Knitting – Page 2 – MsFledermaus Arts

May 1, 2017

Mrs Mausi’s Guide to Knitting Chapter 6: The Gauge Swatch…

Hello there! Yes, there’s more blathering about the perils of tip-toeing down the perfidous path of knitting! You poor darlings!…

Bunbun the Kitty insisted on helping me with my illustration. Stealing the pen and lying on the paper is not super helpful, Bunbun.

Chapter 6: The Gauge Swatch.

So now you’ve been knitting for a little while, and you’re feeling confident! You can cast on like a pro, you have stopped dropping stitches and your garter stitch is nice and even. So’s your stockingette. You can purl with the best of them. Your pot holders and scarves are wonders of knitting to behold. And you no longer have the new-knitter tight-clutch anymore. Not you! And you’ve become so confident with your knitting prowess that you look at helpful instructions about gauge swatches and are all, “Hah! I don’t need to do that! That’s for the noobs! Not me! My gauge is clearly 4 stitches to the inch on size 8 needles with worsted! Perfect!”

Oh, you poor doomed soul…

1: Start a fun sweater pattern with unfamiliar yarn you just brought home. Look at the gauge measurements and go, “Eh. That’s pretty much what I knit anyway. I don’t need to eat up time making a gauge swatch I don’t need.”

2: Snuggle the yarn. It such pretty yarn. It cries out to be a sweater! *your* sweater! Right now! Right this second!!

3: Cast on with wild abandon and start some ribbing. Stop two rows in and think, “Huh, these stitches are a little stretchy. But it’s ribbing, it should be fine. I think I need a glass of wine!”

4: Pour yourself half a bottle of wine and put on The Craft. Knit happily for several hours. Notice the yarn is sliding a bit loosely, but merrily knit on. Marvel on how the wine keeps your fingers nice and loose while you knit.

5: Finish off the wine and yell happily at the movie. Cheer on the magical catfight at the end. Then look down at the cosy knitting on your lap and realise it’s HUUUUUUGE…

6: Curse at your wine-sozzled fingers. Curse at the movie you were enjoying so much 5 seconds ago. Curse at the pretty, pretty yarn and the pretty, pretty circus tent you’ve been making all this time. Curse at the ghost of Elizabeth Zimmerman, who so sweetly kept reminding you to do that gauge swatch before you got all crazy with that yarn. Curse curse curse!

7: Should you rip it out? Should you rip it out? Should you? You should, you know. Frog that bastard and start over. All the way over. Correctly. Like the knitting badass you know you are. You can do it. Even though it’s hours out of your life. And that sweet magical catfight you watched. It’s there, right where the stitches got extra loose. You were laughing so hard, and that was the last glass of wine, too. Man, that was good stuff…

8: Keep knitting anyway. Decide instead of a shapely pullover it’s going to be a tunic. Keep hearing the psycho mom from Carrie chanting, “They’re all going to laugh at you…they’re all going to laugh at you…” Stubbornly plug on. Of course, now your gauge is too tight because you’re wound up. Try not to get too tight on the neck ribbing. Mutter evil things to yourself…

9: After much cursing, another couple of nights with wine and more horribly funny schlocky movies, you’re done! With your circus tent! That has bits that seem too tight!! Hear the sweet voice of Elizabeth Zimmerman in your head, reassuring you that blocking can fix a lot of things. Hope to hell she’s right, or you’re going to go find her grave and yell at it for a while. She’d understand. She was that kind of lady.

10: The tunic, after blocking, is…really not that bad, actually. Friends compliment it, and really appreciate that off-the-shoulder look you’ve got going there. Smile graciously. Smile nervously. Promise the ghost of Elizabeth Zimmerman a nice bottle of wine if she won’t tell the other knitters the truth. And for each and every new project, a gauge swatch shall be knit. Pinky swear…

My illustration of my sweater woes. It’s shaky because of the aforementioned cat-problems. Please don’t mind the extra cat hair. Bunbun helps the only ways he knows how.

April 28, 2017

Mrs Mausi’s Guide to Knitting, Chapter 13: Lacework.

Eventually there will be some extremely jacked-up illustrations for these little knitting chapters. When I get to it. Which might take a little bit. So you’ll have to imagine the kind of horrible things I could draw for these pages. If you think of something particularly good, feel free to tell me about it…

Mrs Mausi’s Guide to Knitting, #13: lacework…

1: Buy delicate, expensive mohair yarn. Snuggle it. Dream of the wonderful shawl you’re going to make.

