Val: Experimental Knitting and more!

Alright, so. Life has been a bit crazy lately, what with the wedding and moving and all. But, we're finally settled in, and still unemployed, so there's been an explosion of crafting.

First, before we moved, Mike and I spent a few days with Amanda and did some shopping. We found this great, huge, old desk for $20 at a university surplus sale!

Getting it the hour and a half back home with us was an interesting challenge, but Amanda generously loaned us the back of her pretend SUV and drove the hour and a half to drop it off at our house.

It obviously needs some work, but it's turning into a fun project for us. We're currently in the stripping/sanding stage, and we discovered a beautiful reddish wood underneath the gobs of light finish. More details as the project progresses.


Next up, I've been playing around with knitting. I'm really, really new to it - this is only my second project - but I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. I wanted to play around with knitting and purling, so I was planning on making a scarf using stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl one row). Well ... only a third of the way through it, I was getting a bit tired of the project and I realized that I wouldn't have enough yarn to make a proper scarf, so instead I turned it into the Etsy favorite: a cowl!

So, here's the process. I totally made this up as I went along, so no guarantees that I found the easiest way to do it.

The would-be scarf:


I had a lot of fun when I started knitting with this yarn because I had no idea how it was going to knit up. Once I decided to make my piece into a cowl, I knit a few more rows to make sure it would be large enough to go around my neck with a bit of overlap. When it seemed long enough, I cast off from my needles and sewed the extra yarn into the ends of the scarf. Just a warning, since it's stockinette stitch, the edges naturally curl a lot.

The cowl would have tried to suffocate me if I'd worked with it as is, not to mention being unruly from the curl, so I folded it in half (wrong side in) and bound the edges together essentially making a tube. I was lucky that my yarn made a striped pattern, because I was able to match up the lines and make sure that I was sewing evenly. When I was done with the side, I also bound one of the ends.


All bound up and ready for buttons:


I apologize for the slightly blurry photos, it wasn't until the next picture that I realized my camera has a manual focus that makes shots like these so much easier!


I had no idea how to make button holes, and I had a tiny inkling that I needed to have knit them into the piece itself, so I decided to use loops to secure my buttons instead. I braided three strands of the yarn together and eyeballed how long they needed to be to hook around my buttons (which I hadn't attached yet). I pulled the braid around a stitch and made sure both ends were tightly knotted. As an afterthought, I used normal sewing thread and sewed the knots together so they wouldn't pull back through the knitting.

To attach the buttons, I just threaded one short length of yarn through the button and the knitting and tied it tightly on the inside.

A note: While you're working on the loops and buttons, one hand needs to be inside the tube, so it can get a little awkward at times, but it isn't too bad. For the most part, I worked with my tube inside out so I could get to the knots easier.


Turn your work right-side out and you're done!


The next step is to put your cowl away somewhere safe and enjoy the rest of the summer!







Let me know if you have any questions!

Next up: A long sleeved t-shirt refashion.