Is it Winter Already???

Everyone is getting out their coats & hats. The weather is getting colder, so...what do we knit besides scarves?? Warm Wooly Socks!! I've been checking with my yarn vendor to see what there is that is new for some nice warm socks. I think that I have narrowed it down to 4 colorways that I like the best. I am going to get my sock knitting machine out of the closet & lube her real good & then get to work on some socks for everyone. This is 75% merino wool & 25% nylon & does make SUPER socks. Here are the colors that I am looking at...

 

I haven't made socks for a while. The socks I make seem to last forever. When they do get little holes(or even bigger holes)I darn them rather than throw them out. It isn't unusual for me to have a pair of socks that have 4-5 different colors of yarn mending them. I can never seem to find the right color when I am in the mood to mend socks. I wasn't very good at mending them so I watched a few videos on YouTube & picked the way that I like the best. Now I use a in & out method that looks like weaving. It works very well & the socks are as good as new, altho they may not be as beautiful as they once were.

 

Does anyone know where Carol Wulster is?? I had her mitten & hat wizards before I replaced my hard drive, but have been unable to get in touch with her. She is the very talented lady that brought us the mitten wizard, hat wizard, sweater wizard sock wizard & other beautiful patterns. I think she may be the one that also came up with the 'buttonhole spacer' a few years ago but am not sure of that one. My computer crashed & I replaced the hard drive but I was only able to get the mitten wizard off of the old drive. I used the wizards all the time & really miss them. I wanted to see if I could get hold of her & redownload them. I could kick myself for not burning them to disc. Her store on Ravelry is still there but there is no contact information & nothing for sale. I am somewhat worried now that she may be ill or some other event has waylaid her. If anyone has an info about her I would much appreciate hearing from them.

 

 

 

 

OFF TOPIC INTERNET SAFETY

This is going to be a post about internet safety.

 

I have two Google acc'ts. I had lost the password for one of them. I tried every password that I have ever used & they were all wrong. Finally I gave up & tried to get in touch with Google. I searched for 'contact google' & my search turned up lots of results. I picked the one with the phone number on top. I called Google & talked to a very helpful young man with a foreign accent. We talked for several minutes about the problem. He told me that 'Google had suspended my acc't' & that for '$199 he could' fix it for me. This kid had somehow gotten on my computer & was showing me all the illegal emails that had been sent from my acc't. I knew that Google did not do that & quickly pulled the plug on my computer.The url had google in the addy & I thought at first that it was a legitimate site for Google, but when he started asking for money I disconnected.

 

 

 Shortly after that I Googled 'Mitten Wizard' to see if I could get another copy of it as I have a new hard drive & the program did not transfer. My search turned up a link to download the program. Somehow it just didn't look right to me so I didn't download it, Thank God. I checked some of the other links & was able to find it on Ravelry, but the program is not available. The internet is a very dangerous place & we must be on guard against all kinds of threats. I think we all feel somewhat safe browsing the internet as we are in our own homes. So many things we take at face value because of that, but you just can't anymore. The internet is a very dangerous place & becoming more so everyday.

 

 

Children's Sweaters

Here are some sweaters that are going to the Clothing Bank here in town. Not fancy but warm & comfy. All are 'grafted neck' & 'grafted sleeves' to make them easy to make.

 

 

This one is made from Red Heart Hokey Pokey. I bought it several years ago to make small crochet bags as gifts. I still have mine & use it in the summer. I only had 3 skeins of this yarn  so was pretty limited with what I could make. This is a size 12 months. I think I would have liked it better if I had alternated 2 rows of the gold with the green & blue. I think it would have made the colors show up better. You can't tell in the pictures, but there are 4 rows of blue followed by green.

 

 

This is a size 4 & is made from Red Heart Soft Baby. I have tons of this yarn that I bought to make baby sweaters for gifts & for charity. This sweater is too big for my mannequin. It is a light pink & light green. Pastels for babies. I will be making more of these before I am through.

 

 

This is another sweater for the clothing bank. It is a size 6. I was glad to have enough to make a little larger size. This yarn is Red Heart Sport. I bought this yarn for Christmas Stockings for gifts. I made tons of them in the green, yellow, orange & red & sent them off to the kids in the family.

 

I esp. like this sweater. I had several skeins of green & only one skein of red & one of orange. I wanted to make the biggest sweater that I could so I added up the weight of the skeins & asked 'Knitware' if I had enough for a size 6. The pattern is 12 rows so I only needed 1/6 of the yarn for each color of narrow stripe. I needed 2/3 of the green for the thicker stripes. 'Kniware' told me that I had enough-but only barely. Here is what I had leftover.

