Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

Stitches West

I went to Stitches West. 

I love her Frida-esque outfit. I want to do something like this.

She always has my favorite outfits.

This lady made her lacy dress out of a tablecloth pattern, only removing the center stitches and then adding some on at the end to make the top of the dress. 

I liked these.

I really wish these were made into pins. I would buy them all.

This guy and I were the most rainbow ones there.

I always like looking at the Mother Bear Project. I need to get the pattern and try some one of these days. 

I want these bears. These bears are me. 

This is some awesome pottery.

Here's some of the works on display...

 

And here's some knitted knockers: 

I was entranced by this year's Knitted Knockers, especially since they are having a contest to make some very weird ones. 

I'm considering entering the contest, but after I was told someone's making one out of glass, I was all "I can't top that."

This style is called "bargello knitting," and is apparently when you take all of the gradient yarn, cut it up and section it off into its own colors and then move where you put them in.

The patch in the backpack says "I Willie Love Knitting."

This book on sale there sounded like fun: it's a collection of quilts dedicated to Prince. Pictures within!

Names of dye lots I liked:

Here's what I bought:

I want to pair them together to do something maybe like this? But with the rainbow striped yarn in the black spots and then the regular stripes in the rainbow slot. I saw too many rainbow things.

And I did go to a few free workshops. One on Cables That Pop--and they do. I believe she slips the non-cabled stitches to achieve this effect.

And I went to StevenBe's workshop on how to use color. It was quite interesting. 

Incidentally, check out this page from the book he did with Stephen West: KNITTING AT THE EDGE OF AN ACTIVE VOLCANO?!?!

So Steven's workshop was on how to mix colors. He talked about throwing random colors/strands of glitter, or even a color you don't like, into a piece to see how it goes, because that can slightly brighten up a color. He referred to the "condiments of knitting." He talked about inventing "sharves, not scarves" and said that people took up shawl knitting when they had too much sock yarn left over after all the socks. 

I showed up in the guitar sweater above and he said, "You're kinda da bomb." I shall remember this always. (Another person called it, "It's a whole situation!") 

He said we should replace the word "stash" with "fine art collection" and said, "I like to be entertained while I knit." He defined "to Steven Be" as going farther than something was intended to go, and said "i'm gonna take this show to Vegas." He also advised people to put on all their favorite things and then go to lunch, and that "sometimes it's the only kudos we get" about our knitting.

 

 

Disney Princesses

I have slowed down on the toymaking of late (see Resistance Sunhat for why) but I did do the two princesses included in the Disney Princess Crochet Kit.

They are very....lollipop head with huge eyes, which I did not really notice until I started making them. The eyes are a bit too big. I also sewed Cinderella's head on crooked so she can only look in one direction. Oops.

Resistance Sunhat

(All links Ravelry.com links, if you are not a member you may not be able to access them. Membership is free if you want to bother joining.) 

So a while back I saw the Resistance Hat on Ravelry. I thought the rainbow stripes, and the various protest slogans, were very appropriate and needed in this day and age where you may end up in a protest every few months or whatever.

However, I had some issues with the pattern:

(a) It is ridiculously difficult to find bright colors in small yarns as the pattern required at Joann's or Michael's. (Indeed, the only place I've seen anything suitable on sale for this hat was at Stitches West, except I had the hat done by then.) Looking on Ravelry was a great help for this because someone suggested using those cute little Lion Brand Bonbon packs they sell at Joann's. I ended up buying three packs of them to make sure I had enough for all the colors, but I probably only needed two. 

(b) I ended up changing which slogans I put onto the hat. Helpfully, a lot of folks on Ravelry have designed their own slogans so I could borrow from different charts. 

(c) The fingering yarn is really, really small. I got gauge but the hat was coming out too tight to fit onto my head even with stretching by the third stripe. So I ended up transitioning from size 3 needles to size 4 and then to size 5 to get it to fit my head. This was quite a clever fix, except...

(d) By the time I got to the green stripe, the hat was getting too large to fit as a beanie with all the colors in it--the green was hitting my ears. So I felt at this point that either I give up on rainbow striping or I start turning it into a sunhat. So I started adding in more blank spaces between letters on the last few stripes to stretch out the slogans.

(e) By the time I finished the purple stripe, the hat was fitting me about like uh, this cartoon kid's hat. I don't have a photo of this but everyone laughs when I put it on. It's too big and looks dumb and obstructs my vision. 

(f) In an attempt to improve this situation, I put wire around the edge and added a pink underlayer on the brim that flips up. I also added tiny pussy ears. 

It's still not great. Sigh. 

The layers are:

• Rainbow: Love Is Love Is 
• Red: Nevertheless, She Persisted
• Orange: No Hate, No Ban, No Wall
• Yellow: Rise Up, Fire Trump, Resist
• Green: DNA
• Blue: All Immigrants Welcome Here
• Purple: Impeach The Motherfucker Already (note that it flips up to "hide" That Word from short small children)
• Pink Underneath: Women's Rights Are Human Rights