2: Look at patterns. Beautiful, eyesearing patterns you’d be completely insane to try. Even just reading the patterns makes your brain cells cringe. Pick out an easy lace pattern you can’t screw up too badly. Promise yourself you’ll tart it up with beads and a cool border later on.

3: Snuggle the yarn some more. Awwwwyeahhhhh…

4: Start your shawl. It’s gorgeous! Light, airy, shows off your snuggly yarn perfectly! And it’s knitting up quickly!! Beam with pride. And putting in an emergency saving strand, in case you mess something up? Nah. No way can you mess up something this simple. You’re a better knitter than *that.*

5: Bring your project to work,can let your coworkers coo over it and pet it. Then realize you missed a yarn over…3 rows down.

6: Swear. Swear like a biker. Swear like a biker with an itchy rash. Because it’s mohair, which resists all attempts to fix anything. Swear like a biker who has to unknit 3and a half rows of freakin’ mohair. Think about leaving the mistake and crocheting a goddamn flower over it or something. Nobody would know. But you would. You would know. Forever…

7: Undo 3 and a half rows of lacework, muttering nastily to yourself. Hope like hell you don’t drop a stitch or jack up the other yarnovers too badly. When a helpful friend recommends frogging it instead,laugh the laugh of the knitting damned.

8: One hour later, finally get to your mistake and fix it. Feel the rush of beautiful, flawless stitches. Snuggle your yarn some more–its your friend again!! Ignore the coworker who says, “can’t you just buy that at a store?” No, my dear. You cannot buy this kind of yarny satisfaction.

*You will be repeating steps 6-8 at least three more times, possibly more. I recommend inventing new swears for each flaw, to keep things fresh.

April 28, 2017

Mrs Mausi’s Guide to Knitting: (With yarn. and swearing. And possibly booze.)

As a lark recently, and to vent about a knitting project I was struggling with, I put up a little chapter in an imaginary book about knitting. It turned out to be a big, big hit, so I suspect I might actually have to *make* this book in the very near future. I should warn you; when you see chapters, they will be out of sequence. Because most knitters tend to jump around in handy guides to knitting, forward and back, to find that one helpful thing they need that now they absolutely cannot find. If you’re a knitter, you’ll definitely understand…

Mrs Mausi’s Guide to Knitting, Chapter 5: Hats…

Pick out several pretty yarns for your project, realise none of them go together. Swear under your breath.

Knit the band slightly too tightly, with nice bamboo needles. Curse a little, undo the stitches, start over. Repeat at least twice.

Question your choice of yarn. Question your choice of needles. Question your skills as a knitter. Switch over to slidey aluminum needles

Just as you’re getting into the zone, watch your stitches slide off your slidey needles. Swear like a sailor. Swear like an annoyed sailor. Swear like an annoyed sailor who picked the wrong bloody needles. Rearrange the whole yarny mess in your lap so it doesn’t slither away. Refuse to change needles, because you can make this work, right? Right? Right!?

Finally get to the decreases on the top. Feel like you’ve climbed Mount Everest with nothing but a salad fork. Hope like hell it won’t ladder much. Punch the air in victory…And remember you still have to embroider stuff on it. Arrrgh…

…The hat? Turned out great, actually. Never let anybody tell you that you can’t get anything done while swearing, because it just isn’t so…

July 23, 2016

Fuchsia shock…

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated. But it’s also a little easier now, since we made a few changes here to make it more readable. I’ve got a new computer to play with, too. I call it the Dreaded Grey Beastie, because it is. A useful, helpful beast, too…

Meanwhile, even though it’s the heat of summer, I’ve still been spinning a lot. Mostly to help me relax. Every time I check the news there’s new reasons to unplug and do something else for a while. I’ve been spinning magenta and fuchsia yarns, with lots of sparkle and fluff.

It seems my hunger for this color is shared by lots of people. When I bring a spindle to work, my coworkers glom onto the bright color. I sold the yarn in the photo, and people asked for more like it. I’ve already had to dye another kettleful of this shade, and now I’m out of magenta dye. (Which means I have to brave the big, gorgeous selections of Halcyon Yarns to get more. *mock sobbing*)

You think I’d get tired of this particular color…but funny enough, I’m not. Not even close. It’s just so hypnotically attractive.

