Bags and Slippers

This Christmas I decided to try to cut down on the paper waste that always seems to encroach. I used this pattern and a bunch of stashed red and green fabric, plus about 6 yards I bought from the sale bin at JoAnn. My idea was to make red bags and green bags so the tree would look festive & Christmasy, but not red-and-green bags that would look too Christmasy if people wanted to use them AFTER the holiday for shopping bags, which is the intent--reusability and reduction of waste.

As one of my colleagues, an Environmental Science teacher, says: There's a reason "Recycle" comes third on the list.

It went very well, I must say. By the end of the project (e.g. this morning) I was able to cut out and sew a bag in about 20 minutes. If I was assembly-lining them, I think I could bring the average down to about 15 minutes. They're not the sturdiest tote bags of all time--the seams aren't reinforced or anything, but they're great for quick gift bags and would hold some light groceries and shopping.

And, if you make them out of quilting cotton, they fold up small enough to fit in a purse or pocket. Because, I don't know about you, but I have about a hundred canvas sacks that I always forget to take with me. We take them grocery shopping, but I'm always finding myself without them when I'm running other errands, like to the fabric store or for office supplies.

Each bag is made with just half a yard of 44" fabric and very little waste. It's a smart and simple pattern, and very suitable for making with kids. If you have a serger (which I do but have never gotten to work right, grrr) you could serge all of the seams and raw edges for more durability and "finishedyness".

The other sewn gift I made was a pillowcase for my daughter. For Christmas, we had bought her a small sit-up-in-bed-and-read pillow and it was going to be hard to wrap. My first thought was to make a large-size version of the gift bags I was already making, but that seemed impractical. Then, I thought to wrap it in a pillowcase.

My son and I had made him a special pillowcase a few months ago and it was super easy, so I took some leftover fabric from some doll clothes I made last summer and some grosgrain ribbon and made her one, too. I used this pattern. It was, again, very clear and straightforward, but there was more waste than I had hoped for, mostly because the pattern paid attention to the grain of the fabric more than I cared about. If I did it again, I'd cut the large rectangle on the cross grain (full width of the fabric) unless I were using a fabric that would look bad that way.

Adventures in sewing! I don't sew as much as I knit, mostly because hauling all of the equipment out is a pain and knitting is so quiet and portable, but sewing is my first crafting love, and once I get started it's hard to stop. I can see the tote bags becoming a go-to project and keeping stacks of them instead of wrapping paper.

So that brings the craftiness total for Christmas 2009 to: 3 pairs of slippers, a bunch of gift bags, and a pillowcase. Oh, and I almost forgot, I also gifted a hat to my dad that I made a few months ago and kept all this time! (Plus I made a ridiculous reject of a hat that I will need to write about separately.)

What did you make, if anything, for the holidays?

Christmas Clogs

Just to keep the slipper love coming, I thought I'd post pics of another gift that'll be on it's way to eastern Washington tomorrow...

This is the Felted Clogs pattern by Bev Galeskas of Fiber Trends (another Washingtonian--go Bev!) Bev is a felting queen and I've seen her a bunch of times on "Knitty Gritty." Last Christmas, I got a yen to knit for everyone and this pattern seemed perfect. I made a pair for my mom (brown and red) and for my dad (blue and green), and then after Christmas, a pair for my husband (black and green).

My brother-in-law is kind of hard to shop for, but he lives in a cold climate in an older house with wood floors, so I thought he'd appreciate wool slippers. My husband loves his and swears they warm up his whole body.

If you haven't made this pattern before, I highly recommend it. Unlike the French Press felted slippers, which I talked about yesterday, these felted clogs require nearly no seaming. It's all short rows.

If you follow the directions exactly, it goes like this:

First, you knit a sole back and forth in garter stitch with short rows. It doesn't look like a sole at all, but more like a filleted fish. Then you change colors, join in the round, and make a foot using a spectacular and lengthy series of short rows. Then you change colors again and knit a cuff in reverse stockinette, binding it off to itself in a neat little hem. Last but not least, you knit ANOTHER sole, pick up stitches around the original sole, and knit them together, making a double-thickness. Knitting a contrast "bumper" is an option at this point, too. Finally, you do a bit of seaming and tacking on the soles, weave in your ends, and felt.

It's one of those knitting experiences, like the Baby Surprise jacket, or turning a heel, where you can't quite visualize the results--you just have to trust the directions, keep track of what row you're on, and wait for the big reveal at the end.

