Kiss My Knits!

Okay, everybody who’s saying “make me something!” It’s time to put your money where your mouth is.

I need volunteers to test something. I’m making – and this is not a joke – felted soap. No, I am not insane.

What’s felted soap? Well, it’s a little bar of soap covered in wool roving which is then felted around the bar, thereby encasing the soap in a little scrubber. I’ve made some for me and some for my mom and I just love it. The covering makes the soap suds up really well, and it foams through the casing like shower gel on one of those plastic scrubber things. But it’s got enough nap to it that it’s also exfoliates some. Nifty!

Right now I’m experimenting with different kinds of soap, different designs, and different thicknesses of covering. Here’s an example of what it looks like before (covered but not yet felted) and after (felted and drying.)

What I need is a few volunteers to let me mail this stuff to them and have them try it out. Now, you know I’m a GM, so I’m used to taking blunt criticism from my peers. So you’d need to let me know what you like and don’t like about it. Too rough? Design coming off? Soap coming out? Feels great? Suckiest soap ever? You get the idea. If I can get the kinks worked out, it’ll be one more thing to put on the table at Simucon.

If you’re interested, let me know. Also let me know if you’d prefer rose, jasmine, sandalwood, or Emerald Mist. I might do some regular old Ivory, just to see, so you can specify that too. 🙂 I’ll mail you a sample. Try not to let it sit in water – we don’t want it melting too fast, or God forbid, mildewing!

Thanks!

You may remember the ill-fated rainbow fish hat which looked like a particularly colorful yarmulke.

I decided to give it another go, but with a different pattern. So here’s the result. I’d like to try this hat again, but on 11s instead of 13s to make it a bit snugger. Plus the end that got woven in on the rim (you can see it over my right ear) looks sloppy. I wove it in on the inside, but of course it’s stockinette stitch so it rolls up… which means it’s really on the outside. Oops!

Down side: The stash didn’t actually get reduced, because I have plenty of both yarns left over, just in slightly smaller quantities. I need to use stuff up!

Okay, that’s it. I’m on a yarn diet. I cannot buy any more yarn until May. Yeah, that’s only eleven days, but still!

I’m spending way too much money on yarn and have projects stacked up. The only yarn I could really use that I don’t have is Lamb’s Pride bulky in Onyx, but really, that can wait.

Yeah, it can wait.

Is it May yet?

How about now?

Gad, I’m pathetic.

Filched from Khaman!

LiveJournal Trading Cards Free Account Edition Tvini User Number: 1997988 Date Created:2004-01-25 Number of Posts: 75 Tvini traces her DR goddesshood back to 1997, and her real-life goddesshood back to birth. She is a bleeding-heart liberal and one of a long line of writers on her mother’s side of the family. Strengths: Flexible, kind, patient, possesses a great sense of humor and keen wit, years of GM experience give her great improvisational skills. Weaknesses: Tends to procrastinate, spends too much money, stays up too late then complains about lack of sleep, kills player characters at random. Special Skills: Spanish (rusty), Feminism (not rusty), Classical Piano, Cabana Boy creation. Weapons: Silver tongue of flaying, red sharpie of QC +1, Dual cats (projectile), dozens of knitting needles. Stupid Goddess Trick: Tvini once tried to lift a car out of a stairwell. It didn’t work. Some goddess.

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http://www.googlism.com/

G’wan. Stick in your name. See what google thinks of you.

According to googlism:

tvini is extremely hard
tvini is next

Ooookay then!

I didn’t pick anything ending earlier than tomorrow.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=36599&item=8100043299&rd=1

Froth from Cherry Tree Hill normally retails for 36 bucks a skein. At 500 yards on a skein, this would make about five scarves or some really cool shawls. Two skeins would make a medium to large sweater. Right now the bidding’s at about a buck and a half, and this person has two skeins (two separate auctions). I found a cool sweater pattern and almost bid on both skeins, and then decided that this sweater, knit in tan loopy yarn, would make me look like I had skinned and sewn up a terrier. You may have better luck.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3105&item=8100743531&rd=1

400 yards of scarf or afghan yarn for 5 bucks? You can’t beat that with a stick.

I wonder how these two would go together:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3105&item=8100351184&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=36596&item=8100350335&rd=1

This one’s an okay deal – I just am about twelve years old and love the way they called it “doo doo.”
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3105&item=8101014912&rd=1

Well, I had a long car trip this weekend, so I managed to finish up the “Flowers On The Go” tote and show the unfelted version(note dinosaur for scale) to the young lady who’ll receive it as a birthday gift.

This was a challenging pattern. Not necessarily challenging because it had me doing new things, but because I felt it was unclear in spots. It had two outright inaccuracies, one involving the number of stitches picked up for the bottom band, and the other involving the three-needle bind-off which attaches the handle to the top triangles. I wrote to the author of the pattern this morning, and she confirmed that yes, they fixed that about a week after it was released, but I guess I got one of the old copies. The author, Bev Galaskas, was very nice, though, and eager to fix anything else that seemed odd.

