Category: Accessories

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Aqua Butterflies

So this story begins in my favorite “second hand” store, the Scrap Exchange in Durham NC. (Second hand is in quotes because most of the materials are new, just pre-owned).

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Okay guys, this is too far away to see detail…

I introduced my parents to the space a couple visits back, and now it’s always on the agenda when they come down (Hi Mom and Dad!), and they visited back in January. So naturally we visited the store.

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Too close, you can see the focus issue…

Checking out the yarn bins, I hit gold in the greens bin with this Malabrigo sock yarn for $5. It had never been caked, and it still had the original $18 price tag. I snapped it up, and I got super excited.

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I guess it’ll do. Dear Reader, please do not try to zoom in!

I should mention that the ‘rents were visiting to help me move. So when I was unpacking I obviously wasn’t originally interested in finding my swift and winder, but still somehow I managed to cake it up within the first two weeks or so of moving, and then looked for a shawl pattern to match it with.

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On Ravelry I found the beautiful Dancing Butterflies shawl, by Carfield Ma, and it felt like a match.The pattern is well written, and working it up was great! I did have to alter it near the border since I only had the one skein available. I played multiple games of yarn chicken  before finally finishing it maybe 10 rows before expected.

Then came blocking, where I was able to block it to a rather huge size, but it did show me that I was not loose enough binding off, so I got curly edges. Not that it matters, because I now have Butterfly Wings!

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I take all my photos with a camera and tripod, and this is one shoot where I should’ve asked a passerby to stand in for focusing… Lessons hopefully learned!

I love this shawl, but I’ve found myself only reaching for it when I’m wearing blue or green. Good thing that makes up so much of my wardrobe!

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Diving Deep Shawl

This might be one of the quickest yarn-buying to final project finishes that I’ve had so far…

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I bought the yarn in January from Me & Ewe in Austin TX as part of my “buy yarn/fabric as souvenirs” initiative to help me stop buying stupid trinkets I don’t need and instead come out with things I’ll treasure. My backpack from last year’s fabric purchase is most definitely my most used item in my life.

It’s a fine single ply yarn that is a merino wool and silk blend from a spinner in Texas. The colors remind me of a tropical ocean under moonlight, or rather what I think that would look like.

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Then I got into a stage of my home life (at the time) where I realized that I couldn’t accommodate nearly every craft I’m fond of in my tiny hole of a room (only slightly bigger than a walk in closet) except for yarncrafts, which had easily accessible supplies and very little footprint.

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So I got to searching Ravelry, bought this excellent pattern called Pearla Beaded Lace Shawl (though I chose not to bead it) from ByTheLilyPond.com, though I did purchase it on Ravelry.

I found it a pretty quick knit, and very intuitive to knit after a bit. I knit it all from looking at a computer, moving a rectangle around in Adobe Acrobat and scribbling a small key on the page so I wouldn’t have to continually scroll up and down, which made it easy to knit wherever I was. I’d most definitely make this shawl again, and I’ll consider it for the next time I go to a new place and buy yarn!

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And I finished in early April. Between it and my NOLA Shawl I can wear a shawl with pretty much any item of clothing. Which is great! I love unusual accessories!

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Ocean Waves Purse

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Purses have not often been my thing. I’ll carry them, find a perfect one for that month or year, and then drop them.

The closest to perfect I’ve come is a small leather purse that I bought for 17 euros from an Aldi near Duesseldorf about 10 years ago. I still have it. But this purse was made in the beginning of the smartphone, and does not have enough room for both a phone and a wallet. No matter what the size of the wallet. And forget about keys.

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So I set off to make one that would fit the things I might need on a day out when I don’t . I listed the things I needed to fit: keys, wallet, phone. Then things I’d like to bring: a notebook, pouch of markers, maybe my ballroom dance heels. That last one’s a stretch.

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I then did far too much research on making a leather purse, and ended up finding this Russian tutorial, which has a pretty clear procedure, and a reasonable looking pattern. I did end up altering the pattern, to make the purse a bit larger and make the front flap larger so it falls closed better, and I put a different pattern on the front, but overall I followed the general step by step.