Here are my tips for felted clog success:

1. Knit both soles at the beginning of each slipper. Leave the spare sole(s) on spare needles until needed. You'll have to slip the spare sole onto your size 13 needle at the end, but that's no big deal. I prefer doing both up front because I just find it's easier to knit two of the same thing in a row rather than getting all the way to the end of the slipper and having to knit another sole. I imagine there are a lot of half-finished clogs out there missing just their second sole...
2. If you got really efficient, you could knit all four soles (for both slippers, two each) in a row.
3. The pattern calls for both a 24" and a 16" size 13 needle. I've found that I need only the 24" needle; at least for the womens medium on up, the cuff never gets small enough to need the 16". That saved me quite a bit on an unnecessary 16" needle.
4. The pattern calls for double-stranded worsted wool, like Paton's Classic or Cascade 220. Upon the advice of my LYS, I've made all mine using single-stranded Lamb's Pride Bulky. The mohair makes them a little fuzzy, but it's nice not having to double-strand, and they felt great. As far as I know, there haven't been any problems with holes.
5. Buy two skeins of your Lamb's Pride in the sole color, and only one in the foot color. It seems counter-intuitive when you look at the finished slippers, but there's actually a lot more yarn in the sole than the foot because the soles are garter stitch and double-layered.
6. If you gift these, it's hilarious to give them un-felted. The look on people's faces when they open the package is priceless. Both my mom and dad tried to figure out, politely, what the heck they were, and both tried to put them on as hats. ha! Then, you can felt the slippers with them there to try on as you go.
7. The slippers are done felting when they feel snug on the bare foot. They do stretch with wear, so err on the side of snugness. If the person really wants to personalize the fit, they can wear them for a few minutes while soaking wet before setting out to dry.

The pattern also comes in a kids' version (same idea, just sized down), which I just bought. Miss E and Mr. D picked out their colors--this time I'm going with the Cascade 220, just to see how double-stranded works out for us. I've told them it'll be after Christmas just so they're not disappointed.

So this means that the only person in my family without a pair is... me!

Reverse Bandwagon

Last month, right before Thanksgiving, I saw THIS PATTERN on my friends' activity on Ravelry.

I clicked and was smitten. Bought the pattern with the last $6.99 in the paypal account (I literally got charged $0.01 on my credit card) and set it aside for a couple of days. Bought some yarn and buttons at JoAnn on Black Friday (I was hoping for flannel for PJs and baby quilts, too, but WHOA NELLIE the cutting line was insane at 6:30 AM, so I "settled" for yarn and buttons).

Last weekend I finally got the chance to make my first pair, a gift for my son's teacher, in Paton's Classic marled blue with turquoise buttons he picked out for her himself. "Ms. M loves blue," said he.

(And of course I forgot to take a photo before I gifted them.)

but...

hey...

They turned out so cute, and then TODAY I started and finished a second pair, this time for my mother-in-law, and then I caught up with my Google Reader (only 8 million unread blog posts, give or take) and found that while I had been in my little bubble thinking I'd found this little gem of a pattern, it had been HARLOTIZED and now there are approximately a bajillion pairs on the collective needles of the knitting community and once again, just like in college when I started listening to Dave Matthews Band six months before everyone but didn't tell anyone until he was already hugely popular, or like when I had the idea for OnStar when I was about 10 but stupidly didn't patent it (of course, due respect to GM's fine work, my version included floppy disks), I am just slightly both ahead of and behind the curve.

Everyone will think I'm jumping on the bandwagon, when in fact I started up the bandwagon, then got down to go get a cup of coffee and came back to find it several blocks ahead of me.

And I know it's silly to be miffed, even facetiously miffed, because in truth it's a darling little pattern that's fast and fun to make and fun to give, so I'll stop with the pseudo-complaining now. And I'll be sure to post pictures of the next eleventy-million pairs I make. And so should you.

le yikes! over a month since the last post!

That's the life of an English teacher. With two kids. Often it comes down to the choice between knitting or writing about knitting. No contest.

(sorry, writing, I love you, but I do you ALL DAY LONG. Let knitting have a chance, willya? Just 'cause she's not on the SAT doesn't mean she's not important, too.)

That said, we're headed off on a road trip today and I was poking around for an easy slouchy hat pattern to do with worsted-weight yarn. I like hats for the car because they're so compact. And...I realized that all of my smaller-than-size-10 16" needles are at school because...wait for it...my 2nd period class is knitting.

Our school does a winter service project every fall, and each homeroom adopts a family (or a few kids) to support with winter clothes, school supplies, gifts, etc. I made the tiny little suggestion that we could knit our kids hats and HALF THE CLASS wants to learn. I brought 6 needles and yarn to class last week and had to play rock-paper-scissors for 5 minutes to see who "got" to learn.

How awesome is that?? I already had three students come up and ask if they could knit during class as long as they were paying attention (I told them after one more lesson if they were feeling comfortable and confident they could) and one boy (!) who already knits was assisting with the teaching!

(Lest you think I'm being a lazy teacher, we did this during our personal reading time and all of the knitters agreed to read for 45 minutes at home to make up the knitting lesson.)

So no worsted-weight-hat today (unless I can convince my ever-so-patient husband to stop at Joann on the way out of town, but even then they don't usually have 7s or 8s in stock...because they're semi-lame).

But I really don't mind.

Three more months

To my own vast surprise, I have kept up thus far on NaKniSweMoDo, aka Crazy Repetitive Stress Injury Inducing Year.

