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March 31, 2005
knit and crochet flowers
Just by chance today at the library I grabbed 3 books with knit or crochet flower patterns:
Vogue Knitting from Fall 2004 and Holiday 2004 both have patterns. The Fall 2004 has 2 patterns with flowers. One of them is really ugly as done, with these horrible curly things hanging down from the flower. The basic flower looks nice enough, though. The second one uses little flower "accents" on a flower patterned sweater, but they'd be sweet by themselves.
The Holiday 2004 one is a modification of a scallop edging by Nicky Epstein. I like her Knitting on the Edge book (also at my library), although I never made anything from it. The modification technique looks like it might be generalizable, too, opening up a lot of possibilities since Knitting on the Edge has like >300 edgings. In the magazine, she made a bunch of flowers in metallic yarns and then sewed them together into a kind of scarflet.
Hooked on Crochet by Candi Jensen has a whole bunch of patterns. I wish they looked a little bit more modern, but they're still nice. The book in general is kind of boring. A lot of the "patterns" are kind of obvious, like striped pillows and a scarf of granny squares (although I do like the colors in the scarf), and the more complicated ones are not so great. There's a cute edging, though.
And it's worth repeating that Cozy Crochet has some flowers in it too.
Posted under Crafty Book/TV Review at 12:05 AM | Comments (2)
March 27, 2005
3 sisters dolls
My very first month of softies submission: dolls of me and my sisters. It's impossible to think of myself as a child without also thinking of my sisters, so I had to make us all. I'm the one with the glasses, Ariel's the one with the crazy curly hair, and Radha's the little one.
zoom of the diorama
The basic body design is from Sally Mavor's Felt Wee Folk book. The more general design inspiration is from the Sunny, Windy, and Snowy & Chinook books by Robin Mitchell and Judith Steedman (previously gushed over here here and here).
Posted under Toys (cat and kid) at 09:15 PM | Comments (10)
March 25, 2005
Needle felted flower
I've been seeing felted flowers everywhere lately, so I finally decided to try one in needle felting. My first try with needle felting didn't go so well, so it took seeing other people's great results to get my confidence up. As you can see, it worked. The color looked sunnier as roving, but it's still OK. I've got some blue and purple for the next shot. I'm going to try to make it thinner next time, too.
Directions: Wad up a fist-sized tuft of roving. Try to hold a part of it kind of together while you jab it with the felting needle. I put a throw pillow on my lap to jab into. Every few jabs, pick it up and move it or flip it over. You want to evenly distribute your jabs over the whole piece. After a few minutes of jabbing all over, it should start to come together. Try to shape it into a disk. Once it holds together more or less, wrap another tuft of roving around it. Jab jab jab until it all holds together. You should have a disk that's still squishy. To shape the petals, jab along a line into the side of the disk, where the division between 2 petals should be. The shaping went really fast for me. Go around, shaping each petal. Once the basic shape is made, you can clean it up by further felting everything until it's firm.
Pictures would be better to describe this. Maybe next one I make I'll document the process.
Posted under Felting at 10:43 PM | Comments (1)
March 24, 2005
Beaded Squirrel
Funny crazed squirrel made of seed beads strung on wire, plus two sequins for eyes. The pattern's from a Japanese bead thing book I picked up at Bookoff. I also have the Klutz beadling book, which I've made a bunch of stuff from. There's an old Martha Stewart Kids with some patterns, too. I remember making a lobster from that. But nothing compares with this Japanese book. The cute animals and beaded food are my favorites, but it's hard to choose.
Posted under Toys (cat and kid) at 10:37 PM | Comments (12)
March 23, 2005
Gocco tutorial
I wish I'd had this when I first started Gocco-ing: Gocco tutorial by Sarah. The instructions that come with the kit actually aren't that bad, but every last bit helps. I can't wait to see what else she makes with it.
Posted under Crafty Links at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2005
RISD
I'm a Rhode Island School of Design groupie. I almost convinced my husband to drive up there for the Xmas craft fair last year, but no dice. It seems like every designer and craftsperson I love went there. So, how have I never noticed their store? They don't have an awful lot up there, but what they've got is nice. My favorite is jewelry by Anna Chan/IMOOI. They're stainless steel and rubber, and I love the bright colors and clean patterns.
But wait, there's more! There's an artist's bios page just brimming with links to wonderful people. I haven't made it through the whole thing by a long shot yet, but clicking a few links randomly brought up a letterpress studio, a potter, a graphic design company, and an industrial lighting designer. Motherload.
Posted under Crafty Links at 12:07 AM | Comments (3)
March 21, 2005
craft library page
I put up a new library page. It's got all my craft books, plus ratings, links to reviews and projects, and links to the appropriate Amazon.
And I made a favicon, the little scissors next to my URL, using the tutorial at Thimble. The scissors icon is featured in my ratings system on the library page, too.