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A game changer for me was to put tape on the suedey side of the leather, so it won’t stretch out when you shape it.

I made this out of nearly all of the leather bellies I’ve got left. Those were carried around with me for about two moves since I last used them, so it was time to get them cut up. I might have just enough to squeak out a strap, but I don’t have the hardware, so I haven’t checked into it.

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After the cuts were made, I skived all of the pieces thinner, by about 25%, and also the edges to make it easier to turn them. It did make the inside nice and somewhat even, and less shaggy, but only a little.

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Then I brought the entire project into my workplace (on a weekend when we were closed) and dampened and stamped the leather for 9 hours… So many hours. Lots of tv while I was waiting for leather to dry just enough to stamp. Lots of punching holes. So many holes.

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If you don’t know (though I’ve probably said it enough), I got my master’s in marine physics, so I did learn a lot about ocean waves… Most waves do not look like this, but I’m totally okay with it. I know better and I’m ignoring it.Cool?

Cool.

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Then I used some wax threads to sew it together, and then also fastened it with suede leather lacing. There’s D rings for the top of the purse to attach the straps, and it used to have a bar at the bottom of the front to hold the flap down, but it broke. Probably never going to fix it, if we’re being honest.

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And then I took some yarn and the remaining leather lacing to braid together a temporary strap. That may turn out semi-permanent.

I coated it with some weatherproofing wax that I used on the belts I made waaaaaaaaay back in the blog.

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Ooh, and then there was the little bit of laser cutting I did on the back. I had designed the initials a few months ago, and I sometimes bring them out and use them. Inevitably I’ll have the discussion about who K is, but I know that it says JS, even if no one else does.

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And that’s that!

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NOLA Shawl

A while ago I told you about my fabric I bought in Seattle, and how that was going to be a thing when I traveled.

I’ve not yet done anything with the Seattle yarn, but I was lucky enough to go on a road trip with some friends last March and bought some lovely tencel yarn in a gorgeous colorway.

We visited four cities on this epic road trip, but New Orleans was the one that hooked me on the trip. I study hurricanes in my real life, so I am fascinated in part because of the geological conditions, but the fact that I hear a lot about it from my favorite food blogger who moved there, and see pieces of it (even if they might be fake) in shows like NCIS NOLA, I was pretty interested. So even though this colorway is not quite indicative of the NOLA people know, it is definitely more my style and wearable in my life. Though I did waffle over some Mardi Gras colorways.

This is not the first time I fell in love with these particular colors together. A few years ago when I was beading as much as I breathed I bought a bunch of beads in that colorway with the intention of making a necklace for myself, which has still not come to pass. Maybe soon? But I consider this colorway Van Gogh colors, since they really remind me of Van Gogh’s sunflower painting.

Officially this is yarn from the brand Prism, and its called Delicato, 100% Tencel, and this is the colorway named Sierra.

Back to the shawl.

The yarn was so soft and I was looking for a low key distraction at the time, so I decided to use it right away. I looked at a bunch of patterns, and ultimately decided on the Good Day Sunshine shawlette pattern from Knitty by Amanda Bjørge.

I really liked the pattern. I didn’t take notes as I went (story of my life), but I seem to remember having to fudge some parts of rows to get it lined up, but I don’t know if that was a careless mistake on my part or if it was the pattern (probably the former). Overall, easy to knit up and the lace kept things interesting!

And then I knit for a month or two. I finished the shawl just before a wedding I attended in early March, but because I had made an outfit with sleeves for that I didn’t need a shawl that night. Until a week or two ago, I haven’t really worn it, but that is not without precedent.

A few years ago I made the Knitty Wavedeck shawl from Kate Atherly which gets worn occasionally, but not enough to be called often. It doesn’t help that with the DK yarn weight it feels more like winter, but we haven’t gotten much winter weather, and that it ended up being more of a shawlette. And shawls are less conducive as scarfs when biking when they need to be attached to something to prevent them from falling off. I’m debating keeping safety pins with the Wavedeck shawl so I can pin it to my clothes before I start bike riding.

