Things for Friends

Right now I am making a jacket & pants for my friends new g'child. He is a big boy & very cute. I made him a set already & here is a picture of him.

It's a little cardigan hoodie. I made him some pants to go with them but he is not wearing them. When I saw that he is outgrowing the outfit(he's a big boy) I decided to make him another one. This one is made from Red Hearts Kids yarn knitted on my mid-gauge. The new one is from Millor Piropo, also on my mid-gauge. It is gray & navy with striped pants & navy hoodie with gray trim. Right now we don't have any new babies to knit for in the family & I do like making baby clothes so I do a lot of knitting for friends etc. + the women's shelter.

 

I'm sure that we have all made New Year's resolutions. Mine is not to charge anything on any of my credit cards for a whole year. It has to cash or go without. I would like to pay down my CC's at least by half. It is just too easy to go to the mall & charge up a storm. I have a bad habit of getting bored & then going shopping & buying all kinds of things that I don't need & in some cases don't even want.

 

I feel like I am neglecting my blog as I haven't been keeping up with it very well. I am going to do better this year.

 

 

I Do Love the Holidays

I do love the holidays but it seems like I get so overwhelmed with all the things that have to be done. It's always nice to get together with family, but it seems like my family invariably gets into little spats & catty comments, & I dread it. I don't know how to combat this so I just ignore it. Certain people seem to save up complaints just so they can bring them up when the whole family is together & then wait to see who picks which side. I have thought about not inviting the main culprits but when I tried that they showed up anyway. Just have to wait & see what happens this year. 

 

I have been selling a lot of little girl longies this year. I  like to put ruffles on the bottoms. The baby girls look so cute in them. Until I started the ruffles I was selling more to boys than to girls. Lots of blues & greens. Now I am getting tons of girl orders with lots of cute ruffles. Pinks & yellows etc. 

 

   

I have found that when I do the ruffles it works out better to do a tighter leg at the ankle as it makes the ruffle stand out more. I make the leg tighter like a legging. These are looser & I didn't think that the ruffle stood out enough. They have turned out to be really popular & are selling very well. I just wish more moms would take the time to send me pictures. I don't get half as many pictures as I would like. :)

 

 

SweaterMaker Easy Charting Program

One of my readers sent me a link to an awesome program called "SweaterMaker' that will run on all versions of windows. This program is very inexpensive compared to DAK & doesn't have the issues that 'Knitware" does. I haven't tried it, but she tells me that it works great & that you can print your patterns out too. It is a charting program that does all the math for you, similar to the two other programs.

 

http://www.seedlingsoftware.com/sweatermaker.htm

 

 

 

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. :(