Another (Bad) Knitting Riddle.

What do you call someone who keeps telling you her shawl is nearly finished, but never shows you any of it? A Clapo-tease. (Ba-dum-bum.)

This is just a hint of things to come... All the stitches are stitched, all the dropped stitches are dropped, I just need to figure out how the heck I'm supposed to weave in the ends when there's never any more than 3 untwisted stitches in a row and my only technique for weaving in is the duplicate stitch.

Oh, the picture looks a little ripply because le Clap was sitting on my inflatable mattress, which had lost some air, hence the wavy background. Which is appropriate because "clapotis" apparently means something like "lapping" like waves lapping against the shore. Or some such; French is not my forte. I hope to join my friends at KG tomorrow night and maybe I can actually finish this darned thing! I mean, I love it and all, but I really need for it to be done for realio and trulio.

A Knitting Riddle

What do you get when you knit a swatch of the most popular pattern on the internet, using the world's nastiest acryllic yarn?

You get a Crapotis! (Thank you, I'll be here all week. Please tip your server.)

Without going into the question of why I have such an awful yarn in my stash, I will say that I wanted to be sure I would be able to knit the ever-popular Clapotis pattern without having to ruin my beautiful Malabrigo yarn by frogging or tinking around with an unfamiliar pattern. So I grabbed this icky yarn and gave it a try, using the directions for changing the size. This swatch worked out to be, oh, 6 by 9 inches or so, and gave me enough of an idea of how the pattern would work to feel confident that I would be able to knit it.

I had a bit of trouble with the increases at the very end of a row; only one of my knitting books even mentioned the pfb technique, not that it was so named in the book, and the diagram and text were particularly unhelpful. Maybe that'll be another post some day. So I went to my friends at KnittingHelp.com and found this page; scroll down to the KFB section and look for the part on using this technique in a purl row. I practiced it in the middle of a row and found that helpful to get the general idea down before I tried to apply it at the end of the row. (I don't know why this was such a mental block, but 2 balls of yarn into my real Clapotis I am well beyond it now.)

I can also see, now, as I was pinning out the swatch, just why you hold the yarn in front when you slip the first stitch of a row, and slip it purlwise. If you slip knitwise with the yarn held in back, you'll get a much looser edge. I am still not sure why this would be so, but it is, and now I know. (And knowing is half the battle.) Now if only I could figure out why knitting books go directly from "here is how you knit a stitch" to "here is a pattern for your first sweater" without ever mentioning the stuff like this, I'd be a happy camper.

Real Clapotis pictures will follow, at some point.

Just for SB, just because you asked.

With apologies to our friends at Roosevelt University, who were the unwitting inspiration for my fake ad.

This is it, friends, the beautiful Malabrigo yarn, color #137 Emerald Blue, for my beautiful Clapotis. It's officially 2 weeks old today, and I just finished off my first ball of yarn last night. Some internet genius discovered that you could just purl the stitches that you'll eventually drop, thus eliminating the need to fiddle around with stitch markers every 6 stitches. This has made it a really fast knit, considering that I've only picked up the yarn & kneedles maybe 6 times. Progress photos will follow, once I've had a chance to, you know, take a couple of them.

Sewing Pattern! Gift Bags

A.K.A. Craftistic overexplains something that's actually really easy to do.

This one is for my friend S (go visit her blog and look at the ridiculously cute dog sweater she just knit!) in anticipation of her upcoming sewing classes. Posted as a public service announcement for anyone else who's interested in more eco-friendly packaging for presents.

Also, I am having difficulty with Blogger tonight and cannot get a decent picture/word wrap working. You will have to live with it, I'm afraid.

I have made a bunch of these little fabric gift bags that I use for all the family gifts at Christmas. It makes wrapping really odd-shaped things so much easier, and it gives you a nice warm feeling when you know that you are not wasting a bunch of paper that will end up in a landfill somewhere. I've reused the same bags for three years or so, and they're still cute underneath that Christmas tree. Also, they are really easy to make. It took me longer to write clear directions than it did to actually sew my sample bag.

Of course you can make these in any size you like. My illustration is for a bag big enough to hold one season of a TV show on DVD, with just a bit of room to spare. (Yes, it's Buffy, but I don't want to get in trouble with copyright people so I won't show the actual artwork.)

