Thursday, April 28, 2011

Royal Wedding

So who’s excited for the Royal Wedding?!?  Not going to lie, I kind of am.  After much hatred for it, I have come around.  It really wasn’t a hatred for the wedding per-say, just the hatred of the constant coverage of it on the news!  It’s like come one, do we need to know everything?  Isn’t there anything else going on in the world, say Libya, Japan, the crazy weather that has devastated this country.  Bah, who cares!

But once you get past that, it’s a pretty awesome wedding.  The last Royal wedding happened before I was born (but I did get to see Diana’s wedding dress a couple years ago!!), and the next one will be a long way off.  I mean, come on, when is the next time you’re going to see a future King and Queen getting married?  Also, Prince William is Queen Victoria’s Great-Great-Great Grandson, and I LOVE Queen Victoria!

So, I’m setting my alarm for 4 am, sleeping on the sofa so I don’t disturb the husband who has to work in the morning, and watching the wedding.  Now, what to knit while watching it so I don’t fall asleep?

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Rainy Days


It’s been raining here for almost a week straight!  Now don’t get me wrong, rain is WAY better then snow, and I’m happy for the rain because as everyone knows “April showers bring May flowers.”  But seriously, a week straight!?!?  Oh well, at least it’s good for crafting.  I don’t know about anybody else, but I think raining weather is perfect for crafting, inspiration, reading and watching movies.

Last night I finished a baby sweater, after having to take out one arm because when I went to go block it I noticed it was a good inch and a half shorter than the other one.  So , now I have to finish 2 more projects or start a new one.  Two more days (according to the weather man) of this rainy weather, so I have two more days of being forced to be inside, and thus getting some good crafting done!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Surprisingly Stretchy

Gooooood Monday everybody!  Who here has knitted a sweater before?  Either adult, teen, child, or infant?  I just started knitting sweaters around Christmas, because I found a pattern that I loved and thought I would try it; and I had the perfect yarn to use that was sitting around my house for 2 years.  It was a great pattern and worked up real easily for a newbie, but when I was done with the collar and cuffs and had to bind off, I did it the normal way.  However, that was way too tight!  It wasn't stretchy at all, you could get your arm through it, but it would cut the circulation off if you moved.  So I did some searching, and found Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off.  It is great!  It made the bind offs super stretchy and worked perfectly!  I highly recommend it if you make sweaters, it's a bit more complicated, but worth the effort.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Book Review

So for my birthday, about a month ago, my dad got me a knitting book called "Knit You Own Dog" by Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne.  It is by far the cutest book idea ever!!  I've finished one dog, the English Bulldog and I'm almost done with the Schnauzer.  The instructions are ok, but there are a lot of typos and not too descriptive on how to assemble the dogs. The bulldog was so hard to put together with all of the pieces, and you don't know which piece is going to be which body party (ex: the face is made of 3 sections) and all the instructions say are "sew cheeks to chin".  What the hell is the cheek and where the hell is the chin!?!  I finally had to put it down and work on it another day because I got so frustrated.  I finally finished it, it looks good, I love it, but it doesn't really look like the photo, and I don't see how it could.
So far the schnauzer is working up good, except for the instructions on how to make the loops.  They absolutely don't make sense!
Ok, so this book review is sounding negative, but I don't really want it to be!  I love the book!  I love the dogs!  But I think this book should've gone through another round of editing by editors AND knitters before they put it out on the market.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

New Items in Shop

It's been a while since I added new items to the shop.  I've been busy with so many baby showers and mother's day gifts.  But now those are pretty much done, so on to the shop!  I had 3 new items in the shop, but one sold already, so now it's just 2.  Hopefully by the end of the week it will be up to 3 again.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Learning Your Craft

I pose a question to everyone: How did you learn what you do, your craft?

I learned how to crochet from my Grandma.  Actually, I learned to crochet from my cousin, who learned from my Grandma because my cousin was convinced that something was going to happen during Y2K (everyone remembers that mess right?) so she wanted to make sure we had enough blankets.  So, my cousin taught me how to crochet, but she left out a lot of key pieces, so, knowing that my Grandma was the one that taught her, I went to my Grandma to fill in the blanks.  For years I crocheted scarfs for friends and family for Christmas or birthdays, and I even made an afghan for my mom when I was a freshmen in high school.  Again, my Grandma was there to teach me how to sew all of the granny squares together.  I love that my Grandma taught me how to crochet, and taught me all of her tricks.  She had over 20 grandkids, and I am the only one she really taught, and kept teaching her craft. 

I learned to knit from my mom.  This one came much later, I was a senior in high school, and on a vacation with my moms side of the family and she taught me and my cousin how to knit a dishcloth.  It was a simple little dishcloth, but it took me 2 weeks to make!  But, that little dishcloth sparked my love to knit, and I haven't looked back.  My mom may have taught me how to knit, but now I'm teaching her new things about knitting, like blocking and new stitches and so on.

