Birthday Project

Happy birthday to meeeee! (Actually, my birthday is May 8th, but still…) I received some money for a gift and took myself to get a Bucilla needlepoint kit. I didn’t realize this, but Bucilla is now owned by Plaid Online, a collection of a number of handicraft providers.

I selected “Oriental Crane,” a lovely pattern of painted canvass needlepoint. It comes with crewel wool, floss, metallic thread and beads. I’m looking forward to working on it. I haven’t completed it (I’ve only just started separating the yarns), but I’m enjoying the colors.

The only complaint I have is the instructions are awful. They are written in about six different languages and it appears that in trying to solve the problem of being an international company, they’ve missed the mark. While there are six languages, the actual instructions are so skimpy that if I weren’t an experienced needle worker I would be lost. For example, if I handed the kit to my husband, who is good at needlepoint but not very experienced, he wouldn’t know how to complete the kit. It’s a shame.

I’ll post more in-process pictures once I have something interesting to look at, but here’s the design so you can at least see what I’m doing.

I’m thinking I might frame it and hang it on my wall at my office. We’ll see.

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Update on Opera Gloves - Design Challenges

In designing my opera gloves, I am using a couple resources. The first is the stitch dictionary by Barbara Walker, A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

Additionally, I did a web search for a few different opera glove designs, but found nothing exactly to my liking. What I want is a glove pattern that goes up the forearm and over the elbow, ending in a ruffle. The fingers will be partial, so it will be a ‘fingerless’ glove, but I do want actual fingers rather than a flat line across the knuckles.

I found it a lot harder to do the swatch with the two lace patterns I’d picked out. I wanted to use one panel that’s a lace rib stitch, two lines, and one as a center panel that’s sixteen rows. It turned out to be too easy to drop stitches on the larger lace pattern, when trying to track both it and the circular knitting. I fiddled and struggled for a while and then realized, if I was having this much trouble on the swatch, I’d hate doing the gloves. I switched to the simpler two row repeat and voila!

One thing I did change, in the pattern, is that it’s a K1 * yo… etc. Well, at first, I did the K1 at the beginning of the round, but not each new needle (I’m knitting on three needles). That was pulling too wide at the joins between the needles, so I decided heck with it, I’d add a K1 on each needle change and it made the pattern much neater. Also, since the pattern is written for flat knitting, I had to reverse row 2 (which is the wrong side row), but luckily it’s just either K or P stitches, no complicated stitchcraft. It’s run to work.

I don’t have pictures yet, but when I finish the swatch I’ll post another update.

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Opera Gloves

So, I joined Weight Watchers. I decided to make milestones for the celebrations, and I’m celebrating my first 5%! I’m so excited. I purchased two skeins of Sock Ease™ yarn from Lion Brand in “Red Hots.” It’s beautiful!




I will say it's more orange than I was thinking it would be (which isn't bad, just surprised me). It's very Autumnal in flavor and I think will look really nice with summer-tanned skin (not that I tan a whole heckuva lot, but hey).

I’m going to make a pair of opera gloves that are fingerless. I’m thinking I’ll have partial fingers go to about the middle knuckle, then have the glove go all the way up to cover the elbow and end in some pretty ruffles. I’m just swatching right now, but I’ll post more as the design comes together in my head.



These are double-pointed needles from Brittany, size US2 (2.75 MM). I want to like them, but I find them too bendy and broke one while making a sock. I'm going to get some Crystal Palace (first I'll swatch with my CP 3's and see how it looks, I may just use them). I am also planning to try some metal needles for the really small sizes, 4 and below, because the natural ones just seem to be too fragile when they're that thin.

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Box Loff – The Grand Finale!

I finished my first needlepoint box! I’m pleased with it. To recap, I used a simple overdyed yarn, worsted weight (double DK weight) for the needlepoint and a plastic frame cut to size. I learned a lot putting it together and like the final look.

Here is the box completed and closed. There’s a lip around the bottom so the lid sits snuggly down over the bottom, making it look like a solid cube. In fact, two people I’ve shown it to couldn’t figure out how to open it at first!

Here’s a view with the top and bottom separate. You can see how deep the box is in this shot. It is three inches square, which is a lot larger than I thought at first.



