Baby dress in cotton yarn

Tried to do this on the knitting bed, but cotton isn't cooperative on my machines.  So, I used two sticks.  Originally the pattern was from Kraemer Yarns.  Will be doing another with their cotton blend yarn when I can get some.  Anyway, I had to alter the pattern.  The stripes were supposed to be vertical and in order to work on the circular needle I had to knit horizontal stripes.  Yes, I had to frog it once or twice.

It was interesting knitting with cotton.  I've always used wool or acrylic.  Now to find a source of yarn that will work on the machines.  I know it's going to have to be a cotton blend.  So far I'm looking at Peaches and Creme and Brown Sheep yarns.  Both are American.  I buy American whenever I can.

 I hand washed the dress this morning.  It's still damp, after leaving it in the dryer on low heat for over an hour.  That's not going to go over well with Mom's.  Still, this is a heavier weight cotton yarn.  I'd love to try it again with a finer yarn.

Toodles
Tomasina

Even more tutorial photos

It's always amazing to me the difference in the color before and after.  There are six or eight more to do in the dining room.  It's fun!

More tutorial pictures

The pictures aren't in exact order, but first you sand the daylights out of the switch plates to remove all the shiney, squish the clay to soften it, put it on the plates, impress with your chosen design, bake in the toaster oven and there you have it!  I did forget to take a picture of the glaze I put over the finished product but then you can put them back on the wall.  You can use, as I did here an unmounted rubber stamp or you can bake and paint, which is what I'll be doing in other rooms.  I do intend to use glow in the dark clay for my nephew's room.

Toodles

Amateur Tutorial

Great Mistakes!

Ever have one of those moments when the end is in sight and you suddenly realize something is way wrong?  Nothing you can really put your finger on, you just KNOW something is just not what it should be.

After weeks of knitting this sweater, I was just finishing up the right front and suddenly, the little nagging niggle at the back of my mind burst and I realized I'd made a critical mistake.  There were 7 rows in the pattern that were knit on the purl side.  I had purled on both sides. 

It wasn't the kind of mistake that GLARES at you, no, it was one of those mistakes that keeps winking at you from the shadows.  Just a niggle naggle you catch out of the corner of your eye.  Would it have gone un-noticed?  It might have, but the moment I realized what I'd done, I was stunned and ready to cry.  Mom kept saying nobody would notice.  It might actually have gone un-noticed, at least by most people.  BUT I WOULD HAVE KNOWN it wasn't right.  It would have eaten at me in the wee hours of the night.  I made a big, big mistake. 

Just as I was nerving myself to frog the whole dadgum thing a light snapped on in the back of my mind.  I could use the ribber tool from my knitting machine to fix it.  To fix them.  I could undo each wrong row and make it right.

I'm doing that now.  See pictures. ;-)  I'm happy now.  And we like me happy. ;-)

The top picture is what it should look like.  The rest of the pictures are the repairs made by taking out the stitch from the top of the knitted fabric and unlatching it down to the bottom ribbing.  The last two pictures are using the latch tool to "knit" the stitch back to the top.  It's not quite perfect, but I can live with it.  Leaving the mistake would have driven me around the bend.

Toodles

A bright and shining Wednesday

The annual burn is on.  All the fields for miles around are being burned.  Allergies in high gear.  I don't begrudge them the need to burn but it does give me a month of fun with allergies.  Not any worse than the other allergies to growning things.  Sort of a double whammy.  There was a thick haze yesterday and there's a strong odor today every time one opens the door.

Working on the right side of Katheryn's sweater.  Doing the mirror image of the left only with button holes this side.  So far frogged twice.  I just can't bring myself to leave even a small mistake in the work.  If it was for me I could but for someone else I just can't do it.

James (the nephew who lives with us) will be 25 on the 5th of next month.  Just got "Tangled" and "Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader" for him.  He's going to be excited about it.  We had lent our  favorite movie "How To Train Your Dragon" and just got it back again.  Yay, one of my all time favorite movies.  LOVE the story line and the intro narrative is just plain funny.  We'll be sitting down to watch that one again soon.

I have company coming today.  A friend with her two small children.  Will be showing off my switch plates.  I have a dozen more to do.  God bless Papa, when he built this house he made sure there are outlets every few feet so there was never a problem with where to plug anything in and all the light switches were handy no matter where you are in the living/dining rooms.  There are 18 of them.  I've only done 5 so far.  My Papa had an interesting mind.  Gosh I miss him.

It's lovely to be able to let the dogs out again.  Once we got the electric collars and had them trained we've been able to let them out together to play and run.  One of the neighbors is decidedly UNfond of the dogs.  Neither one of them are the least bit aggressive but they do bark at strangers so when they visited her she took a pet.  We had them on a chain outside until we got the collars for them.  No sense in taking chances they'd end up in stir because they were curious.

Will make as much progress as possible on the current project.  As I said the other four will be made on one of the machines.  This just takes too dadgum long with only two needles.  The beds are a prodigious amount of work as well, but they don't take months to finish a project.  I can do a complicated sweater in about a week using 100 or more needles.  Time isn't a problem if you don't have all sorts of projects lined up.  I think I'm up to 25 pending projects at the moment.

SO!  On with the day.

Pictures to follow. ;-)
Toodles

Sometimes you just get lucky!

Finishing up the left front of the cardigan for Kat.  Fortunately, I have nieces close by in the same age bracket so will be able to gauge sizes from there until I get measured dimentions.  In the mean time, I am now certain that I will have to knit an insert between the fronts and the back.

That's a little hint/tip/technique I happened upon when a friend of mine brought me a book of patterns and asked me to knit her a suit.  Unfortunately, the two machines I have wouldn't accomodate the yarn she wanted to use.  It was LOVELY but too fine to use on a mid-gauge or bulky machine.

However,!!! that same pattern book showed me that you can do an insert to compensate when you don't have enough needles on your knitting bed.  Rather like doing a blanket in panels.  It ends up looking as if it's part of the design.  Fortunately, since I'm making this sans pattern, it IS part of the design.
OH, I just bought "Sweater Wizard" yesterday.  It's on sale at the source, on Amazon, eBay and strangely on Overstock.com.

http://www.software4knitting.com/  I found it here.  The "inventors" are really nice people do deal with.  In any event.  After agonizing over the loss of my Knitware program for months, this looks to be an excellent replacement.  I bought if from the Sweater Wizard people even thought it was more expensive.  They have it for 20% off at the moment.  It's way less expensive than some of the other programs out there.  When they have upgrades they give excellent discounts for those who have already bought the program.

It was so sad when I found that I had bought a program that would no longer be updated and was only fit for a 32 bit program use.  Everything is now 64 bit.  I only have a rudimentary idea of what that means.  Knitware was an excellent program.  SO, I was left to either find another program or figure it out by my own self.  That latter is not my best choice.

A month or so back I tried the Hat Wizard from "Knitting Software" and liked it.  So when push came to shove, I decided I would give their Sweater Wizard a try.  Talk about your day late and dollar short.  I could have used the Sweater Wizard to figure out how to make Kat's sweater without all this hullabaloo I've been going through.   I'm really looking forward to using this new software for knitting patterns.

I'll post pictures of the current progress later.

Toodles