New Pattern Published!

I've published another pattern! For this hat:

It's available on ravelry or on etsy.

This hat is very large! It's designed to accommodate bulky hair, dreadlocks, or just be super floppy. There are two subtle cables but otherwise it is a basic hat. If you want the hat without having to make it, it's currently still available on etsy.

Couple FOs

I needed a new hat. I do have a gazillion hats, but all the ones I made last year are too small for my hair now (it's grown!), so I only had one that fit properly. But now I have two!

I spun the yarn from some dyed corridale top, and it was almost exactly the right amount, so yaay! I really like my little fish beads...the last one is a boat.

I also made a cowl with handdyed yarn:

I really like how it looks (the dye worked really well!) but it's too big to actually keep my face warm in the HORRIBLE FREEZING weather we've been having lately. But decorative cowls are nice too, so it's not a total loss.

Pattern and yarn reviews

I have a new favourite pattern! Skoodlet (ravelry link), by Leethal, who makes various wonderful things. It's awesome, a hood/scarflet thing, it is absolutely delicious. I made a giant one (to accommodate my dreads and to make me look more mysterious) out of Nashua Handknits Granite, which is quite a lovely yarn. (ravelry link.)

The pattern is written to work with any yarn you want; you measure your gauge and put it into the formula. It's super easy to figure out, just simple multiplication and putting in numbers. I do recommend printing it out to write the numbers in - it's too confusing otherwise! Luckily, leethal has written the pattern so that only 2 pages actually need to be printed out. Suggestions for possible modifications are given in the pattern, so it was super easy to make it big enough for my overlarge hair. All the techniques she uses (including a figure-eight cast on I hadn't used before) are clearly explained at the start of the pattern. There were maybe a couple lines I had to read through a couple times, but for the most part everything was very clear. And of course, the skoodlet is absolutely ADORABLE, I wore it all day today and never wanted to take it off. EVER. It's sitting by my bed where I can reach it at a moment's notice.

5 stars for an awesome pattern!

The top and bottom buttons on it are ones I've drawn on - <3 drawing on buttons.

The yarn I used was Nashua Handknits Granite in "Deep Mix." I didn't have super high expectations of this yarn: the colours seemed nice, and I love slub yarn, but 70% wool, 30% acrylic doesn't tend to inspire blind confidence, simply because there's so much variation in the quality of both fibres. I was pleasantly surprised though, it's lovely and soft! All the thick sections are coloured, the thinner sections grey, so it has a really awesome texture when knitted. This is one of the few yarns I actually like better when it's knitted, I usually prefer the look of skeined yarn. It has a nice drape without being too heavy. While it doesn't reach the extremes of fabulousness some other yarns do, it's a very nice yarn indeed and I want more of it!

4.5 stars for great yarn!

A yarn I am less happy with is Twilleys of Stamford Freedom Spirit. I've used it before and it didn't seem so bad, but I guess I've acquired taste now. It's rather scratchy, and splits very easily. I bought it because I really like the colours as they appear on the ball, but they're muddy an disappointing when knitted up. I'd planned on using sections of reverse stockinette, but it ended up looking like such a mess that I had to use the other side. It might just be this colourway that's like this, I've used a different one before and it didn't have these problems...but I was crocheting....maybe I should just crochet with this yarn? But I'm halfway done a knitted hat! Anyway, I'm super disappointed with this.

2 stars for crappy yarn. Boo.

My other WIP is a purple lace dress, using Mari Lynn Patrick's Featherlight Lingerie Dress pattern from Lace Style.

The pattern is fine so far, even though it has some seaming, and picking up 450 stitches. I nearly went insane, and I'm only done the skirt part. I feel like this could have been designed to incorporate less seaming and picking up stitches, and if I'd thought about it I would probably have tried to do that myself. Too late now though. This project is on hold for a little, until I've gotten over picking up all those stitches.

3 stars for a decent pattern that could have been designed better.