With this fingering weight one it’ll get more fall and spring wear, and has already proven so! I wore it three times this week, which was great. I wish the weather agreed with me wearing it though…

Shawls are so pretty, but I need to get more in the practice of wearing them. Especially since I love knitting them!

This was finished in very early summer, and other than a project I started knitting and abandoned for time, I haven’t really been knitting. I got a little bit of a start when I saw Blade Runner 2049 (so pretty) with these socks that I’ve been knitting since I saw Deadpool in theaters. I think I’m calling them my movie socks, since they’ve seen me through about 6 movies, both ugh and awesome!

What are you all knitting up right now?

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Backpack with some Awesome Whales!

Once upon a time, a girl traveled to Seattle for a work conference, and made the bad decision to enter a fabric store. Specifically this one.

You see, she had decided a year or two before that instead of knick knacks to memorialize a trip, she’d choose fabric or yarn.

Let us note, dear reader, the word “or” in that sentence. It is not the word “and.”

So what is this girl to do, but buy both fabric and yarn. Not on the same day, of course, as she has some amount of restraint, but both were purchased during that fateful January trip.

The whales you see before you are the direct result of walking into the fabric store without a hint of a plan. But aren’t they adorable, dear reader?

The whales festered in that fall hole of a place commonly referred to as “stash” for three months, set which point the girl realized that she had too much variety in her daily life to keep everything in her daily purse, and she very much hated carrying anything bigger. She used her backpack from high school a few times, but missed having easy pockets and containers for those items that are not quite junk solely because they’re regularly necessary.

So she designed her perfect backpack. When she began looking through her stash to find the perfect material for her perfect backpack, she saw the whales, and rescued them from the dank hole of stash.

But alas, this material was too flimsy for such purposes! How would she move forward?

Then she made the decision to make bags for her bike, and not knowing the quantity required, she accidentally ordered extra, which turned out to be exactly what she needed!
(Seriously, she has maybe 6 tiny scrap pieces now.)

So she constructed this perfect backpack with a lower zipper pocket for sundries, pocket sized for her laptop help keep the structure nice and sturdy, and a section that nicely fits sketchbooks and journals and lunches and maybe even dinners. Dependent on the amount stuff packed in there.

She was so happy that she managed to construct the monster that she didn’t add real closures the first day, and made a simple not quite drawstring closure later.

A couple weeks and a rainstorm later reminded her that further closures would be ideal, so she dug into her button stash until she came out with two sets of three matching buttons that matched brilliantly. So she attached some thin elastic and the buttons and they’ve held fantastically so far.

Right before taking pictures for this post she changed the cord on the “drawstring” so one can actually leverage the thing closed.

And she sewed on that handle… And seconds later pictures were taken.

Tada!

She still has over a yard left, which had been sent back the stash until the next perfect project arises!

That’s enough third person for now…

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Bike Bags

Last September I bought myself a bike. I live in a college town rife with bike lanes, and I can park at one place of work, so biking onto campus makes a lot of sense.

But I am not an efficient cyclist, and my back gets really sweaty before leaving my neighborhood if I’m wearing a backpack. So after doing some research on how and what attaches to the back of normal bikes. I determined that a rack was essential, but that i couldn’t afford any reasonable bags after the cost of bike and rack.

After much internet searching, I decided to use some scrap fabric and cardboard and just make some. They were… Useful. Not fantastic, but they certainly worked. They were a basic bag shape without a lid, one for each side of the bike, and connected by a couple inches of fabric over the top the rack. I had turned the top edges under to prolong its life, but forgot to put in buttonholes to thread bungee cables through, so it was slightly torn, which only got worse over time. To stiffen the cotton fabric so it didn’t get caught my wheels, I used some cardboard, effectively making these super bad in the rain.

But I used this version for probably 6 months. Somewhat because I was too lazy to do it again, and somewhat because I didn’t have the right fabric.

In April I finally gave up looking for cute fabrics and settled on some black water resistant utility fabric.

This time I altered the bag pattern a little so that the bag bottom slanted upwards, and I added flaps to help cover the contents. I also added pockets to the back so I can add stiffener like a sheet of acrylic. I’m still working fitting that acrylic into the pockets, but i think it’ll fit if i shave off an inch.

