Möbius Magic

A bunch of the moms at Sparky's school have started a knitting group and quite delightfully they chose to meet at the coffee house half a block from my house. A dream come true! Last week someone brought a copy of A Treasury of Magical Knitting by Cat Bordhi. In this book and its sequel, she give directions for knitting a möbius strip. She uses this unusual shape in scarves, hats, and some really nice felted bowls.

So I had to try it. For this first attempt I dug around for some yarn I didn't care about, and found some really fat, scratchy green wool. Rug yarn maybe? I didn't follow one of her patterns, just did the amazing and original möbius cast-on. I knit a few (double) rounds, alternating 2 rows of knit and 2 rows of purl. Cat Bordhi recommends a 45" circular needle. I used the longest one in my stash (30") and it was awkward. Don't even think about using anything shorter.

It worked! What you want to notice in this picture is how the circular needle is coiled into two loops, rather than the regular circle. It's definitely one of those knitting projects in which you just have to have faith and follow directions, abandoning any need to make sense of what you're doing.

The basic deal is to use a very long circular needle, cast on stitches, knit once around, then knit around again picking up the other side of those same cast-on stitches. (You do a stranded cast-on, which just becomes another row of knitting.) That maneuver coils the cable of the needle into two loops. You place a marker to show the beginning of a round, but on each round you do two loops. You sort of say "Hi!" to your marker after the first loop, as it's at the bottom edge of your knitting. But then it shows up again on your needles after finishing the second loop (or one full round).

Confused? I did my best to explain that clearly, but it's a non-trivial problem, as we say in computer geek speak.

Your cast on becomes the "spine" of the piece, and on each full round you add a row on either side of that spine. That shows up well when you do a round in a contrasting color. You can see it in my cast-off. I used the suggested I-cord cast-off, in gray yarn.

Both sides of the cast-on will show, so the I-cord is a nice choice since it's the same back & front.

This looks like it might make a nice neck-wrap, but no one wants this scratchy stuff against their skin. I think I'll try one of the felted bowls. I'll pick up stitches from the I-cord (in green), going around only one loop. Then I'll cut across, picking up stitches through the green bit, then along the I-cord and back to my first picked up stitches. This will leave me with a twisted brim for my bowl. I'll knit round and round, decreasing to nothing at the bottom, and then felt it. Stay tuned!

Double Sticky, at last!

I finally found it! I have looked repeatedly for something like a sheet of sticker stock that has no paper at all--a sheet of double-sticky adhesive sandwiched between backing which could be used to make stickers of cool stuff. At the scrapbooking store my question was met with puzzled looks. At a local discount store (known for European foods past their sell-by date) there is a rack of cheapo office supplies, and there it was! Two sheets for 99¢! I bought four packages. But it doesn't have a brand, as if some company just repackaged it.

I played around for a few minutes decorating little gift cards with fabric stickers, and here are the results.

Thump, Thump, Thump

I'm setting up for another bout of dyeing fabric, so today I cut some 30" lengths off of a bolt of muslin I got a few weeks ago. It was a real thrill be the one who goes thump, thump, thump unrolling the bolt like the ladies at the fabric store.

Birthday Thank You Photo

For a few years now I've been including a photo collage like this in Sparky's birthday thank you notes. It requires asking each kid to smile for me, but I find that not so hard when they're holding cupcakes. I crop a square out of each picture and size it to a fixed number of pixels, then collage them all together. It's all done with Photoshop Elements, which came free with our scanner. I have the photo place print it out as a 4x6.

For the second time we did decorate-your-own cupcakes. The kids basically pave their cupcakes with assorted candies. They love it and it requires no fancy culinary creations on my part. Not that I mind creating confections, but I tend to get carried away. For instance...

The Volcano Cake of 2006

It wasn't actually that challenging, since the frosting could be (should be) messy.

The Dumptruck Cake of 2005 was really easy, just a mush of chocolate cake (dirt), chocolate pudding (mud), and crunched up Oreos (gravel). The tricky bit was when I realized I hadn't bought a dump truck yet and it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. But the gods were smiling and I found this cheap beach-toy truck.


My sister sent the construction cone candles, and we made a ramp so we could drive the cake onto the table.

General Grievous

Somewhat overdue, here is this year's Halloween project. For the third year in a row, Sparky kept to the Star Wars theme. This time it's the arch-villain cyborg, General Grievous. As I put in more and more hours on this, I had to ask myself if I was doing it for him to enjoy, or for me to show off. But he got a lot of pleasure from the abundant attention the costume won him. Young adult males seemed the most often impressed. He even got his picture in the newspaper! During the downtown merchants' trick-or-treating, the owner of the hobby shop said he was so cool that he got TWO pieces of candy, which thrilled him.

I was inspired by a great instructable that I found just after Halloween last year. (Good thing, I wasn't up for a costume project last year.) That one is all done with foam core attached to black clothing, and includes a PVC backpack thing from which the two extra arms pop out! Truly amazing. I copied the foam core idea, but part way through I thought of craft foam. That was definitely the tool for the job for anything but the epaulets and chest plates.

I focused my attention on the helmet. Sparky was thrilled to have a full helmet rather than a simple mask over his face. I was pleased that the design gave him so much peripheral vision. The idea of using brads to attach it all came to me late, and they worked great. They look very cyborg. There is also a lot of white drafting tape and a few straight pins holding it all together.

On the body, the brads worked best when I forced them through the sweatshirt fabric rather than cutting a tiny slit. They do need to be well covered on the inside of the garment, so they don't unfold or poke. The best covering was a pad cut from craft foam held on with packing tape.