I would like to dedicate this blogpost to my Grandma who taught me how to crochet.  She passed a way 2 years ago this week, and without her, I might not have caught the crafting bug.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Getting Lost in a Pattern

Who, as a knitter or crocheter or anyone that follows a pattern, hasn't gotten lost in it?  You going along, knitting your rows, then you get distracted and...oh no! where was I?  Was I on row 23 or 24?  Sometimes it's easyish to figure out, and sometimes it's not easy at all.  Or, maybe you write on your pattern page, making hash marks and marking where you are, where you left off, and/or what rows you've already done before.  But it you don't like to mess up your patterns, don't want to re-print them if you make it again, or still get lost doing that, this tip will help.

I saw a tip to help this about a year ago, but didn't start using it till around December (I'm slow to change habits). 

What you do is put your pattern in a plastic sleeve.  You know the ones that fit in 3 ring binders that help protect pages?  Yeah, just put it in that and have a dry erase marker near you and you can mark what row you're on, what stitch your on, and if you have a patter that says "knit rows 3-48" you can keep count.

It's great!!  I really wish I would've done this a lot sooner!  It keeps my pattern clean, I never get lost now, it's just wonderful!

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Finishing Projects

I hate working on so many projects at once, but sometimes it happens.  With my cousins baby shower soon and trying to make stuff for my etsy shop I’ve been going back and forth between projects.  My husband seems to think that once you’re done with the actual knitting of a sweater that it’s done.  However, there is still the blocking, the drying, the sewing on the fake pretty button, and then sewing on the hook and eye. 

I do shoot myself in the foot with things like this.  I get to brainstorming moods and think of so many things to make, and it overflows where I have to make something!  And that something turned into a mama and baby monster and baby sweater for my cousin and a baby blanket for my shop, and a knitted version of my moms mutt Ricky for Mothers Day.

So, time to stop typing and time to pick up those knitting needles!!

                           

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Happy Birthday!


Today we celebrated my father in-laws birthday.  It seriously doesn’t feel like it’s been a year.  Last year I made him the BEST birthday cake.  Now, to understand this epic masterpiece that is the cake, you have to understand that my father in-law loves MGD (miller genuine draft).  Other then water and coffee, it’s seriously the only thing I’ve ever seen him drink in the 5 years I’ve known him.  Now don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t wake up in the morning and crack open an MGD and keep drinking them till he goes to bed that night.  He just refuses to drink any other beer other than MGD, not even that low calorie MGD they have now.

So, to sum it all up, here is my father in-law with his birthday cake from last year.  Happy Birthday Jerry!!!

Friday, April 8, 2011

Twittering with Tweets!


Ok, I finally did it, I broke down and got a twitter account!  My sister got me this great book for my birthday called “The Handmade Marketplace: How to Sell your crafts locally, globally, and online” by Kari Chapin.  It’s the best most helpful book I’ve ever gotten!

Anywho, it talks about (obviously) on how to sell and market your items, and it talks a lot about twitter and flickr, along with facebook.  I tried doing twitter years ago when it was all new and what not, but I didn’t get it.   

So, I thought for the benefit of my business I’d give it a try again.

So, if you have a twitter and would be willing to put up with a new twitter-er, then you can follow me at: http://twitter.com/#!/StitchnPass

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Sweaters, Sweaters, Sweaters!!

Ok, so my cousin is having a baby (finally).  Her baby shower is early May, even though she's not due till the end of August.  We just found out a week ago that she's having a boy, so it hasn't given me a lot of time to think of what I want to make her.  On top of all of that her having a boy is like the 7th person this year that I've had to make baby boy stuff for.  I'm really getting sick of seeing blue!  I had all this cute baby girl yarn picked out for this current boy having cousin.  See, I'm not a huge fan of pink, and neither is my cousin, her favorite color is purple, and I found this GREAT variegated purple yarn perfect for a blanket, sweater, bib, anything!  I had so many great ideas, I was so excited, the universe wouldn't make me make MORE boy items would it?  But apparently the universe doesn't like me or I did something to anger it (probably angered it by buying that beautiful purple yarn).

Oh well, she's having a boy.  I got down to figuring out what to make.  My sister and I found a cool pattern for a polka dot blanket.  We loved it, I bought the yarn, started to make it.  It worked up SO slow.  Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely blanket, but it's made using intarsia  knitting, which looks good, but goes slow.

So I scraped that project (it wasn't going to get done before early May, and I'm not going to lie, I really don't like this cousin so I don't feel as bad scraping it).  Now I had to look for more cool-ish items to make her that says "look at the cool stuff I can make".  I didn't want to buy more yarn for making a new project, so I had to find something that only needed at least 2 skeins of one color.  So I decided to make a baby sweater/jacket.  It would be perfect, people think it's so hard to make a sweater/jacket so it will look like I put a lot of time into it, and it's practical so the baby will be able to use it.  Here is the jacket I'm making:
I've changed a couple of things.  I put a 5 row 2x2 ribbing on the bottom of the sweater, and on the cuffs of the sleeve to keep them from rolling and (at least to me) it gives it a more polished/finished look.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Sorry

Hey everyone, sorry I've been gone so long!  So many things happened last week that made it impossible to even get on my blog, let alone write one!  I've been sick with a chest cold that turned into pneumonia, and my sister came home from New York for the week.  But I'm back now!