Posted under Random at 12:14 AM | Comments (3)
March 20, 2005
vintage crochet
I mentioned my great aunt's linens as inspiration in my crochet edgings post, so I figured I should post some of them. There are a bunch more where these came from, including some awesome white ones that wouldn't scan well. I've got some handkerchiefs:
This is from one of a few little sets that I think are meant for the back and arms of a couch. Several of them include embroidery as well as the crochet edging. The back of her embroidery is so neat it's amazing.
Posted under Crochet at 12:05 AM | Comments (6)
March 19, 2005
Amazon Japan ISBN search page
Link to the books search page on Amazon Japan, which, among other things, lets you look stuff up by ISBN. For anyone else trying to navigate foreign Amazon pages, all the sites seem to be derived from a common ancestor, so they have homologies. Like, the tab for books is the third tab over on the front page of both the American and Japanese page, then search is the first link on the green bar across the top of the books page. Same thing works for single book pages: the link below the book title brings up all the books by that author, at the bottom of the page the links next to the checkboxes go to other books in the same category, etc. Beware: the coveting potential is much much worse than the couple dozen Japanese craft books on eBay. Although, unlike the American Amazon page, it doesn't look like you can see inside pages of any of the Japanese books, just cover zooms.
Posted under Crafty Links at 09:31 PM | Comments (16)
crochet edgings from Cozy Crochet
I finished a big project in lab a few weeks ago, so I used it as an excuse to buy a bunch of craft books. This is from one of them, Cozy Crochet by Melissa Leapman. It's such a pretty, pretty book, with several patterns I will probably do: soft coasters (just crocheted rounds), classic ripple blanket if I ever get the attention span to do an afghan, country bowl, flirty skirt (maybe in miniature for Blythe?), and the flower motifs. Perhaps most impressively, there's a crocheted sweater that looks really nice, the scooped neck pullover.
These are the Nostalgic Edgings. I've been wanting to do some crochet edgings since inheriting a pile of my great aunt's needlework a while back. I'm thinking I'll edge the bottom of a white curtain for the kitchen. I went ahead and swatched all 4 of the different patterns. I'll probably do 3 or 4. They're fun to work up, and the 3 inch swatches took me about 30 min each. What to use the swatches for, bookmarks or something?
Posted under Crochet at 03:52 PM | Comments (5)
March 18, 2005
Book Off
Thank you Mary I, who commented on my Japan in New York post about the Japanese used book store Book Off. I made it up there today and it was fantastic. It's at 14 E 41st between Madison and 5th Ave, and the deals are truly amazing. I got a couple of craft books for $4 each, way less than the ~$15-$20 I'd pay for them new. Plus, they had several of the elusive Dayan/Wachifield books, also for cheap. Book Off is apparently a chain, but I unfortunately can't find a (English) list of their other locations.
Posted under Wants at 12:23 AM | Comments (7)
March 16, 2005
Ikea "preframed art" fix
Our apartment is like an Ikea showroom. It got even worse once we realized that the nice Stenbrohult frame we bought was really "preframed art" with the pictures glued on. We've had it up for like a year before finally fixing it last night. Measured the holes, printed out the pictures sized to fit (which are pieces of a panorama pic my husband took), cut them out, then glued them on top of the offending ones. You can't even tell.
Ikea pics
redone, then horribly photographed
Posted under Projects with Instructions at 06:38 PM | Comments (3)
March 15, 2005
spiderweb capelet
Lace knitting takes too much concentration. Shockingly, I actually did it mostly right. Pattern from Stitch 'N Bitch Nation. The main deviation from the pattern is the yarn, Patons Divine in chantilly rose. Using size 13 needles, the width gauge matched the pattern, but not the row gauge, so I had to do an extra 3 of the spiderweb repeats (the pattern should only need 4). I probably should've done another one, even. This yarn is also fuzzier than the called for yarn, which really obscures the lace pattern. It still looks pretty good, though. Where in the world am I going to wear it?
Practical things I figured out, which other newish knitters may find helpful:
- First, fix the mistake. This helps a LOT.
- YO just means loop the yarn over the right needle like when you are knitting a stitch, but you don't actually knit it. Like, normally you would insert the right needle into the stitch on the left needle, make a loop, pull it through, then drop the stitch off the left needle. YO is just the make a loop part and nothing else. All the other complicated ways I read seem to lead to the same result. Unlike the totally misleading stitch instruction page in the book, YO does not include a knit stitch.
- In the purl drop rows (3/7), you drop all the YOs. The knits have little loops around the base where they attach to the stitch below, and the YOs seem unattached.
- After the purl drop rows (3/7), the all purl rows (5/9), and the complicated rows (4/8), you should have 92 stitches on the needle.
- When you sl2 pwise, keep the yarn in the back. If you bring it forward (like you normally would when you purl), you get a little extra loop that makes it harder to do the slipping bit.
