12.14.2005

a pair, or two

After about three tries, I finally have a pair of booties! This is a different pattern than the first bootie I knitted. The first one was knit on two needles, so it had a weird seam and was just a little funky looking anyway, so I found a different pattern. I made one bootie with the new pattern and it was a tad loose and had some strange holes in it where I switched between needles (knit in the round). So I considered that one my practice bootie, and made two more with that pattern, and even took notes on the things I changed, so I could make a matching one. and here we have it... a matching pair!
It might be a little hard to see, but there is one row of frilly fringey yarn just above the sole. oooh, uh... did I say they were DONE? I still have to do some i-cord for a tie around the ankle, but THEN they'll really be done. But for now, I'm moving on to Christmas knitting, because the baby isn't due until late January/early February.

Here is a picture of the finished mittens that I never showed off. I still need to wash them and block them. The one I finished first is bigger than the second because everyone I showed it to, wanted to put it on, including men with big hands. So it is stretched out a bit, but I think I can fix that by washing and a VERY quick bounce around in the dryer.

They were really fun. I have this terrible urge to find the tiniest yarn and the tiniest needles and knit tiny mittens. I have no idea where that came from, but I really want to do it.

And here is what I've been working on at school. It's not too exciting, they are just practice pieces, I've been learning doubleweave.

The shorter piece on the right is what I started first. It is an 8/2 Rayon and Rayon Boucle warp and same for weft. It was a nightmare. It wasn't until I started to pull all the ends thru the heddles that I realized my mistake. the little bumps on the yarn were catching on each other and tangling, getting wrapped around heddles and snapping. I snapped 3 warp ends before I even had the thing tied onto the back beam. I managed to get it straightened out, tied on and tensioned, and when I started to weave, I was still getting the bumpy threads tangled on each other, so I could only tolerate weaving that much, which is probably about 6 inches. I decided to get some new yarn and tie it on to the existing warp and pull it thru the reed and heddles. It worked really well, it only took about an hour to tie each new end onto an old end and pull it thru and tie them all on the back. Once my new warp was on, I wove like the wind! That rayon is so soft and slippery and smooth, it's just great to weave with. Especially with doubleweave, because you have twice as many threads shoved into places where only half as many should be. Maybe that is confusing... if your yarn is 24 ends per inch (wraps around a ruler 24 times to equal one inch), you need 24 of each color (because in doubleweave, you are weaving two layers simultaneously), so there are 48 ends in one inch, where really only 24 are supposed to be. So I've come to the conclusion, even after using this great slippery yarn, I don't care for doubleweave. I can see it's usefulness, and possibilities, but I don't really enjoy doing it.

I don't mean to rub it in, but... MY CHRISTMAS SHOPPING IS DONE! I've never been so prepared, so early. This is the first year I've made a budget and stuck to it. I decided how much I could spend on each person I had to buy for, and I only spent that much and stopped shopping. In years passed I've started early and just kept shopping until Christmas eve. But this is the first year I can actually see the bottom of my savings account, so it made it that much easier to budget. I am waiting for one more thing to come in the mail. Something I bought on Ebay, I paid for it on the 23rd of November, I should have it by now. It better come, or someone's in big doooo doooooo.

Oh, the scarves, I never reported how much was made for Habitat for Humanity. We are still selling scarves randomly to people who stop by the studio, but last I heard, we sold about 30 scarves out of the 45 we dyed. So we probably donated close to $300. I didn't end up selling any of the bags I brought in. I think my prices were too high. The average college student, walking through the union at lunch time probably doesn't have $35 in cash. But I would rather not sell them than get less for them. I have to turn a profit, don't I?

I have 6 more days of work before I'm off for 10 days. I can hardly wait. I am already compiling a mental list of everything I want to work on while I have the time. I need to finish the calendar contest piece. I have a quilt I started last December that needs to be quilted, I'd like to re-vamp my website a bit and of course knit knit knit. I might also dress my loom for the alpaca shawl. But at the top of the list is to get a contribution to The Sampler sent out. I think I'll dye some fabric and cut it into fat eighths and maybe dye some silk noil yarn to go with it.

But now, it's back to work for me.

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