Category Archives: Fiber

Two kids’ knitting projects, old and new

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I did two projects recently for the children of the family whose house we stayed in in the Netherlands. The daughter is 6 and the son is (I think) 4.

For the daughter, I made this pink and orange headband (modeled by my son on the promise that I was not taking a IMG_2677picture of HIM, just the headband. He didn’t ask why I wanted a picture of just a headband. What a strange age we live in.) I did have a pattern, though mostly ended up winging it once I realized that the pattern wasn’t working for me. This was knitted flat and then sewn together. In hindsight, I think I should’ve knit it in the round instead. You can’t see it in the picture, and hopefully it will be covered by hair during normal use, but the sewn join is not so great. I’m just not good at sewing yarn. I am good, or at least getting better, at sewing felt, though – which is how I made the flower accent. The pattern called for crocheting the flower (knitting and crocheting in a single pattern, surely the first sign of the apocalypse), but I haven’t found time to learn how to crochet yet.

Speaking of yarn, though, I love the yarn I used, and want to go out and buy a bunch more in colorways that are more my own style. (It’s Natural Ewe in “Tiger Lily”.)

For the son, I decided to play it safe and knit another alligator scarf. My own son loves his, and it is certainly an appropriate reminder of their stay here in Florida. For this I used Berroco’s Comfort yarn, which I like well enough, though I find it is a little slippery to work with.

alligatorScarf2

Winter birds

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I had a lot of fun making these little guys – and discovered that you can, indeed, rubber stamp on felt. I had some craft ink pads lying around from back when I had enough time to actually do crafts on a regular basis (which explains the expedition I needed to take through the closet to find it. I swear I was *this* close to Narnia).

redbird1 greenbird redbird2

The basic idea comes from the current (Dec) issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors. I did my first bird just by eye-balling the pictures of their birds, then laughed when I turned the page and found that they’d actually provided a PATTERN, with INSTRUCTIONS and everything. Luxury.

Anyway, these little guys are super fun to do, and go very, very quickly. I’m already thinking I will have to do an updated version this spring. Blues and yellows, perhaps?

Felt for regular needles, too

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Last year I put together a little sewing kit for myself, after getting tired of having more and more clothes that I couldn’t wear for a missing button or the like. (We have a collection of  random mini-sewing kits that have multiplied over the years, bunny-like, but they hide whenever it is time to come out and play.)

I “splurged” in a few places because I knew that under normal use, I was going to be irritated at best to even need a sewing kit (because buttons have no sense of timing when it comes to randomly popping off one’s clothing), and so maybe having something cute or nice would help soften the blow and make me an ever-so-slightly nicer person during such repair work. So: Sweet little glass jar? Check. Cute little wooden spools? Check. Pretty stork scissors? Check. Cheap plastic insert to hold the needles? Check. Wait, what?

Last week I had a neat idea to replace the cheap plastic insert with a little felt pin cushion attached to the inside of the jar lid. So, after some theraputic stabby-time with my felting needles and an even more satisfying stint with my hot-glue gun, I can now reveal my latest felt adventure:

In order to create a core that was dense enough to hold the needles, even when upside down, I started with a small amount of roving and just stabbed the heck out of it with my largest gauge needle until it was very, very dense and maybe 1/3 the size that it started. (And about half the size of my final pin cushion.) Then, I added layers, carefully shaping the cushion as I went. Finally, I put a light layer around the outside, and using my smallest gauge needle, created a prettier, cloud-like effect.

I’m going to give this a few months of testing, but assuming it continues to work as it does now – I’m claiming victory. And I think I will now even SMILE while sewing rebellious buttons back on. (I’m not making any promises about darning, though. I think “darn” is just not quite a strong enough term to cover it.)

Getting ready to move

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Quick knitting update: I’m working on a lightweight scarf for Redbeard that combines my love of knitting, numbers and codes. But, I have gotten stalled out about 3/4 of the way through with all the packing and cleaning we’re doing to get ready to move back to the US.

Speaking of packing, I just entrusted the good folks at the local post office with lots and lots of these:
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These are fat quarters (always loved that name) that use traditional Dutch patterns. I found them at a fantastic local quilting store – I spent way, way too much money in this place! But, it inspired me to make my daughter a new “grown-up” (i.e. twin-sized) quilt and to replace the baby quilt for my son that we LOST with a bigger quilt (maybe also twin-sized, we’ll see how overambitious I’m feeling).

