Category: Crafts

Embroidery

The library system in our neighboring county has five or six locations with 10-needle embroidery machines. They’re free to use, but you pay $0.10 for every 1,000 stitches. And you cannot just bring your own thread (they will, however, order colors if you request them … not thirty shades of orange, but they’re happy to stock colors that aren’t really close to something they already own). Lesson of the day: even if it’s not “a computer”, it’s a computer. Reboot it.

I took a day off work, and we planned to spend the day at the library embroidering an entire stack of shirts. Five hours later, one was not even complete. There were two staff members going through the really big manual. They tried everything. The threads breaking issue turned out to be a badly would bobbin, but we still had trouble with the machine locking in the thread when it would move to a new run. Try enough times, you could get it to start. But, when it locked off the run, cut the thread, and moved elsewhere to start another run? The thread wouldn’t get locked in, and it would come out of the needle. We tried “fast forwarding” the job to the point of using a different needle. Same issue. We tried a simpler design (we started big, which was probably a bad idea). Same issue (although we managed to re-thread the upper needle frequently enough that the job completed). Kind of a last ditch effort, we rebooted the thing. And it worked perfectly. I’m guessing there’s some re-calibration steps that run on start-up because I don’t see this as a purely software issue where clearing the memory and starting over would have done something. But, sigh! Reboot it!

Wood carvings

Anya had whittled a few things (even a crochet hook!) with her multi-tool, so I bought a set of actual wood carving knives, safety gloves, and basswood cubes. She’s been doing a lot of wood carving this summer, and she’s gotten really good! The left-hand owl was coated with linseed oil and submitted for a local art showcase. The snowman has the cutest (and pointiest!) little stick “carrot” nose.

Crochet Project: Anya Scarf

Anya taught me how to knit, and I am slowly knitting her a scarf … but it’s more of a fancy going out scarf than a “keeping warm” scarf. I found the same yarn that I am using for our sofa blanket in a variegated color (Tidepool), and I used that to make a really warm scarf. I started off knitting, but the Bernat Blanket yarn doesn’t knit well for me — I managed to get about three rows in after more than an hour of working on it! Took that out, grabbed a crochet hook, and used double crochet stitches. Two days later, voila! She’s got a warm, snuggly scarf. Just in time for … 60 degree weather. It’ll get cold eventually. And her scarf is standing by!

 

Knitting – Finally

I learned to knit and crochet at the same time — crocheting was something I could do easily but knitting? It was awkward and never really worked. I’ve always suspected I was just doing something wrong — if only someone who knew what they were doing could spot it. I even managed to teach a friend of mine to knit, and she couldn’t show me what I was doing wrong.

I got Anya a knitting book — it wasn’t quite enough for her to figure out knitting, so I let her find a few videos on YouTube. She has gotten to where she knits quite well. At first, she was using pencils — but I got her some knitting needles with little cats on the top. And she decided to teach me how to knit. Casting on — check. Knitting — not a check. It’s this strange awkward motion and the yarn ends up way too tight on the needle. So she sat and watched what I was doing — corrected the couple of things I was doing wrong, and …

I am actually able to knit now (yes, there are a few mistakes … but the tension is reasonable and it’s reasonable looking).

Macrame Project – Hanging Plant Basket

I have eight spiral knot “arms” on the plant hangar — it’s starting to look like a sea critter!

The trick that I’ve found to macrame is managing the cords as you work. It’s rather difficult to make knots with four eight foot cords. Gathering the working cords into individual bundles (and, since I am doing square knots where two cords are being wrapped around a pair of cords … I gathered two of the cords into one bundle) makes the whole process quicker and easier.

The tie around the “active” cords then matches up with the string color on my knot diagram — which is great for remembering which of the two knots you just tied!