felting in the wash

August 11, 2013 by 18 Comments

I’m no expert on felting, but the general process seems to include agitating your wool (by hand or machine) in warm/hot water.  Easy enough to do on purpose, I suppose, but inconvenient to avoid if you’re in a hurry to thoroughly wash your woolens.  It seems that you can even “felt” acrylic yarn over time, to an extent:

felt2

This is an acrylic blanket (Red Heart, I believe) that was made by my boyfriend Chris’ great-aunt.  It’s a full size blanket made with US single crochet stitches, and I can only imagine how many hours it must have taken her to complete.  It seems that she was very wise in choosing her machine-washable materials and denser type of stitch, for the blanket has held up very well indeed (you’d be very impressed too if you saw how my boyfriend and our dog abuse blankets, and you’d also understand why I generally try to keep my handmade items away from their regular use).  The blanket receives much wear, accompanied by many washes and dries.  It has “felted” a bit over time, as well, which has come in handy.  In the picture you can see the stitch definition pretty well, but if you try to tug on part of a stitch, the yarn doesn’t budge because enough fibers are interlocked.  Our dog’s claws (or Chris’ toes) therefore are extremely unlikely to catch and pull.  It’s perfect, and the chevrons are still in style!

My first ripple blanket, made back in 2011, I’m afraid to say hasn’t seen much use because I’ve been too worried over it’s immediate destruction.  It’s a twin-sized blanket and was made with Berroco Vintage Chunky yarn, which is 40% wool and not exactly cheap.  Inspired by the above blanket’s indestructible-ness, today I decided to try and get my lovely ripple to felt a little bit.  Here’s what happened:

felt3

The stitches did indeed begin to sort of “glue” together, although the navy stripes acquired some of the fibers from the other colors and now look a little rough.  That’s OK though — it’s fixable and the experiment gives me hope that with a couple more washes, I may be able to let go of the fears attached to the use of my treasured blanket!  It would be lovely to see it being enjoyed instead of just sitting in the linen closet.

For comparison, I’ve taken a picture of my most recent ripple, which is also a twin-sized blanket made with Stylecraft Special DK (acrylic).  It has not yet been washed because it, too, has seen almost no use:

felt1

Of all 3 blankets, this one has the best stitch definition.  I’m planning on washing it a bunch of times in a row the next time I have extra change for the laundromat so that hopefully it, too, can be indestructable and worry-free!

Have you had any experiences with felting that have turned to your advantage?  Or have you accidentally felted something against your intent?  If you have any tips or pointers for me on what to do or what to avoid while attempting to further felt my wool and acrylic blankets, please do share!

Thanks so much for stopping by everyone!

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CAL: week 11

August 10, 2013 by 8 Comments

Hello everyone!  Today we’re up to week 11 of our crochet along — can you believe it?  Are you ready to get started?  Don’t forget, we’re using US terms.  Here’s where we left off last week:

cal91

rows 79 & 80

With new color, work the two rows that make up the star stitch pattern (click here for the original instructions).

row 81

With new color, work hdcs in the spaces between the hdcs of row 80.  Check your stitch count at the end if you think you might be off one or two stitches.

row 82

With new color, dc across.

rows 83-85

With new colors, work the granny stripe pattern (original instructions found here).

row 86

With new color, dc across.

Here’s what these 8 rows should look like:

cal92

I don’t have a picture of the full blanket this week; I didn’t get a chance to take one in good lighting because this week’s been really busy.  My boyfriend has gone to another city to start a new job (I will hopefully be following him soon) and it’s much tougher cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, taking care of the dog, and working an hour’s drive away without his assistance.  I’m working more days, which is great.  Also, my car is having troubles, so I think I’m going to have to borrow my Dad’s truck so that I can drive to work safely while waiting to hear from the shop what’s wrong with my car (it seems to be the transmission but if the whole thing has to be replaced I’m SOL and don’t know what I’ll do).  I know that many other women do more than this in their days, what with kids or full-time/regular jobs, so I’m not complaining.  Just busier than normal, and stretched very thin.

The sooner I can move, the better, because hopefully I can find a cheaper place and therefore be able to take care of myself.  If that does happen soon, I’m afraid I might miss a week of the CAL.  I’ll make every effort to get it done, but during the moving week we might just have to take a short break.  Just wanted to give you a heads up that that might be a possibility — in fact, some of you might be relieved, because it’ll give everyone a chance to catch up, weave in neglected ends, or just rest those busy hands.

Well, that’s all for today.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

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ow.

August 9, 2013 by 28 Comments

What a couple of days it’s been!  My car needs a really expensive fix (about half of what the whole car costs, so I don’t know what’s gonna happen there).  In the meantime I’m driving Dad’s truck, but the first day I drove it it sat in the sun too long and the glue holding the rearview mirror on gave out.  Mirror swinging wildly by a cord, today I drove it to the shop to get it fixed.  I was planning on eating afterwards — they said it would be an hour.  It was 2 hours, and I was quite hungry and had been sitting in an uncomfortable chair.  Standing up to go pay, my foot which had been asleep without me noticing completely gave out.  I fell but caught myself against the wall and limped in pain to the cashier desk, wherupon I connected the cashier with my dad via tellephone and had to be led to sit down — my vision went black.  Someone had to drive me and my Dad’s truck home.  Now I can’t really walk at all.  Thank goodness Chris is home from his job and could look at it — he used to be an athletic trainer and so quickly identified what was wrong.  It’s a bad sprain from rolling my ankle.  It doesn’t hurt much unless I try to walk, which is a problem since I had to call my boss and tell him I couldn’t be there tonight and might not be able to go tomorrow.  It’s my right foot so I probably won’t be able to drive, much less stand for hours on end.  What scared me was the blacking out part, because I never actually fainted but my vision was gone, I was dizzy, and broke into a sweat.  Possibly low blood sugar.  Possibly low blood pressure.  Possibly shock from the pain.  It’s happened before but not this bad.  Not sure, but I do know that I was incredibly embarrassed and I NEED to go to work tomorrow.

