Subheading

Showin' some love to the sheer awesomeness of homemade gifts



Friday, February 18, 2011

Wrenna - my first Finished Object Friday

Whoever thought of knitting lace in bulky yarn was just genius.  Seriously.  I fell in love with the Wrenna cardigan from the book French Girl Knits after seein a few finished online.  A lot of knitters finished the sweater as quickly as only two days.  Mine took closer to two weeks for the actual knitting.  However, it took a lot longer to figure out how to fasten it - laced with leather, as the pattern calls for, isn't quite my style, so I just finished sewing on hooks and eyes.  Mine also took longer because I added sleeves, roughly 3/4 length in stockinette.  Here's the finished product.
Close up of the hooks and eyes:
And here is the lace:


AND.... I am so excited  - this week I bought a Silhouette craft cutter.

For years, I had considered getting a Cricut, but just could not justify buying lots of cartridges.  But the Silhouette does not take cartridges, it connects to the computer and cuts any true type font and any of the digital images you download from the Silhouetter online store or create in the software that comes with the machine.  Here's an action shot:

That's part of a birthday cake popping right off the sticky carrier sheet.  Can't wait to see what projects this new toy can handle!
P.S. Finished Object Friday roundup here.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog...

Yeah, that's not really what things have been like around here.  Without any sort of posting schedule, I just have not posted anything.  So, taking a key suggested in a group in one of my favorite places on the entire world wide web, Ravelry, I've decided to adopt some regular posting days.  Welcome to the first NJMA weekly Work in Progress Wednesday!

Here goes:


So what is in the works at this moment?  Well my little boy wants me to knit him a sweater.  A green one, specifically.  But since he is on a Where the Wild Things Are kick, I think he'll forgive me when he sees a cream wolf suit sweater.  The pattern is from Splendor Knitting.  Major mod I'm making is sticking it on my Bond USM knitting machine.  It's slow going at the bottom of the ribbing, since there's a lot of hand converting purl stitches to knit stitches for several rows, but it should go more smoothly once I get past the bottom couple inches and only need to convert a few garter rows at each end every other row.  (The Bond USM feeds yarn through a carriage across a bed of latch hooks.  As the hooks catch the yarn, it creates rows of stockinette stitch, which are purled side facing the knitter.  Any thing other than straight stockinette requires manipulation with spare latch hooks and needles).

So that's what's going on in these parts at the moment.  Hopefully I'll have something that actually looks like a sweater to show soon!

P.S. There is a WIP Wednesday roundup is here!