Five Baht Elephant

my crafty home

This Morning I Planned Projects

I bought the Wayfinder Quilt Kit during a Craftsy sale (score!) and I honestly don’t know what I was thinking when I hit the ‘add to cart’ button. I haven’t been sewing much in the last year. I am pretty sure it will take me quite a long time to finish it.

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The box arrived this morning, and I’m actually really excited about working on it. I took a few minutes to identify and label the different fabrics. aaaaannnnndddd then I put it all back in the box it came in. I’ll get to working on it – maybe I’ll make a project schedule?

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The other project I planned were some new socks I want to knit. After finishing up my Talia’s I knew that I wanted to knit more colorwork socks. My local yarn shop, which is within walking distance (score!), has the book _200 Fair Isle Motifs_ and after thumbing through it, I scooped it up. It is such a good resource. I am using the Talia pattern, but I charted different fair isle motifs. I used Google Sheets to play around with colors and patterns until I settled on these. I made use of conditional formatting and then the ‘find and replace’ function to make changes fairly quickly. I’m sure there are easier ways to prototype fair isle, but I found this method easy for me.

FairIsle Chart

I have the gray, navy and hot pink already in my stash but no teal. Carol and I went to Fancy Tiger where I picked up a 50g ball of Sock Yeah! by CoopKnits in Topaz. I have some travel next week (Baltimore and then Austin) and then more travel the week after (California). It’ll be painful, but at least I’ll have some quality airport and plane knitting time.

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2016 Ravellenic Games

“Uh, WUT?” You’re probably asking.

From the Ravelry Group Page

The Ravellenic Summer Games 2016
Dates: Friday, August 5 – Sunday, August 21

The One Rule To Rule Them All: Challenge yourself by starting and finishing one or more projects during the 2016 Summer Olympics.

What will be a stretch for you? It could be a new technique, that first sweater or pair of socks, something massive, something delicate, or maybe finishing that monster in the closet. The goal of the Ravellenic Games is to support you in expanding your knitting/crocheting horizons.

I’ve mentioned it before, but Ravelry is like the best website for knitting/crocheting. Community driven, visually pleasing and an amazing resource – if you knit you should be on Ravelry. Every Olympics, a group starts up and thousands of people join in to ‘compete’ in different events. I’ve joined a team of knitting redditors called Team Upvotes. But truthfully, there’s no competition and you don’t need to join a team. The goal really is … whatever you want it to be. Though it is fun to participate in something that a whole bunch of people from all around the world are doing at the same time.

I think I’ve been a bit ambitious in my goals for the next two weeks. I’ve entered three “Events”

WIP (Work In Progress) Wrestling: Talia Take Two

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WIP Wrestling: StrokkurΒ  I am seriously still only like 4 rows from completing this.

Strokkur WIP

Sock Put: Another Hermione Every Day Sock

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Sweater Triathlon: Blank Canvas I’ve had this yarn for over a year, with the intent to knit this sweater. The two yarns will be held together to create a pretty unique color. This event is a bit ambitious because, well, it’s a sweater.

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Knitting Updates

I’ve been slowly working on these two knitting projects.

My Strokkur (started in January!) – I’m really about 4 rows until I am done knitting. The colorwork portion is complete, and I love it! I’m glad I went with the blue; spring green was my other option.

Strokkur WIP

My Daybreak Shawl. I started this in March, and ugh. It is taking me forever – sock yarn, small needles, large project. There’s a shit ton of stitches and it takes me about 30 minutes to complete two rows. But this is my take along project. It is simple enough to work on in the car, in the waiting room, at sports practices and at the coffee shop.

DW WIP

Made: Divided Basket and WIP: Strokkur

I’ve been on a crafting kick – guess I’ve gotten my motivation to make things back.

We were in Telluride, CO this past weekend for little get away. JJ, Miles and I needed the time away from work, Denver and life in general. It was awesome. The drive to Telluride from Denver is over 6 hours, so I brought along two knitting projects. The one you see below is my Strokkur that I started back in January. I was having trouble keeping the entire project in my project bag, so when I came back I knew I wanted to make something bigger to hold it.

