I’m loving embroidery…but what to do with what I make?! I’ve got one hanging on the wall.
But the rest? I decided to try putting them on bags. Some will get used as project bags. Others I was thinking of re-purposing as gift bags.
I’ve been playing around with using crayons to color my fabric, then filling in the outline with backstich. I’m not sure I love the finished product, but I do love the process!
Summer has hit in Santa Barbara, and this year we are hitting record temps. And before anyone from the midwest, or Vegas, or anywhere that is predictably hot starts laughing, Santa Barbara doesn’t, as a rule, have air conditioning in the houses. So the dogs and I are laying on the floor in 100+ degree temps (that’s 38C) trying not to melt. Our house is mostly concrete, so it stays cool for the first day, and if it cools off at night, we’re good. But if it doesn’t cool off at night, each consecutive day provides less relief.
All that said, hot temps and wool socks, yeah, no.
I’ve switched to embroidery a bit. I’m a terrible sketch artist, so I’ve been utilizing other people’s wonderful drawings. There’s a lot to be found on Pinterest.
I used Etsy to find that lovely woman with the skull. Alifera has a ton of really beautiful, unusual work!
And those succulents are from a larger drawing, and I grabbed my three favorite succulents.
When I knit, I usually knit stockinette. I like the process. I really like it in the round. And I like to wear it. I like the simplicity. The simplicity of the knit, the simplicity of the finished product.
Recently, though, my husband asked me for a knit as a gift for a birthday party we are going to. While my husband appreciated the aesthetics of my knits, they aren’t really his thing. So his requests are few and far between. And I like to oblige. He wanted a hat. Simple enough. Unfortunately he wasn’t taken with the simple watch caps that I showed him.
(Images from Ravelry)
No. He chose the Hemisphere hat. I’ve knit it once before, so I owned the pattern. It’s double knit, two colors. Or otherwise, not stockinette in the round.
And it wrung me out.
It started with picking the yarn. My husband and I did that together and for price meets color, we ended up with some Knit Picks Hawthorne.
Then my husband wound up a ring to try and help guide the yarn better. It worked. But I’m not sure it’ll be a technique I keep around. There were still frustrations, like the ring catching the tail of the yarn as I worked.
Then I had a problem with the increases. No matter what I did it created a ridge on the inside. As a purl bump, it wouldn’t have been a problem as it would have been followed by more bumps. But as it was, it was a ridge followed by smooth stockinette. I finally ended up using Tech Knitter’s one below increase, but as a purl increase, to make the ridge disappear.
Once that was done, I needed more stitch markers. And I wanted to be able to easily tell where I was in the pattern, so I needed numbered stitch markers. Thankfully my sister’s craft closet is even better than mine. Shrinky Dink to the rescue!
Unfortunately, they were too dark once they shrunk đŸ˜¦
So after several more rounds. I made more.
And then it was just knit. And knit and knit and knit.
And more knit. (& purl)
Until it was done. DONE!
I’m wiped. I’m drained. I’m wrung out. Seriously. It’s gonna be awhile until I knit again. At least until tomorrow.
There’s a real trend these days for knitters/crafters to encourage each other to stop pointing out mistakes. To simply revel in the finished garment. To eschew perfection and be the good.
But here’s the thing. You knew there was a but.
I sometimes point out mistakes because I want the person, particularly another knitter, to know that I recognize the mistake and either I chose not to fix it or I learned from it. I want to open a discussion. To connect with someone. And if the person isn’t a capital K knitter, I don’t want them to think that I see myself as infallible. I want them to just chat with me, because we can learn from each other.
Pointing out mistakes isn’t me saying I’m less than, it’s me saying “no one is perfect and we’re all learning.”
After all that discussion about the heel and my unhappiness paying for it, I still had to do some duplicate stitching to make the heel work neatly. And I tried twice!
