Long time no see

So...um...hi! ::waves::

It's been quite a while, I know. Largely I haven't been updating since I haven't been crafting, but that's not completely true. Since my last post, I finished my monkey socks and my fire fetchings, and I started sewing an apron. Oh, and I finished the first heart on my Be Mine socks. Partly I've been going slowly because I've never really gotten momentum on my Be Mines, but since they were my project spectrum feb/march socks, I didn't feel comfortable starting a new project until they were done. Now, though, now it's april. This means "earth" is officially in swing, and I can start my next pair of socks, which I've admitedly been getting more and more excited about. Even better, I can sew the project bag whose fabric has been sitting stacked next to my computer!

For my earth one-person-KAL with already purchased yarn, I'm going to be knitting the Embossed Leaves socks from the Interweave Favorite Socks book, in Knit Picks Risata in Grass. I think the 'leaves' aspect of Embossed Leaves makes this a good thematic choice, as well as the fact I think I'm just in love with the pattern. I can usually recognize it right away if done in most solid colored yarns, but there are some times when I'll see a pair on flickr or something and think "wow, those socks look awesome! I want to knit those!" Another thing I'm liking about this pattern is that it's all friendly stitches: mostly knits with a few purls, k2togs, ssks and yos thrown in there. As much as I think the Be Mines are maybe the cutest socks in the world, their pattern is too thought intensive for me. These should, hopefully, be a little easier.

If I end up finishing these, or if I end up devoting a lot more time to knitting these months than I previously have, I might work on finishing up my Branching Out, in it's beautiful and thematically appropriate yarn choice. The trouble with the Branching Out is that I don't like the needles it's currently on. It's on some of my grandmother's old aluminum straight needles. They're too long, overly heavy, and they make a sound when knitting that reminds me of nails on a chalkboard. After the major crush I've developed on the Knit Picks long circular sock needles I bought, I've been heavily debating getting a set of their Options, once I've saved up the money. I know there have been some complaints about the cables breaking or the needles coming undone from the cables, but I think I'm willing to risk it. For things like the branching out that I'm currently doing on old-but-annoying straights, I suspect options would be prefereable. As it is, I think I prefer circular to straight simply for the portability factor, and the nice smooth cables of the Options add to that.

As far as my sewing goes, I've been working on a skirt from Sew What Skirts, but it's been frustrating me. I'm looking forward to a nice break with my pattern bag. Though I have a decent amount of fat quarters to choose from (I stocked up when JoAnn's was having a 1 for $1 sale) I ended up chosing two that aren't my favorite pattern or color, but which go very well together. Both are from a fat quarter package I purchased at PurlSoho back in NYC. The outside is an asian inspired brown fabric with orange, pink, yellow, and green flowers and leaves. The lining will be a lime green that matches the green on the outside pretty well. Unfortunately, the only zipper I have that'd work size wise for the project is dark green, and I'm not much in the mood to go out and buy a new one. I'm trying to convince myself it'll look kicky, not tacky.

Oh well, off to work! I'll try and post more pictures once I've started knitting/sewing.

The front of a weekend

Hello!
Since we last met our hero, she has been crafting up a storm!
We'll start with my weekender-in-progress:

There's a picture of the front and back 'main panels'. As you can see, I attempted to match up the pattern on the pocket and, for my first time, I think I did pretty well!
Here's a closer photo:

So far, I'm very pleased with my bag. I think my first attempt at piping went well, as did my first attempt at using heavy duty interfacing for anything but the bottom of the bag. I'm happy to report that so far, I've had no needle breakages or other major sewing disasters. Sewing a consistent distance from the piping is difficult and my seams aren't perfect, but I'm okay with that. In the end, my goal is to make a pretty bag that I'll be able to use, and I think I'm well on my way toward doing that.

One modification I've made already: Instead of sewing the handles onto the bag just by horizontal stitching, I made two little "x"s between two horizontal lines on each handle. I think they are quite stable, so I'm hoping I won't have the handle-falling-off problem some bloggers have reported.


Also in the sewing world, I finally have pictures of the 'project bag' I made for project spectrum 08, fire.
The open bag:

A side view:

The filled bag:

I made that losely based on the Drago[knit]fly box bag tutorial, but I'm planning on writing up a tutorial of my own that will explain how you can start with the size of finished bag you want, and work your way backwards to figure out how to cut your fabric.
My bag was made from two fat quarters from JoAnn Fabrics, a 12" red zipper, and some flannel lining. The bag itself has two layers of flannel, and the handle has four, so the handle is more sturdy than the bag, but as you can see, the bag is capable of maintaining its shape while empty.

Tune in again to hear the story of what you see IN the bag, my new favorite sock knitting book, and the story of the fastest sock I've knit yet!

Just checking in...

Sorry it's been so long since I last blogged. I was hoping to get a nice post in once I got my knitpicks order, but sadly it has yet to arrive. I have to say, the tracking portion of their website is incredibly confusing: it suggests my package arrived already, when I know for a fact it did not!

Although I have yet to start my official project spectrum socks, I do have one knitting FO and one sewing FO to take pictures of and post about, but those will have to wait.

