November Progress 2013

Yard work is officially done for the season so I may now have more time to make lace.  Oh, and knit!

Tatting:

I am plugging away on two larger WIPs and I hope I will have something to show soon.  The pieces are getting kind of boring so I took a break to complete two small pieces.  At least it gave me something to post!

Knitting:
Knit project in progress.  It's a fun one!

Motif No. 46

I hope everyone in the US had a nice Thanksgiving!

I actually finished it earllier this week but didn't have time to scane it until today.  Shown above is motif no. 46 - Beaded Snowflake from Vida Sunderman's "Tatted Snowflakes".

The scanner does not do the color justice, but it is a wonderful pewter-bronze color.  It would make a fabulous nail-polish color!  Come to think of it, I should go through my nail polish collection to see if I have anything similar:)

The construction of this snowflake is very interesting in that the outer round is made entirely from chains.  I am not sure why it doesn't incorporate rings, but considering I am making this with metallic thread, it works better.  Large rings and metallic threads do not make a good combination.

Obviously, although the original pattern calls for beads (hence the name!) I did not use them.  Although I have not tried it yet, I think beads and metallic thread would detract from each other.

So close to being done with the second round of 25 motif challenge!  Although part of me would like to complete the challenge by the end of the year, I will not be too upset if I don't.  It has already taken me way over a year to complete the second round.

Beaded Minaret Snowflake

Although it may seem like I have, I really have not dropped off the face of the earth!

The last few weeks have been extremely busy, both at work and in the yard in a race against time to finish raking.  For the first time ever, I don't think I will manage to rake up all the leaves.  I never made it to a small section all the way in the back.  It's not that big a deal, but it will make spring clean up a bit more painful.  Something to look forward to!  That takes care of one thing, but work will continue to be busy through the end of the year.

I have been puttering around with lace and such, I just don't have much to show for it.  Most of my time has actually been spent on a knitting project I started recently.  Since I have an actual deadline for it, it's at the top of my list of things to work on.  I have also been trying to finish a WIP that's been hanging around on my shuttles for ever.  It's at the point where I don't even like the pattern much any more, but I just want it done.

Amongst all that, I managed to complete this little piece over the weekend.  It's "Minaret Snowflake" from Vida Sunderman's book and was made to include in a thank you note.  I've made this snowflake before using Kreinik braid, but this time I decide to make it cotton thread (special dentelles 80 in ecru) and add beads.

Two minor points:

• I am not sure how I managed to do so, but it looks like the center round goto twisted when I was joining it.  Unfortunately I did not discover that until I was well into my second round and I did not want to start again.  I tried to smooth it out in the scan, but one of the center chains has a tendency to twist. 
• The beads in the center don't lie flat (see upper and upper right chains in scan above).  I think that is even more distracting that the twisted chain.
• I tried a new way of adding beads to joining picots.  I typically avoiding adding beads in joining picots because I normally pick the beads up with a crochet hook as I am joining the picot. Although I tend to make large picots, the picots to which I need to add beads are of course short and I spend a lot of time trying to find a smaller bead that is still large enough for my crochet hook to fit through.  This time I added beads to the picots as I was making them, taking care to make the picots slightly larger than I normally would.  I then joined the picots as per the pattern.  The fact that the beads are not symmetrically arranged on the picots bothers me though!  I'm pretty sure that it's only an issue for me, so I am not too concerned about it.  Won't do it again though.

As mentioned above, the stubborn beads and the twisted chain do bother me though and I am not sure I want to give away this snowflake.  Part of me thinks I'm being too harsh and even if I see this again in a  few months I won't even notice.  Suggestions?  I will also run it by my husband.  He tends to give me an objective opinion.

As an aside, I used a random vial of beads that I bought either at Michael's or Jo Anne's a long time ago.  I have two similar vials of beads in two shades of gold that I keep coming back to.  Since I am finally making a dent in both colors, I will have to look into restocking both colors.

Shark Hoodie

So this is the big mystery project I have been referring to in the last few posts - a shark hoodie for my nephew (modeled by a teddy bear...)!

As with most of these random project, I am not sure what inspired me to make it.  I am not a hoodie person and I am not a shark person, but when I saw this shark hoodie, I thought it would be fun to make.  Now, as cool as I think this is, I certainly was not about to wear it, so I decided my nephew would look adorable in it:)

As I mentioned before,  I need to start keeping track of where I stumble upon these links, but somehow I found the link to this shark hoodie tutorial.  I checked out some of the links in the post and indeed the hoodie in the tutorial was my absolute favorite.  It's the red lining!

I may have mentioned before that I don't like to sew.  I do have a sewing machine but I have not yet bothered to figure out how to use it.  Threading the machine seems a bit of a mystery to me.  I figured I could probably handle this hoodie since most of the sewing in the tutorial was done by hand.  I may not like to sew by hand, but I can kind of sort of do it.  I just don't expect anything I sew to withstand much use...