Yesss….good…let the Hypnoyarn fill your mind…

I must be out of my mind, spinning all this wool in July. But–but–fuchsia!!

April 29, 2016

Knitting in the workplace…

See this pretty thing?

It started it’s dark and sparkly life in a basement of a museum, surrounded by coffee and polyester sweaters and noise. Lots and lots of noise…

Breaktime Knitting — Not pictured: a handheld radio, a cup of tea, gurgling pipes overhead and my frowny little face as I try to concentrate…

I usually bring knitting to my job, to help me unwind between breaks and to sneak a little time into my various projects. More often than not it’s something I spun up myself that demands to be made into something right this minute. Yarn can be pushy like that. So very pushy. This yarn was a dark black, red and white spiral-ply I spun up from one of the beautiful batts at Butterflygirl Designs on Etsy. I’ve bought from her for years, and her goods are always so good. One of the nice things about handspun yarn is that you can keep your stitches pretty simple and let the yarn do all the work of being pretty…

Workplace knitting has it’s own challenges. It’s noisier than home, of course. There’s lots of traffic, and the possibility of spills, crumbs, overcurious coworkers poking at your project, moving it or distracting you enough to drop a stitch or two. I’ve lost count of the times on a break where I answer a workplace question while my hands are moving, and when I look down…I messed up that yarn over. Again. Drat it all. And I mutter quietly to myself when I think nobody can hear me. (But of course my coworkers can totally hear me. I can tell by the snickering)

Then there are the usual jokes. Requests to knit whole sweaters for 20 bucks, or nothing. Various eyerolls, “only grandmas knit” or “knitting nerd” comments. The occasional vampire-slayer remarks. (I actually like these remarks because I get to brandish a knitting needle in a mildly threatening fashion.) But sometimes there are the people who sidle over and gently pet the yarn, or ask if I have time to crank out some wristwarmers for them, or can I make a goofy gutmonster for a birthday or something. I love these people.They get extra guts in their knitted gutmonsters.

Mostly I just like the peace. After I get into the groove a little bit, I can float right off into a nice soft realm of stitches and fluffy textures and away from the workaday life for a little while. I feel a little more rested on a break where I’m working on something. And when I’m finished, I just glow with a little well-earned pride. A moment in a gloomy basement redolent with the smell of burned coffee and old pizza can be the brightest part of my day when I bind off that last stitch…

April 1, 2016

If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!

It’s been a little while since I posted here. Life just got a little more hectic recently, with projects and and whatnot. I also…heh…got engaged. I’m very happy about it all. Of course, now I’m thinking about things I’d never really considered before. Are there registries that aren’t specifically full of beige-colored towels? (Apparently there are. I still have to go digging around for them, though.) What will I do about a dress? How much cake? What kind of cake? And how many Gothly decorations can I bust out at the reception? (Quite a few, actually.) Do I change my name, and to what? Sadly, even though it would be perfectly legal, my sweetie put his foot down at being called Mr. and Mrs. Dracula. *sigh* Another dream shot down…

Meanwhile, a dear friend of mine brought me a very interesting bag. Cornelia had been traveling through Scotland recently, and spent some time happily wandering around the sheep-filled heather, plucking bits of wool off the fences here and there. People used to do this sort of thing all the time to get a little wool to spin up; it’s the original meaning of the term, “woolgathering.” When she came home, she presented me with a nice fully Ziplock full of soft plushy wool…

The wool smelled wonderful, all heathery and peaty. I kept inhaling the scent while Cornelia told me with a grin, “That, my dear, is what Scotland smells like!” Scotland smells this good? Wowwwww… I gleefully showed off my bag to my boss at work, who is very pro-Scotland. After happily squishing the wool and huffing it, he asked if he could keep a pinch, for the innate Scottishness. Of course I let him. How often do you get to snort another country at work and have it be legal?

