Friday, April 8th, 2011
I’m not knitting lately, at all, because I moved crosstown, to my own apartment. I hired movers for the heavy stuff and the furniture and the things I needed to set up a house right away, and the odds and ends are at the old place, piled onto the balcony and mashed into the closet, with all the yarn at the back. I have no idea where my knitting needle sets are.
But, knowing how my hands and brain start to itch when I don’t make anything for a few days, when I made a mad lunge back to the old place to pick up mail, I grabbed an overflow stash organizer (god, I’m becoming that kind of stash freak) (Becoming?) (Shut up). The freestanding cabinet that the birdcage sits on still holds my collection of vintage red, yellow and green Boye straights. I loaded a couple patterns on my iPad that I guessed would suit the yarn and needles I’d have at hand, and I’ve promised myself that once I unpack a few more boxes tonight, I can sit in my easy chair and listen to the radio and knit for the first time in a couple of weeks.
And since I have two and a half rooms and two and a half closets all to myself, the little shallow half-height closet is going to be just for yarn.
Friday, August 6th, 2010
I made a bag!
I sewed a bag, to be specific. A knitting bag. I have a couple of bento bags I picked up in Japantown at the dollar store: squat, square-bottomed drawstring bags that are the perfect size for a ball of yarn and a small, portable, mass transit-friendly project.
These little guys are perfect for carrying small projects around before you absentmindedly stuff them into the back of a closet or into the "I swear I am going to go on a finishing spree; next week, maybe" box.
I didn’t use a pattern (but this pattern is pretty close), since I was using whatever scraps were left over from some too-long pillowcases. The red thread I already had on my sewing machine matched perfectly: not because I’d spent any effort on it, but because I keep buying such a narrow range of reds (”safety” through “fire engine” and “candy apple,” to be specific) that everything matches — to the point where last week, I accidentally-on-purpose dyed my hair the same vivid color as my little red satchel.
I went a little nuts on the construction: after having a couple of my earlier sewing projects fray in the wash, I’ve become militant about enclosing seams. In this one little bag there are French seams, flat-felled seams and rolled hems — I even broke out my new hemming foot for my sewing machine! Any stray fabric that could shed threads, snag a needle or catch a pair of scissors is sewed down to within an inch of its life. This little dude is bulletproof. There’s even a pocket inside with a tiny compartment for my tiny, tiny sock needles.
I sweated over this little bastard for two hours, pinning and ironing and getting my corners EXACTLY right, making sure the exposed hem on the front of the pocket was lined up just so. The cotton yarn I used for drawstrings at first seemed too thin, so I ended up crocheting a few feet of chain stitch out of a neon orange acrylic yarn I’d picked up for making amigurumi. Once it was done, I popped a ball of yarn into it, tucked a set of tiny DPNs into the pocket, and tied the top shut with a flourish, to admire my handiwork.
And what I had was … a little red bag. A little red bag with a pocket you can’t even see.
That’s it?
Good lord. I think I’ve set a new personal craft record for overthinking the obvious.