Tag Archives: market bag

Knitting AND beer updates

Beer, knitting, , , , ,

A rare occurrence – something to say about both of the topics of this blog at once. Alas, I have not yet figured out how to knit beer. BUT… Redbeard and I just took possession of a kegerator (did I just say that?) – thus completing our transformation from wine snobs in our 20s to frat boys in our 30s.

In hindsight, it was inevitable that we’d get a kegerator eventually. First, bottling is the least-good part of brewing, particularly because the yeast does insist on having CLEAN bottles to work with. So, now we can keg our own brews, which I am already looking forward to. Second, two of our three local breweries, including the one just a few miles away, don’t offer a lot of their brews in bottles. And our LBS (local beer store) stopped doing growlers recently.

No home brew yet, but you can’t leave a kegerator empty. Even though I’m new to this, I know that’s just not right. So, Redbeard went out yesterday and bought a keg of Swamphead’s Cottonmouth, which is one of my favorite summer beers. Light, but still full of tasty goodness. We made fish and chips for dinner, because, well – if there was ever a dinner that went with beer, this is it. But, we just got a lot of foam instead of actual beer. The crack team of experts we consulted (i.e. the tubes) suggested that the beer was too warm or over-pressured (perhaps this makes the beer too anxious?). The beer did seem a little warm, so we adjusted the pressure and will see tonight. With much willpower we resisted the urge to have beer for breakfast. Though, now that we have a kegerator, all things seem possible.

KNITTING! I have learned a very important new thing. Don’t tuck in your loose ends until you are 100% sure that you will not need them ever again. Which for me means do not tuck until 5 minutes before you give the project to its intended recipient. Luckily, I am a crappy tucker, and so it was irritating but not impossible to untuck as I frogged the handles on my felt bag project.

More happily, I have also just got Sandra McIver’s new Knit, Swirl! book and have been drooling over it, trying to maintain some sense of perspective on my knitting speed and free time (I found five sweaters in five minutes that I want to make for five people). I am torn between knitting one for myself first (selfish, but only I will have to suffer any mistakes) and knitting one for someone I love (who will thus have to love the sweater regardless of any mistakes). As far as I can tell the technique and pattern itself seems very straightforward – I will have to learn a couple new things, including how to cast on one billion stitches and how to join them into a round without twisting. But, this seems very doable, even for my meager skills.

So, I am knitting like crazy on my Magic Thief scarf (almost done!) so that I can justify starting a new project. Which I can do with an endless supply of beer to sustain me.

An analogy

knitting, , , ,

I’ve decided that knitting has some important similarities to baking. Actually, I’m sure that there are lots and lots of similarities, as I think about it just now. But, the one – the key one – that matters right now is that if you’re going to go off-recipe, you need to think through all the other things that might need adjusting to deal with your crazy off-recipe plans.

So – I’m making another felted bag and decided to modify the same pattern I’ve used before. I wanted to make the bag oblong instead of circular, though, and change the sizing a bit, so I knew that I’d end up with a different number of stitches. No problem. When I got to the point last week where I needed to start the handles, I got out a pencil, counted my stitches and worked out how to adjust the pattern.

The circular bag pattern calls for K25 and BO25 back and forth, so that you have four patches of 25 stitches awaiting four spiffy handle straps to be knitted on them, which will then be paired and kitchener stitched together for two handles. That equals (carry the 1, cross the ‘t’…) 200 stitches. But my oblong bag only had 152 stitches, so I dutifully recalculated – I wanted the handles to be the same width, so I shrunk the BO stitches to accommodate 150 instead of 200. I dithered a little about having the smaller gap, but decided it would be good. So, off I went…. I do the first the first handle strap. Ta Da! I do the second and then stop to think about whether I want to attach this strap to the one that I just knitted because… (anyone see where this is going?) I want the handles to be oriented like a tote bag, and so I need to make sure that the right… straps… are stitched… togeth- oh, crap.

