Marquee letters

It was my man's birthday a week ago!  He's a big typography geek, and I made him marquee letters with his initials.

I was pretty smitten with this Craftster tutorial video, but then I saw these marquee letters and liked the backgrounds even better.  My sister pointed out to me the map used in one of the letters, and I had a map of Oregon (where we live) that was perfect (and free) for this project.

The Craftster tute goes into more details about prepping the letters, which I got from Joann.   I used a box cutter to start taking the front off, and I found that once I started it, I was able to just tear the rest away.  I kind of wanted it to look rough (I even tore the bottom left of the B and didn't fix it with anything, it's a pretty forgiving project if you don't take it too seriously).

Once I had the front of the letters off, I used them to trace out the map.  The B is made from the whole of Oregon and the J is made up of the Portland area (it was a double sided map with cities on one side, the whole state on the other).   I used Mod Podge to glue them in there.

I purchased these lights from Target for under $13 (I used one string for both letters, I had 2 light socket spots left over, but only one light since I busted one of the bulbs twisting it too tightly), making the whole project under $20.

Now, here is where I tell you to be careful when you're stringing the lights together letter to letter, the first time I did it I made it a BJ and that was just frustrating.  Also, if you take more time to cut off the excess paper before trying to screw the lights in, you won't accidentally break a light trying to get that sucker in there.

The way I cut holes for the lights was to use one of my Leatherman's poker tools, then shoved a screwdriver in the rest of the way and tore off some of the excess cardboard.  High tech!  Also I love my Leatherman tool, if he was a real man I would have run away with him when I was a teenager.

Star Trek Cross Stitches, Part 1

A few weeks ago, my mother sent me a link to this Star Trek Cross Stitch book.  It was so cute!  I'm pretty stubborn about buying craft books though, or just books in general.  I go to the library a lot, and I looked at our library's website and they didn't carry it, so I gave up on it.  Six days later, out of nowhere, a friend of mine MAILED me the book!  Signed by the author, too.  I immediately got my cross stitch on, and began the Federation Seal.

Awwwww yeaaaaah.

My husband is a pretty big Trekkie, and being in proximity to that has made me pretty Trekkish myself.  A friend of my man's is expecting his first baby to be born this month, and he is a HUGE fan of Deep Space 9.  I don't usually like to make baby items for people because babies in my family have these giant heads and never fit into anything under 6 months old, and I don't like to gamble with unfamiliar genes and my knitting time.  I decided to make the DS9 space station for them to hang on their future cadet's wall.

The DS9 was super fun to do, it didn't have much mindless cross stitching like the blue in the Federation seal, but it wasn't too complicated to keep me from watching the Big Bang Theory.  When I went to the store to grab some extra embroidery thread, I wrote down the colors I would need, which included pink.  I came back home and was going through the pattern and saw the TWO STITCHES the pink called for.  Don't get me wrong, they are important to the makeup of the station, but I would have settled for something on hand if I would have paid attention to the lack of pink needed :)

I'm currently in the middle of my "thank you" cross stitch that I'm making for the friend who got it for me, and then I plan on making a Borg cube Christmas ornament (!!!!!!! I almost can't handle that one) and an excellent one of Wesley Crusher with the words "Shut up, Wesley" over the top of him.  More posts as this develops!

And can I talk about how much I love that cross stitching is such a cheap hobby?  It's bomb diggity.

Cowl fever

Birdy and I decided to make cowls for our husbands as Christmas presents.  My husband was basically bursting to have one (he brought it up CONSTANTLY).  He uses public transportation for school and work, so his neck does get cold a lot.  I blatantly lied and I told him I would try and make one for him after I was done with my Christmas knitting, which was okay because my mom always says it's okay to lie if it's regarding presents.

Bird and I picked up the yarn from Yarn Garden.  Bird was a magician and had finished all of her Christmas presents like 3 weeks before Christmas (people do that??) and I did mine about a week before.  This pattern moves very quickly, and I finished it in a week, and that was without pushing myself too hard to get it done.

twelve's cowl

Birdy's cowl

Me: Smile Baby!

Bkins: Maybe I am.

Darn! These photos really wash it out, but it is a nice bright blue, as modeled by the darling husband above.

I had a ton of fun making this cowl. It was quick and easy but had just enough of a pattern to keep me interested until the end. I ran into a mishap when I was casting off, though. 12 or so stitches to go and I reached the end of the line. For realsies. What the blob. So I just found a blue in my stash that was similar enough and finished off this bad boy. 

