Updates on the Tote & Other Things

Now I know why I'm a fan of needlework, & not a sewing - I totally cut out the pieces for my tote bag wrong. You would think that with the paper pattern being just squares, that there wouldn't be too much that could go wrong.

Unless you're me.

Somehow I missed the part on the instructions that says that you are to lay the pattern on the fold of the fabric. Turns out that if you fail to do that, you end up with two squares instead of one long rectangle, which apparently you need for the bottom of the tote to be strong. I'm thinking I just may work with it though, by cutting another square the same size in a contrasting fabric, then sewing all three together into an even longer rectangle than what is in the original pattern & having the seam end up in the middle of the tote instead of the bottom. Hopefully this will give a pleasing wide stripe. If not, well, at least it was made from discarded jeans, & not new fabric.

Just read with amusement a post about the K-Tel Knitter (I remember it being called the Looper when I had it), from Noreen Crone-Findlay here. I was quite amazed at how she figured out how to make the loops when she didn't have the instructions included with it. I remember when I played around with the knitter about 10 years ago, how complicated it was to make the stitches, & thinking "Why would anybody want to spend 2 minutes making one lousy looking stitch? Arghhhh!" It stayed within my mind as the bane of the needlework world ever since. Yes, Noreen, it is a pig's ear - & a dirty one at that!

We still have to get things sorted out with Sasktel at Dan's business, but on my end of things, I'll be going back to using Skype. Dan also brought me home a cell phone for my own use, so that I have something for emergencies & when the power goes out. I've never been a big fan of cells, mainly because I have partial hearing damage (unsolicited advice to teens - this is a direct result of me blasting music in my ears constantly with my walkman for 5 years straight - mp3 players & ipods will do the same thing too) which has prevented me from being able to hear the person on the other end of most models, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone. Anyway, the cell DH got for me has a decent volume control & the sound is very clear - I could actually hear him when I tested it - Yippee! I only have a calling plan for now, but think I'll be upgrading to the data plan in the near future, so that I can post pics & check prices on Ebay when I'm at the thrift stores.

In the mean time, I've started crocheting a pair of ornamental baby booties in thread. I'm really liking the pattern so far - it's from a booklet from Annie's Crochet Newsletter called Sweet Sentiments. If I'm happy with the finished results, I'll probably put a few on consignment in the local gift shop here - they are always looking for new things, and they've been sadly lacking in baby shower items for some time now - hopefully I can fill in that need. I've also rediesgned the graphics for some of the crafting CDs that I sell through my Ebay & Etsy store - I think they look a lot more professional now & hope that will spark some more sales for me. I really must get some more vintage patterns scanned into ebooks & deal with all that raw wool sitting in barrels in my house too.

And if I'm not busy enough, I'm going to become a Usborne Books direct seller. I had been buying the books for awhile for my children to supplement their home school curriculum. It just made sense that now that I have 4 children being home schooled this year, & with the volume of books I purchase (the kids & I are all major bibliophiles), that I should at the very least get a consistant discount on my purchases. I just have to wait for them to approve my application - it's only been since Friday that I faxed the forms, but I'm already feeling impatient - I wanna buy some books right now :)

The Sasktel Saga

Didn't get to the denim tote like I had hoped - Ben's friends came earlier than I expected, & he had two instead of one - making a total of 6 rowdy boys in our little house on the prairies! Couldn't get much done, much less get any quiet around here, but that's ok - a good time was had by all :)

Just before they left, I found out that my VOIP service was cancelled, leaving me wiht no phone. Apparently the major phone company, Sasktel, has eliminated all competition in the province in the land line biz by making it mandatory that all phone lines are routed through them & anybody leasing their phone numbers for resale (as a VOIP company would have to do), now has to use Sasktel's infrastructure too. This jacked up the prices for the VOIP & other companies like it, effectively making it impossible for them to compete, and Sasktel has completely monopolized this service. I'm pretty sure that this is illegal on Sasktel's part, but it's likely they'll get away with it - they have the money & power to win any lawsuits against them - not to mention that they are a Crown Corporation (owned by the government, but still run like a private business), which in Canada means that they are virtually above the law. Shame on you Sasktel - shame! :(

So I need to go pester my neighbours to borrow their phone & call my DH at work to see if he wants to go with Skype & have the hassle of our phone number being long distance to all our friends. Or break down & be owned by Goliath. Anyone know a David? Think I'll be getting a lot of stress relief crocheting done this week .

Tatting, Tatting, Tatting....

Finished my cro-tat edging last night - er, I guess at 3 am it is technically early in the morning...

Today I'm going to piece together the recycled denim tote (or at least try) from a Quick Sew pattern that I picked up at the local thrift store for $0.25 last week. I already have 5 canvas totes around the house that I use for holding various needlework projects & 2 that I use for groceries, but the canvas is just not holding up well on any of them anymore. Figured rather than buy some more generic bags (that "have no soul", as my friend Roy would say), that I would give it a go & make some of my own. Having a monstrous pile of knee-blown jeans taking up space in the house is a pretty good motivator too!

I'm thinking that I might also make some flower or heart motifs to applique onto the totes too, or maybe even try my hand at a quilt patch - not really sure. Sometimes it's best to let the project "speak to you" as you go along making it. I've found that some of my best creations have come about that way.

