if you're here, you probably have some questions.

( allow me to answer some of the more popular ones for you... )

i hope that's gotten you off to a pretty good start as to what you'll find here in this blog. the side bar to the left has some links to some of the more popular entries, making navigation a touch easier. if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment here and i'll get back to you promptly.

keep knitting!

tonks

i've finished both the cabled silk drawstring bag and the alpaca underwear (soooo not posting pictures of those on, but they are a delightful fit and very, very comfy. i highly recommend them to any knitter. hell, they're a good reason to learn to knit.) and have returned once again to the massive laceweight mohair bridal skirt.

but first, you want pictures, right? *grins*

no pattern for this little bag, i just did it on the fly. i'm writing up the basics for an upcoming (and hopeful!) book, however, so if all goes well, a pattern will be available. it may not be this exactly, but it will be a cabled drawstring bag with a ruffled top.



the undies took me longer than i would care to admit because i kept messing up the second leg. i'm rather unhappy with the book these are from ("wedding knits") in general, as i think the patterns could be much better written, with clearer instructions and better technique for shaping. i also dislike how the book uses only (and only) one company's yarn, not providing any weight information to substitute without deeper investigation. of course, that's not difficult to do, but i think that a pattern should tell you what weight yarn as well as the yardage of the total project (not just how many balls of what yarn, i mean.) upfront. it's something i try to do in my own patterns.

anyway, while i love these, i think that they could be better designed. i might just have to do that myself. :)

and now? onto the little bits about the bridal skirt.

this, you may remember, is the giant skirt out of laceweight mohair. it's now about 8 or 10 inches long, and i worked my way through another increase section last night. my goal for the day (after and in between laundry, dishes and mopping the floor, that is) is to make it the remaining 7 inches to the next increase section. i'm using the fibonacci number sequence as a rule of where the increase rows will be placed, so the skirt won't be ridiculously long, but it's still a hell of a skirt insofar as fullness goes. currently, there are about 500 sts on the needles, and that's just after the second increase. all said and done, there will be approx... *does the math in her head, lending to her being totally wrong with this statement* 5,000 stitches to bind of on the bottom edge? hrm. that seems like a lot (seems like! ha! *falls over dead*) but it also sounds about accurate.

oy.

i've gotten myself into something, no?

tonks

...a bottle of lipton extra sweet i was dumb enough to leave on the end table fell down into a yarn basket, leaked, and soaked into 8 balls of 100% silk yarn. we're blaming the cat for this, as well as myself for leaving the tea there, capped or not. but mostly we're blaming the cat.

so... yeah. shitty morning. but, the good news is thus-

i spent the last hour rehanking the silk and hand washing it gently in the sink. after washing as best i could, i left it to bloom in the hot water and put on a very large pot of regular black tea (no sugar this time. *facepalm* of course it had to be a bottle of the sweetest sweet tea ever commercially sold that spilled all over my cream silk.) on the burner to steep. i'm hoping that tea staining the yarn will take out the mottled texture that the sweet tea has stained my silk with, and i've always wanted to tea-dye yarn. just... you know... not because i'm trying to clean up a yarncentric homicide attempt from the cat.

*it should be known that "the cat" is henceforth "the cat" and no longer "mclovin". it's not that we've changed his name, but that "the cat" is easier to say when your words are dripping with disdain. go ahead. just say each of them out loud, and you tell me which sounds more disdainful. it should be further noted that later today, when he comes mewing up for affection and does that kitty roll flop belly thing into my lap, all playful paws and purring? he will then once again be "mclovin", or if he gives me a nuzzle and maybe a kiss, "my mclove bug".*

tonks

the progress on the knitted wedding goes ever onward, and while the theme of the event is obvious, it's also, imho, rather dry. outside of all of the pieces being knit, there's no real theme outside of color.

the cake is, however, quite themed, and i'm debating on pushing that theme around in other places. the cake, as i mentioned earlier, is a twist on the house from foster's home for imaginary friends, complete with little cake figures of 12 and i, hanging out with our own personal imaginary friends. mine is a squiggly ball of yarn, and his is a game boy playing penguin buddy.

