into cool territory. My harness gained lots of resin and glitter filled vials, chains, and oddities. I added a “Gibson girl” hairstyle, and topped it with a mini hat that I finshed sewing on the ride to the convention.

Smaller functional details were improved too. The old embroidered purse that I converted into a belt bag was improved greatly by some strap adjustments. The harness gained some new belt holes and resewing straps was much aided by a new leather sewing needle/awl tool.

However, despite these accomplishments, I was really devastated by having my sewing/embroidery machine break in early May. I haven’t had time to take it for repairs. So there are many planned pieces that have moved to next year’s list: embroidered underskirts, bustle/ruffle layer, embroidered lace fascinator, lacey sewn top.

One major new costume detail also arose at the convention -

I bought a corset! Now I’ve got to make the top strap on my harness removable, because there’s way too much visual clutter when I wear the corset. Until next time, keep those needles stitching!

Dropspindling from silk mawatas

I was gushing over my weekend fiber fair plans to my boardgaming friends when one fellow suggested that his wife might like to come along.  Now Emily is one of the coolest people I know, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she or anyone else not currently a spinner or weaver would want to get into deep fiber nerd territory.  I was both surprised and delighted when she wanted to join us.

We all had a great time.  There were lots of live fibery critters, finished yarns, spinnable fibers, tools large and small, weaving supplies, and so much more!  It was also very, very hot, and after 3 large open barns of booth after booth of excitement, the wool fumes and heat were melting my brain to the point that any purchase seemed reasonable.  Fortunately, by that point I was very low on actual cash, so that formed a natural reminder not to overspend.

Treasures from the fiber fair

I bought a Lincoln Longwool whole fleece from a sheep named “Romeo”.  I bought a small bag of undyed mohair, three 1 oz samples of dyed mohair, some Firestar (a synthetic fiber that’s very lustrous), some Angelina (another synthetic fiber that’s metallic), an upright lazy kate, a nostepinne (manual ball-winding stick), and a cute little suet feeder stuffed full of fiber seconds to provide nesting material for the birds.

Emily quickly converted from a fiber passerby to a fiber enthusiast as she bought her own first drop-spindle kit, plus some blended roving.  She made her first yarns in the car on the way back home.

I came home with a raging headache from all the 90 degree F heat, overstimulation, and perhaps having a delicious but foolish lunch of only french fries, fried oreos, and strawberry shortcake.  However, a cool shower, some more liquids, and dinner revived me enough that I wanted to do some fibery crafts.

Purple, blue, and green dyes in the bath

I suggested dyeing and Emily was amenable to the plan, having been bitten by the fiber crafting bug and eager to see what else we could do.  My Mom had given her some samples of roving from her stash, so that went in the pots.  I also threw in my mixed alpaca roving (from five free middling-quality fleeces that I had commercially processed into roving a few years back), plus some of my new undyed mohair and some freshly cleaned locks of Lincoln Longwool.

Red, orange, and yellow dyebath

We decided to use up some acid dyes that I had pre-mixed a while back.  Although Emily is a scientist by profession, and I have a science degree as well, we abandoned rigorous and accurate measurements for this adventure.

We approximated fiber weights, added dyes freely.  But essentially, the basics hold true:  wet fiber, add water/ vinegar to just cover fiber, add heat, pour on dissolved dyes.  Remove from heat, cover and let sit 30 min.  Wait until cool and rinse.

Here are the results.  The red/yellow dyepot saturated nicely, although the dye bath never did run clear.  I rinsed and rinsed but it never seemed to run clean.  I noticed some sediment at the bottom of the jar when we added the red, so it’s possible that it wasn’t dissolved well enough.  Hopefully the dye will not bleed onto hands when spinning.

The reds dyepot – note that I may not have rinsed enough, some dye has bled onto the towel

The blue/green/purple dyepot did not saturate as well, possibly I had it too tightly packed.  Also, the “purple” which we had mixed up from some blue and red dye concentrates, separated in the mix for some reason.  Still, I am willing to bet that the results will spin up nicely, maybe especially after a blending in the drum carder.

The blues dyepot – note that the pot was possibly over packed leading to less color saturation

So that sums up the fiber adventures for one day!  Lots more craftiness has happened in the past few weeks, but this post has been a slowly progressing draft for over a week.  So let’s close this one out and move onto the next topic!

Until next time, keep those needles clicking and dyebaths bubbling…

Our favorite annual gaming convention – and my costuming deadline – is just a few weeks off, so no time for a long post.  Here’s a brief tease of vat-dyeing adventure results:

Seafoam green, plum blossom, and safari grey

The seafoam green came out nearly white (there’s an undyed hankie in there to show the similarity), the plum blossom came out crazy hot-pink on ths skirts (though more dusty rose on some canvas aprons not pictured), and the safari grey came out much warmer and more brownish than expected.  That’s the adventure part of dyeing!  You never know what will happen.  But these base colors are only the beginning.  There will be tie-dyeing, shibori, painting, resists, and more in the future for these garments. 

