Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

Tiny shawl

TypePad is Having Issues today and one of them is that it won't rotate my pictures. But you get the drift.

I bought this fancy silk/fuzzy yarn at Stitches and making a tiny shawl was what I could do with it. 

Emma Overdress

I wish I'd written down when I started this one. Presumably spring 2022 when Bridgerton season 2 came out and I got obsessed with Kate Sharma's wardrobe and I wanted to make pieces like it. It feels like longer. I spent something like $90 on yarn (ok, had a gift certificate for some of that) for three skeins of fancy purple yarn made with size 4 needles. 

I had a lot of issues with it, especially the fiddly edging/hem, and put it on hiatus for awhile. I didn't do the cabled belt because doing cabling with tiny needles made me insane. I ended up crocheting the bottom edge because the bottom edge was making me insane. I spent a lot of time on the fiddly hem on the edges and I'm not even sure you notice all that work. I pulled out the top a whole lotta times and redid it.

But it's finally done. 

Here is the first photo, taken alone in a public bathroom :P

And some better ones, taken at home.

 

Scarf fidget maze

So I found this pattern around the beginning(?) of the year. It looks like The Ultimate Fidget--double knitting, wind a marble through the maze. I took a class through Stitches (RIP) to learn how to do double knitting, but this being different from side to side really screwed with me for awhile and I would take out more than I put in.

Now, I think I have it down, relatively speaking. I don't work on it that often--it's my work office lunch project--but I think I've got enough of it going (nearing the first page down...of many pages, mind you) to show you a bit. Here's a photo of the scarf with the pattern, if that helps any to figure out what is going on.

And here's more of it, on both sides now.

 

The Isabela top has flowers on

Continued from here. I still have to figure out the sleeve dots issue, but it's mostly done now.

Isabela skirt is done

Continued from here. Based off the artwork here.

Now all I've got left is yarn-bedazzling the top and making a cactus.

 

Stitches just went bankrupt

Announcement here. 

Posting this for those who read this blog and may not have heard otherwise. I'll update with more dish if I hear it. 

I'm so disappointed and sad, if not totally surprised because they had a lot less vendors this year (around 100 down from 300 the year before, and they used to have a lot more pre-site move and pre-pandemic, of course) and I suspected Stitches 2023 might be the last one. But I'm bummed as hell anyway. 

Places to find out more:

• Reddit discussions here and here.
• Ravelry discussions with the most here and here
• Facebook page for the screwed over.

Tesoro Sweater

Found here.

.

Started this in January. Pretty easy knit but I kept screwing up the sleeve decreases at least twice per sleeve, and the sleeves went on FOREVER....finally finished just in time for 85 degree weather!

First layer of sleeves done

Encanto Isabela, continued.

Huh, by the time I got around to getting this downloaded, I've actually finished the second layer of both sleeves...and am going to make the collar bigger. 

Tiny damn yarn

So.....I have an enormous amount of fancy tiny yarn I've been acquiring at fancy yarn festivals and the occasional shop trip for several years now, most of which I haven't done anything with. I have colorway COLLECTIONS of this stuff.

Neon

I'm not sure what to label this collection, but it's .... pale rainbow-ish shimmery, I guess? Possibly not everything that qualifies in this is even in this shot.

More rainbow rainbow (this isn't even ALL of the stash of that)

And pink/purple/blue (rainbow and pink/purple/blue are my life's colorways).

This is because I want to make more dresses out of fingering yarn, and the tank/tube-style dress I want to make I have (a) not been able to design myself, and (b) the closest pattern I've got doesn't get gauge even remotely with the fingering yarn it supposedly uses, forcing me to recalculate or substitute something else or god knows what. (Other people have agreed with me that the gauge is insane.) i just took a class in recalculating this for another gauge because I come out at about 28 sts/4 inches with size 5's in fingering, or 28 sts/4 inches if I really wank it and use size 8 needles. The pattern's gauge is at 22, which is worsted weight, FFS.

Meanwhile right now I'm knitting with the 28/4 gauge with fingering on the Isabela top. I did the collar and I finished (most of) one sleeve and am on to the next. And you know what? That shit's STILL flimsy AF really. Like, I wanted to make a lightweight summer dress out of these things because it gets to be like 116 here, but if I knit it at that gauge I'll probably still need to wear some other dress under it or else embarrass myself. If you hold it up to the light, it's a bit peekaboo still. The crochet dress is definitely peekaboo, which is why I have clothes under it and have mostly worn it in midseason temps here and there.

Maybe I should just give up and knit 2 yarns together and do it in DK gauge? That uses more yarn (but has awesome color combos that could harmonize, particularly on the neon) and knitting with two seems like a pain, but that might be less of a pain than working in one strand of tiny. I did also find a way to knit with 3 fingerings at once (folding them up and weaving a third strand through...it worked) to come out around worsted/bulky gauge. Works a treat, albeit it was quite heavy fabric and not what I was going for in a "summer" dress.

Argh, I dunno. I still have Halloween costume I'm plugging away on and a portable project and a pain-in-the-ass-I-may-never-finish-it double knitting to work on, plus the vest that is on hold because I got sick of the fiddly lacy hem. So...yeah.

THIS IS MAH HAUL

Here's the pictures of what I got at Stitches 2023.

Yes, that's something like....17 skeins, technically? (A bunch of minis on the end). I have been collecting (a) rainbow skeins, (b) pastel mix skeins, (c) purple/blue skeins, and (d) neon skeins, for possible future projects. I shopped like there may be no Stitches in the future, basically. I took a class in alterations, so hopefully I can someday come up with the dress pattern I want for these things.

Other things: shawl pin, knitting board, landscape pendant embroidery kit, Knitters Oracle. And a bunch of stickers.

And the socks on the right.

This is the sample NEWS sweater I made in class.

Oh, and I made the embroidered pendant. (I note that the kit seems to have slightly different color instructions than the picture, so one part of the mountain is light gray.)