granny square meditation

i needed a little breaker from my fls. i started the short-rows and they are making me nervous. plus they take attention and i have a feeling i am gonna have to frog and repeat. which is okay. i haven't done them before and i dunno where they are gonna land. i don't want arrows pointing to my bits. but still.

(sorry the pics aren't fabulous. i am no brooklyntweed)


i dunno how i stumbled across the wool eater blanket on rav and wanted to give it a swatch. it wasn't easy. i ended up using pictorials and a youtube video and still fudged it. i would like to get some yarn appropriate for a king sized square but that will have to wait. and i would have to rewrite the pattern to fit my mods.



so what to do? revisit my poison Ish? pic up that garter stitch bed cover? nah!

when in doubt - granny squares!

i'd like to pile enough to make a blanky. at least square by square i can feel like i am progressing and not have one perpetual round after another. and i dug in my stash. i am using noro silk garden sock. rather than going out and buying a blanket amount of yarn. i don't feel like worrying about dye lot or color. just go lizard ridge style and pick up a skein, any skein as needed and press on especially when i dunno how far i can take the project. i dunno what's with me and blankety projects lately. i find them so appealing. the two squares so far:

this yarn is rough rough rough on the hands. i can’t imagine making/wearing socks from this. i read it softens up in the wash. even so a lap blanket is about as far as i can go with this stuff. if i can get that far. call me sensitive, whatever. it is Quite rustic. i can’t believe i paid $23 for this. lesson learned. it is pretty stuff though if you can get past all the cons. i can’t say i won’t buy noro ever again but at least i'll know what i am in for.

do the dishes!

i needed to do some dishes. now you should know that that is something i rarely ever do. not that they don't get done! they do, just not by me. and the reason for that is i don't like touchin that wet cleany thing. so i made this real quick and cleaned um all up. mostly.

pattern is Simple Tawashi flower by the lovely Marte
yarn is cafe kitchen antibacterial acrylic

winding molly

i threw all caution to the wind and i am winding up a skein o'molly to see how she flows.

nice

the staycation

knitting

knitting has been on  hold. i am finding i am not as in love with my knitpicks options as i thought i was. so i don't feel like knitting with them. maybe all i need is a break from them. the summer heat and my ufo add has me crocheting quick and dainty projects. plus, i just LOVE my hamanaka rakuraku crochet hooks. to pieces! i have both the regular set and the lace hooks. somehow this summer i became a threadie. who knew!

tatting

so, Nozomisan was nice enough to translate that freaking book for me. the whole book ! in like a week. she's crazy. but i am thank-ful. i learned the tatting. it's hard stuff. i made this little motif practice thing with size 10 thread. 

sure, i made a mistake or two but i got the gist.

 i immediately took up the size 80 and tried a different motif with that. ha! size 80 is no joke. i have had to cut the thread like three times. i will make that stupid thing though! -i think. somehow. it's hard work. now that i know the mechanics of tatting i just dunno what i wanna make. collar edgings and table runners aren't really my style. plus those are kinda huge projects. i have to conquer this other motif first then i will worry about that.

Nihonjin kurafuto?

my adoration for all things cute-ly crafted inevitable-y and eventually lead me into the world of  crafts japanese style. it doesn't help that-well, actually it does help, it does, that i have a Kinokuniya a hope, skip, and jump from me. amigurumi, tawashi and little crocheted coasters and fabulous little fluffy handmade yumminess-i am into it all. and still i haven't woken up with the magical ability to read and speak japanese fluently like that girl did in Heroes. poo. until then i will have to make due. ( i do have that Rosetta Stone. i give it a thumbs up. i just don't do the lessons as often as i should.)

 i have learned, from these japanese books,  to read a chart. a wonder in itself, the charted crochet pattern allows for no loss in translation. actually, i can't go chartless now. there is just too much ambiguity in written out patterns. even in english. 

tawashi

the business end

all this dabbling in japanese craft and acquisition of many japanese pattern books inevitably and naturally led to a search for japanese yarns. the yarns they make for tawashi are silver ion treated acrylic with antibacterial properties ideal for cleaning ( ehem, 'ta-washi' carries an audible resemblance to the english words 'to wash'. coincidentally that is the purpose of tawashi, to wash. dishes...etc.). the cottons they use for these home projects, even just through photos, seem of a different origin. much more representative of the cozy comfy cotton we use for clothes. more reminiscent of the plant the fiber came from. in texture and weight that kitchen cotton cannot compete with. 

the antibacterial acrylics like Cafe Kitchen iw as able to find in ichigonopantsu's etsy shop. gotta love the ravelry connections. but delicious cotton! that was different task.  this project from this book as seen on this blog  started it all. 

substituting this yarn was waaay more difficult than i thought it was gonna be. the yarns that i found were too thick too thin and too rough looking. so i started lookin for this Hamanaka Paume which is the yarn suggested and  couldn't find it anywhere! now i got my own etsy shop, etceteraetc.etsy.com, so the next person looking for it won't have to look that hard.

this bag was made with a sport weight or dk cotton called CottonnottoC . also a hamanaka concoction. i haven't found that one... yet.

adventures in tatting

i bought me a tatting shuttle yesterday. the tatting demon was first encountered  june 17th 2007 during a long awaited trip to MAD for the Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting exhibition. Doodling, (Hildur Bjarnadottir, 2005) had me, well, stupefied really. i stared trancelike at the swirling lines of thread until Robert shook me back from the transcendental world. "i must learn this art!" a voice in my head- impersonating my very own self resounded. the demon lay dormant until just recently. it's emergence coinciding with the newly available online resources related to said demon.