The yarn I'm using is Maseru by Fleece Artist. I bought it for the gorgeous colour, bright vibrant purple! I got one skein of straight purple, and one matching varicolour skein, and I'm alternating every few rows (which is where that half-striped pattern is coming from). This yarn is soft but scratchy, which is not really surprising at 60% mohair, and it's very light and floaty - great for a dress! It's never going to be my favourite, I wouldn't be able to wear it against my skin, but the colours, floaty-ness, and price ($10 per 545 yard skein) make it a great choice for mohair projects.

4.5 stars for bright purple yarn!

Handspun and FOs

Some new handspun:

Purple dragon. I spun this a while ago, but never took a picture of the finished skein. This was my first time spinning from a batt, I really enjoyed it!


Foreign skies. This is the thinnest yarn I've ever spun! It's 2-ply and laceweight. This is the first time I've spun using long draw.



Mermaid's den. Respun from Lion Brand Homespun. Two skeins of singles and one 2-ply with occasional beads. There doesn't seem to be a good way to spin beads without putting them on a separate thread and plying that with a single - I tried threading the beads onto one of the singles, then pushing the beads along, which sort of worked, but the single kept breaking and it was very frustrating.

Some recent(ish) FOs:

Lace armwarmers. I made these quite a while ago, but never took pictures. This is another one I'm planning on writing out a pattern for, I really like how these turned out. If the pattern gets written out I'll probably add a thumb.


Silk and alpaca scarf. Worked sideways; the silk is sari ends I spun. I like this! I need to rinse it, but I'm worried about the dye on the silk running, it's happened before.


Child's hat. Cables!

Gosh

Several exciting things I have done recently:

I PASSED PHYSICS! I was so very worried I wouldn't, and the fact that marks took forever to be posted wasn't helping with my mindset. I did not do spectacularly, but considering the course I am pleased with my mark.

I WROTE A PATTERN! It's a pattern for my dreadlock hat, and you can find it HERE. (Ravelry link only for now, I may post this on my website at some point, if I ever get around to making it a proper website.) The pattern is only $1, I fully endorse it! Just look at how lovely the two I made are:

I finished all my x-mas presents on time! I will post pictures once I have them, I need to get my family to take pictures of themselves in my lovely creations. I am rather pleased with myself for finishing everything before I got home, even if I was just knitting for immediate family.

I remade a table to be a delicious monster named Soysauce! His birthday was January 1, 2011, he is a bundle of joy brought into my life by a glue gun. His teeth are made from an old wedding dress!

I found a bunch of semi-decent yarn at the thrift store! Including some delicious neon
laceweight (ie, string). I'm gonna make lovely lace arm warmers that will glow under blacklights!

I got paid (wooo!) by Rare Funk; I hadn't ever picked up a cheque from them, so it was quite a satisfying amount.

I had an unfortunate incident with a can of custard. Delicious but painful.

I dyed my hair...this one may sound less exciting, but dying dreadlocks is a difficult, dangerous, and deadly business.

I am so very much not ready for school to start. It is complicated and difficult even when I like the courses. It's only been two days of classes, and I've already slept for 2.5 hours on campus.

SO MANY HATS

Goodness gracious.

I did a craft fair on friday, and I was madly making hats in preparation for about three weeks. Quite glad to be done frantic knitting for a little. Though I need to work on x-mas presents now...

Anyway, the hats! I'm afraid the pictures are a little blurry, I wasn't able to take them in the day.

This one is my favourite! I really like how it turned out, I'm going to write down the pattern and publish it on ravelry. I've made another hat with this pattern, so I've got it pretty much figured out now.


Crocheted hat, similar pattern to this one. The pattern turned out well, so I might write this one down as well.


This one makes me think of cherries!


Got to love pom-poms. This yarn is weird, it's a white single plied with brown boucle, but I'm happy with how it turned out.


Quite soft. I like putting stems on the tops of hats.


This one is soo floppy and soft! It feels like dressing gown (but in a good way).


Tiny toque. It looks very small, but streeeetches a lot.

