Eleven Stitches

Two Knit Dresses

During my blog break, a lot of things happened.  I made up the class I missed last year when I had swine flu.  I finished all of my internship assignments for my Montessori certification and I passed the practicum, which is where I had to give a lesson in front of people who were critiquing me. The certification paperwork is in the mail!  I made lots of dresses.  I got my hair cut even shorter, and David and I got a new car!  Our previous car was 12 years old, and it was finally Time.  We had been wanting to get a Prius for such a long time, so it was an easy decision when we found out the old car had problems that were too expensive to repair.

Oh hey, I'm also wearing one of my new dresses in that photo!  It's Simplicity 3775, which I've made before.  Only now it's 2 sizes smaller, which fits much better. The fabric is from JoAnn Fabric, and it's a comfy blend of 95% lycra 5% spandex. 

 

I added a little modestly panel to the dress so it would be easier to wear to work. This is one of the most comfortable dresses I own, and I love it.

In fact, I love it so much that I decided to make another one with the same pattern right away!  The other great thing about this pattern is that it comes together so quickly.  Instant gratification can be so satisfying.

 

This one is a cotton knit from Michael Miller Fabrics.  I bought it at my local quilting store, and I was so excited to find knit fabric there!  This dress also came together quickly.  It has a different feel to it because the fabric is a little heavier. 

 

I've been wearing this dress with a little green necklace that I "made" myself.  It's two strands of seed beads and one fancy bead strung on some stretchy thread.  Another very simple, but very satisfying project.

I have to say that knit dresses are my favorites to wear.  I'm finally getting used to working with knit fabric, and I'm so glad.  I actually cut out some fabric that was not for the pattern 3775, and I hope to show that to you soon.

But Not a Real Green Dress (That's Cruel)*

Now that summer is here (and is it ever!), my itch to sew has come back.  I had some bright green fabric in my sewing stash for a while now, and I decided that this weekend it was time to make it into a dress.

I've made this dress before, and it was pretty simple to make it again.  The pattern is Simplicity 2999. I lengthened it a little so it would be easier to sit cross-legged on the floor (a good idea if I want to wear it to work).  I also took in the side seams at the waist because I'm skinnier now than I was when I made the dress last time. (yay!)

The pattern called for a 22 inch zipper, but I had a green 14 inch one on hand.  I moved it up a little higher and put a little V in the back of the dress to accommodate the shorter length.  It works!

I think dresses like this are essential for summer.  I like that it's simple and lightweight to help with being out in the heat, and the bright color seems especially appropriate in the summer time.

By the way, I changed my blog header and color scheme.  I'm sure you noticed :)  I haven't changed the look of my blog since I started it, and I figured I was way overdue.

* from this song

A Case for my Nook

A few weeks ago, I bought a Nook.  I adore it.  I did not adore so much the silicone cover that I got to go with it.  Well, I didn't like the fact that it was an attractant to dust and cat hair.  So I decided to make a cover of my own.

 

I haven't had a chance to try it out much yet, but I think that I'll probably adore it as much as my Nook.

It's a simple case.  It's made of two layers of fabric: the outside fabric that you see, and this lining.

There's no padding or extra protection.  It's pretty simple.  Perhaps if I travel I'll use my silicone cover, but this is great for every day. 

As it turns out, my very good friend bought a Kindle last week.  She requested a cover, and she said that she likes red and orange.

I'm leaving the button off the cover.  She can sew it on to fit her e-reader best!

April, May

I have to say that recently my creative energy has been devoted to quilting instead of knitting.  I know it goes in cycles-- I'm sure the warm weather has something to do with it-- so I'm enjoying the change instead of stressing out about it.

It's a good thing I want to quilt, because I had a lot of catching up to do!  I got behind on my One Shiny Bee blocks when I was finishing up my internship requirements.  I churned out March, April, and May blocks pretty quickly.

April  The inspiration for this month was wonky stars.  I had never made wonky stars before, and it was fun.  I used scraps to eke out a third block.  I have to do something for sending my blocks so late!

May The May inspiration was circles.  This was a challenge for me.  I had never (successfully) pieced circles before.  However, there was a link in our group discussion to a great tutorial, and it was so easy and effective.

The first block is machine applique, the second and third blocks are a mixture of piecing and hand applique.

 

   

And that brings me to June for my One Shiny Bee blocks!  I'm finishing up the second block for June now, and I'll be able to show them both to you soon.

