WIP Wednesday: Progress, Progress

I know it's been a while (I feel like I'm all or nothing when it comes to projects to post about), but I have managed to make some decided progress :)

 I finished the first sleeve on my Emelie cardigan! I actually managed to finish it on Saturday, which was National Knit In Public Day :) I went to Seaworld with my family and finished the sleeve on the way.

Here's a close up - I had to fudge things a bit since I wanted my sleeves shorter than the pattern calls for. I had to decrease very quickly at the end, and I actually ended up with a line of decreases on the underside of the sleeve, but it feeds right into the ribbing so no one will notice it but me. It looks like a sudden dip when it's flat, but when it's on my arm, you can't even tell. I'll take it :) I also managed to make my whole sleeve cap in church on Sunday and start on the actual sleeve itself. I can feel how close this is to finishing now so I'm trying to work mainly on this.

As far as my Outfit Along Briar cardigan - it hasn't even been started. Ugh. The Fibranatura Cotton True is sold as "sport" weight yarn, but it is more like fingering weight in person. I've tried several larger needle sizes and I still can't even remotely get gauge even when the stitches are so big that you can basically see through the knitting completely. Rrrr... Oh well. I have to figure out something else, but I may just use my Emelie as my OAL sweater. We shall see. It feels like I haven't had much time at home over the last few weeks, so I haven't been able to delve into my stash and figure out a new plan. 

In other news, My mom knitted something! My mom was always told she could never be taught to knit because she was left handed. Even her mom wrote her off as hopeless when she was young, so she just gave up on the idea. When I taught knitting at my church back in May, my mom was one of my students. She has stuck with the washcloth project, and worked on it little by little, asking me questions periodically, and she just finished binding off yesterday. I'm so proud! (sniff)

I did finish a fairly complex sewing project this week as well - a Colette Beignet skirt. I posted this pic on Instagram last week when I hammered out the buttonholes. It came out really great, and I'm super proud. I just have to take photos and whatnot, so stay tuned for that :)

I'm also knee deep in listening to A Tale of Two Cities along with a friend  of mine. Oddly enough, I've never read this book, and I never even knew what the story was about despite this being required reading in basic 12th grade English in my state. I took AP English, so I didn't have the same required reading, and this book just never crossed my path. This book is always in the top 5 of Books To Read Before You Die lists, so I've wanted to read it for the last year or so. My friend Taylor suggested the two of us read it at the same time, so it gave me a great excuse to finally mark this one off my list. I'm about 1/3rd through it, and I'm liking Madame Defarge already :) Gotta love a fellow knitter and revolutionary.

So that's it for me this week :) Head over to Gracey's Goodies to see what others are up to.

WIP Wednesday: Geek-Along, Teaching Knitting, and Sew Much More

This week has been quite filled with making things :) I managed to finish my first square for the Geek-Along this weekend - my Tesla coil. I decided to do my blanket in crochet, and I learned how to do "tapestry" crochet just for this project. It's actually really easy, the only part I struggled with is figuring out which way to twist the yarn when I changed colors to avoid gaps in color. I got much better with this as I went on, so the top half looks much better in my opinion. It was pretty fun - it's nice to do something really simple where technically it's all single crochet. Following the chart and changing colors for the picture prevented me from getting bored with it like most every other blanket I've tried to make. It definitely bolstered my confidence in the project as a whole, so last night I started my next square: Bunsen and Beaker.

I grew up watching the Muppets (I'm of the Muppet Babies generation, after all), and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker were always some of my favorites. So when faced with which square to work on next, this was the obvious choice. So far I'm sticking to the colors suggested by the designers (I mean, OF COURSE Bunsen and Beaker had to be green and orange). I pulled some Red Heart Super Saver in Spring Green and Red Heart With Love in Mango out of my stash, and I think these are bright and fun colors for the block. I managed to get this far last night before I decided to sew instead, ha ha.

I was asked to teach a knitting class for an activity at church in May that my mom is heading up (they are calling it "Get Your Granny On!" ha ha and they can choose to learn knitting, sewing or crocheting). Since the class will only be about 1 hour of real instruction, I wanted to choose a project that at least seems attainable to the new knitters. As boring as the idea sounded to me at first, I decided on teaching them with a washcloth/hotpad (whichever they want to use it for). I looked up simple, free washcloth patterns and at first thought that one of the knit/purl pop up design ones would be easiest since it just uses the two stitches, so I made this to try it out:

This is the Heart For Ruthie pattern, which I found for free on Ravelry. In theory this was super easy, but holy cow was it crazy following that chart! I decided to make a garter stitch edge instead of moss stitch like the pattern, and I kept messing up reading the wrong line. I had to start over 3 times! Even though the stitches are simple, I decided that following this chart would just be too complicated for a new knitter (especially considering I've followed charts before and had a problem), so I kept looking. I decided to try out this one next:

