2008 August « cosymakes

Archive for August, 2008

like a charm

August 31, 2008

thank you all for your lovely wishes about my starting to teach more knitting… my first class was friday. i was supposed to have 4 students, but i ended up with 3.

this sweater worked its magic wonderfully.

i delivered waterfall to emily (happy birthday!), who also got into handmade arcade, and then, i spent yesterday spinning on the front porch with lauren. all in all a good weekend. now to bake some blueberry muffins and it will be complete. what fibery goodness has happened in your life lately?

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tea for two on the porch, anyone?

Posted in cosyknitsliterally, knitting, teaching | 5 Comments »

waterfall scarf

August 29, 2008

so. it’s a friend’s birthday and i thought i should make her a gift. (runner up was sheldon, by the way). this particular friend works a real job and wears lots of real job clothing, which includes much black and white.

an aside. when a friend from knit one cleaned out a bit of her yarn stash, it included a ball of great big sea. i tried to get her to keep it, but she is making a cardigan and this particular skein was just a different color than the rest and so she wanted it out of her house, so i benefited. thanks julie!!

anyhow, birthday meets gifted yarn and you have this scarf – the perfect accent for my friend’s work clothing… and here’s the little pattern in case you have one of those sorts of jobs. use a yarn that is silky, shiny, drapey at about a dk weight and size 7 needles. i used about 110 yards of great big sea, did 36 repeats, and ended up with a scarf 64 in. long by about 3 in. wide.

if you chose to use a different weight yarn, use a needle size one size above that recommended. i wouldn’t go much larger than one size above since you want those nice garter stitch ridges to show up well.

cast on 16 stitches

pattern repeat:
row 1: k for the first row, k dropping all yos for all remaining rows
row 2: k
row 3: k6, yo twice, k1, yo 3 times, k1, yo 4 times, k1, yo 3 times, k1, yo twice, k6
row 4: k, dropping all yos
row 5: k
row 6: k1, *yo twice, k1, yo 3 times, k1, yo 4 times, k1, yo 3 times, k1, yo twice,* k6, repeat within the *, ending k1

make it as long as you want, ending with two knit rows.
bind off.

block lightly by soaking in room temperature water for at least 20 minutes, rolling it in a towel to remove excess water, and laying flat to dry.

enjoy and have a great weekend!! (and here’s the ravelry link!)

Posted in cosyknitsliterally, free, knitting, patterns, scarves | 17 Comments »

harvest

August 27, 2008

i’m finally getting a little bit of a harvest over here. the issue with planting random heirloom tomatoes (and not paying attention) is that i really had NO IDEA what i planted. see that opaque, mat yellow tomato? i was so unprepared ;)

this week’s work includes continuing to plug away on cleaning the yarn room, do a spinning commission, try to finish that pattern i’ve been working on FOREVER, and prepare to teach my first february lady sweater/baby suprise class that is coming right up on friday. the picture also includes the sleeve of a february baby sweater that i finished yesterday. i just wanted to knit the sweater to a ‘teachable moment’ and i’m there… but boy! did i not want to be knitting this one yesterday. i was a grumpy knitter.

lastly, i’m pleased as punch to tell you that i’m going to be a vendor at handmade arcade again this year. YAY!!!

Posted in cosyknitsliterally, knitting | 6 Comments »

old tea

August 26, 2008

while cleaning the yarn room the other day i found this box

inside was this

which can be split into two categories
yarn

and knitting

age: 3-4 yrs old.
content: wools too itchy to wear, wool/acrylic blends and unknown yarns i thrifted
born in: vancouver
description: early knitting, playing with color and texture
conclusion: half finished tea cosy

although i loathe to rip it apart, i also loathe to finish it in the manner it was started. hmm. it might just become the jekyll and hyde tea cosy, one side all crazy and one side very normal… and maybe a contrast in fiber too… one side wool/acrylic blend with itchy wool, one side mohair or alpaca.

so, what’s the oldest unfinished object of yours? maybe it should be a jekyll and hyde too, after all, we all change as knitters from year to year. i know i’m not going back, how about you?

Posted in cosyknitsliterally, knitting | 8 Comments »

shine-along and other sightings

August 23, 2008

as to the word-along, jennifer made two AWESOME think caps here and here (rav links). aren’t they brilliant? i love the depth of color she’s achieved by combining yarns.

and with permission of dawn, her shine hat.

Shine Hat 1, originally uploaded by DawnsRays.

here’s her blog entry. this one doubles as both a book knit and a word-along. i really like how it’s double sided and the sun has a lot of movement in it.

book knits:
puppy dog knits is on a total roll in the mitt category, scroll down to see her version of 3!! pairs of mitts from the book.

amysuz’s ravelry stream has several book hats and emily’s ravelry stream has hats, mitts, scaves – you name it!!

the first of the headbands from the book looks great!!

a back alley hat in fabulous colors from paperkitty and a flutter neckscarf to boot (rav links).

my yarn:
my friend lynne who became addicted to knitting after sharing a booth with me at the may market made this neckscarf from my yarn.

when craft punk won the name game a while ago, she bought this yarn and then made these super cool mitts (rav link).

free patterns:
love this train tam with yoyos (rav link) and there is another fabulous train tam over on the ranger sarah blog.

check out the scrap-happiness that is jocelyngermany’s project page on ravelry. so many scrap-happy hats :)

and this bity geometric helmet hat makes me smile to no end.

that’s all for today. i’m rucuperating from camp, anticipating scrabble, and expected a quasi-surprise visitor. have a great weekend!