My First Handspun Socks

I realized a little while ago that I had been acquiring handspun yarn, but that I had yet to finish and wear anything made out of handspun.  Why was I putting all of this energy into getting handspun yarn?  Maybe I don't even like to wear handspun and it was all for naught.

As it turns out, I don't think it was.

This yarn is Crown Mountain Farm's Sock Hop yarn in Layla, which I believe is now only available through a club membership.  I used US 1 needles.  It was basically a stockinette sock with the cuff from Waving Lace Socks (Rav link) on top.

I started these socks a year ago as a self indulgence during a stressful time.  I finished the second sock this year when I was again stressed out.  I hope that when I wear them next fall they will be as soothing to me then as they were to knit. 

I guess I can't say for certain that I like to wear handspun yarn, as I haven't had a chance to wear these socks.  But I suspect that I'll like them just fine come October.

Quilts for My School

A week ago I was really busy quilting, but it wasn't for me.  I was working on two quilts for my school's fund raising auction. 

Unfortunately, I did not get very many pictures of the first quilt.  This one is from my during-the-day classroom, with a kite theme.  I worked on this one with the other two teachers in my classroom, and the children helped sew the buttons onto their individual kites.

The second quilt is from my After School program.  This is using the same idea as the quilt I did last year, but this time I cut out the shapes because the younger children are not as adept with the scissors yet.  Even so, the children exceeded my expectations on what they created.

 

Two days before the auction, we hung up the quilt outside so we all could admire it.  The children set up chairs right in front of the quilt, and spent quite a bit of time just looking at it.

The quilts ended up raising over a thousand dollars for the school!  The After School quilt ended up being in a bidding war, and they had to go to a second sheet of paper for the silent auction bidding.  I was so excited.  I think it's so wonderful that something I love to do ends up being so valuable to the place I work.  Yay.

Pretty, Pretty

It all started with the yarn.  At the time, I was very faithfully knitting my Olympic Sweater, but I did stop in at my local yarn store.  And I saw this skein.

It was one of those skeins of yarn that I picked up and just could not put back down.  Look at all of those colors!  And they look so nice together in the skein!  The yarn is Punta Yarns Merisock Hand Painted in HP71.

In order to offset some of the guilt of buying another skein of sock yarn (I do have a lot), I decided to start the socks right away.  Or at least, right away after my Olympic sweater was done.

I began with the wavy cuff I made up for the Glacier Wave socks, and followed it up with a little 1x1 ribbing. 

And then it was stockinette all the way.  Because apparently that's what I do with socks nowadays.  As you can see in the above pictures, the colors were pooling  a little bit, so I quickly switched to 60 stitches around instead of 64.  It got rid of the pooling, and the sock probably fits a little better, too.

I really like how these came out.  It's rare that a skein this pretty translates to a pretty pair of socks, because the colors so often do something weird.  This time, they still look great.

Overall, the socks read as a kind of zazzy neutral brown. So I get to wear them with my brown outfits and feel like I've got a bit of color to go with it.  I have a ton of yarn left over.  I'm not sure how I'll use it all yet, but I did use a little bit to make a wee tiny sweater to use with one of my classroom lessons.  But that's a story for another day!

Something Cozy

Hello, blog readers.  I think I'm ready to start posting again.  April has disappeared into a haze of homework, self-doubt, reflection, homework, exhaustion, and more homework.  All of my assignments for my teacher training were due on April 29, and I turned in almost everything.  The thing about this training is not just that it required a lot of homework, but it really required me to change as a person as well.  And even though I think I'm a better person for it, the change was difficult and sometimes painful.  It's a lot to take in.

In April I worked myself to exhaustion and tears, and you might say it culminated two weeks ago with me forgetting to knit for an entire day.  I broke my three year streak and I was too tired to care!  Now that I'm on the other side of things, I'm trying to figure out who I am again, and what I like to do for fun. I know that I still like to knit, so I'll start there.

One thing that has gotten me through the past few months has been tea.  It helps my sinuses (a huge problem for me), and I've trained myself to relax while drinking tea. It also has a lot of stuff attached to it that I think is a lot of fun: flavors of tea, tea kettles, mugs, loose tea holders, honey... I realized that the one thing I was missing was a mug cozy.

My mug cozy lets me hold my tea when it is still steaming without hurting my fingers, and the bit of contact with a knitted thing is soothing to me.  I started my mug cozy with some bulky yarn that I had never figured out how to use, but then I changed my mind.  This cozy should be made with the luxury stuff, since tea is a tiny little luxury for me.