This is the Feather & Fan Dishcloth pattern, also found free on Ravelry. I was glad to find a pattern that used all the same stitches I used on my first knitting project: knit, purl, yarn over, knit 2 together. I found other feather and fan patterns, but they all included slip slip knit and sometimes even slpo! Definitely not what I wanted to teach for newbies. This pattern worked out great! It was ridiculously easy to memorize the lace pattern and I had this whipped up in about 1.5 hours. This was the example to show the ladies what they will make if they sign up, so I don't have it now, but I plan to use it myself soon :) I've heard good things about knitted dishcloths, but I always thought they would be too boring to make. I also tried this pattern out by teaching my mom to knit - and she took to it wonderfully! This is no small miracle since her mom had tried to teach her when she was younger and pronounced her as hopeless (my mom is left handed, so she tends to be difficult to teach). I was amazed at how quickly it clicked with her and she has completed 3 repeats of the pattern so far :)

I've also been very into sewing lately, and I have 4 finished projects that are waiting to be blogged (!), which is pretty crazy for me. I'm going to space out the posts over the next 2 weeks, so look for them coming soon. Here is a sneak peak at something that I transformed just last night:

This skirt is not a skirt any longer (insert evil laugh here). I'm pretty pleased with how is turned out, so I'm hoping to get pictures of it soon.

So, stay tuned here for more fun creations coming up the next week or so :) In the meantime, head over to Gracey's Goodies to see what others are stitching up!

Macramé Meg - Learning/Teaching A New Skill at Girl's Camp

I mentioned back in June that I was preparing for a teaching venture. Well, I'm just now getting around to blogging about it - can't rush these things.  

So, my church hosts a 4 day long Girl's Camp every year for all the girls age 12-18 every year. The camp involves lots of fun activities as well as certifications for general camp skills. One of the required skills is tying knots. Now, when I was a teenager, we hated certification day. It was very boring and each skill was taught be some of the older girls who always seemed to have just learned it themselves that morning in order to teach it. This year they decided to run things a little differently and I was asked to teach the girls how to macramé and they would count that as their knot tying certification.

I agreed to this months ago even though I didn't know much about macramé. I knew it was tying knots and it was popular in the 70s (my Grammy was apparently the macramé queen and their porch was covered in plant hangers), but that was about the extent of my knowledge. So I've been collecting books from the 70s whenever I find them in thrift stores. I also scored a whole tub full of the real deal wooden beads from the 70s for the girls to use - I was pretty proud of this find. I will confess that I didn't actually buckle down and try to macramé until the week of camp, but I lucked out because it is incredibly easy. Turns out every friendship bracelet I made as a kid was technically macramé - it's just tying a series of simple knots in a pattern to make something other than just a knot to hold something. Pretty easy.

Anyway, the day came and I brought all my stuff with me out to Kissimee to Deseret Ranch last Wednesday morning. All was well until the leaders let me know a little tidbit they hadn't mentioned - I would be teaching all 100 girls and their leaders AT THE SAME TIME! If you've ever tried to teach a large group a small craft before, you will feel my pain. My lesson I planned suddenly became undo-able and I had to improvise a group lesson. I quickly made samples of the knots on larger rope and loaded my stuff into a gator cart and was driven about a mile away from camp in the middle of the woods.

This was just before I started the lesson. As you can see from the young lady behind me they were incredibly excited about it, lol.

This is my lovely assistant, Katie, without whom my lesson would have been a huge fiasco. Katie is very crafty and picked up the knots very quickly before the girls got there and she can cut thread like a champ. Thanks so much Katie!

Basically I went over the few essential knots the girl's camp manual wanted them to learn for certification and then showed how to do the project I had planned with square knots (pretty much the heart and soul of macramé). The lesson went fairly well since it's such an easy topic, and then we spent the rest of our time cutting 5 foot strands of crochet thread for the girls to make their own projects. Katie and I were cutting like mad and got them all the colors of their choice. It was crazed, but it went off without a hitch.

Here's the truly interesting part of my trip. Not only was I a mile away from camp, I was also down this steep hill in a clearing with knee high grass. The men hadn't mowed this area so we all were just hoping no snakes dropped by for the lesson - I'm glad to report they did not :) That arrow is pointing to where my table was set up at.

Here are all the girls as they filed in. They had already been at camp for 3 days by this time so they were used to the heat and walking :)

And here's the table set up. I brought my 70s macramé books and put them on the table end for the girls to look at if they wanted - no one did since there just wasn't time, but I was able to show a few examples from them (as well as laugh about a few projects with the other leaders afterward - seriously, a man's tie?). I brought 6 different colors of crochet thread (there was a teal too that isn't pictured here) and I made sure they all coordinated with each other - a wise decision believe me. This way there could be no complaining of being stuck with bad color combos :)

I made several knot samples, but I left them all at the camp when I went home. The white example above (made out of a cheap clothesline) is what consecutive square knots look like. Look familiar? This is how you make those paracord bracelets - who knew it was so easy! I see many of the men in my life receiving these as gifts this year :)

This was my successful example I made for the barefoot sandals. I made another one with pinks and browns, but it was more of a practice run and I really didn't do the knots right. So we'll just forget about that one :) Most of the girls really liked them, which I count as a success since it is absolutely impossible to please that large of a group of teenage girls especially when it comes to crafts. Several of them worked on their projects throughout camp and I got to see a few of theirs finished on Facebook later on, which is always fun.

So I now highly recommend giving macramé a try :) It's easy and fun and the results are very unique (and they always look more impressive than they should for the amount of skill it took lol). Maybe I'll make some plant hangers to carry on the family tradition :)