Tag Archives: acatherinenoon

What Am I Designing Now!

Knoontime Knitting

I have an AlphaSmart 2000 portable keyboard that I use to write while I’m on the train or the bus. I got to thinking, it needs a cover! I knit!

These two things taste great together!

So. Here’s what I did:
I knit a gauge swatch on size 7 dpn (double point needles, the kind used for making socks). I got a good gauge from them, but realized when I started to cast on that 100 stitches wouldn’t fit on them.

I knit a gauge swatch on size 9 circulars, 24″, without really thinking about the length of the circular part. I realized, though, that if my circumference wasn’t 24″, I was toasted when I wanted to cast on since I wanted to knit in the round.

The third time’s the charm. I found my size 7 circulars with I think 8″ or 12″, and knit a gauge swatch. Then I figured, 9″ x 2, plus 1.5″ is 19.5. Make it an even 20.

Just a smidge too small to make it around the circular part. The unit is 12″ wide, though, and even though I originally wanted the stitches to face the other way, 12″ x 2 + 1.5″ works on circulars that are the length I have, but only just barely.

I did a knitted cast on and realized two things: I should have cast on one needle size up, since it’s a pretty tight cast on, and that the knitted cast on curls just like stockinette fabric does, even if you use a straight weave for the fabric itself. This isn’t a bad thing, exactly, it’s just a thing – but I got to thinking: next, I want to try a ribbed knit cast on, and see if purl stitches work as well as knit stitches, to eliminate the curl.

I have about 4.5″ on the needles now, and today decided to make sure it “fit.” That’s what this picture is:

I like the fit quite well, actually. I think I’ll do two rows of reverse stockinette, then another 9″ of plain stockinette, for a lining; finished with a 3 needle bind off. The closure will be picked up and knitted into a triangle, with a button closure. I need some sort of window cover for privacy, but I haven’t worked out yet how I want to do that.

The stitch for the body is a garter rib stitch: 1 row of rib, 1 row of knit. That gives a purl bump in the rib columns that’s pretty but retains the elasticity of a true rib.

Fabricloff!

Knoontime Knitting

So, I took an artist date yesterday. I decided to check out a new fabric store in Bucktown. Back in the day, Bucktown was NOT a neighborhood you wanted to be caught dead in.

Well, I guess if you wanted to be caught dead, you would want to go there…
Anyway, you get the point. So I decide to check out this new place, and it’s pretty darned cool! They don’t even bill themselves as a store first; it’s a DIY Sewing School and Fabric Store. My kinda place! It’s called the Needle Shop, http://www.theneedleshop.net/ , and it’s in a little storefront in amongst brownstones and houses and puppies and yuppies.

I wandered through the front room, which is filled with bolts of pretty designer fabrics, and then to the back room which has their books and patterns. The clearance rack caught my eye and I found some pretty Aboriginal print fabric. And I did something I don’t usually do – I passed up on a book, which I’ve realized I have a LOT of, and bought the fabric! It was on sale for $7 a yard, and is a lovely Kaffe Fassett print that I found, after looking it up, came all the way from Westminster Fabrics in London!

Wowsers.

Here’s a pic of it, not yet prewashed. I have about 3 yards and 4 inches, so I think I’ll at least make a pair of pants and either a top or a jacket, depending on how much I can squeeze out of it. I’m also going to take it to the knitting shop and see if I can find some yarn to match, and make a sweater with a square neck and short sleeves.

Stay tuned!

Camera Bag

Knoontime Knitting

So, I sez to my friend, Friend, what kind of a bag would you like? And she sez to me, she sez, Well, I’d like a camera bag.

In camo.

…

Have I mentioned before that I HATE camo?

I must have mentioned this.

In fact, my friend, she started giggling because we had talked, at length, on just this very topic the day before while hiking. I sez to my friend, Friend, do you have a hat I could borrow for this here desert hiking in the sun? And she sez to me, she sez, sure! Here you go!

It’s camo.

…

Have I mentioned before that I HATE camo?

So this bag. Well, it’s a camera bag, for a wee little bitty camera of a thing. So I knitted a swatch, and I knitted a sock, and I closed the sock with the three needle bind off, and I picked up the gusset for the lid, and I knitted the lid.

I even did some lace, but you can’t really see. The end is sort of diagonal, which I don’t like much, so I think I’ll do another one. And I want to add a strap. But I finished the bag. Poof!

In camo.

…

Have I mentioned before that I HATE camo?

It’s quite roomy inside. I showed this picture to my friend, and she said it looks like a little mouth. Which of course makes me want to make a version of the bag with ears and teeth…

This is the inside of the cover. There’s actually a small lace pattern in the triangle that forms the flap, but you can’t see it since the yarn is so dark.