I’m finding the bags a little difficult squeeze things in, but they’re secure, water resistant, and easy to retrieve things from when reach my destination.

Out of the same fabric, I made a cover for bike seat, and does its job even its not pretty. I’m learning not leave it on when I ride bike, though, as it often is more slippery than the actual seat, but it has helped when I had wore a skirt from a rather slippery fabric.

Alright then. That’s all I’ve got to say on this subject right now. Reasonably effective, highly useful, probably will get remade if I end up in a bike friendly town post-degree!

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TARDIS Television (Purse)

Here we have a brief return of TARDIS Tuesday, where I would update you on my progress on my TARDIS costume.

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And now I’ve got one of the my favorite ideas (and perhaps most clever part, though I should probably not be the judge of that) of the costume to share.

I was looking at the console one day, and thought, Hmm, I’m going to need a purse thing… Why not make it look a bit like the TV?

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So when I was working on the costume for Halloween (not last year, but the year before), I brought out the remainder of the pillowcases that I used for the “vest” or bolero thing, and worked with that.

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The original version had pretty much no extra support, with just the thin fabric from the pillowcase flatlined to the same canvas like fabric I used to make my knapsack.

It did it’s job well the one time I used it like that, for the actual Halloween it was intended for, but it wasn’t structured enough for my plans. And it was unlined.

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So I took it apart last weekend, and added stiff interfacing and a lining. The lining is from the taffeta I used on the skirt, so it’s a little stiff and won’t tolerate any stains. That I know from experience. But it’ll be nice to open it and feel pretty good about how the inside looks! Excepting the bridge portion… Don’t look at the bridge portion…meccano

The purse itself has two hooks, which hook into the Meccano ladder piece, and that ties onto the leather corset belt. I don’t have a finished pic of the interfaced version with the corset belt, but it’ll pop up soon!

Oh, and I glued a dial on the side for a handle, and to sell the TV angle a little more. I thought about how to make it spin, but gluing in place just seemed so much easier. And it was!

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Warmth, in this incredibly Warm Winter

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So after the large winter storm passed by here, it got warm.

Like really warm. There were some people wearing shorts. Winter, even around here, should not be that warm.

So its a fitting time to be knitting with wool, right?

In reality, both of these projects were conceived earlier in the month/last year.

Knowing that its supposed to be winter, I had decided that I needed a warm hat. I’m not a hat person, really, but I walked home (about 2 miles) one night when it was near freezing, and I only had a thin scarf and my “fall” coat (because its lighter than my winter coat, but still normally warm enough), and I’m pretty sure that I nearly died. It took me about 45 minutes to warm up enough to function like a human being, and then another hour past that to eat and drink enough hot stuff to warm up enough to fall asleep.

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The next day I started this hat. I had this orphan skein that I got on sale when I was looking for sock yarn. I couldn’t find any on-sale sock yarn, but even with my full-price sock yarn, this still fit into my hobby budget. It may have been 4 dollars, and I’ve got a couple of yards left.

So the pattern is Helios, free on Ravelry. It’s a pretty good pattern, though I stuck with the size 7 needles throughout, since I don’t have a slightly bigger needle. It makes it more of a globbular slouchy hat, instead of a beret/tam kind of slouchy hat. The one thing I’m afraid of is blocking it, since it’s a tad big, and I don’t want to stretch it out any. My other green knit hat was too small, so I gave it away to my cousin, so I guess I overcompensated with this one, and made it too big.

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Oops! Its still wearable, which is perfect. Because I was not going to admit defeat and try again.

And the second knit project is this pair of socks! This project can be described in three words:

Second Sock Syndrome.

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Yes, this time I fell prey to SSS hard. Really hard. There was a thought in the back of my head that I should somehow work both socks together, and my circular needle collection does not include a skinny enough needle with a long enough connection. So I planned it that once I got to the ankle of the first sock, I’d put it on stitch holders, and start the second. Which worked perfectly.

