In lieu of posting about Adam’s b-day present, which in my slow knitting way remains unfinished, I will show a photo of his Christmas gift, which I did manage to finish on time:
They’re a little pill-y from wear, but they’re holding up pretty well. Here’s a detail shot:
Adam gave me a gift certificate for a sewing class that I will be taking in a couple of months. The class, which takes place over several weeks, will teach me how to make a zippered bag, which is very exciting, since I have not machine-sewn since the eighth grade. My primary school had (and perhaps still has) a house on our school grounds that was used to teach sewing to seventh and eighth graders. It’s true, my primary school was preparing us all for future employment at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and thus, an entire HOUSE was devoted to teaching us to sew.
Anyway, once I regain the muscle memory of my sweatshop skills* I am planning on making one of these cute little box bags I’ve been seeing.
I first saw them for sale at store.piddleloop.com, which someone had linked to on their blog. Misocrafty has some, too. I like the idea of the grommet hole on the piddleloop ones for feeding the yarn out, though it also strikes me as totally useless since once you started your project, it would be impossible to fit back through the grommet hole. Unless there’s a secret trick I am missing.
But if you already have sewing skills, here is a tutorial for making these same box bags, from a blog called dragoknit.
*Hey, my grandmother was/is a member of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, so I mock because I am of The People.
Yarn: sportweight Blue Sky alpaca in Toasted Almond and Licorice, 1 skein each. Total cost (before tax) $20
Needles: No. 6 Clover bamboo circular (these are knit flat and then sewn up)
Pattern: My own.
The color and pattern were inspired by andknitting.com’s scarf. After I started them (waaay back in Oct/Nov or so), I noticed Knitlit Kate made these opera gloves, which are also very similar. Knitlit Kate was smarter because she made them in self-striping sock yarn.
I am glad I knit them flat because (a) it was easier to deal with than DPNs and (b) the beginning and end of each row has two garter stitches which made a pretty garter stitch channel along the side of each one.
This yarn is amazingly lovely. It feels like butter (buttah!) when it is knit up. I think I might be sensitive to alpaca though, so I find it slightly itchy. Which is crazy, because it is so so so soft. Lickety Knit wrote a funny post about how she knit this luscious alpaca scarf that made her itch. Damn you alpaca, with your bait and switch properties.
Here they are in action today. They’re a little big, but warm.
As part of my never-ending analysis of this simple project, I shall now continue my epic recounting of how it came to be. So, anyway, once at The Yarn Tree (see below), I decided I could not figure out how to thrum a bonnet or hat on my own. My sister had requested a gray with blue thrummed hat, and since I had abandoned the thrum idea, I decided to substitute a mixture of two yarns.
I’m not sure about the marled result, though a couple people have pointed out that it looks like chain mail. It does, though for some reason, I couldn’t think of this concept (chain mail) and the only words that came to mind were “helmet liner,” “Monty Python,” and “Asterix and Obelix.” But if I were a little smarter, I would have realized the thing that connected these three ideas is chain mail.
Anyway, is knitted chain mail chic? I don’t think so, but it’s not that bad. So on a chicness scale from 0-10, I would say it is maybe a 4. On a utility scale, I would say it is higher.
I myself found the yarn combo sort of itchy, but I have sensitive skin, and since it seemed itchy, I gave it a good wash before I mailed it to my sister. I’ll have to wait till she wears it a lot before I give a judgment on its itch factor. The Joseph Galler yarn has tremendous yardage (665 yards!), and the Frog Tree yarn is relatively cheap. The Frog Tree is, I think, maybe the itchier one, but since I did use the yarns together, I am hesitant to blame it.
I am actually contemplating destashing it, but for the record, here’s how much I have left of the three balls of fingerling-weight Frog Tree and one skein of Joseph Galler (undyed sport weight). Both yarns are alpaca.
I think I would make the hat again, but in a bouncier yarn. The alpaca is too drape-y. Also, I would never use this yarn for something where you care about stitch definition, because it is quite fuzzy.
If I made the hat again, I doubt I would make the scarf, because it was boring to make. It required both concentration and repetition, not the most exciting combination. The hat took a week, and the scarf took two months.
So, in conclusion, is it a winner or a loser? I am not sure, and am going to take the wimpy Californian way out, and say, “There are no losers in life. It’s all about how you play the game.”
This is a very belated Christmas present for my sister. It’s kind of a knitted helmet-meshed with a scarf.
Pattern: The hat part is from this pattern here. It is the Amelia Earhart Aviator Cap, and apparently designed for chemo patients. Cute, even if you are not undergoing chemo. Some other knitter made it into a Princess Leila hat/wig here. You can see it in its hat-only form above. (I also think it looks like a helmet, hence the shot from the arms and armor room at the Metropolitan Museum.)
The scarf is a diagonal rib (k2, p2, scooting over one stitch every right-side row) for two feet, and then I increased on one side only for about half a foot and then decreased on the same side for another half a foot so it would form that triangle shape to fit into the bottom of the hat. Then I knit for another two feet.
Yarn: Joseph Galler Prime Alpaca (1 skein) and Frog Tree Fingerling Weight Alpaca (2 skeins) from The Yarn Tree, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Needles: No. 7 Addi bamboo circulars. I rarely hear people mention Addi bamboo needles, but I like them a lot. This is the only pair I have but they have a better cord than the Clovers, I think.
Cost: Well, I bought 3 skeins of the fingerling weight but only needed 2. So, if you bought 1 of the Joseph Galler ($26.50) and 2 of the Frog Tree ($13), your total would be $39.50. I will evaluate the yarn and yarn store in another post.
Jenny’s comment on my last post and a recent post of Knit and Tonic bring the discussion to a sad sad fact. Somehow, learning to love knitting means losing any and all fashion sense. I want to be chic and cool, but I want to knit frumpy frumpy things. Like shawls. And self-patterning yarns.
My name is New York Minknit and I like to knit ugly things.
And if you keep reading my blog this week, I’ll have some (or at least one) potentially-ugly finished object for you to observe. And as a preview of something I recently started, look at this sock that I started (and yes, I still have another pair of socks unfinished.) Ugly, yet alluring.
To attempt to end on an uplifting note, I will now promote The Sartorialist. This photo is from his site:
That sweater has cabling, yet is great. I’m not sure about all that naked chest-ness on top, but I salute Mr. Hipster for his fashion decision to BELT his sweater. I’m not sure all men should emulate this, but it is kind of awesome.
I always wanted to be someone who had an “inspriation” wall. No, not of quotes. Depending on my mood, I either find sappy quotes super-stupid or incredibly moving. I think I have bi-polar sappy card syndrome. There was one summer where my friend and I would send each other horrid cards (the ones that are marked “From loving wife to husband” or some such crap) because we thought they were so bad. But then, sometimes, I read them, and I think, *sniff!* “It’s so true! We are just little grains of sand in the world!”
But anyway, I thought it would be cool to have a interior decorating/closet inspiration wall. But I never got around to it. Instead I just pile all my crap around on various sofas (mine and Adam’s.) I told Adam–when he was trying to clear the corner of my crap–that he couldn’t throw away a Lucky magazine because it had a picture of this sweater above, which I wanted to copy. Anyway, I never scanned in the Lucky photo or anything, but I just found a blog, coloursknits.blogspot.com, that had this photo with links to people who had tried to copy it. (Her commenters had all sorts of useful information as well.)
P.S. I am aware I dress more like a homeless lady or Ugly Betty (as evidenced by the fact that Ugly Betty and I had the SAME coat–I replaced the powder blue version with a red puffer a year or two ago, but I digress) than a swinging ’60s mod girl.