Super Secret Project . . . Revealed!

So a little while ago I alluded to a super secret project I was working on.  But I'd given the intended recipient a link to my blog so I didn't want to chance a big reveal flop.  The gift has now been given so I can safely share what all was the deal.

So a friend of mine went back to grad school (again) and I wanted to give her a nice gift bag of stuff as a Good Luck and Congratulations on Going for Your Second Master's gift.  So rundown on the contents, unfortunately I didn't take a picture of everything.
1. orange thyme plant (yes we tested it when I bought it from the farmer's market, it does small like orange)
2. scarf (why a scarf in the summer you say?  well I happened to have yarn in her fav colors and I had time before giving the gift so I went a little overboard)

3. two placemats (but not just any placemats.  These placemats were single crocheted from black organic cotton yarn)

4. two coasters (squares of cork that I drew her initial on with marker in fancy lettering.  Don't want them walking off on their own you know.)

5. a rice heating pad (A nice big one that can lay across the top of one's back and over one's shoulders.  100% cotton toweling and thread so it can be heated up in a microwave or oven.)

6. A tote bag (I needed to give the gift stuff in some kind of container, and I thought a tote bag is also a useful thing.  No pic of it because I made it at the last minute.  Flannel with a green and brown pattern, plastic insert to help the bottom hold shape, and wooden buttons as a decorative element where the handles join the bag.)

Of course after the fact when the gift had been given I thought of all sorts of ways I could have made it better, but isn't that always the way.  She seemed to like the stuff, as eclectic as it was, and I hope they either make her life at school a little easier or at least help her relax a little.

Sadness Yarn

So I've been dealing with a lot of serious personal drama, which distracts me from lots of things including posting here on a semi-regular basis.  Part of this involved visiting a relative in the hospital every day for about 2 weeks.  Not too much to do there, so I brought my largest knitting loom and some boucle yarn to work on a wrap/shawl thing.  No recipient in mind, just something to keep my hands busy.  I was about halfway through when the visits ended, and just recently remembered the project and wanted to finish it.  Imagine my surprise, and extreme irritation, to find that my loom is mysteriously missing a peg.  Somehow it broke clean off!  The shawl was only 38" long, not nearly enough to be useful.  And I had no immediate way to fix the loom to try and finish it.

So this:

Became this:

That's right, I had to unravel it all to make into something else.  I sent the picture to my mother, who I had told about the situation, and told her "This is what sadness looks like."  So this is now my "sadness yarn" that I am currently working to turn into a scarf on one of my shorter looms.  That's right.  I'm making a "sadness scarf" that I will probably give away to charity to get the thing out of my sight.  I am just beyond frustrated with the whole situation that I've been spotty in actually working on the scarf.  Hopefully I'll have some time to sit down and work on it.  I just haven't been in the mood lately.

Have you ever had a project just turn into a disaster that it made you want to chuck the whole lot right out a high window or something?

Hats, Hats, Everywhere

So I have been super busy outside of work making hats.  Baby size hats actually.  A coworker is doing a craft fair in the fall and, seeing me making a hat for a christmas gift, asked me to make some for her table.  I agreed.  Went out and bought the yarn, a nice bulky 6 yarn from Bernat.  The label says it is for blankets, but who cares, soft yarn is soft yarn and it'll be nice and warm.

The theme is baby girls, so I got yellow and white yarn.  They didn't have any pink.  Then came the tedious part - actually knitting the hats on my new loom.  I bought the two small size looms.  The blue is the baby size and the orange is a special extra small size.  The instructions that came with it were for making flowers.  I tried it out on these which I then put up on my Etsy store, hehe, didn't have anything else to do with them really.

Baby loom went to work making hats.  I'm almost done as you can see here.  She wanted 5 white and 5 yellow.  Only 1 more yellow to go.

Busy Busy

So I am almost done with the Victorian Tea shirt.  Buttonholes are in, with some mishaps, but they're done.  Of course I put them on the wrong side.  Oh well, this top really wanted to button right over left anyway.  Now all that's left is to actually sew on the buttons - but black buttons on black fabric screams for daytime and the additional natural light, so they'll be going in tomorrow.  So exciting to be almost done.  More exciting will be being done.

