I do love felt; it's definitely my kind of sewing material. I think coming up with boy embellishments though is a little trickier, at least for me apparently. I went through a few different ideas before deciding on this one and am quite fond of the final result. (Convinced myself I did not need to keep this pair for "future what if".) I used Heather Bailey's great Bitty Booties pattern and got to rummage through my vintage buttons and use some of my vintage ric rack too.

The rest of the weekend was a determined dash to finish the Circum nav cardi- and I did! It's currently blocking and will be ready for the Guild's show and tell and some finished photos soon.

Posted by Jen at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon light syrup (such as Karo or pancake)
• 1 1/2 cups peanut butter
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 1/2 cups quick cooking oatmeal
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 6 ounces M&Ms

Posted by Jen at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

I'm so happy I picked up this Clover mini-circular, me loves it lots. I like double points and all, I suppose I'm just use to tidy little sock stitches and working these sleeves on 8's with the entire sweater body weighing it down was just jacking my gauge all up. A close up of the needle is pictured here in Knitter's Review. I had thought it might be kind of awkward but to me, it's not at all. Easy round and round TV knitting!

Posted by Jen at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Bias hat v.2.0 is in need of another rework, after trying to fudge the numbers here and there in an effort to make a more compact pattern. Seems they needed fudged in the other direction. So I've given up any idea of releasing this pattern somewhere near "in-season". Which means, a little welcome distraction!

Babies, babies all around (literally, both neighbors just had babies within days of each other). A nice simple, follow the pattern knit was just the breather I needed. T-Strap Booties in the Lion Brand Cashmere blend, which really is very soft. I was tempted to post this with no mention of who they were for, just to mess with my mom (Hi Mom!) but I must be getting soft. ;)

And the winner is...
Now what everyone wants to really know- the contest winner!
Thanks to the handy Random Number Generator the winner is -

Janelle of Bioengiknitter!

Big thank yous to everyone who left suggestions, they will be very helpful!

Posted by Jen at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After wanting one of these for months, I finally decided to just order one already. So I did as a little birthday present for myself. Birthday present? and I'm just getting it now? Yes indeedy- because it made quite the journey from India.

I love getting mail from India. Usually it's cards and letters from Mr. Pieknit's family but it always has an interesting array of stamps, markings and whatnot. This package is certainly a prime example. I was so eager to open it after picking it up at the post office (which even the postal worker gave a little disbelieving laugh upon seeing it) but I felt it warranted its own photograph.

Wrapped in muslin cloth and hand stitched closed, the customs forms are even sewn to it.

Inside is my very own Tahkli spindle. These are lightweight support spindles from India that are good for spinning cotton and fine fibers. At a mere .5 oz. it's ideal for producing very fine yarns. I ordered this one from eTrade Enterprises in India. It was only $10 and comes with this nice wooden box as well. The shipping is another $9 of course, but still a good deal (and for such charming packaging it's worth it :) ). The company also offers several different types of Charkha's as well. Which btw, the one I'm working on building has hit a bit of a snag in that I haven't yet been able to find someone with a supported drill that can drill the drive wheel holes balanced. So in the meantime, I can now try out those cotton punis I have with this.

I love it. I might even say I like it a little more than wool. So many comments I've read remark how cotton is difficult to spin, which I think probably pertains to spinning on a traditional wheel. Ah the difference having the right tools makes. Yes, it requires a Lot of twist, but I think since it can hold so much twist it's much easier to avoid over twisting, a problem that plagues my fledgling wool attempts.

With wool, I've been working to try to spin thinner and funnily enough with the cotton it's the opposite. Tahkli's are meant to spin fine threads, but a little messing with it and towards the end I was able to spin a little thicker, near lace weight. Looking at the photos now I should have probably included something for scale. I was surprised how dainty this thing really is, super portable. I've seen several types of support bowls for sale as well but happened to find this cute bamboo condiment dish for $2.99, thank you Target.

Very addictive, I've already spun a second puni up before I got this posted- so another gratuitous photo.

Link-o-Rama (Tons of related links in the extended entry)

Sites on how to spin on a Tahkli/Takli
How to use a Support Spindle or Takli
Spinning on a Tahkli Spindle
Spinning angora on a Tahkli
Spinning on a Takli
Storing Takli-Spun Singles For Plying
Tackling the Tahkli
ICanSpin.com also has two videos on Takli's here and here

Sources for Tahkli's
eTrade Enterprises - where I purchased mine
Dragonfly Farms - some nice varieties
The Wheel Thing - beautiful unique handmade support spindles
They also have traditional Tahkli's, ceramic bowls and a clever magnetic "bowl" you can use which can also be seen here
The Bellwether has a nice variety as well

Fibers
yarnahoy.etsy.com - Where I got my puni's, great prices!
Cotton Clouds - great cotton and puni selection including dyed
Treenway Silks - has very Tahkli friendly exotics, I'd love to try this kit
The Woolery - variety of cottons and a Learn to Spin Cotton Kit that includes a Tahkli
Little Barn
Mielke's Fiber Arts - another great variety including punis

Posted by Jen at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

My circumnavigated cardigan now has a neat little button band.

