Nessie Lives

I recently finished a project from the book Amigurumi Knits: Patterns for 20 Cute Mini Knits by Hansi Singh.

I bought the book because this woman’s idea of cute is wonderfully twisted. While the patterns for veggies and star fish are adorable, not everyone can see the sweet in jellyfish, earthworms, and spiders. Yes, the book includes patterns for all of these, and also for a praying mantis, a black-devil anglerfish, and (believe it or not) garlic.

But the pattern that intrigued me most was one for the Loch Ness Monster, which is the first thing I’ve made from the book.

My Nessie, complete with stylish scarf

I found out that, along with having a twisted sense of cute, the author has a slightly warped idea of what is reasonable to do when knitting. Because the pieces are eventually stuffed, she recommends using much smaller needles for your yarn to ensure a tight fabric. Maybe I overdid it, but I found some of the stitches really difficult to make with such tight knitting. I made several adjustments to her pattern (mainly for sanity’s sake) and everything worked just fine. And I loved the results so much I had to make her a little scarf from some leftover sock yarn that I love. (My husband says scarves are what all the stylish plesiosaurs are wearing…)

I think my next knitting project will be a sweater, but I’m sure other critters will be joining Nessie one of these days. Maybe I’ll make the Jackalope…

Next Step of the Bag: The Flap

I’ve actually already finished the flap completely and have blocked the pieces. However, the camera is in the shop, so I can only show part of the progress I’ve made.

After cutting the front and back apart (by cutting through the steek), I picked up the flap stitches on the back half and then knitted the flap using intarsia, which is a different color knitting technique than the other parts of the bag required. You can see the difference from the wrong side of this piece.

The blue and purple part has the yarn running all the way across the stitches in the back, which is necessary, because the two colors in any one row are used constantly. This type of stranded color work  is also known as Fair Isle knitting. The pink and blue part has large areas of a single color, so a single strand of yarn is worked for a single motif (i.e., one strand of blue for each separate rose), which is intarsia. Both techniques require counting and careful yarn management, but I think it is worth the extra effort to have more color in the piece.

The next step, which I will post when I have a picture of it, uses duplicate stitch, which is actually embroidery rather than knitting.

Turtle Pincushions

I’ve been in craft-mode lately (as you can tell from recent posts). I’m taking a vacation from more serious projects and letting myself goof off, putting together little things for the fun of it, like the Christmas ornaments I finally finished.

Last week, I stopped in the local quilt shop and was struck by a cute pattern on the counter: Henrietta Turtle, a pincushion designed by Heather Bailey. The pattern hopped in my bag and I was cutting out fabric before I knew it. I made two turtles at once, one for me, one for a gift. I think the total time involved per pincushion was one to two hours (a very rough estimate). Here are the ones I made:

Before I put it together, I didn’t realize that the turtle actually rests on her stomach, not her legs. The gusset for the stomach looks like it makes the legs the only point of contact with the table, but when you stuff it, the tummy bulges out and winds up being the support.

I found this pattern rather fussy – lots of directions about where and how to clip the curves, for example. I probably made things hard on myself by using regular stabilizer instead of the iron-on kind, but it was all I had available at the time. I also quickly got frustrated working with the tiny pattern pieces to make the cute felt flower that gets sewn to the shell, which is why I wound up improvising my own designs instead.

In the end, the turtles did not come out as nicely finished as a would have liked (a couple wonky seams) but the worst of it is hidden under the shell.For some reason, when I stitched up the stuffing hole in the back, I gave the poor critters scoliosis. Still, it was a fun little project do, and I particularly enjoyed picking out the fabrics and making the embellishments.

P.S. For those wondering why I made myself yet another pincushion this year, all I have to say is: you can never have too many pincushions.

Crazy Things Come in Tiny Packages

This Christmas I received a handmade gift from my friend Kelleen. You may remember that together we took on a pincushion project last spring that I despaired of ever finishing. It included tiny counted cross-stitch on linen that I thought was going to make me go blind. I did eventually complete the project. How I laughed when I opened my present and saw that my friend had tackled this challenging pattern once again, this time to make me a sewing box that matches my pincushion!

My new sewing box with crazy-making tiny cross-stitch on the lid.

The box after it is opened up - lots of places to put things

Kelleen actually made the cord that draws the sides together when you close the box, and she says that turned out to be the most time-consuming part of the project. She got me the perfect present: something I love having that I would never have made myself. Thanks, Kelleen!

Christmas Angels

One of the surprises of organizing my studio was finding a bunch of finished cross-stitch projects from years long past. I didn’t pay much attention at the time; I was too busy sorting and storing to even look in the bags I found. But they all wound up in a bin together, so when I started decorating for Christmas and remembered seeing a kit for Christmas ornaments, I knew right where to find it.

It occurred to me that I might have finished the cross-stitching but not assembled the ornaments, and when I opened the bag, that was what I found – six lovely little angels all stitched up, waiting for their ribbon and lace. I made these so long ago that I don’t even remember making them anymore, and I had to wonder why I had put in all that time and then not completed the project when there was so little left to do.

I found out quickly that in fact there was a lot left to do. Not only did the angels need to be glued to cardboard, but they had two separate trims (piping and lace) and felt backings, all of which got glued on in separate stages. It took me a full day, including drying time, to put these together, but they are on my tree at last.

All six of the angels from the kit