Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Have Speedy Little Updates

This week has been... a lot.

It hasn't been bad, don't get me wrong. I've been fairly productive by my standards and nothing tragic has befallen me, but boy has there been more activity than I'm used to.

I'll probably get more into it tomorrow, but for now I'll just say this:

Boiled frosting is hard to make.

Spiders don't care how hard it is for you to sleep when they're over your head.

Scrap Yarn is just another opportunity.

Gordian Knots can be unraveled without cutting them (or at least, I'm pretty sure they can)

Good friends are the best.

For today, however, I'll just talk about the Yarn and the Knot!

Behold The Goblin's Purse!

Last night, I was listening to some music and trying to avoid a spider on my ceiling, so I decided to use up a tiny amount of blue thread I had leftover from a long while ago! I started my pouch based off this Treasure Pouch Pattern by Pahavit's Universe, but I had misread what kind of thread they were using, and they were using a Size 3 thread for their 2.25mm hook and I was using the 2.25mm hook on a 10 weight thread.

This meant that when I reached the recommended stitch-count circumference, my pouch was... itty-bitty. We're talking "won't fit over an American Girl Doll's hand" small. The pouch I ended up with is small, make no mistake, but it's at least large enough to hold a small handful of coins, some shiny rocks, or whatever other minor detritus you might scoop up on a walk if you, like me, are a cross between a crow and a goblin creature, hence why I'm calling it The Goblin Purse.

R1: Make a magic ring, then sc 6 stitches into the ring, close it. Do not turn work, do not chain. Work in continuous spiral rounds. (6sc)

R2: 2sc in each sc around (12sc)

R3: (2sc in next sc, sc in next sc) around (18sc)

R4: (sc in next sc, 2sc in next sc, sc in next sc) around (24sc)

R5: (2sc in next sc, sc in each of next 3 sc) around (30sc)

R6: (sc in each of next 2 sc, 2sc in next sc, sc in each of next 2 sc) around (36sc)

R7: (2sc in next sc, sc in each of next 5 sc) around (42sc)

R8: (sc in each of next 3 sc, 2sc in next sc, sc in each of next 3 sc) around (48sc)

R9: (2sc in next sc, sc in each of next 7 sc) around (54sc)

R10: (sc in each of next 4 sc, 2sc in next sc, sc in each of next 4 sc) around (60sc)

R11-25: sc in each sc around (60sc/round 900sc total)

At this point you can either continue adding rounds in 60sc increments or do what I did and finish it off. I chose to finish mine in a crab stitch, which is, as best as I can describe, a single crochet, but backwards? There are other people who can describe how to do this stitch. I am not one of them. You can finish it however you like! Remember to weave in your tails!

To make the bag cinch shut, you take two strands of thread or cord and sew them through the top of the bag to make a drawstring. Then tie the ends. I put my threads over two stitches and then under two stitches around.

After you have your drawstring in, if you want to add the little wrist strap that I have on there, you just find the opposite side of your bag from where the drawstring comes out, and put your hook through the holes to either side of an sc. Then attach your thread and chain as many chains as it takes to get your hand through, slip stitching back into the same stitch you chose. If my instructions aren't clear enough, I 100% understand, and it's absolutely fine to, say, make a loop of chain stitches that your hand fits through, and then sew that to the back of the bag. You can even add a cute button or bead to hide your sewing!

At this point, you have a fun little goblin bag to take out adventuring with you! If you make one of these, feel free to @ me on Twitter with pics of the bag and any trinkets you collect in it! I'm hoping to take it out for a spin maybe tomorrow or Wednesday :)





Now, as for the Gordian Knot I mentioned...

You see, I have a tangle of yarn that has become a bit of a recurring character here on the blog, and its name is Gordon. Gordon is a large quantity of what I think is a DK weight acrylic yarn. I have had it for years and never have I ever been able to detangle it.

This week, however, I've really been working hard on him and...

I think we're getting close!

Gordon has gone from being a pile of yarn that pooled to a width that dangled over my tv tray or totally filled a 12" cube to a ball the size of a very large cantaloupe, a tangle the size of a grapefruit, and after finally locating his other end, a small pile of spaghetti in a paper bag.

Not a particularly overlarge paper bag, either.

