Sunday, August 26, 2012

Fall ideation: friendship bracelets

Friendship bracelets are one of the biggest trends of summer, but they don't really fit too well into the cold weather of fall and winter. It's something about how they just look better with short sleeves in the bright sunlight. I have been making a lot of bracelets lately and do not want to give up the geometric colorful patterns as soon as sweater weather starts. Here is a picture of a few of the things I have been working on:

The first two on the left are traditional embroidery floss bracelets. The middle  one is paracord in fluorescent colors. The fourth is Red Heart Super Saver yarn - the super cheap stuff - and the one on the right is Lion Brand Thick and Quick.

The two styles made from yarn are a little harder to make than the one s made of non stretchy materials. an embroidery floss bracelet is more even and stiff than one of yarn. The red heart taught me a bit about how to tie better knots in yarn.

Note that after the central brown diamond, the width decreases by about .25 inches and the knots look more precise and even. this is where I started to make the knots very tight. This helped a lot to improve the texture and to make future projects (belts) doable.

I'm gearing up to begin work on these this evening on the train. hope you can see how these patterns are starting to transition into cool weather crafts.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Guess My Place - Day 3

This will go on until guessing starts.

Have some laser discs.


Monday, August 13, 2012

Guess My Place - Day 2

Same rules stand until someone gets it right. Here's the second clue.


Sunday, August 12, 2012

Guess my place

You may have been wondering where I have been for the last few weeks. There have been a few blog posts, but for the most part, this blog and my Etsy shop have been shut down. It turns out that I have been busy moving to a new city to be an intern at a very cool company. It has just been too hard to juggle work, commute, moving, boarding with relatives, Chinese pastry obsession (to be posted later), and the general business that is going on to post anything .

So this week I'm going to post clues hinting at where I'm living. The first person (whom is not a friend whom I have told) to guess my location will get their choice of Knitting Pattern for free. Leave a comment with your guess, you can go more than once, and I will let you know as soon as someone gets the right guess.

Here is the first clue:

I commute to here from the special secret place.

And I like yellow shoes, but that is unrelated.


So make a guess!!




Thursday, July 26, 2012

Fleece tug toy

My grandmother has a little poodle named Coco who destroys toys. There are only a few which are left whole and stuffed at the end of the first day of play. Those which have no stuffing or stitching tend to hold up better, and a braided fleece toy in particular has not been shredded. It is the type of product which you look at and immediately understand how to make.


This is how I made Coco's braided tug toy:

You will need:
A rotary cutter and cutting surface or scissors
A ruler
A sharpie
A rubber band
A weight

3 3" strips of polar fleece cut from selvedge to selvedge

I used 3 colors of fleece at 60" wide. The bolt should be labeled with a width when you buy your fleece. A width of 54" or more is best for this project.

Fold your fleece in half matching selvedges. Measure a 3" wide strip and cut so that the folded edge is facing you and the selvedge is away from you. You should end up with one strip of fabric. Do this 3 times so that you have enough strips to braid. Keep them folded in half.

Line up your three folded strips with the fold end towards you. Measure 10" up from the fold and mark with the sharpie. Push aside the top layer of fabric and mark the lower layer as well. When you unfold the strips, there should be 2 marks on each (approximately) 20" from each selvedge and eachother.

Line up ends and find your sharpie mark. Pinch at the mark and rubber band here. The rubber band will not be centered, put the shorter tails away from you.

Place a weight above the rubber band to hold everything in place while you braid. Braid until you reach the next mark. If you are using different colors, make sure your strips are in the same order that they started in.

Remove the rubber band. You should now have something like this - a centered braid with two loose ends. Look at the braid, it has a direction where the fleece makes up pointing or down pointing Vs. These Vs need to be pointing in the same direction, if they are not, flip one end of the braid horizontally.

Match the colors and begin to braid them tightly as if each pair of strands were one.

Grab the ends of your braid and tie an overhand knot near the ends. It might seem like a bulky knot, but it will work. You will see that a loop has formed on one end to serve as a handle for either you or your dog (or cat?).

Take each piece of fleece individually and pull to tighten up the knot. It is now unlikely that a dog will untie it right away.

Trim the ends to a uniform length, and it's ready!



Make sure that if the fleece does start to fall apart that you take the toy away from your pet. Fleece is non digestable, so do not let them eat it.



Happy dog time


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