The Sick Chick Crafts

I made this around the end of February but never got around to posting.

I call this the Scooter hat because it reminds me of the hair of Scooter from the Muppet Show.  Inspired by the Rasta Hat of Annie Modesitt, I’ve never seen the pattern just the pictures.  Made with Colinette Prism yarn in the Zebra colourway on the Reader’s Digest circle loom.  Fits me snugly so approximately youth sized or very small ladies.

iHanna does some of the most amazing things at her blog, you should seriously check it out!  One of the things she has turned me on to are the myriad of challenges around various crafty sites.  I decided to start the Green Pepper Press Crusades which are monthly challenges in various paper-crafting techniques. April’s challenge was cutting your own stencils.  (I want to note that I did technically do this in April, but the deadline for posting was extended to May 7 so I’m on time anyway )

The tutorial Michelle Ward posted on the Crusade site is very good and if you are interested in making your own stencils I suggest you go read it now and come back here later  I do not have a burner tool so I just had to make do with craft knives.

The first step is to decide what you want your stencil to be.  Michelle noted that it’s handy if you can cut the stencil all in one cut so that you will have both a stencil (piece of plastic with a bit cut out of it) and a mask (cut-out shape that stands on its own).  There are good reasons for wanting both to work together, but this post is going to be too long already so I won’t go into them.

I decided that I wanted to start with a letter “J” (for Juliann, of course!).  I scouted around my large collection of fonts and found very many suitable ones but really wanted to draw my own so I doodled a little and came up with a letter similar to my actual handwriting but with clean lines so it would be a little easier to cut. Then on a whim I also doodled with the letters “tsc” (for “The Sick Chick”) and was surprised when I came up with a design I liked for that, too.

Next, I drew out these designs in a larger size onto the backs of used envelopes.  I ideally want something small enough to use for ATCs but figured that a larger size would be easier for this novice cutter.  (As it turns out I think the J will fit on ATCs but only just.)

[You can click on any image for the full sized version.]

So here are my initial doodles, the larger designs drawn in marker, and more supplies for making stencils:

Cutting the Stencils and Masks

Next I taped things to the cutting mat to help steady them.  First I taped the paper template, then I taped the plastic down over it.  This helped a little but things were still a bit wobbly and the masking tape didn’t hold stuck through the whole process.  Still it was better than nothing.

Taking a craft knife (Exacto, scalpel, whatever you have), carefully cut around the outlines *without picking up the knife*. I used a very small mat that I had gotten free from a magazine so I was able to turn the whole thing around any time I needed to change direction which made things a lot easier.  If you do wind up lifting the knife, try to start cutting again as smoothly as possible.  You can always go back and clean up joins later but this is a little hard (and you have to do it on both stencil and mask). Unfortunately, I didn’t think to photograph this stage as visually it was pretty boring and I was too busy trying to keep my knife firmly planted.

Using the Stencils and Masks

I used rubber cement to hold the stencil down as there we lots of little fiddly bits that wouldn’t stay in place just by taping the outside.  You can rub off the rubber cement later after the paint has dried.

So  here are a series of me painting the stencils and masks…

The Finished Products

That’s just what they look like solo, I hope to make some art projects soon to incorporate them into.

I have enjoyed my first Crusade with the GPP Street Team and hope to be able to be involved in more projects in the future!
 

Alas, in this case I don’t have many pictures. I took video last night but I have yet to edit it and that’s pretty far down the priority list at the moment, so you’ll have to wait. Sorry!

Last night, the Museum of London had its monthly late night opening (link may rot) but for this occasion it had a crafty theme.  There were booths of people making felt mustaches, animals out of pipe cleaners and wool, a diorama of London with plasticine sculptures, a sign language music video about London and in the other room the booths of knitting, crocheting and spinning.  You can guess what room I was in!

First I met up with my acquaintance, the lovely Claire from PurlPirate, who was teaching hyperbolic crochet which makes a coral-ish sort of shape.  She gave me several pointers about the second row issue (using a larger hook to cast on, not trying to get “under the v” when stitching into the chain, etc.) so I hope that I will be able to improve when I try it again next week.  She also had quite a crowd of people trying out the hyperbolic forms, including many totally new to crocheting.  Go Claire!  She was also teaching people how to crochet with plastic bags and gave an excellent demo on how to cut them up into jag-less strips.

