Charity Squares

Recently I had decided that I needed to start using up some of my yarn stash. I was thinking about making hats or scarves for charity, but something else just happened to fall into my lap. Last week I saw that my local yarn shop was collecting squares for KasCare. Basically, this charity collects 8 inch by 8 inch squares. Then they sew them together and give them to AIDS orphans. The yarn shop has put a twist on this idea and is doing a competition between the two local schools. They want the squares to be in either WSU colors (crimson and grey) or UI colors (silver, gold and black). Since I graduated from UI, but work at WSU and have yarn in the colors of both schools in my stash, I decided to make some squares for each school. WSU:

UI: 

The shop is collecting squares up until October 15, so I plan on making as many as I can with the yarn leftovers that I have. This charity is always looking for squares and their goal for 2011 is 170,000 squares. So, if anyone else out there has extra yarn, you can always consider making some squares and sending them in!

Felting - A Lesson Learned

I have always been amazed by anything felted. I remember the first time I saw something that was felted. My 4th grade teacher, who taught me how to knit, made many felted hats and brought them to class with her. I remember thinking that it was so cool that you could knit something really big, and wash it in hot water to shrink it. While I love to admire the felted projects of others, I was always too scared to try it. The reason being that once something is felted, it cannot be undone. Felting can only occur when animal fibers are used (wool, alpaca...). These fibers are lined with scales that, when felted, interlock with each other and form a solid fabric. In order for a fiber to felt, you need 3 things: water, heat and agitation. (Which are the three things you have to avoid if you are not trying to felt!)  Once something is completely felted you can no longer see individual knit stitches. You also can not unravel it and try again like you can with almost any other yarn project.

So, this story starts with a Nook. Last Christmas I got a nook and I decided that I wanted to knit a little Nook cozy for it. I really like the way this cozy turned out. (It is even the banner of my Etsy Shop).

Once this cozy was done I had a lot of extra yarn that just happened to be 100% wool. Since I already got the cozy out of it, I decided that I would use the rest for my first felting project - a bag. My first mistake here was that I didn't make a swatch, felt it, and see how much it shrinks. My second mistake was that I didn't know that knitting shrinks more lengthwise than it does width-wise. My third mistake was that I didn't look at any patterns, but made up my own instead. (It worked with the nook case...) Unfortunately I don't have a before picture of this felted bag, but trust me - it was not this shape before it was felted. It was much more square, and I thought it might even make a nice bag. So, I through it in the washing machine and,

well, my husband has named it the "felted underwear with no leg holes." Anyway, that disaster happened back in February or March and I haven't felted anything since then. Until yesterday that is.

Last week I got one of the new Nooks with a touch screen and decided that it needed a cozy of its own. I had a bunch of wool scraps lying around and thought I would make a striped felted Nook case. This time I did a little more research and made the case longer than I thought it should be. (I added an extra 25% width and extra 30% height.)

Once it was done, I put it in the washing machine, then let it dry overnight. When I got home from work today I went to check on it. Except for the way that the top flares out, when they are side by side it looks alright.

Then, once the Nook is inside, it doesn't quite fit.

The top of the Nook sticks out - it shrunk too much. Again. Oh well, I think I'll stick with non-felted Nook cozies. But now I have a felted bag and don't know what to do with it. Any ideas?

Cherry Berry Baby

This post is a little late since I have been trying to post on Sundays, but our internet was out all day yesterday. Therefore, this week gets to have a Monday post! I was recently asked by my mother-in-law (who is a great supporter of my shop - thanks Mary!) to make some baby outfits. I thought that I would find some patterns to knit (versus crochet, which is how I have been making all my baby sets). I found some patterns that I thought looked really cute together. They are all sized for a 6-12 month old, and made with acrylic yarn. While I have been learning about and using a variety of fibers, I like to stick with acrylics for baby patterns. The reason for this is simple - it is machine washable. I figure, babies are messy and their moms are probably not going to want to hand-wash their clothes. Here is the end product:

I started with the hat which was a really simple pattern on double-pointed needles. The yarn was Bernat Baby Jacquards in the Cherry Berry colorway. The yarn made a self-striping pattern that turned out really nice looking.

For the dress I used TLC Baby yarn in the Powder Pink colorway and a pattern called Baby Sweater Dress found on the Lion Brand Yarn website. For the bottom garter stitch rows and the two rows in the middle I used the same yarn that was used for the hat.

The booties are made out of the same yarn as the dress and are called Mary Jane Booties. I decided to omit the buttons on the sides to reduce the chance of the little one pulling them off and attempting to eat them.

I also started working on a matching blanket. It is a dark pink and I am using Lion Brand Pound of Love yarn in the bubblegum colorway. The plan was to knit a blanket but after many attempts at many patterns and much ripping out of yarn, I made the decision that it will be crocheted. All the knitting patterns were fairly difficult lace patterns. I would get to the end of a row and not have the right number of stitches on the needle. Then I would have no idea where I lost/added a stitch. Maybe someday I will attempt another lace knit blanket, but for now I'm sticking with the much more forgiving crochet pattern.

This pattern is very similar to the very first crochet pattern that my mom ever taught me, but with a different edging. I haven't made it very far yet, but here is a sneak peek:

Amazing Lace

Welcome back! I have some new stuff to show you this week. First of all, I'm sure you have already noticed the new theme. I decided I liked the colors and layout better. Secondly, I now have my own domain (thanks, Jason!). You can access my blog the way you have been, or also by going to crystal-crafts.net and my shop can be found at shop.crystal-crafts.net. Now on to the fun stuff. I always love learning new knit and crochet techniques and lately it has been all about the lace. It has always looked so complicated to me that I have been afraid to try, but I gave it a shot. I just finished my first lace scarf and it was easier that I thought it would be. Now I want to try more lace projects!

