Seattle to Portland Train

So here are some of the pics from the Yarn Crawl, I don't really have any group shots but that's because my cousin and I aren't real good crowd people, and have antisocial tendencies.

Union Station



Organizer Lady



Water barrel with Fremont Bridge in back on the walk to Dublin Bay.



Dublin Bay is a really cute store with some great yarns but as it was one of the closest stores to the station a whole bunch of people went there and it was too crowded to really be able to appreciate the selection. I did however their pastries and toffee, I suspect the former came from one of my favorite places St. Honore.

We were headed for the next place when we came across this building



it's home to one of the best pizza places, Hot Lips. I decided to be a little adventurous and try the Ham, Pear, & White Cheddar with a pesto bread-stick & their apple/lemon soda.



I have to say I think the flavor combination on the pizza worked really well, the ham was a kind of salty sweet and the fresh clean sweetness of the pear blended real well with it. The pesto bread-stick was totally awesome, and the soda was not what you'd normally expect it wasn't as sweet, but I think I liked it.

While we were eating in the restaurant we got a couple of cute little visitors, and they were not at all shy about coming right up to your chair.



We even met-up with some of the PDX knitters while we were there.



We also had a taste off between Cupcake Jones the chocolate & red velvet & Saint Cupcake peanut butter cookie.




I know, I know your supposed to use the same flavor but Saint Cupcake was out of Red Velvet if I remember right & I didn't miss it. I have to say though that I personally prefer Saint Cupcake, because the large cupcakes from Jones are filled and with the icing on top it just was too sweet for me, also the SC cupcake was moister.

We hit some other places that day but the best was Sock Dreams, where I got some most excellently off the wall socks.



Oh, yeah and I got yarn too, but only from Happy Knits and I actually bought yarn with a specific project in mind, usually I just get it because it's super pretty and can't pass it up or if I have a vague idea of what I want to use it for. Anyway here's a pic of my crawl booty.

Perler, The New Crack

Yep, I have a new addiction, not that I needed one as I don't have time for the ones I already have. Now for the details Perler beads are small, short, and multicolored tubes that you arrange into a design on a pegboard, and then melt with an iron.



They look so innocent and you think to yourself you know your cousin had had some of these and made some fun 8 bit characters from classic Nintendo games wouldn't those be just great for your friend who is a HUGE Mario fan? You know you could make a set of 3 or 4 iconic items from the game and he can turn them into magnets or hang them on his wall.

A few hours and many beads, and aching fingers later...



I have another friend who's pretty fond of Pacman so I made these for him.



It didn't stop there either, I was in full 8 bit mode and as I'd pretty much run out of black and white I picked up a second bucket at Ikea so I could make these...



It's a Moogle from FF7, I ended up having to glue the little pom pom on because the way it was designed I couldn't be the beads to melt together. I planned to also make the mages and possibly a couple of the main characters.

I also made some from one of my favorites Space Invaders, I'm not real sure about the proportions between the figures as I had to use multiple sites for images, but for the most part they look alright.



I have plans to make other characters including a Frankenstein for one of my friends but first I need to order some more of the individual colors for shading.

Once in A Blue Moon Sale & Cast-on

So yesterday in honor of the New Year's Blue Moon & Lunar Eclipse, Tina of Blue Moon Fiber Arts had the Once in A Very Blue Moon Sale and Open House.

At 11:13 Pacific time a magic button would appear on the BMFA site that when clicked, would deliver unto you a choice Air, Earth, Water, or Fire. Now as I was at work at the time and using my break to order yarn(for which my cube mate rolled her eyes at me) I didn't have much time to deliberate, plus my budget is still suffering a bit from Christmas. I picked up 1 each in medium weight of Water, Fire, and Earth.

I can't wait for them to arrive and I know they'll be gorgeous. I also think that since I have a tendency towards blues, greens, and purples having surprise colors that I may not have ever picked for myself, will be fun.

The Open House ran until 10pm and my cousin A-chan and I were able to go visit after work. I was kinda weird for me on the drive out, because my family had lived out there for years, and we weren't that far from Mollenhour Rd. I learned to drive on those back roads, but I hadn't been out there in years, and I just had the most eerie nostalgic feeling, I think it was because I was going somewhere I'd never been but knew the roads(if that makes any sense).