This is with the flap closed. The line of the flap at the point of the triangle is angled down and to the right, which I don’t like; I want it to be square. What I think I’ll do is start the next bag from this point, rather than end here, and then cast on the extra stitches for the body and go from there.

Even with white in the background, you can’t see the lace. It’s a pity, but a good lesson: on dark yarn, use a textural pattern and not lace to see it – or use bigger needles (or block the heck out of it).

This is how it looks when I hold it straight, but I’m still not really happy with the closure. I do want to find a cool wooden button to use for the clasp, and I may make a prototype with a button since it will be used in the field on the fly.

And here is the back in all its glory. I did the top part in a garter rib pattern that actually looks quite nice in this yarn; I may do the whole thing next time in that stitch for added padding against the camera body.

Another thought I have is to do a lining, so that there’s extra padding to protect the camera – I just don’t want the bag to be too bulky. We shall see.

Spring Bag

Knoontime Knitting

I’m on a kick to make more gift bags. I found a cool overdye at Michael’s, and I like the colors. I think it looks like Spring or Ostara.

I did the top as straight knitting, but I used a knitted cast on instead of long tail. I like the way it comes out, since you can’t really see the edge and it looks very neat and clean. It’s looser than long tail, too, which is nice; although when working that first row off the cast on row it sometimes is tight.

I used a slip-stitch pattern from Barbara Walker’s stitch dictionary, A First Treasury of Knitting Patterns which has been re-released by Schoolhouse Press. I actually didn’t like the way it looked with this yarn, which surprised me. I have found it to be pretty on some overdyes, whereas on others it looks flat and muddy – which I thought it did, here.

I switched back to plain knitting for the next segment, and then experimented with a Garter Rib. I tried doing the plain rows by switching between knit and purl by row for the first segment, then doing purl every straight row for the final segment.

It wasn’t until I finished and turned the bag inside out to seam it that I realized my error – I did the stitch inside-out!

I like the way it turned out, but for the next bag with this yarn I’ll do the garter rib for the whole thing and see how that looks. I used the three needle bind of for the end and made a 3-stitch i-cord for the cord. On the whole, I like how it looked.

The yarn is worsted-weight, and I used a size 7 needle, which is much smaller than I’d usually use for this yarn thickness. The resultant fabric is quite dense, which I like for the purpose of the gift bag.

Element Bag

Knoontime Knitting

I recently experimented with a pattern for a gift bag, which is really a very simple project. I used pearl cotton, gauge 5 and gauge 12, to create the bag. Starting with yellow for East and Air, I then used red for South and Fire, (both yellow and red are the gauge 5), then navy blue for West and Water, and finally green for North and Earth. For the i-cord, I used indigo and violet, both gauge 12, held together to make it thicker. Take a look:

You can see the difference in yarn thickness between the 5 and 12 sizes. I used a Size 3 (US) set of double-pointed needles to make the bag (and plan to switch away from my usually beloved bamboo and purchase some steel ones; anything smaller than Size 5 (US) is too bendy in the bamboo and wood).

For the next bag, I plan to use only the size 5 thread; I found the size 12 too thin and the resultant fabric too flimsy for what I wanted. I could double up on the 12, but that would use twice as much yarn and I don’t need that thickness for warmth or durability, just appearance.

This is a top view of the finished bag, with all colors visible but the i-cord untied. The finished bag clocked in around four inches tall.

This is the finished bag. The pattern I used calls for a 3 needle bind off, which I did use; I also like stepped decreases though did not use that for this bag. They give a more rounded finish.

Birthday Project

Knoontime Knitting

Happy birthday to meeeee! (Actually, my birthday is May 8th, but still…) I received some money for a gift and took myself to get a Bucilla needlepoint kit. I didn’t realize this, but Bucilla is now owned by Plaid Online, a collection of a number of handicraft providers.

I selected “Oriental Crane,” a lovely pattern of painted canvass needlepoint. It comes with crewel wool, floss, metallic thread and beads. I’m looking forward to working on it. I haven’t completed it (I’ve only just started separating the yarns), but I’m enjoying the colors.

The only complaint I have is the instructions are awful. They are written in about six different languages and it appears that in trying to solve the problem of being an international company, they’ve missed the mark. While there are six languages, the actual instructions are so skimpy that if I weren’t an experienced needle worker I would be lost. For example, if I handed the kit to my husband, who is good at needlepoint but not very experienced, he wouldn’t know how to complete the kit. It’s a shame.

I’ll post more in-process pictures once I have something interesting to look at, but here’s the design so you can at least see what I’m doing.

I’m thinking I might frame it and hang it on my wall at my office. We’ll see.