One of the key learnings I took away from sewing the pieces together was this: at first, I used one horizontal stitch, then a diagonal stitch from the same square on one piece to the next square up on the other piece. That looked good but I didn’t realize it was canting the pieces sideways by one square, which threw off the finished design. I’ve shown that below so you can see what I’m referring to.

To fix it, I just placed the stitches two in each square horizontally. I was worried it wouldn’t have enough coverage to conceal the frame, but it worked just fine – as you can see from the pictures.

The next box will have actual stitch patterns using different textures of thread and yarn. The suggestions I saw in the book I’m using call for Paternayan crewel wool and perle cotton, which look nice together. Pix soon!

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Box Loff!

As some of you know, I've recently started playing with fabric boxes. Here is the bottom of my latest creation, Earth Meets Sky.

The bottom of the box has a lip, visible in the picture; the lid will fit over the entire piece and be flush against the lip.



Here is a detail of the box. I used a simple overdye yarn so I could concentrate on the construction; but next time I plan to use more embroidery design. I'd like to make boxes in other sizes, as well as a drawer liner for my desk at home (to house things like paper clips and stuff).

Several people have asked me how the box is put together. Here is an image of the bottom being worked. First the designs are laid in, and then the box is sewn up. You use simple plastic canvass from Michael's or JoAnn's (which has the benefit of being cheap!) and can use any yarn or thread you like. This yarn is a simple worsted weight (double DK) that cost about $2.00 USD a skein (which would make a LOT of boxes - smile). The pattern is a simple tent-stitch, I just varied the rows by covering one or two squares.

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Fuzzy Shawl

My lovely sister in law gave me yarn for Christmas (which is a little like giving crack to an addict, but there you go). Two of the balls are this really fuzzy tribble stuff that have a variegated black and grey colorway with little silver sparkles. It’s fun stuff. I decided to make a triangle shawl with it, since it’s a little scratchy, that way I can wear it over other clothing.

Here’s the progress so far. I’m going to have to switch to circular needles shortly, since I’m running out of room on these. As you can see from the tip, I was adding four stitches every other row – a make one on each edge and a yarn over in the middle once the lace pattern started. I decided to leave off the make one, so I don’t run out of depth (since I only have the two balls). It makes a pleasing sort of rounded heart edge on the point that I like.



This detail picture shows the lacy bit, which is a little silly with such a textured yarn but I like it. Bonus points if you can spot the error!

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The Story Shawl

My husband and I went on an Outward Bound Dogsledding expedition in 2006. When we got back, I went shopping with a friend of mine in Wisconsin and found some incredible silk and mohair yarn that looked like sunrise on snow. Still under the influence of the Boundary Waters and our experiences there, I set to work on a shawl that would tell our story.

The border is eight stitches, one for each person in the party. I chose a seed stitch to symbolize life and growing. Just like in a garden, people can come together and learn to support each other in the same space but not taking the other’s light or nutrients. We form symbiotic relationships.

I added a row of lace yarn-overs, the holes symbolizing the fact that when we came together, we weren’t a team. We were eight separate individuals, but not one unit. We separated into two teams of four; three students with an instructor. One day the students were with the dogsled, one day they were skiing. The instructors had a two-day cycle, two days on the sled, two days on skis. I chose a basketweave pattern of K4, P4, four rows each, every so often going for eight rows to symbolize the instructors.

At one point in the middle of knitting, when I had about a hundred stitches on the needles, I decided to try an alternate basketweave stitch that I found in a book, thinking it was the “right” way to do it.

It looked totally wrong.

Faced with the decision of unknitting three rows of over a hundred stitches, it occurred to me that this was a perfect metaphor for the middle portion of an expedition. You know your mates well enough to identify their quirks and likes, and well enough for little frictions to pop up. After all, you’re adults enclosed in a vast and threatening wilderness with these other individuals for hours at a time.

It was exactly right.

I left the stitches in and completed the shawl. Eight rows from the end I dropped the yarn-overs, symbolizing that by the time we arrived back at Home Place, we were a team.

The bind-off is done in a sewing needle bind-off that took about six hours to complete. Incredibly detailed, it nonetheless creates a soft, supple edge that doesn’t look at all like a bound-off edge. It’s springy and slender and adds to the beauty of the garment.

This is one of the most expensive and time consuming projects I’ve designed and I share it with you so you can see what can be done with two sticks, some yarn, and an idea.

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