Wednesday, May 31, 2006

miss busy- bee

All my bags are beaded. I think I might try my hand at beading other things when my extensively long list of things-to-do needs another thing-or-two added onto it. In August my learn Italian goal, and my knit cute bags from my bridesmaids goal will be accomplished, or at the very least irrelevant, and I don't think that learning to play the guitar will be enough to not do.



So! Next step is the lining. I was planning on buying pretty blue fabric to go with my wedding "colors", but I'm lazy and never officially made it to a fabric store. Luckily, I have a quite sizable stash of fabric to go along with my sizable stash of yarn (I knew my pack-ratish tendancies would come in handy someday), and I had this pretty pink fabric that at one point I was planning to use to make an adorable bag . I still have plenty of fabric left for my bag...don't you worry. And some lovely contrasting orange fabric for lining as well. Unless this was origionally my lining fabric for that as well. It was so long ago, it's hard to remember...

After many initial mishaps (I hate cutting shiny fabric), I finally cut 4 pieces that I believe are the right size. Then I used my trusty rusty chalk (one the perks of being a teacher is that there is often chalk on-hand) to mark the .5" seam allowance. The bag lining only gets sewn 3.75", and the rest gets tucked under the latch after being ironed as far as I can tell. I still have to trek off to M&J fabrics (and that's one of the perks of living in NYC) to get the hardware, but all in good time. For now, the fact that I managed to get this all marked up, pinned, folded and ready for the sewing machine is enough of an accomplishment for now!

Friday, May 12, 2006

slacker-city

So, I've been a slacker on both the knitting fronts, and the blogging fronts, but now I'm back, and even with the pictures, as promised! Bo-yeah.

So, what happened was is that I knitted my fourth (just enough for bridesmaids gifts... So much for one for myself and one for my mom and one for everyone who ever smiled at me...). Somehow I kept messing up one of the cables on it, I kept frogging it and reknitting it. I must have redone it about 3 or 4 times. I was exhausted and frustrated with it. But each time I made the decision that it looked "good enough" I got annoyed with myself, because I really wanted these to turn out as-perfect-as-possible for my girls. But that tricksy little cable is all fixed up now.

After just sitting on the knitted pieces for awhile now, I decided to start blocking them the other night. I blocked 2, but I have two more to go. Let me just note, for the record, that they look AWESOME blocked. The pattern really highlights the cables, and the yarn I'm using is really well suited for the pattern.


So, I pulled out my beads and other bead supplies, and was immediately frustrated because the thread I got was too thick to fit through the eye of my super-dooper special beading needle. I broke a needle before I ended up switching to a normal sewing thread for my beading needs. It seems to be working fine so far.



After looking at my bead options:
Blue seed beads:
Translucent seed beads:
Blue swvorski crystal beads:
Clear swvorski crystal beads:
and inspecting my blocked knitted piece, I decided to go like this:

1st row: alternate blue and translucent seed beads on each side of cables.
2nd row: in the center of each cable, alternate crystal beads, otherwise continue with seed bead rotation
3rd row: repeat 1st row.

It's turning out really pretty... Well, at least in my humble opinion.











I still have to: 1)block the other two bags 2)find material to line the bags with 3)buy hardware for the bags.

Not too shabby. Unless I visit slackerville once more that is...
 
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