Update on Opera Gloves – Design Challenges

Knoontime Knitting

In designing my opera gloves, I am using a couple resources. The first is the stitch dictionary by Barbara Walker, A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

Additionally, I did a web search for a few different opera glove designs, but found nothing exactly to my liking. What I want is a glove pattern that goes up the forearm and over the elbow, ending in a ruffle. The fingers will be partial, so it will be a ‘fingerless’ glove, but I do want actual fingers rather than a flat line across the knuckles.

I found it a lot harder to do the swatch with the two lace patterns I’d picked out. I wanted to use one panel that’s a lace rib stitch, two lines, and one as a center panel that’s sixteen rows. It turned out to be too easy to drop stitches on the larger lace pattern, when trying to track both it and the circular knitting. I fiddled and struggled for a while and then realized, if I was having this much trouble on the swatch, I’d hate doing the gloves. I switched to the simpler two row repeat and voila!

One thing I did change, in the pattern, is that it’s a K1 * yo… etc. Well, at first, I did the K1 at the beginning of the round, but not each new needle (I’m knitting on three needles). That was pulling too wide at the joins between the needles, so I decided heck with it, I’d add a K1 on each needle change and it made the pattern much neater. Also, since the pattern is written for flat knitting, I had to reverse row 2 (which is the wrong side row), but luckily it’s just either K or P stitches, no complicated stitchcraft. It’s run to work.

I don’t have pictures yet, but when I finish the swatch I’ll post another update.

Box Loff – The Grand Finale!

Knoontime Knitting
I finished my first needlepoint box! I’m pleased with it. To recap, I used a simple overdyed yarn, worsted weight (double DK weight) for the needlepoint and a plastic frame cut to size. I learned a lot putting it together and like the final look.

Here is the box completed and closed. There’s a lip around the bottom so the lid sits snuggly down over the bottom, making it look like a solid cube. In fact, two people I’ve shown it to couldn’t figure out how to open it at first!

Here’s a view with the top and bottom separate. You can see how deep the box is in this shot. It is three inches square, which is a lot larger than I thought at first.

One of the key learnings I took away from sewing the pieces together was this: at first, I used one horizontal stitch, then a diagonal stitch from the same square on one piece to the next square up on the other piece. That looked good but I didn’t realize it was canting the pieces sideways by one square, which threw off the finished design. I’ve shown that below so you can see what I’m referring to.

To fix it, I just placed the stitches two in each square horizontally. I was worried it wouldn’t have enough coverage to conceal the frame, but it worked just fine – as you can see from the pictures.

The next box will have actual stitch patterns using different textures of thread and yarn. The suggestions I saw in the book I’m using call for Paternayan crewel wool and perle cotton, which look nice together. Pix soon!

Opera Gloves

Knoontime Knitting

So, I joined Weight Watchers. I decided to make milestones for the celebrations, and I’m celebrating my first 5%! I’m so excited. I purchased two skeins of Sock Ease™ yarn from Lion Brand in “Red Hots.” It’s beautiful!

I will say it’s more orange than I was thinking it would be (which isn’t bad, just surprised me). It’s very Autumnal in flavor and I think will look really nice with summer-tanned skin (not that I tan a whole heckuva lot, but hey).

I’m going to make a pair of opera gloves that are fingerless. I’m thinking I’ll have partial fingers go to about the middle knuckle, then have the glove go all the way up to cover the elbow and end in some pretty ruffles. I’m just swatching right now, but I’ll post more as the design comes together in my head.

These are double-pointed needles from Brittany, size US2 (2.75 MM). I want to like them, but I find them too bendy and broke one while making a sock. I’m going to get some Crystal Palace (first I’ll swatch with my CP 3’s and see how it looks, I may just use them). I am also planning to try some metal needles for the really small sizes, 4 and below, because the natural ones just seem to be too fragile when they’re that thin.

Box Loff!

Knoontime Knitting
As some of you know, I’ve recently started playing with fabric boxes. Here is the bottom of my latest creation, Earth Meets Sky.

The bottom of the box has a lip, visible in the picture; the lid will fit over the entire piece and be flush against the lip.

Here is a detail of the box. I used a simple overdye yarn so I could concentrate on the construction; but next time I plan to use more embroidery design. I’d like to make boxes in other sizes, as well as a drawer liner for my desk at home (to house things like paper clips and stuff).

Several people have asked me how the box is put together. Here is an image of the bottom being worked. First the designs are laid in, and then the box is sewn up. You use simple plastic canvass from Michael’s or JoAnn’s (which has the benefit of being cheap!) and can use any yarn or thread you like. This yarn is a simple worsted weight (double DK) that cost about $2.00 USD a skein (which would make a LOT of boxes – smile). The pattern is a simple tent-stitch, I just varied the rows by covering one or two squares.