Next I met Rachael Matthews and Louise of Prick Your Finger  (their blog), a yarn and fiber shop that I am sad to say that I have not yet made it to.  Especially since they are involved in the Walking Stick Cozy competition with Missability (run by Felix).  (As an aside, I am sad that I have not yet been able to make a cozy for any of my walking sticks, I think I need the Knifty Knitter Bloom Loom for that to get the right sized tube and shall get one this summer but alas, too late for the competition which ended yesterday.) Bethnal Green is geographically closer to me than Waterloo (home of I Knit) but it’s harder for me to get to due to the weird nature of the London bus system, and that’s why I have yet to go to Prick Your Finger.  They were demo’ing spinning and had drop spindles available to play with and a big bag of what I think is Black Welsh Mountain fiber.

I sat there forever and made this bundle of yarn:

Not bad for my third time on a drop spindle, but all the credit goes to the fiber, which was sooo easy to spin and wanted to be spun so fine it was almost scary.  Just in case it was the spindle rather than the fiber I tried a bit of my signature flouro pink roving but it came out crap as always. The moral of the story is that I am not very good with roving but am much better with carded batts, so I need to card my fiber!  I have handcarders but man, I covet a drum carder now.

Black Welsh Mountain is a mountain fiber so it’s very scratchy.  I don’t know that I would use this sort of yarn for much of anything but it was heavenly to spin so I shall endeavor to get to PYF before I leave for the summer to get some more to play with!

Finally, I went to meet some of the lovely ladies of Stitch and Bitch London.  I’d only just signed up for their newsletter about three days ago so I haven’t had a chance to attend their events yet (I couldn’t do their sewing up event on the 30th as I had to rest up to go out on the 1st). But it was very nice to meet people and show off the world of loomknitting.  Photos of me will probably be appearing on their blog in the near future.

I didn’t really have anything to do with the other crafty things,which seemed either aimed at kids or designed for people who aren’t usually crafty to dip their toe into the waters and have a little fun.  I have nothing against that, I just wasn’t in the mood.

Still, it was a very fun evening and many thanks to all of the lovely ladies I met who made it such a great experience!

Some more photos just so I can catch up on the past week.  (I still have several months backlog of photos and events to blog about, but I am at least trying to stay on top of things as they are happen now!)

This week I attempted to crochet:

I didn’t get very far, I’m still having difficulty with the second row issue, but I got lots of tips last night (which I shall blog about in a minute) so I think I shall give it a go again this week with hopefully better luck.  Buthey, at least I did get stitches made in a second row!

I also made a partial gauge swatch:

I was supposed to knit a 4 inch swatch but by three inches in I knew that I didn’t want to use this yarn for that project.  I did get gauge though, so I am chuffed about that  I will use this yarn on a felting project, probably a laptop cover.  But it (Debbie Bliss Soho) is just too scratch for a hat and I don’t really want to have to line it.

Also in the photo is my new temporary wedding ring, I think I have blogged about it but not sure :/  (Brain is sooo not what it used to be, thanks fibro!)  My real one doesn’t fit at the moment but as I *have* to lose weight because of the diabetes I didn’t want to get it resized so I got a temporary one from the same place as t’s wedding ring and he is getting one to match (but wearing it on a different finger, it’s been backordered for a while though ).  I couldn’t wear rings at all for about five years because my fingers swell a lot during the day but that is lessened now and also I don’t need to use two sticks quite as much, I can make do with one, so that makes it easier to wear a ring on my left hand.  It’s just so nice to have *any* wedding ring  Plus I can wear this one on a different finger once I do lose the weight.

I mentioned these last week so here are the pix:

The upper bracelets are plastic beads on elastic cord, the lower (for their mom, Valerie) is glass beads mixing the girls’ favourite colours with a silver awareness ribbon charm, strung on 49-strand silver-plated Beadalon.  The colours here aren’t great since I photographed them on my red flannel sheets but you get the idea.

And, because I thought it was amusing, I snapped a pic of how I have been storing them, on an empty dvd spindle (with my alarm-clock watch):

I actually finished this last weekend but with photographing, tagging and all that am only just posting today. Hope that still counts for FO Friday ;0

I had contemplated sending this in to LKC magazine as a submission but A) it’s pretty basic and more importantly B) it fits me perfectly, which means it will be too small for most adults with hair.  I didn’t want people to get disappointed.

