A Trip To The Local Yarn Shop

i finally made a trip to my local yarn shop. it was sooooooo much fun! my sister and i were going to all the stores that sell yarn cause she wanted a tam and scarf set for her birthday, but she wanted particular colors. so i told her it would just be easier if we went together to A.C. Moore, Joann Fabrics, and this local shop which i had never been to before. We went to the yarn shop first and boy and i glad we did! the lady who owned the shop was there with her two friends and they were sitting at a table knitting and crocheting. they were all so friendly! this happened in early October, so i can't remember all the details, but basically, we ended up hanging out there for almost two HOURS!! just talking with the ladies and looking at all the wonderful yarns. it was such a nice experience. i ended up getting $70 worth of yarn!!! my sister decided she wanted a mitten and scarf set in one color and a tam and scarf set in another color. and then i saw this absolutely dream-a-licious grey wool yarn and i just had to buy 2 skeins of that at 18 bucks a pop. so worth it.

i didn't tell them i use a loom to knit. the conversation was just going so nicely and it would have broken my heart to encounter any knitting snobbery. the owner didn't seem like that kind of person, but...
after the fact, i kinda felt guilty, almost as if i was acting as if i was ashamed of loom knitting. but it wasn't about that at all. i've just had to deal with so much knitting snobbery with my friends that i didn't want to chance getting it from this woman with this lovely yarn store and then i would never go there again and get my hands on her yummy yarn anymore. she told us to stop by anytime and sit and knit with her. she also told me to come back when i finished my sister's stuff. so maybe when i go back i'll show her the fine quality of my items, LOL, and then tell her they were done on looms. i feel as if i have to go back there and tell them i use looms to make up for not saying anything before. i am not ashamed of my looms, dammit! LOL

then we decided to still go to A.C. Moore and Joann Fabrics cause i had found coupons to both places. just to take a look to see if they had anything better. nothing at A.C. Moore. but at Joann's i found the purple hat loom! so exciting! i made a hat with my yummy gray yarn with that in one day! looks and fits great. i'm also gonna use that to make my sisters tam and i've been "commissioned" by a friends mother to make a tam for her as well. non paying job, but i'm happy to spread the knitting love!

Beaded Headband

there's been a lot of talk on one of the looming groups i belong to (The Knifty Knitter and Loom Knitting Group, you should join!!!!) about beaded work. a lady had done a cute set of hats with beads in the brim. it generated a lot of posts and it got me thinking about beading. so, when i went to knit a headband, i decided to throw some beads on it. it wasn't very hard, but it was a bit tedious. i was working with a ribbon yarn which was very sheer. i had some cute, tiny, little red beads that i wanted to use, but i couldn't find my needle threader. but i have tons of different gauge wire from my jewelry making, so i figured i would make a threader out of that. but all the wire was too thick. in some cases, the bead would go on the wire, but you need to double the wire up to have a little loop to thread the yarn through, and when i made the little eye, the bead wouldn't fit over the wire anymore. so i was stumped, trying to think of another way or a thinner wire to use when it came to me...GARBAGE BAG TIES!!! that wire was thin and flexible enough! so that's what i did! AND, i figured out that i don't have to make a complete eye to thread the yarn through, i just need to fold the wire over. here's a little slideshow i made to show what i did. hopefully its clear enough to help someone else out.

the hardest part was constantly pushing the beads down the length of yarn as i knitted. i had threaded on about 70 to 80 beads. its a lot to push down. i had to push down ten or fifteen, then go back and push down another ten or fifteen. it took a little time each time i had to push the beads down. i THOUGHT i had pushed it down really far, but, two or three rows later, i had to push them down again. the yarn was curling up on itself, too, and i couldn't get it to straighten out because of the beads. but, all in all, i was happy with the result. i decided to get a little fancy and try to make a pattern on the headband, but i quickly settle on just a basic wave pattern. anything else would require me to get out the graph paper and sketch it out. here's a few pic of the finished headband.