You will need: Some fabric in color/pattern of your choice. I can get 6 or sometimes more bags from half a yard of fabric; your mileage may vary based on how big you want your bags to be. If you're buying Christmas fabric, wait until the week after Christmas and you'll most likely be able to get it on sale.
Some ribbon in color of your choice; something that works with your fabric. I prefer to use a 1/8" thin satin ribbon, because I have a bunch of it on hand from other projects. I've also used a 1/4" metallic ribbon that's more grosgrain-y and that works too; it's just a little less flexible.
Scissors.
Thread. Something that either won't really show against your fabric, or something that's complementary/contrasting if that's how you want to go. Only the seam on the drawstring part will show at the top, just barely, when you're done.
Sewing machine with sharp needle.
Blunt yarn or tapestry needle.
Optional: Presents that you intend to wrap. Or just make a bunch of different sizes.

Need I mention: All of my "measurements" are really rough because size really isn't all that critical. It's just a fabric bag, and if it doesn't fit your present, then use it for a smaller present and sew a larger bag already. My knitter friends know how I feel about this one: gauge is not critical!

Step one: Roughly measure your fabric, if you want to. If there's something particular that you want to wrap, you can lay it out on the fabric like I did here. (I'm using 2 DVD sets to make my width and margins obvious.) Note that I left a good-sized margin up at the top - you want to have enough space above your present that you'll be able to close the drawstring part all the way when you're finished. If the bag is only just barely bigger than the present, you probably won't be able to get the bag completely closed, and that makes it really easy to see what's inside.*


Step two: With the wrong side of the fabric facing you, make a small fold across the top and iron it down. Mine was about a quarter of an inch - you're shooting for something wide enough to sew a seam down the middle of it without worrying that you'll run off either edge.

Step three: Fold down across the top again, this time giving yourself a fold two or three times the width of the ribbon. This is the little pocket that you'll thread the ribbon through for the drawstring. Iron it, so it stays put, and then sew.** Here's where you're sewing along that first fold you made, see?


Step four: Fold the bag in half lengthwise. (You'll sew this inside out to keep the hem on the inside, so fold it with the right side of the fabric facing in.) On the opposite side from the fold, sew a seam from the bottom of the drawstring pocket to 3/8" away from the bottom; turn*** and sew across the bottom. Finish off and trim any thread ends that are dangling.

Step five: Cut a piece of ribbon to use for the drawstring. Be sure it's long enough so that when you have the bag completely open, the ends are long enough to grab and tie easily. Use the tapestry needle to thread the ribbon through the drawstring pocket.


Step six: Turn right side out and admire! My final picture has one DVD set "wrapped" inside with another on top just to give you the scale of how the finished piece turned out.



* Granted, if you're worried about people peeking into their presents then this may not be the way to package them. It's really easy to untie the bag, look inside, and retie it, and there won't be any telltale signs like there would be if you used wrapping paper. Unless you can come up with some fabulously difficult knot that your recipient can only untie while you're standing right there giving them directions, but that seems kind of complicated.

** If you're really obsessive about things, when you start and finish each seam you run the machine back and forth a few stitches. This is one of those finishing techniques that Mom taught me that I faithfully follow, although in this case it's probably not strictly necessary.

*** I'm sure your basic sewing class will teach you this, but just in case: remember that when you turn your fabric, you need to make sure that the sewing machine needle is all the way down through the fabric so that you don't pull your fabric/thread in a strange way.

Happy earth-friendly gift-giving occasion!

Finished Object!

Hey, here's another finished project that I first posted in-progress pictures of back in November. You know, of 2006, since that seems to be the theme around here these days.

This is a souvenir pattern, from a trip to Washington, DC in 2004? I think? Maybe 2005? It's getting hazy. Anyway, I went to a knitting shop in Georgetown and picked up a pattern book from Colinette, and of course decided I had to use completely different yarn. Sorry, Colinette, but my heart belongs to Malabrigo.

The yarn was left over from the earflap hat (which was knit at a vastly different gauge... I think the earflap hat was on size 11 kneedles and this was on size 5s, but details, details). There is a tiny bit of accent yarn in there on the brim, and that might be Cashmerino, but might be something else. That ball band is long gone, so the world may never know. There's still quite a bit of it left, which as you will see is good news.

Because the one problem with hats that you knit from the bottom up, when the interesting part of the hat is on the bottom, is that you pretty much get only one chance at getting the size right. And I trusted my gauge swatch just a tiny bit too much, and got impatient, and it turns out that the hat doesn't quite fit the way I'd like it to. It's a bit too short, and a bit too small, and a bit disappointing.

But very pretty! So I'm chalking this up to experience, and thinking of this hat as a practice one, and it is one that I can wear in spring and fall, just not when my ears need extra to stay warm.

Also, since I have used up most of the remaining Malabrigo to do sweater swatching, I can tell myself that I'll just buy another ball of Malabrigo to reknit this hat (on larger kneedles) and use up the Conceivably Cashmerino. I have also figured out how to make a matching scarf, but that will be far in the future!

And finally, just for kicks, here's what my mom and I got up to on the day after Thanksgiving.

