Kiss My Knits!

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!

Q: Aren’t you being a bit hasty in rejecting my item?

A: Maybe! So let me go ahead and get a well-reasoned, insightful, rational second opinion from some other GMs.
GM opinions.

1: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says:
“…is concerned. Slam its tail in the door of the milk truck, and…” Me Talk Pretty One Day by Davis Sedaris, waiting to become a bookcrossing book.

2: Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?: a half of a bagel.

3: What is the last thing you watched on TV?: “Heart of Gold” from the Firefly DVD collection.

4: WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is: 12:15

5: Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?: 12:11

6: With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?: cars from the busy road we live on.

7: When did you last step outside? what were you doing?: Two minutes ago, to pick up the mail. We got a package for my daughter from her grandmother. It contains the stuffed animals my daughter accidentally left at Nana’s on her last visit.

8: Before you came to this website, what did you look at? http://www.tomatonation.com

9: What are you wearing?: Loose black pants, a loose knit (not by me) burgundy top, ankle socks and tan canvas sneakers.

10: Did you dream last night? Yes.

11: When did you last laugh? hard? A half hour ago. I was sending a care package to Jadzia, and when the post office guy stamped the box, it totally caved in. We riffed on the yarn engulfing the post office when the box went through the machine. But being nice and having a good attitude got the guy to take it in back and re-pack it for me. Yay!

12: What is on the walls of the room you are in?: a large world map, an Appalachian Trail calendar, a white board with the names of all my wedding couples and their various states checked off, a poster of a Camille Pissarro print, a picture of myself and my husband, and my two Addy awards. Go me!

13: Seen anything weird lately?: My daughter stacked a small plastic goat on top of a small plastic polar bear. The polar bear represents a troll to her, for the Three Billy Goats Gruff. In this house, it doesn’t qualify as weird, but I suppose it does in the real world.

14: What do you think of this quiz?: It’s interesting, and a bit stream of consciousness-y.

15: What is the last film you saw?: Hidalgo. That Viggo sure is easy on the eyes.

16: If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?: I’d pay off our debts, mortgage, car, put some money away for my daughter’s college, give some money to relatives who need it, etc. I’m afraid I’m a very practical person about money these days. What do they say? “Time ain’t money if all you got is time.”

17: Tell me something about you that I don’t know: I thought my husband was a total idiot the first time I met him.

18: If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?: Free education for everyone.

19: Do you like to dance?: Yes. I look like I’m having a seizure, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it less.

20: Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?: Emily. Although we almost went with Molly.

21: Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?: Alexander? Ross? Daniel? Cuthbert? I have no clue.

22: Would you ever consider living abroad?: Sure, if they had proper resources for my child – and if I were a multi-millionaire as above so that I could jet back whenever I wanted to. But truth to tell, I like the place I live.

23: Will you pass on this survey?: Sure!

[Tvini] You know what I love about DR? I’m working, yet I have my hair up in a little girl’s hair tie in a topknot and I’m wearing a mud mask.
[Liadran] If only our “real” jobs allowed that
[Tvini] They frowned on that when I worked at the TV station.
[GM X] I didn’t get dressed until about 5 minutes ago, and I’ve been working since 830
[GM X] Gotta love it.
[Liadran] Still in my jammies!
[Tvini] I think I should LJ all of this. I love the idea of the entire staff of DR lounging around in their sleepwear.

You know what works for me for small finished projects to learn new things? Washcloths and dishcloths! You can pick up some sugar ‘n’ cream cotton or some other kind of all-cotton yarn at Michael’s or other craft shops for fairly cheap. Then you can knit about a six-inch practice swatch and actually have a finished project when you’re done. And you get to use it every day and think about how cool you are for making this yourself. 🙂 Here’s a site with some good washcloth patterns.

The “Grandma’s Favorite” one on page two was the first washcloth I did (totally lopsided, but I didn’t care), I think, and last month a friend came over and saw it and said, “You made this? My grandma used to make these all the time! Brings back memories!” Needless, to say, it made me feel really good.

On a somewhat related side note, I was going through my stash and noticed I had some duplicate things. I was going to sell them on eBay, but frankly, I won’t get more than a couple of bucks for them. If anybody wants them, holler.

I haven’t gone through it all the way, but so far I see an extra package of stitch markers (you put them on your needle to mark the beginning of a row or repeating pattern, especially on circular needles, but frankly a loop of contrasting scrap yarn works just as well), 16″ long size 8 bamboo circular knitting needles (great for hats) and some size 17 wood knitting needles – perfect for chunky scarves. Also, two skeins ofSirdar Wash ‘n’ Wear cotton dk yarn and no, that’s not my auction. Besides, my yarn’s aqua. This is the dishcloth yarn I was talking about above. It’d probably make great booties, too. I don’t think they even make this stuff anymore, that’s how long it’s been in my stash.

Anyway, I’m off to work on a) a wedding for DR and b) a mystery project gift for a friend. I wish it weren’t in that order, but the wedding’s today, so I want to be sure everything’s perfect before I do anything else. I’ll post pictures of the mystery project after he or she has safely received it!

My back’s been bothering me (old college injury), and combined with allergies that’s been making it hard to sleep. So today I apparently dozed off in the waiting room of my daughter’s speech therapist. And curled up in a little ball on the loveseat. And snored. And they had to really shake me to get me to wake up.

Soooooo embarassing.

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!

Okay, so I go by one of my local yarn stores to get a $1 stitch holder (aka glorified safety pin). While I’m there, I’m carrying my booga bag, and everybody oohs and aahs gratifyingly over it. Then the yarn saleslady motions to me and says, “We’ve got some new stuff in the back room, haven’t even put it out yet!” She takes me back there and lets me caress the yarn. Hmm… I come in for a one dollar thingie, and they want me to caress the $19 skeins of Big Kureyon. I’m pretty sure they’re trying to feed my habit. Suppliers are the same everywhere! I’m doomed!

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.