Fusing our brains?

Some of the knitters from my regular Tuesday night group came over to my place tonight for an evening of non-fibery crafts. We made fondue--chocolate and cheese, and after some wine and snacks put the food aside (Oh, except for Emily, who was a fan of the mini-beers.) to get to work on the project of the evening.

Heidi taught us how to fuse plastic grocery bags into a sort of fabric. It was really fun, and I don't think we ruined her iron, 'tho we may have gotten a little light-headed on the fumes.

There are many tutorials online that tell how to do this, but you really hardly need a tutorial. All you need are

The thin grocery type of plastic bag,

Velum paper (because for some reason the plastic doesn't stick to that)

An iron.

Everything we did was an experiement--we played with the number of layers of plastic, the temperature of the iron and the kind of bags used.

At the end of the night, we wanted to see if we could make buttons by melting some bags in the oven. These results are cool, but not super useful. Of course, as knitters, we love buttons. We put some cut up bags in mini muffin tins. Here they are before being baked.

We poked holes in them with skewers.

Here are the somewhat other-worldly results.

My own personal favorite project is this wallet I made from a black "liquor store bag" (the one that carried the mini-beers), and a green newspaper bag. I love how the colors melded together, tho' the inside is still quite black. It has a lovely papery look and feel. I "seamed" the wallet by melting the sides. I'm still thinking about closures, maybe a snap, maybe a velcro "dot."

I don't think I'll be doing this very often, because although it seems the fumes are relatively safe, they did irritate my throat a wee bit, and I don't want to be releasing that kind of irritant into the environment in or outside my home regularly. But I'm thrilled to have my wallet!

Knit a Selvedge

A few years ago, when I was re-learning to knit, my friend Corrine, who was my Emergency Dropped Stitch Fixer, told me you should always slip the first stitch of a row. I did, for a while, but I didn't end up with the nice even Selvedge edge that she always had. She wasn't really able to explain why not, so I just gave up on the idea after a while.

ETA: My brother asks in the comments, what's a selvedge? It's basically the edge of the fabric, a "finished" edge. When referring to sewing fabric, it's the "side" edges of the fabric as opposed to the "raw" top and bottom edges. In knitting, it refers to the side edges.

Later, after I had learned about stitch anatomy and orientation, I finally figured it out. The slipped selvedge edge is really an elongated stockinette stitch, and you can't simply slip the first stitch to get it. What you do depends on what kind of fabric you're making. Here's a quick overview:

Stockinette
If you're knitting stockinette stitch, on the KNIT rows, you'll slip the first stitch KNITWISE--this is the opposite of how stitches are normally slipped. Slipping knitwise means that the needle goes from front to back as if to knit. On the PURL rows, you bring the yarn to the front FIRST, then slip the first stitch KNITWISE.

Garter Stitch
Slip the first stitch knitwise, purl the last stitch of the row. Here you're essentially creating that one stitch of stockinette on each edge.

Generally Speaking
All other stitch patterns work pretty much the same way. You can easily convert the first and last stitch of the row to stockinette, making sure to slip the stitch on the public side of the fabric and purl it on the wrong side. How you knit into these slipped stitches will depend on how they're hanging on the needle. If you want an open stockinette chain, just make sure you're not twisting your stitches.

Adding Stitches
Should you add 2 stitches for the selvedge? I would say it depends. If it's a scarf, you probably want to add the stitches so the rest of the stitch pattern remains intact. If it's a garment with seams, there's more of a judgement call. The designer has most likely taken the seaming into account with her stitch count, nonetheless, if your gauge is worsted or lighter, a stitch on each end shouldn't change much.

There are a few web sites that have other tutorials abut selvedge edges, some with nice pictures or drawings. All of these instructions vary slightly in style and technique, so as with all knitting, I recommend--do what works for you!

Bella Online
Tech Knitting
The YarnPath


[ETA]: I want to draw attention to Kristy's comment as she's an expert knitter and technical editor (and author of Knitting Patterns for Dummies!) Kristy says:

Just to provide a contrary point of view: I don't slip edge stitches. On a scarf, etc. It's strictly an aesthetic choice and I prefer the sameness of stitches over the slipped, doubletall stitches on the edges almost always. Any wonkiness in my edge stitch is that much more apparent when it's twice as big! More recently I've tried Annie Modesitt's slip-stitch edging which makes a nice edge, if you need something that behaves itself and doesn't have a super splashy presence. You can find it in her "Alison's Scarf" -- essentially you're making a very skinny border of double-knitting.