Posted in book, community, hats, knitting, patterns | 1 Comment »

coming back down

August 20, 2008

there has been knitting, finger knitting, loom knitting. there has been kool aid dyeing, cardboard loom weaving, a little bit of crocheting. there has been felting of beads and snakes, tie dyeing, painting on fabric and even a little bit of spinning… 30+ kids. aiya.

only two more days to go. in the meantime, the fibery stuff goes on.

finished the anatomy of a baby suprise jacket – changing color every time something major changed in the pattern. i’ll use it for teaching. just need to sew in the ends.

today, i got this hat back from interweave.

i had submitted it to knitscene, but it wasn’t accepted. drats. but that means you can look forward to me coming out with something very similar independently. i can’t stand holding onto something until it gets published. plus – it was inspired by their description of what they’re looking for, bright colors and layers. this was actually the first time i tried to get something into a magazine.

and lastly, did i ever finish the february lady sweater? nope. still percolating. so i started a new sweater. can you guess what it is? there’s a hint peaking out of the middle ;)

hope you’re having a great week!

Posted in cosyknitsliterally, hats, knitting, sweaters | 11 Comments »

plotting, planning, and practicing

August 15, 2008

go to flickr for notes on this photo.

or go to the pittsburgh craft collective blog if you want links to the project pages.

here’s what we have tentatively planned for fiber arts camp, thanks to all of you who helped me with your fabulous ideas!

felting
beads and snakes

i’m not very good at felting, but it’s fun! my snake wiggled free one of his pipe cleaners and you can see the pipe cleaner under his chin. i fully expect the kids to be better at this than i am. the front bead is made of yarn, the others are made of roving. does anyone know if these really need hot water poured over them? they seem pretty felted to me…

spinning
with the hooks you see in the top

adina already has planned some weaving – bags or little cardboard loomed pieces and i picked up some yogurt containers that can be used to weave in and out of to make little baskets. to which i might like to add some paper weaving we’ll see. we’re also planning lots of knitting, needle felting, sun printing, and tie dye.

sounds like we have plenty of stuff! now we just need to organize ourselves :) i’m hoping for good weather so we can do lots of this outside.

Posted in community, felting, teaching | 3 Comments »

in the works

August 14, 2008

thanks and thanks again for all of your suggestions for fiber arts camp and for your congrats on the whole movie thing. for those of you who asked, not at all strange that you may go see the movie just to see the knits, thus will be the way for many people i know. it’s understandable… a movie with so much cannibalism and all… as for me, it’s a movie i might have seen anyhow.

anatomy of a bsj in the works for the class i’m teaching. 3 people signed up!! hurrah! more on that as it unfolds (ha ha).

garden in the works – my tomato plants finally have a few ripe ones. they’re taking over the world, or at least the hedge and encroaching on the sidewalk. here’s hoping i planted the really strange colored ones (black, pink) down there so that no one steals them.

spinning in the works – the to-be-washed spinning shelf. now put on hold for fiber arts camp and preparing to teach classes.

today, i’m working on reading up on fun fiber stuff to do with kids, just to make sure i know what i’m doing. i’ll probably make some samples this weekend and i’ll keep you posted as i plot and plan.

have a great day!!

Posted in community, cosyknitsliterally, knitting, spinning | 3 Comments »

the suspense…

August 13, 2008

has killed you, i know. now that the buzz is picking up i think it’s safe to show you what movie i was knitting for back in february.

here’s a gallery of photos from which this one came :) it comes out in late november.

let us see if you can guess… my first full sized adult sweater was knit for ________________________?

knitting for this movie was fun. i know others who have knit for movies and had a stupid time of it, but with this one i was given some creative license. to give you a bit of a recap, i was working at the yarn store one day when a couple of people came in and inquired about getting some knitting done for a movie they were working on. while i was waiting around for my boss-type person to see if she could come up with someone (i just knew they wanted sweaters, and i didn’t want to knit sweaters) i finally asked what they needed. and they said hats!!

as for the knitting, initially they wanted 6 hats. the best part was that the hats needed to be post-apocalyptic and look like someone dug them out of a garbage heap – holes, runs, you name it. they picked the yarn, gave me some photos of what sort of hats they liked and i went to it. those were the most fun of all and to add to that, one is supposed to be worn by this gentleman.

next, i needed to knit 3 identical hats for the child in the movie. they were ribbed, brimmed, and this lovely lady is wearing one in one of the pics. in the end, the kid and his two doubles kept leaving their hats everywhere, so they had me make 3 more. therefore in the end i knit 6!! of these. it was a bit much, but what can you do?

this sweater was the last thing i made for them… you can read about in the other entry if you’re interested. it was fun and a challenge. overall, a good experience and i’m pretty excited to organize a group to go see it on opening night :) should be fun and silly with a lot of knitters involved.

Posted in community, cosyknitsliterally, hats, knitting | 19 Comments »

fiber arts camp

August 12, 2008

so. i just agreed to teach fiber arts camp at one of our local arts centers to 8-12 year olds – NEXT WEEK!! yikes!

here’s the description:
Explore the vast array of art that can be created from fibers including string, yarn, fabric, paper, straw and more. Try your hand at weaving, dyeing and even painting with fibers. The art you make can be hung as paintings, displayed as sculptures, worn or used, or turned into installation art. Explore the endless possibilities.

the good news is that my friend adina (who got me the job) will be teaching one set of students in the morning and i’ll have another, then we switch – and she has it loosely set up already… but honestly, if any of you have FABULOUS ideas of what to do with these kids, i’d love it if you’d pass them along.

i’ve been collecting supplies while cleaning the yarn room. good timing!