I was excited to do a project with Twelve. Our husbands are total buddies so this is a good gift for them both to enjoy. 

Shablam!
The end!

Hotpad for my sister, and my misadventures in double knitting

(My snippet regarding my goals is at the bottom of this post)

I decided to make this potholder/hotpad for my sister for her birthday.  I planned on making two, until my learning process for double knitting became a HUGE HASSLE.  Seriously.  I did not have a clue.

The pattern is roughly written by the designer, which is fine.  I don't expect someone to teach me how to knit every time they write a pattern.  However, I was shocked by how many people said, "this was my first double knitting project!" and yet I didn't find much help regarding the actual technique of pattern work within it.  (Also, this was mostly last minute, so I didn't have time to check out resources from the library - my bad.)

Essentially with double knitting, you are casting on both sides of a project at once by casting on twice as many stitches, and you knit every other stitch (which becomes one side of the work) and purl the other stitches (which become the back of the work).  Then you have a reversible piece of work that's really cool!

Here are the resources I used to help me through it: (all short videos)

How to cast on for double knitting
Knitting the first row with double knitting (by the same person as above)
Doing a pattern within the work  in my case, a teapot

I got really frustrated when I didn't understand casting on twice as many stitches (do I cast twice the number told in the pattern or did the creator already account for that? I ended up restarting 3 times before figuring it out). I went with the original cast on number in the pattern so it's a smaller hot pad that I'm not too thrilled with, but I get the process now.  I purled the last stitch of each row and slipped it knitwise the beginning of each row (you can partially see in my pictures that I didn't do this in the beginning, one side has a nice braiding and half of the other side is kind of twisted).

(My Ravelry link for this project)

Goals:
This gift fell under my "buy everything local for gifts" goal, which, womp womp, we didn't do.  I already had this yarn on hand from Michael's last year (which I don't feel bad for, stash yarn is okay!) but my husband designed her some Batman stationary, and we ran by Fedex Office to print it out instead of a locally owned business.  Doh!  It was only a few dollars and it was the first week in January so I have to get in the swing of things.  Not a huge deal, but I have two birthdays next month I'll (hopefully) be better about!  Here's the stationary Jesse designed for her:

Wind it, Knit it, Give it, Wear it.

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,

Trash it, change it, mail - upgrade it.

-Daft Punk 'Technologic'

Sing the blog title like that song and it becomes a billion times cooler. I think someone much more clever than I should make a crafty version of Technologic. If someone has already, please, please, let me know!

Anywho. This post is all about those gifts I received for Christmas that only make my crafty addiction easier to satisfy. As I've stated before, it's nice having a nerdy husband that appreciates your craft. Appreciates it and feeds it with shiny new toys.

I really wanted Knit Picks ball winder and swift for a while now. I was always bothering Twelve to bring hers over or let me use them at her house. Now I don't ever have to talk to Twelve again because I got my own. Thank goodness!

Ah, a glimpse into the clutter of my craft room. Is that Reese's peanut butter cup wrapper in the corner, you ask? And proudly I say: YES IT IS!

On top of giving husbands I have the coolest Nana in existence. So cool in fact that there are people who have applied to be her honorary granddaughter.  I had complained to her at some point about my issue with losing steam on my sock knitting. It's a curse most knitters fight with everyday, it seems. I'm just lazy enough that it turns into an issue, occasionally every single time.

She was kind enough to buy me some Addi's double pointed needles. Two sets, in fact so that I could try my hand at two sock knitting! I knew it was a thing and I have seen it done before on public transit but I just never went out and bought the needles for it. Well, now I don't have to. I also was able to wind up some sock yarn that had yet to be touched and so my journey has begun!

I am a fan of mismatched socks. Little Miss Matched, anyone? These socks are using the same style yarn, just different colors. (Durhey) 

So far I really like doing the two socks at a time. It made it easier when I decided it was time to knit together my extra stitches. Didn't have to count and write it down (and then lose the paper), I just went ahead and did it to both at the same time. Lots of fun to do.

Nana also got me a fun little book: Knit Your Own Dog. Someday I will knit my own dog, or 8 and you'll be sure to enjoy it.

She also gave us a beautiful hand made quilt.

Super nifty giraffe pillow cases.

This isn't everything she made us either. She did some amazing painting this year too, but that will need it's own post. There is a lot to show, but in due time.

I never know how to end these things, so...