Just Pictures

My front yard



Tiny 1.5" squares!


9 patch scraps


2.5" strips

Here are some of my recent knitting:







The baby sweaters were knitted from the top down, the designs from Mary Rich Goodwin's books. Her website is HERE. Her patterns are very well written, easy to follow and written for a wide range of sizes, from infants to adults, well, depending on the book you buy. I love her books.

The baby booties pattern is from one of those little books by Vogue Knitting. This one was an easy pattern but the Vogue books are littered with errors. I once sent them an email pointing it out but they seemed unconcerned. Thus, I stopped buying their books.

My books came in

SOFTIES KIT : This is the same as the book except it has pieces of felt, floss, needle and a different format. The patterns are in laminated card format.



Luckily, I didn't buy the book in the first place. Why do they do that? They did the same thing with Amy Butler's In Stitches Book, and Denise Schmidt's Quilt book. You would think that you're buying a different book. Waste of money.

AMIGURUMI WORLD: Excellent book by Ana Paula Rimoli. Well-written patterns, beautiful pictures and cute stuffies.



PLUSH YOU - LOVABLE MISFIT TOYS TO SEW AND STUFF : Now, there's the keyword - MISFIT! My style is those cutesy-huggy-pretty stuff. That's why I did not like the book. I'd hate to say that the book is bad. Others might like this style, even enjoy making them. This has gotten 2- star reviews on Amazon (2 out of 5 stars). I'd say, to each his own.



My kids saw the stuffies inside the book and they found some quite disturbing. Some made me laugh. There are zombies, an ugly purple thang, a blind penguin, cannibal bunnies and this stuffie with a piece of wood sticking out of its eye. This one freaked out my kids:



I found some cute ones but no patterns. There are the amigurumi cupcake bears, Ami dolls, Woolyhoodwinks (with pattern), flapper dolls, Sewing stars owls, candy corn doll (with pattern), Mommy and Baby owl by Ana Paula Rimoli (and with pattern too!), and a Family of whales (Blairpeter).

This book is a collection of patterns by different designers. Photography is excellent though. Fortunately, I borrowed the books from the library before buying it outright.

These are the 3 baby quilts I finished:

Hubby liked the bright colors of this one. I used 5" charms I bought a long time ago.

A baby boy's quilt. I wish the colors were brighter--lol!

A more subdued baby girl's quilt which featured carousel horses with pink flowers (can't really see in the picture). I like the antique-y look of this one.

coming up... knitted baby sweaters.

This is the way I do my strings...

I use any old phone books or yellow pages. Some of you recycle. I cut mine up. The pages are very thin and perfect for foundation. I cut mine into 6.5" squares. Use an old rotary cutter (not the one you use for fabrics).

I sew on the strips (any scraps)onto the paper diagonally, like this. The first strip in the middle is right side up. I do the flip and sew.



Press the irregular squares with the paper intact. I usually do 5-6 squares at a time.


Turn the squares over and cut. Use the paper as guide. You now have a 6.5" square of diagonal strings. You can remove the paper at this point. Be careful that you don't unravel the stitches.





Sew 4 smaller squares into a bigger 12.5" square, like this:



And this is my semi-finished quilt (without borders yet).



This is going to be a baby quilt. You can do it in all blue fabrics or fall colors (my fave) or any colors you want. Use your scraps, use your stash, use your Japanese fabrics, or batiks. Have fun!

Well, ya know, I haven't blogged but I finished 3 baby quilts! I also finished quilting my Dad's quilt. My mom pieced the top and I did the quilting on my Janome. The 3 baby quilts are orders from my sister in law. I'm also knitting some baby booties and hats for baby shower gifts.

Here are some pics of a top I did in one of the local classes I've attended, hosted by the Country Sewing Center, "Gracie's Night Out". These are some of the possible layouts.

Layout #1

Layout #2

Layout #3. This was the teacher's suggested layout.

Can you guess which one I picked?