Anyway we made it up the hill and found the place without too much trouble, the GPS did lead us a bit astray at the end but it wasn't too big a deal.

The studio was amazing, there were boxes of wonderful yarn on just about every available surface, and a wall of sock yarn that ran almost the whole length of the barn. It was great fun to sit around and visit with the other ladies, and Tina put the bobbin of yarn she'd just finished up to her nose and started sniffing it, it was the cutest thing. I didn't take any pictures though because it just didn't feel like the place for it, ya know?

It was really hard to decide on what to get without going totally overboard and completely blowing my budget for the next month or two. I did manage, barely to remember that I have 3 skeins on the way. With that in mind I stuck to the rare gems since that's what the sale was all about, and even though I got a lot, only three of the ones from the studio are for me.



The four on the left are light weight, and the 2 on the right and one along the bottom are all medium weight. Trying to get a good picture was a little frustrating, I first tried it outside, usually the abundance of natural light gives a truer color, but since it's winter and I live in NW Oregon, the skies are perpetually heavily overcast. This means the pictures came out on the blue side, a little washed out, and the third skein from the right is too dark to see the color, it's actually this gorgeous dark purple with bits of teal. I tried later that evening inside with all the lights in the vicinity on to try to get a photo with warmer tones and better color.



It worked in that I got better color saturation & truer color in all but the dark purple skein, I just don't have a big enough light source right now to get true color on dark items. I should probably look at getting a couple of freestanding adjustable lights with flaps so I can get sufficient light levels for pictures when it's nasty outside.

Oh, I almost forgot the Eclipse Cast On, I decided to go with the Openwork Eyelet Scarf by Jennifer Pace, here's the link for it on Raverly. I'm really liking it so far, the pattern is easy to remember, and it has a cool nubbly look.



I'm using STR Heavy Weight in Rolling Stone, at least I think it is because it's a mill end.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Mitered 2

I got it done in time! Yay!

I really like making blankets from the center, because they grow so fast at the beginning and it's really encouraging, I also love the way the stripes look when worked in the round, and you have the freedom to just BO when you're sick of it. Knitting those last 3 to 5 skeins though, feels like you're not getting anywhere, I mean once you get to the point where each row is taking about a half hour to complete and it's taking close to 8 hours to complete each stripe, it's just not fun anymore.

I thought it'd be cool to take a picture each day I worked on it to show the progress, and that worked pretty good for awhile but then I had to switch to every few days because there just wasn't that much of a visual difference.
12/7



12/8



12/9



12/10



12/13



12/17



12/24 Finished!



The end product, totally worth it. I got the blanket done Christmas Eve giving me just enough time to wash & block it. Later my sister-in-law said the blanket was Pooh Bear colors and that Lorelie loves Pooh, so the color choices worked out well.

The one thing with it for me is the line made by the beginning of row color changes, I'm not real sure if maybe I made a mistake or if I could have prevented or hidden it.

I'll Be Mitered!

So I'm mired in Christmas projects right now and am currently working on the one that will probably take the longest, a blanket for my nice Lorelei. When I first started looking at patterns I knew for sure that I didn't want to do another Pinwheel Blanket as I've already made two of them but I still wanted something that lent it's self to being multi-colored and could be made from yarn already in my stash.

I found the Mitered Square Afghan Project and really liked the look of it, and the fact that it was modular, so I immediately copied it onto the back of an old receipt, grabbed the oh so delightful Knitpicks Shine Worsted, cast on, and voilà it was done.



I was really impressed that it only took me a couple hours to complete, and while I was sitting there musing at my own speediness when a few things occur to me that A) it kind of looks a little long in one corner, B) looks like a bee, C) is really not all that large and D) has an awful lot of strings hanging off of it.



I lined it up on my trusty cutting mat to find that it's roughly 8 1/4" square though the one corner does kind of curve it's way up to 9".

I kinda stared at it for a while and did the math for a descent sized blanket I'd need 36 squares which would give me a blanket roughly 48"x48", with nine complete squares. The other thing I realized is that I only have 3 colors in this yarn and for the sake of not messing up the gauge & care instructions, I decided it would be best to use all the same yarn. As I sat there contemplating the square and fiddling with the 18 loose ends, it started to dawn on me that I was going to have 36x as many ends to deal with. In addition to sewing all those squares together into bigger squares and then sewing them together into an even bigger square.

