Bachelorette Invites

When your best friend asks you to help coordinate the bach party, you do it.

For years now, my sister and I have been stationary makers extraordinaire. We share a love of making things yourselves and thriftyness. Sorry, but hallmark is expensive. When you have a lot of family members with birthdays, it adds up.

I wanted to mass produce my own invites without having to draw the same picture 20 times. Can anyone say “Michaels!”?? Away I went. Fact, Micheals does NOT sell stamp making kits. I bought a piece of balsa wood and foam piece. Cut to the chase, foam piece doesn’t work. Balsa wood does.
I drew out my picture, traced it and then used an exacto knife to trace the drawing. Then I took some carving knives and carefully indented over the drawing. Then I stamped and dropped it on a card. Done.
See below, post crafty.

Back to the Basics….again from the shared blog

When Sara and I first started this blog, I suggested that we trade off weekly blogging entries. We can’t expect a book deal without having blogs first. Her response was “Mimi, I am pretty busy, I don’t know if I can blog every other week.” Now look at her, out blogging me. I better get with it. I do admit I had a little bit of blogger’s block. What to blog about, I don’t exactly knit a new project every 2 weeks, a girl as other things to do! Sara thought maybe I should do a blog about the basics of knitting. So here we are. Back to the basics, which as with most things in life makes me think of music. Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure whilst reading my blog.

My most recent entries have been my latest and greatest projects, which to a knitter starting out could understandably be intimidating or it could not, who knows. In any event, I want to share with the world wide web community my favorite knitting sites. These are the sites which helped me fall in love with the craft of knitting.

I was living in NE Portland when I re-visited knitting…quick shout out to the ladies of 4214. I had known how to crochet since my Mom taught me in the third grade. Our joint projects were to say the least, interesting. There was a little knitting store about a mile from where I lived, one of the lovely ladies who worked there shared with me her blog and some knitting sites when I told her I was ready to try knitting again. Until that point, I was the crocheter, loyal and hooked on it. A side note about knitting stores: 90% of the time when you go into any locally owned knitting store any one of the people there are more than happy to help you find a pattern, yarn, and needles needed to make your project a reality. They want you to know the same joy they find in knitting.

I hustled home and looked up this. To this day, she still inspires me. She offers free patterns for all knitting level. And her patterns are easy to read. Not much else to say, she’s my knitting/blogging hero.

The how-to website that is AWESOME. This site has videos for every style of knitting, it makes learning to knit super easy and has videos when you’re ready to try out new techniques like socks or yarn overs for lace.

Okay, I’ve showed my inspiration and how-to site. Get yourself some yarn and needles, make a scarf. Want more? Below are my favorite pattern sites.

Here is a site that I have used for free. I have found that most books out there have maybe 2 cute patterns out of about 25. I have made the fair isle hat and I’m about done with the spring time bandit. SUPER cute projects.

Of course, any knitter/crocheter will agree ravelry is a great online knitting community. Just be careful, a lot of the patterns are poorly written and some are not free. ANNNNND this one;
I find is more quantity over quality, but good.

As always, check out your local library for knitting books.

Save up your money and blow it on the yarn. Being a snob is bad, but being a yarn snob is not.

Gauge This!

Zo, like any obsessed knitter, craft enthusiast, sewer, addict if you will, I peruse the Internet ogling other’s work and patterns, preferably FREE patterns. Every so often you find lurve at first sight, for me it was This pattern is Selbu, a Norwegian style. I found the yarn and needles, size 2 and 0. I was giddy, excited…you get the picture. I wanted to knit the hat so I could wear it yesterday. (Here’s me still learning about patience.);Here is where I tell you to check you gauge: check your gauge. On any knitting and crochet pattern you’ll find the yarn, the needles, the finished size, the notions, and the gauge. The gauge will tell you for every 4 inches, your knitted yarn (typically a stockinette stitch), will yield so many rows and stitches. It gives you an idea, if you knit too tight, too loose, or you knit juuuuust right. It may just be a matter of changing your needles or adjusting your stitch count. (If your pattern says cast on 10 stitches, but you knit too tight or small, then you may want to cast on more.) It depends. Hopefully that makes sense, once you do it you’ll see.

The kind of shawl your Grandma would make and you’d want

Recently, I attempted my first lace shawl. I had been wanting to attempt lace for sometime now. I bought my yarn at my favorite yarn store in Portland, before we embarked North to Alaska. I was waiting for the yarn to get spun into a nice ball, so I read through some knitting books. I put one down and wondered where the author lived. A couple of moments later, the owner asked another customer if she would like her new knitting book (the one I was just looking at) signed by the author. The author just happened to be 6 feet away…spinning MY YARN! I knew the yarn would serve me well, at least I hoped it would, it was spun by a knitting celebrity.

I found the pattern in my knitting magazine. Here’s the link.

People ask me how long and how many hours, it takes to knit something. Its nearly impossible to say how many hours it takes. I am certain the same can be said for any craft. I will say this piece took hours and hours and days and days. I was obsessed, I wanted to stay home and knit. I was itching to see the finished piece, off the needle and around moi.

I found that this kind of knitting takes patience. Patience not to rush it, if you mess up, you go back and fix it before you go on. Patience to count your stitches. And patience to finish it so you can see your accomplishment.
Here are the photos of the blocking process and then the after. Blocking is a beast, (along with “weaving in your ends” and “buttons”, those deserve their own blog).

One of things I love about knitting is thinking about how this is such an old craft. I think about how a woman passes her craft on to her daughter, I think about how a lace shawl, much like the one I made, may have been passed on to a daughter again and again. Each time you wear it, you add to the memory and you think about the person before you that wore it. What she was doing when she wore it?

When I knit and crochet, I sometimes think about my Grandma Mildred. Who taught her to knit? Why did she like to knit? Sure knitting is kind of an old lady craft, but whatever, have you seen my Grandma Mildred? Wicked tough lady. Knitting is about counting your stitches, knowing your gauge, how much yarn to use, what size of needle…starts to get super technical, right? But then all of THAT turns into something beautiful. Suhweetness.

I still have yet to wear my shawl in public, it’ll happen soon I’m sure. I had a lot of fun knitting it. It took me a long time, but I would do it again of course.

Old blog, first entry.

Here is the first blog. Saved up a lot of photos of past projects which will get posted soon. Stay tuned. Mary