The 'suggested' instructions in the pattern have it worked in garter stitch, but I'm just not that big of fan of the garter. I like the more tailored look of a folded hem. Sewing down that entire edge however, was something I wanted to avoid. Plus I think it defeats the point of a cleverly designed seamless garment. I wanted to pick up, knit, bind off and be done.

Hello Double Knit, nice to see you again.
I had swatched several different types of button holes, seeing what I liked best and what could possiblly be converted to double knit. I settled on the self-reinforcing button hole (found in Barbra Walker's treasury among other places). Another benefit of working this in double knit was I wouldn't have to fiddle with getting the two buttonholes on each layer lined up and be all floppy as in a true folded hem. After some more dk swatching I came up with a variation to use both strands at the same time so the two layers are held together. A very sturdy button hole and band materialized, mission accomplished.

The bind off creates a neat little tailored vertical line of stitches at the edge as well.

I simply continued it for the collar. I like to think this technique keeps in the spirit of the original garment.

Posted by Jen at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

As I've mentioned, the Circumnavigate Cardigan I've been working on is being knit as part of a guild wide knit-along for the Dallas Hand Knitters Guild. I had a bit of a surprise recently when I found out I had been nominated for 2nd Vice President (Education)/ Programs Chair. Last week I was voted in and I'm really getting excited about the upcoming year. This position handles setting up the meeting programs and workshops and the guild's had amazing ones in the past. So now my brain's been abuzz with possible topics, ideas and thinking what sort of things/classes would be interesting. I'd really love to get a wider input though of course. So, to make it a little more fun here's the contest thingie.

Simply comment letting me know a knitting related topic, technique, event, something that'd you'd be interested in. You don't have to be local (although if you are in the Guild, please offer your suggestions!). I'm just hoping to get some ideas. What is something you'd like to see at your knitting group? Do you have a teacher or specific workshop you'd love to attend some day?
Then in the effort to give "prizes that don't suck", list your favorite colors and/or fibers. I'll draw a random name and work with the winner to get you some cool goodies. Let's say it's open until Sunday, April 22, 2007 until Midnight (CST).
Sound good? Go!

Posted by Jen at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (36)

Well certainly no mystery if I made it to the Vendor area at the DFW FiberFest this weekend.

The fashion show on Friday was a different matter unfortunately. I was just about to leave when Mr. Pieknits calls to warn me there's a severe thunderstorm and tornado warning. Just as I'm going to the computer to check as it had only been a little cloudy, the storm hits. Now, I always joke that being a Northerner, I'm not too intimidated by Texas "weather" but when the marble-golf ball sized hail started coming with the sudden torrential rain and I could hear the sirens... yeah ok, no contest.

The weather was sunny and lovely by Sunday however for my Reversible Cables class with Lily Chin. I really enjoyed this class, and Lily is certainly entertaining. While I've done lots of cables I'd never messed around with Reversibles before and can now think of some things I'd really like to try (and wish I'd known sooner). She also taught a handy short-hand method of charting/designing cables which should be helpful since I have a penchant for creating large celtic non-repeating cables. (My last one (not blogged) was about 45 sts wide, over 80 rows I think? Spanned over 2 pages of graph paper so yeah, would've been handy)

After the class I got to hit the vendor area and yeay, the fiber! I haven't seen much at the local yarn stores so I was happy to get to feel around some and snag some shipping free. Here's what I picked up in addition to the Claudia Hand-painted above.

Some exquisite bamboo fiber in steely blues, this stuff looks so cool! Also couldn't resist some wool hand painted roving in great purples and my fav funky greens. I've also been wanting to try those stretchy circs and picked up one of those as well.

Posted by Jen at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I've been getting in little bits of spindle time.

Bright blue corriedale wool from The Flying Ewe and spun on my Viking Santa spindle. It was plied with a shiny bright green thread (that doesn't photograph well) on my Greensleeves Barebones. I like the plying with thread trick, lets you wring out as many yards as possible and still have a 2-ply (my singles are still far from being usable as is). This skein ended up around 70 yards.

Another recent thrifting find that I am so happy with, vintage rick rack. I have a serious thing for rick rack, absolutlyloveit. I have several projects in mind that will be using it so finding this entire spectrum was kismet.

And Aejaz, because his mirrored Diet Coke obsession like his mommy amuses me (though in his case it's more container specific). He's also overjoyed to get to dismantle the can boxes, as seen in this little animated sequence when he was 4 months. It's exactly the same thing now, he even begs for the bottles and boxes.

Posted by Jen at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Squeee! Ok, I can't help it- I just got my copy of the new Knitter's Magazine Spring 2007 issue that has my pattern in it.

