Thursday, July 31, 2008

blankets

It would seem that I am slightly blanket obsessed. My first real sewing project was my t-shirt blanket after college, and I am now working on my third knit blanket. The first of course, was the most difficult, but which I made for my sister and will always be quite proud of. I found the pattern in Knit it!, a magazine that I really enjoyed but have yet to see since that issue last spring. In any case, the blanket came out beautifully despite it's rather small size. A lap blanket I like to call it. I made it in 5 strips and I think it came out slightly larger than the 30x42 inches it was supposed to be thanks to different yarn and larger needles.


The second was a really easy stockinette stitch blanket on size 17 needles which went nice and quick. That was a lion brand pattern found here. It was all using two strands of yarn to give it that cool look and it was made in three 12 inch strips.



And now I am working on my large patchwork-like blanket out of 7x9 rectangles with I think 12 different colors and around 17 different stitch patterns. So far I am done 14 blocks, but it has become a rather low priority on my project list since it is not really for anyone else and I have no deadline or anything. I would also like to add that the other two knit blankets were childs size making them that little bit easier. I guess we'll see if my current blanket makes it all the way to its intended 49x63 inch size. I suppose it is not that I am blanket obsessed, it is more that I like to make useful things that are not sweaters. And really, one can only make so many scarves :)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Chopstick holder

So I am going to start with my most recent project and work from there, adding past projects when I get to it and other projects as they come. Anyway, this came out really well and I am really happy with it despite a few minor mistakes. The design is one that I sort of created after looking at a number of knitting needle holders online and taking the parts of them that I liked. I used a fusable interfacing between the layers to give it strength and it worked great. The result is not at all bulky and is easy to roll and store and now there is no need to worry about any of our chopsticks being broken by being shuffled around in a drawer. I think the whole thing only took an hour or two to put together once I figured out the pattern and how it would work. At any rate, here it is.