The Enchanted Forest Bag - Finished!

So I finally finished and took pictures of The Enchanted Forest Bag that I mentioned back in this post.

I added D-rings to the straps for a little bit of hardware and a pocket on the inside to hold chapstick, change or keys.

I also have a shrug to be listed sometime in the near future (tomorrow or the next day).

And I finished a Hamster Hammock for Delilah that I am thinking about offering custom colors, shapes and sizes for.

What do you think?

Tutorial: Knitting a Picot Edge

Edgings are great ways to embellish an otherwise ordinary project, or even those projects that aren’t ordinary hehe. There are a few ways to do a picot edge, but today I’m going to show you how to a knitted picot edge in the easiest method that I know how.

To make the edge, you can choose to either begin the project with the picot edging, bind off with the picot edging or pick up an already bound off piece and add the edging. The directions after this point are fairly similar but the first row may be different depending on the project. Either way, make sure you have all of the stitches that you want on your needles for the edge.

Knit two rows in stockinette.

On the next row, yarn over and knit two together across all the stitches

Knit another two rows in stockinette.

This next part I kind of fandangled myself after having done a few edgings the “hard” way where you finish the piece then go back and sew the end of the piece together to make the edge. So instead of that, I bind off (or attach while continuing the work, whichever happens to be part of the project, in this case it is attaching while continuing the project) while sewing the edging in place.

This is done on the purl-side. I go through the front of the stitch on the left hand needle as if I’m about to purl then pick up the equivalent stitch that is on the opposite side of the YO rows where I began the first stockinette row for the edging (in this case the cast-on row) and knit the two together.

If I’m binding off at this time I also incorporate that into the work as the stitches are added to the right hand needle. Do this all across the row and you end up with a nice little detail on the edge of your work.

Did you like this tutorial? Did it make sense? What other tutorials would you like to see in the future?

Blog Banners

I've decided its time for my blog to have a "real" banner.

I created these two and don't know which one I should use, what do you think? The first or the second? Or would you switch the fonts? Or change the font colors? Or do something else entirely?

Trimmings

What do you do when you have that piece that is just....ok. Its nice, its functional, its *almost* cool, but its not...quite....there....yet. You know the piece I'm talking about. You may even have more than one of them (I know I do).

Instead of tearing up the whole thing, or frogging it to shreds in frustration, try adding a trim of some kind.

That way, the bulk of your item stays the same, functional, cool piece you created but its not just *almost* cool anymore, its now super cool!

Don't know what kind of trim to use? Something simple, complicated, lacy, ribbed? Come Monday I will post a tutorial for knitting a picot edge for your *almost* cool piece! This will be the first in a series of edges and trimmings. In order for me to know which edges you would like to see, please leave a comment and I'll do my best to give you what you want!

Calculus

So the first week of of the Summer Semester is over.

Chemistry and Calculus will surely be ruling my days for the next eight weeks and I am not exactly looking forward to it. Hopefully I will get to squeeze in some knitting between all the numbers and relax some in order to keep my sanity before the intense Fall semester I have lined up.

It will all be worth it in the end right?

(as always, clicking on the photos will take you to the item in the shop :))

Kitty

So we have a cat?

Yes, its a question. we didn't mean to get a cat, I'm not sure its "ours" per se, but its not anyone else's either....and its at our place?

It used to be another student's cat, but he left Socorro and couldn't take the cat with him so the cat was living with my friend Zita for a while, but Zita's dog scared her so bad she just stayed in the kitchen cabinets and wouldn't come out unless the dog was gone and didn't trust people or anything. So we decided to let it stay at our place and its amazing the turnaround in her personality.

She doesn't hide in the cabinets and the only time she "hides" at all is during the day or when people come over. She comes out and looks for affection, she mrows and we mrow back and then she mrows back and we have a little conversation, she plays a little, stretches out out in the open, she even woke me up this morning so that I would pet her for twenty minutes before my alarm went off. Oh, and she barked? at my neighbor when he was leaving for work this morning.

Maybe this is all normal behavior for a cat, but I haven't exactly owned one since I was a little girl and even then it was a short period of time.

Fiberful Weekend

So this was a very fibrous weekend for me!

I got some knitting done, handpainted some wonderful alpaca yarn that will be going up in SillyLittleYarns later and finished spinning up that purple roving I've had for ages that will make its appearance sometime this week :)

Also, we made salsa yesterday for the first time, and didn't even have a recipe to follow, we just threw stuff together! We will have the recipe and photos on our website if you'd like to see how you can make salsa without plastic too.