Some of these sold, but not all, so I'm taking the rest to Rare Funk tomorrow. (If you're interested in buying any of them just let me know, I can put them on etsy for you.)

I was very worried about not having enough stuff for the craft fair, but then I went through my room, and found PILES of things! I probably had the most stuff piled on my table out of everyone, it was odd. I dug out a bunch of older hats, scarves, mittens, yarn (dyed and spun), jewelery and clay monsters. I priced everything suuuuper cheap, so stuff sold! I made $134! And today I met someone who had like my stuff but didn't have time on friday, and she bought another $50 worth of stuff. So hurray, money! Now I can buy more yarn!

I mean...christmas presents....

I spun a little bit of thread-y yarn:

Spun from the thread-y bits from Lions Brand Homespun, after I took it apart.

Finally, here's a picture I drew for art class:

We had to pick two different objects and transform one into the other. I picked a spindle and a lizard because a lizard is not like a spindle.

Making a case

Until today, my knitting needles, crochet hooks and miscellaneous bits have been kept in a drawer that gets put wherever there's space for it. It has been VERY DIFFICULT to find anything, and I've been meaning to make a case for ages, but haven't gotten around to it. Well, yesterday I finally go around it it! Here is before:

And after:

It's so exciting! I haven't sewn anything in AGES, so it's a little wonky, but it works and is colourful, and that is what counts. My sewing machine got jammed half way through, and wasn't sure what was wrong, and I got rather upset. But then I went to THE INTERNET, found this site, which had the manual for my machine to download (for free!), and it told me what to clean. And it worked after cleaning! Who would have guessed! So I made that first container, but it didn't have space for my circular needles, so I made this as well:

And after:

It's a bit too long, but better too long than too short. I'm going to embroider needle sizes on each section, but it's going to take a while since I haven't done any embroidery since I was about ...twelve? I've already had to unpick one number.

My hat is progressing! I've had to frog bits of it, but I really like how the colours work together.

If you ever have to do colourwork, I thoroughly recommend a colourwork thimble:

It keeps everything so much less tangled! It is really quite wonderful.

Plans

I just finished reading Sweater Quest, by Adrienne Martini and it has inspired me! First of all, it's a great book, it has a great flow to it, and I read it in a couple days because I couldn't stop! I totally recommend it. It inspired me to work on more interesting/challenging projects. I've made a few shirts and a sweater before, but now I want to learn Fair Isle...not on the same scale as Martini, I'm going to try a hat first. A wander through Ravelry came up with a few patterns I liked; atm I'm leaning towards Tracery Tam, but still considering Joni, Midnight Sun Tam, Floppy Fairisle Hat, or Star Flower Tam. Too many choices! The Fornicating Deer Chart definitely deserves an honourable mention though.

I also want to make socks! I haven't made socks before, mostly because I'm not really a big sock person...I tend to wear thick tights or nothing. But I think knitting socks is something I should know how to do, so I picked up some orangey-greeny sock yarn from Michaels, and I'm going to use Knitty's Universal Toe-Up Formula.

I've finished a couple more hats, which I'm happy enough with, but not really excited about. I'm going to take them to Rare Funk sometime next week...I meant to take hats this week, but I had a whole bunch of assignments to catch up on, and couldn't seem to find the time.

This hat is crocheted, I started it about a year ago, but only just finished it. I've made a similar hat before, I really like the spiral pattern. Acrylic single-ply yarn, it's really soft and I like it! It does pill a bit though.


This one is 100% wool. This is the first hat I've knitted, and I didn't use a pattern (of course) so it's a liiiiiittle wonky...but still wearable! I am reasonably pleased with how it turned out.

Next I'm going to see if I can make red and aqua look good together. This could be interesting, here's the yarn I've got:

It will at least be distinctive.

I also got some colourful tape for hula hoops! It's actually hockey tape from the sports store, it's cheap and colourful and I got a whole bunch of colours. So now my hoop has a few different shades of blue on it, so exciting!

