Crafty post!
May. 15th, 2010 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelThis post is a bit babble-heavy and a lot pic-heavy. (With all the pics, click to embiggen.)
Knitting pics:
This is my Saroyan scarf, done with bulky yarn on size 13 wooden needles. This was my attempt to see if knitting with needles still worked, as long as the needles were long enough. (It was the second attempt. First attempt, with some very pettable bamboo yarn on smaller aluminum needles, proved way too slippery.)
The verdict, happily enough, is yes. There are caveats: It works with this yarn and these needles. My left hand holds the needle close to the base, rather than the tip, and the right hand does all the yarn work.
One problem is that in order to do a stitch, I have to let go entirely of the right needle. This is the way I've knitted for a long time -- right hand lets go in order to throw the yarn, then picks the needle back up to finish the stitch -- except that previously, I could hold the needle with my left hand, which was conveniently sitting there at the tip within grabbing distance of the needle. Now, the way my hands are positioned, if the needles are such that I can use my right hand to get around the tip, my left hand isn't anywhere close.
It works okay with this yarn and these needles because the combination is grabby enough that the stitches hold the needle okay. (It's a bit tricky on the first stitch of the row, which I've solved on one end by slipping the stitch, but since I'm not sure what that would do to the lace, I have a bit of juggling to do every other row.) With other yarns or other needles, it might not work as well.
Another problem is that because these are straight needles, I can only knit flat, not circular. Which works fine for scarves and shawls, but not so much for socks and gloves and similar. (Okay, technically, I could adapt circular patterns to flat-with-seaming, but I hate seaming with a fiery passion.) And circular needles, which I prefer over DPNs just because it's harder to drop a needle, tend to have very short shafts. Which is fine for most people, but did I mention that I was holding the (not very short at all) straight needle at the *base*? ...I don't necessarily need the full length of the straight needle, but just for fun I pulled out a pair of circs to see where the minimum I needed was, and I was holding the cable, not the shaft.
And a third problem is that a lot of my yarn is not, in fact, bulky yarn. Some of it's worsted; some of it's sock weight; a few things are even thinner. And I don't know that it would work to have the right size of needle in the length I need, just because the leverage is weird, and holding the needle at the base while working at the tip might snap smaller needles.
Nrrrrgh.
(But it /is/ nice to know that I can still do at least some amount of needle knitting. Loom knitting is /so/ not the same thing.)
This is a knitted chocolate bunny, because I am a big fucking dork. (I was browsing rav for something else, and came across this pattern, and went "omg" and had to knit it.)
This was done on, er, size somethingorother dpns. Which were a pain to work with because they were too short, and also I tended to drop them, so I had to work on this in really brief spurts so I wouldn't hurt myself, but the cute is totally worth it. :D
And the results of last Tuesday's beading (wire wrapping) class:
The bracelet is about ... 80% done, maybe? I need to make another link segment or two so it's long enough. I heart moss agate so much, and it goes nicely with the gold color.
I am seriously tempted to get more of the wire and more of the gold chain (which you can't really see because all it is, in this picture, is single link elements; I perhaps ought to take a picture of the materials, probably with some sort of size reference) and make a matching necklace. I'm thinking chain for about half of it, then the beaded wire-wrapped link things, and possibly either larger moss agate beads in the center or a wire-wrapped pendant or something. I am insane. But it's so pretty...!
The pendant is I have no idea what sort of stone. Possibly carnelian? The class instructor had a tray full of "pebbles" (for size reference, the one I chose is perhaps a bit more than an inch long; there were smaller ones and larger ones and flatter ones and jaggedier ones, and none of them had labels) for us to choose from. I was at the time not entirely happy with the way it came out (partly because it was hard to get the stone and wires to cooperate, especially given mobility restrictions, and partly because for some reason I had dragon fire in my head, and that did not come out dragonny at all), but it is shiny and pretty and I made it and I didn't even succumb to the temptation to have the instructor Do It For Me.
I want to get more wire and more shiny stones and play around with wire-wrapping in a setting that is more accessible and also less time-pressure-y. Not a lot of wire and shiny stones, not at first, because it's possible that even with my special long-handled tools and a lot of patience it will still be too much of a pain (literally as well as figuratively) to be worth it, but it is kind of fun.