So here it is instead!  I had two skeins of Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk in Aran weight (I still think Alpaca smells of dog when wet but oh well, it’s sooo nice to knit with!) that I had gotten half off at the John Lewis after Christmas sales in Newcastle.  It had gotten lost in my stash for a while until I was looking for something to go with my Harley jacket (the jacket you always see me in in photos where I am in the chair) which has charcoal grey lettering on the back.  So I pulled this out  hoping to make something in time for the Paris trip and I might have succeeded if I hadn’t frogged the first three attempts.  The yarn’s softness was lost in a detailed stitch pattern (frog #1) but I found I wanted a pretty edging rather than purely functional (frog #2) and eventually (after frog #3) settled  on a basketweave border with plain stockinette for the rest.

I used the Reader’s Digest loom and used a little bit tighter tension for the borders as I want a little bit of “grip” like you would otherwise get from ribbing.  I did five rows of k2p2 ribbing, then five rows of p2k2 and then five more k2p2.  Then knit as long as I wanted (28 rows in this case) and do the border again for the neck or closed up for the hat.

The neckwarmer looks insanely long but it actually pulls up over my mouth, nose and the bottom of my ears.  The hat comes down to meet it around my ears and thus is forms a pseudo-balaclava but a little more dainty and of course they can be worn separately and the neckwarmer can be scrunched down when it’s not so cold.  (I have problems in very cold weather with my lungs due to my asthma and doctors have suggested that I breathe through a scarf to help pre-warm the air before it hits the lungs.  It does seem to help.)  I also wanted something that could go under the collar of my jacket so that when it zips up I have a layer protecting me from wind — my biggest complaint with that jacket is that the neckline is a little too big. (My second biggest complaint is that if I am wearing a sweater under it it looks like I have scary uniboob happening around my waist, soooo unflattering, especially as it flattens the actual boobs so they don’t show and I get this weird look instead :/  But I have yet to find a knitted solution to that!)  So this has fit both bills

I have to say that I LOVE this yarn.  It handled the frogging pretty well and I think it will bloom a little when washed, but right now the stitch definition is excellent. It feels a little softer when sliding through your fingers while working with it than in the finished garment, but the end product is still really nice.  WEBS has this for half price (I think it was just under US$5 for a 50g ball) so I got four skeins in an eggplant colour and I hope to do a cabled scarf to go with my burgundy coats (maybe a hat if there is enough left!).  I totally recommend it. 

Oh and for the record the neckwarmer took a little over one skein and the hat a little under, but again that’s because I made the neckpiece longer than most anyone else would want it.

I’m also proud that it looks needle-knit rather than loom-knit.  The flat knit stitch (Isela’s way) really makes sooooo much difference to the finished project that I have switched to it exclusively.

Oh yeah, I simply must mention this!  I was one of the guests on the latest episode (4) of Knitting 911, the loom and needle knitting podcast by Denise Layman of KnitChat.com and Loom Knitter’s Circle Magazine fame.  You can listen on the webpage.

This has gotten me fired up to resume my own long-neglected podcasting and I will be posting more about my plans soon.

I had started this thinking it would be a thing-a-day but the blasted thing took me twelve hours over two days.   Knowing that has put me off doing its mate until thing-a-day is over.

Anyway, the gory details: One legwarmer, extra-long (I like em to come up over my knees), made in K2P2 (2×2) ribbing on the green loom that came with the Reader’s Digest set (does this thing have a real name?).  Made from one skein of Colinette Prism in the Lagoon colourway, to be worn with the Ponytail hat.  With lots and lots of flaws where I purled instead of knitting and vice versa.  Doing ribbing for a few rows isn’t so bad, but for over two feet is a lot harder than I thought!  But I guess part of knitting, especially when something is meant as a utility garment rather than stylish one, is that you have to learn to live with the mistakes.  Still, I think I have a lot more love for storebought legwarmers after this.  (And the ones I shall be making for friends will be ribbed at both ends but e-wrapped in the middle!!!)

Three Basic Hats

This is probably boring to  most of you as it’s very basic hats like we all make when starting out with loom knitting.  The purple one on the right is what I made the very first night I loom knit, it took me about three hours while watching tv in a hotel room in Virginia.  Thats Red Heart Light & Lofty, which we’ll see more of soon as I’ve just done a more fun project with it.   THe gray hat is the Bernat soft boucle that I hate, again the basic hat form with a brim, blahblah.  This one’s for t, and has a scarf and fingerless mitts that go with it (but they’re not photographed yet).  The teal one I made because I wanted something without a brim for sleeping in — Ifind the brim annoying under my neck.  So I took some Moda Dea Metro (more of that to come, I like this one) and whipped up a hat quickly with a garter stitch border instead of a brim.  Perfect for keeping the draft off my scalp.

