Yarn in South Korea - No Problem!

I know I have been neglecting this blog. But it is not without good reason. For the good part of February I was preparing to and during March I was moving to South Korea. If you were moving to the other side of the world what would be some of your concerns? What your kids' school would be like? What kind of housing will be available? I was somewhat concerned about those too but if I'm being perfectly honest, and I do try to be, I was really worried about how I would find good yarn.

Well have no fear, within a week I have tracked down two yarn stores that are each within 2 blocks of my apartment and found a local guy selling bags of yarn on the corner by the subway station. I am set.

I haven't made it into the second store. We just found it as we were strolling around looking for a place to eat last night and it was closed when we discovered it. The first is on the way to the subway so I stopped in and took some pictures. The shop owner really doesn't speak English but I had already used Google Translate to translate: "Can I take some pictures? I have a blog."

I'm not sure how that translated but she said yes so I snapped a few of her and her friends. Two were knitting and two were crocheting and she was working on crocheting a purse with a plastic flat yarn.

I stood and watched for a few minutes and then pulled out my iPhone again to translate: "Is that a lesson? May I come back and knit with you when you are not teaching a lesson?" She nodded yes to that so I will return.

I have to wonder what they said after I left. Probably, "What's with the crazy white chick? Don't they have knitting in America?"

I wandered off down the street past the subway to kill some time before I had to go to pick Kayson up from school. I'm glad I did because on the other side of the Jihaeng subway station there was a guy and his wife selling yarn.

A friend of mine had sent me pictures of this same guy but in her pictures the yarn looked cheap and stiff. I was wrong. It was fine and there were nice colors and all kinds of textures. My only concern is that the multi-ply yarns did not seem to have much of a twist to them and may be hard to work with.

His English was minimal but he said $5 for one bag (with 4 balls) and I was trying to tell him I would be back and a passerby realized we were struggling and translated for us.

But that wasn't the last yarn-related event of my day. As we were waiting for the subway home we met one of Kayson's classmates and his family. Take a wild guess what his sister was doing. You have a 50/50 shot!

She was ... Crocheting!! Her mom said she was self taught and when I took a look at her project I could tell nobody had ever told her to chain one between rows. I gave her a bit of help and I could tell she was eager to learn. You have to be if you have self-taught yourself and are already toting around a 8x10" piece of work! I was so pleased to see a young girl picking up the craft.

If I have found three yarn vendors within 500m of my apartment then I am really excited about how many more opportunities are out there.

FeBREWary Inspiration - Mug and teapot cozy

Noble Teapot Wrap
To me crochet is like walking. I just do it. Just because I know how to do it doesn't mean I can teach someone else how. But a few ladies asked me to give them a little class so I picked a mug cozy pattern (Link Here) from the blog; Tutus and Tea Parties, and showed up with some hooks and stash yarn and a lot of anxiety.


At first it was a bit rough. One of the ladies began referring to the first row as the "Satan" row and I thought that was a perfect description. But after spending at least 75% of our time on that first row they soon got the hang of it. I told them that I had to make about three projects before I really knew where I was supposed to insert my hook to make a single crochet and to chain one after turning each row. I didn't keep either the slanted "purse" or the entire blanket made by crocheting into the back loop only.


I soon realized that these ladies were also anxious. They wanted to succeed and make something they could be proud of. We all achieved those same goals. By the end of the day they each had a nice size swatch and if they weren't quite finished, they posted pictures that night of their finished projects.

I was so inspired that I came home and made a matching wrap for my teapot with the leftover cotton. This free pattern was designed to fit a Noble Teapot from DavidsTea.com and can be used with any oversized teapot. It also makes a great first project if you are just getting started.