The cape was a real stroke of luck. We went to the fabric store, hoping to find gray for the outside of the cape and bright red for the inside. On the remnant counter we found slinky fabric with metallic red on one side and dark gray on the other! As soon as the nice lady cut it, I tied it around Sparky's shoulders and he wore it around the store. It was a lot of fun seeing all the other people buying costume fabric. Three college-age girls, each buying a different color of pastel netting. A couple of very manly man guys buying brown fake fur (caveman costume?).

And I couldn't believe that I found a black sweatshirt at the consignment store four days before Halloween. For $3 I also got a used Clone Commander costume as back up if I ran out of energy.



After it was all done and I'd recovered, I did spend some time making sketches and checking that I had a pattern for each piece. I don't plan to recreate it, but you never know. I'd like to make an instructable for this, for the sake of all the other Star Wars parents out there, but I need to figure out a sensible way to get my pattern pieces on the web.

Getting Loopy

My Dangerous Sister sent me a little sample of this cast-on, with some cryptic directions. I think I've got the basic idea now, but need to work on doing it neatly. Here's the basic idea:

cast on three stitches using a half-hitch
chain three off the last stitch with a crochet hook
set that aside, making a long loop so it won't unravel, and leaving the yarn under and behind the needles
do the same thing with color number two
pick up color number one, bring it under and up, and put the long loop on the needle
just keep doing this, alternating colors

It has a matching cast-off as well. My big question is how elastic it is, but that requires a larger sample. Would it work for the cuff of socks? I have some socks in progress, so I'll keep testing.

Later...

Here's the sock in question, that I've been knitting for Dr. Mavis. (Well, one of two for Dr. Mavis.) It's my excuse to play with the Regia self-striping sock yarn. It's very fun. Making something so colorful without managing loose ends is quite delightful. I'd like to dye my own, but recently realized that it would require reeeeeeeally large skeins. I'll have to find out how to manage them.

To knit the sock, I started from the cuff end, as usual, but the purl rows that I added for a little extra pizazz just looked more and more dorky as I worked toward the toe. So I ripped out the first few inches, picked up the stitches and knit back toward the cuff. Unfortunately, that means I need to replace a cast-on with a cast-off, and the latter is rarely as elastic as the former.

So I tried the loopy cast off, hoping that all those little loops would make it flexible.


They did not.

It was super constricting, so I'm going to rip it out and try a better cast-on. But I had to get this picture first, just for the record. Dangerous Sister's instructions are very scribbled, and I only just noticed that the person she learned it from (on TV) got it from a pair of Turkish socks.

[Post Script: In the end I did a grafted cast-off for single rib, following directions by Denise Powell that I found here. To make it stretchy enough I left the stitches really loose. It looks a little untidy, or lacy depending on your point of view.]

While we're on knitting...


I went exploring in the attic, amid the gritty puffs of paper insulation, and found several batches of useful yarn. I found enough white, worsted-weight yarn for a sweater, perfect for space-dying. I also found this UFO hat, and Sparky says he'd like to wear it! That's a first. The yarn is mohair that my Dangerous Sister brought back from Kenya, of all places. I'll keep going for a beret shape, and find something absolutely itch-free for the brim.

Kanzashi

When I saw Kanazashi in Bloom on I forget whose blog, I knew I was in trouble. I really have a thing for round things, and for radial symmetry. The Yo-Yo Obsession of 2008 made that abundantly clear. The Martha Stewart ribbon rosettes came next. But this is better. Much better. And what a great use for little bits of dyed or otherwise irresistible fabric!

Diane Gilleland's directions are clear, complete, and well illustrated. Her example projects didn't really do it for me, but there's a wide range which gave me some good ideas. I did a little surfing and the clearest tutorial I found was a set of pictures by SpanglySpangle on Flickr and her quick little video (no voiceover). Her craft set has lots of lovely examples. I found an instructable for the pointed petal, but the pictures are a little small. There are a lot of super-amazing Japanese examples here. The individual pictures are big and beautiful and detailed, but I found them a little slow to load.

These are my very first efforts. Kanzashi are made from folded squares of fabric, and are remarkably easy (though I hesitate to say so, in case some of you find them hard). Looking at the book and my own creations, my favorites are the ones with lots of petals. They're like potato chips: I'll just make one more.


Here's a really large one, 6" squares maybe?, using a flower-shaped yo-yo for the center. It's a pointed petal, possibly with an extra fold.


This one is tiny, from 2" squares.

It's sometimes hard to decide which side should be up. Here I used the pleated petal, and for the rear view I squished it into a spiral.


Remarkably, I found a justification for all this. We are giving wreaths to the many grandparents this year, and I hit on the idea of adding giant red kanzashi in place of bows. This is made from 8" squares, folded in a modified pleated petal. I anchored the folds with a few hidden stitches, then folded up the sides one more time. I did most of them watching The Thomas Crown Affair for the umpteenth time, while taking a break from Thanksgiving pie-making, (It was the Pierce Brosnan remake, but some day I'll have to watch the Steve McQueen original.)

That's an extra-large (60 mm) yo-yo in the center. On the others I used a brass button for the center, which looked even better. (Well, really a brass-colored plastic button, but that is better anyway for outdoor use.)

It ended up very suggestive of a poinsettia.



I ran some wire through safety pins on the back, and wired the whole thing to the wreath. I'm hoping the bow can be removed and reused. And get this, Mr. Tea's mom drove up for Thanksgiving, so she could take her own home with her, and deliver two others on the way!