So now I’ve been spinning it all up. I hand-carded the wool that very night, and chose my nice heavy Ashford spindle to do my spinning. For some reason spindle spinning just seemed right with something like this. The sort of thing someone would do while walking a hedgerow, woolgathering…

Scottish yarn — A spindle full of Scotland! Well, maybe not full, not yet…

What will I do with the yarn once I’m done spinning? Hard to say. I’m guessing once plied up there will be enough for maybe a couple of sachet bags or some cool cabled bracelets. If I need more, I’ll have to talk Cornelia into going back to Scotland to gather some more wool for me. I may have to go with her, for ummm…quality control. Yeah. That’s it…

March 5, 2016

Steampunk made easy…

I finished up the pendants I wanted to play with last week. Here’s what I ended up with:

Purple eye pendant — I have a few leftover taxidermy eyes from a haul I made at Axeman, years ago. I hoard them like treasure. But this turned out nicely!

Steampunk pendant — Polymer clay plus watch gears equals rainy-day fun!

It’s been great goofing off this way. It kind of helped me get back into knitting things again after a short break. I thought of this pendant, and then though how cool stitch markers with gears would be, then thought about various projects that needed stitch markers…and before you know it, bam! A scarflette finished!

Of course, a lot of my knitting has been on breaks at my work. I also do a little sketching here and there to help with stress. I’ve had this look on my face pretty much the entire week…

So there you are…

December 11, 2015

Holiday Knitting DangerZone…

Ah, the holiday season…where everybody, including me, starts to panic about presents for the loved ones in their life. Like anybody who knits, I get loads of requests for last minute speed-knitting of pretty, warming things. Some of them are very doable. Many are too time-crunching. A few are jaw-droppingly ludicrous. Sweaters. Elaborate socks. Entire blankets. Union suits. Alien face-hugger masks with bendable leggies. Huge Dwarf helmet-hats with horns and braided beards. While it’s extremely flattering to hear that people think I have magical knitterly skills, I have to turn the big projects down. I also start getting that hunted look on my face, where I’m expecting to sprint down the corridors at work with my coworkers chasing me, yelling, “No, wait, it’s just a last-minute thing, I know you can do it by Christmas!! Come Baaaack!”

But that said, I’ve cranked out a few pretty things, here and there…

Silver angora — A skein of silver angora I plied with a soft silk thread for extra strength and shine…

Both of these lovely things have already been claimed. I should make more. When can I make more? So many things to make!! So many! Do I have enough yarn? The right kind? Do I have to make some? Why did I make this fussy, time-consuming thing that everybody wants now? I Must Make Many Many THIIIIIIIINGS!!

And then possibly ask Santa for a Time-Turner, or manybe a Margarita machine. It’s medicinal, I tellya…

November 14, 2015

The post-Halloween doldrums…

Ah, Halloween…it was lovely, everything I hoped for, and now it’s just a happy memory.

But I did get a fun photo of Shamu the Bunny in a jaunty Steampunk hat…

Shamu in a jaunty hat — Shamu is a dapper little fellow when I put hats on his tiny, rabbity head…

And now it’s the season where everybody realizes they’ve lost their mitts or something’s eaten their scarf and they come running to me. I’ve been plotting and planning new mitts and hats to make, and today I’m just playing with colors, to see what seems to click. So far I’ve got a rose and caramel mix of mohair yarns I like a lot, as well as some black and deep purple sari silk for a Gothly scarf. I have to remind myself to play sometimes; it’s good to make custom stuff to order, but it’s even better to come up with something new…

October 9, 2015

Zombie Love…

People ask me all the time what projects I like to knit. Depending on who asks, I will stick to safe answers like, “Socks, sweaters, you know, knitful things.” But sometimes I’ll tell them the truth.”I love knitting weird things. Squooshy monsters with tentacles and guts inside them, tiny shawls for ghost dollies, cosies for things that don’t need them…You know, like you do. And Zombies!” I keep finding cool patterns for things like Sharktopuses, which I *have* to try. I have to! I want a Sharktopus, and I’m betting you do too!

Last year about this time I knitted up a zombie version of my sweetie. He sits on his shelf, with a detachable head, arms and legs, with his guts squishing out of his torso…

Zombie Sweetheart. — This fella’s got a really big heart. It’s just behind all those squishy guts…

It’s actually not a bad likeness, except for the green skin and detachable head and loose intestines. If I made him a tiny fuzzy sweater, he would look an awful lot like Robert Smith with glasses. But would that invoke The Dreaded Sweater Curse? Or maybe, since it would be small, the curse would also be tiny–maybe we’d just have a grumpy morning with burned toast instead. Anybody who’s made tiny sweaters for undead significant others please feel free to give advice…I realize that may be a very small advice pool.

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