Nobel Teapot Wrap

Yarn: Sugar 'n Cream Cotton
Hook: 4.5mm
Embellishments: 2 medium buttons, needle and thread

Directions:

Ch 19
Row: 1 turn and ch1, SC across
Row 2-26: repeat Row 1
Row 27: turn, ch1, SC in next 5 SC, ch9, skip next 9 SC, SC in last 5 SC
Row 28-50: Repeat Row 1
Row 51: turn, ch1, SC in next 2 SC, ch 5, SC in next 11 SC, ch 11, SC in last 5 SC, fasten off.

Finishing:
Weave in ends
Position wrap on your teapot and estimate button locations. NOTE: better to make your wrap snug than too loose.
Sew on buttons
Brew a nice big pot of Earl Grey and ENJOY!

5 Things Not to Knit (or Crochet)

Shortly after I started knitting two years ago I made a list of things I would NEVER knit or crochet:

1. Dog sweater
2. Table-leg cozies
3. Anything with a pom-pom
4. Doilies
5. Barbie doll clothes

I have now decided to put this list in print and publish it in an attempt to strengthen my resolve to vow off these knitting clichés. Why would I feel the need to do this? Why, temptation of course. Not just by one item but two. I actually went to Ravelry.com and searched for patterns for two of these items.

Can you guess which two? I'll lay it out like a playmaker game.

-Ken will not see any new clothes
-No toiling over decorative layers
-Cozies are for beer not table legs.
-Poodles or Pomeranians??

Since we are moving overseas we decided (perhaps hastily) to ask my parents who live in Canada to keep our chihuahuas for us. Nellie and Cookie are 7 and 6 pounds respectively. My mom was scared they would freeze like the cement doggie statue we keep in our flowerbed. I actually went to Ravelry.com and typed "dog sweater" in the search bar. Someone needs to come over and slap me! Instead of turning to rock statues, they transformed into super-potty puppies getting their business completed with Indy pit-crew speed. YES! Une Cliché averted. I forget what is French for averted. You get the picture.

Then came these horrendous toques that the NFL designed for their players to wear this season. Who looks good in a beanie with a giant pom-pom on the top?? NO ONE. Oh wait thats a lie. I will drool over Tom Brady no matter what he is wearing. Maybe hubs thought if he wore a toque with a horrendous pom-pom I would drool over him too. I love him and all but, no.

I tried to appease him. I knit him a beanie with a patriots logo in intarsia. He said no. My neighbor, Chris, loves it. I tried a striped version with no logo. Chris' son got that one. Finally I got out my pom-pom maker and actually experimented to see if I could make a pom-pom!

Christmas traveling saved me. By the time we got home he had run into an authentic NFL Patriots beanie complete with god-awful pom-pom attached proudly to the top. It is atrocious and thankfully I will never have to say I made it.

Mom is still working on me about the dog sweater but I'm hoping this will give me the motivation to abstain. And you know if I take my glasses off in the right light I can pretend he is Tom Brady now. Added bonus: I spent hours working on this patriots color logo so I may as well sell it at Ravelry.com. Follow the link to get a copy of the color chart I made for this project with the Patriots Logo.

buy now

Trucker's elbow stinks

Two weeks ago if you told me about the Ulnar nerve I would've thought you were just making up fancy medical jargon to impress me. Now I know that it is the nerve that controls your pinkie and ring finger and it runs through the outside of your elbow. I also know that if you damage or pinch that nerve you will not be able to feel your pinkie or ring finger and they will be a bit weaker. They call it Trucker's elbow because it usually happens to truckers who lean their elbow out the window as they are driving. Maybe your recliner broke and you are more comfortable putting your feet up underneath you during a knitting marathon and leaning on the arm of the chair - yep that will do it too.

So I have damaged my Ulnar nerve. My right ring finger feels different. I can move it and I can feel with it but it is just different. Like I have had a rubber band around the first knuckle for the last two weeks. I asked the doctor about it and she says there is nothing that can be done but rest. i.e. no knitting. YIKES.

