I have been BUSY!

This little pile of fabric, felt and interfacing became...

I have been busy sewing my little fingers off. This weekend was that of the Best Little Yarn Crawl in Texas. I was busy making project needle cases that hold a few sets of double pointed needles, and up 3 circular needles. Just enough for a project, hence the name. They can hold dpns up to 7.5 inches long, or 8 inches, if you don't cover the tops with the flap. Any length circulars will fit.

Lovely, delicious scissor fabric...

Dress pattern fabric (tee, hee.)

Here is the lovely tree, flower, and fruit fabrics. From the scrap felt, I made...

Sock needles are tiny. They are thin and short. Perfect for losing and snapping in half. I thought that giving them a little padding and protection was a noble idea. Besides, I have lots of buttons and like to make things out of extra material.

Fern green and a deep, strawberry smoothie-colored pink. They will hold needles up to 5.5 inches long.

This is the inside of my project needle case. You can see needles already looking comfy inside. The button on the circular needle pocket keeps the circular needle cable from shifting when it is closed. It provides just enough pressure to keep things tidy.

Aren't they cute!

Here are the insides of the other project needle cases - red, strawberry, and fern green. I have four more of the brown ones to finish. There are also pink and yellow felt pockets.

Sales were a bit slow, but as it was day 3 of the yarn crawl, people were tired. I have been invited back to The Knitting Nest (Austin, TX) in November for their Ravelry party. November 13, some of the ladies from Ravelry will be in town for a visit. I will be there, cases (and beaded stitch markers) in hand.

I am also going to be teaching classes this Fall at the Southwest Family Y, in Oak Hill (Austin, TX.) Two levels each of knitting and crochet, and some quick, fun jewelry classes. If you are local - come sign up. We are going to be learning a lot!

Things are busy, but it looks like the next few months will be full of fun.

If Vikings had lived in Austin or Nashville

If Vikings had lived in Austin or Nashville, maybe they'd have had armor made of wool felt (like cowboy hats) riveted with pearl snaps (like western-style shirts.)

Here are loads of pictures of all of the projects that I have been working on for my son Badger's 7th birthday. I think that I've been working for about 2 1/2 months total. mostly mornings before he woke up and in little fits and starts while riding in the car or sitting in waiting rooms.

The first thing that I worked on was a large dragon. It is 18 inches tall and about 24 inches long. The fabric is a VIBRANT orange batik that I had in my fabric stash.

It has really lovely wings.

And a lovely smile. The crown just seemed right somehow. I cut a crown out of some red wool felt from the felt stack here at home, and embroidered it with yellow pearl cotton and red metallic embroidery thread - which was a bear to work with. Badger picked the colors for the crown and the gold mylar thread for the centers of the button eyes. He thought that I was making this dragon for his Grandpa Bob, who also likes dragons. This bit iof subterfuge was necessary as it was really hard to hide a large orange dragon. He was very generously making all sorts of design choices so that is Grandpa Bob would really like it. I fooled him.

Badger picked a button from the stash to make a center jewel for the crown. My husband, Matt, helped to remove the metal shank on the back and I glued it on with craft glue.

Badger received the dragon as well as a suit of knit chain mail (hood and hauberk) first thing in the morning. As you can see, he is still waking up. I found both patterns on Ravelry.

The new look for baby fashion this fall is apparently chain mail. With cloth diapers. This is Rose, not Badger.

Badger is not so sure about the look.

The chain mail hood (called a helmet in the pattern) is shaped with short-rows like a sock heel.

I had to make the neck of the hauberk larger because Badger has an enormous head to house his enormous brain.

I made a buckler-type shield for him - also out of wool felt.

Blanket stitched on the edge in pearl cotton. It just made it look less plain.

We used a large, heavy button from Germany for the center boss.

And it has both an arm and a hand strap. To be useful.

Next I worked on a helmet. Finding a pattern for a helmet that was even remotely realistic was impossible. So I made my own. Actually, I made two. The first one was for a 15th century helmet called a sallet. Because I was insane. The one in the Wiki image with the lobster tails was the original idea.

I made a pattern and then made a paper 3D model. It was ok, but it had buckling on the top, as well as flaring at the bottom. This was an issue. I knew that the wool version would do the same thing. Wool felt does not lend itself to a fairly round smooth look without seams - not so smooth in that case. I could have blocked and steamed it, but I knew that I was going to have an inner layer with heavy interfacing which would not be as malleable as the wool.