i've got some patterns lying around for little stuffed critters and creatures. some of them even already have formal attire in their makeups, and i'm thinking of knitting these little guys up to display on the buffet tables, on the knitting tables and around the store in general. little hand knit imaginary friends to attend the event.

i've even found a spectacular spider pattern on etsy that i believe i'll be converting to hold something. i don't know what yet, but those legs are wire, and could be reinforced to support a dish of cards or mints or something... maybe he'll clutch the programs. :) who knows. but he'll be there. isn't he delightful?

i'm also starting to accept that the locale of our event could likely not handle the influx of interested people. while this saddens me, i do have to make some hard decisions about what is happening with this event. it is, first and foremost, a vow renewal for my husband and i, and secondly, a reason for a bunch of people to knit together. however, the interested people from all over america have made it loud and clear that they want in, too. i am very grateful for this, but i don't know if i can actually do that.

a good knitterly friend of mine suggested a compromise. what if i were to keep the original event small, as we had intended to begin with, and then rented a space at the maryland sheep and wool festival the following spring to show the knits and maybe sell some of the patterns i created along the way? this way, we could not slam the little yarn shop with interested peoples, and we could also appease those who wished to "attend" the event.

good idea/bad idea?

what do you think?

so i gotta say... it was awesome. we had about an hour to hammer out the basic details of the cake (it's set in stone now, and i'll tell you about the design soon...) and get our price quote, which all went pretty smoothly. i didn't actually get to talk to duff, but as you can see above, i did get a pic of him. :)

and you want more pics, right? can do, baby.

( charm city cakes below! )

we brought both of the design concepts we had to the table, and ended up being able to afford our favorite of the two. wanna know what it is? well... go here. see the pink foster's inspired house? that's my cake. we're having a 3-d rendering of the house done, complete with 12 and tonks minis sitting on the front porch with their imaginary friends. 12's will be a penguin, and they will each be playing with game boys tethered together by a little black cord. mine will be a ball of yarn floating suspended over my shoulder and above me from fishing line, and i'll be knitting with this yarn. he'll be all crazy like, with googly eyes like this: Oo

i can't wait to see how it looks!

anyway, they gave us six different samples to try, and every single one of them was utterly delicious. it was very difficult to pick a favorite, but we did! our cake will be "blackberry and sour cream", which was so incredible that i feel i may never be able to eat another slice of cake without comparing it to this for the rest of my life. this cake has ruined me for other cakes. seriously, man. game over.

in short, my lovies... it. was. amazing.

tonks

(xposted to my personal journal)

the appointment is tomorrow evening, and i'm all kinds of nervous! i have two concepts prepared (well... mostly prepared... i'm still unsure as to how much "prepared" i'm supposed to bring to share with the rest of the class...) and for the love of all things holy, i don't know which we'll do. my theory is that we'll run with whichever is less expensive.

gods i hope it's ok to have two ideas to briefly pitch.

oy, am i nervous. but at the end, i get cake samples. that can't be a bad thing...

tonks

i have, according to my little pink counter thing on my desktop, 613 days, 7 hours and 19 minutes to finish the knitted wedding.

it seems like enough time when i think about it like that, but the reality is... erm... probably not so much. i spent last evening trying to work out some of the three dimensional roses for the overskirt from that habu silk i can't seem to get enough of, and while they are going well, they are so very small and tight that it really hurts my hands to work on them. what i really want to be doing is that big cabled bridal shawl with the hood, but i've lost the book it goes to.

not fun.

so... what will i knit today? i do have that pair of underwear to finish, and then there's always the skirt that never ends...

back to work, woman!

the wedding knits have tapered to a crawl in the last month as the life and vitality of spring have picked up. i'm the hairstylist for a local movie on the weekends, and my afternoons for the past week or so have been filled with "flipping" my back yard and turning it into something lovely rather than the frightening hole of weeds it was not but weeks ago.

and i've been knitting socks and olives. not terribly exciting.

