turtle

This was so much more work than I anticipated!

It was a toss-up between a scarf and a collar, and I went with the collar. I'm not sure it was the right choice. I read that a lot of people use nylons so the stuffing doesn't escape. I used a black sock because that's what I had. Around the neck in particular, the holes were pretty big and obvious, hence the collar. I used baby's initials; perhaps stripes would have been more effective.



There's a squeaker in the head, a bell in the bottom, and crinkle paper in the shell. I went up and down every aisle in Michaels twice, and couldn't find supplies. Instead I went to Value Village and bought a toy to dismantle.

I suck at i-cords, so I made a lucet cord instead with a two-pronged fork. *much* easier.

The light pink yarn is lovely and soft; the bright pink, not so much. It's also pilly already. Rather unimpressed.



Monster has claimed it as his, and frankly, I'm such a selfish knitter, I not sure I want to give it away anymore.

eta, nov 20: Okay, seriously, what am I going to do with a noisy, pink turtle? It's been gifted. Baby was sleeping, but I think the mom likes it. Or is at least intrigued that I made it.

sewing skillz... or lack thereof

While wrangling with my mom's ancient sewing machine, something finally occured to me: the sewing machine was supposed to make things easier. Duh, right? So yeah, hand-sewing it together. Have stabbed myself with the needle more times than I care to count, but it's going a lot better now.

I couldn't find totoro fabric. I don't think they make it. Or if they do, please tell me where so I can send you cookies. So I tried for camphor trees and acorns. Found something that would fit the bill,
I got it from Fabric Tales. Highly recommended! Cheap and fast shipping, and none of that fat quarter thing you see on Etsy--fraction of the price too.

needlessly complicated

So, I like to change patterns because I don't want to knit the carbon copy of somebody else's project. Fair enough, right? It's just that I end up making them WAY HARDER THAN THEY NEED TO BE.

I'm making mittens, out of sock yarn, and I thought it'd be neat to have them reversible. So, double knit. But corrugated ribbing isn't reversible. Tried a few different things, but have resorted to tubular cast on, and will knit 2 sets of cuffs, connect them when I get to the main body part.

When I first cast on, was sitting on the fence whether to do a variation on somebody's latvian mitts, or a herringbone stripe thing for the back side. Went with the latvian boxes, but not so thrilled. Too many long floats. Hey, at least the double knitting should take care of any floats, yes?

I dislike this skinny yarn thing. It makes my hand cramp up. But I couldn't get enough detail with worsted yarn.

hmmm...

I'm thinking about frogging rogue and making twist. Rogue is too big at the back, so I need to restart anyway.

rogue cardigan via steeks

hm. this may prove to be a really stupid idea, but I'm going to steek my rogue. it's my first ever sweater & "big project". I mean, in some ways it's a good idea, I just started about a month ago, and I'm already up to the armpits! I love knitting in the round, it's so speedy.



but... now what? since i'm cutting (yikes) the front, should I also steek the arm and neck holes? how do I do the throat cabling? I think it'll get put back into the closet while I start on the sleeves and ponder this. good news, my brain woke up, 6 rows into doing this in the round; ripped back, and will follow pattern. I mean 700 other people did this on ravelry. I think I'll make do.



also, about the kangaroo pocket. I didn't know how to go about it, so I did it as two separate flaps. I didn't want to cut through two layers, y'know? I don't know if that was the right choice or not. I put an extra 10 stitches in the centre for the steek.

being that I have a chest resembling that of a 10 yr old boy, every increase in the side cabling, was met with decreasing in the body. lol.. -_-; I'm pretty sure this is still going to be massive and baggy. gauge swatching didn't go very well, so I gave up, but failed to use math to figure it out. oh well, it's only $93 worth of yarn.. *whimper*



as terrified as I am that I'm going to royally screw this up, I'm pretty pleased with what I've done so far. I'm also getting really good at un-knitting, and dropping back 30 rows to fix mistakes.. LOL

dry faster, damnit!

perhaps a little dramatic, it didn't shrink that badly. I managed to stuff a couple of math textbooks inside to block it. A lot smaller than I had intended, anyway. It's still really wet though, taking foreverrr to dry!