So I'm thinking that this is Gordon's last week as a mess. Next week, he'll be one ball. And after that? Well... I don't know, but he's kinda scratchy, so maybe he's not going to become anything that'd touch skin. I would like to use my 3.75mm hook on him, so I'll go hunting on Ravelry or elsewhere on the interwebs. If you have any suggestions for what appears to be approximately an entire mile of primary blue yarn in about a DK weight, I'd love to hear from ya!

I think that'll about do it from me tonight. I'm tuckered out, and I hope you appreciated the linked and free patterns!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which More Progress, however small, Has Been Made

When last we saw the Secret Project, it was getting super close to being done, and now we're even closer!

But not quite finished yet.

Today, I made three rings from copper wire and held them together with pipefitter's tape. Friction tape of any kind would work for this, including medical tape, but sticky tape probably wouldn't work well. See, making the rings small enough to function as a spot to join the strap to the body and serve as a front closure means there's not a lot of room to maneuver the tape without getting it stuck where you don't want it if it's sticky. If it's a friction-based tape like pipefitter's tape, then you can just cut lengths and they'll go through easily until you tighten the wrap.

Three Rings! They're each about the size of a nickel, possibly bigger.

You can use any kind of ring you want, and if you use premade ones, you (probably) won't even have to put tape on them! I Have the tape on mine because I didn't want the ends of the wire poking through the next step.

I also took this opportunity to finish the little hanging loop!

The hanging loop is a few slip-stitched rows of the red color, approximately 4" long. I folded that in half and then put 3 single crochet stitches through both ends, binding them together. After that, I made a ch1, then placed a single crochet in the back loops of each single crochet, turned, and went back around, making a sc in the remaining loops of those original 3 sc. After that, I increased from 6 sc to 12 sc by placing 2sc in each sc. At that point I tied off the loop.

This red ring will be for the closure!

To crochet over the closure ring, take your cap color and find a point on the ring, then put your hook through, yarn over, and holding onto the tail, pull the caught loop through to form a slip stitch. From there, treat the ring as though it was a magic ring, holding onto the tail. You don't have to be too terribly picky about how many single crochets you make around this ring, just try to minimize any gaps! Once you have covered the entire ring, slip stitch into the first sc made and fasten off.

A Finished Beige Ring

Cover the other two rings with single crochet in the same way as the first, using your body color (beige in my case). These will be used to sew on the strap!

All Three Finished Rings

When you've finished your rings, go back to that loop you made earlier and slip-stitch it into place on the top of the cap of the bag! Now you have a hanging loop!

The ridge left behind will eventually be covered up - stay tuned for next week!

I hope to have the bag 100% assembled and finished next week, but we'll see. I've been saying that for the last ten weeks haven't I? lol!

That being said, I've learned a lot from this crochet-together project, and I hope you all have, too! If you've been working along with me, I'd love to see some of your guys' progress! Feel free to, if you have Twitter, tag me in a picture of your work! If you have Instagram, I'm there, too, as Grumpmuffin89, so if you know what you're doing there, hit me up because I'm all the way out in the weeds and it's incredibly confusing.

That'll about do it for me tonight - I'm hot and sweaty and ready for beddy. If you have any requests for Thursday's art blog, please feel free to send me a Ko-Fi with a message telling me what category (refer to my "commission" page in the sidebar for categories) and don't forget to...

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which Seeeeeecret Project is finally updated!

I'm sure you're tired by now of all my excuses so behold:

One Very Annoying Strap.

The strap above is made entirely with slip stitches and that is why it took for-freaking-ever. But now it's... done? Maybe? We'll see when I start to attach things. I also started a similarly slip-stitched loop for the top of the mushroom cap! I've been working on this bag for so long that I keep losing track of how to do things, but if you look up the "secret project" tag, you can find the whole pattern up to this point!

I've also been struggling a lot to try to structure this project. You see, crochet thread? it's super duper floppy. It won't look good in glamor shots if it's super floppy, so how do I hold the mouth of the bag open? I tried so many ways to do things - wires, strengthening things with plastic, and even zip ties! And yet none of them worked well.

Today I just went ahead and did it - I added wire.

Fortunately I had some cheap $1 jewelry wire that I used on the mouths of the lower part of the bag, and then I used thin copper wire around the bottom of the cap. The thin wire is purely aesthetic - I'll be stiffening the base of the cap with thin plastic of some sort (or possibly craft foam if I find some), and that will hold it against various things being stored in the cap!

The plastic tie failure - they were only top-closure, I'd need side-closure

The jewelry wire is still quite pliable so I doubled it up!