Oh boy, am I in big trouble. I really tried to think of a way to knit the 1/4 squares together as I went, but as of right now I can't think of a way that will give it the same look. SO, new plan...

I remembered that in the Knit-A-Long book there is a pattern for a mitered square using sock yarn called the Barn Raising Quilt. I thought that it would work just fine on bigger needles and I could just keep going until it was the size I wanted, as for the hole a the center I could knit or crochet a flower to sew into it, if it still bothers me when the blanket is done.

I started it last night, and got a decent amount done.



Today I was able to move it off the DPNs and onto my 24" circulars, and lay it out to see how it's looking. Right now it looks pretty yellow, but I don't think that will last all that long and I think that so long as I sandwich the Terracotta colored yarn between two bands of the Fedora it wont clash.

I Completely Forgot to Post This...

Ok so a few weeks ago I was working on stuff for the first craft bazaar of the 2010 Relay for Life fund raiser. I'd taken pictures of everything before I sent it off but forgot to actually write the entry.

Ok so here it all is pined out to dry, the picture kind of reminds me of a bug collection, and all those poor little creatures impaled and placed on display for the delectation of others. Gah, what a macabre, wasteful, and depressing thought.



I also took individual pictures of everything...


1x1 rib black sock yarn held double along with ladder yarn.

garter stitch with Fun Fur.

1x1 rib with 6" fringe in Brazilia Pompon.

I actually used a pattern for this one it's Mary Jane Booties by Lucie Sinkler, though I didn't knit them flat like the pattern calls for.


These hats were also from a pattern it's the Sweet and Simple Baby Hat by Debbie Bodmer. I only did a row of the I-cord though so they have just a slight point.


The same pattern was also used on these hats, though they are in a smaller size & I actually made the little sprout like the pattern calls for, well mostly anyway, I didn't make mine long enough to tie a knot with. The booties and hats were all made with Tahki Cotton Classic.


Stocking knit made with cotton tape(I think).


These were a test knit item I finished back in March, and as far as I could tell the pattern worked fine but the designer still hasn't made it available, and as of today it's still listed as being in the test knit phase. I used Simply Soft on it, and have to say it was probably not a great choice.


I think I may have missed getting a picture of them once they were sewn together, the pattern is Double Nickles Wristwarmers by Jessica.

It was kinda sad that give up the warmers as they are made with a really interesting felt yarn. The texture was a bit on the rough side, but not itchy, and because it was felt there was no spring to the yarn other than what the stitch pattern lends to the item. I thought it was ideal for gloves and mittens because, I wouldn't expect it to stretch out much, or be as prone to snagging & getting damaged as a plied fiber.

I haven't really had any luck in finding more of it, and it was a de-stash item that most unfortunately didn't have a ballband so the manufacturer is a mystery. I tried asking the gal I got it from what it was but she couldn't remember because it had been on her stash for quite a while.

Swatch

Last fall I acquired 5 skeins of, very delicious and discontinued Worsted Ware (a superwash merino that is as the name suggests worsted weight) at the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Barn sale, I especially love the darker of the blueish ones.



I've been wrestling with patterns trying to decide what to make them into for the last year, and had just started a cabled scarf with it for a test knit. Unfortunately however my cousin who also got a skein of the Worsted Ware, didn't have as much trouble and used it to make a very cute bolero for her extremely cute daughter...

It fulled the first time it was washed, in fact she said it felted better than the Twisted, which is actually intended for fulling.

So I frogged the scarf and, took about 2 grams off each of the skeins, and knit them up into a swatch strip(something I never do) on needles a size larger than recommended. I wanted to make sure that it had plenty of room to full if it was so inclined. When I was knitting it I noticed was that the pale blue is substantially heavier than the other others, I think it may actually be a bulky.

After I'd rubbed, yanked, and swished it around in some very hot Dawny water, I had my results.



While I did get at least a little fuzzing on all of them, due to the extreme mistreatment the colors had endured, the green and pale blue are only two that went for it completely.