After I finished up the cro-tatted piece, I stayed up even later to give a try at shuttle tatting again. I had done it for a little while years ago, when Deb was just a baby, but didn't have access to hardly any patterns then, so I didn't keep with it for very long. I still don't have a proper shuttle around the house (yet), but I'm pretty good at improvising - I found that all my sons have lots of great shuttle repacements in the form of Knex building pieces :)

Being overly abitious, I started with a size 30 tatting thread. It was a bad idea, as I was too tired to see the stitches properly & couldn 't figure out why I couldn't pull on the shuttle thread to close the loop - wasting a lot of good thread in the process of knotting everything up. Decided to go to good ol' size 10 & see if I could make a better go of it. Same problem - I couldn't close the loop. Picked up the instructions again, looking for a clue - ohhh, I was making the stitches with the shuttle thread rather than on the shuttle thread! This happens when you pull the shuttle thread taute, but failt to relax the loop wrapped around your other hand. Trying again, I finally could close my loop - yay! Now that I've got shuttle tatting figured out again, I'll have another hobby to take up space, Bwahahah!

So Much for Rain & Finishing Projects

I had almost completely forgotten that today the town was having all the pipes flushed - so no water would be available here - a real pain when you have a family of 8 and a mountain of laundry to do! So instead of finishing my cro-tatted edging yesterday after Brianna left, I spent rest of the day doing 6 loads of laundry.

Normally I do one load a day & that keeps me on top of things, but I had been busy getting my paperwork in order for the coming home school year & fighting several computer related problems in the midst of it all, so I had let it slide. At least for my reward I had a nice & toasty comforter to snuggle under when I went to bed - I love that straight from the dryer warmth - especially when the temp took a dive to 5º Celsius last night.

Then I woke up today to find that my youngest son had gotten into my cro-tat project - Wahhhhhh!!! Thankfully it wasn't tangled beyond repair, but he had it frogged back to nearly the beginning :( Guess I know what I'll be working on tonight when all the children are in bed. At least I found a great item today at the local thrift shop to help me keep my thread organized while I'm working on my project - a metal paper towel holder. It can hold two of the large balls of thread on it or up to 8 of the really small balls - very handy.

My day got even better when Rachel came home from checking the mail - with a package for me.

"It's from China?" she sounded a little confused, as usually anything from China is computer equipment that goes to Dad. But I already knew what was in it - the set of 20 circular bamboo knitting needles that I bought on Ebay. Oh happy day!!!!! A few months ago I learned how to knit in the round on two circular needles from Cat Bordhi's great youtube tutorials (see the first one below), and have learned to love making socks again. Now that I have my bamboo set, I'm going to be working like a maniac to get at least two pairs done for the whole family by winter. I'm stoked just thinking about it :) Off I go to find some yummy yarn to work with tonight.

Knitting Pledge After-Effects

My DD Deborah had a friend over this past Sunday afternoon, Brianna. The original plan was to bake a large batch of sugar cookies, but I had no butter or margarine in the house, and our small town doesn't have a store open on Sundays. While thinking of something else to do, Deb showed Brianna the knitted scarf that she has been working on. I asked Brianna if she knits (no, but she crochets, so I asked if she wanted to learn (Yes!). You can be sure that I was more than happy to teach her right then & there :)

We were all sitting in the living room: Deb, her friend Brianna, my other DD Rachel and me - all of us knitting & crocheting away quite happily. Then, Deb pipes up & tells me that she has been teaching the two older boys from the Kerr family how to crochet. I told her that it was great that she was doing that & as Deb didn't say anything else, I didn't think much more of it.

Soon Brianna's mom came to take her home & she eagerly showed off the beginnings of the dishcloth she was making. Mom thought it was great, gave a thoughtful look, then asked me if I knew how to join afghan squares together. Apparently Brianna, mom & a few of her siblings had crocheted some squares to make an afghan, but having done them without a pattern, were clueless about how to assemble it. Again, I was more than happy to offer my services :) Next thing I knew, Deb is piping up again that, "We should have a kind of knitting & crochet bee. Then we could have your family & the Kerrs & us get together & work on projects together!"

I'm so glad that I took the knitting & crochet pledge a few months ago - it looks like it is having a ripple affect through the neigbourhood now - Long live the Needle Arts!

On to other things & Cro-tatting

The contest still didn't turn out as well as I had hoped for - I only had one entrant & hundreds of spam messages. Phooey! I'm thinking that I'd be better off doing a contest in winter, when people are cocooning at home & more likely to be checking out other blogs that they don't normally go to.

I've also realized that I'm a terrible blogger - I've had this blog for nearly a year, and I've only made 22 posts - including this one. My friend Kelly, at Crazy Dog Farm , has only been blogging for 3 weeks & has already made 17 posts. I have post envy!

So it's time to get on with it and start making some posts!

Recently I've picked up cro-tatting again. In case you've never heard of it before, cro-tatting is a way of making lace that looks like tatting, but using a special elongated crochet hook instead. A really good site to learn the basics of cro-tatting from is MaryM's. Besides having a great tutorial here, she also has a lot of sweet & wonderful original cro-tat patterns. The clincher is though, that it is very difficult to find other cro-tatting patterns. Annie's Attic no longer carries cro-tatting books, and they were really the ones to set the trend. Of course, you can still find some pattern booklets available on Ebay, but if you're like me, you can never have too many patterns, so what to do, what to do?

With a little bit of experimenting , you'll find that you can convert most shuttle tatting patterns to cro-tatting - it just takes a little bit of a work around. Where in shuttle tatting you can just make a tatted chain, with cro-tat you will have to make some chain stitches & then go back over the chain with enough single crochets to match the amount in the pattern. At times this may require that you make your rings first, then do a second row/round to make your cro-tat chains.

This week, I'll be working on some patterns from an Annie's Attic book called Charming Boudoir, My first project is going to be the towel edging, which I'm going to do in a dark pink. I'm thinking that I'm going to sew it on as an edging onto an upcycled denim tote that I'm going to be making. My scanner has been giving me grief again, so I'll have to ask my daughter, Deborah, if she'll take some pics when it is done. If the summer weather stays as cruddy as it has been, that should be tomorrow!