Nonetheless, it came out of the washing machine and looked really great! My husband thought it looked like a miniature sweater. It took 2 1/4 skeins of Lopi and a lot of time and effort, but it was all worth it. I just needed to block it and let it dry, then needle-felt the young lady’s name on it, and…

and…

CRAP!

I attached the handles sideways. In other words, instead of running parallel to the long side of the bottom of the bag, they were perpendicular. ARRRGGGGHHH!!!

Why does this matter? Think about holding a paper grocery bag closed. You don’t bring the short sides together, as that would be awkward and bulky, and would gape. If you carried it at the end of your arm by your side, it would bump your leg. So you bring the long sides together. The mistake I made brings the wrong sides together. And of course I placed the flap for the button based on where the handles are, so that’s wrong too.

That’s not really something you can fix easily. Frankly, I think I’m better off just re-doing the whole damn thing tonight. I guess I’ve learned a lesson about double-checking EVERYTHING, because it didn’t occur to me that I should watch the order in which I was doing the triangles and i-cord, but now that I look back, obviously it was going to make a difference. Grr. Well, live and learn. My ‘bright side’ disposition leads me to say that at least I can use this bag as a canvas to practice needle-felting on.

Yes, I am easily amused.

http://www.lordofthepeeps.com/

Edited to add: http://www.geocities.com/sotto-voce/news1012.html

Man, I gotta start getting more sleep.

Why are the beautiful ones so difficult to deal with? It’s like they know they’re pretty, so we’ll put up with the snarling and twisting and… wait, are we still talking about yarn?

So I decided it was about time for me to make something for myself, and I had a hank of Mango Moon sari silk in my stash. This was one of those that I picked up and put down about five times at the yarn store, because man, was it beautiful, but it was also expensive! But then, it’s hand-spun by village women in Nepal from recycled sari silk. I reckon it would be expensive. Finally I applied my rule, “if you pick it up more than three times, you’ll think about it at home until it drives you insane, so go ahead and get it.”

It comes on a big hank. I do have a ball winder at home, but I don’t have a swift. No problem, there’s always the time-honored traditional way of winding yarn into a ball from a hank, the one you’ve seen in so many cartoons. The one where you make someone sit there with a big loop of yarn on his hands while you wind it off of them. It worked fine for the Classic Elite Waterspun(the link is a slightly different version of the yarn) that I was going to pair with it, so it ought to work fine with the sari silk, right? Right?

Wrong.

The yarn had a wonderful smell of hay and animals (no, really, it was great!) when I first opened up the hank. I could really picture some woman in Nepal at her wheel, bringing together different pieces of silk. Sadly, I did not have the same ease in pulling it back apart. After three hours of making my poor husband sit with yarn around his hands, I had managed to de-tangle about half the hank onto a ball. Here’s the rest. We’ll try again on a night when he doesn’t have a paper due.

However, I did go ahead and knit a hat out of the half that did wind up. And here it is! I love it. Finally something for myself, right? Right?

Wrong again.

Literally, ONE SECOND after I’d finished putting the tassel on, my daughter saw it and said, “It’s not finished!” I said, “no, it’s finished.” She grabbed it and said, “This is a hat for Emily!” and she won’t take it off. Ah, well. Maybe someday I’ll get to keep something. 🙂

(2008 note – she did give this up pretty quckly. The hat eventually made its way to Simucon and went home with the lovely and talented GM Alnilam.)

Behold! “The Tessima!”

Loosely based on the Sophie, but with obvious differences to account for Tessima’s need for a bigger bag (this is about 8X10) with mondo flair. Plus she sent me the really cool red Fizz and I just HAD to use it in a bag.

The other wool yarns are Ruby Red and Onyx in Lamb’s Pride worsted, which is a blend of 85% wool and 15% mohair to give it a nice sheen and little bit of fuzziness. The Lamb’s Pride felts like a dream, by the way. This only had to go through the machine once, with another little 5 minute spin for good measure.

Before starting the bag, I knit up a sample swatch with various yarns and then felted the swatch to determine how much it would shrink, and how well the various yarns would keep their pizzazz. As is often the case, the novelty yarns caused the swatch to flare slightly, so I worked some extra decreases into the bag to account for this. It still didn’t get very small near the top (I wasn’t sure whether it would or not until I pulled it out of the machine) so I’ve sewn in a narrow strip of male velcro, so that it doesn’t gape, and a wide strip of female velcro onto the opposite interior side so that the male velcro won’t grab the wool too much. We know how grabby the male of any variety can be.

I’m not giving away secrets by posting it, since she’s already seen a pic of it. So all that remains is to pop it in the mail after the holidays.

This bag was, frankly, a lot of work, since I had to keep switching colors and was also carrying along a double strand of the Fizz with the red. I think just weaving in all the ends was the worst part. At one point I renamed it “The PITA.” Still, I got a lot of ideas for Simucon bags. Tessima will have to tell me if the Velcro works, so I know whether to ever do that again.

I’m already on to the next project! Whee!