Buzzkill

I have made many things for the people I love. Mittens, blankets, sweaters, animals, etc. I am fortunate to have a family that not only embraces my handmade items...they ask for more. So it's really a shocker when something gets...well...I'm just going to come out and say it...rejected.

Owlie when he was just finished. He's little bear's favorite

Flashback to last January. Below zero temperatures, wood floors, little feet. The situation was just screaming for cute toddler slippers. And, as luck would have it, I had been eyeballing this adorable pattern by Bekah Knits for quite some time. I ran out to a local yarn shop and purchased what I needed to cast-on. (I ended up choosing Spud & Chloe for this project. It is such a workhorse yarn and washes up like a dream.)

Since the slippers would be toddler-sized, I figured that I could get 2 pair of slippers done in a weekend. Yeah, right.

One of the truly great things about the finished slippers is that, when knitted with the Spud & Chloe yarn on the smaller needles required for this pattern, the resulting fabric is seriously thick and dense. These slippers are built to last. Unfortunately, the process of knitting that firmer fabric made my hands get really sore (not usually a problem for me) so I could only knit on them for a little while before I needed to take a break. Needless to say, this made it impossible to finish quickly and it ended up taking me a month to get them done.

But, I am a loyal soldier in the handmade army. Deep in the trenches of the never-ending toddler slippers and I was going to come out victorious...by hook or by crook. So I pressed on and finished them. The blocking was also a slow because they took days and days to dry due to their thickness. (Pro tip: I stuffed them with cotton socks to shape them during the blocking.) Eventually they were finished. And they turned out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself!

Slipper-y cuteness.

Of course, I popped them on my three year old to get some photos for my Ravelry page right away. As soon as they were on his feet, he gets riled up and starts running...wood floor....slippery knit bottoms...you get the picture. Luckily, I had seen a solution for this problem addressed by another knitter on Ravelry. She had put stripes of fabric puff-paint as treads to give the bottoms some traction. I did it too. Awesomeness. Here is my finished project ravelry link.

Detail of the puff-paint traction.

So, at this point, I was feeling pretty good - the long knitting process was done and the technical kinks worked out. There would be no more cold, little feet in our house! Or so I thought...

Yeah, neither of the kids will keep them on their feet for more than 5 minutes. I kept them in the living room, trying to coax someone into them here and there for about a month. Eventually, I gave up and put the rejected slippers in the kids' closets. All that trouble for naught. The only saving grace is that it's not as painful to have your work rejected by a toddler. Maybe next fall they will have a change of heart. :)

–Cassandra

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

Irons in the Fire

This weekend was two solid days of ADD. I couldn't seem to find a project that would hold my attention and that's just not (normally) me. Maybe it's because I'm excited about all the projects in my head... or maybe I'm overwhelmed with the stuff that really needs to get done. All I know is, I have five things in motion and none of them are near complete. To top it off, bouncing from project to project created an interesting comedy of errors.

Lets start with the Toddler Moc-A-Socs by Bekah Knits that I am making for the two littles:

This slipper pattern was calling to me from my Ravelry queue. It was the siren song of the "perfect little project" that would break the monotony of the large one I am working on. Friday, on my lunch hour, I ran to the nearest yarn shop and picked up some gorgeous Spud & Chloe yarn so that I could get started right away. I was motivated and ready to bang this small project out quickly. Ah...the best laid plans...

After dinner I got out my fabulous swift and ball winder and started winding the yarn. Yeah... halfway through the hank of yarn, the ball on the winder flies off and everything is a tangled mess. I thought, "hmmm, must be a fluke" so I just wound the rest of it by hand and set up hank #2. Again, flying yarn ball. And guess what happened on hank #3? You know I had flying balls of yarn everywhere. I'd like to point out that I have successfully used this contraption many times, so I'm sure it's user-error. Frankly, it better be user error or my love-affair with my swift and winder will be over.

Sadly half-hand-wound ball of yarn.

But, I wasn't daunted! I was going to cast-on as soon as everyone was tucked in bed. I went to get all of the supplies I needed and realized that I did not own a pair of #2 straight needles. Wa-wa-waaaaa. Another delay.

I finally got correct-sized needles on Sunday morning, thanks to my fabulous errand-running husband, and cast on Sunday night while watching TV. I knit two rows and decided that I was too brain-dead to start a new project successfully. So here is where it sits:

Yes, this will be slippers.

I have to admit, my enthusiasm for this project is waning a bit after all this. It's hard to stay upbeat when it seems like you're being thwarted at every turn. But, I will not be swayed. My kids feet are cold so I'm going get these done - eventually. (Hopefully before spring.) On a positive note, when I was feeling too beat to start the slippers, I was able to add a few inches on to my Vineyard Wrap during TV time. So, you know... I got that going for me.

Vineyard Wrap at 17 inches.

In addition to these two knitting projects, I worked on three sewing projects this weekend as well. Because this post is getting a bit long, I'll share those with you later this week. However, let me leave you with this... even an experienced seamstress of nearly 20 years (that'd be me) can still manage to cut out pattern pieces upside down. And the comedy of errors continues...

–Cassandra