Felt soap

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Here’s another project I’ve been wanting to try – felted soap. I was inspired when I saw some very pretty ones in a store, though wasn’t quite sure how they were made.

Thank goodness for the internet. I found a great set of instructions here and then I took a couple of small soaps that I’d gotten from our hotel in Paris and tried it out.

The green and yellow one was first, and while it worked, the colors are sort of clumpy. The second one came out much better. It is even easier than the instructions I found made it sound. This particular soap is not very sudsy (though it will eventually work up a froth), and so I want to try other soaps and perhaps a thinner layer of wool. The nice thing about this felted soap so far is that it doesn’t leave a layer of soap goo under it.

Further fun with felt

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Redbeard is just shaking his head, but I’m rather pleased with my most recent adventures with felt. I got it into my head about a week ago that what I needed to do, what I really need to do was, I needed to try to make needle felted tulips. I finally got a chance to give it a try, and am pretty happy this first effort. Of course, I didn’t think to take pictures until I was nearly done, but here is one in-progress picture and the final product:

Bulb flowers are for sale everywhere here, usually in small pots that have just enough soil to let them grow, but not enough to let them grow very large. There are lots of pygmy daffodils here. 🙂 Anyway, my idea was to do the same thing with these felt flowers. So, rather than a vase, they are in a little pot.

The small scale of these was a bit challenging, and I am still thinking about how to best shape the flowers themselves. The thing that I thought would be a problem – having stems that were strong enough to stand upright – turned out to be no problem at all. I figured I’d have to somehow put wire into the stems, but they are easily standing on their own.

Also, I’d like to pretend that I planned for this, but I have to admit that it is sheer dumb luck that I picked tulips instead of some other flower. Because tulips have a naturally thick stem compared to most other flowers, I think my tulips look better than if I had started with, say, roses. In short, chunky is okay here. I think.

The Netherlands also has these traditional tulip vases that have small holes for each individual stem instead of a big opening at the top. I may have to try that for my next set.

Another sheep-based hobby

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Good thing that the Netherlands has all these sheep since I apparently can’t get enough of sheep-based fiber hobbies. Right before we moved, I made a few felt applique projects:

A crown for my son (whose favorite colors are pink and silver, and who wanted a rose crown):

This was a little tricky because I made it while I didn’t have internet access, and so just had to wing it. I convinced him that the flowers were roses, though it is clear that he remains somewhat skeptical. As do I.

A little pouch for my daughter:

And a “magic” pillow (filled with buckwheat hulls) for my son:

I actually made this pillow from a pattern that I sketched myself. I’m really happy with how it came out, though it might’ve been better it I knew more stitches that I could’ve used on the star. Right now I’d just like to get the mattress stitch right on a more frequent basis (ignore that stitch by my lower finger, nothing to see there).

Felt penguin

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Here is my first attempt at a felt creature made from an actual set of instructions:

My fantastic grandmother (the recipient of my earlier alpaca) got me Laurie Sharp’s Wool Pets, which had this pattern, along with a bunch of other equally neat creatures.

I actually made this right after Christmas, but have only gotten to post it now – things have been a little crazy in the lead up to my current status: ex-patriot living The Netherlands. It’s a temporary gig – 5 months. But that’s plenty of time to track down some yarn shops!

Making new friends

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Almost literally in this case…

This little alpaca is my second attempt at needle felting, and I think it went pretty well. This took a little longer than my sheep, but was still a nice project for someone with a short project-attention span (like me). I really, really enjoyed making this, in fact. The only thing that was a little frustrating was getting the wool to cover his feet. I think that this is something that I will just have to get better at with practice. Lots and lots of practice.

Good thing these are small, or I would already be worrying about how they would all fit in my house. Though, in this case I already have a new home in mind for this little fellow …

Not baaaaaaad!

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Sorry, I couldn’t resist. That was a friend of mine’s response to this, my first attempt at needle felting:

This took about an hour or so from start to finish, which included fussing around with the armature (read: pipe cleaner stolen from my children’s craft supplies) and a few false starts figuring out how much wool I needed for each stage of building up the body. Oh, and endlessly poking the legs to get all trace of the armature hidden.

Toward the end, I couldn’t help but feel a little like I was making some sort of demented voodoo doll, and that somewhere there was a poor little sheep thinking it had suddenly developed arthritis and migraines all at the same time.