Misc Let's get this room going again!

I'm unhappy to report Hobby Lobby will not be having $1.99 sales on Simplicity or McCalls patterns. I'm thankful that I have a good supply of multi-size patterns because there is no way I'm paying $15 to $23 for a pattern. I also watch for patterns at thrift stores and garage sales but seldom see any. Hobby Lobby is pretty much the only place to buy fabric in my area.

Walmart has some patterns in the $2 to $6 range, but every time I've looked what I wanted was missing. Walmart is going to mostly precut fabrics which is useless for most projects. Even if you buy two cuts it doesn't work. Walmart does have an excellent selection of sewing findings at decent prices.
 
I have had to buy my last 4 batches of fabric from Ebay to be able to get what I was looking for. Also it was cheaper the main hassle having to wait for it to be mailed to me. And doesn't seem to be any remnants at Walmart anymore it seems. :confused:
 
I have way too much fabric on-hand. I think I could make a quilt a month for more years that I have left and not come close to using all my quilting fabric. I could also probably make a garment a week for close to 10 years before running out. I'm going to make a stringent effort NOT to buy more fabric this year!!!

I have purchased fabric online and was pleased with it, but I really enjoy touching/handling fabric before I buy. It's hard to determine the "hand" buying online.
 
Our local Walmart has become a disaster: they don't have enough help, and the store is totally torn up because they are moving stuff around. The sewing notions seem to be in two different places, and what employees are there don't know where anything is, either.

I got frustrated enough to go to JoAnn's, which I avoid because of the prices (even with coupons), but I walked in and was able to locate both the thread and the buttons I needed within three minutes.

I inherited a really good wool vest, but two of the buttons were missing, so I ended up replacing all four. Wouldn't you know it . . . I had several packs of small buttons but none of the larger ones suitable for a vest.

And, yes, if it had been a SHTF moment, I would've improvised using nylon thread and making buttons out of wood. But I'm glad that I didn't have to do that.
 
I buy almost all my yarn and fabric online, usually from other folks in our Middle Ages club. I can't wear polyester next to my skin except for tiny amounts (like in sock yarn). This is also why I seldom buy women's clothing; not only is it cheaply made, but very little isn't polyester or another synthetic blend.

I've been somewhat stalled in my knitting due to the extreme cold, but that is lightening up a bit; I cast one an emergency set of mittens, but then my housemate knit a quick pair for me for Yule. Still, I need to finish the other ones - leggings are still on hold, but I hope to get back to them soon.
 
Just wanted to share - I went to a "Knitting - how to fix your mistakes" class at my local yarn shop. Lord knows I make enough mistakes. It was pretty good. How to fix twisted stitches, dropped stitches, etc. Learned about a cool little tool to fix mistakes - this isn't the only one, but the style the instructor used.


I also learned to knit completely different than most people, apparently. When I learned, my mom picked a pattern out of a book and said "Here, make me that." It was a pair of legwarmers in 2x2 rib stitch. So I learned to knit and purl at the same time under her guidance of course.... Yeah most people don't learn like that. Everyone else in the class was amazed or sad for me that I had to learn that way. LOL One lady had been knitting for years and "still wasn't sure how to purl". Which I find amazing. Everyone else there learned to knit and made the standard scarves, etc. and then learned to purl and expanded out from there.

After the class I asked the nice instructor-lady about something and she said that she could show me, but didn't have anything like a sweater to point it out to me. I had brought my bag of knitting stuff including a sweater I was working on, so I brought that out and she said that I needed to tell my instructor (mom) that she did a good job teaching me, (which made my mom smile). On the good side, I apparently knit very evenly and my fabric as a whole looks really good. On the bad side, I screwed up my gauge (which still messes with my head) and my sweater was going to end up being a gift instead of for me, because it was WAY too small - though I probably could have carried water with it, because my stitches were so tightly packed together. So on her recommendation, I ripped out about 2 skeins worth of chunky yarn, and started over. So I'm only now back to where I was, using the correct size needles this time and it's amazing how much lighter it is. :lkick: I was using 10.5mm needles and needed to be using a US13. So I was about 2 sizes too small. Wish me luck. This is my first "garment" so the whole process of armholes and the neck, etc will be completely new to me.
 
I was chatting to my housemate, who discovered last week that she pearl's "Russian style," not "German style." She said it might go back to her learning to knit while her Mom was studying to be a professional Russian translator and sometimes had to take her to class. She had no idea until she saw this on a video. She always thought she was knitting "continental style."

I told her about 20 years ago. I was teaching knitting to a group of SCA ladies in Germany. A very mixed group of everything from the wives (or serving) US military, other Americans and Brits, some native Germans, Scandinavians, and Brits. As almost always happens with more than ten people, some ladies pick up their needles and start knitting after the cast-on lesson.

Several said they had "no idea" what they were doing, but it "felt right." Almost all vague memories of a grandmother or other older relative showing them how to knit when they were four or five, and then they forgot about it (my mother did this with me).

What was startling to me was the number of different ways they automatically picked up and held their needles, saying something like, "Oh, this isn't what you are doing. I must be doing it wrong."

