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Friday, April 16, 2010

Don't get your stitches in a twist!

Things I want to type about:
1. Learning to knit
2. WIP bags
3. Working through WIP's
4. Up late

#1 Learning to knit:
I'm learning to knit! This is very exciting- for me- because I've been trying to teach myself (off and on, mostly off) for going on 8 months. Finally, I went to a knitting group and they showed me what I was doing wrong: I was twisting my stitches. Oh geeze.

Twisting stitches is where you insert the needle into the loop "backwards" which causes the stitch to be closed (twist) instead of open. Now that I've been shown the light and had my knitting breakthrough I can't stop knitting! I've been knitting every day. Love it. And, bonus, I now have a new saying: "Don't get your stitches in a twist!"




#2 WIP bags:
Speaking of, today I was knitting and growing frustrated because I've been storing all my works in progress (WIPs) in plastic freezer bags or grocery bags- not very sexy :-/

So I decided to craft something up- poof, it's 2am and I've made 2 WIP bags.



Only, I have 50 gazillion WIPs...

#3 Working through WIPs:
Speaking of, I have placed all my yarn related WIPs (notice "yarn related WIPs" rather than "all my craft WIPs") in the larger of the two WIP bags. I solemnly swear to work through my WIPs!!

#4 Up Late:
Speaking of, I'm tired and it's time to go to sleep.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Milling around and such

I'm looking for lists of fiber (or, fibre) shows in and around the UK during May. I have a work trip scheduled to London May 2-7 but the weekend will be mine (8, 9, 10). Anyways, some interesting links I've stumbled upon which I do not want to loose:





Sunday, April 11, 2010

So, you want to be a blogger...

I'm a fan of several blogs; most of them have idealistic pictures, beautifully cropped and polarized, with gorgeous, spotless children wearing handwoven, carbon-neutral organic fabric.

Do people really live like that? I don't. I think my kids are gorgeous but they're never spotless. I'm not great at taking pictures and the fabric I use is not handwoven/carbon-neutral/blahbity blah.

But I do love to craft and make handmade stuff for my peeps. The problem has always been time.

May I recommend: The Purl Bee, Mimi's dolls


I made three of these, one for each of my nieces. Each doll had a red dress plus an additional dress in the girl's favorite color.

These were so easy to make, no experience with doll making required. The free pattern is excellent. The hardest part was the face; I made a demo-doll first and practiced embroidering the face until I felt pretty good about trying my hand on the real thing(s). The demo doll was made with recycled plastic felt but the three final dolls (non-demos) were made with 100% wool felt.


One word of caution: All three of the dolls had their legs pop off- which was a good thing, actually. The three girls played with the dolls "so hard" and so often that they were left leg-limbless. This was easily fixed by sewing the legs directly to the body (instead of using the buttons). The girls couldn't care less about the restricted range of motion.

What I'm working on now
: Tunisian crochet (or, how to fake knitting)