Cow Costume

Dancing Cow costume
My daughter participated in “The Glass Slipper”, a ballet based on the story of Cinderella. During one part of the play she and a fellow dancer performed a “magical” dance, which turned straw into gold.

Together my daughter and I helped out by creating the costume. We started by making a paper Mache covered balloon. This we attached to a bicycle helmet. I carved a nose from Styrofoam. We attached the fabric and eyes using hot glue.

The cow was a great success. The dance instructor even invited my daughter to perform at an outside dance and sing fest.

Finished my husbands Hat!

Here are some nice photos of the finished hat. My niece Nili is the model. As you can see the hat is a bit large for her.

Nili has been visiting for a few days. Its been fun coming home from work and chatting. We would pour a glass of wine, break out the chips and dip and catch up.

I'm teaching her how to "blog" so she can pass along the skill to her family.

A few years ago I taught my sister to blog and now she blogs way more than I do. She also uses blogs for her classes. In case you want to see my sister's web log about boat building and restoration.http://www.greenboats.blogspot.com/

A Hat Big Enough

My husband is someone whose head size is larger than the average. He has a hard time finding hats to fit. He recently, came down stairs so proudly saying, “I just found a web-site where I can order an extra large hat.” After hearing that, I was humbled into finally beginning a knit hat that would fit his head.

Just before Christmas I downloaded Brooklyntweed’s “Turn A Square” free hat pattern. Thank you, Jared! I thought this would be a fun hat to knit and would be manly enough for my hubbie to wear. I spoke with my friend Ellen who makes recycled cashmere yarn. She had just dropped some nice gray colored yarn for sale at one of our local yarn stores. I dashed over to “Ewe’ll Love It!” and made my purchase. I proceeded to visit several other stores in search of accompanying contrasting stripe colors.

For such a simple looking hat there were some technical challenges to completing a good looking result. This hat is knit in the round on circular needles where stripes appear with steps at the color changes. To avoid these stepped stripes, I used the jogless stripe knit technique found here on the techknitting blogspot: techknitting blogspot. I wish I understood there was such a simple solution sooner. I could have used this technique earlier in my two-stranded knitting.

I didn’t finish this in time for a Christmas gift but started right afterwards. This way I got a chance to use part of my new gift of Knitpick's Interchangeable Harmony Wood Circular Needles. Instead of using double pointed needles at the close of the hat top, I used two circular needles (see photo). To make the stitches slide easily from the left side needle to the right I used one needle size smaller on the left needle connection.

I did run into some problems with this knit design. I didn’t see other commenting on this on Ravelry, so, it could just be the way I knit. I found I was creating a rather large gap where the “corner” raglan style decrease was occurring in my knitting (see photo). As I noticed the effect starting a few rows up I tried to minimize the gap. I found it helped to knit tightly in the area one row prior to the decrease area. It helped but, I still came back and ran a few tightening stitches through the loops on the backside of the knitted fabric at the raglan decrease line (see photo).

Band Costume Design

I helped my daughter’s middle school theater with their costumes for the performance of “Barnum”. We collected circus costumes and 1870’s clothes, and we found that we needed fourteen 1890’s band costumes. Well, I took on the project. I found a good web site with lots of old time band pictures. (http://www.ibew.org.uk/vbbp-us1.htm)(Mostly men, I guess women weren’t allowed out in public back then. At least not as a band member.)

At first I was hoping that the students would not wear hats since our budget was limited. But, after looking into all the old band pictures; almost every band has caps on their heads. The style I that thought would be appropriate (conductor style) are hard to find. Because of that my daughter and I thought to create them from an inexpensive top hat. It’s really Nomi’s design. She worked on them slowly but surely finished.

For the actual, band jacket I altered a short styled women’s stand-up collar jacket. I added the extra Triangle shape flap for band “flare”. This is where we added the trim straight across the chest with buttons on the ends. Michael's craft supply store sells a mix of gold buttons so we mixed and matched the buttons to the front.

Our costume committee members helped to cut out the jacket pieces. We distributed the cut pieces out to two different mothers who also helped to sew them up.
So here you see the final results on the students. Hurrah! Come follow the band!

Latvian Mitten Knit-Along

It has been quite awhile since I last posted. I have been knitting and will slowly feature my finished projects here over the next few weeks.
This Picture is the start of my latest project, “Latvian Mittens”. Our knitter’s guild, NVKG, is having a knit-along. Our president and treasurer took a Latvian Mitten knitting class last summer. They liked it so much they wanted to share.
They came up with a modified pattern and started to explain the cuff detail in our November meeting. About thirty of our member all started along. We learned how to do a modified long tail cast on which uses two different colors. The braid detail is purl stitches where the back of the stitch is actually carried in front of the work instead of the back. By twisting this yarn as you go along you get the raised looking braid. It will be fun to see the results of all our members.
The basic pattern calls for light, medium, and dark wool. Of course I couldn’t settle on just three colors so I am using all of them mixed in. I like the basic green tones when they are highlighted by the bright blues. I got a chance to knit in the car while we drove to the Cape for the weekend. That’s how I got so far.

I am sad to say that my dearly loved mother has passed away this april. We will all miss her dearly.

Combination Knitting & Noro Scarf

It seems a while ago but our last knit guild meeting was an interesting one with a presentation made by knit author Annie Modesitt.

She was a comical and interesting speaker. She was self-taught and developed a knit style where the purl stitch is created using an under-pull style called “Combination knitting”. Ms. Modesitt had our whole guild group creating knit fabric using this unique stitch. Many of our members found it a bit difficult to switch to this unique purl style, but I think I will try a knit project using this purl stitch before I give it up.

You can see my knit sample results at the left. We were asked to knit the bottom in our usual style then try the “Combination knit style” above it. I did find that my knit fabric is a bit tighter. We also learned a method for creating cables without a cable needle. The saying goes, “make a might X, then pinch, slip, poke.” I could have used the method when I knit a cabled hat earlier this year.

I am also working on a Noro single rib scarf. I was thrilled by the beautiful stripe Noro scarf , which Jared knit on his Brooklyntweed blog.

You can also see a bunch other beautiful scarves by searching for Noro scarf on Flicker.

I have been admiring the Noro Silk Garden yarn for sometime. My daughter was with me during one of my visits to my local yarn shop. She suggested we get it for my up and coming birthday. Well, how could I resist! We brought it home and she hid it until my birthday. Shortly after it was unwrapped I had it cast on. It is a great project for non-technical knitting like car rides and sitting and chatting. This picture shows it half way. After my trip to visit my parents over Easter I’ve got a quarter left to go now.