My family has a long and storied history of exchanging various gifts with my godparents' family, all variations on the themes of turkey, moose, or wolf.

This time around, Mom and I both opted for edible turkeys (although I cheated and bought mine from Moonstruck). She found the recipe in a magazine somewhere. It's a cheese ball, decorated with pecans and frosted crackers, and a bit of red pepper. For us, this is the kind of thing you do once, for a special treat, and then never again. Life is too short to mess around with ridiculous decorating, especially on things you're going to eat immediately afterwards.

Next up: Stitchy-Swatchy, or a look at what might happen if Mrs. Wishy-Washy ever decided to knit a sweater. "Just look at you!" she screamed. "You're not the right gauge! Into the (garbage) tub you go!" (Or possibly not...)

Erm, Merry Christmas. Of 2006.

This is it, this is the Christmas present I promised a friend. Last year. She knew that I wouldn't be starting it until after the new year, but I don't think she expected it to take quite this long! Of course, by the time it was April and I wasn't even half done, I didn't feel much sense of urgency to keep working on it over the next few months, because, you know, who needs a scarf in the summer?

I had trouble working with the yarn, because the plies don't really like one another all that much. I've forgotten exactly what kind of yarn it is; I know it's a cotton/rayon blend, and I picked it because it was the closest thing to the color she wanted that I could find. It was hard to tell on the skein that the rayon plies never wanted to stay with their cotton plies like good little pieces of yarn. Which meant that I had to closely watch every single stitch I made, and I couldn't get away with knitting by feel.

It's also a bit tricky to knit this pattern on the train. Not because the pattern is all that tricky in itself; it's as easy as being able to knit, purl, and count to three. (By the way, the pattern is Wavy from Knitty.com.) I really admire the cleverness of the design, which is nothing more complicated than an offset rib stitch. What makes it a bit difficult in execution is the fact that you have to keep track of every single row.

The notes about the designer indicated that she resented having to use a row counter for it, which (of course) I took as a challenge to see if I could come up with a way to knit it without a row counter. (I don't own a row counter, so that probably made a difference.) I ended up typing the directions into a spreadsheet; the first column has a row for each row of the pattern, and then there's a column for each repeat of the pattern. Knit the first row, put a check mark in the row one, repeat one box. Knit the second row, put a check mark in that box. And so on. Easy peasy, although apparently not everyone automatically thinks like this, because my knitting group expressed some amazement at the concept. Well, I'm always happy to help a fellow knitter!

I put the before and after pictures up here to show how much of a difference blocking can make; for this pattern, at least, I find it sort of amazing. I may still be more used to the world of crochet, where you can maybe square up your work a bit if you wash it and dry it flat, but here it does wonders for the finished product. I'm actually rather proud to have my "From the knitting needles of..." label sewn on this one!

And when I finally gave it to my friend the other night, she loved it. The color, the pattern, the length, the weight, pretty much everything about it is apparently just what she wanted. You generally know as you're hand-making a gift that the recipient will like it, but it's still so gratifying to hear how much they love it.

So Merry Christmas, C, and stay warm this winter!

Not a Baby Gift!

Can you believe it's not a baby gift? Neither can I. I came over all craftistic last night, and after sewing 4 snaps onto a new blouse, I pulled out a project that's been languishing since Christmas. With any luck, it'll be ready by the time I need it this winter. Since I am Little Miss Always Cold, I find a large collection of scarves in many colors is a very handy thing to have in the cooler months. I had a black scarf made of this same yarn in the same pattern that I wore almost all the time in the office, and I decided that I wanted one in a creamy color as well for those when I'm wearing my cream-colored office sweater (as opposed to my black office sweater; you'd better belive I have more than one office sweater). As you can see by the trailing end, it's a work in progress. This is worked lengthwise, and right now I'm about one-third of the way through the width.

As it turned out, some time after I had measured the beginnings of this scarf against the length of the original black scarf, I lost the black scarf. (Boo!) So this will be my new default scarf for this winter, or at least until I make a new black scarf just like the one I lost. Which will be just like this one (except black).

Oh, and for the record, it's ridiculously simple to make, and the closest crochet equivalent to knitted 1x1 ribbing. Chain until you have something just a bit longer than you want the end result to be. Single crochet in the back loop of every stitch until it's the width you want. Finish off and sew in ends. As I said, ridiculously simple. Although the yarn makes it a bit more challenging; the one thing I don't like about Microspun is that it's a 6-ply, and the plies split way too easily for my taste. It's a bit tricky to work with, as you have to closely watch every stitch you do; much better suited for listening to music or podcasts than to trying to watch TV. Still, it's so beautifully soft that the end result is worth the effort.