Kiss My Knits!

Yet another friend is having a baby. This friend was a bridesmaid in my wedding, so whatever I make for her, it HAS to be right. So far I started this, which, making the 12 month size, was way too big. (That’s from the Haiku pattern in Knitty, by the way, and is just too cute for words.) I’m not going to frog it, but will finish it as other projects allow. I’m already halfway around the body and it’s a perfectly good project.

Then I decided to make some felted booties, and thought that I’d do them from a nice high-end yarn. I picked Naturwolle, which is handspun by a woman in Black Forest in Germany. Nice stuff, which it ought to be for the price. We even have a brand new yarn store in town that carries it, and other super-ritzy mildly overpriced yarns, so I picked some up. Unfortunately, the store’s lighting isn’t that hot, and apparently my EYES aren’t that hot either, and I didn’t realize just how much of this wasn’t pink. Morever, I didn’t perceive the green at all until I had knit it up.

I knitted up these booties and then felted them down into these. That shiny thing is a quarter for scale. Now, these are pretty cute little moccasins, and I think every baby needs a pair of earthy little shoes to lounge around in, but whatever I make for my friend has to be pink. This was made known in no uncertain terms. Pink. These aren’t quite what they’re looking for, I feel sure.

So now I get to drop back and do something else. This time, I’m just lettin’ go of all the fanciness and making a nice hat and bootie set in “Victorian Pink” Lamb’s Pride Bulky. It’s about $6.50 a skein as opposed to $22 for the Naturwolle. I figure I can do little felted flowers on the front of the booties and it’ll be a nice touch.

The baby shower is Sunday. Wish me luck.

You may remember the pink felted bag I made, to which I had incorrectly affixed the handles. It was for a little girl named Brianna, and she had already seen the unfelted version, so I really did have to make another one correctly.

Well, it’s finished!

She said she wanted her name, so I put that on there, and she wanted some flowers. Flowers didn’t seem to look quite right with the name also on there, so needle-felted some spirally doo-dads instead.

This is the Fiber Trends “Flowers On-The-Go” tote. The pattern has been corrected since I made it the first time, but there’s still an error in the closure flap. Frankly, three errors in one pattern doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me to buy their other patterns, but I may give it a go. On the other hand, I feel like I’ve learned enough since I made the first one that I could probably wing it and make my own patterns. Here’s hoping Brianna enjoys it. Her younger sister has already put in a request for a blue bag, but this one with a pocket on it! Whee!

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.

I am now totally in love with the patterns from Black Sheep Bags. They were the source for the booga bag pattern, and that went so well that I decided to try one of their teeny tiny bags as a birthday gift for my niece. Here it is pre-felting with a deck of cards for scale. Here it is completed. Yes, I own Star Trek playing cards, I’m that much of a geek.

I think on the next go-round, I’m going to modify the pattern some and also add a button to help keep the flap closed. I’ve learned enough now to change the patterns to my own taste. This is fun!

Ze Booga Bag, she is mostly done!

The knitting was actually pretty easy, once I figured out how to “pick up and knit twisted” the stitches along the bottom. The most boring part was doing the i-cord for the handle. I didn’t realize until I got to that point that I had to knit 8 freakin’ feet of it. Skinny, but time-consuming. Good waiting room work, though.

Here’s the bag pre-felting. At this point, it’s all knitted, the ends are woven in, and it’s ready to go into the washing machine. The box on the chair is the box I had planned to put inside it to block it on. In this case, blocking means putting the bag snugly over the box and letting it dry to give it a nice flat base and sides.

Here’s the bag after one go-round in the washing machine with a pair of jeans and two towels. It’s getting a little smaller, a little fuzzier, and losing some stitch definition. I didn’t put it in a zippered pillowcase as recommended, because I wanted the stitch definition to really fade, and I figured the extra friction would help.

Here’s the bag after a second go-round, this time with a little bit of detergent which I thought might speed things up. I think it did, as you can see it’s much smaller now. However, it’s also really shiny because the detergent didn’t rinse out well. So I put it in a zippered pillowcase (I didn’t want it to fuzz up much more) and tossed it back in for another brief go-round.

Here’s the bag still damp from its brief third and final go-round in the washing machine, blocking on its box. It’s good to know that the Kureyon shrinks more lengthwise than it does in width. It’s probably down by a third of its size. After this picture was taken, I picked off the fuzzballs. The bag will stay over the box until it dries, which could take a couple of days.

This project has been very fun, and I’m ready to tackle more felted items! Just in time for warm weather, it’s a fun knitting thing I can do that holds up well to use in any season! Whee!

UPDATE!

The completed bag. Obese cat for scale.