Yarn-wise this is an alpaca merino blend that I intended to use for socks for my dad… last year. Meaning 2014. Sorry dad. It’s also not machine washable, so perhaps its best that I made them for me, since I’ll be more likely to remember that…

The pattern is ish-designed by me. Meaning, I used this book I got, Socks a La Carte 2 Toes Up to plan it out, with a rotating rib leg, technically a double picot cuff that I’m too lazy to fold over and seam. But once I made the toes of the first sock, I realized that I would get super bored doing a simple stockinette for the foot, so I found this.

lace-diamond-knitting-motif-chartTo be honest, I’m not sure where I found it, but I think it was on a Russian stitch pattern website, and since this was before I started the sock, so I never anticipated needing to cite the source. If you know who’s this is, please let me know! Because its a beautiful lace pattern, and I’d definitely suggest it!

So after finishing both feet of the socks, I started in on the rotating rib of one of the socks, and I got a long way through when I realized that I should weigh out the yarn so I could maximize the height of the sock. Once I double checked that, I ribbed until I got to the cuff, made the double picot cuff, bound off, and then the socks sat there. For months. And months.

What I haven’t  told you yet, is that these socks were started over the summer. July or August.

Oh yes.

These took me about 6 months.

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When I went home for the holidays I brought these with me, and didn’t even make it a row. So once I got back I vowed that I would finish before the semester started. Which also didn’t happen. I made progress, but didn’t finish it.

It was during the first week of the semester, and I told myself that I couldn’t start any new projects until I finished these. Trust me. These got finished really quick after that. I even took them with me to the movie theater when I saw Star Wars the second time. I had the whole row to myself, so I didn’t even feel (too) self conscious about KIPing. There are some advantages to itsy bitsy theaters.

And then I started on the hat! So a happy ending finally. Plus, the hat got done in less than a week. All that pent up knitting energy I guess!

Got any SSS, or longtime knitting projects?

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Tote of Wonderful IKEA Goodness

My former roommate brought me this fabric one day last year and said, “I bought this cause I was thinking of something like curtains for my house and then our color scheme changed. Would you like it?”

Of course!

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It’s a decorator weight fabric, definitely. Strangely, I made a dress out of this stuff once. Much too stiff.

But it’s the perfect weight for a bag!

I recently came into temporary possession of a second laptop, for work. I’m trying my best not to do anything personal on it, which is moderately working, so often I bring in my personal laptop for lunchtime and when MATLAB is taking its good old time.

But if I shoved both laptops, both power cords, a lunch, a snack, my purse, a notebook, and other little bits into any bag I own then I would never be able to find anything.

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I’m not a big bag person, but this thing is massive.

It’s a rectangular prism shape, with nice thick straps. There are individual pockets for each laptop, and each powercord. In height, it’s about two inches taller than my bigger laptop is wide. There’s two bento-box shaped pockets in the remaining area inside, one roughly the shape of each of my bento boxes. That way, either box would fit for lunch, and the second pocket holds the purse, snack, etc. And on one of these inner pockets, I

The entire bag is lined, since the lining is where I constructed the pocket frame.

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All of these pockets are free floating, though, except one that is sewn down. I didn’t have the patience to continue after the pain that one caused me.

In hindsight, it would have been better to shape the sides as trapezoids (or trapeziums if that’s your fancy), but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. To keep the sides from gaping open uncontrollably I attached two lines of a thin elastic across the long side. This thing holds everything I need to survive a day at the office.  Or two days on occasion.

Super duper handy.

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Green Gable Hat

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My main reason for naming this was because it was green… and cables rhyme with gable.

Do you remember this hat? Fluffy looking and blue where you couldn’t see the design or shape?

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I almost don’t since I can’t actually find it.

I made that pattern again, the Aran Tam from 101 One Skein Wonders, but this time in wool so I could block it. And it came out so much better!

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Unfortunately it is a bit small, and I couldn’t make it grow bigger at the end, since you start with the brim and work inwards, so it’s a little small on me. But I like it, and if I’m going to wear a hat, I’ve got to like it!

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Now if only the weather hadn’t suddenly realized it was spring, and not the time for warm hats!

Next year, this hat and I will get along well!