Knitting pics:
This is my Saroyan scarf, done with bulky yarn on size 13 wooden needles. This was my attempt to see if knitting with needles still worked, as long as the needles were long enough. (It was the second attempt. First attempt, with some very pettable bamboo yarn on smaller aluminum needles, proved way too slippery.)
The verdict, happily enough, is yes. There are caveats: It works with this yarn and these needles. My left hand holds the needle close to the base, rather than the tip, and the right hand does all the yarn work.
One problem is that in order to do a stitch, I have to let go entirely of the right needle. This is the way I've knitted for a long time -- right hand lets go in order to throw the yarn, then picks the needle back up to finish the stitch -- except that previously, I could hold the needle with my left hand, which was conveniently sitting there at the tip within grabbing distance of the needle. Now, the way my hands are positioned, if the needles are such that I can use my right hand to get around the tip, my left hand isn't anywhere close.
It works okay with this yarn and these needles because the combination is grabby enough that the stitches hold the needle okay. (It's a bit tricky on the first stitch of the row, which I've solved on one end by slipping the stitch, but since I'm not sure what that would do to the lace, I have a bit of juggling to do every other row.) With other yarns or other needles, it might not work as well.
Another problem is that because these are straight needles, I can only knit flat, not circular. Which works fine for scarves and shawls, but not so much for socks and gloves and similar. (Okay, technically, I could adapt circular patterns to flat-with-seaming, but I hate seaming with a fiery passion.) And circular needles, which I prefer over DPNs just because it's harder to drop a needle, tend to have very short shafts. Which is fine for most people, but did I mention that I was holding the (not very short at all) straight needle at the *base*? ...I don't necessarily need the full length of the straight needle, but just for fun I pulled out a pair of circs to see where the minimum I needed was, and I was holding the cable, not the shaft.
And a third problem is that a lot of my yarn is not, in fact, bulky yarn. Some of it's worsted; some of it's sock weight; a few things are even thinner. And I don't know that it would work to have the right size of needle in the length I need, just because the leverage is weird, and holding the needle at the base while working at the tip might snap smaller needles.
Nrrrrgh.
(But it /is/ nice to know that I can still do at least some amount of needle knitting. Loom knitting is /so/ not the same thing.)
This is a knitted chocolate bunny, because I am a big fucking dork. (I was browsing rav for something else, and came across this pattern, and went "omg" and had to knit it.)
This was done on, er, size somethingorother dpns. Which were a pain to work with because they were too short, and also I tended to drop them, so I had to work on this in really brief spurts so I wouldn't hurt myself, but the cute is totally worth it. :D
And the results of last Tuesday's beading (wire wrapping) class:
The bracelet is about ... 80% done, maybe? I need to make another link segment or two so it's long enough. I heart moss agate so much, and it goes nicely with the gold color.
I am seriously tempted to get more of the wire and more of the gold chain (which you can't really see because all it is, in this picture, is single link elements; I perhaps ought to take a picture of the materials, probably with some sort of size reference) and make a matching necklace. I'm thinking chain for about half of it, then the beaded wire-wrapped link things, and possibly either larger moss agate beads in the center or a wire-wrapped pendant or something. I am insane. But it's so pretty...!
The pendant is I have no idea what sort of stone. Possibly carnelian? The class instructor had a tray full of "pebbles" (for size reference, the one I chose is perhaps a bit more than an inch long; there were smaller ones and larger ones and flatter ones and jaggedier ones, and none of them had labels) for us to choose from. I was at the time not entirely happy with the way it came out (partly because it was hard to get the stone and wires to cooperate, especially given mobility restrictions, and partly because for some reason I had dragon fire in my head, and that did not come out dragonny at all), but it is shiny and pretty and I made it and I didn't even succumb to the temptation to have the instructor Do It For Me.
I want to get more wire and more shiny stones and play around with wire-wrapping in a setting that is more accessible and also less time-pressure-y. Not a lot of wire and shiny stones, not at first, because it's possible that even with my special long-handled tools and a lot of patience it will still be too much of a pain (literally as well as figuratively) to be worth it, but it is kind of fun.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-15 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-15 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-15 09:45 pm (UTC)and i think i'll need to make a bunny. i even have brown wool in my stash :)
no subject
Date: 2010-05-16 09:14 pm (UTC)