Since this was my first time attempting anything like it, I followed the tutorial pretty closely with very little deviation.  Below are some notes (mainly for myself)

• I started out with sewing a double layer of felt (wool) for the teeth.  By hand.  Have I mentioned before that I don't like to sew?  I don't like to sew.  It went by fairly quickly though.  I think the teeth were finished in two nights.
• My fabric pencil did not work on felt so I had to trace the outline in pen.  After flipping the felt the few lines that were still on the felt were covered.   I realized I need fabric scissors - the scissors I started out with were hacking at the felt rather than cutting it.
• The teeth ended up about 1/4 inch shorter than the hoodie.  Not too noticeable, but it did bug me a bit.

• Sew teeth to hoodie.  By hand.  I followed one of the seams on the hoodie so at least the seam was almost straight.  So far so good!

• Cut out eyes from felt (synthetic)
• The tutorial used old T shirts, but I opted for felt - less hemming and thus less sewing.  When I went shopping for fabric, they were out of plain black felt so I opted for slightly sparkly black felt.  Even sharks can use some bling:)
• Figuring out the eye shape was fun!  Both me and my husband got involved and his design finally won.  I do still like the original eye shape in the tutorial, but I think this one works as well.  Yes, this part did involve looking at cartoon images of sharks.  I take my work seriously:)

• Sew eyes (by hand) and attach to hoodie (by hand)
• I had a hard time placing the eyes evenly.  They still ended up a bit off, but that's OK.  Animals are not perfectly symmetrical, right?

on the floor after the eyes were attached

modeled by my teddy bear

• Lining - this was the scary part
• once the eyes and teeth were attached, I could have stopped working on the hoodie since most of the hoodies I found did not have any lining.  As I mentioned though, the lining was my favorite part.  As a back up, I decided that if the lining really did not work out, I would find a wide red ribbon to sew along the edge of the teeth so there would still be some red
• I wanted to make sure the lining would cover the edge of the teeth - getting the size and shape right was not easy.  I *think* I followed the tutorial pretty closely, but I did get a bit lost at times.
• Sew lining.  By hand.
• This was by far the most tedious part of the hoodie and I almost quit making the lining at this point.  Good thing I'm stubborn!
• Attach lining to hoodie.  By hand.
• Not fun, but it got done.  I realized once I started attaching the lining that it did not match up to the hoodie very well and final lining is a bit wonky.
• I skipped sewing the lining down the center following the hoodie seam when I realized the shape did not match up too well.  The lining is attached to the hoodie only along the outer and bottom seams.

completed hoodie!

If you look carefully the lower seam of the lining does not match up with the hoodie itself.  Oops.  By the time I realized that, I was not about to remake the whole lining!

completed hoodie modeled by my teddy bear

Yes, the hoodie looks cuter on my nephew than on the teddy bear - it's the ears on the bear that throw it off:)

Not that I ever plan on making anything like this again, but if I were to do something similar, I would make the following modifications:

• Sew on eyes first
• Sewing on eyes after the teeth were sewn on was a bit awkward.  The teeth add quite a bit of bulk!
• Try to get the shape of the lining *before* attaching teeth.
• Part of what made it difficult to get a good shape for the lining is that the teeth were already covering the edge of the hoodie.  I tried to make the lining as close to the size of the hoodie as possible so I had very little wiggle room.
• I like the sparkly eyes!

I did also prewash the lining twice since I didn't want it to bleed all over the hoodie.  The color definitely ran the first time, but I think by the second time through the wash it no longer bled.  I would still be careful how I wash it though.

If I think of anything else, I'll add it later.

Overall I still think this was a fun and informative little project for me.  It almost makes me want a shark hoodie for myself.  Maybe one of these days I will actually pull out my sewing machine and figure out how to thread it.  It would have made sewing the lining much, much, much easier.  And faster!  As it stands, I hope my nephew outgrows it before it falls apart.  At the rate he's growing, it shouldn't be a problem, even with my sub-par sewing skills.

Back to lace.  And maybe even knitting, now that it's finally cooler.

October Progress 2013

A little late this month...  I was on vacation for about a week and a half and now I can barely remember anything prior to that:)

Considering everything else going on, I'm pleasantly surprised I not only managed to make some lace, but I also completed a few things to post!  Most of my very limited lace time was taken up by the large project mentioned in the sneak preview a few days ago.  Now that it's done, I may have time to make more lace - I kind of have to, if I want to post since I don't think I have any almost finished projects lined up for quick and easy posting!

Bobbin lace:

Nothing.

Tatting:

Not much actual tatting, but I did manage to complete two pieces to post - a small motif and the Quatrain mat.  I am not sure I can really count Quatrain since I only finished a few ends this month.  The actual tatting was done earlier.

Needle Lace:

Inspired by a tutorial, I made a little skeletal leaf.  It was nice to make some needle lace and working with color was a nice change of pace as well.

Teneriffe:

Nothing. 

Knotted Lace:

Nothing.

Puncetto:

Nothing.

Crochet:

Nothing.