So I knitted this cozy on US 1 DPNs with some leftover Crown Mountain Farm Sock Hop yarn instead.  It's 18 stitches, garter stitch all the way with some button holes at the end. It's perfect.  Except that I did not realize how much stretch there needed to be in the cozy, and I recently ripped out about 2 inches and re-did the button holes.  Now it's really perfect!

I'm glad I had this little project to make me smile during tough times.  Now I'll get to enjoy it during happy times as well.

Wee Tiny Things

(Alternate Title: Knitting is Useful)

One of my internship assignments it to collect 3 small objects to illustrate each letter of the alphabet (phonetically), and 20 items (4 per vowel) to illustrate short vowel words (such as cat or mug) and 16 (4 per vowel, but not e) to illustrate long vowel-silent e words (such as cake or cube). That's a total of 114 objects!

This has actually been my most fun assignment.  It turns out I love collecting tiny things, and it's nice to now have a purpose to collect them!  Most of the sounds are easy to illustrate.  But some of them... they can be pretty tough.  That's why knitting is so useful.

Q is a tough one.  There's quarter, and of course I could make a tiny quilt.  But then what?  Quail?  Quince?  Oh, how about queen?  But most chess queens require the buying of an entire set (or the ruining of an entire set that you already own), so that didn't seem like a great option.  I saw some cute little queens for sale on etsy, and that's what made me decide I could just make one.

She has a crown and a purple cape, of course.  And a pink face.  That's OK, right?

I also had a lot of trouble with U.  There's umbrella.  Easy.  And then....?  Underwear.  The rose was more of a fun knit.  It happens to illustrate long vowel o. 

And then there was X.  Now for x, we were allowed to use ending sounds instead.  So much easier.  I had a box, a six, and then I thought fox would be great.  I again searched around, but after seeing some hand made foxes I decided I could make my own.

I think he's my favorite.

Also, some of the things I own because of knitting were useful for this project.  For instance, one of my Chibi needles went into the N bag.  And here we have my swatch for Audrey in Unst, and a tiny skein of sock yarn from the Rockin' Sock Club.

Or as I like to call them, yarn and red.

I realized as I was taking photos that I did not have a tiny sock included in the S bag.  Now, S is easy to illustrate.  Get a snake, a star, and a spool and you're done.  But this sock knitter needs to have a tiny sock included in the assignment.

This assignment is finished and ready for grading.  It's too bad all of the remaining ones don't require much knitting.

Leftovers Mittens

During the Winter Olympics, I started and finished Audrey in Unst as my Olympic Knitting project.  It was a good choice.  The yarn was from Whistler, the pattern was lovely, and there was lots of stockinette knitting to do.  But although the sweater was the logical project for me to knit, in my heart I really wanted to knit some mittens.

Mittens were, of course, all wrong for the Olympics.  Having to refer to a chart is not great for Olympic watching.  They were too small in scale for the challenge, and the yarn was not from Whistler. They did serve well as a carrot, however.  Once I finished my sweater, even if the Olympics were still on, I was allowed to knit my mittens.  I'm pretty sure my sweater was finished up a little bit faster because of the promise of those mittens.

I had the yarn already.  It was leftovers from these two wonderful pairs of socks.  I had been planning to pair the leftovers together for quite a while now.  In fact, I was anxious to finish up the Glacier Wave socks so I could use the leftovers!  I also had a pattern, Heather's Mittens, in mind.  However, once I finished the sweater I actually opened up the Heather's Mittens pattern and looked at it.  It was not what I wanted.  I did not want to knit my mittens at such a tight gauge. I wanted a long cuff. Have you ever built up a pattern in your mind and then realized it's not what you imagined?  It's very disappointing, even if it is not the pattern's fault.

So, I started making the cuff I wanted to make while I figured out what I was going to do.

It's corrugated rib, with a braid, 4 rows of one-stitch stripes, and then another braid.  (I like braids, too.)  By the time I had finished the cuff, I had finally decided what I would do.  I used the chart from Heather's Mittens, but only for 3 repeats instead of four.  This meant that the middle repeat wrapped around the side of my hand.  I also made a gusseted thumb because I like them so much better than the ones that come off the palm of the mitten.  Oh, and I kind of just knit from the chart until the mittens were long enough, and then I did some tapering thing at the top and kitchenered it all together. (I did take better notes than what I just said so that the second mitten worked out the same way.)

 

I think what I'm trying to say is that I knit my own version of a mitten, and I used the chart for Heather's mittens.  Kind of.  I flipped it around for the second mitten so that way they would be mirror images of each other.

 

I love these mittens.  They're exactly what I wanted. I will happily wait until next winter to wear them.