Divided Basket

The pattern is the Divided Basket by Noodlehead (Anna Graham). I’ve sewn plenty of her tutorial/patterns and they are really well done. Modifications I made to the written pattern were to use Pellon 72 – Peltex and batting to reinforce the exterior pieces. The Peltex and batting really give the basket structure. The sides of the bag do not fold in AT ALL – unlike my other project bags. Stitching all the layers was a bit tricky so I made sure I went slowly and didn’t force the fabric through the machine.

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One side of the basket has two pockets where I keep little knitting notions – stitch markers, scrap yarn, scissors.

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I dug through my fabric box and resurrected some pieces that I’ve had for an embarrassingly long time (i’m talking years here). The exterior is an Echino print that I’m pretty sure is out of production. The dotted fabric used in the lining is so old, I can’t remember where I bought it, let alone who makes it. The divider and trim on the handles are leftover shot cotton from another project.

Divided Basket-4

Here you can see the colorwork detail of the sweater yoke. Colorwork is fun – both the process and this particular pattern. The yarn is a traditional Icelandic wool – the yarn sticks to each other, so there is a lot of me stopping to untangle the yarn while knitting. The sweater sat in hibernation over most of the summer. This wool is quite warm, and just not particularly fun to knit when it is hot outside. But the cool mountain mornings in Telluride were perfect for hotel room deck knitting. And I’m just about finished with the sweater. I’m really excited to see the final result. More details can be found on my Ravelry project page: Strokkur.

Made: Endpaper Mitts

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When I want to knit, I really want to knit.

This fact is supported by all the yarn I’ve purchased this past month. Yikes. And if you knit or crochet, you know that quality fiber is pricey. The cost for sweater quantity yarn quickly approaches $100+.

JJ and I agree on most things, one of which is putting our resources (time + money) towards things and experiences that we enjoy. Where I about shit my pants at the cost of the yarn I love, he doesn’t even bat an eye. He has told me many times that he knows that I enjoy my crafts – sewing/quilting/knitting – so he doesn’t really question how much this stuff costs.

With that, I’ve actually got 2 sweaters I’m about to begin. Both are designed by Ysolda Teague. I’ve knitted a sweater by her a few years ago, and her patterns are well written and the garments are so well designed. I didn’t intend on knitting two sweaters, but I had already bought the yarn for a Strokkur when I saw that Fancy Tiger is hosting a knit-a-long. With the knit-a-long, they offered a discount on selected yarn. Since I want to knit a Blank Canvas at some point anyway, I thought “Why not” and picked out some yarn.

BUT.

Before I even start with the sweaters, I’m going to share these fingerless mittens. I decided to knit arm/hand warmers because my hands get so cold at work! And I chose this pattern because I wanted to learn how to knit colorwork. Extra bonus is that these are extra warm because you ‘carry’ the second color of yarn behind the work, thus creating a double layer of warm wool. Yay!

endpaper mitts

The Endpaper Mitts are a free pattern. The instructions are not PDF, but they are posted on her website with links to tutorials on the tubular cast on and bind off. I had never done either, so in addition to learning colorwork, I learned the benefits to these techniques. Note: The kitchener bind off is really great for edges that need a lot of stretch, but I had to watch several different video demonstrations before I got it.

I started these in the car ride to Ohio. And the mechanics of knitting with 2 strands of yarn took some getting used to. I used this little plastic strand guideΒ on my index finger, and that worked really well. The pattern designer claimed that the pattern was easy to memorize, but that was not the case for me. I definitely had to refer to the chart often, and I did have to un-knit more than a few rows when I made a mistake. I also used a free knitting counter app on my phone to help keep track of how many rows and pattern repeats I completed.

These were super fun to knit. The colorwork forced me to slow down, which I’m convinced helped alleviate some of the wrist pain I had due to knitting my Antrorse.

There are more details on my Ravelry project page, to include the type of yarn, colors etc….

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