but the boy cut undies from wedding knits? now those are cute as hell! i'm half way done, having just finished casting off before bed last night. this afternoon i'll work more on 12's new socks. yes, new. we both adore the argyle, but they're (stupidly, and totally my fault) made with a wool acrylic blend that's a bit too bulky and unbreathing for his shoes. so now his argyle socks of awesome are his "house" socks, and i'm knitting him a stripy pair from a superwash merino in a much smaller gauge. the bad news? that's wasted time. the good news? i get to put argyle elsewhere in the wedding. he's gettin a vest. :)

the skirt, while slow, progresses. one apparently can't knit 4 plus miles of yarn in a night or a month. it's about a foot and a half long now, making it the worlds shortest and sheerest mini skirt ever made. of course, it will be longer. i promise. that last thing on earth the world needs to see is me in a sheer mohair mini. *shudders*

more to come, my faithful followers!

tonks

episode 11 of unhinged knitter is live!

that's right! i got the pattern for the glass covers earlier this week and dove right in. i've got a long history with thread crochet, so this is not a difficult pattern for me, but the size of hook and thread i'm using are doing one hell of a number on my hands. i fear i may have gone too far today, doing both fans pictured below, two roses and three of the leaves. (not pictured here.) i've been irritated at my lack of progress as of late, but that does not mean i should bust of out of the box and overdo work with thread crochet. cause... yanno... that'll put me right back into my physical therapist's angry list. and, considering i think my pt (her name is deb.) could have taken down every single one of the boys who played in the super bowl today without breaking a sweat, her angry list is one of the last places on earth i ever want to be.

but you want pictures. :)




i love the way the roses work up. the layering happens in rounds, starting from the inside out. each new petal layer is worked in the back of the previous on a string of scalloped chains that you sneak in underneath the previously worked row. it's rather genius, actually. i'll be using this pattern for some of the roses on the bridal skirt, too. (that last picture is the back of the rose, where you can see what i mean by the layering process.) i'll also be putting some of those copper toned beads in the middle of the flowers. i think it will be perfect.

many people think that thread work takes forever, but in pieces like jewelry or small bits like this? it's super fast. it hurts my hands like hell, but it's not going to take days to do. in fact, i was able to do one of those fans pictured in about an hour. of course, i've got crochet speed skillz and all, but still... i think the most it would take someone who knew how to do the stitches is an afternoon. to me, that qualifies it as a fast project. :)

tonks

so, that garden of alla shawl? i'll give you three guesses what happened to the most recent incarnation of the bridal over skirt, and the first two don't count.

frogged. yet again. i simply couldn't get past the upper lace repeat section was so strange to me that i just could not figure it out. it was beyond irritating, and in an effort to keep from flinging seasilk to all points of the room, i frogged it and will begin again with yet another pattern. i've found a LOVELY piece in "lace style" that i adore. i'm hoping that this is the last time i start this over again.

*sigh*

tonks

ladies and gentleman, i bring you one finished leg warmer. silly of me, no? to only show you one leg? well, considering how often i don't show any leg at all, getting one is a bit of a stretch in the first place. basically i wanted to show off the project that has eaten three weeks of my time even though i have given it constant reassurance.

i'm still in a bit of shock as to how quickly this project ate my sock yarn! i had two balls of this, and it disappeared far faster than i expected. the pattern calls for over 700 yards, so it's not that we're being lied to here- it's just that it's a bit disturbing to watch such a light weight yarn simply *poof*!! and... it's gone. i expect that from bulky weights- not sock weights.



because i went up needle sizes (i'm a plus sized gal, and the measurements for the "over the knee" section of the project were for... well... not me) i had some fear that the finished result would be too long, and that i may have had to modify the lace pattern simply to keep the finished blocked result from being longer than my entire leg. (one could surmise that i was having a gauge issue... but it also had to fit over my thigh. take it as you like.) but, as you can see, my "thigh high" result worked out great! i plan on wearing these with garters under the bridal gown. they'll be perfect! plus, the extra length of them being "footless stockings" as well as slouchy awesome leg warmers means i don't have to knit those fishnets like i had been planning/dreading.



i love them up, but i also love them down. because of my sexah plus size thighs, the ribbing around when slouched does not have the grip on my upper calf that it needs to stay on my upper calf. i'm thinking i'll run some thin elastic around the ribbing every half inch or so to give it some more bounce. maybe that'll help them stay up when i wear them down.



this is the "mock cable" dealy between the zig zag lace. it's not a cable... it's not even really a mock cable. so what does one call this? i call it "pretty".