On garments that will be seamed I don't like slipping stitches either. I like a plain ol' stockinette edge. Slipped edge stitches cut my choices for seaming in half and I like the results better when I have more options on where to stick the needle.

Thanks for sharing your techniques, Kristy!

Technorati Tags:
stockinette, knitting, knit, selvedge, edge, garter, stockinett

Magic Crochet?

I found this at the thrift store yesterday, and of course, I had to have it, even though it was in a plastic bag and I couldn't really see what it was. Apparently, it makes something like a granny square in three sizes. Once I've read the instructions and tried it out, I'll let you know.

I'm trying to bust through my to do list today because I already have a reward for myself planned. Tonight is the anniversary party at A Tangled Skein, my local yarn shop. They'll have treats and shmoozing as well as a sale, so it should be good fun.

Oh, and Jay says "Hi!"

Have a good weekend!

New Favorite...

IMG_0125.JPG
Originally uploaded by laracroft3

Thanks to Carol's blog, I have a new favorite crocheter to watch out for. Danielle (aka LaraCroft) lives in Spain and works as a professional musician, but she also loves Jacquard Crochet, a version of tapestry crochet worked through the back loop of the stitch. She produces amazing designs for gloves, mittens, hats, and more. And Carol isn't the only one to take note of her work. She's got a following on Ravelry, and she has a pattern for socks appearing in the upcoming issue of Interweave Crochet.

A Final note about TNNA...

Dinner at La Muse
Originally uploaded by plainsight

This was one of my favorite moments of the conference. A group of us gathered after the show closed on Saturday night and wandered until we stumbled upon this restaurant called La Muse. We took over the garden seating and were quite comfortable under the heaters and pretty lighted palms. The French food (including crêpes!) was delicious, and the company was even better. Pictured here are Cookie A, Robyn Chachula, Dora Ohrenstein, Shannon Okey and Kristy Porter. Not pictured are Jess and Casey and Cecily Keim.

Crochet and Craft

Coffee
Originally uploaded by Bnice2mice

The Craft Magazine Blog is full of crochet-love the past few days, with lots of great links including one to the flickr set of Bnice2mice who made this cute tea cup as well as lots of other neat amigurumi-style toys. I love how she says "I taught myself how to crochet via the oh-so-insightful Crocheting for Dummies. Being Queen Dummy myself, I only know one stitch. This is what happens when I use it."

KnitBoy's 200

aiight
Originally uploaded by knitboy1

John Brinegar (aka KnitBoy) made a giant crocheted scarf that he's just posted on Ravelry, which I'm guessing will have folks all over running for their bulky yarn and big hooks. I love the bold colors and giant stitches.

A Fair Trade

Yesterday, I was having tea with my friend Tanya, an artist, photographer, fashion designer and all around creative person who moved to my neighborhood not long after I did. She spoke so eloquently about why she no longer sells her work, neither her photographs nor her clothing line. Tanya feels that the act of selling and creating a market for craft necessarily devalues it. When she was designing children’s clothes, she says she made sure that every step of the process—from her use of organic materials to the fair wages she paid to her pattern makers and sewers—had integrity. But, at the same time, she wanted a product that was affordable, not cheap, but accessible by most people. The only way for her to do this was basically to not pay herself for her time. How “fair” is that?

Tanya mentioned a book she’s reading called The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde. Tanya says that in the book the author argues that while selling art may devalue it, giving it away actually adds to its value. It’s a theme that resonates with me. I’m going to check the book out and report back with a review.

Talk of making a living seems to be percolating through many of the conversations I’m having and observing lately among my creative friends. Annie Modesitt has put out a call to arms for needlework designers to organize in order to demand fairer wages and terms (She argues that designers today make the same as she did in 1986, which, adjusted for inflation is really a huge pay cut); Crochet designer Kim Guzman has written an eloquent post on her blog this week about what she really makes in a year, and the impact of copyright infringement on her small business.