It started out as 13" x 16" x 3" and is now 10" x 11.5" x 2.5".




stuff to do:
whiskers
teeth
tack down the arms
attach buttons onto arms? maybe they shrunk too much to be useful
claws
attach webbed straps & buckles
pick out lining
sew lining
sew zipper to lining
sew lining to bag
would soot sprites be overkill?

felting day

instead of the world's slowest knitter...maybe the world's dumbest...or laziest...

wrapped up my bag in a pillow case, and tossed it into the washer, hot cycle. had a peek, still looking pretty big. had another peek, yep, still big. wandered off and forgot about it...you can see where this is going, right? yeah, tiny. tiny like the pre-felted version of my first bag. UGH!

AND I knitted the straps as tubes, so I could add webbed straps later. you know, like commercial backpacks with the adjustable buckles and all that. yeah...it felted closed. after 10 minutes with scissors, and a giant metal skewer, I managed to get it open. it's super skinny now, I'm not sure if I'll be able to find webbing to fit inside, let alone padding. funny thing is, the straps were the ONE thing I did a gauge swatch for!

but, the good news is, I get to go shopping for a lining this week.

NOT looking forward to sewing it all together, however...

it's drying right now.






and what it was supposed to look like...

updates

haven't been doing much in the way of knitting lately. and far less blogging, evidently.

longies


I used the Curly Purly waistband, and a variation on the LTK picky pants for the gusset. I suppose I did it wrong the first time because I think I now prefer it to the one I used for the domo-kun shorties. I was worried I would run out of yarn, hence the striped legs.

Waist is a bit big, I'll probably add a drawstring later. Legs are a bit short, I probably won't fix it, seeing as it took me ~4 months to finish.

fetching

Okay, so I know everybody and their cat has knitted Fetching, but it seemed like an appropriate gift for V. My fastest knit ever, managed to get it out the door within 3 days. I still need to finish my pair.



tokidoki x hello kitty

another project hibernating... it's destined to become a pencil case, but probably too late, the inside of my paradiso campeggio is all dirty with pencil and pen marks.



punk rock backpack



most.boring.knit.ever. finished the gusset a while back, and am working on strap #1 now. still have to do strap #2, ears x2, arms x2, the "chest hair", seaming, felting, attaching the webbed straps, sewing a lining & zipper, and then the whiskers, claws, teeth, soot sprites. ugh. and since the perfectionist in me won't let me do a half-ass job of just slapping it together, i project another year, minimum, 'til completion. it's already been--what, 20+ months? lol..

shorties

I made shorties for my monster.

I used the picky pants pattern by little turtle knits. I probably wouldn't use it again. Kinda annoyed to have paid $14 usd for it.
Here's the first attempt...

Whatever you do, don't do option 3 for the shaping... it said "this is the best option, in my opinion) for Buddha bellied kids. You know, the ones where the diaper invariably rides down under the belly in front? For the Buddha option, you’ll work both the backside increases and extended short rows in order to get the perfect fit." I read that and thought, wow, that's totally Finn! NOT. holy crap it was freaking huge. I also didn't like the gusset. Second version, I used the one described here

Second try

front


back (domo has eyes, but the black yarn kinda blends in with the dark brown... hard to capture on camera.)

I'm not unhappy with the second version. But I forgot to account for the short row shaping when I did domo's face, and I think his mouth is disproportionate to his teeth, and that I should have done the whole thing up higher on the bum. Oh well. The embroidery took almost as long as the knitting!

Issues: Should I size down the needles for seed stitch? The legs have this kind of flare to them... Haven't blocked or lanolized them yet, so maybe that'll help.
Also, with the short rows, it's fine on the knit side, but on the purl side there's a little loop left over. Does that make sense? I didn't take a pic, and with the duplicate stitch, you can't see it anymore. But it bugged me.


it was hard to get a good shot, he kept running around.

knitting for non-knitters

*sigh*

I had narrowed it down to one of 3 different scarves. lace. my first. for my mom. for mother's day. knitty's argosy, knitty's branching out, and misty garden from scarf style. and I couldn't decide. so I looked up on flickr, and showed my mom, and asked her what she thought of each. she said, "yuck" "ohhh yuck" "omg even worse" "were you thinking of knitting that?!?!" "for yourself" "oh no, not for me!!" "i hate those kind of scarves".

god.

well, at least I know it now before yarn shopping and putting it on the needles and all.