13 posts tagged “knit”

OMG, just when it couldn't get any better. I just saw this tee on Threadless, in American Apparel Girly Tees($17) and even on a hoodie($40). :o)

Book: Show us the latest book you bought, borrowed or received.

I was a dork-o-rama yesterday. I had recently whipped up a pretty red wool wrap for Gidget for Valentine's Day and forgot to take a picture of it before dropping it in the mail to my mother. Ugh. Sorry 'bout that - I'll try to remember to get a pic of her in it sometime soon.  It was pretty - I even embroidered a small white heart on the edge. :o)

In the meantime, here's the current one in progress. It's a blend of Lana Grossa and Cascade yarns, using double crochet and some textured stitch. (Yes, the little darling is spoiled.)

The other monstrosity is the first of a pair of thigh-high legwarmers I'm working on for myself. I have these nice DC boots, and it would be just spiffy to have a pair of thigh-high legwarmers to go with short skirts on chilly days.

I've also decided to donate the following to the Los Angeles Chihuahua Rescue:

I've been in a dog sweater mood lately. I guess it's because I have the perfect dog sweater pattern in my head and that crocheting is easy to stop and start, which is perfect for all the work-work I have lately. All of my current knitting projects either have too-interesting pattern counts, or are slippery yarns on metal needles - you know, things that you can't do easily in a hurry or watching t.v.

Not like my mother's complaining. I've stopped selling for now, while I overhaul my knitting website and so my mother and her smidgety chihuahua, Gidget, are getting all these. I've even joked that she's in the "Sweater of the Week" club because I've been mailing her so many! When I get the site back up, I'll probably start selling them again. She's been getting a lot of complements on them and has specially requested a black and red one so that Gidget will match her car when they go out driving. :o)

The mint green one is an incredibly soft alpaca/wool/acrylic blend, with some gorgeous teardrop-shaped pearlescent beads around the collar. The blue one is pure wool, burly spun, warm and snuggly, with some tiny silver-lined beads. Both are stretchy enough to fit small dogs of all kinds of girth, and are cut low around the abdomen to safely allow for mess-free doggy business. :o)

Current projects: dog sweaters, suri alpaca afgan, a handful of scarves, a few toddler sweaters, an adult sweater, a few shawls, charity baby hats

I just found about about craft swaps the other day! I'm not sure on
all the details but it seems like two crafters hook up and send each
other stuff every so often. I thought I'll look online here for some
of my fellow fiber freaks in my neighborhood.. :o)

Random thoughts and ideas:

• For the sake of brevity, limit crafts to anything that can fit in a
  gallon size ziploc bag. (A good packing idea, too, what with the
  upcoming rains, etc.)
  
• Toss a 50-100g ball of yarn from your stash in, too. :oP Stash swap!
  
• Every three months? I'm swamped with Christmas projects already...
  
• Are allergies a concern? Should swappers list limitations like this?
  
• While they're at it, maybe preferences? ie. household, cats, dogs.

I have a full-time job that is not, unfortunately, a knitter-for-hire. I'm a web consultant, with a small handful clients that keep me busy year-round. I sneak in knitting time in the following ways:

• For 10-30 minutes when I wake up in the morning.
• For at least an hour before I go to sleep.
• When I get stuck on a particularly finicky bit of code.
• While watching t.v. shows and movies from NetFlix.
• While babysitting my nephew.
• When overly stressed or upset.
• On vacation.
• On weekends, when work allows.
• When I get new yarn and can't wait to try it out.
• When visiting friends and family.

Places I have yet to drag knitting projects to:

• The bathroom.
• Movie theaters.
• Restaurants.

I noticed dirty_girl's post that she wanted to learn to knit and thought I'd throw my two cents into an actual post. :o)

Warning: Knitting is an extremely addictive hobby. Be prepared to have non-knitters think you're marginally insane, to never be able to explore a new city or town before first looking up local yarns shops, and to go to sleep with a project tucked under your pillow, in case you wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep.

I can only recommend First Knits to those who have yet to take joy from a knit and suffer a row of purls. (Yes, I can admit now I prefer knits to purls.) It's a great book that walks you patiently through the knit stitch and then the purl stitch, while making generally decent things that you wouldn't be embarrassed to show in public.

After that (or if you already know how to knit & purl), I'd push for you to try the Yarn Girls' Guide to Simple Knits if you're interested in sweaters/tanks for you, sweaters for your boyfriend/hubby/father, simple hats, scarves and a couple of household throws. Their instructions are some of the best I've ever seen, their writing style light and fun without being ditzy. I have yet to catch an error personally in any of their patterns and they walk you step-by-step through the intimidating parts of things, like the neckline or armhole of a sweater. If big person clothing is a little too daunting, you could go for the Yarn Girls' Guide to Kid Knits. (If you don't know any kids, you can always donate the finished piece to a local charity.)

