amazon_syren

Basic Socks PLUS Step-by-Step visuals for Sock-Knitting

Pleated handbag (leather, vinyl, or heavy woven fabric)

Mary-Jane Slippers (might be useful for Ghost)

So, having listened to them both about a billion times on YouTube, I finally ordered Carry the Fire (Delta Rae) and Transgender Dysphoria Blues (Against Me!) and will have two new CDs in my hot little hands in... ab out another month. I hope they'll arrive earlier, but there you go. By the end of May I may even have forgotten when I ordered them and getting them in the mail will be a wonderful and fabulous surprise.
I also ordered a (cheap!) copy of Wanting, in Arabic which is Trish Salah's first book of poetry (many years old, at this point - her new one is coming out in, like, five more days). I'm honestly not sure what to expect. Trish's poetry is... Okay, the pieces of Trish's poetry that I've read ten towards the dense and word-play-ish. Stuff done with aliteration that follows the order of the alphabet.
So we'll see what I think about it.
Beyond that, I got to go on a road-trip with Ghost today - her bike broke down in Sharbot Lake yesterday afternoon, and we got to go and collect it in a cube van this morning - and I managed to finish a knitted cowl (for my sister). My Ghost wants me to make her one in black, which I think I'll do - I've got some black yarn left over from her hat (which was, originally, going to be a shrug for me) that I can put towards such a thing, and it'll give me an idea of what amount of yarn will be needed to do a knitted dress for myself out of similarly-weighted yarn.
I have PLANS to make myself a knitted dress (or, alternatively, a cobbled-together dress made of t-shirts and tank tops from, like, Giant Tiger or something) with leather accents, so it would be good to know how many skeins of yarn I'm likely to need (answer: a good 4-5 times an many as it will take to make a cowl, but I can work with that).
Anyway. It's another project to work on while I wait for the next round of Shawl Yarn to come in. :-)
As a side note, there is this song: Shivers. It's a cover of a Rowland S. Howard song, performed by Against Me! Meaning: Performed by a trans woman. The lyrics take on a particular meaning in that light).


TTFN,
Amazon.

I have stitched my pink (cotton/angora, iirc) ribbed stocking-extensions onto a pair of hacked-off-at-the-crotch cotton (mostly - 75% cotton + some nylong and spandex) tights from Sears. Now I have TWO pairs of extended cotton garters-required stockings. Go me! :-D

I picked up a whole wack of tights, since I was at U of O (and therefore very close to the redeau centre) in both cotton and bamboo-rayon and so will be making a few more sets of stocking-tops (ideally in purple, turquoise, and royal blue, plus the brick-red ruffle-top ones for-which I already have the yarn and which, thanks to Sexy_Romulan's video-tutorial links, I now have a rough idea of how to make).

Re: Ruffle-top stockings: I think the idea is that I do 24 stitches at 1" appart and do 4-6 rows, plus about three rows of garter-stitch across the top (on Really Big Needles) using the fishnet yarn as if it was shoelace material) in order to allow for something through-which to stick the garters. But I'm not actually sure if that'll work. Basically, they need to stretch 23" at the tops in order to accomodate my thigh and still have some give to them for the garter belt (and, y'know, circulation).
So this'll take somethinking. But I think I can figure it out. :-)


TTFN,
Amazon.

So I've finished my hat.
I'm rather pleased with it, really. It's got three different yarns (all merino, I think, but various colours and I think only one of them is a super-wash) and a variety of stitches and Navajo'd some of the yarn in order to get a chunkier knit. I used DPNs (for the first time) to close up the crown (and then did a short string of finger-knits once I'd cast it off at the top in order to close up the hole in the middle), and used circular needles for the rest.

There's about $30 of yarn in the hat (plus just shy of $15 for the extra set of circular needles I got to accomodate the widest part of the hat - it's a tam/beret style, so it gets quite wide).

There's also between 25 and 30 hours of labour gone into it.
Which is not a terrible thing, as most of it was done while I was also doing something else - chatting with my relatives on xmas day or with friends in Montreal on NYE, or in the car, etc. etc.

None the less, if I were pricing this out the way I price my jewelry for a craft show, even if I paid myself minimum wage (rather than, like, experienced artisan wage), my break-even point for this hat would be...

$030.00
+
$003.00 ($15/5 because I will totally be using these again)
+
$276.75 (27 x $10.25)
=
$309.75


I mean, yikes. O.O
I'm assuming that people who sell their knitted and crocheted items at craft fairs are either (a) using less-expensive materials (maybe?) or (b) are paying themselves about $2/hr (more likely).
O.O


So, yeah. That's why I'm not trying to hawk my knitting at craft fairs (sewing 2nd-hand sweaters into hats and arm-warmers and so-on is a different story. That doesn't take anywhere near as long and so I can charge enough to actually pay myself without making people's eyes bug out as if I were completely dissociated from Reality for trying to charge that much).


Next project = pink stocking-extensions. The plan is to do about eight rows of knit-knit-pearl-pearl (ideally in a multiple of 12?) with the 4th and 5th row have evenly-spaced holes (we'll see how that goes) around it - maybe every six stitches? - so that they can easily accomodate garter-clips. And then I knit downwards for... however long it takes me to get 4" of extension knit, and then I shall cast it off. Part of me is all over trying a lace-pattern with this, but another part of me wants to stay careful and just stick with the pattern I'm starting with.