Update 3/3/12:

I have re-knitted this pattern as written and did not see any errors. Here is the latest picture:

I've been racking my brains as to why others are not able to get the same fabric as pictured. The only thing I can think of is in row 2.

There is a K1 in the beginning of row. You don't repeat this K1. The repeat is from *YO, k2tog* to the end of row.

Another thing I'm thinking of is that I knit Continental, with the working yarn held in my left hand. I'm not a thrower. When you "throw" your yarn with the right hand, it is easy to drop or miss a Yarn Over.

Pattern Freebie, Big Net Lace Scarf pattern

All of a sudden, I've had requests for this pattern from my old, now defunct, website. so, I'm putting it up here:




I used a skein of Chunky weight Baby Alpaca, about 100 gms, 108 yards, and US size 15 ( 10 mm) needles.

Abbreviations: K – knit; tog-together; SSK-slip, slip, knit; YO-yarn over

Big Net Lace Scarf:

Cast on 17 stitches (must be an odd number of stitches)

Row 1 : Knit

Row 2: K1, * YO, k2tog * ; repeat from * to * to the end of row.

Row3: Knit

Row 4: * SSK, YO*; rep from * to * to the end of row, ending with K1

Row 5: Knit.

Repeat rows 2-5 until you have just enough yarn to bind off. Make sure you end with row 5 and bind off loosely.

I’m sure you can use any type of yarn, worsted, sport, lace weight. Adjust the number of stitches, make it narrower or wider. Play with it.

The pdf link is here on Ravelry.

© 2005-2008 Vicki Suan for Suanknits.

Oh, so, speedy spinner here has finished spinning her Merino/silk roving from yesterday and here is what the yarn looks like. About worsted weight, 147 yards of super soft yumminess!



I am also knitting the Ballerina Tank top using SWTC's Bamboo yarn.The picture is HERE. The blue tank top which really looked good on the model.

I bought the yarn from Babetta's a long long time ago (about a year or so) and got the freebie pattern. There are some errors in the pattern. I googled for erratas but found none, checked SWTC's website, Soysilk.com and again, no errata. So, I emailed them and found out that they are aware of the errors and have since pulled the pattern from circulation because of that. Oh good, so I can play with the pattern as much as I want.

But what if I was a novice knitter? How do I get help? If I was the designer, knowing that the pattern has been distributed, at least post the corrections on the website! What the heck?!!!?

So, here I am, attempting to help, hoping that someone, under the same predicament I'm in, will somehow google this.

First: I know I'm right on gauge (of course I knitted a swatch and I have proof too, he, he) but I doubt I can fit into this:


Well, maybe I can, if I block the heck out of it. Or maybe, if I lost some weight? hmmm....


The purl side is supposed to be the Right side. But then, this is my top, and the purl side looks ugly, so I'm making the Knit side my right side.

Second: There is waist shaping and I'm supposed to do the decreases every 4th row 11 times with corresponding increases 11 times. My problem is I am short with a short torso. Not gonna work for me. I reduced it to 8 times. Worked out good!

Thirdly, and here is the blatant error:

Knit the back for 14" from the hem and knit the straps for 4". Oookay.

Now, knit the front for 16" and knit the straps for 6". What the ....?

What I did is I knitted the back for 16" and the straps for 6". I will knit the front for 18" and shorten the straps to 4" because I don't want to reveal too much cleavage or in my case, a bony chest.

Oh by the way, there is no armhole shaping either. What fun!

The lesson here is: Be fearless. Don't be afraid to make changes. You don't have to follow instructions to the letter specially if your gut feeling is telling you it's wrong. It's your garment. Knit it to suit you. And if it turns out butt ugly, rip it out or wear it at home and enjoy!

Whoa! I'm spinning again !!

This is Merino/silk blend that I handpainted last year and never got the time to spin. Chocolate brown and Cherry red colorway.


