In another edition of "Jen Makes Strange Gifts For Friends, Hope They Like It!", here is the Hamiltie. The friend went to Hamilton for his last birthday.
For whatever weird reason, I always wanted to try making a tie. I don't know why since my dad's dead and before this year I haven't had any dudes in my life for a long-ass time, much less any that were into ties. I saw this Hamilton ornament on Ravelry and wanted to do something along those lines, but noticed that the logo was just out of felt, eh....
I quickly found a suitable fancy tie pattern (Collar and Tie on Knitty) that was double sided (and is supposed to be knit in the round on DPN's), but you're supposed to knit that on the bias, which to me ruled out trying something Fair Isle to do the logo. Then I remembered that years ago I bought some cross stitch waste canvas because I liked the idea of being able to cross stitch on other items. IDEA! I can finally use that stuff...Also, this reminded me of my phase where I was cross stitching a bunch of Hamilton slogans and called it the "Ham Sampler Platter."
Knitting the tie was tricky. I bought this fancy yarn, Cascade Yarns Sorata, which is out of freaking baby llama(!!!) and silk. I couldn't get the gauge quite right. The pattern gets gauge with size 1(!) needles, and I could get the stitch gauge with size 6's but was about four rows bigger than the row gauge. Normally when making things I prioritize making sure stitch gauge matches because when you're usually making stuff like scarves or sweaters or skirts you just knit for a certain length. However, I had some issues making the tie come out the right size and shape, so I had to take it out and redo it, starting the bias large middle section when I had 26 stitches on rather than 35.. I also had to knit each side separately rather than in the round as intended so I could cross stitch on one of the sides.
After I eventually got that working and done, I had to figure out the waste canvas issue and re-design a logo that fit the size of the tie, which of course came out smaller than I expected. I found a logo somewhere in cross stitch but it was too big for me to use, so I had to figure out how to size it down.
There's not a whole lot of information out there on what I was trying to do, i.e. cross stitch on knitting. That's about why I'm writing this post in case anyone else tries it. It looks super easy if you're just doing it on regular fabric, but the few websites that mentioned anything about doing it on knitting said you had to have interfacing in there to make it less wiggly. I hate interfacing, but since I had issues the last time I did any major project and tried to not use interfacing...okay, fine, I got the stuff. The online instructions said to sew it in, but there was no non-fusible interfacing to be had in Joann's, somehow.
Thankfully, I did a sample knit after finishing the tie and tried it out, because man, I had some problems. Ironing in the fusible interfacing worked great on the sample (much less so on the actual tie, which kind of barely stuck by comparison...oh well, it was in enough for my purposes), but the waste canvas did not work so great.
(Note: since I used an embroidery hoop to do the cross stitch, I really did not have any wiggle issues with the project. Some parts of the sample actually went over where I had the interfacing, but I didn't have problems cross stitching there. I don't necessarily feel like I really, really have to have the interfacing if/when I try this again.)
I had read some stuff online saying that when pulling out waste canvas strings, you had to get the project wet first, make sure your floss didn't bleed when wet, blah de blah... So after cross stitching a bunch on the sample, I did the bottom third of it by just yanking out the strings dry and barehanded. It was pretty easy to pull out, but snagged on the yarn on the sides on the way out. I tried wetting down (slightly) the rest of it and it slightly snagged less... but it still snagged. This was something nobody mentioned running into online anywhere (again, why I post this if it comes up for you).
Also, as per whatever website I read this on and can't recall, you really should use thicker strands when cross stitching on something else. Two strands was kind of flimsy looking, so I did further cross stitching with all full six strands in.
After noodling around trying to think of something else to try that wouldn't make the baby llama yarn snag (I debated ordering water-soluble waste canvas online for a while, but felt like waiting on delivery time might slow me up on finishing it, and given how things had been going I wasn't sure if I'd have to scrap the whole thing or start over or what...), I was Googling around not finding much and then I saw some stray mention of tissue paper somewhere on Craftster...
That's the idea that worked, folks. Put down a layer of tissue paper (in this case, I got some yellow) and layer it in. Tie on the bottom, then tissue paper, then put the waste canvas on top of that and then load all the layers into the embroidery hoop. And that worked! You don't see much of the tissue paper and it was easy to pull out of the sides after I pulled out the waste canvas strands, which snagged not at all this time :)
So, whew, it's done and I didn't have to start the whole thing over again. Huzzah. And now you know the special trick to try (plus what recommended tricks did and didn't work) if you ever want to try doing cross stitch on a knitting project.