overall, i'm both excited and nervous about doing the second leg. this project was far more time consuming than i had anticipated, and it ended up being one of those projects that, much like a lost puppy, needs constant care and reassurance. i worked on this practically day and night, and it still took me three weeks to complete. (needy bitch... *grumbles*) but, on the plus side, i think it's gorgeous. as soon as the remaining yardage i need arrives in the mail, i'll be off to the races again. perhaps now that i've done it once, the second leg will go faster? here's hoping...

tonks

meet the anniversary waltz glass covers from annie's crochet newsletter. (issue 65, published in the fall of 1993) what's awesome about this is that the crochet flowers are separate, and one could bedeck the covers as they saw fit. i'm thinking of beads as well as some of the flowers. what sucks is that this newsletter was published 16 years ago.

the real beauty of this is that i found a copy of this on ebay this afternoon. hopefully i'll have it in about a week, and if i can find size 20 crochet thread (locally all i can ever find is size 10) i'll crank these out pretty quickly. the question now is do i do this just for 12 and myself, or do i make covers for all of the glasses?

hrm.

tonks

i've been toying around in my brain about what do do under all of this knitting. the bridal skirt (under skirt- the mohair one?) is lovely, yes, but it's also very sheer. i needed to find some kind of slip, and i have had stupid amounts of trouble finding a slip that was floor length, let alone without that slit up the side or the back. in fact, most of the long slips i've found thus far have stopped at the knees or the calves. no good.

i had posted in the knitting community about adding a crochet trim to the bottom of the skirt, and the slip conversation came up in the comments. at first, i'd simply written off the idea of putting anything besides a basic long slip under the skirt because the skirt was originally designed very differently. it was a bit of an a-line, yes, but not full enough to warrant a crinoline.

um... yeah. it's full now! so why am i killing myself trying to find the perfect slip when i already have a bridal crinoline upstairs in my closet? in fact, i have to go and pull it out to be sure, but i'm fairly certain that it is either already floor length or very close to it. there is no reason that i couldn't simply attach the crochet edging i have planned to the bottom of the bridal petticoat and call it a day. accept that the petticoat/crinoline is white. like, holy shit white.



yeah, yeah... some people come down on rit dye. it's the poor man's dye, they say. well, how the hell else can one afford to purchase the 20 miles worth of yarn to knit an entire wedding if they don't cut costs where they can? (as a side? the book "101 things to do with ramen noodles" is a thing of beauty. i know that didn't seem relevant, but trust me. it totally was.) so as soon as i can dig my bridal bits from out of the bedroom closet (or possibly the attic... who knows for sure) and run to my trusty walmart, my bright (and frighteningly) white nylon petticoat will become my chocolate brown petticoat. i think that the deep, rich cocoa brown under the creamy mohair will give just the visual impact i want without making me wash out with all the creams and ecru's i've got going on in this gown. plus someone once tried to convince me that brown and pink was sophisticated. i laughed in their face, but here's a chance for me to give it a try. what with my naturally pink hair and all. *shrugs*

perhaps i can get my husband to swing by the walmart tonight. there may be a science experiment in my laundry room before my head hits my pillow.

tonks

here, my faithful few, is the progress of the last two days on the garden of alla shawl/ my bridal over skirt.

i'm loving the seasilk i'm using for this piece of the wedding. it's slick, sexy and absolutely lovely to the touch. it's also incredibly strong! what i really love is the inner glow the yarn seems to have. do you see in the first picture how the ambient light from the screen of the laptop dances in the yarn? it's like it's made from spun gold. i adore it.



even though this is fine laceweight mohair, and the halo does pick up the ambient light nicely (and it's just so very soft!) this yarn does not have the shine and sheen of the seasilk. i've really got a soft spot in my heart for silks, and the above seasilk is indeed fine. the mohair has it's own life, though. it's fussier to knit with, but worth the effort. the thread actually floats down like a dandelion puff as i pull it from the ball. i can hardly believe how light this yarn is! it will, or so i hope, feather around me in soft, graceful arcs. i'm basing this skirt's pattern on the original bridal skirt from the knit wedding dress pattern provided by interweave press. (pdf link.)