Not so many posts lately, sorry about that, I've been experimenting with knitting and such between Victorian Tea top sessions.  I started an Etsy shop - with nothing in it.  Plus I agreed to make hats for someone else's craft fair table.  Too much to do.  As soon as I have pictures of what I've been working on I will put them up.  I recently bought the baby and teeny size round looms so I can make baby hats.  Turns out the teeny one comes with instructions for flowers.  I've been playing around with that.  Super fun and they're so fast so almost instant gratification.  Pictures will be forthcoming, I promise.

Crochet Victory

Finally, after failing to learn years ago (probably from lack of patience), relearning, and much practice - I have single crocheted a scarf!  Maybe not so impressive, but the rows are pretty even, no mysterious dropped stitches or tightened tension, and it is a decent length to be worn.  Version 1.0 with this yarn actually came out well too, but I'd made it too wide so there wasn't enough length.  Cue ripping out all the crochet and starting again.  No wasting yarn here.

The yarn is a Bernat cottontots yarn - which is 100% cotton - with the color name "sunshine" that I had bought many years ago intending to crochet a hat.  Not sure how I intended to do that with my then complete lack of crochet ability, but hope springs eternal.  So here, in all of its not-very-interesting glory is my first successful crochet scarf, folded for your convenience.

Final dimensions were 50 3/4" long and 3 3/4" - 4" wide.  I'm not sure what I will do with it.  Either donate it to the domestic violence shelter, or save it for the Etsy shop I hope to start as soon as I can think of a cool name.

Knitting Looms

So I have some new toys.  I've never been one much for yarn crafts.  My mother tried to teach me to crochet many years ago and it was a spectacular failure.  My rows kept getting shorter and tighter.  I finally gave up.  Now that I am getting back into crafting, I've been thinking about trying yarn crafts again.  A coworker was kind enough to give me two round knitting looms she had laying around after I saw them online and mentioned how I wanted to try it.  What is a knitting loom you ask?  The round ones look like this:

The green is an adult size if you're making a hat.  The red is for children.  They make smaller and larger sizes, but these were the two my coworker had, and I wouldn't turn down free.  I won't go into how to use the looms.  There are a million and one videos online about how to use them that do a better job than I ever could.  I recommend you check them out.  It is dead simple to do.  Unfortunately she didn't have the hook that comes with them so I had to MacGuyver one for myself.  The pic below shows the one I made next to a real one:

So I had some $0.99 mystery yarn from the Goodwill that I decided to mess around with and try out the looms.  Basic acrylic yarn (I think) of medium thickness.  I discovered two things: 1) It truly was as easy as it looked and 2) one strand of yarn of the medium thickness is not thick enough to make an effective hat.  They came out really floppy and the weave looked really open.  The one on the left is the adult size made with the green loom and the one on the right is the child size made with the red loom.

Using a kind gift of additional yarn from another coworker, I tried doubling up to two strands.  I had some yellow left so I mixed in a sage color.  I only made one in the child size to see how it came out.  This was definitely better.  The two strands together provided more stability and the weave was tighter with the extra bulk.

My mother also gave me a lot of yarns.  One in particular was a bulky purple yarn that looks only slightly narrower than a pencil if not pulled tight.  I decided to see how that one loomed up since its bulk would make good winter weight items.  Again I did a child size being unsure of whether I had enough yarn.  Of course now the remainder is too small to make anything else with.  No clue what to do with it.

One of my coworkers has agreed to take the purple hat home to test on one of her grandchildren for fit.  I haven't been keeping track of the rows except for the last one. The purple hat is 14 rows folded in half for the brim and 19 rows from the brim to the top.  We'll see if that is good or if I need to adjust.

Not having children of appropriate age in my family at the moment, all the hats except for the purple one are being donated to a domestic violence shelter in the local area.  As I experiment with different yarns and such, the finished products will go there if I don't have a recipient in mind.