The Sewing Project - Black Pirate Dew Rag

by Kelly

Today is Black Friday, which means I will be staying out of harm's way by avoiding retail storefronts until the shopping mania is over. I participated in one Black Friday, years ago, when I was getting off work at 6 AM and was already awake and functional for the biggest shopping event of the year. Never again. Or at least, not unarmed.

Crafting stores in general seem to be the exception to the Black Friday rule.They know their audience, and they understand that their demographic will be far too busy struggling in hand to hand combat over that last 'Tickle Me Elmo' doll to even think about their current crafting needs.

Speaking of crafting stores, when three of us here from Three Strands Together were in Joann's Fabric recently, we saw this must have fabric for my piratey husband:

The three of us all had the same thought - this fabric was made for my piratey husband. But what could I possibly do with it?

My husband is a biker, as in a motorcycle rider, so wooly scarves and, heaven forbid, mittens, aren't really his style, and that means that I have never made him a homemade gift. On the other hand, he does like to wear something under his helmet to prevent 'helmet hair', and that something is called a dew rag. Or DooRag. Or however the spelling is supposed to go.

So I went to a site called sewingartistry, and found a pattern to print out:

And then I found some black fabric to use as a liner for this somewhat transparent top fabric, and cut that out in the pattern shapes as well:

And now I'm off to Donna's house to tap into her sewing expertise, because frankly I don't have a clue how to go about this. More on that in an upcoming post.

Gingerbread Men Christmas Ornaments

by Kelly

Since we usually put up our Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving, I went back to a project I had put aside: small gingerbread men.

Of course, for the last couple of years we've used a live tree, so our Christmas decorating might be slightly delayed. Artificial trees can go up any time, but real ones don't age well, and I'm pretty soft-hearted, so that bugs me. I always feel a little twinge of sorrow when I'm vacuuming up loads of pine needles around the poor tree hacked down in its prime and dragged from its clean scented woodland home to suffer indignities of tinsel and garish lights in its dying days.

Anyway, back to the gingerbread men ornaments. These poor guys have suffered many crafting setbacks.

First, I couldn't get a nice outline with my chalk pencil. I have never had much luck with chalk pencils, and a long discussion with my mom has convinced me that I'm  not alone in my troubles. She showed me her large collection of unsatisfactory chalk bits and pieces, gathered over five decades of sewing, and said that she has never understood why she couldn't get the hang of drawing on fabric with the stuff. Maybe it's genetic. I eventually settled on using a black Sharpie instead. To heck with tradition, anyway.

My second problem with these ornaments was that I couldn't get the crisp fabric edge that I was looking for. The frayed linen edges made me pretty unhappy. I solved that problem with iron-on fusible webbing.

And then, for some reason, I had trouble with the embroidered faces. The early ones had 'creepy doll eyes syndrome', even though I wasn't using buttons. I may eventually specialize in creepy eyed dolls, since I seem to be able to produce them with very little effort.

At any rate, I'm pretty satisfied with them now. I think they'll look very nice on our Christmas tree. Which will actually come from a Christmas tree farm, by the way, and whoever owns that farm will be really grateful for an influx of cash so he can keep the lights on and put a turkey dinner on the table for his family.

There, that makes me feel better. First wave of Christmas guilt successfully battled!  'Tis the season.

Candy Dot Hat and Scarf

by Kelly

Now finished: the Candy Dot Hat and Scarf Set.

And the hat came out just a smidge smaller than I calculated, and by a smidge I mean less than 1/8 of an inch, so I'm really happy about that. I am now a Gauge Master! Ha, not really. But I'm making progress.

I'm going to try a few more pairs of gloves and then plunge into the sweater project. 

Hello Kitty Hat

by Kelly

Another hat finished for The Mitten Tree.

I used this free pattern from Crochet in Color. It's so much easier to crochet hats than to knit them. i did make one change, though - rather than braiding the pom pom ties, I made a knitted I-cord and then used the leftover end to tie around the pom-pom.

In other news, now that winter is officially here, I was given some pretty white vases.

 

These were a gift because, for some reason, there was actual dirt inside. But I patiently cleaned them out with the use of a chopstick, paper towels, and a pair of forceps. Forceps are extremely handy for grabbing things that are fragile, like soggy paper towel, or for holding impossibly tiny wires when you're trying to solder them onto a microscopic circuit board and don't have a full soldering station with vices and things. I'm sure they're useful for other things as well. You might say they're a real life saver.