And here’s an update on the jacket and harness rig that are a staple of my costume.  I’ve been refining both, improving them from what I wore last year.  Adding detail is especially important in steampunk looks.  Adding accessories to the belt/harness have pushed the inspiration into a “faerie hunter” theme, I like that it can be adventurous but not so rugged that frills and lace would be out of the question.  Not sure what might be done before the costume deadline, especially since my sewing/embroidery machine has had a breakdown and needs to go in for a repair and tune-up.

Until next time, keep those dye-baths bubbling and needles a-stitchin’…

For last year’s early summer gaming convention, I started trying to cobble together a steampunk look,

but I was really pressed for time because I was taking a heavy load of summer classes.  I got a jacket finished, but it was under-embellished so it really just hinted at steampunk in a vague way.  I had some cool accessories, and I made some steampunk jewelry, but I felt underwhelmed by the look.  It lacked a lot in detail and cohesiveness.

Now this year, I’ll be done with classes in about a week, but they’ve also moved up the convention date.  So I will really be under the gun to craft in my spare time if I want four days of costumes that I will be happy with.  I suspect some compromises will be made as I get closer to travel time.  But for right now I’m feeling ambitious – I have five weeks, that’s an eternity right?  Oh wait, I do have a full-time job.

So today, I have a day off (I’ve been working a ton of Saturdays, so this isn’t vacation, just time they owed me).  I have an important paper to write to finish up ye olde semester for one of my classes, but in my usual crafting mania kind of way, I’m also taking time to dye up some stuff.  I’ll admit, that it isn’t helping me write my paper, nor is taking the time to tell you about it, dear reader.  But the paper will get done today, and much will be dyed, and all will be well…. Or I’m the queen of procrastination and senior-itis (can you get “senior”-itis as a grad student?).

So, what, you may ask, am I dyeing?

I got a bunch of lovely dye blanks (ie. All-white finished clothing articles made of dyeable fibers) from Dharma Trading, purveyors of many fine dyes, paints, and dyeables.  I also restocked some dye powders and paints for the coming projects.

Knowing that I wouldn’t have much time for sewing, I thought I’d do some dyeing and painting of blanks to speed up the process.  There are pieces I want to construct too, but those are in the “if time allows” category.

Basket of washed and ready dye blanks

Of the blanks, there is one dress, two shirts, one skirt, and one piece that can either be a skirt or a short sundress.  All in simple cotton and totally dyeable.  Many of these pieces I intend to layer, and some I intend to embellish after dyeing with paints.  As a bonus, I’m also doing a base dye on couple of aprons for later tie-dyeing and embroidery (Mother’s day gifts).

So the plan is to do three color batches, Safari Grey, Plum Blossom, and Seafoam.  The end products will get other treatments later, but those are adventures for another day.  The tub dyeing process is the part that will take a day of baby-sitting the washing machine, and surely that will segue well with writing my paper.  Right?

Until next time, keep those dye-baths agitating…

PS.  Expect to see more regular posting starting in a few weeks.  I’ll be blogging again soon about the dye process I’m using today, dye safety, and the “next steps” on today’s blanks.  Also, I’m planning to expand the scope of this blog beyond knitting and fiber arts.  I do a lot of crafts and less categorizable DIY projects, and I’d like to share those too.  But I will also be writing about knitting, this blog was good motivation for me to finish Level I of the Master Knitter program, and I’m eager to move on to Level II later this year.

But it got me thinking about lost tools.  The Yarn Harlot often makes light of losing tape measures, and I know lost DPNs are common enough being small and roll-inclined.  I certainly never seem to have enough stitch holders, but I think this is a factor of my many works-in-progress more than an indication that I’m really losing stitch holders.  Stitch markers are easy enough to misplace, but not having worked any enormous lace shawls yet, I’ve never run out of the little implements. 

I usually take excellent care of my needles, having crunched a beautiful wooden one in a car door once, I have been extremely good ever since about what needles I use on the road and what needle cases I bring for their protection.  I made several needle rolls many years ago that keep all my favorite straight needles well organized, and I always have my Knit Picks binder of Options needles handy by the couch for emergency gauge changes.  So I never lack for needles either.

Needle roll

But there is one category of tool that I am frequently losing and always buying more of:  cable needles.  I love a nice smooth cable needle, either plastic with a bendy spot, or wood with a groove or divet to keep the stitches from slipping off.  But I am constantly dropping them in the car, losing them in the couch cushions, or just simply discovering that my cable needle is no longer attached to the project I had been using it on.  I suppose it’s because cable needles go on and off of the project so often, they are just easier to misplace.  While working in a cable project, where do you set your needle when not using it?  I often stash it back in it’s project bag, tuck it behind my ear, or jab it into a previous part of the knitted work.  In the car, the cable needle often gets stashed in the door handle well along with other yarny detritus.  But all of these locations have led to lost cable needles at some point.

And I know, no one really needs a cable needle.  I’ve heard that here are methods of cabling that use no needle at all (heresy!), and I have used stitch holders, pencils, and safety pins in desperation.  But I really like cable needles.  I just find them to be a satisfying way to knit a cable.  So I guess I will continue to buy and lose and buy cable needles, doing my part to advance the knitting economy (because who would just buy a cable needle and be done shopping?).

Has anyone invented a cable needle that can’t be lost?  What knitting tool do you lose or destroy the most?

Until next time, keep those needles clicking…  and hang onto your tools.