So it has been about 5 days now. No needles have touched my hands and no hooks have passed through my fingers. I did wonder if I could just switch to crochet but decided to just rest. And it is a horrible time of year to be yarn-free. I have so many present ideas that I'm itching to start but I can't. If I had been smart I would've been working on presents through the summer too but I got wrapped up in my own projects and then re-doing my projects because I'm still working on my sizing to fit any presents in there. Now I'm paying for it.

On the bright side - I do think that my ring finger is slowly going back to normal. But at this rate it will be Christmas before I get to knitting again. Merry Christmas to me!

F Number - Fibonacci is not a dirty word!!

For a while now I have been aware of the correlation between knitting and mathematics. As knitters we are constantly counting stitches and rows and memorizing patterns.

Recently I bought The book, Stitch 'n Bitch: Superstar Knitting and have been reading it like it was a mystery novel. The biggest plot twist for me was a chapter devoted to the Fibonacci Sequence. It sounds like something out of The Da Vinci code and actually it is! The Da Vinci Code examines the F Sequence as the main character uses it to crack a code left by a deceased museum curator.

Your high-school or college teachers probably told you about the F sequence or F numbers but most of us never thought we would ever find a practical use for them in our everyday lives.

Biologists can probably tell you the significance of the F numbers as they are present in almost every plant. The ever elusive four leaf clover is elusive because four is not a F number. You see flower petals, seeds and leaves come in quantities of: one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty one, thirty two, fifty three, eighty five ... Do you see a pattern? It is probably not coincidence that these numbers have such a strong correlation to nature since they can also be used to create an aesthetically pleasing set of "random" stripes for knitters.

After ready my F Sequence chapter in Stitch 'n Bitch, I decided to give it a try with a couple of baby blankets I had planned to make. I love the look of random stripes but my random stripes never looked good like the ones in the magazines. What did they know that I didn't? The F sequence!

OK the f sequence numbers are found by adding the last number to the one in front of it. So if you start with one then the next number is one (the number before) plus the number before it (zero). So now you have one as your first number and one again as your second number. Our third number is one plus one. Now we have 1, 1, 2. And you can go on calculating the F numbers from there. The official F numbers are:
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 ...

You can also use the same formula used to find the F numbers and start with a random number like four which is not an official F number.
4,4,8,12,20,32,52...
But notice that these numbers are all corresponding with the F numbers.

I chose to use these numbers to count my pattern repeats in my blanket. My repeats were four rows long. But instead of counting row I counted the repeats. One repeat then four rows of another color then two repeats of my next color then three repeats of the last color petting the F numbers guide me. I chose to start again at one repeating from the beginning each time but you also can reverse the patern until you are back at one again.
To make sure my 1 repeat row of knitting wasn't always the same color I decided to use 5 colors but only 4 F numbers so that my colors shifted through the pattern.

Not every striped blanket I see uses the F numbers to decide the thickness of each stripe and I haven't figured out what mathematical formula they are using but for once I created a striped blanket that looks random and nice at the same time.

Why can't my son just be a Pirate?

 

Why can't my son be a pirate or a police officer or even an Angry Bird for Halloween? I was talking to my friend the other day telling her how I made my son's costume last year, bought the one before that at a garage sale and was given the ones before that. I think the only costume I've ever bought from the store was a tiny pumpkin that he wore when he was about 3 months old. Even then, we didn't take him trick-or-treating with it. We wanted to show him off but were too embarrassed to be collecting candy on behalf of a 3 month old who obviously wouldn't eat it.

Last year he was Luke Skywalker and although the store had plenty of costumes available, the creativity junkie in me took over. You know the one that swears she can make a costume that looks better than the store-bought version. So I did.

I had just finished a slipper pattern so I made some big slippers and extended them upwards for boots that he could slip on over his shoes. I also made a dickie-type neck wrap which was bigger on one shoulder than the other (like Anakin wears in the new animated series.) I found an old karate jacket at the thrift store on base and it was super cheap because the pants weren't included. Then I crocheted (my craft of choice at the time) a belt for my Jedi added a pair of khakis and off he went. He got so many compliments and was so proud to be wearing a costume that nobody else had.