And in another aside, my beloved husband and I are supposed to be on vacation right this very minute...but alas, finances won't allow that this year. However, in lieu of beautiful pictures from a beach that I should be uploading today, I did manage to find something similar locally.

Yesterday was so windy that the birds sitting on the water were being blown down river. Then they would fly back to where they started and be carried down stream again. It was hard to tell if they were having fun or irritated by this process. Who knows what birds think?

I know what I think. Brrrr! Winter has definitely arrived. Time to get back to learning how to knit gloves.

First Snowflakes

by Kelly

Searching for snowflakes, I found some unusual patterns:

via LionBrand

The best thing about Lion Brand patterns is that the Errata is written in red, so you can see what you're getting into. And this comes with matching mittens - very cute. This is a knitting pattern, but never fear, the next one is crochet.

via So Far, So Good

I love this beautiful snowflake, even if it is a doily. And the best part is, she recreated this from a cast off doily she found in a thrift store. Free pattern available at her site, and while you're there, check out her Walled Garden Square, dug out of an old folder. I'm glad I'm not the only one with a library of paper patterns with no provenance.

Meanwhile, I took a quick break from gloves to make a few hats, including the candy dot one that I finally finished.

Oh well, break's over. Back to gloves!

Hats and Speecifying

by Kelly

I'm taking a break from gloves to work on hats.

From a free pattern found at Collette's place. That cord to the right of the hat is the drawstring cord that is supposed to be threaded into the bottom ribbed part...I think. She suggested a finger knitted cord, but I just made a two strand I-cord.

This hat is terribly cute, but for some reason it reminds me of the hats worn by Ewoks. Hmmm....maybe I'll have to work on something like that...

Meanwhile, since this is the day before Election Day, I thought I would share a book that I came across this summer:

It's title is "The Compleat American Housewife : 1776". It's purportedly a collection of recipes and thoughts from an early American housekeeper. I haven't researched to see if this is true or just a clever marketing gimmick, but the recipes certainly have the sound of very old cookbooks. For example, there are directions for cooking Flip and Flummery, and a very tragic recipe for Parsnip Wine. Much as I love books and the preservation of information for the next generation, I really think that some things are best left to fade into obscurity.

And here is a quick tip on the best way to bake bread:

"Many housewives having no brick oven will do all their baking on the hearth...Sweep a clean spot on the hearth and place a piece of dough directly on the hot bricks. Cover it with an upside down pot of iron or earthenware, and then cover the pot with embers and pile hot coals around it. Experience will dictate the baking time needed."

All of this aside, the thing that most interests me about this book is the thread of politics that weaves its way through the pages. There are accounts of making do without coffee, tea and sugar during the Revolution, quotes from presidents and their wives on dining and entertaining in the European way, and a plea  from Abagail Adams to her husband to not forget the rights of women when drafting the Constitution.

The best part, though, was a section about when to serve the pudding: "The place of pudding on the menu even enters into political life. The Federalists eat their pudding first, but the Democrats begin their dinners with meat."

Oh, yes, the Federalists. Committed to a fiscally sound and nationalistic government, and their only president was John Adams. Sigh.

Show and Tell

by Kelly

Work continues on learning how to knit gloves. It's a pretty uphill struggle, as far as I'm concerned. Oh, I completed my first glove, all right...

but I'm not happy with it. The gauge seems too loose to keep hands warm in a Midwest winter, and the fingers are waaayy up on top of the palm, so it doesn't seem proportional. I searched for other free glove patterns, so I could do a comparison glove, but most of them are knit in sock yarn. I do have two skeins of sock yarn that I acquired somewhere along the way, but I don't think I could match the gauge required. I mean, I have to drop four needle sizes to knit most patterns with worsted, so I would be knitting with size 000 needles or something.

Speaking of gauge, I knit that tiny purple hat as a quick test to see if my gauge calculations are at all accurate. The hat came out spot on, so I guess whoever came up with the glove pattern thinks of gloves only as fashion accessories, rather than functional winter wear.

If I can find another free glove pattern, I'll try that with worsted weight yarn - otherwise I'll knit the Patons glove with two strands of yarn, and see if that helps.

I would try thrumming, if I happened to have any wool roving lying around. And I don't think that even Donna's almost mystical yarn stash, which multiplies on its own when no one is watching, has any wool roving in it. Oh well.