Now in .com!

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A few weeks ago, I took the plunge and updated the blog URL to misscarlotta.com, which may be a bit easier to keep track of… at least that’s a hope.

Starting the end of this month I’m going to start clearing out the stash of finished items, and I’m debating about posting a page here or just over on my wepay or etsy page.  If you have seen something you liked on the blog and want to enquire about a particular item you can send me an email using this handy form for now, it does get scanned for spam automatically:

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Thank you for your response. ✨

Let it Snow!

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Quilt Two is now completed!  This one I made for my grandmother, and was inspired in part by Hawaiian Quilts.  Final size is approximately 50×50 inches, which is not really a standard size for anything, but just what I thought looked good and would work as a smaller lap quilt.   I did a much better job of the binding this time around, in fact there were corners I felt looked downright professional!

“Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow, For which, through naked trees, the winds A-mourning go?” ― John Banister Tabb

I am going to mail this out just as soon as I figure out my letter I want to write with it.  I’m sure that societal conventions would say this is a Christmas Gift type of quilt, but I’m too impatient to tell her I love her and think about her all the time.  So conventions be damned!

There is a whole gallery about this quilt you can check out with pictures of flakes I didn’t use, close ups of materials and in progress work available here.  I plan to send some of those photos with the quilt.

While putting this together I found some pretty cool stuff… like there was a fine Gentleman by the name of Wilson A Bentley that took the first photo of an individual snowflake all the way back in 1885!  And he was so fascinated by snow, he went on to take 4999 more!  You can read a bit more about him over at snowflakebentley.com.  Also… there are scientists at Caltech creating snowflakes in their lab to study how they are formed, and you can watch video clips of some of the snowflakes being formed on their site SnowCrystals.com.

Shawl we get this over with? – And some philosophy

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So you know that shawl I posted from my stash just the other day… well yesterday and this  morning… I finished it!

Fanned out and on display

This shawl has been in my stash for a very long time… it had two of the half fans that form the top border on stitch holders and just hanging out because I ran out of yarn.  It was the first modular design piece I decided to try.  Since it was a learn to do it project… I used stash yarn that I picked up… likely from the clearance section of the yarn shop, and didn’t have enough as it turns out.  So I ended up finishing it with a later not-quite match.

Here you can see where the new color row fits in with the old color

Now…. the philosophy ramble…. (skip to the end if you want the pattern link).

I don’t tend to worry about gauges when I’m testing out something to see if I can do it.  I don’t plan nearly as much as I probably should… but since I am in more of the beginner stage of knitting, I don’t think that is a bad thing.  I could see where this would be an issue later on when I want to make a sweater, or to get the right fit on socks and gloves, but for learning the principals of stitches and patterns on scarves and blankets  it really doesn’t matter.  If what I want to know is… can I figure out how to SSK/cable/double-knit something… it does not bother me in the slightest if its 30 inches instead of 36, or vise-versa.  No one else but me has any idea how its supposed to turn out anyway.

Sure, I could follow the recommended yarn brand, which would have cost me about $60, and it would probably be worth it… but the whole time I’d have started the project I’d be fretting about cutting up that beautiful and expensive yarn.  Or I can test out a pattern and not worry about the yarn for about $10 on the same project.

If you are learning and you see a pattern you like and want to try, don’t fret over having “Super-silk-cashmere-yarn-of-Amazeballs™” just bust open your yarn stash and get to work with what you have!  Learn something new… and find what you love.

And with that… here’s the pattern.

Stashed Away!

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So my baby afghan spree has revealed a few items that are still floating about in my stash…

Such as this baby sized chunky afghan that finished off a couple skeins of patriotic red, white and blues on some giant needles…

Soft and Thick Patriotic Flavor

And this angelic little preemie/doll size of a hourglass eyelet stitch.  I really like this stitch because even the wrong side looks pretty nice!

Front side, with a simple crochet edging.

Backside. Looks like a fancy basketweave.

And then there is this shawl I am finally going to look at finishing… because I finally found a yarn I think will go well with where I ran out of the last batch…

Fan shawl

So now its off to see if I can finish the fans this month before I have to get started on a September Stocking, finish my snowflakes quilt and various other crafty projects!

Baby Afghans, take 3 for August

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So, a while back, I obtained some yarn from another knitters stash… and I am a fan of trying new stitches and finding ways to use up the yarn stash… so this one, the solid blue and the yellow are yarn that’s probably as old as I am (based on the yellow skein’s wrapper) so its well past time it got a new life.

This pattern makes a nice dimensional stitch.

I knitted it up until I nearly ran out of the dark blue… and I still have some light blue and yellow to play with!  But its at least baby afghan size, so there is that.

After some blocking, laid out on my library/sewing table

 

Perhaps I shall have to make up some hats or booties or something…. As a bonus, this pattern made a fun picture to use as my cell phone wallpaper.

Rows almost look like diamonds

The colors remind me of a dress I used to own, with a denim bodice and a yellow floral long skirt… I loved that dress.

Pattern available on Ravelry. 

Fun with counterpanes!

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So I’ve had this yarn from the yarn shop where I learned to knit for some time.  I believe I originally bought it oh about six years ago or so.  Well I am out of blue thread for my other project so… time for more knitting.. and time to tackle something with counterpanes!

There were many to choose from but finally I settled on a three leaf counterpane pattern, originally seen here: http://www.knittingparadise.com/ (Scroll up for images)  Through some alterations based on my trial square, this is what I ended up with:

Mint Leaves!

Now as you can see from these two closer in views of the leaf section and the diamond section, I am not the greatest of fancy joiners, but I do think they look alright… just not very lacy.

At this point its more flowerlike

Diamond Point join

So I think it turned out ok, and here’s what I did differently for anyone curious or wanting to replicate.

