Tag: xmas

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Knitting and Crochet Shopping

Let the Christmas season begin!

photo of christmas presents
Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

The tree is up and decorated, I’ve downloaded new (to me) Christmas music from iTunes, and I bought some of my first presents from the Black Friday online sales–the season has officially begun!

My holiday knitting is coming along nicely, although I ran into a glitch with the beaded Booga Bag–not enough yarn.  Curses! I always forget how very much yarn BBs use.  For the next one I’ll definitely be cutting back on the stitches, probably about 20% to start.  For now, I either have to hit a Michael’s for another ball of mustard Patons (*shudder*), or make the top third brown.  The second option would be my first choice, except the beads make it more complicated.  I don’t think the change in color will work with the beads, so until I can think of a third option that doesn’t require me going to a craft store during the holidays (*shudder*), I’ve put that bag aside and started on another Pink Lady bag, this time in purple and blue.  I started it yesterday, and worked on it a bit after dinner while chilling with my friends, so it’s already half done–yay!

In non-bag knitting news, I’ve had some requests from family and friends that I’ll need to squeeze in, perhaps after I finish this latest bag. And I have to start felting soon, as well. Must procure more zippered pillowcases so I can do as many as possible in the same cycles, and save myself some quarters.

That’s it for today–happy shopping!

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Beading, felting, and gifting

Bag #6 is finished! Well, ok, it still needs the handles to be kitchener-stitched together, but that requires concentration with no distractions, so I haven’t got to it yet, but otherwise, the knitting part is done!  And it’s beautiful, if I do say so myself. I like using the variegated stranded with a solid color.  Sadly, this has made me less enthused to do a bag in a single solid color, which is not good, as I don’t have enough variegated and novelty yarns to mix things up.  On the other hand, I think I’m now sufficiently motivated to try beads on the next purse. I have a little bag of 300 pony beads I picked up almost a year ago that should do the job nicely to dress up a Booga Bag.  Now I just need to decide which color to use with the metallic gold beads–olive green, forest green, mustard yellow, or brick red?

In other news, I hand felted a purse for the first time yesterday!  It was the turquoise and white clutch, and I used a bucket and plunger in the tub.  I beat that sucker for about 25 minutes and just couldn’t do it anymore, even though it could’ve used another 5-10 minutes.  It’s felted, but you can still see the stitch columns (not the rows, though).  I haven’t decided if I’m going to do it again, or wait until I have access to a non-coin-operated machine.  I think I’m waiting to see how my back feels tonight (it usually takes my muscles about 24 hours to protest new activities).  But the finished product is still cute!  Needs some rhinestone buttons for embellishment, though.

For my final ramble, I’m still undecided on what to make for the young girls in my life.  The Elann birdhouse scares me a little, because it requires embellishment techniques that are new to me, and therefore scary to try on something that will be gifted to someone else.  Perhaps I should abandon the idea of felted purses and make them the kitty hats from Stitch ‘n’ Bitch?  I’d really like to do purses, but I just can’t find the perfect pattern.

This is the part where I’d appreciate any ideas or links from you, my reader. (Bolded to catch the eye of those (like me) who only skim posts without pictures.)  My intended recipients are girls ages 3, 5, 6, 8 and 10.  And maybe the two-year-old, too, I haven’t decided.  I prefer felted purses because I’d never get around to lining an unfelted purse, but non-purse ideas are welcome too.  No sweaters, because I need something quick.

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Busy little knitting bee

WIP: Little Coco
WIP: Little Coco (waiting for felting)
It’s a fuzzy picture, but check out the cool stitch pattern on the bottom of the bag.
WIP: Pink Lady Bag
WIP: Pink Lady Bag (top left; bottom is knit)

I finished bag #5 last night, and immediately started bag #6, this time using Lion Brand’s feltable wool.  I’m using the same pattern that I used for my very first felted bag three years ago, which I conveniently found when I was cleaning my bedroom last week.  It’s call the Pink Lady Bag from Designs by Shelley, and it’s very easy, although it does involve the kitchener stitch to seam the handle. The Lion Brand is about 50 yards shorter than the listed required yardage, but I was in the mood to do something variegated, so while I’m hoping the 200 yards was just optimistic, I’m double-stranding two different colors (one purple, one variegated) just in case–since I bought two of everything at Michael’s last week, that gives me two sets of the mix.

I’m really enjoying this whole “cranking out as many bags as I can” strategy–takes the indecision out of my next project, which is what frequently stalls me out when I finish a project. With so many incredible patterns and yarns to choose from, I can never decide what to do next! I’m getting a little tired of the Booga/Little Coco type bags, though, and while I adore the Balloon bag pattern, it requires stitching the handles before felting, which I hate doing.  Hopefully this Pink Lady Bag is as easy as I remember, so I can get a few under my belt before going back to one of the other patterns.

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Purse three, on the needles

The brown and red purse is off the needles, and now I’m working on a turquoise and white clutch purse from One Skein.  I brought it with me today to work on during lunch, but forgot to bring the pattern, and I couldn’t remember how many increase rounds there were.  Damn.

I’ve starting thinking of the next month as my own version of “Summer of Socks” only instead of summer, it’s the holiday season, and instead of socks, it’s felted purses.  It’ll be interesting to see how many of them I can finish in the next month.  But then, I also want to make items for my b.i.l. and a couple of other people that aren’t purses, so I’ll have to find time for that, too.  For now, though, it’s all purses, all the time!

Knit purseAnd to give you something pretty to look at, here’s a picture of my first ever felted purse, made for my mom for the first Christmas after I learned to knit (2004). It was made with Cascade 220, and the pattern was free from the store, but I think they’d downloaded it from the web. It has a magnetic closure.

Contemplating Christmas presents….again

So I made a list of the people I’ll probably be gifting this year, and it’s about 23 people–GAH! I wish I’d made this list two months ago, as now I’m thinking knitting my way through as many gifts as possible, while stressful and not at all easy, will at least be cheaper, ’cause yo, seven boxes of stash!

At the moment, I’m contemplating the Birdhouse Bag from Elann.  The pattern looks easy enough, but I’ll have to check the colors of my feltable yarn to see if they’re suitable.  If it’s manageable and I can make them quickly enough, it could be the gift of the year for as many as six little girls that are on my list!