We'll see how it goes. O.O


Wish me luck! :-D


TTFN,
Amazon. :-D

Two things.

One: The hat I am making for myself is - having transferred it to a set of circular needles that are big enough to hold it when it's at its widest - about 4 inches too big-around in the hat-band area. Help?
Not that I have a crochet hook,though I could probably rig something up (un-bent paperclip, etc) BUT: Is it possible to knit a new section of garment directly to a piece of garment that has been cast-off (or on, as the case may be)? Or do I just need to knit-and-pearl[1] a ban of eighty and then start reducing from there? Thoughts? Suggestions? Help?


Two: As mentioned, above, I now have a set of 6mm circular needles with a much longer (32", iirc) string. YAY! :-D I also have:

A set of Very Very Thin circular needles (the plan is to make ruffled and/or lacey stocking-extensions on them)

Two balls of burgundy/brick-red fishnet-yarn (for the making of said ruffled stocking-extensions -- I will need to have the method of this shown to me yet again so that I can do it right, but that's The Plan)

Two balls of PINK cotton-angora yarn (not lace-weight) for the purposes of knitting a really, REALLY simple lace patterned stocking extensions (when I'm feeling up for it -- I will have to get a better hang of pearling and increasing before I do this, I think, as well as this "yarn-over" business, but that's The Plan)

One ball of purple yarn (100% wool) in a thicker (oh, well) gage and a different shade (far bluer, somewhat lighter) than the purple stuff with-which I've started my hat

One ball (or twise, really) of many-hued hand-painted merino that (handily) contains both shades of purple PLUS a few number of pinks, berries, and blues -- this will be used to bridge the two purple yarns (probably more than once) by adding... oh, about five rows (I hope) of it between one purple and the other.


It'll work. :-)


I do not yet have a spindle, but that is not a problem. :-)



Tomorrow we go to Monreal (to visit the biodome! :-D) and I shall bring (a) salted-caramel chocolate[1] and (b) my knitting bag and (c) Kushiel's Dart in the car with us to keep us entertained. Whee! :-D



TTFN,
Amazon. :-D

So hi.

I posted this in my LJ a while back and, while someone has expressed interest in ordering chocolates from me, I haven't had any luck in the yarn department. So I'm posting it here in the hopes that the Ottawa Knitting People will be interested in making some sort of exchange.


*~*~*~*~*


I made my mom a thick, orange scarf for xmas last year. It was made of a washable wool blend (merino + acrylic or something similar) and it was a very thick yarn.

She has since asked me to make her a tuque to go with it. I SO don't have $60 to drop on yarn this year. At all. But I'd like to make her a hat.

I'm looking for ~2 skanes of a thick-gage washable yarn, ideally with at least some plant/animal (as opposed to petrolium) content, in a dark chocolate brown with amber/pumpkin/rust flecks.

However pretty-much anything in that colour-family will work, as she's an Autumn.


So I'm looking to the many, MANY local (Ottawa / Gatineau) knitters I know and saying:

Have you got anything in your stashes that would work for this? I'm hoping such a hat (in our large-headed family) won't take more than two double-fist-sized (I have big hands) scanes/balls of yarn, or whatever the super-thick gage of yarn option is, size-wise. (I don't work with patterns at this point, if it's not painfully obvious -- I iz n00b).



What I can offer in exchange:

Home-made bread (contains wheat, can be vegan or not)

Home made gluten-free goodies such as cookies, cakes, or pie (not typically vegan, let me know about nut-allergies beforehand)

Home-made chocolate truffles and chocolate barks (pumkinseed-butter, clove-and-cayenne, fleurs de sel, peanut butter, mint, tahini)

Home-made jams, jellies, pickles, and/or other preserves, 2C jar per skane unless otherwise specified (give me a few options for what you want, I'll let you know if/when I can make it happen)

Relaxing (not therapeutic - I'm not an RMT) massage (30 minutes)

Custom Porn (written, 1000 - 3000 words)

Home-made vegan soaps (6-8 bars, you pick the scent, multiple scents can be done but not more than 3 per batch) -- assume 6-8 weeks for delivery, as they will have to cure. (Also home-made massage balm and/or candles -- limitted)

Topping a 20-30 minute stingy-percussive S/M scene for you or the bottom of your choice. (Hands and canes. No flogging. I suck at flogging. No genitals, but breasts okay. Thuddy/punchy is a possibility, but the vas majority of my tools are stiny and so are my hands, so I'd stick to stingy for this one). May also be able to do piercing, if I check my supplies. Modeling portfolio and kink-specific blog (Syrens) are linked through my LJ profile.

1 hr+ free modeling (photography, not life-drawing for this one, folks) if you need cover-art for your e-book/chap-book or need a model for your Etsy wares (If you've chosing this option, be aware: due to my height, I can be hard to fit, so you may want me in jewelry or other accessories rather than clothes, depending on what you make). Modeling portfolio is linked through my LJ profile.

Custom pendants/earrings using semi-precious stones + silver-plated and/or surgical-steel findings (I'll let you know what materials I've got and you decide what you want made).


*~*~*~*~*


I'm posting this as open/public, so if you know of someone who might be interested in this kind of a trade, feel free to link them to me.