Slick Knit

Knitting a Difference

This Saturday I am participating in a Crochet & Knit-a-Thon to benefit Make a Difference Day.

Make a Difference Day is an annual event every 4th Saturday in October. It's basically just a day for people to forget about their own problems and needs and spend a day helping someone else.  This year it is October 22nd but the Knit-a-Thon is a week in advance so I plan to spend two Saturdays knitting for the homeless.

My own problems this year have been overwhelming.  My husband committed suicide in February, I'm selling the house we built, the car we bought together was repossed, I had to sell my engagement ring to pay for repairs to a crappy car that was loaned to me (and that then broke down just days later).  I spent my first birthday without him, next week is his birthday and the holidays are rapidly approaching.  (I don't want to bum out the knitting community so this will probably be the only time I write about all that in the klog but you can read about it on my other blog.)

But as bad as this year has been, I have also been very blessed.  I may not have our house anymore but I do have a roof over my head.  I don't have the RAV anymore but I can commute to and from work with my sister (who I also live with, conveniently) so my gas and insurance expenses are much lower.  I have family and friends who love me and support me and help me through this.  My life wasn't devastated by a hurricane or tsunami or terrorists.  Although every day I think about how much my life sucks right now, I also think every day about how lucky I am compared to others. 

I know making hats, scarves and mittens for the homeless isn't much.  Shelter and food would help more.  But it's something, I can afford it, and maybe it will help some people out this winter.

If you get a chance, I urge you to do something for someone else on October 22nd. 

The Bag That Ate Cleveland

I finished the body of the Not-So-Hawaiian bag yesterday.

This picture (which will get even bigger if you click, agggh, run away from the crazy big bag) does not give you a proper sense of scale regarding the utter bigness of this purse/bag/tote thingy.  That is because I cropped out anything that would provide scale because it was mainly trash and clutter as my bedroom is a disaster and 1am on a worknight maybe be picture-taking-time but will never be clean-the-bedroom time.

So what did I do instead of cleaning the bedroom?  I went downstairs and put the purse on top of the dog and took a picture, of course.  Because pets provide scale and the cat lives in a different house for the moment.  Xander is a Cocker Spaniel, probably just a fat English but possibly a really gorram fat American.  (English and American Cocker Spaniels are two different breeds.  English are more Springer Spaniel in appearance around the head - flatter head, longer nose than the American spaghetti-eating cockers.  Either way he's spoiled rotten but pretty darn cute.)  That look of "Hi, hi, hi, take my picture, hi!" was originally a look of "get this damn thing off of me, I'm sleeping."  The secret attitude adjuster?  One Pringle chip held above the camera with a stern "Leave it!" on the side.  (I did give him the Pringle when I was done taking pictures of the dog wearing a purse.)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, it's big.  The after-felting dimensions given are 12.5" tall by 16" wide x 3.5" deep.  She doesn't provide before-felting dimensions but currently it is 18.75" tall by 18" wide by 5.75" deep.  I think the width and depth will be fine but I really think it's much taller than it should be. 

This pattern at Knitty shows how a gusset (the little triangles of extra material/paper on the bottom of rectangular bags) is made.  On most bags with gussets - like paper grocery bags - the gussets are on the outside.  When I taught rubber stamping I used to teach how to make a small bag out of a business-sized envelope.  (Why would one want to make a small bag out of a business-sized envelope?  Because they are really damn cute.)  We always folded the gussets to the outside.  With knitted bags I understand why they are folded to the inside.  Otherwise the bottom corners of the bag would be extra bulky on the outside and the bag wouldn't sit evenly.  But folding them to the inside leaves this weird gappy area at the bottom sides of the bag as shown in the pictures to the right.  I looked through the book and she only uses this gusset techinque on two bags.  On this one the gappy area is covered by the outside pockets that were deleted from my version.  The other bag is a much smaller bag and the photo shows only the front so I don't know how she dealt with the gappy part. 