I'm making a couple more hoops for friends, which is exciting, I've made back the cost of the materials already. Not sure if anyone else wants to buy hoops from me, but I still have pipe left over, so possibly I'll just make myself some different sizes.

In dumpster diving news, I found 21 tubes of watercolour paint the other day.

They were all in clean packaging, I don't know *why* they were thrown away. More free stuff, I guess, but still. No wonder everyone hates north america.

I'm home for thanksgiving this weekend, and I found some yarn bombing! I wish I'd had a camera with me, but no. In true London, ON fashion, it had been burned by someone...wtf?! It looked like it had been nice before...

Many Exciting Things

I had a terribly productive day the other day. I made a hula hoop! A proper one that is appropriately heavy and large. I can already do a few things (none very well) but it is SO MUCH FUN.


It's (sadly) only black because I only had black electrical tape, and I couldn't get the duct tape to wrap evenly. BUT I found this site, which has all manner of wonderful shiny hoop tape! Yep.

If you want to make a hoop (and you should, it's super easy and they are so much fun), this was the tutorial I used.

Adhering *ahem*...closely to my "hat-a-week" goal, I have finished another hat. It looks like a pumpkin! A stripe-y pumpkin.

I know this picture is just dreadful, I'll take another one tomorrow in decent light, but I was just too excited!

Michael's store brand "Charisma" acrylic chunky, which is actually not bad! It's soft and has a nice stripy pattern. This is actually the first hat I've knitted, all the others have been crocheted. It didn't turn out perfectly, but I like it well enough.

I ran out of yarn two thirds of the way through, so I had to run to Michaels to get more, and (of course) couldn't resist peeking in their dumpster, even though it was raining. But it was worth it, because I found YARN (omg!), acrylic paint, a label punch, and a bunch of glue.

Speaking of yarn, I found this terribly dangerous website: Yarn Find. It is a buy/sell/trade site for yarn....ohhhhh my.

I guess I haven't posted stuff in a while, so here are some more ATCs:

I am in the midst of rediscovering how intensely wonderful Pop Rocks are. Like, oh man. I am actually having dreams that involve me buying massive amount of Pop Rocks. It would be slightly unsettling if it wasn't so AWESOME.

Also, I got asked for drugs the other day! We had to do projects for a class and I ended doing mine on harm reduction approaches to drug use (ie, I handed in TRIP flyers), and then we had to talk about them in class. Then after class a nerdy awkward frosh guy came up and said "Excuse me, do you have any marijuana?" It was really cute! I don't sell drugs, but lolz.

Exciting as this post had been, I have to end it now. Why, you may ask? Because I have to get my hoop on, bitches. And go tell the people who live above me to stop jumping on their floor.

More hats! And I've learned to make rings

Hats

I have a bunch of new hats finished! I haven't decided if I'm taking them to Rare Funk, the store in Kitchener where I sell hats, or listing them on Etsy.

These two are commissions for a friend, who wanted presents for her children for christmas. The first is made with Lions Brand Homespun, which looks really nice and feels super soft, but it is extremely annoying to work with.



This one is made with acrylic and wool stripes.



This red one I started ages ago but ran out of yarn...so I got more yarn last weekend and made it large enough to wear comfortably.



I used some of the yarn left over from the first hat for accents on this lacy cloche.



This one is made of wool I got off ebay. The sizing turned out smaller than I expected, so it's probably best for a child or someone with a very small head.



This varicoloured beanie I made as an option for a commission as I wasn't sure about the taste of the person in question. Acrylic yarn from Value Village.



An acrylic hat made in shell patterns:



And finally a fluffy red hat I made for my mother. She chose the yarn, which is Red Heart.




Rings

I got some ring bands from Michaels a while ago, and have just started using them. I've made 4 rings so far, in blue, green, red and black, so I think of them as water, earth, fire and night. I was going to make an 'air' one but I didn't have the right colours of beads on hand.





Monsters

I've also made some new polymer clay monsters! The updated Etsy listing can be found here and more pictures by clicking the picture below.