When I look at the designers like Annie and Cat Bordhi, Lucy Neatby—those who truly make a living doing what they do, one thing is clear: they’re running a business as much as they are being creative. They are self-publishers, public speakers, teachers, DVD producers and more. They run their own schedules, do billing, ship boxes of books, do graphic design and layout, they can make anything happen. These women are inspiring, but their work is daunting and more than a full time job. Although I don’t mind running a business, not everyone who designs wants to do that. Is that the only way to make a living as a designer?

Several solutions are being hatched, taking advantage of the Internet to allow designers to more easily connect directly to crocheters and knitters. For instance, Ravelry is developing a new pattern store, which will allow designers to offer direct sales off the site. Interweave is now selling “out of print” patterns on their web site, and giving designers a piece of the pie. Of course, that means we have to be even more careful when negotiating magazine rights to make sure that we take future online use of our work into consideration. (Now I’m starting to sound like a striking screen writer!)

I’m hopeful that all this talk will lead to more awareness among designers about how to get a fair shake and more awareness from the public about the state of the industry. But I wonder if publishers will try and hide behind the umbrella of economic downturn in order to avoid dealing with the issue.

Hard Work

Divine Bird has an interesting post about creativity and craft and how in her opinion, it's more about practice than amazing talent that makes people good at what they do. She's a spinner with some nice looking yarn on her etsy shop.

Still jetlagged from my trip, I'm forgoing a walk this morning in favor of getting right to pattern writing. Hopefully, I'll be able to reward myself with the walk later, and maybe it will be warmer, it was 32 Fahrenheit this morning when I took Jay to school which is, believe it or not, unseasonably cold for January in Maryland.

My real reward for finishing these patterns will be getting to start the designs that are now on my list, I'm itching to start sketching and swatching and playing with the new yarn I've discovered at TNNA.

One of my favorites is the new Panda Silk from Crystal Palace:



It's a wool bamboo blend with just 5% silk for strength--a sock yarn that doesn't need nylon! It has amazing sheen and softness and would make wonderful shawls too. I like how the multi-colored yarns are "tonal" instead of variegated, and each one has a solid that goes with it.

I'm resisting all of the great sales that seem to be assaulting me through e-mail. Namaste bags are on sale at Joann's, (I hear there's a coupon floating around for them too) and KPixie has their kits on sale, including three of my blue sky patterns, the Cropped Cardi, the Suri Merino Crocheted Sweater, and the Pleated Vest. They're showing the vest in Charcoal, which I think looks very cool.

On the Cover

Crochet Today Cover
Originally uploaded by plainsight

There are still a few weeks before this issue will hit the newsstands, but I was excited to discover at TNNA that my recent vest design for TNNA will be featured on the March/April cover of Crochet Today magazine.

Before I left for TNNA, I had undertaken an entire week of taking a yoga class every day--the local studio hosts a free week after New Year's each year, and this year was the first time I had taken advantage of it. (I've done lots of yoga in the past, but none since Jay was born--he's now three). It was a great way to start off the year, and I felt awesome, and maybe even a little taller.

Of course, right at the end of the week, I got a bad cold, then I left for TNNA. Walking the show floor is very hard on a body--hard concrete, carrying bags, not much sitting or stretching, and being "on" all day. I try to mitigate this by wearing good shoes , but I end up being stiff and sore by the end of the week. I took a red-eye home, which didn't help matters much, then napped for a good part of yesterday to catch up on sleep.

Today, I'm back on track, catching up, and I went to yoga class where the teacher spent a good deal of time on poses to work the very joints I had stressed. Yeah! I left class feeling much better.

I only have about an hour and a half before the work day is over and the kids come home, so I'm going to try and get one pattern written out, and start making lists about impending work. It looks like it's going to be a busy spring!

Magic Balls

Brandon Mably teaching Magic Balls class
Originally uploaded by plainsight

Today I took a color theory class with Brandon Mably. Brandon is part of Kaffe Fasset's design team and a great designer and author in his own right.

In the beginning of the class, Brandon asked us to pool all our yarn and create two balls by tying short strands together--a light ball and a dark ball. Then we were just to knit the simple poppy fair isle pattern and see what happened.