My concern is that once the bag has stuff in it the bottom corners will sag because of the gusset gap.  I'm probably going to seam them together but I can't decide if I should do it before or after felting.  I'd appreciate any input from anyone with experience felting a bag with gussets.

Now I have to make two 42" I-cord handles and another I-cord around 54" that will get woven in and out of the garter-stitch border at the top and form the button loops for closure.  I-cord is so boring that I'm dreading it but I've got to get it done so I can move onto another Christmas present project.  So I'm off to I-cord until I can't stand it.

Clapotis & Purses & Scarves, oh my

I finished my Clapotis!  I finished the knitting last Tuesday and then Wednesday night I wove in the ends and futzed with all the drop stitches until they were dropped.  I showed it off at the Knit Wits lunchtime group at work on Tuesday and everyone seemed to like it.  I should probably block it since the ends are curling and ugly but I have no where to block that won't immediately become a dog playground.  I hope to get more pictures next week.  We moved a couple of weeks ago and I can't find the dc cord for my camera and it is deady dead dead. 

And with only 79 days until Christmas and plans to give all the adults in my family knitted gifts I am now in major Freakout and Knit mode with two projects in process and many others in my head.

First, I'm working on a purse for my sister, Donna, at her request and using the pattern and yarn she picked out.  It's from Pursenalities.  The pattern is called Blue Hawaii but we've changed it up quite a bit.  First we nixed the outside pockets as useless and all the novelty fizzy yarn because we both think it makes the purse look a bit tacky.  Then we completely changed the colors.  As designed the pattern calls for one skein each of 7 different Cascade 220 colors in shades of blue and green.  The picture on that webpage isn't very good because in the book the colors are really pretty, very oceany.  They just aren't Donna's style.  Instead we are using only three colors - a heathered plum on the bottom (8420), a heathered green in the middle (9461) and a solid orchidy color on the top (not sure of the number, the label is at home, I think it's 8909). 

I took pictures of all my stash one night, this is the purse yarn before I started.  I have an in progress picture but it's trapped in the camera too.  I didn't ball the third skein of green but I'm not convinced 7 full skeins are needed.

I did the bottom rows in plum and then continued the plum for the bottom third of the bag, then did one row with a strand each of plum and green, and now I'm on the green section of the body, row 33 of 62 body rows.  I really like this pattern so far. Every odd row is knit but the first stitch on each corner is slipped purlwise with the yarn in back; every even row is just knit.  It's a really nice, subtle way to give the bag a more squared-off shape instead of round.

I've also started the Easy Lace Scarf from Lisa Knits for my mother for Christmas in Sirdar Cossack Chunky #88.  It's the two burgundy skeins in this stash photo, though the color is way off.  On this page the color is much more true.  I tried to talk Mom out of picking this yarn for a lace scarf since it's really too bulky to shown the pattern.  But the yarn is really soft, the colors are beautiful, and it was majorly discounted since the Cossack line has been discontinued. 

Here's a really bad in-progress photo of the scarf as modeled by my typewriter and a file folder at work.  The color is really off in that picture, I shudder to think what my skin looks like under these lights.

I like seeing the pattern emerge but lace knitting is tough for me.  I'm a multi-tasker.  I can't just knit, I'm usually either watching tv or knitting at lunch at work with a group of ladies.  It's hard to keep to the pattern and pay attention to the conversation or the tv.  But it's fun too and I promised it would be in her stocking at Christmas.  I'm hoping the pattern will be a little more obvious after it is blocked.

After these two projects I have two more purses to make (one for Heather, my sister-in-law, and one for my Mom), the arm gauntlets from The Purl Stitch (for Donna's birthday in December) and three pairs of socks (Dad, my brother, Jason, and my brother-in-law, Paul).  I've never knit a sock and I just learned to knit this past June.  I'm hoping the arm gauntlets will give me practice before I tackle the socks.  But that's an awful lot of knitting in 79 days, I'm not sure I'll make it.