Leap Year Tote Bag

It's a good thing that there's an extra day in February because I just finished my final red and white wool project today. It's a tote bag with a textured gradient of red 3D dots.

I'm not a big fan of a lot of the bags on the market, they're all very similar and traditional. There are also a lot of great, fresh looking styles, but they demand a higher price. When you have the skills to do it yourself, you should. The result will always represent you better than a store bought product.

It is lined with blue twill fabric to keep the felt exterior from stretching and deforming with use. When I get a job, I'll be using this to replace my current work bag, so it has to be sturdy enough to hold 20 lbs of papers and computer. The straps are just cotton webbing, the same as on a factory made bag

The hardest part was figuring out how to do colorwork with a texture of shortrows. I treated each red lump ad if it was just a normal fairisle color shift. The strands were carried in back as I worked my way across the row. You can see that the red yarn does not continue across the row because, if it were, the dots would be connected with a thin line.

These two pictures to the left show the knit part of the project before and after felting.  I left blank spots in the textured areas so that there was a place for the straps. As usual, most of the shrinkage was vertical. I made a ridge along the bottom of the bag to add shape to the squared off bottom panel. This attempt to shape the felt did not really work and the ridge kind of blended into the felted fabric. Next time, I would add more purl rows.

Currently there is no written pattern available. It's very similar to some other lumpy patterns I'm working on, so it wouldn't be hard to write out, but I'm not sure if it really appeals to many people . If there's a response (via comments) I would consider doing the work of writing it up for the ravelry pattern store.

Wool Chukka Slippers

The goal of this project was to make myself a pair of (red and white) wool slippers that could be worn around the house and sometimes outside. They would be pretty close to a shoe construction, having a sewn upper with laces and all, but would not require lasting before soling. It was important to use materials and tools from around the house in order to avoid spending a lot of money.

The other goal was to provide some good instructions on how to make a unisex looking house shoe with a real leather or rubber sole.

So here you can see me modeling my new shoes. I thought it would be really funny to make my shadow look like a windsock man but keep my feet really still. The resulting GIF hangs over my layout on the left and looks bizarrely 3D because of the slight shifting of the camera, but it makes me very happy.

I'm showing you this second GIF so that you forget about that whole instructions thing for now. When I went to put all the images together, there turned out to be a lot more steps than I could edit,explain, and post tonight. Because of the 20 or so small simple steps to make these slippers (compared to the 120+ for a pair of handmade pumps) instructions will follow in a series of installations over the next few weeks starting with pattern making.

Beyond Dead

The term for ironing the texture, stretch, and loft out of acrylic fiber is killing. Killed acrylic had good drape and feels smooth and almost silky. A few months ago, I started to experiment with the idea of heat setting acrylic swatches into more interesting textures than their usual flat form.

This pink swatch is in a fold pattern called a Miura-Ori. It was ironed into folds in the compact position on top. when you open it up, the crease pattern is visible. Because of the shininess of the yarn after ironing, the folds really shine in the sunlight.

This second piece in aquamarine yarn has an unstructured texture. It was crumpled and baked to get this unusual, almost organic topography. It almost looks like the mountains on a map. I hit one side with green Montana Gold  spray paint to create a different effect on the back. The shine of the yarn is really nice with this texture, and the crumpled effect creates an elasticity in the fabric.

The goal of these swatches was to take a fiber which is not generally considered desirable and to transform it into something where the artificiality and cheapness become positive attributes. These two effects can only be achieved with a synthetic fiber  and are quite beautiful. I'm thinking up some patterns that might use this sort of textile, so if you like the look and have some ideas, please comment.

These techniques are going to be the topic of a tutorial which shows how to heat your acrylic safely and with style. Hope you all liked the examples.

TV Gameshow Sweater

There is someone out there who read my moodboard-like post about some sweaters being time machines and is waiting to see what came out of it. The time machine sweater was finished about 3 weeks ago, but didn't have any photographs that did it justice until a few days ago. Taking inspiration from the cheesy photography in vintage pattern books, I put together a little scene with period furniture. The color combo reminds me of some of the game show sets from the past.

I don't usually like to model for my own knitting photos. This case was no exception and I think you can see it on my face. I may not appear so, but I'm very happy with how this turned out. There aren't many concepts that are begging to be realized in red heart super cheap synthetic, but this one needs the artificiality to look right. The colors are so retro and they seemed to fit with the mustard chaise lounge (who doesn't love a mustard chaise lounge?). You can read about the history of the lounge on the MoMA website if you're interested.

This is a close up showing some of the fitting and the color. When this gets sized up, I'll have to learn how to chart the colored section.

The raw numbers for the full range of sizes have been worked out, so the testing phase will start soon. The pattern will be available by fall, so keep a look out if you want to knit your time machine sweater.

I heard you like pills

Yo dawg, I heard you like pills* so I put your pills in this pill so you can take them where you take it. 

See, this is a big felt pill. It looks like that little pill.

And inside of the big pill is a container with little pills. It's good for traveling because you can take your pills with you wherever you go.

I'm in the habit of carrying a prescription bottle and a baggie with Advil and Benadryl with me when I go on overnight trips. As part of my celebration of finding bright red Patons Classic Wool at the store, I made this little holder for my pills.  It fits a small prescription bottle and a few bags of other stuff for traveling.

You will need one or two colors of Patons Classic Wool - I didn't measure yardage, but it isn't much.
You will also need  size 8 double pointed needles.

Gauge before felting is 5 stitches by 8 rows per square inch.

Capsule top
Cast on 36 stitches and divide equally amongst 4 needles.
Knit 30 rounds.
Knit 7, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 32 stitches.
Knit 1 round
Knit 6, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 28 stitches.
Knit 1 roundKnit 5, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 24 stitches.
Knit 1 roundKnit 4, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 20 stitches.
Knit 3, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 16 stitches.
Knit 2, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 12 stitches.
Knit 1, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 8 stitches.
break yarn and pull it through the remaining stitches.

Capsule bottom
Cast on 32 stitches and divide equally amongst 4 needles.
Knit 52 rounds.
Knit 6, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 28 stitches.
Knit 1 round Knit 5, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 24 stitches.
Knit 1 round Knit 4, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 20 stitches.
Knit 1 round
Knit 3, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 16 stitches.
Knit 2, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 12 stitches.
Knit 1, k2tog. Repeat this sequence another 3 times, you will have 8 stitches.
break yarn and pull it through the remaining stitches.

Felt these pieces in the washing machine or by hand. I did mine by hand and it took very little time.

Now you have a pill shaped pill case.

Make 20 of these in 3 colors and you can play real life Dr. Mario.

*The number of Americans that take a prescription hovers between 40 and 50%. It is reasonable to assume that an even larger number of people take over the counter pills somewhat regularly. I'm also going to assume that this means most people "like pills."