 

 

 

For the past several months I have been getting all sorts of requests for my physical location. I have had at least a dozen. Most of them are anonymous, but some aren't. I do not give out too much personal information to anyone that I don't know. I hope that I haven't hurt anyone feelings but you never know who is on the other end of the emails. I once received an email of a man's private parts after giving out my email addy to someone that I had talked to online but didn't really know. YUCK!! :)

 

 

Embellish the Neckline a Little

Today I am going to talk about embellishing the neckline a little bit. This is really an easy addition to your pullover, & VERY simple + adds a little pizazz to the look.

 

 

This is a very easy pullover with grafted neckline & sleeves. I don't have it sewn up yet but will finish it up today. It is for the Clothing Bank here in town. One of the ladies that volunteers there said there is a great need for children's jackets & sweaters & hats so I decided to make them some. I also thought that this would be a good time to say a little about necklines.

 

 There are lots of things that you can do to spice up the neckline. Mary Anne Oger(I hope I spelled that right) has a great book out called the "Necks Best Thing". She has lots of great necklines for the MKer.

 

 

This picture is of the neckline. It isn't as easy to see as I had hoped it would be. There is a ridge around the neck that makes it stand out some as opposed to the plain neckline. To make this neckline you need to:

 

1.Rehang the neckline stitches with the right side of the knit  facing you on the KM.

 

2. Knit one row straight across with the main bed carriage.

 

3.After that, transfer your stitches for the rib that you are using.

 

4. Knit the rib(this is the grafted neckband).

 

5. After the rib is knitted you want to take the neckline off with the garter bar or waste yarn.

 

6. Turn the neckline around & rehang it with the wrong side facing you.

 

7. You are going to bind off the neckline by rehanging the first row of the neckline stitches. You will have 2 stitches on each needle.

 

8. Bind off the neck over 2 gate pegs loosely.

 

If you want you can knit more than just the one row for the ridge. Sometimes I do 2 rows for a more pronounced ridge. Just a little something to add interest!!

 

PQ 1500s 

As you know, I bought a Brother PQ 1500s earlier this year & I just love it. It is a straight stitching machine that is advertised as a quilting machine. I was looking for a bias binder foot to fit on my machines to attaché bias tape. I bought 2 binder foots(feet??) from Brother that are made for the PRW 420 but they didn't work very well.

 

 

For the PRW 420 & 1/4" tape.

Also for the PRW 420 For 1/2" tape.

 

Neither of these worked very well. In the demonstrations they show the feet work perfectly but in actual practice not so well.

 

I saw this foot that is for an industrial machine from SailRite. 

I bought this foot & attached it to my PQ machine, which is a semi-industrial machine & it worked even better than I had hoped. It was exactly what I was looking for.

 

Here it is on my machine. You can't see it but I have taped a piece address label on the bed of the machine. The foot is what is called a 'swing away' foot & it chipped the bed of the machine where it slides  around to working or non working status. I thought with a little bit of tape that would cushion the bed & it wouldn't chip any more than it is. So far it is working.

 

 

 

My DD says that I am neurotic to get so upset over a couple of little dings. I like to keep my things looking nice & it really upsets me when something like this happens. I am crazy?? Maybe!!. My first impulse was to throw myself on the floor & scream & kick, but managed to avoid doing that. But I am not happy about it. :(

 



Shaped Necklines when Knitting with G-Carraige, Fairisle or other Stitch Patterns

When knitting pattern stitches with the G-Carriage it is possible to have a shaped neckline. It is an alternative to the cut & sew neckline. It makes a beautiful neckline & isn't all that hard to do, but a bit time consuming. (Some mker's try knitting back the out of work needles with ravel cord but that never worked for me)

 

1. When you get to the neckline while knitting the front of your garment you want to scrape off the complete front with your main bed carriage. You will be doing the neckline one side at a time.  

 

2. Then rehang the left side back on the machine keeping in mind that you have to return the stitches to the original needles in order to keep your pattern knitting correctly. If you scraped off stitches for the shoulder you do want to rehang those stitches. Do not rehang the stitches from the neckline on the right side, or the center stitches. I hang the right side on the gate pegs so that the weight is not pulling on the other side.

 

3. My pattern says to bind off 1 stitch each row at the edge of the neckline. Since we are doing the left side first that would be needles on the left side only. Instead of doing that I am going to drop a stitch at the neckline for each bound off stitch each row, & use a double eye needle to knit them off & run contrasting yarn through that stitch.  Knit in pattern with GC or whatever.