i got a job! yay!!! but i'm taking an 8 THOUSAND DOLLAR a year pay cut. the economy is so bad no one is offering any decent salaries! five and a half years ago, with virtually no college coursework and five years less experience, i was hired on at my old job at $14.65 an hour. over the five years i gradually made it up to $15.94. then the economy collapses and my center got closed down and now i'm laid off. everywhere i was looking for a job in the past few months ranges from 12 to 14 an hour!!!! with most of them averaging around $13!! and that all well and good, but i'm now a ten year veteran with much more education under my belt! you'd think i could at least start off at $15! but NO, no place wanted to even consider it. so i finally ended up with this particular company, which was offering the lowest salary ($12 an hour), but it was the place i really really loved the most and had the most room for growth. i'm actually so so exited to go work for this place.so, now this means i really gotta get up on my game in regards to knitting things to sell. I'm not going to recoup my 8K a year, but if i could even get 2 or 3K, that would be awesome. so i made these three products. i haven't put them up to sell yet cause i want to get really nice pics of everything. i'm probably only gonna ask for like 5 bucks each for these first few things cause i can definitely see areas for improvement. for someone like me, who's an easy going relaxed consumer, minor errors won't bother me. but for someone like my sister, who is very picky and particular, the small errors might make her angry. its not like there are a lot of errors on each piece. it just that each piece has one small stitch error each. one tiny error. a knt where its suppose to be a purl. or the stitches aren't picked up evenly. it makes me angry, but i do it every time!! arg! so i can't ask for any sort of decent price for these things. i'm basically just trying to make enough back to buy some more yarn.

the first one is a raspberry tam.

there's a little string hanging out from the back. that's the drawstring from the drawstring cast on. its cool casue you can make the tam opening large to get it over your hair and then tighten the tam so it stays on your head. but then what do uou do with the hanging string? its not like you can tie it or something. i suppose one could tuck it under. but i don't know how to advertise and make that lone tightening string a good thing. so that's the error with that piece.

the next one is a larger tam in strawberry lemonade
this one is one of my favorites. for this one, i did an i-cord for a drawstring and wove it through the headband and it ties in the back. it actually looks really nice. but the error on this one is on one side of the drawstring, the yarn is loose!
you can see it on the end of the drawstring on the right side. i don't know how this happened! it won't come unraveled, but it doesn't look as neat as it could have! arg!!!

the last one is a knitted visor
i love, love, love, this one. this one has some stitch errors where the visor meets the head piece. i grabbed the wrong stitches on two or three pegs when i was folding over the top of the visor. needless to say, i almost wept in frustration. and, the visor is a little too narrow for my taste. i would prefer if it was a little bit wider. i'll probably make the next one with a wider visor. and this one is adjustable!! the back closes with a decorative button, but there are five button slots in the back, so it could fit a child's head as well. but i like it a lot. maybe i'll be bold and ask for 6 dollars for this one! LOL!!

that's about it. i start my new job next week so i may not have as much time to knit after that. right now i it takes me about one day to make each piece. although i don't actually knit every day. but when i srart work, it might take two or three days to complete each piece. i'll throw these these three pieces on my Etsy page and see what happens. Maybe no one will want them and i'll end up giving them away as gifts for my family. we'll see...

Tote Bag by Graciela Worth

so this week in the loom knitters classroom, we had a tote pattern by Ms. Graciela Worth. now, i must admit, i've been a part of the classroom for just about a year and i only actually finished one project, the ribby gloves by Laura Campion. i see all these wonderful projects come through but i just never have the time to do them, or, if i start, i never finish them. yep, miss UFO is my name!
but this week the project seemed really cute and i had really been wanting to try a purse of some sort. lucky for me, my boyfriend gave me an A.C. Moore gift card as one of my birthday presents and so i hopped on over there earlier this week and bought a purse handle along with some new crochet hooks and buttons. but,of course A.C. Moore didn't have the exact handle i wanted (in fact, they only had TWO styles in the WHOLE store! what?!), so i drove five minutes over to Joanne's, and of course they had exactly what i wanted and then some! its never the first store you go to, right?! so i ended up spending money anyways and buying 2 other purse handle sets and a few of those solid rings you can use to connect the purse with that handle. i figured i could knit a handle to match a purse as well this way.
i started knitting the tote on Tuesday, i think, and i finished it up today (Friday)! it was suppose to be 40 rows of a garter stitch using the e-wrap, but i really don't like the look of garter, so i did about 50 rows of my modified rib stitch, which is turning out to be my favorite.
my yellow loom is already marked off with rubber bands. its two knits and one purl. but then i like to turn the product inside out. i know it seems weird. you might ask why i just don't do two purls and one knit in the first place, but it just doesn't look the same! i've tried! and i'll admit i have a thing with turning things inside out.
of course there are a PLETHORA of mistakes! LOL! as usual i was watching TV whist knitting and i messed up on the pattern. i seem to automatically default to purl stitches when i'm distracted! LOL! so on two different rows, you can see where i continued purling when i should have been knitting. i decreased way too much on the part where the yarn wraps around the handle. its suppose to be much wider, but i totally messed up. oh well. and the biggest mistake? i put the flipping handles on backwards!!!! you know how one side is flat and one side is rounded and the flat sides are suppose to be facing each other on the inside of the purse? well, i managed to sew BOTH handles in the wrong way! i was almost tempted to turn the bag bag right-side out to make the handles right, but in the end, i went with my quirky little error. and because the handles are shaped like ovals,i can have them either horizontal or vertical. i'm thinking about anchoring the handles by wrapping them in yarn later so they stay one way, but that's way off. i was also thinking about lining the bag, but i can't find a material i like enough yet.
the pics aren't the greatest quality, the color looks washed out in a lot of them. once again, i had to use my camera phone cause i can't find the battery charger for my digital camera! arg!!! i took a pic of the bag against my granite table cause i thought the natural colors of the bag against the stone looked so cool together.
so, without further ado, here are the pics of my cute little bag!