Unspun


Spun

I bought some fat quarters from a new online store here in Elk Grove, CA TheQuiltShoppe.net. She doesn't have an actual storefront. I'm quite impressed with the service. I didn't need to buy the whole bundle and only needed 8 FQs of each collection. I emailed the owner, she got them cut for me, nicely bundled and ribboned, and got them right away! Reasonable shipping charges too. I really liked the Surf and Sand collection (I'll turn them into purses) and Sandy Gervais's Red, White and Bold set.

Here are some of the covered journals I made last Christmas, all of which sold.


Same with these calendars...


...and the checkbook covers.

New 2 Me yarn

This yarn might have been out for a while but I just purchased a batch from Ashland Bay in OR. It's called Panda yarn, fingering weight sock yarn -- 60% Superwash Merino, 30% Bamboo and 10% nylon. I searched Ebay but couldn't find it. There were several Panda brands (acrylic and wool) and some wool bamboo but nothing similar. Quite surprising (maybe I just didn't go a good search).

This is what it looks like undyed:



And here is what it looks like dyed with acid dye. It came out soft with a slight sheen to it (I'm guessing the bamboo content) and dyed really well. Each skein has approximately 430 yards, weighs 4 ozs. I'm dyeing up some more and will put them up in my Etsy shop. If you want these first 3 skeins, each is $15.00 plus $2.00 shipping via USPS First Class mail. The undyed skein (I have several) is $9.95 per 4 oz skein plus shipping. Just send me a comment and I will email you back.


purple,cherry red,Brilliant Blue

And here's a close up:



To follow- I'm knitting up a sock with Panda.

Website of the day

I came across this site yesterday (don't remember how) but she has some beautiful knitting patterns to share.

Slumberland.org

Check it out.

I'm starting to handpaint some yarns again! woo hooo!

more pics to come

Happy New Year!

My last entry was Nov 27th, 2007 and it's about time I posted a new one.

Sometimes, I feel like I have to have pictures to post an entry. I have a lot of pics but they're still in the camera. Uploading the pictures is a major pain because of my connection, yadda, yadda.

I spent the last days of 2007 sewing bags and more bags. The orders haven't stopped even with the gift giving days over. I have learned so many different techniques from patterns I bought that I'm able to use them to design my own. I'm getting better at this bag making thing. NOTE: I am not infringing on copyright rules. I know better being a knit pattern designer myself.

I also finished knitting and pattern testing a new Hand Jive knits shawl pattern for Darlene Hayes. I finished it just in time for her to take it to TNNA. I have been doing this pattern testing thing for her for quite a while now and should have learned that it doesn't work to cram. But somehow, the adrenaline rush of trying to finish something with only a few hours to spare works for me, he, he.

I love stars

Here is a small wallhanging/sampler I designed for Christmas.


3 of the stars are from the spiral bound calendar called 365 Quilt blocks a year and each measured 12 inches. The center block and the one on the bottom right are from Marcia Hohn's Quilter's Cache website, another favorite of mine.

Last shop hop, I won a set of 5" Christmas charms and didn't know what to do with 36 squares. So, I made a table topper.

There was no specific design in mind. I just made hourglass blocks, sewed them together, added borders and appliqued stars on the corners.

With the ton of 5" charms I've accumulated, I figured I can make a quilt out of them. Another fave star block of mine, the sawtooth star. Each block measures 16". This one should go fast.


I'm making crumb squares out of scraps.


more later...

I have bags coming out of my ears...


This little make-up case below,is the result of sewing together 1.5" squares. Yeah, I don't throw scraps away. I use them as "leaders and enders". By the way, Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.com, one of my favorite websites, ever, has a tutorial on crumb piecing. Don't forget to read her Leaders and Enders tutorial as well.



PinkChalk Studio has a pattern for a NoteTaker folio (for sale). It was very easy to follow. The big one's for me, and the little one is for Emily.


Inside the big NoteTaker


and here's the smaller one


HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!

Here's the banner of the month for November from Pearl Louise's club at Thimble Cottage.

And here are more bags




some little make up purses