Wanna see my foot?  Some people think feet are gross anyway, so if you do, look away!

foot1

Extra gross, right?  It’s not usually all swollen and multi-colored.  Actually I like my feet when they are normal looking, but this foot is just sad.  In real life it actually looks a bit worse than this, but you get the general idea.

Chris immediately wrapped it in an Ace bandage and put an ice pack on it and elevated it to the arm of the couch I’m currently lounging on.  Now it looks like this:

foot2

Now I’m all wrapped up in my cozy blanket (the ta-dah moment of which can be seen here).  It cheers me up and I’m not all tensed and panicky anymore (I freaked out because I was home alone for a bit and was scared I’d black out and not be able to get help).

I may take a nap.  I feel so much better now that Chris is here.  I literally don’t have anybody else that I know of who lives in this town that could help in an emergency.

On the bright side, I’ll have plenty of time to work on the CAL now, and I’m sure glad I went to the laundromat and walked the dog yesterday evening.  Maybe I can even convince Chris to cook me dinner.  He’s taking such good care of me!

Just wanted to let you all into my exciting few hours.  I’ll admit it’s very overwhelming (because there’s tons of other stressful stuff going on at the moment too) but to be honest typing it out gets me to relax a bit more about it.

I’ll talk to you again soon, I expect.  Take care, and don’t let your legs fall asleep and catch you unawares!

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CAL: week 10

August 3, 2013 by 6 Comments

Hey everyone!  Ready for this week’s CAL installment?  Let’s get started, and don’t forget we’re using US terms!

Last week we left off with row 70:

cal88

rows 71-74

Repeat the mirrored chevron pattern.  Click here for the original instructions.  Here’s all 4 rows:

cal89

row 75

With new color, hdc across.

row 76

With new color, dc across.

row 77

With new color, hdc across.

row 78

With new color, dc across.  Here’s what it’ll look like:

cal90

And that’s all for this week!  I managed to get a full shot of my blanket, although the color got a bit washed out:

cal91

I hope everyone is still enjoying the CAL, and I hope you’re keeping up with weaving in your ends!  😉

The pictures you’re all posting on facebook and Ravelry are great — it’s so cool to see everyone progressing!  The links to those are in the right-hand sidebar, as are some new buttons/links that will take you to each individual week.  It was requested by a participant and I agree that it should make things easier on you all.

Oh and one of the participants also set up a Ravelry pattern page (thank you!) so you can add it to your projects easily.  Click here for that.  I must apologize to the creator of the page — I had to take down the original picture because that’s not my picture (it is our inspiration picture but it belongs to this blog and I didn’t want it to seem like I was claiming that that picture was mine).  I really appreciate you making the page though — it was a big help!

That should be all for this week.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

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sewing and a belated link

August 1, 2013 by 13 Comments

Hey everyone!  I have a bit of a different post for you today.  I’ve been doing some sewing and wanted to share it with you.

As you can guess, working on a food truck is very hot.  Working outside the food truck for hours in the sun is also very hot.  Appropriate attire is a bit tough to figure out — if you wear a shirt you’ll need an undershirt to keep your sweat from showing through, which works but also makes you a bit hotter.  Dresses are ideal for standing outside (inside the truck you need to stick with the shirts), but there is the problem of wind.  I was nearly discommoded by a strong breeze a couple of weeks ago, but I caught the skirt before it flew up.  Here’s the dress, which as you can see is a bit short, meaning the problem is likely to happen often:

sewing dress

That close call reminded me of something I’d heard a long time ago about sewing things into the hem of a dress to weigh it down just a bit and keep it from blowing up.  The best options I could think of were cheap chain necklaces or small fishing weights.  The fishing weights were really cheap, so I went with those:

sewing weights

They actually don’t weigh very much (although heavier options are available), but since the fabric is so thin I didn’t want to weigh it down too much and make it look weird.  I went to my handy dandy sewing box, which my mom used to use:

sewing box

Using navy thread, I hand-sewed a fishing weight every 5 inches along the hem of the dress:

sewing done

Testing it out today revealed that the fishing weights do indeed help with breezes, but are still not effective against stronger gusts of wind.  I’m debating on getting another pack (they’re only about $1.50) and sewing more in.  It took such a long time though, working with such tiny things and making sure that they were securely attached, that I’m not up to doing more right now.

The second thing I wanted to mention today is a bit belated.  Over a week ago, Rachel from The Little Room of Rachell made a guest post on another blog about how to crochet if you are left-handed.  Being right handed myself, I never really thought of how troublesome it would be to try to learn as a leftie from right-handed instructions (which pretty much everything is), but now I see that it would definitely be nice to have some instruction.  I just wanted to link to her post so you can see it, if you haven’t already.  The post is on the blog Slugs on the Refrigerator; click here for the post!  I had actually never seen that blog before, so I subscribed immediately — it looks great!

That’s all for today, thanks for stopping by!  The next CAL post is already scheduled, so get ready for Saturday!

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