- Pass slipped stitches over means use your left needle to take the two slipped stitches (stitches 2 and 3 from the point of the right needle) and pull them over the k2tog stitch and off the needle, as though you were binding them off. You can do them one at a time or both together.
Hope this helps someone out there strugging with this pattern. Would've saved me an evening of watching knitting movies on the web while repeatedly frogging fuzzy yarn. Once I got it, it went pretty well, though.
Posted under Knitting at 10:42 PM | Comments (6)
March 13, 2005
panty hose speaker fix
The Bad Kitties scratched up our speakers. Mark tried gluing the fabric back on, but it looked pretty bad. So we came up with this fix. Buy some regular black Queen-size nylons (not control top). Snap off the cover of the speakers, as well as any logos that are on top of the existing fabric. Remove the existing fabric. Cut a leg off the hose, then cut the foot off that. Stretch over the cover. Fold the extra hose around to the back and hot glue in place. If you're lucky, the hot glue will also melt off the extra fabric, but if it doesn't, cut off the excess. We added another layer of hose for extra opacity. (We thought about using black tights instead of 2 layers of nylons, but I think tights are not stretchy enough. I was worried they would bend the flimsy plastic frame.) Snap the logo back on through the hose, then replace the cover on the speaker. Our cover has little prongs on the back that we had to poke through the hose to snap it back together. You can't even tell that we did anything. It looks really good.
Posted under Projects with Instructions at 02:01 PM | Comments (2)
March 11, 2005
deer
The other big find at the Japanese bookstore the other day was the Mascot Album book with this deer pattern in it. You may recognize this deer from around and about on the web. Oriettacat makes very similar ones, for instance. I know I just saw someone else post a picture from the book, too, but now, of course, I can't find it. The book has just all sorts of cuteness going on. I'm sure I'll do more from it. This guy is made of corduroy and felt, with embroidered features. Hey, he matches Blythe's new outfit!
Posted under Toys (cat and kid) at 11:13 PM | Comments (4)
March 08, 2005
Martha Stewart Baby
I entered the 3 issues I have of MS Baby into the Marthadex. I only have Spring 2001, Fall 2002, and Spring 2003. If anybody out there has some of the other ones, I would love to have them. :)
The extra magazine makes the advanced search formatting all wonky now, though. I'm going to have to fiddle with it.
Posted under Martha at 12:11 AM | Comments (28)
March 04, 2005
Pinafore dress for Blythe
Home sick today, so I made a new dress for Blythe to make me feel better. Rare chance to take advantage of the natural light, too. I used the pinafore dress pattern from Orriettacat. The pockets are my addition. I'm definitely getting better at these things. The fabric is from an almost identical (down to the pockets!) dress that I no longer wear.
Posted under Blythe at 02:30 PM | Comments (3)
March 03, 2005
linkies
I updated the links page with a ton of new finds. The craft sites just keep coming and coming. Hard to keep up. The new ones are in the Newer Discoveries section. I rendered verdicts on the previous set of New Discoveries, so most of them got scattered around in the other categories. I'm working on an Inspirational Shops page now that my laptop's back (and more importantly, my bookmarks with it). Should be up soon.
Posted under Crafty Links at 11:02 PM | Comments (3)
March 02, 2005
Seamripper backgrounds
Check out the supercute desktop backgrounds at Seamripper. She also sells a bunch of really cute bags and jewelry and whatnot. Her blog is always great fun to read, peppered with her illos. And she just got a Gocco!
Posted under Crafty Links at 03:17 PM | Comments (1)
March 01, 2005
tiny felt dog
One of my bookstore finds the other day was the Mame Wanko tiny dog pattern book (first seen on Loobylu, also on Craftster somewhere I currently cannot locate and occasionally in Kitty's Oriental Craft Shop). I gave it a shot today with some craft felt I had around. He's kind of wonky, but I'm sure Blythe will still like him. The main problem, as with all my small felt things, is the visibility of all the seams. I think some furrier fabric would remedy this. I have the feeling that the book gives lots of good tips, but I am illiterate. Anybody with the book know if you need to add seam allowances or anything?
Posted under Blythe at 11:08 PM | Comments (1)
jeweler's saw
When I was in NYC the other day, I was in the neighborhood of Pearl, and it's tractor beam pulled me in. I am now the owner of a jeweler's saw, desire for which is thanks to many episodes of Crafters Coast to Coast. They didn't have any silver to saw, so I got a piece of stainless steel or aluminum or something that was being sold for miniatures. Within 5 minutes of taking the thing out of the package, I'd already broken a blade. Now, the blades come in 12 packs, so I think this is not an altogether rare occurance. I could sort of tell I was stressing it too much, but I'm not sure if it was the material or the technique or what. Anyone know any good instructional sites? And I want to buy some silver anyway, so cheap silver supply sites would be good too.
Posted under Jewelry at 12:01 AM | Comments (5)