This photo was taken at the end of the day but as these hats are pretty boring to me I didn’t feel it was worth taking the shot again another time.  I’m a very lazy photographer, I am finding, which in some ways disturbs me as I’d love to have gorgeous, professional-looking shots like on other blogs, but just can’t manage to go into the other room, set up the lightbox and tripod and all the other faff that is involved.  I think I will have to do all of that for my beadwork though, we’ll see.

(Sorry it’s a little blurry, I have a hard time holding steady..)

This has been all over, starting with a gorgeous Union flag mohawk hat in a punk knitting book and with variations all around the net. I just made a hat in 2×2 (k2p2) ribbing on the Knifty Knitter red round loom and then added the “hair” in the same way you’d add fringe to a scarf (lark’s head knots, I use a crochet hook to pull things through).

Yarn is Colinette Prism in Cherry for the body of the hat and Colinette Marshmallow in Lagoon for the mohawk.

I call this the Ponytail Hat because, well it looks like the hat has a ponytail :)  Not suitable for wearing with actual ponytails, although I suppose you could modify it.  It is youth sized (my head is 20 inches in circumference without hair which is very small for an adult, more like pre-teen sizing).

This hat was made on the Knifty Knitter long yellow loom knittiing in the round.  I used a “ruffled” cast on (not that it looks very ruffled), then a K1P1 ribbing for six rows.  Next was ten rows of e-wrap and then I started the decreasing: first just the end pegs and then four pegs per row until I had eight pegs left.  I knitted the tube at eight pegs for about four inches, then decreased to six pegs for about five rows and then down to four pegs for the remainder of the ponytail.  Add fringe and voila!

This used most of one skein of Colinette Marshmallow in the Lagoon colourway.  To do an adult hat I’d go up to the green long loom and it would probably take one and half skeins. (It’s actually a little short for me as it is, if I were to do it again for myself I’d add 3-4 more rows of e-wrap but that would have put me over one skein and I didn’t have any more.)

This is what I am calling the Awareness Scarf, cince it looks so much to me like an Awareness Ribbon.  It is a skinny keyhole scarf (one end goes through the other to hold it snug on the neck) made on the Knifty Knitter long looms.  This one is made in Colinette Marshmallow yarn in the colourway Jay and was made for a friend who is an ovarian cancer survivor (which had nothing to do with my choice of colour, she just happens to like blue ).

I’m thinking about making several of these to sell on Etsy for about US$20 plus shipping, with $2 from each scarf given to a charity relating to one of my diseases.  I’d not really be charging anything for my time but I figure this is craft therapy time for me and the rest of the profit can go to more craft therapy for me.  I found making this was very soothing to my anxiety levels, better than meds :P   I’d always use Colinette Marshmallow as long as I can still get it and then Colinette Point Five after that, they have a wide range of wonderful colours to choose from.

What do you think?  Is  $20 a reasonable price?  On the one hand it’s too little as it doesn’t pay me much at all for my time, on the other hand skinny scarves are very popular and going for much cheaper when mass produced so I think people will baulk at $20.  All I really care about is the opportunity to raise some money and awareness of some of my diseases, but getting to knit more and more is a very big plus

Comments very welcome…

Well, we stil haven’t completed a light tent to my satisfaction, but t just got a new camera (out of his ten year service bonus) and it does muuuch better with colour than mine. So it will do for now with yarn type things.

But I am really tired, so for now I shall just leave you with this pic of a work in progres that was on my loom earlier today (now finished for Thing-a-Day).

I designed these gloves for two reasons: One, as a sampler of various stitch patterns that you can do on the round looms and Two, because I hadn’t seen any gloves done in the round, only flat panels that were seamed up.

I have a small hand and wrist, but I wanted to be able to wear these over my wrist braces. They stretch a fair bit. The pic below is NOT over braces. I also wanted the cuff to be loose so that it can go over a shirt sleeve or even the bottom of a coat sleeve as I hate how the wind can get in there! So this has a wider, gauntlet-like cuff then it narrows at the wrist. The whole pattern is a little roomy, if you want it tighter use the flat knit instead of the e-wrap.

