When Crafts Attack!

When one thinks of crafting, one generally associates it with hush-voiced grandmas sitting around a quilting table or knitting up something cozy while rocking in a chair. There might be a unicorn or a double rainbow in this visualization because, you know, crafts are sweet like that.

UNTIL CRAFTS ATTACK!

This week, I learned all about attack crafts when my recent project drew blood.

Yes...you heard me... it drew real red, stain-y blood. Bast*rd.

Here's the photographic evidence:

It's blurry but you can clearly see the damage. And, if you look carefully, I think you can even see the offending craft tool sitting on the table.

You thought that we were just a couple of namby-pamby crafters writing this blog. Now you see us for the death-defying warriors that we are.

How could this horrible tragedy happen, you ask?  Thank you for asking!...

Once upon a time, I wrote a blog post about about FiberTrends Felted Clogs - my favorite pattern to knit because it's so easy and satisfying. I was in the process of making a pair for a friend's birthday when I decided that I wanted to, somehow, personalize these slippers because, you know, homemade isn't personal enough.

One craft technique that I've been dying to try is called "needle felting." I've seen incredible work done with this technique and, while I hold no illusion that I'll ever be THAT good, I do like to try new things. So, off I went to the local hobby shop to buy some inexpensive roving (wool that's been dyed but not spun) and felting needles.

For the uninitiated,

• Felt is a non-woven cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing woollen fibres. While some types of felt are very soft, some are tough enough to form construction materials. Felt can be made into any shape or size. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_felting
• Needle felting is the interlocking and compacting of wool fibers by using pointed, barbed felting needles either by hand or machines.

Needle felting is often used to create 3-D crafts, like toys and decorative items. It can also be used to add decoration to other things - like, say, felted slippers.

So, I finished the slippers. (see how plain they are...)

Boring and in need of decoration

Then I set out my new tools.

New and dangerous equipment

For drawing my design on the slippers. This worked better in theory.

POINTY

I'd like you to take note of how POINTY these needles are. And, what you can't see without a magnifying glass, is that the pointy ends of these suckers are BARBED.

If you remember from my tutorial above, the way this works is that you POKE THE NEEDLE in and out of the roving, over and over again, until it binds the wool fibers together.

Are you getting a picture of the danger involved in this activity?

I decided to go with the simplest design I could think of since this was new to me and I was using dangerous equipment. Tiny red hearts on the heels of the clogs would add a bit of color and a sweet sentiment to my friend's gift.

Poke, poke, poke, STAB! Ouch! #$^%@#&^%!!

Poke, poke, poke, STAB! Ouch! #$^%@#&^%!!

In case you missed it before.

Eventually, I finished my first needle felting attempt and, frankly, I'm pretty proud of myself. I think the hearts are cute and they actually appear to be done correctly. Of course, my thumb may never recover...

All I can tell you is that my friend better appreciate the suffering that went into making these things.

- Alex, Craft Martyr

The Mistakes of My Past

Somewhere around 2001 Cassandra and I decided we wanted to learn to knit. I think she had some childhood experience. I had none.We found a local yarn shop that taught beginner classes and we signed up to make a felted tote bag.

Not my actual tote - but the same pattern

This is how little experience I had... I had no idea what the heck felting was. I soon learned that it was the modern equivalent of boiling wool - and I knew about boiled wool, having grown up in a wicked cold climate.

The instructor was very clear about why we were doing this particular pattern:

• Projects destined for felting have to be made very large (because they shrink - a lot) so you tend to use larger needles which are easier for new knitting hands to handle.
• Felting hides a million ills. You can make lots mistakes in your knitting and they'll just disappear once you've felted your piece.

I still have my tote bag and often use it as a knitting bag.

My second class was felted slippers, which I've talked about previously. I still wear my original pair all winter long.

FiberTrends awesome Felted Clogs

Starting with felted projects has pros and cons. The pros are obvious - your piece can be less than perfectly knit and it still looks great in the end. This allows you to confidently knit and not worry about a dropped stitch here or there. The con (for me, anyway) was that I became addicted to the freedom to make mistakes. I didn't want to do non-felted projects because I was afraid that my finished project would look bad.

I eventually got over the fear and I knit a bunch of non-felted, smaller projects. In time, my stitches became more even and I learned the little tricks to correct problems along the way. Although, I'll embarrassingly admit that I  only just learned how to pick up a dropped stitch and weave it back into my work - ten years into my knitting.

