Monthly Archives: September 2012

On the Go…

Life’s been kinda hectic lately and haven’t had much time to craft or post! (You may have noticed the lack of a Pinterest Peeve of the Week last week). Anyhoo, I thought I’d take a moment to give you a sneak peak of what I’m working on and what’s coming up for blog posts and tutorials! It’s funny, I had no idea I had so many projects on the go until I started counting them up for this post. Guess I’d better get busy….

1. Pete’s Hoodie.
My boyfriend requested an upgrade to his favorite hoodie, so we’ve bought all the stuff and I’m supposed to be sewing a iphone pocket onto the sleeve. Er, almost done, baby!

2. Sweater for niece/nephew

My brother and sister-in-law are expecting a baby….and I’m making it everything!!! Starting with this sweater (I swear, it will turn into a sweater in the end) out of yarn they bought me last year for Christmas. It’s gorgeous alpaca wool from the farm down the road from them and I can’t wait for them to see this!!

3. T-shirt quilt

I’ve been meaning to make a t-shirt quilt for the longest time and I finally got it started!!! I’m keeping it simple since it’s my first quilt and doing a patchwork pattern. I’ve got the front all sewn together and bought the batting and backing last weekend. I’m still debating how I’ll quilt it but I’m leaning toward fighting my initial urge to bite off more than I can chew and just doing ties.

4. Needle felting

Last Christmas I bought my sister-in-law this needle felting kit from Wool Buddy from the Bazaar Bizzare (or maybe it was the Renegade Craft Fair…). I was dying to try the needle felting myself so finally gave in and bought another kit for myself. Somehow though, I just haven’t gotten around to doing it yet!

5. Garbage area

I love my apartment, but I’ve hated the mess around the garbage area in our kitchen since I’ve moved in. Pete and I decided to finally do something about it one weekend. We’ve got the basic construction done and one of these days I’ll get around to sanding and painting it. I can’t say that we’re expert carpenters but we definitely made some cool finds that day, the coolest being our local re-build center that recycles old building materials. Way easier and cheaper than starting from scratch!

6. Fix market bag

I found this pattern for a market bag on Ravelry and it looked easy enough. Found some cute $2/skein bright green 100% cotton yarn at Michael’s and thought it would be perfect. All was going well until I decided it would be cute with a hot pink handle. Now it looks like something a 12 year old girl would own. So I’m going to take off the pink handle and re-finish it in all green. I’m still debating whether it might be cute if I lined it with some white or black fabric, but then it would lose its stretchiness…

7. Take in pants
A friend gave me this pair of jeans/jeggings and they’re super cute. Buuuuuut…..they don’t have any belt loops and are just a bit too big in the waist (I have basically no butt/hips what so ever). I’m planning on putting some darts on the top at the back to help hold them up. Shouldn’t be too difficult (famous last words!).

I’ve got a few projects lined up that I haven’t even started yet too! My boyfriend and I are planning on being Max and a Wild Thing for Halloween. We haven’t even started our costumes yet and we’re going to be away for half of October, yikes! At Thanksgiving my mom’s going to give me the yarn, etc to knit my niece/nephew a little hoodie and my brother has already requested some of my hand appliqued onesies (tutorial upcoming). Looks like I’ll be busy through the holidays!

See? I don’t just bitch about Pinterest, I make stuff too!

Lobster Mittens (Free Pattern!)

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One of the most complimented clothing items that I own is a prized pair of mittens I picked up at the end of a pier in Halifax, Nova Scotia. These bad boys, featured prominently in the bad ass photo below, occasion comment from strangers nearly every time I wear them.

A few months ago, my boyfriend’s friend was in San Francisco visiting and gushed over the mittens. Having recently taken up knitting again two years ago I said to myself, “Self, now is the time to recreate the lobster mittens”. And here you have it folks, the lobster mittens replica.

I’m pretty pleased with how they came out! And they’re my first intarsia pattern that actually worked! You can find the pattern for the lobster intarsia for free at the end of the blog. I knit this on worsted weight yarn using off-white, red and a wee bit of black (just for the eyes) and I think I was on about a US7 needle.

Now, here’s the place I’d love to be able to write out an amazing tutorial for producing the perfect intarsia. Only problem….I don’t actually know how to do them properly, I just kinda made it up. There are plenty of good tutorials online to help you though. I did come up with a couple tips while doing this one though.

1. It’s way easier to do intarsia neatly if you’re not knitting in the round. I normally do mittens on double-pointed needles but to make these mittens I opened the pattern up then sewed a seam down one side to connect front to back on the mittens at the end.

2. I found it easiest to have three balls of yarn going when knitting the lobster; two balls of the off-white and one of the red. I would knit to the lobster, drop the first off-white and switch to the red. Then I’d knit the lobster section of the pattern, and when I hit the edge, switch to the second ball of off-white. What this did was kept me from having to carry yarn along the back of mitten. Last time I tried to do that, I didn’t keep proper tension and the adorable toque featuring copulating deer that I had made was way too small for the intended recipient with no stretch at all.

Please don’t reproduce this pattern on your website. If you’d like to feature this pattern, please link back to this blog post. Thanks!

Sorry it is not more of a tutorial, but I feel there are many more qualified on the web than I on this particular subject. I’m not sure how to post a link to a downloadable .pdf file for the pattern, so you’ll just have to go off this until I figure it out.

So that’s it folks! Go forth and knit!