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!

Calorimetry Headscarf

i actually saw the pattern for this headscarf a year ago. I thought it was gorgeous but i just couldn't figure out how it was done. at the time, i hadn't done short rows before and i had no clue how to transfer a pattern from needles to loom. flash forward a year, and one of the ladies on the DALooms list on Yahoo brings it up again. when i went back to look at it again, with a more experienced looming eye, i thought, "ah ha! now i get it!" so i went to work yesterday and made one!
first off, let me say, i wasn't certain it would come out right, so i didn't want to use any of my favorite yarns. recently my friend gave me like 6 or 8 of those Caron One Pound skeins of yarn. that's a lot of yarn! and two of them were in this purply reddish color that i didn't particularly care for. so i wound up a bit on my ball winder (i'll write a little more in another post why i like to do this) and went to work.
now, ya'll know me. i NEVER do a swatch test. never. so, that being said, i wasn't sure if i should use my green or yellow knifty knitter loom. the scarf looks like it calls for a smaller gauge loom, but this was just a test pattern and i wanted it to knit up quick. but then i realized my green loom is still occupied with the baby blanket for my friend (who had her baby a few weeks ago! oh well. at least she got the mittens, bib, and mitts in time!) so i went with the yellow loom, but that would make the scarf too big, so i decided to omit a few pegs. i ended up using 30 pegs of the yellow loom. the pattern calls for a knit 2 purl 2 ribbing, so i marked off the knit pegs with small elastics. then i wrapped a piece of scrap yarn around the middle ten pegs that i wasn't gonna work for the short rows and went to work.
it took me over five hours, but that's only because i was watching TV more than i was knitting. and then i stopped for an hour or so to make dinner for me and my boyfriend. i think if i worked straight through, i could probably finish it in under two hours. i'm not a fast knitter, i'm sure a more experience person could do it in about an hour.

of course, because i didn't swatch, it was too small!!!!!! OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

but it actually came out pretty good! the seam where the short rows are is a little funky. i'm not quite sure why. i'll probably just knit a strap or something to connect the back and add a button. i'm actually starting to like the one i made and i would consider wearing it, but it clashes horribly with my hair. but after making this one, i have ideas of how to make other ones with different stitches and yarns so i can wear them now in the summer. i think for the next one i'm gonna go with e-wraps and purls so the knitting is a little looser and airier and maybe i'll try and all e-wrap one or one with eyelets! maybe next time i'll use one strand of yarn instead of two! the ideas are endless. i'm probably gonna do another one tomorrow. we'll see how that one turns out!

here are the pics! this is the front of it. i didn't weave in the ends yet. there actually isn't that much weaving to do, which is a definate plus for me!!!


here's the back. looks pretty much the same as the front.


and here it is on my head. i had to hold the two back ends together with my hands, but you get the idea of how its suppose to look.

Sore Fingers

looming hurts! when i'm sitting on the couch for hours and hours on end, my butt and back get really sore. I usually lay the loom against my belly or sit it on my thigh and as i turn the loom around as i knit on it, it rubs against me and it makes my belly or thigh sore.

and my fingers! when i loom a lot, my fingers get irritated from rubbing up against the loom for hours. i tend to keep my pinkie finger tucked up under my hand so it's constantly rubbing against the loom as i knit. and the loom pick tends to rest on my middle a lot and that gets irritating after a while. so, whats my solution? electrical tape!!! i've found that electrical tape works the best out of all the tapes. its soft and flexible and it moves with you. i tried duct tape, masking tape, scotch tape. none of them worked. so now, when i know i'm going to put in a few hours of looming, i bust out with the roll of electrical tape. its actually in the little storage cubbies with the rest of my looming supplies!

here are a few pics of how i wrap up my fingers. you can actually see the little roll of electrical tape in the backround!! LOL! as different fingers get sore, i just cut a piece and wrap them up.