  • I did a knit increase in my first knit stitch instead of a yarn over increase.  I tried the yarn overs, but it just looked to loose and sloppy to me, so I went with the knit increase instead.
  • My Row 15:  Row 15 YO, (k1, yo) twice, k1, p4, SKP, k9, k2tog, p4, (k1, yo) twice, k2  — I felt that swapping two stitches to purl instead of knit made for a better transition.
  • When you swap to the Diamond Point (included in the follow up post from the three leaf section)  you need to add a simple knit across row so that your diamond point turns out purl side up as the right side.  do not increase that row, as you should go into the Diamond Point section with an uneven set of stitches
  • For Row Two in the second post its just: k2tog, knit to last 2 sts, k2tog — She corrects this in a later post on the thread, its just a duplicate in there in the original.

I finished it off with a simple double crochet row and then a scalloped crochet row (2 single crochet stitches, then 3 double crochet in the next stitch and repeat) because three skeins meant I was pretty much done with just a 9 pane blanket.  Seriously…. this is all the yarn left:

Dr.Pepper can for scale

So if I had my life to knit over so to speak… here’s what I would do differently:

  • Buy about 4 more skeins of yarn so that I could knit up 12 counterpanes, which would leave me with all diamond edges instead of some leafy edges, and an all around better size.  (Nothing wrong with a 9 pane size, but 12 would be even better for the repeats imo)
  • I’d finish it off with a border of leaves, which I figured I could snag from another counterpane pattern such as the one here: http://www.knitting-and.com/knitting/patterns/counterpanes/rosedale-counterpane.htm

I greatly enjoyed how it turned out… so much that I’m actually contemplating making something more full size at some point, perhaps as a gift.

I could totally see this as a much larger piece.

August: Traditional Style!

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Well I tossed about several ideas… went looking for patterns and finally just decided to have a more traditional looking stocking.

Green and White is always right.

The cuff is a pattern you can pick up for free from ravelry  I spent quite a bit of time the other day going through patterns looking for a cable from a Duncan McLeod sweater… and that was one of the extras I stumbled on.

The tree however…. is a true original.  No pattern… just winged it!  There was a bit of cabling, a bit of increases and decreases… and I’ve been assured by the ever critical Ben that it does indeed look like a tree!  Felt like a real accomplishment!

So now I’m at 11 stockings for the big sale of 2012.

One for the family tree

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So I finally finished my baby afghan I started ages ago as just “trying out the branching out pattern” on an airplane trip… and several trips and pulling out several rows because I forgot a yarn over later…. its finally done:

As experiments go, I think it turned out ok.

It does have its issues.. I found my green and blue together yarn was rather limited, so there are a couple spots where its a bit more blue… and there is one wheatear cable that is one row too long…

Said long cable included in this image in all its glory. -_-

On the other hand, I really lucked out with where my final leaf border seam fell in the colorway:

A leaf on the wind…border…. thing.

But overall I think its an alright thing, and someday I’m sure someone will love it.

Various patterns in this afghan include:

Not just geeky knitting happens here…

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I realize that I knit quite a bit of geeky things… even my first quilt was all videogame blocks. But I do work on other more traditional beautiful projects. The banner above was a peg-rack full of scarves. So here’s a couple in the works projects…. (apologies in advance these are cell phone photos)

First I have some pieces that will eventually be a baby afghan. I don’t have children, and frankly don’t really know what I’ll do with it when its done, but I just liked the designs and was given some children’s weight/color yarn. So these are my edges based on and a wheat ear cabling. I like the leaf design, and my somewhat matching yarn is just the blue verigated with no greens…. I am thinking I will make it a tree row and then add a border.

Half Done with the second side.


Here’s a closer detail on the stitching.

To be fair, I’ve had that project on the needles for some time, was working on it while traveling and just getting distracted and kept pulling out rows because I flubbed it up and then going back… but I’m finally making some solid forward progress.

Second item…
I am working on my second quilt. The original plan was a very hawaiian style quilt, as a gift to my grandmother. She used to go to Hawaii every winter with my grandfather. And I wanted her to know how much I think about her and worry about her even though I am the world’s worst letter writer (in the mailing it out dept). However, my quilt blocks aren’t super Hawaiian, and fall more toward the snowflakes realm of things… so its a snowflake quilt. I have all my flakes cut out and I’m currently appliquéing them on.

Yes, I love snow.

Unfortunately my quilt shop near me is closing this month. 😦
Which has me all manner of sad, since the proprietor was the kindest and most helpful person in my quilting experiments. She always seemed sincerely interested in my quilting efforts, even though it was obvious the subject matter wasn’t familiar. So now.. my nearest fabric shop is once again.. at least 30 minutes away.

July: Knitting and Binary!

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Knitting and Binary are actually quite similar, in knitting there are two basic stitches… knit and perl.

So this stocking celebrates the pure geekery of binary!

Side 01

Side 10

For those of you that I know would spend hours attempting to decipher what it is on this wrap around design I’ll give you the code and the means to translate.

Here’s the binary on the stocking:

01001000 01100001
01110000 01110000
01111001

00100000 01000011
01101000 01110010
01101001 01110011
01110100 01101101
01100001 01110011

00100000 01001000
01100001 01101110
01110101 01101011
01101011 01100001
01101000

00100000 01000110
01100101 01110011
01110100 01101001
01110110 01110101
01110011

In addition to using that in a binary translator online, here’s the code you can run in a terminal window to translate (courtesy of Ben):

#!/usr/bin/perl -n

while (/([01]+)/g) {
$str = $1;
if ($str =~ /^0/) {
substr($str, 0, 1, ”);
}
print chr(oct(“0b$str”));
}

END {
print $/;