I started off trying to make the One Row Lace Scarf (http://turvid.blogspot.com/2009/03/free-pattern-one-row-lace-scarf.html):

While I really love this pattern, I decided that I wanted to go in another direction. I was using my hand-spun cashmere yarn after all and wanted something a little nicer looking. So, back to the ravelry pattern finder I went and came up with the Leafy Lace Scarf pattern (http://knitlet.typepad.com/knitlet/files/leaflacescarf.pdf).

The interesting thin about this pattern is that you knit each half of the scarf separately, then use the kitchner stitch to sew them together. The kitchner stitch uses a regular yarn needle to sew stitches together in a way that looks like it is knit. To do this, I first had to line up both halves of the scarf. At this point all the stitches are still on the knitting needles:

Then I got out the yarn needle and started sewing the two halves together:

Once it's done it's hard to even tell where the seam is:

One of the most important steps in the lace knitting process is blocking. Blocking involves soaking the scarf in cold water then pining it out so that the lace pattern can open up. It stays pinned until it is completely dry. I got 2 towels out on the ground and covered then with a black sheet (for pictures). Then I started pinning...

  

I left it out for a few days to make sure it was completely dry, then took all the pins back out. Below you can see the before and after pictures from blocking.

   

And it's done! As you can see, blocking really does make an amazing difference!

Did someone say yarn?

This weekend was all about cataloging and organizing my yarn stash. I'm not sure how it keeps growing, but it does. Ok, I know exactly how it keeps growing but I just can't seem to stop accumulating more of it! I have been meaning to go through the yarn for a while and enter it into my ravelry.com stash to keep better track of it. This weekend was the perfect weekend for this event because while my husband is out-of-town for the week I have turned the living room into the yarn room. I'm starting to like it this way. I think it should stay this way permanently, unfortunately my husband probably has other thoughts... Here's the entire collection pre-sorting. A yarn mountain!

It has now been entered online so I can keep track of what I have. It is still sitting in the living room, but somewhat more organized so I have space to work:

As you can see, the wheel is positioned to see the TV, all my knitting needles are accessible, my knitting project (which I will tell you about in another post) is out, and the computer sits in the middle so I can type this post.

After seeing how much yarn I have I decided that I need to start making some projects to eat through the stash. So, I decided to do a scarf. It is a simple scarf knit the long way in straight garter stitch. I used size 11 needles, cast on 200 stitches and went to town with all kinds of scrap yarn. Here is the end result that I finished this morning:

I'm still not sure if I really like how it looks, but it successfully used up some odds and ends that I had hanging around.

When I wasn't working on the scarf, the spinning wheel has been running. I have been working on the red/pink/orange roving that I showed you in the last post. I spun the red on one bobbin, then alternated the pink and orange on a second bobbin.

       

Then, I took one strand from each bobbin...

...and plied them together.

      

I didn't know what to expect from this, but it turned out interesting. If I were to try this again, I would probably use one of the lighter colors as the main color since the red is kind of overwhelming. I can't wait to see it knit up into something! :)

Hello World!

Welcome to post #1 of the CrystalCrafts blog. This is a place where I can keep track of what I'm working on while sharing them with you at the same time. In fact, over the last few days I finished some projects that I want to show off. The first one is a knit tank top. The pattern comes from Lion Brand and it is called the All Season Shell (60433). I used 100% cotton yarn (Loops and Threads Brand Cotton Club in Wild Rose) in the hopes that it would be nice and cool for the summer. Turns out the yarn is thicker than I intended and it may not be as cool as I wanted, but we'll just have to see what happens. At the moment it has been washed and it drying in my craft room. I am very glad it turned out since the first attempt was kind of a failure. I finished it, went to try it on, and my head didn't fit through the head hole. Oh no! Anyway, I Un-did the shoulder seam, picked up the stitches, added a few rows and used kitchner stitch to seam it back together (which looks a lot smoother than when I had sewn it).  I tried it on again and voila! my head fits through the head hole. Yipee! I don't have a picture of me wearing it yet, but here it is drying:

The next project that I recently finished was a diamond pattern crochet hat. This hat is kind of special because it is the first item I made from fiber that I completely processed myself. A friend of mine gave me wool from her sheep. First step: skirting. I took the wool out of the bag, got rid of the dirtiest parts and saved the rest.

For this step I decided to take the wool out to the porch. I bought some cotton zip-up pillow cases to put the wool in for the next step: washing.

Then it was bath tub time. I turned up the water as hot as possible, filled up the tub, and the wool went swimming. The tricky part here is making sure that the wool is not agitated because heat+water+agitation=felting which means a huge blob of wool that cannot be spun. 

After combing out the wool with some dog undercoat rakes (which I will never have to do again since i got some awesome home made wool combs- thanks Dad!) I spun it on my amazing Kromski Sonata. I ended up with quite a bit of yarn. (576 yards if you want to know exactly how much.)

I took 1 hank, dyed it with blue raspberry kool aid and crocheted it into a hat:

Voila!

Now I'm off to go work on a new project. Not sure what it will be yet, but I'll let you know when I figure it out!