Those stitches will not unravel because they are on waste yarn & have the extra yarn drawn through them.

 

4. My pattern then says to knit 12 rows on the remaining stitches. Let the G-Carriage knit those rows in pattern. Scrape off stitches after knitting your 12 rows. 

 

5. Now rehang the stitches for the right side of the neck omitting the center neckline stitches. Knit as for left side reversing the shaping.  

 

6. The pattern will tell you to knit the 12 rows even. These rows will be the side of the neckline that go straight up without any shaping. Scrap off.

 

7. Now we have both sides of the neckline stitches almost finished. Rehang the stitches from the neckline on the appropriate needles & then hang the inside edge of the neckline stitches on the needles keeping in mind how big you want your neckband. Knit one row across these stitches in plain knitting. Scrap off.

 

8. Attach front & back at one shoulder & rehang the neckline on the machine, the back of the sweater neckline too, including the rows that were knitted even & the stitches that were scrapped off on waste yarn. Start the rib knitting for the double neckband. You might have to knit through by hand the first row. After that the GC can take over or knit the rib with  main carriage & ribber carriage.

 

9. Once you have knitted the appropriate number of rows you can rehang the first neckband stitches so that you have 2 stitches on each needle, & bind off over 2 gate pegs.

 

  You now have a beautifully  shaped neckline & can proceed with attaching the sleeves & sewing up. Remove the waste yarn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Back to Kniting Diaper Covers

Back to knitting diaper covers again. Don't have any pictures right now.

 

I managed to get the negative feedback removed. Doubt I'll ever see my carriage. I did post a 'Beware' of this person on Facebook & the MK list. Ileen Levy said she may have tried to pull the same scam on her a couple of years ago. For those of you that don't know Ileen, she has a brick & mortar store as well as selling online.

 

It seems like lately everyone is asking for discounts on the covers. I know times are hard for families with small children. I am older & financially secure now but I haven't forgotten what it is like to have little kids at home & not enough money for clothes, food etc. I remember pinching pennies & making do. I still have stay on a budget. I try to give the younger parents a break whenever I can but with the cost of the yarn & the escalating costs of shipping, it isn't easy. I haven't raise my prices since before the recession. Although I am able to buy my supplies wholesale I have to buy a bag at a time of each color I want. I can't buy just enough for one cover. & even wholesale, they are not cheap by any means.

 

I decided to change the template for my blog. Thought I would go pink for awhile. :)

 

 

 

 



My Diaper Covers

I make my diaper covers in 5 sizes; Newborn, 6 month, 12 month, 2T, & 4T. Recently I was asked by a mom to make a preemie/small baby size in the pullon style. I always recommend the pullons for smaller babies because of the way it fits. & I think they look cuter on smaller babies than the shorties do, although I make a lot of shorties for smaller babies too.

 

Pullon

 

 

as opposed to the shortie on a very tiny baby,

 

 

 

When I first designed my pullons I didn't think they would sell very well because I just didn't think that moms would be interested in them, but I loved them so tried to promote them on my Hyena Cart Store & Ebay.  I had seen some similar covers online & they didn't seem to sell well either. I wanted to make mine with good coverage around the legs as the shortie legs were so loose & seem to flap around. My pullons have proven to be a big seller & I am adding new colors all the time.

 

 

It turns out that my pullons sell almost as well as my shorties, which are by far my biggest selling item. Several moms have asked for a pullon with long legs for winter. I think that I will make the legs ribbed so that they will hug the baby.

 

Ebay forced me to give the crazy Ebayer her money back even though she lied about everything. I don't have the ribbed transfer carriage back yet. I imagine it will be in pieces when it shows up, if it even does. I didn't wait until I received it back before I refunded her. I know I should have but I wanted to get rid of her once & for all. She actually wanted me to pay her for sending it back to me. I decided to do some investigating about this woman. It turns out she is Lucille Rowels, aka Kazekaknits, & lives in Chicago Il. She is a 55 year old attorney, but not a very good one judging from her feedback. I wonder if she is on any of the MK lists. One other thing, she does not know how to use a rib transfer carriage. LOL

 

The other day I was talking to my neighbor about some of my glass bake ware that has burned on food & grease. I have scrubbed it with cleanser, SOS pads, magic eraser & whatever else I could think of to get it clean, all to no avail. My neighbor, Kathy told me to put toothpaste on the SOS pads & water & it will remove it. I tried it & it does work. In fact, it worked so well that I got my old cookies sheets out & scrubbed them too. It worked for them to0!!

 

Remember our Warriors