You can see in the sidebar my progress each month, the projects I've completed (OK, a few months were cheaty-ish, but not too far off the mark). Each goal--lace, seaming, cables--has been met with the giant yawning omission of one: a colorwork project.

I can't tell you how many colorwork projects I have perused on Ravelry, blogs, and in books. If I had a dollar for each one, I could have ordered all of Alice Starmore's kits plus paid for express shipping all the way from the UK. I finally decided that a colorwork sweater in a month might be too much, so I'd make a vest. I had the pattern and yarn for this one in my knitpicks shopping cart for literally five months--they kept e-mailing me hopefully, saying "The items you saved for later have now come available...hint hint." (OK, not the "hint hint" part, but the implication was there.)

I don't know what's holding me back.

But as the year draws to a close--not trying to be melodramatic here, but in less than three months it'll be 2010--this is becoming a priority.

Any suggestions for a stranded colorwork vest pattern? I'm thinking that, in the interest of time, I may want to go for sport, DK, or even worsted rather than fingering.

And while you're pondering that--check out my October project: the ubiquitous, infamous, and thoroughly well-pattern-tested Central Park Hoodie, in Jade Heather Paton's Classic Wool

The color is totally off--it's actually a beautiful heathered aqua with flecks of yellow and blue.

I can see why so many folks have made this--it's eminently practical, simple, yet fun. The easy-peasy rope cables break up the stockinette stretches. I made the first sleeve in only a few days, and finished the second sleeve last night.

I decided, after the sleeves, that I wanted to make this more challenging, or at least try something new. One goal I didn't list for NaKniSweMoDo was to steek. So I'm adapting the pattern to knit the body in the round with center front, arm, and neck steeks. I get the steek idea in theory--but as we all know, theory is far different than practice. I'll keep you updated.

Have a great week, everyone--

home-made pesto

I have a thing for basil.

I grew three different kinds this year and we enjoyed it all summer in stir-fry, pasta, and salads. I've been known just to pick it and eat it.

So, although the curly-leaf and Thai varieties were pretty much spent (I worked those plants, believe me) my hanging pot of plain old Italian basil needed to be harvested.

Hence: pesto.

No real recipe, just: chop up a whole bunch of basil into little itty bits (I don't have a food processor); add a couple spoonfuls of minced garlic (I use the "jar-lic," as my sister calls it, from Costco), and then olive oil until it's about the consistency of natural peanut butter. I didn't have any nuts, so skipped those this time, and let each person add their Parmesan individually because of some dairy sensitivities. Cook a bag of Trader Joe's brown rice spirals, toss, and serve.

Yum!

Finished Vine Yoke!

This is why I don't do the "take a picture of yourself in the bathroom mirror" photo shoot very often.

Let's think of it as "artsy" rather than "blurry," shall we?

Because, even though I sorta teach people how to take good photos...I can't hold the camera steady for the life of me. (And, in my defense, I couldn't have the flash on because it reflected off the mirror, but there wasn't quite enough light for it to work well without the flash.)

I finished this up on Monday evening last. It looked scrunched and funky:

But see how well my garter kitchener stitch turned out?

I was still a little nervous that it might not be long enough. I'm long-waisted, so I usually add .5" to 1" length to sweaters so I won't end up looking like Jennifer Aniston in the first couple of seasons of "Friends." Cropped, in the fashion sense, is a four-letter word as far as my body type is concerned. But even though the scrunched and funky sweater looked short, I decided to trust Ysolda, who insisted that she had taken the vertical stretch of garter stitch into account in the pattern.

I soaked it in the washer with some Eucalan for a half an hour, then spun out the water and spread it out to dry on a towel. I encouraged it to grow vertically, then left it to do its magic. Just like my swatch, first it grew a lot, then it shrunk back to the exact right gauge when fully dry. Woo to the hoo.

Now it's time for buttons (I was too excited to wait to take the photo above), which I've already purchased. Side note: I found them at JoAnn, and they, amazingly, match the red-orange of the yarn exactly. But they only had three cards in stock (six buttons) so I had to special-order two more. JoAnn charged me $7.95 for shipping on $5 worth of buttons. Can you believe that??

Knitting this sweater was an absolute blast. The pattern requires a lot of trust in Ysolde (and thank goodness for Ravelry, because there was an error in the sleeve math--now fixed--for a couple of the sizes, including mine; if you bought the PDF early you should have received a link to the revised pattern) and her math genius, and a couple of times I had to really think ahead and write out my pattern rows to make sure it was all going to come together at the end, but every single time: it did.

My mods were minor:

1. For the sleeves' provisional CO I used Judy's Magic Cast on with two KnitPicks needles and then just knit one direction, taking the needle tips off and holding the stitches on the KP cable for later. This worked well for the kitchenering later.
2. I increased above the yoke pattern across the back (4 sts total) to give a bit of back-neck shaping. I didn't want it to ride up. I'll report back on this one once I have the buttons on and have had the chance to wear it.

Loved it!! And--I can't believe I'm saying this--I can't wait for our indian summer to get over with so I can wear it to work. But there's no rush...