The best book I've found for general guidance on these issues is called The Knitter's Companion. Good illustrations and simple instructions will get you through most any "mistake" in your work. It also contains instructions for casting on, binding off, increasing, decreasing, various stitch types, and much more. There's even a little needle gauge included in the back. I can't tell you how many times I've referred to this book over the last ten years.

My most common mistakes include dropping stitches, mis-counting, forgetting to do an increase or a decrease (which throws off your stitch count), or losing my place in my pattern. Most of these are easily fixed by becoming a habitual "counter."

Counting stitches, and re-counting stitches, is the best way I've found to ensure that I'm in the right place in my pattern and not missing or adding stitches. I have become an obsessive counter - much to the annoyance of people around me when I'm knitting in public. But, it's worth the side-long glances to know that I haven't totally screwed up a row. In my knitting life, there has been enough "un-knitting" and ripping out of projects in order to correct a mistake that's 10 rows back. I hate re-doing work so I'd rather be the crazy woman in the corner, counting stitches, than the crazy woman tearing her hair out because she has to rip out a couple of days worth of work.

It's important to recognize when it's appropriate to simply adjust your pattern to correct an earlier mistake versus when it's worth ripping the work out and making the correction at the point of the mistake. I often find that no one but me will see the flaw so I eschew perfectionism and accept my piece as being "good enough." 

Recently, a friend's nine-year-old daughter started knitting. My friend doesn't knit so Miss P and I have bonded over our shared love of yarn. The reason I bring this up is because little Miss P is a FEARLESS knitter. In a short forty-eight hours, she was knitting up a storm and, if she happened to drop a stitch while she was working, she'd just pick it up and put it back on her needle. I was aghast and impressed. In my first forty-eight hours, I was obsessing over every stitch and if, god-forbid, I dropped a stitch my entire project came to a screeching halt. We should all strive to have the fearlessness of children, don't you think?

Sally forth and make mistakes. This is how we learn.

- Alex

Traveling Shoes

Whew! Vacation can really take it out of you! Travel, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, dealing with people you normally don't spend so much time with, and, in my case, too much exercise - I went downhill skiing. In Colorado. At 12,000 ft. Yikes!! Sore muscles and altitude sickness made for an interesting break from the day-to-day.

Me, in white, and my friend at 12,000 ft.

That being said, vacation is also a great time to knit. Long waits in the airport. Hours on a plane. Evenings in a hotel room (or, this time, a condo with a fireplace!) These are captive times when knitting can really keep one's sanity in check. It has a grounding and calming effect - Cassandra said she read an article that claims that knitting increases some calming element in the brain chemistry. Who knows. Regardless of any science behind it, I love to knit when I travel.

 I had a stroke of luck the week before my trip. A friend called and, in the course of conversation, I discovered that he was planning to buy a pair of slippers. So, I offered to knit (and felt) him a pair as a birthday gift. This particular pattern is the perfect travel project - it's small, relatively easy, requires only six skeins of yarn, and can be done very, very quickly. I've made these slippers about seven times. It was one of the first projects I ever did as a knitter and I'm still wearing the original pair that I made myself nine (or so) years ago. They make an awesome gift.

FiberTrends Felt Clogs

The pattern is by FiberTrends and it's just their basic felt clog. There are some variations in the pattern - you can make them with fancy cuffs or with suede bottoms (which FiberTrends sells, btw.) I just do the standard clog with the double sole and can knock one shoe out in about eight hours or less.

For this particular pair, I dug into my stash and found a lovely tan-colored Cascade 220. I needed a darker color for the sole and ended up finding a great evergreen color that coordinates perfectly. You want a dark sole so that they don't look dirty too quickly. You can (and should) wash and rewash these often, especially if they start to get too loose. Basically, you can "re-felt" them any time you need them to be a little tighter or cleaner. Never put them in the dryer though or they'll end up as Barbie slippers.

Cascade 220 - best felting yarn ever.

My favorite part about knitting something for felting is that you have to knit the item SO big. My friend has large feet so the final pre-felt shoe looks like a clown shoe. It's really hilarious.

So, while these won't be totally finished by my friend's actual birthday next week, they will be done very soon. I want to make another pair quickly and try to needle-felt a pattern on top of the shoes after the machine felting is done and the slippers are dry. Maybe I need to make myself another pair....

Cassandra's size 7 foot next to the unfelted clog