see how it floats? this is why we adore laceweight mohair. simply lovely, and a very, very simple knit. stockinette on us size 10ish needles, increasing as knit one, yarn over. couldn't be simpler. it's just... well... a LOT of knitting. over 4 miles of yarn, just for this skirt alone. :)

it's coming along, of course. slow and steady wins the knitted wedding.

tonks

i just got off of the phone with mary ellen from charm city cakes out of baltimore, and we've got a scheduled tasting for the end of march. this means that i need to have what i want figured out by then, and i think i'll just go with the only idea i ever had to begin with. which, of course, means more knitting.

when the current skirt project is off the needles, i'll pick up some spare laceweight (i've no doubt i'll have leftovers in many forms.) and i will knit up large swatches of the different types of lace used, including the eyelet feathers from the pretty as a peacock shawl (my train), the snow peacock edging (my veil) and the garden of alla that i'm knitting right now. i'll also include the english mesh lace i'm using for the sleeves and the leaves in the cuffs that i knit from the hemp/linen yarn. i hope that this will provide enough visual for them to pipe a mimicking of the lace onto the cake, though i still wonder how they will make the cake look as though it were knit. perhaps we can come up with some texture stamp they can push into the fondant to make it look like knitted stockinette stitches before they pipe the lace on?

maybe i can even find a rubber scrapbooking stamp like that.

tonks

even the top hat, which is in it's third run, has not been frogged or redone (or redesigned) as often as the over skirt i am knitting for myself. i've finally narrowed it down, and i'm using the garden of alla shawl from luckyfind's ravelry shop because i think that the lines the lace creates are reminiscent of the stalks of peacock feathers. since there are eye feathers in the train, i thought this would be a nice touch. :) hurray for peacocks!

i'm using that seasilk that showed up at my house (and my mother swears she didn't send it!) from some dear heart (i suspect my darling husband. i love him.) and it's knitting up beautifully. i imagine i'll be standing there, renewing my wedding vows and rubbing my legs and hips like some exotic whore simply because i won't be able to stop touching this yarn.

it's not far enough along to warrant pictures, but i'll be working on it for most of the day, so perhaps there will be some before the night is out. we shall see!!

tonks

even with the time line still two years out, i have fears of not finishing on time. the dress is easily the most difficult and time consuming thing i'm making for this wedding, and it's not anywhere near done. in fact, i've had to rip back so many times in the last year that i fear i may simply never finish the pieces!

well, at least my little meez chick looks cute knitting naked. me? probably not so much. :)

tonks

it's been a very long time since i've knit with a boucle yarn. this is spinnerin's "suzanne", a vintage yarn that is no longer in production. from what i can find, this particular yarn is from the late 40's or early 50's. it's 100% virgin wool, and makes a nice thick and thin boucle. pretty pretty!

i'm using a basic shrug pattern that i found for free online, and of course, am making great modifications to it. i can't ever just knit as i'm told...

hopefully, i'll make some good distance. all told, it is not a large project, so i should have no trouble finishing this one fairly quickly. not like, say, the six feet of cabled shawl that is sill under 2 feet long, or the bridal skirt that marks less than four inches in length. *sigh*

i'll get there. :)

tonks

i've broken my promise of not knitting for christmas (i knew i wouldn't make it...) and have spent the last few days trying to do a hat for my husband (it's so much more than just a hat, though! it's a cthulhu ski mask, complete with 10 stuffie tentacles. madness incarnate.) and two pairs of baby socks for my mom. :) the hat was finished last night, and the socks are getting there. i have a hard time with socks. :)

i had swatched out and cast on for the bridal skirt, though. about three inches into the waist band, i sneezed and dropped a massive amount of stitches. i gave up the ghost of trying to fix them all (it was a very hard sneeze) and frogged it. when i pulled it off the circs, it was HUGE. i mean, just ridiculously huge. obscene. it was at LEAST twice the size of my waist, possibly three times the size. since i'm no skinny minnie, this is rather large indeed. adjustments were made, and far fewer stitches were cast on this time. :) less than half, to be truthful. the skirt seems to be better for it. :)

first, i must finish my mom's socks. then it's back to the skirt and the bridal shawl.

oh, i almost forgot! i got an email from charm city cakes! they're going to be calling me "shortly" to set up a tasting/interview. sweet! (literally! sweet, sweet cake!)

tonks