Yep – I’d kept the equal spacing of the circular bag pattern. So, I’ve got bag straps that just sort of randomly sprout up around the bag. I have seriously considering just rolling with it, and having a crazy freak bag that only a mother could love. But, no… I’ll frog it back down the rim tonight and try again. This time I think I’ll use a calculator… (because that is clearly the problem here, nothing to do with my logic-type thinking abilities)

Success!

knitting, ,

The market bag is drying on the rack (that sounds so much more professional than “my son’s plastic toy shopping basket balanced precariously on top of his plastic toy microphone stand).

It’s almost there, and it looks like the re-felting worked! (I ran it two more times through – for a total of four complete “quick wash” hot-cold cycles.)

Here’s the close up:

And, the bag in its final felted glory:

It’s weird, though – I deliberately used the same type of yarn for the green and yellow so they would felt the same, but I think that the stitching must matter because the sides are definitely more felted than the bottom. I’m already planning to do another one – making the sides and handles longer.

Felting questions remain

knitting, , ,

So, I may have been subject to irrational exuberance yesterday – upon closer inspection this morning I realize that I can still see some stitch definition in the felted bag. There’s no doubt that it’s felted, but it’s not felted-beyond-all-reason-felted, which I was hoping for.

I’m going to look online to see if people have had success with further felting even after something is mostly dried. I won’t be all that disappointed if this is as good as it’s going to get – I’m still pretty happy with the bag! But… if I could felt it further….

And, for my next trick, I’m going to turn this lump of fuzz into a scarf:

Redbeard and I were convinced that this had to be roving until the nice lady at the yarn store patiently showed us how, yes indeed, it was really yarn.

Felting success!

knitting, ,

Yes, it’s true. I am a felter.

The bag is still drying – I’ll get pics once it’s closer to dry. But, either my expectations are low, or this felting thing is not so hard after all.  Can’t wait to use this bag (and start working on the next felting project – a glasses case for Redbeard… though in this weather I should be thinking about a nice cloche hat…)

I know Kung Fu, er- Kitchener Stitch

knitting, , ,

Here’s the pre-felted final bag in all its non-felted glory:

The bottom looks only mildly screwy, especially from a comfortable distance:

The pattern actually deliberately causes those raised stitches. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it – and in this case it’s actually true!)

I learned a bunch with this pattern – I learned the wrong way to roll a ball of yarn (unless you like unpicking wooly knots), I learned that knitting in the round mostly means not having to purl (I like knitting in the round), and I learned the ssk stitch. All very cool. But the best thing, bar none, was I learned the kitchener stitch:

Redbeard swears I actually said out loud “Holy crap – it works!”

Now, I get to go learn how to felt in a front-loading washing machine. After some googling, I’ve decided to follow this set of instructions that appear highly rated by other felters. So, as much as it kills me – I’m not felting yet until I make a test patch.

So close!

Going round and round

knitting, ,

My local knitting shop finally opened. I dragged Redbeard along so we could go to lunch together afterwards, figuring it would be pretty quiet. Boy, was I wrong! Apparently there were lots of ladies who were itching to get their hands on more yarn. (Maybe some new year’s resolutions being started?)  Plus, the shop was stuffed (over stuffed!) with all kinds of knitting things. (Gotta take my mom the next time she comes to town!)

So, Redbeard and I tried very hard not to step on anyone’s toes (unsuccessfully, on my part, I’m afraid) and get some yarn for the market bag project. I wanted to do a leafy green with brown accent, but I couldn’t find a single type of yarn that had both a great green and a great brown. So, I went with the perfect green and a nice, rich yellow.

I really should be working on the things they pay me for, but I couldn’t resist getting a start on this whole knitting in the round thing. The squeamish may want to look away for the next picture, though I think it could be going *much* worse:

My practice tries with starting an 8 stitch knitting in the round (with another yarn) were unmitigated disasters, so I’m actually kind of happy with this. Plus, the worst of the messiness will get obscured with the felting (right… right?). I will try to sew the tail in tohelp make it more solid, too.

But, first, back to “real” work….

(Isn’t that green gorgeous? That will be the main body of the bag and handles. The yellow is the bottom and a small part of the handle.)