1. Use wood or bamboo needles. The cheap aluminum ones can be slippery and can make it easier to accidently drop stitches.
2. Barring allergies, pick a 100% worsted-weight wool yarn. Pick something you can't stop touching, because that feeling will get you through all the tangled knits and twisted purls. Plus, wool has a natural elasticity that will bear a lot of ripping out mistakes and starting over dozens of times without showing much wear. (Unlike acrylic and cotton, which show just about everything.)
3. Don't worry about making your stitches look perfect. That'll come over time with practice. Trust me.
4. 

   Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Volume One: Knit & Purl: The Ultimate Stitch Dictionary from the Editors
   Consider investing in Vogue's Stitchionary: Knit & Purl. It's amazing how many gorgeous scarves you can make with worsted weight yarn, #8 needles and two simple stitches.

Through this all, I can only gush mad praise about finding your local yarn shop ("LYS") and spending some time there. Most are filled with staff or customers more than willing to help you untangle stitches, make heads or tails of a pattern, or choose the right needles for the job. If you're in doubt, call ahead and see if they offer lessons, free or paid, and if you get a yarn discount for taking a class. :o) Knitting is the only hobby I've ever taken up where the insiders love to get a hold of new converts, so don't you dare be shy! Knit wildly!

You take not one, but two projects with you to go work out. Just in case.

For those of you in the Caps to the Capital campaign, hugs and cheers for helping out!! I've got six or seven boxed and ready to ship, with another two set for a second shipment. (This is great practice for my novice crocheting skills!)

I noticed after the third hat that printing a whole page for the 3x7 strip that makes the tag was a terrible waste of paper, so I made a 4-tag PDF. Hmm. Looks like posting a PDF file is near impossible on VOX, so here's a 4-tag JPG.

I've been infected from reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, and have recently begun to wonder where all my cheap ( 200yds wool < $5) yarn comes from. The other day, I received a yarn catalog in the mail and was shocked to see 121 yards of bulky "100% superfine baby alpaca" being sold for $6. WTF?! I've been buying Blue Sky at twice that price for half the yardage! Granted, there's a quality factor involved, but the margins for the catalog yarn must be incredibly low. And then I remembered the first lesson from reading The Wal-Mart Effect: if it's too cheap to be true, it probably is.

Conventional sheep, kept in close confinement en masse, are often 'dipped' in highly toxic pesticide solutions to kill ticks, lice, blowfly and scab. (Google: sheep dipping) I can't seem to find much on how much pesticide residue is left over in processed conventional yarns, but the chemicals used in the process can cause central nervous system damage. And sheep are dipped not once in their lifetime, but at least several times, on average.*

FWIW, I can't say that I'll never buy conventional yarns again. There's too much variety missing from the organic market right now. But I will promise to buy organic where possible and affordable, and save my yarn money to buy more organic, rather than splurging on cheap conventionals. I'm also contacting all of my favorite yarn manufacturers (ie. Brown Sheep, Blue Sky, etc.) to find out where they get their wool/fibers from, and asking for specific farms and locations. At the very least, maybe it'll bring to their attention that people care about this stuff.

• O-Wool, by the Vermont Organic Fiber Company. Free shipping @ theyarngrove.com
• Near Sea Naturals carries a large variety of organic fibers, such as nettle, cotton, alpaca, wool, recycled silk, and hemp.
• Marr Haven sells their own, fresh-from-the-farm 100% chemical-free wool yarn, with minimum processing to keep most of the natural lanolin intact. (Lanolin naturally softens wool fibers with washing, and is almost completely missing from conventionally processed yarns.)
• There's a new shop opening later this fall, Organic Imaginings, which plans to feature organic yarns, including certified organic and fair trade yarns. Drop them an email and show them some love!
• Browse Etsy for homemade yarns straight from the sheep. Some of my favorite sellers that spin yarn from their own sheep are ritaswoolybatts. (The sellers I steer clear of are anyone associated with the Makah tribe, which cruelly hunts grey whales for non-nutritive purposes.)

In an effort to compile a master list of organic yarns, I've started to scour the web and save promising links to del.icio.us. If you're interested in my findings, you can find them and similar bookmarks from others with the keywords "eco organic yarn".

* If you're interested in more information about the real cost of wool, I don't recommend PETA's savethesheep.com site. I say this because while their sheep campaign targets Australian farms, it demonizes all wool growers with blanket statements like "sheep raised for their wool all over the world are castrated and have their tails cut off...". What about the few small production farmers that DO practice humane and ethical treatment of sheep? Or those that keep sheep or alpacas as pets and create homespun yarns? Add to this that PETA actually recommends the use of synthetics like tencel (according to the Green Guide, "the EPA rated Courtauld [the manufacturer of rayon] the sixth-largest producer of inorganic pollution in the U.S.") and rayon (Co-op America states that "about a third of the pulp obtained from a tree will end up in finished rayon thread"; the rest is thrown away).