I said, "there are more ways to make two different stitches, the knit and the pearl, than most people think. If it works for you it is all good." Unless you discover you are twisting all your stitches (one lady was doing that) if so, you might want to learn another way so you can follow a pattern. "

This allowed me to talk a bit about the politics of knitting. In the United Kingdom, many knitters had knit continental style until it was labeled "German" in WWI. How left-handed knitters used to be forced to knit with their right hand (a problem especially in American/old English knitting) and the pros and cons of the two most popular styles. At the time, I wasn't very good at teaching "left-handed knitting," but there was almost always someone in the classes who knit continental style who could teach that method which tends to be easier for left-handed people learning to knit for the first time.

I can now do both, but only when I have a strand of yarn in each hand; my fingers refuse to cooperate with left-hand knitting dominant only (continental style), even when I broke my right arm. I do keep practicing, but the brain is a funny thing sometimes.
 
I have now put aside the "longies" (long winter underwear). The Irish-made yarn is just too much for my hands now. It is the older style of yarn, heavy and tightly spun, great for traditional cable sweaters, but I have a half made "The Sweater of Far Too Many Cables" I started for Wolf ten years ago that is a UFO (Unfinished Object) still in a plastic box somewhere. If I find it, I may finish with sleeves that only have one cable on them or something (make it into a vest?) for me. I can work with these traditional yarns for part of the year but in the dead of Winter. The damp cold affects my hands too much.

So I'm working on a nice, soft sweater in Hobbii's new one hundred percent wool color collection for those who like color work. I got a ton of it (partly as a present to myself and partly as preps) when they put it on sale if you bought a pack of ten skeins. So far, the gauge is working out perfectly for the Big Sven Cottage Creations pattern, which is my go-to for yoke/art sweaters. I modified the basic directions using Elizabeth Zimmerman's simple percentage system from Knitting Without Tears. I know she later changed that to yokes with more decreases, but I like the artistic freedom using just three decreases gives me. Not quite as good a fit, but much easier to fit patterns. Also, the Big Sven sweater is intended to decrease for a few rounds once you connect the sleeves to the yoke, which gives me extra stitches if I need to modify the number of stitches to fit a design.

I was also delighted to find out that most Cottage Creations patterns can now be bought online, which is fantastic because I keep losing my hard copies (they get stuck in yarn boxes or project bags). I bought most of my favorites right away, including the original version of the Wonderful Wallaby, which they had said initially was going to be discontinued. I'm not the only one who prefers an open space on a knit hoodie to a fiddley placket with buttons. My next large project will probably be to knit in a combination of the wonderfully soft Hobbii Yarn, and their sock yarn because I want it to be warm and rugged to wear outdoors.

Hint for those getting older, a large front pocket on a sweater is a great place to carry things up and down stairs if you need to hang on to the stair railings these days.

You can get the Cottage Creations Patterns here. The designer is in her 80s and still going. She had permission from EZ to use her percentage system in her patterns. In the last few years, her daughter has helped. I sent her a photo of the "Wolf Sweater" I did for Nightwolf (before he trashed it), and she loved it!

cottagecreationspatterns.com

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Over 3-Dozen Fun and Easy-to-Understand Original Patterns for Hand-Knitting by Designer Carol A. Anderson Take a Look at the Patterns Pattern Categories Afghans Sweaters Babies & Children Socks Gloves, Mittens, Caps & Scarves Projects for Community Knitted Friends...
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Well, here is my 1st finished knit sweater! This was my first item bigger than gloves/hat/socks. The color is actually a deep maroon or wine, but the flash on my phone made it seem kind of orange. It's just a basic raglan using chunky (size 5) yarn using the pattern from DROPS 219-11 Winter City. This sucker is heavy and warm! edited to add - I did not understand the instructions for the neck. They had me binding off and doing other stuff that didn't seem to make sense to me so I did the best I could. LOL

www.garnstudio.com

Winter City / DROPS 219-11 - Free knitting patterns by DROPS Design

Knitted jumper with raglan for men in DROPS Snow. Size: S - XXXL
www.garnstudio.com www.garnstudio.com
 

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I've got the first sweater with the new "hobbii" yarn collection done, except for the patterns on the neck. So far I have cat faces and 1/2 cats. Then I do the first serious neck decrease. For some reason there is a fad now for doing all round sweaters top down, which to me only makes sense for some cardigans; I much prefer knitting from the bottom up but then that is how I learned. You do the easy/mindless (or nearly mindless) stuff first and then get to the fun bit. This sweater I intentionally kept this really easy with no decorations on the sleeves or body because I worked on it while recovering from surgery. Endless rounds of stockinette stitch in the round (aka knit all, except for the knit/pearl ribbing) were just what I needed. Next one I'm sure I'll put something on the sleeves and probably the bottom of the sweater. Most of my sweaters got "Wolfed" (worn by da Big Wolf and then thrown into a corner somewhere) and are only salvageable as kitty pillows or something. The moths are bad here at the best of times, throw a sweater in a corner for nine months after wearing it outside to the barn a few times, and there isn't much left. But I now have enough yarn to replace them and then some, which makes a fun project. Meanwhile, I keep the least damaged ones to wear in an emergency or even repair a bit. The horse sweater is probably salvageable, sadly "The Wolf" sweater is not (nor is the Icelandic) but at least I've got pictures.

I'm also working on a pair of socks, got a wonderful book of almost all designs (traditional) from Norway and ordered a book called 10,000 hats (obviously it is basic patterns with suggestions). I hope to finish the tights when the weather warms up a bit more.

That's my update for now.
 
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