For now, I'm going to write about my most scary exciting sewing project ever: tackling Amy Butler's Weekend Travel Bag! I've admired this pattern ever since I saw it, and when I was in New York at the end of January, I bought the pattern from Purl. A few weeks ago I bought fabric (well, my first round...I'll explain THAT in a bit) from JoAnn's and I've just been waiting for some inspiration to start cutting. Last night I found the inspiration! I was looking through the Flickr group for UHandbag blog's Amy Butler patterns and I found some *beautiful* weekenders I'd like to share with you:



1. Weekender, 2. Weekender Bag, 3. Weekender Bag, 4. Melissa's Weekender Bag, 5. sew11, 6. Weekender Bag front view, 7. weekender1, 8. Amy Butler Weekender Bag, 9. Amy Butler Weekender Bag, 10. amy butler weekender bag, 11. DSC_0302a, 12. Amy Butler Weekender bag.

Simply beautiful!
So, last night I started cutting my fabric. I decided I was going to approach this project slowly so I wouldn't get too frustrated or intimidated by it, so my goal for last night was just to cut out the exterior fabric. All went well, and I even managed to (somewhat) match up the patterns for my front pockets! I tried matching the side pockets, but that didn't go quite as well. Oh well!

This morning I started cutting out the lining fabric. The way the pattern is written, you're supposed to be able to cut out both the handles and the main panels on the same side of the fabric. (If you have the pattern you'll know what I mean.) Like the instructions said, I started by cutting out the handles, but once it came time to cut out the main panel, there simply wasn't enough fabric left. I'm usually overly conservative when cutting fabric, but this just turned into more and more of a disaster. I've cut out all the pattern pieces for the actual lining, but I need to go out and buy more fabric for the piping. I'm sure this is my fault, but I'm not pleased.

The other thing I'm frustrated about has nothing to do with the pattern exactly, but has to do with the help at my local JoAnn's. (Yes, I know large chain stores aren't as nice as smaller local stores, and if I *knew* of any small local stores I'd be there in a heartbeat, but we work with what we've got!) I'd brought the pattern with me when I was buying all the fabric in hopes of getting some help with the Timtex and the interfacing. The woman at the cutting counter very nicely helped me select something for each of them, but somehow I didn't notice until today what she gave me for the interfacing was actually tear away stabilizer. Argh! Maybe I am a little bit frustrated at the pattern for this...so far as I can tell, Timtex is out of business. The replacement is, inevitably, Pellon, however I haven't found information *anywhere* about how to know *which* Pellon I want to replace Timtex, or what I should buy when a pattern just says "heavy weight sew in interfacing." That's my rant number two.

My rant number three is completely the pattern's fault. In the materials list it telsl you you need 1 sheet of Dritz 12"x18 heavy duty template plastic, which I happily found and purchased. However, once you cut the plastic, you are supposed to be able to cut *two* pieces of 7"x16.5". I realize I wasn't a math major, but I'm pretty good at basic arithmetic, and there's no way you can cut two pieces that size out of the sheet of plastic I bought. 7+7 is not <= 12! I'm going to make do by just using one piece of plastic for the bottom, but I'm a little frustrated about that problem with the pattern. Though my other issues with the pattern are at least partly my fault, that one is not. (And yes, I did read through the entire pattern before purchasing materials, but I hadn't caught that because when the pattern said "cut two pieces of this size from that plastic" I trusted I could do it. So much for trust!)

Well, enough writing about the problems - I'm going to go to the fabric store and get all the extra stuff I need. I hope they have the fabric I want in stock still! I'll try and have some photos of my own stuff in the next post. Later!

Project Spectrum "Knitting club"

For at least the past year, if not the past two years (it's so hard to keep track of these things) I've been reading and loving Lolly's blog. Last year I admired all the Project Spectrum posts and I realized that sort of a project is exactly why I wanted my own blog.

Well, now I have a blog, so I can join Project Spectrum!
If I was as wonderful a blogger as Lolly or some other people I could mention, I'd bring my camera with me everywhere and have pictures of everything in every color. Unfortunately, I have yet to get into that habit, and even when I've remembered to take my camera with me, I've forgotten to take pictures! I decided that for my own personal way of celebrating/experiencing project spectrum, I was going to make up a knitting club.

When I say knitting club I don't mean a "lets get together and knit" stitch and bitch type club, I mean like the Rockin' Socks club. I'm going to assign myself to knit (or at least start) at least one project spectrum project for each of the four elements. I purchased yarn for the first three on Knitpicks: red sock yarn for fire, green sock yarn for earth, and grey lace weight for air. I'm going to pack up the earth and air yarn and force myself to wait until the appropriate months before taking it out and knitting.

My goals for creativity for project spectrum are as follows:
1. Knit (or at least start to knit) one theme project per element.
2. Sew one theme project per element.
3. Try and join all the ATC swaps.

When it comes to what I'm knitting and sewing, I'm giving myself some leeway as to how I interpret the theme: at the very least, the color must be one of the accepted colors. Ideally, the pattern will meaningfully relate to the theme as well, but especially as far as the sewing goes, I'm giving myself some options there.

I've already started my fire sewing project. I'm making a box bag (the likes of Dragon[knit]fly) for my fire knitting project. I've wanted a project bag, and this pattern keeps popping up on all the cool blogs, so I figure I'll start here. All I have left to do is make the handle and the lining, but it's too late now. I'll post more later. (And update this with links!)