This year he wants to by Lloyd Garmadon from (BIG SURPRISE) Ninjago. At first I dismissed this and tried to convince him to choose a pirate costume from Walmart. But then those creative juices started to flow and I began to feel that making a costume for him wasn't an obligation but a privilege. How many parents make their costumes these days? I'm going to watch on Halloween and see if I can spot even one. Do the same and let me know how that works. I feel proud when my son is rocking his one of a kind costume that the other kids wished they had.

Lloyd Garmadon

So with my completely egotistical motivation fully fueled I went in search of a black hoodie and some fabric paint. My naive husband said I should get one that already has a set of skeleton ribs on the front. I laughed at him. Short of spending a bunch of money for a customized one online that wasn't going to happen. But I walk into Target and voila! There was a black hoodie with skeleton ribs already on it. I had to text him a picture.

 

He already has a cape in his tickle-trunk (any Mr. Dress Up fans out there?) leftover from a Darth Vader costume. Now all he needs is a purple belt and a green 5 over his heart.

The purple belt is easy - I have purple yarn in my stash. The green 5 was more challenging. I had made a blanket with numbers on it a couple years ago so perhaps I could get out that pattern and crochet a green 5 and sew it on. After a trip to Michael's I came home with a 5 stencil, lime-green fabric paint, lime-green yarn, a swatch of lime-green felt and a roll of iron-on adhesive.

 

My little Lloyd wannabe decided that he'd like to cut the 5 out of the felt but then decided the color wasn't quite right. I showed him the crocheted 5 but he wasn't a fan (gasp) of my work. He decided he wanted it painted on. Of the three options; sewing on a crocheted applique, sewing on a felt cut-out or painting on a 5, painting one on scared me the most. That's pretty permanent. Oh well I think the hoodie was $15 so here goes. I used a stencil from a previous project and tested the paint on a old pair of sweat pants to make sure the green paint would show well on the black fabric. It did so I went to work on the hoodie. Three coats later and Voila.

 

I've got a tube of yellow face paint for his face and hands although I'm still considering an attempt at "Lego" hands out of yarn. Add a Darth Vader cape black sweatpants and his purple crocs and I think he is set. I'm not sure how many parents will recognize who he is but I think we've got a good shot! Worst case scenario he decides at the last minute to be a pirate after all and he's got a killer Lloyd Garmadon hoodie.

 

NOTE: Lego man mitts are finished and fabulous. See the picture above.  You can find the pattern at:

http://www.ravelry.com/projects/AdventureKnit/lego-man-mitts

Owl is fine - I've been busy!

I know I haven't posted lately but it is because I have been spending every waking moment knitting for a baby shower. With just one weeks notice I knocked out two stroller blankets and designed this great little baby sweater for my friends twins. I based this pattern on an old pattern from Leisure Arts

and Designed by Joan Beebe although it was heavily modified.

 

 

I chose a 2x2 ribbing and shifted the little owls down so they would sit out on a nice chubby belly. I added some buttons on one shoulder to make access easier and then also improvised an owl from one I had a picture of but no pattern. It was easy enough to figure out that the owl was made from C2B/C2F combinations. The wings were smaller versions of the birdie wings featured in the Beebe pattern.

I specifically knit on the purl side when joining the blue and then the brown again because I really like that "stitching" effect that you get seeing the purl side of a new color.

 

The blue color was a slightly thinner yarn so I jumped up two sizes for my needles but that area does pull a little. I think it still works although in the future I plan to ONLY use yarns that are the same weight.

Each owl has his own set of button eyes and each are different. First because I was using stash buttons and I couldn't find six the same and secondly it gives each owl his own personality!!

I had fun with this project and am working on another version for the little girl that is on the way. Lets hope I have more than one week's notice to get the next one finished.