And I attached the wire using single crochet through each dc from either mouth

I think it came out pretty well!

The copper wire was harder because it's thinner, softer, and I measured wrong!
Measure twice! Cut once! Then you don't poke yourself with twisted wire lol

The bag assembled & reinforced!

Hopefully today's blog has helped someone trying to figure out how to create structure in a project. Here's some additional advice: grab sandpaper to round off the cut ends of your wire so it hurts less when it pokes you.

So now we just have a few more things to do!

• Finish/attach straps
• Make and attach spots for the cap!
• Add the final structure elements
• Make a closure for the stem (maybe a braided cord?)

That doesn't seem like so much when you look at it that way!

And that's gonna do it from me for tonight. I'm pooped!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which A Break Was Taken

Everyone who knows me knows, by now, that I am absolute garbage at remembering dates, holidays, and birthdays. I barely remember Christmas, Halloween, and my own birthday. So of course, I did what I always do.

I forgot it was Father's Day.

Thankfully I have an understanding father and a stockpile of yarn and the internet.

I sat around for an hour or two trying to figure out what to make and then I realized that a bag you can hang off of a horizontal board or pipe or whatnot would be useful for him. Mostly, he'd be able to toss the Roku & tv remotes, a tablet, maybe a netbook into it easily if it was looped around the arm of the wooden futon in the other room.

So then I went looking for something nice & masculine. I have a lot of masculine colors right now - black, red, dark green, etc. I chose a brown and green combo that wouldn't look too out of place while camping. Some of my best childhood memories are of camping with my family, dad teaching us axe, knife, and fire safety (no river stones in the fire pit!, say thank you when you have a grip on a bladed object that someone is passing you, point the front of an axe away from you), overboiled hot chocolate in little brown plastic cups that kind of smelled and tasted like detergent no matter how well you washed them, hamburger helper...

Rain literally every single time we set up and took down camp. Every single time. I don't think we ever struck camp on a dry day, not even when we were using the camper.

I also remember fishing trips where I never caught anything but logs and grass, but I got to enjoy sitting with my dad. I remember hiking and canoeing, though I was terrible at both.

What I'm saying is, when I was little, we were outdoors a LOT.

So I chose a pretty cabin pattern charted out on Ravelry by Abi McIntyre @ GetYerHookOn. If I were to make a suggestion to other crochet artists - don't do this pattern while tired and actually read what the pattern dictates. I just used the chart, but the actual pattern itself looks amazing when followed correctly.

Seriously, go download that pattern and follow it to a T, and you'll be so, so happy.

I'd say, though, that for doing everything in Single Crochet, carrying the colors through, and then making it into a bag (which I modified without a pattern!!!) it looks pretty great!

The shapes are pretty well-defined!!!

And the colors are pretty nice!

What you cannot see here is that I made the back of the bag by using the same yarn and the same hook and the same stitch tension and alternating 7 rows of brown and 7 rows of green until I had 49 rows (7 more than the front). Then I started row 50 with ch3, skipped the first stitch, dc in next 6 sts, turn, and repeat from ch3, placing the 6th dc in the top of the previous row's ch3. I did that for 25 rows, then slip stitched the end of the dc-based strap thingie onto the opposite side of the back from where it began (see above). Then I ran a row of sc around the outside of every flat surface, joining front to back.

If I were to do this again, I'd take a little more time making sure the seam looked nice. Maybe instead of an sc row, I'd sew the seam shut properly. I'd also ease my tension significantly on the front!

That being said, this came out really well, and if you put the body of the bag through the handle to secure it to a surface like a railing or a futon arm, it really does hold up to even a Dell Latitude laptop or an iPad in an Otterbox lol!

I'd like to make a few more bags in the future, too. I really enjoy doing mosaic work, and I adore doing filet crochet, so some fun character bags (there's a super cute pattern with a squirrel and an edging/insertion lace that could easily be used for handles that's all acorns and oak leaves!!!) might be in order.

Don't think I've been totally neglecting the Secret Project aka the Mushroom Bag, though! I worked a whole bunch on that strap...

It's just that slip stitch rows are... very very very thin. And that means building up to a proper strap width is taking quite a bit.

I might go the i-cord route for the hanging loop I'll make for the top... or do a single-loop slip stitch instead of the double-loop I'm doing for the should strap...