Each set of stitches is done in 6 rows, hence the 6 in the name The pattern goes as follows:

On the Knifty Knitter Round Blue Loom: 6 rows of garter stitch (e-wrap odd rows, purl even rows); 6 rows of e-wrap; 6 rows of K2P2 ribbing (knit two with the flat stitch, purl two, all the way around the loom), 6 rows of e-wrap, 6 rows of e-wrap as a flat panel (do not connect! turn around at the last peg and go back, this makes the hole for the thumb), 6 rows of garter stitch (as above), 6 rows of K2P2 ribbing (as above).

I’m sorry, but if you don’t know how to do any of the above steps, you need to look it up, I don’t have time to explain.

I used the horrible yarn that came with the Reader’s Digest loom set. Man, that stuff splits and frizzes badly. I probably won’t keep these gloves long as I don’t think the yarn will last!

Next I am going to make some fingerless gloves just in the K2P2 ribbing, which will be much tighter. I find K2P2 very tedious, but it does give a lot more “compression” than anything else I have tried thus far. I may do a sampler of various types of ribbing (K1P1, K3P1, etc.) to compare.

I created this hat in Mid-December. I was inspired by several Fraggle hats I have seen on the internet, but due to the thickness of the yarn it doesn’t really look like those. Instead, it reminds me of Raggedy Ann, and thus the name It’s made of one skein (every last inch of it!) of Colinette Marshmallow in the Fiorentina colourway. I have a small head and no hair and thus the hat fits my 20″ head, but for an adult size you’d probably need more yarn if you want it to be double knit.I made a 12 inch/30 cm long rectangle by double knitting on the long pink Knifty Knitter loom with the figure 8 wrap. I used the lucet cast on. I then took the rest of the yarn and cut it into 6 inch/15 cm lengths and used those pieces to close up the sides, tying in square knots. If you wanted to make this for a larger head (most adults would need a larger size), I’d use the yellow loom and do more rows, but really you can make a long rectangle any way you fancy!It took an evening while watching TV, don’t know the exact timing. I’ve ordered three more skeins to make a matching scarf because I looooove this yarn!

[Term stolen from Hankering for Yarn blog. It means forgetting to take a picture before it's too late.]

Now is about time to start tallying up all of the things I have knit since I started on 8 November. Unfortunately, several of the gifts I forgot to photograph and as for the rest I left my microUSB cable at my parents’ house, so unless t (my husband) can borrow one from work, it will be a while before I can get any images off my camera. Sorry!

I’m usually not so good about finishing projects and my mother and t are both blown away by how much I have done with looming. What can I say, I just love yarn! So far I have made one plain brimmed hat from the basic Knifty Knitter instructions (in Red Heart Light & Lofty), 6 children’s hats (in Berocco Foliage) that were gifts to kids in my family, got 1/3 of the way through a scarf in Red Heart Grande then decided I hated that yarn so threw it away (it was splitting and frizzing horribly!!), made myself an 8 inch by 8 foot double knit scarf (in Moda Dea Metro) and a matching hat similar to this pattern from Knitchat.com, a 12 inch by 6 foot scarf double knit in the alternating rib stitch for my mother (out of Trendsetter Yarns Blossom), a magic scarf for myself (out of Lion Brand Fun Fur), three dishcloths doubleknit on the loom for my mother (in Lily Sugar ‘n Cream), an 8 inch by 8 foot double knit scarf for t (in Bernat Soft Boucle) and a plain knitted hat (in same) — working on matching fingerless gloves and legwarmers — and what I call a ragdoll hat (a Fraggle hat that looks rather more like Raggedy Ann) from a yarn I LOVE: Colinette Marshmallow. Plus a couple of coffee cozies that I didn’t like so I frogged.

I’m pretty pleased with that for 6 weeks’ work!

Things I have learned so far: I hate regular Red Heart yarn as it’s horrid to work with and makes my hands itch. I love using knitting boards and definitely want an afghan loom. I want to make socks if for no other reason than to indulge in sock yarn. I like working with cotton. I really want to start felting (I do felty stuff that’s not knitted already.) I’m entirely smitten with Colinette yarns at the moment and want more right now!

Anyway I shall try to get pictures of the things I still have on hand (not the kids hats or the dishcloths) soon, as I am aware that this blog is woefully boring without pics!