Kinda cute, and awfully quick
So that thing where babies have small(ish) heads? Yeah, well it makes for quick knitting. This went from swatch to cast on to finished over something like two or three knitting sessions. Which is fair, because from what I've heard, babies outgrow knitted stuff at an alarming rate. But now, I'm going to go weave in the ends (there are rather a lot) and block this (yes, block everything, even baby stuff, just hush and do it, it's worth it). And then I will come back and show it off properly!
Absurd, but kinda cute
Someone I know (very definitely not me, seriously, no, do not even ask, that's super weird to ask and you should totally know better, you will get a whole lecture if you make it weird) is currently producing a baby. And that means I get to make some truly absurd baby hats. Because babies are helpless little meatloafs at first, and the reward for putting up with their never ending stream of noise and bodily fluids is that you get to put ludicrous stuff on their heads. At least that's my theory. So I will wrap its tiny little head [...]
Sometimes you cook, sometimes you get takeout
On Tuesday I put out the pattern for Dispatch (the little envelopes of alarming cuteness). The response was overwhelmingly positive (it pretty much always is for those tiny projects). People were excited it was out. People bought the pattern. People started showing me the awesome things they were making and telling about their marvelous plans for their creations. Everything was great! Then Thursday morning I got kind of a crummy comment. The comment was left publicly on the pattern's ravelry page for anyone to see (not sent to me privately) so I feel comfortable sharing it here (though I have [...]
One month in
Somehow (and please do not ask me how, it certainly wasn't my idea) we're just over a month into the new year. And we're exactly a month out from the morning I sat down at my computer and took my whole ravelry shop down for a giant organizing and tidying spree.* It was scary (selling stuff on ravelry is how I pay my bills). And reformatting and relisting things is a massive project (I've got more than 280 patterns...revisiting them all is daunting). But it has been so so so satisfying. Since that morning in January, I've brought about thirty [...]
Dispatch
Dispatch is out, it's 10% off with the code POSTED, and you can have a whole stack of them knit up by the end of the week. So I'm always torn between talking about the practical stuff (how it's made, what yarn you need) and the fun stuff (what to do with the awesome little things). But the fun stuff is, well, more fun. So let's start there. From what I've heard, a whole bunch of you are planning to use these to slip notes or cards into and send them off with your kiddos or sweethearts, either as valentines [...]
And now it starts to get tidier
So, we had the messy middle part. We made the patches. Now it finally starts to look better. After sending the patches through the washer and dryer a few times (because if they're going to shrink, I want them to shrink *before* I sew them on my sweater thank you very much), I pinned them to the sweater. Then I held the fabric stiff and still with an embroidery hoop and started sewing. I picked a column of stitches on the edge of the patch and duplicate stitched over every other stitch in the column, then over a random scattering [...]
Sidebar
We interrupt your regularly scheduled elbow patches to talk about the slits on the side of the sweater. I love sweaters with side slits (what can I say, I have a big ass, side slits make for extra ass room). But I find they tend to get messed up over time). But...but...this is fixable! The best way I've found to fix it is by blanket stitching around the perimeter of the slit. Now, if you were a cool kid, you'd do this before it got worn out. But if you were me, you'd intend to do it before it got [...]
There is actually some knitting involved in this
So these are the patches. Nothing fancy, just more or less oval shaped, and a good bit bigger than the worn area on the sweater. I'm knitting the patches in Ontheround's Everyday DK in Silver Lining Tweed. That's actually the exact same yarn I used for the original patch (this is more leftovers from the same skein I used before). You can see that the original patch faded a good bit since I put it on. This is totally MY fault, NOT the yarn's fault. I have done things to this yarn that no yarn should have to endure. [...]
The middle is messy
Like with a lot of projects, the middle of this is going to look a bit messy. I'm pretty sure if I were doing this right I'd only show you the shiny finished product. But I always find it refreshing to see that someone else has messy bits in the middle, so I'm leaving them in. The first step was ripping off the old patch. I'd put it on there rather firmly, and it has been through the wash dozens of times since I put it on, so this part was actually kind of a pain. But I wanted to [...]
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