In any case, there you have it! A finished Father's Day gift that has been delivered and is, to the best of my knowledge, currently in use.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Did More Work On the Bag

It's a nice, chilly day. The sky is pale blue, the trees are slowly browning from our unfortunate drought (of which we've had more drought years than fine ones in my memory...), and my toes are cold in their thick cotton socks. It's a crisp 60℉ (15.5℃) with 26% humidity. Perfection. I'm happy with this weather, though I still have that sense of unease that too long without rain brings. I'm not even an outdoorsy type of person, but even I can feel that something is off with the weather.

I spent this morning examining the insides of my eyelids, sleeping in until about 11AM, so I apologize for the lateness of this blog but I needed that sleep. I was beginning to feel the exhaustion of my insomnia in a very uncomfortable way - it felt like my body was bruising. I feel much better today. More settled. More myself. More human.

There was a short moment this morning, as my mother got home, where things got a little crazy, but it was in a good way. Our toaster oven hasn't been toasting properly for a few weeks now, so she's picked up a new one. The cat is thrilled lol.

A blurry shot of the new toaster oven

An Equally Blurry Shot of the Cat Going Nuts in Her New Box

The mass of yarn in my room is slowly becoming more organized, too! Thanks to the ball winder my awesome partner got me for my birthday, I've been taking apart the tangle of my horde and putting it into neat(ish) balls. I still haven't mastered the winder, so occasionally, the yarn will slip and coil around the top of the ball instead of actually winding properly, but for the most part, it's going well.

Also, my younger sister was awesome and surprised me with two balls of Red Heart's It's A Wrap: Rainbow yarn a couple days ago in both "Seaglass" and "Couture". They're awesome and I immediately started looking for shawl patterns for them. I didn't expect them to be such a loose twist (there really isn't any twist to them, it's a bunch of very fine threads that are all clinging to each other with static and hopes and dreams), so there's a bit of struggle with splitting, but once you have the rhythm down, the cotton/acrylic blend works really nicely and feels great in your fingers. I've already done one pattern repeat of a butterfly-themed shawl in the "Seaglass" and I'm planning on doing something a little more nocturnal for the "Couture" (maybe moons? Stars?).

As for that little yellow bag?

It's Coming Along :)

I really like the basketweave pattern on this, and despite the fact that the yarn ball is now the size of a tennis ball, I think I'll keep going. If I have to use the red sock yarn as a contrast for straps & closure, that's what I'll do lol.

How are your guys' projects coming along? Are you getting your rows in? Your wordcounts down? Your colors laid down? I'm rooting for you!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Mo - WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S TUESDAY?!

 

In Which Time Is Slippery

But Yarn is Not

I'll be honest, I lost track of time both today and yesterday. I legit forgot that it was Monday, despite knowing that Tuesday was one sleep away (I haven't had that sleep yet, btw, I refuse to flake 100% on Monday :P ). I did have kind of a long day, after all, with a lot of writing and a lot of running around and doing laundry and working out... The weather today was spectacular - warm, sunny, breezy. My old man took out the hammock and cleared the mouse nests out of the riding lawnmower in between renovations and rebuilds on the camper he bought. My mom gardened. I wrote, did some situps, ordered chicken taco pizza for my family's dinner. Busy busy.

I didn't do any crochet until after dinner.

I didn't even think about crochet until probably 9:30PM (that's 1730 in military time, lol).

And now I'm too tired to keep crocheting lol.

But I did some work, I promise! On a woven stitch bag!

But it's not for a laptop like the pattern suggests - it's probably only big enough for an iPad or a notebook. It'll be a nice little purse or something :)

It's starting from the bottom, of course, which is closest to the ball.

So that's what I eventually got to work on.

That and page 19 of Part 2 of the novel. I'd like to finish pages 20 & 21 on Tuesday, but we'll see lol.

I'm very much enjoying the work, though. All of the work. The writing, the crocheting, the reading and the art. I enjoy my work.

I hope that all of you out there can find some work you'll enjoy, too, whether it's art, writing, music, video making, cooking, or teaching. Make something.

The weather tomorrow (Tuesday) is supposed to be (and I quote): "Partly Sunny and Delightful" with a high of about 73℉/22.8℃ (which will feel like 79℉/26.1℃ in the sun) with about 82% humidity (which will be pretty annoying!) with only 7-9mph breeze! 

I intend to spend it writing.

So please, Go Enjoy Something!!!

FC