While I was working I was wary and not very happy with my swatch, I thought my color changes were too stark and the repeats were too long. At that point, I switched up and started using shorter pieces of yarn, which made for more interesting knitting. We were allowed to change what was in the ball, but not to rip out what we were doing.

This was not a technique class, but Brandon did share a quick little technique for weaving in ends as you go--Its a technique I've used a little for intarsia, but it works just as well for this magic ball project because you have all the ends where you've tied the pieces of yarn together. Basically, you flip the ends over and under the working yarn so they're woven in the back of the work for four stitches, the you can snip off the excess.

While we were knitting, Brandon played music which made us knit more and talk less-it was a brilliant idea, especially considering he was cramming a day-long class into a three-hour time slot. I was surprised by his choice of music. Tho' I don't think he's much older than me, it turns out he's a bit of a folk-y playing Pete Seeger, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchel, and more. I seemed to be the only one humming along.

At the end of the class, Brandon took all of our swatches and pinned them to the board and then came the best part. He described what he liked about each swatch making its creator feel like a true color genius. Brandon described the colors like someone might describe a fine wine using elaborate metaphors and creative descriptions--one set of poppies was a gravel road, another a sunset. My swatch, which I had been ambivalent about was now "bold, daring and hip."

James was only a snail...

IMG00033.jpg
Originally uploaded by plainsight

We saw this little guy on the way to the opening day of The National Needle Arts (TNNA) conference which is happening this weekend in Long Beach, CA.

I've been getting energized by all the yarn and great folks here and have lots of new ideas for designs and projects.

The big news is, I, along with friends Julie, Shannon and Kristi, learned the ancient art of Tatting! Here we all are trying it out:

Some great new yarns have been unveiled--I love seeing more truly certified organic cotton--like that from Nashua Handknits, and Blue Sky Alpaca. Here's some lovely and soft yak down yarn which is gently collected from the big animals who roam around Colorado twice a year.


The woman who owns Bijou Basin Ranch said she feeds her yak a little grain so they'll be happy to come when she call them, and then when they're ready uses a big dog brush to comb out the down. She sells all gorgeous natural colors, and the yarn is as soft as cashmere.

Here's a new design that I just completed for Lana Knits (Hemp for Knitting). It's a crocheted shawlette, and we're making plans for more designs to come soon.



More to come...

Flying Time

I'm in San Francisco for a couple of days staying with my brother and his family and seeing my niece Solveig for the first time. Here she's wearing the sweater I made for her on the plane--it's a modular pullover made from Malabrigo Chunky --just two balls!

Solveig loves to roll around on the floor--she rolls until she reaches an impediment, then starts rolling the other direction, so I've been calling her "Roomba."

I didn't have her measurements, so I really got lucky on the sizing. The neckline is a simple half double crochet shell.

Here's a detail of the button I used to close the neck in the back: (I found it at Imagiknit, a nice yarn shop in the Castro district of San Francisco).



I left the seaming on the right side of the garment because I like the way it looked.

Krum Kakke

Krum Kakke
Originally uploaded by plainsight

Here's the first of a few posts wrapping up our recent trip home for the holidays--It was lovely and relaxed and there was lots of time for knitting and crafting and cooking.

Here my dad and I are making Krum Kakke, a traditional Norwegian cookie that's like a crisp crêpe, made on the iron you see at the bottom of the photo. It takes two people--one to cook the batter on the iron, and one to lift the krum kakke off the iron and roll it around the cone-shaped form. I took the latter job because its hot work, and my years working in the food industry have made my fingers rather insensitive to heat. (Between heat and knitting, I have basically no fingerprints left, or so they told me when I had to get fingerprinted by the county to teach after school children's classes).



In the photo above you can more clearly see a finished krum kakke and the fabulous apron my mom let me wear. It's one my grandmother brought back to the states from Okinawa in the late 1960s.

Below, my mom is making another traditional Norwegian cookie, Sandbakkles, with Selma and her friend Nora. Sandbakkles are a sugar cookie type dough that is moulded into little mini tart forms and baked. The apron my mom is wearing is one she made in home economics class in high school!