Introducing Liquid Silver
This was pretty much my month of December. It is so exciting to see this pattern finally out; it was one of my very first designs. Originally sketched out some time ago, the details came together after a long incubation period. And little details it has! It looks simple, and it is, but I think it has enough interesting bits to keep it engaging.

The underarm increases are done entirely with short rows rather then large chunks of stitches cast on in stair steps. All the required stitches are cast on at once then the short rows "activate" the needed amount for each row. This makes for a smooth curve and far easier seaming. My favorite is the cuff treatment though.

I-cord casings are made using, can you guess? double knit! ('I love double knit' should be my catch phrase.) It just worked out perfectly, this way you can simply join the front back with an easy 3 needle bind-off. Again, painless seaming- my fav. Of course the I-cord closures at the top take care of the usual somewhat unsightly top seam of a dolman style construction. Plus I think everyone can show a little collarbone and look sexy. :)

It also made the contents page, not the cover of course, but the 2nd thing you see which I have to say I thought was pretty cool, heh. My "working title" for this design was Concatenate, which amused my programming geeky side. (Mr. Pieknits informed me it was 'too geeky', pshaw) I think Liquid Silver is a great choice though.

You can see the entire Spring Preview online at Knitter's website
http://www.knittinguniverse.com/flash/knitters/GalleryList.php?IssueNum=86

It really feels awesome to grace the same pages as such designers as Norah Gaughan, Elsebeth Lavold, Deborah Newton, and Kathy Zimmerman. I'm excited to be a part of such a great issue!

Posted by Jen at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (44)

Whilst reading about this great mirror re-do I remembered I too had a gaudy gold freebie mirror that had been lounging in the garage. With a bit of funky green paint I now have my own looking glass for the craft room.

I started with a metallic green paint that I "sponged" on (went ghetto-style and just used paper towels) but it ended up not being enough contrast on its own. So I picked up some bright lime green and did another coat in that, followed by brushing on a few highlights in the metallic.

Another little spot in our home that makes me irrationally happy is our pantry. Oh how I love our new pantry and its space of cavernous proportions. In my ongoing quest to organize all our bags and bags of indian spices I picked up a bunch of these assorted glass jars. The little rows just make me smile and make cooking that much easier and in turn, more enjoyable.

You do have to kind of master a squat waddle to get out the crock pot but hey at least there's a place for it.

Posted by Jen at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

The good news
Well I was happy to find that all my calculations and knitting matched my schematic perfectly. Yeay! That was the tricky part. After wrapping my brain around determining the slower decrease rate on the decrease side of the diagonal to actually create an increase, I admit I felt a wee bit clever. Heh, nothing like knitting to keep you humble however.

The intended result. (Do please excuse the crap photography, my photographer (Mr. Pieknits) is out of town.)

The bad news
Like I said, the knitting matches the schematic - too bad the schematic was wrong. Doh. It's so obvious to me now of course, and would've been if I had given more than 2 seconds thought to the basic beginning. So what does it actually look like?

Hershey's Kiss head!
Although I should stop looking at this photo because I'm starting to kinda like it...
Not the result I wanted however. Below is the basic shape of the hat flat. I had taken the measurement of the full width, then the width after all decreases and drew the diagonal lines. I was imagining the ends to fold in and meet in the middle. The reality in 3-d is you fold it in half down the center- and you can see the sloping point that results.

What it needs to be is like this. Again, looking at it now this is embarrassingly obvious.

I hope this yarn rips well.

Posted by Jen at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)

Thanks for all your input on the Circumnav Cardi! Having a fresh set of eyes is very helpful. Now that that's moving along- I finally got to jump over to something that's been gnawing at my brain since January. Remember this green yarn I picked up in Vegas? No? Didn't think so. Since I got it I have been sketching and calculating things like this.

This image could possibly prove to be a more interesting What do You See? exercise.
Backing up, when I first got this yarn I knew I wanted to do something with it that played with directional stitches. It's what I usually go to for variegated yarns, I think it shows off the qualities best that way. This yarn however has more Noro-like subtle color transitions so that quickly ruled out small twisted stitch like motifs. I wanted to preserve the thicker striping effect and I started thinking of diagonal stitches. After much swatching this led to deciding to knit the entire piece on the diagonal for a hat.

The easiest route would have been to knit a long rectangle and cinch it shut but I felt this was cheating. Plus I'm not a big fan of puffiness on top of my head. So I calculated the dimensions of a basic in the round, bottom up ribbed hat that was then slit open flat. Using my favorite drawing program I drew a schematic to scale and then rotated it 45 degrees. Viola! Now I could mark off segments to measure and calculate my stitches, thus the odd looking graphic above.

I've been so eager to test out my pattern "theory" as I am calling it (as in, I think it'll work) that the knitting is already almost done.

Ok, so it does look more eel-like than hat-like at the moment but that's mostly because the ribbing is pulling it in. I won't know for sure until I seam it if this first go at it worked, but so far wrapping it around my head at intervals seems to indicate it will. *crosses fingers*

Posted by Jen at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)