DIY

Rockalilly’s Escapades Frittering Away Time

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I do occasionally finish projects. They don’t all live in the WIP (Work in Progress) graveyard for eternity. And sometimes, I even use some stash yarn to make them!

Enter this project. This past December, many of you know we went to visit friends in England. We were thinking about gifts and I wanted to make something for our friend Suzi. She’s always cold and has some arthritis in her hands — so when Mike and I talked about what to do, we wanted something with some silk content in it, and figured handwarmers were something I could probably finish before Christmas. Mind you — this conversation was happening the night before we left, on Dec 13.

So, I went stash diving. I found about 4 different skeins that I had inherited from my grandmother that were wool/silk blends. Mike picked the color he felt was best of those 4, and I packed a little knitting bag with needles, stitch markers, and yarn and tossed it in my carry-on to possibly start on the flight over. I failed to consider that on overnight flights, they turn off the lights. While I did take it out, cast on (started), and did about 2 rounds in the dark, I didn’t love how it looked when I saw it in the light — so I actually frogged it (rip it!) and started over once we were settled into our vacation home.

The first mitt went otherwise without incident, and I was doing okay time-wise to get them done. I finished it around the 21st – leaving me about 3.5 days to do the 2nd one — and we had fewer plans, so more knitting time.

So, I immediately cast on the second one. I’m working away on it, and go to rearrange some stitches, and I pulled the cable out of my circular needle on the night of the 22nd. That basically makes them useless. I had to find a knitting shop – and hope it would be open! — the next morning to have any hope of finishing to either get a replacement cable, or a new set of needles — and a yarn needle to weave in the ends, because I had forgotten to pack one of those.

As luck would have it, there were 2 shops within walking distance of our rental, and both were still open before the holiday! I went to the closer one, and while they had some needles that I liked, I didn’t love their yarn selection (because local hand-dyed yarn is always a great souvenir!), and more importantly, they didn’t take credit cards. We rarely carry cash anywhere, and even less likely in foreign countries. So I thanked the lady and went to the other shop.

Luckily, this shop also had needles close enough to the size I needed. Brits apparently don’t use the exact size I had been working with very often — but they had some wood double pointed that were a hair smaller, so I could work with that. Pro tip: when you are used to working with metal needles that slide easily and swap to wood, you can go down a size because you’ll need to loosen your tension to get the stitches to slide.

And they had some fantastic locally dyed yarn, so yes, some souvenir yarn came home with me. If you are ever in the area, check out Little Shop of Hobbies in Morecambe.

So, I get the project swapped over to the new needles, and keep plugging away. Side note: Double pointed needles make projects look very scary!

After continuing to plug away, I finished the project before they arrived for gift giving time on Christmas! I’d been working on them right in front of her a few times and she had no idea they were for her. She either loved them, or is very polite — because she used them a few times on the rest of our trip.

Rockalilly’s Escapades Frittering Away Time

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My hobby is collecting hobbies.

It started with friendship bracelets when I was a pre-teen. Then, I took that DMC floss that I was using and started cross stitching.

In college, I was a little overweight, so I took up knitting to do something with my hands instead of eating. Spoiler alert: It didn’t help. But I got pretty good at following patterns and even designed something of my own once.

Then I learned about GOOD yarn, which led me to fiber festivals. Then I bought a spinning wheel and learned to use it. Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on a distaff, not a spindle.

One skein of yarn that I got was beautiful, but I didn’t think it was going to look as good knitted. But woven…that would look great paired with a solid color in a kind of houndstooth plaid! So I bought a loom.

Then, I found some beautiful fabric that would make a great knitting bag…so I learned to sew. My grandmother also used to sew, so I knew the basics. But then instead of bags, I found some cute clothing patterns, but they were made from stretchy fabric, which my basic machine didn’t like – so I also got a serger.

Then the vinyl cutting craze hit, so of course I had to get one of those, too! And the regular iron didn’t work great to attach this to shirts since it wasn’t even pressure, so I got a heat press as a Christmas gift.

And we also found a really cheap 3D printer and thought “What the hell!” That one didn’t last long (the motherboard went to crap), but we found a step up from that. We use it to make random things, like a lock for the shower door so the cat can’t open it. We mostly use other people’s opensource files, but I did manage to design a few cool things on my own.

I continue to dabble in all the things, sometimes even making progress and finishing a project, so I thought I might do a bi-monthly series on my productive time wasting adventures and share works in progress and maybe some older completed projects.

FIRST UP

I signed up to do a murder mystery quilt this year. We get one block pattern a month and a chapter of a murder mystery. The pattern helps solve the case and correct guesses are entered for a chance at a prize – but you also get a quilt out of it, assuming you do all the steps.

I’ve never quilted before, but have a bunch of old tee shirts that I want to make into a quilt someday, and I’ve always appreciated the work, so here are my January blocks (4 of the same) – completed 2 days before I get the February pattern! I have no idea what the finished item will look like. We got fabric color suggestions when we signed up, but I thought this would be a great way to break up a big project into manageable pieces to learn! So far, so good!

Now I just need to read that first chapter…