Cocktail hat

so as i was fooling around with different yarns and stitches to use with the Calorimetry pattern, i messed up on the bind off and instead got this.





and here's a closeup of the ribbon yarn and the stitch



love it!!! it looks almost like a 1930's cocktail hat, and so that's what i made it! i showed it to my sister on thursday and she snatched it up before i even got pics! but we had a wedding to go to today (saturday) and it matched the colors of the dress i was planning to wear, so she graciously "allowed" me to have it back for the day. i had to get as many pics of it on me as i could, so i just put them all in a slide show for your viewing pleasure! LOL! i might have to make a few more of these in different colors!

Kneel Down, Puke Up

kneel down, puke up. kneel down, puke up...

that's my little chant i use to remember what direction to make the loop when i'm using and pattern that requires knits and purls in the same row, like a rib stitch type thing. when you do a knit stitch, you pull the loop down the peg, therefore, KNEEL down. and when you do a purl stitch, you pull the loop up the peg, therefore PUKE up! it works so great for me! i rarely mess up on my knits and purls anymore! but, i must admit, i was getting some strange look from my boyfriend when he heard me chanting under my breath when i was working on the Calorimetry pattern!

Oh Ball Winder, How I love Thee!!

i never blogged about it, but i got a ball winder a few months ago. love love love it!! i got it at Joann's.com with a 50%off coupon, so i only ended up paying 30 bucks for it. i also got some looms clips (which i've been DYING for!) and the knifty knitter flower loom. i have a twelve peg ITA flexiloom, but i wanted a knifty knitter one too, just in case! LOL! in anticipation of losing my job, i bought about $150 worth of yarn from Smiley's. its a great online discount yarn store and i encourage you all to check it out! you wouldn't believe how much yarn i got for the money! a lot of it was in hanks and since i had the ball winder, i got to work winding them all. this ball winder makes outside pull balls as well as center pull balls, which i'm not a big fan of because as you pull more yarn from the center, the ball starts to loose structure and if you don't use the whole ball, then you have this wobbly, half formed ball on your hands. so i usually don't make the center pull kind. but then i realized, if i need to use two strand of yarn at one time, i can pull the yarn from the center and the outside of a ball! i know you're suppose to be able to do this with some skeins, but i've never figured it out an it never works for me. all i end up with is a tangled mess when i try it one those skeins. this way works GREAT for me! so now i find myself winding even my skeins of yarn so i have two points to pull the yarn from. and the yarn is much easier to store now that all the balls are the same height and shape and mostly the same width. when i was messing around with that giant skein of yarn when i was doing the Calorimetry pattern, i just wound a bunch of it into a ball first and then used two strands as one. eventually i'll still run into the wobbly ball problem, but it doesn't happen as fast. i keep the ball winder clipped on one of my TV dinner trays and i use my boyfriend's office chair as a make-shift swift when i need it. i just put the hank of yarn over the chair back and i spin the chair to release more yarn as i wind it. works awesome! i must say, i do love my ball winder dearly!