I asked around for help with the geometry of the thing, and was put in touch with an armorer that knits. Can you beat that for cool? He was a big help, and his suggestions let me know that there would have to be many more seams than I wanted.

So I looked for something still a little complex, but easy enough for my simple head to figure out. I took a lot of measurements of Badger's head, and added a bit for ease and room to grow. Then I sat with pencil, large eraser and a load of drafting tools and came up with a second pattern. I found some images of the Gjermundbu Viking helmet and someone else's metal version of what it could have looked like. I chose for safety to omit the top spike. My brother sent a link to a Swedish museum pattern for a Viking 6-panel hat. I adapted it using Badger's measurements for a 4-panel helmet. I had two days total to do the helmet, including Badger's birthday itself.

The back had a chain mail piece, so I knitted more mail.

We used pearl snaps instead of rivets. The backs of these are all covered in interfacing and more felt - so no metal bits touch skin.

The outside layer of the helmet by itself.

The inside layer had 2 layers of very stiff and heavy interfacing. I didn't want his helmet to crease or dent.

It looked like a small tent when it was done.

Next came all the hand stitching. The bottom rim is attached to the inside and outside separately. Then the mask part was attached on the inside and outside with invisible ladder stitches. I had whip stitched it in pearl cotton beforehand. The top straps cover the seams and reinforce the helmet . Side pieces are attached with more pearl cotton, using a figure-8 stitch that looks like a herringbone pattern.

The top of the helmet. The pieces were also attached with simple whip stitching.

Happy boy received his helmet after dinner. I also cooked special Gluten-, Dairy-, and Soy-Free cupcakes and a layer cake with homemade chocolate icing. And brown rice and sorghum pancakes for his dinner - he requested pancakes, bacon and eggs for his birthday.

Yes, I am completely out of my mind.

The Value of Our Handmade Stuff

Here are most of the crocheted and knitted veggies for my daughter's 2nd birthday present. For some reason, the corn didn't make the shot. So we have (total) 11 veggies: corn, tomato, squash, lettuce, asparagus, garlic, beet, radish, carrot, and 2 mushrooms. I made 2 mushrooms because one just seemed lonely somehow.

As I have been making all of the veg for my daughter's present, I have been thinking of how we value handmade stuff. If you are reading this blog, you probably dig handmade already, but how much do you value it?

Do you buy local handmade in support of local artisans? Do you pale at the prices charged for it? I know we can all get a pair of nifty cabled gloves at discount stores for under $20, so paying $60 or better for what could be seen as the same thing seems exorbitant. Consider that the raw materials at retail prices can cost $20 by themselves. Consider that it can take 20 hours or so to knit a pair of gloves with a complex cable pattern. If we paid ourselves fairly for our time, those gloves would cost $220. Now that $60 doesn't seem so bad, does it? Besides which, the workmanship and materials used in the handmade pair mean that those gloves will last you longer than a month or so of fairly constant use. With care, you could pass them down to your kids. Over their lifetime, handmade goods cost far less than the mass-produced equivalent due to their better workmanship. You could pay $60 for one pair of gloves every 5 years (with hard wear) or $10 twice a year or more for store-bought - so $100 for 2 pairs of $10 gloves a year for 5 years.

Do we as makers value our goods as much as we should? Do we consider that when we do our best work, we should charge accordingly? We pay retail prices for our materials (most of us.) We spend HOURS making each individual item. Why do we then devalue our work when we gift it? We say "well, I made this, so if you don't like it, I understand" or some such nonsense (of which I am guilty as well.) Why are we hesitant to charge a fair price when we sell it? Are we really trying to compete with discount store pricing?

I spent HOURS on my daughter's present. I am spending HOURS on the market bag to hold her present. I will be spending HOURS on my son's birthday present - the fabric cutting alone is in it's third day. The materials mostly came from my stash, but I paid retail for all of them. Why do I feel a little guilty for giving them only handmade for their birthdays? No idea. Even though this was a planned thing, I feel like I need to do more. Do more than 50 hours of work for each one? Spend more than I already have, even if lots of stuff came from stash? Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Even as a dedicated handmade consumer and maker, I tend to devalue my own work. How silly. I put love into every stitch, love into every cut of fabric and moment at the sewing machine, love into choosing the materials and patterns.

If you make stuff, value your time, effort, care, and work. It is more than good enough.

On Handwork

I saw this short video over on the Mason-Dixon blog site. The importance of it struck so deeply that I felt the absolute need to share it here as well.