Recently in Projects Category

There's too much going on right now and not enough of it involving yarn or fabric. There are currently no commitments on the calendar this weekend, so I am planning on spending a lot of time quilting and knitting.

I was able to finish a roll brim hat for Todd on Tuesday night. It's the same as the one I made for Lantzilla, just smaller. Horus was kind enough to model it for me.

Cori came over for Craft Night on Monday. We worked on a darling knitted owl kit she picked up at ImagiKnits. It had a tricky cast on and different way to add a stitch. Looks like it will be fun once she gets going.

I made progress on the Dutch Tiles quilts. The backing fabric arrived from Amsterdam. It's okay, but I don't lovelovelove it. The colors are a bit too faded for my taste. But it matches the front fabric and hey, it is the backing. Not like I have to look at it a lot.

I cut out backing for 3 of the 4 wall hangings, cut out batting for all of them, and basted one wall hanging. I have to get to a quilt shop this weekend and pick up some bobbins for my Viking sewing machine. I think I also need to get a walking foot for it. Will have to go through my stash of sewing machine parts again. I'd rather not use the Singer for the quilting of these if I can help it. It's fine for piecing, but I find it a bit hard to control for quilting.

I also made progress on the Beatrix Potter Patchwork quilt. There are 16 rows of 16 squares and I now have eight two-row units. I have to press the seams and then continue to stitch them together. It's amazing how much easier it is to match points when the seams are pressed in opposite directions. I need to get better at always doing that.

I have more drive to work on the Beatrix Potter quilt than the wall hangings right now. I really need to prioritize Kitmas gifts above all else. I just picked out a pattern for another Kitmas hat and I want to start on that too. It should be pretty easy to whip out.

We also need to start working on the wedding fabric boxes. We need to do the test run to make sure that we want to go the route of fabric boxes. So much to do!

Ever since I got back from Europe, I've been thinking about the Dutch tiles fabric that I picked up in Amsterdam. This weekend I got it out and made four small wall hangings out of it.

There were enough tiles to make two quilts of four tiles each, and two of 16 tiles. I had just enough fabric from the fat quarters to make the boarders around them.

I was amazed at how quick it was to make these, even if I forgot to square the tiles before I sewed the bars to them and had to rip it all out since they were slightly larger than 6-inches. I realized that most of the quilts that I have in production are at least queen bed size. That's big. No wonder it takes me so long to finish one!

I decided that I really should back these wall hangings with the same fabric as the front. So I went to the Den Haan & Wagenmakers site and ordered enough fabric to back all four, as well as the binding. I decided to go with a black print since I was afraid the blue wouldn't quite match.

I hope the fabric arrives soon. I really want to finish these up. I'm just going to stitch in the ditch, so that should be fast too. Yay for small projects and getting done quickly!

I often find that if I'm going to knit while there is something social going on, I tend to do better when it's an ultra-simple pattern (read, just knit stitch). But most of my projects are more complex these days. I've been doing a lot more knitting with cables and lace, and I'm getting better at paying attention to what I'm doing. At Craft Night this month I decided that I would work on Erik's Celtic Cable Scarf. I went in confident that I could talk and pay attention to what I was knitting.

When you look at the photos of the scarf at first they seem fine. But on closer inspection you will see that I have indeed messed up the pattern. The pattern basically goes 4 twists, 2 twists, long straight bit with 1 twist, 4 twists, 2 twists, 3 twists, 2 twists then back to the 4 and repeat. If you look at the bit near the needles, you'll see that I have missed the long part with the single twist.

Gah.

I pointed this out to the ladies at Craft Night and they all thought that I could make it work. "Just do that again and make it part of the pattern!" they said. But that assumes that I can deconstruct and figure out what I did where. Okay, I could certainly DO that, but it would take some time.

Alas I think I'm just going to rip it out. It really isn't that much. And I would prefer to have it right. I guess I should stick with my plain knit stitch sweater the next time the group is over.

Celtic Cable Scarf
Started: March 30, 2008
Completed:

See, this is how I end up with so many projects in the hopper at once. I'm almost 3/4 of the way done with my Hat Series. And what do I want to do? Not finish the 1.25 hats I have left for that. Oh no. I want to start a NEW hat and scarf project. Why? Because it's freakin' cold here in San Francisco right now. And I keep thinking about this lovely Merino wool I have in my stash.

Isn't it pretty? And you should see how it feels. Just lovely. So... I'm thinking of making a scarf and hat set out of it. I have four balls, I hope that would be enough. I think if I don't make the scarf too wide, I should be okay. But I could always go back to Noe Knits and get an extra ball or two. Just for safety sake.

I'm really inspired by the pattern in the Amanda hat that I just finished. I love the weaving effect. I was thinking of doing that for the scarf, with little rows of garter stitch in between. It doesn't look quite as good on the wrong side as it does on the right side, but it's okay.

The issue is that the original pattern I have is for in the round. Not sure how to convert that to a scarf where I'm going back and forth. I was wondering if I could just knit it on circular needles and slide the stitches back and forth. But I don't think that will actually work. I think I need to work the pattern backwards. I'm not sure if that will give me the same effect. I'll have to play with it. Stay tuned.

The hat I'm working on is coming along nicely. This is the photo of where it was on July 29. The photo below is what it looked like as of last night. I'm about to start the decreasing. All of the cables will meet together at the center.

This pattern really isn't difficult. The purl into the front and then back stitch was the most complex, but only because I had never done it before. The hat has a number of cable and twist stitches. They make the knitting much slower, especially the twists. I'm not entirely sure that I see the point for them. I'm not sure that I see how that is effecting the resulting pattern. But I'm sure the designer put those stitches there for a good reason.

I'm guessing that I will be finished with this in another couple of days. There are only 26 rows left. Yay! Then I get to move on to the next hat. I have a series of four that I'm working on.