Dorset Buttons

Learned how to make basic Dorset buttons tonight from Ginny.

I had thought to use large/bulky yarn:

But no. Smaller, non-textured yarn is the way to go.

I didn't get my wheel centered well (sigh).

There are two books that have some really cool patterns. The one on the left is only available through Amazon.uk, dear!

Will definitely be trying more of these!

Emergency Hat!

Started yesterday, finished today. 2 balls Camelot (Classic Elite Yarns) in the St. Stephen colorway. Size 9 needles; this meant only 15 pattern repeats total, instead of 20. 4-stitch icord for the cord.

Top: as hat!

Bottom: as cowl!!

Things started...

Another entrelac hat. The stockinette beanie was not working, so I unraveled it.

A Red Skies at Night scarf from my ball of Island Yarn Rivulet in Huntsman:

Things finished:

Yeah.

Catching up!

Okay, here are a few of the things that happened in July: 

Crocheted starfish for our Coral Reef Beach window display

A Danger Crafts tweeter

A tiny Cowichan-style sweater from a class with Beth Brown Reisel 

Another Virus Shawl (more on that later in the week)

Tex-Mex food & Pokémon GO

And the discovery of Star Wars jewelry at Kay's. (No, I don't have any. Yet.)

I started more projects, too, of course.

More on that later, as well.

Felt-Splicing Skeino

So since vacation last week, I've somehow lost a day. Or six. Anyway, yesterday a Skeino Arabella Shawl Kit happened. 

Being me, I decided to splice the whole thing into a ball.

Carefully separate single ply into two for about two to three inches. Put the joins so they fully intersect and soak in water for a second:

Then, use friction between your pans to hear it up and felt it solid. (It's done when the water is gone.)

Then continue...

... and continue...

... and continue.

Here's the full color run and label info:

Left to right, winter gray thru spring greens into summer golds and then the reds and browns of autumn!

I'm going to make a Fall of Leaves cloak, if I can!

Socks happened!

Took Laura's Toe Up Socks that Fit class. It resulted in a quick pair of socks:

The foot part fits excellently. They're a wee bit loose at the ankle (my ankles are still oddly skinny), but easy enough to correct on the second pair!

(Yep, I will get four socks out of one ball of Lang Jawoll Aktion.)

Scarf Blocking

Just have two blocking squares to work with? Use both sides! 

Elegant? Maybe not. But it works! 

(Hopefully, the scarf will finally be dry tomorrow!)

SilverSpun & Feel Good Yarns

Yesterday was the SilverSpun Workshop & Trunk Show at the store. 

I did workshop space set-up (remembered we had two tables!): 

Dorie (the organizer) and Laurie (the owner) from Feel Good Yarns did all the product set-up and ran the workshop.

At the workshop, we got little bags with 2 DPNs and two gloves, which we learned to transform into touch-screen gloves! 

(promo pic from Feel Good Yarns as I left my gloves in my car, so no photo...)

The trunk show went well, woohoo! I might, just possibly, have bought some yarn...

(It's Thera-gloves for my mum, don't tell her!)

Baker Street Scarf

This is a free pattern on Knitty.com. It's a simple two-row repeat. I used two skeins of HiKoo Simplinatural. 

I wound off the yarn for the fringe first, then knit until I was out of red, switched to gold and knit the gold.

The fringe is hooked on individually, then knotted in clumps of two or three.

I have very little yarn left:

It curls something fierce right now, but I'm hoping blocking will take care of that. If it was mine, I'd call it done, but it's a shop model. So, blocking will happen.

Dreamscope

My friend Jhada got the Dreamscope app, and has been having all manner of fun with her already-amazing portraits.

So you know, it's an app that takes photos from your phone (camera or memory) and applies one of many (so very many!) filters over it. The upload and convert process takes about three minutes, then your results are thrown all over the world.

As I don't necessarily want pics of me all over (this blog and G+ don't count - really, who sees it?), I opted to use a few of the more normal filters to see the results.

Here's the original photo:

Watercolors filter:

Um, no. I know it's just grabbing a splash color, but the brick red makes it a little too Stephen King.

Charcoal filter:

I like this one much better full size. The tire tracks in the foreground are cool.

Oils filter:

Meh.

Sketch filter:

Ding ding, we have a winner! You'll be seeing more of this in the future.

DIY Indeed!

Last trip to Tuesday Morning (a name-brands-for-less chain), we stumbled upon  DIY rubber bands - allegedly for those looms all the cool kids have these days.

Mom and I thought "STITCH MARKERS!" at the same time. Small elastics work for knit or crochet as row markers, too - knit/crochet them in place, snip them out when you're done.

We spent about 15 minutes this morning sorting 1200 rubber bands (metallic! neon! glitter!) by color.

And now we have six sets of markers for whatevs. The green and orange are mine, the purple for our friend Lynell, and the pink, blue & yellow are Mom's.

They'll probably only last a year, two at the outside, but not bad for two bucks!

Swiss Cheese Scarf - Finished!

Totally forgot to show off my finished Swiss Cheese!!


I used gravity and a shower rod to block it:




Worked great, and it's done!!

Needlework Level 100

Oh my gosh, this is BEYOND beautiful. Need to learn to do this!!

The mitered-square hoodie (part 1)

I don't remember when I got the idea for a mitered-square hoodie; probably after a Woolly Thoughts class. I started knitting straightaway with some stash yarn, and bought a hoodie.

I reversed the zipper so the outside of the hoodie would be the inside of the jacket; the fleecy "inside" would hold on to the knitting well, and then I'd have inside pockets and such. I got a goodly number of squares of varying sizes made:


I grafted exactly two squares together... and it was MUCH bigger than I'd thought it would be. I may be close to having the entire hoodie knit!


We'll see. But I'll be working on this a bit more over the next few months. (And yes, I have PADD. But if I work on lots of projects, I'm still going to finish lots of projects. Eventually.)

Stitching Copyright (not what you think!)

So, I needed a stitched copyright symbol. I picked a bunch of fonts, chose one I liked, and blew it up to 72pt type. I then ran it through Stitchboard.com's Free Pattern Wizard (a wonderful, wonderful resource!), and got this:


Now, I'm not actually cross-stitching, per se; I just needed a shape generated so I'd know what shape I was stitching. (Um, that was clear as mud. Hopefully you followed along anyway.) So, I backstitched the whole thing, and started filling in the backstitched area with Smyrna crosses, cross stitches and French Knots.


I then chose a fill stitch for the center background:


And then finished it up. I love the look of the French knot "flowers", and how the design gets warmer closer to the center. I think it came out great!