Update on glove: so very annoyed with this pattern. I have had to make so many adjustments, in order to make it fit properly, and the mitten shell is giving me the worst issues right now. The rest of the pattern is just - kind of obviously written for the pattern-writer's own needs, which is one thing. The mitten shell decreases are requiring me to read her mind in order to know whether she wants me to do a set of four decreases per round or continue the decreases until I finish the round, because there's nothing specifying which one she means. I'm going to switch to decreasing across each needle, then knitting around, then decreasing again, because otherwise I'm not seeing the mitten shell getting done while it's a size that's going to fit properly on my hand.
@Zuki you should check out the spindlers group on ravelry, they're a pretty good group and the author of "respect the spindle" is a regular poster over there I'll also happily nerd out at you about it. Maybe it needs its own thread?
So, I bought some sock yarn because it was on sale, and I want to make socks with it. I've never made socks before - is there anything I should keep in mind when looking for patterns on ravelry? Tips? Advice?
I am really fond of Tin Can Knits' sock tutorial, but it's written for worsted weight yarn - you might still find the walkthroughs helpful for understanding sock structure, though!
Oh, I really appreciate their explanation of the short rows and the heel! Thank you :D Edit: With my superpower of INCONSISTENT DECISION MAKING AS SPEEDY AS THE WIND, I've decided not to make socks with this yarn- it's really pretty and all my socks get gross and hairy, plus I'd have to hand-wash it.
Oh hey, it's almost the same as the last thing I did, but different! Actually, I wanted this to be a few inches taller, so I ended up redoing the entire pattern from scratch. At least I didn't have to wrestle the DMC palette a second time? Turns out waste canvas is kind of a giant pain to work with, compared to Aida cloth, and I've spent the last week whining to myself about how I'm never going to work with it again, but it's hard to stick to that when things come out looking this neat. Now I just need to sew a bag from scratch in two days without ruining the cross-stitch, so at least I have this photo record to remember the good times after I probably/inevitably screw this thing up.
I finally, finally finished my Yule present for my moirail. These were a lot easier and a lot harder than I expected at the same time!
My sister is finally casting off the snood they're making me as sort of an Imbolc present, and what does my kitty do? Decide he needs to be 1) on Em's lap, and 2) under the knitting.
I made a rare endangered neck (pillow) python! His name is Lumpy and he will be invaluable on the coach trip I need to make next weekend :D He is Lumpy because I rushed him and only made him this morning in a couple hours, but he has one of those metal snap fastenings where his tail meets his neck, and also I wound up hand-sewing his head to his body because I didn't think ahead (heh) and forgot to just incorporate the head-shape in the original pattern, or sew it on BEFORE I started stuffing ^^;;; But I think he's cute all the same for all his flaws XD Also, he's made out of a piece of my mum's old yoga pants and an scrap of old duvet cover, so points for upcycling, right? :D
My hand-beaded graduation gown! Took me so many hours of painstaking beadwork. I watched almost the entire Season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer while embroidering this. I'm debuting it on Friday, at my graduation reception.
hey cross stitch folks. i have a big pile of embroidery floss and a piece of #16 aida cloth about a foot square, and i want to use LOTS OF COLORS. i hate twee cutesy stuff, love geometrics, relearning after a long time not doing it so i should probably not attempt any super-realistic thread painting. suggestions? links to free patterns? i am leaning toward some repeating geometric motif where i can have the colors change in rainbow order across the canvas, but i'm also kind of thinking about a kelp forest with colorful fish, or maybe a bunch of poison arrow frogs on jungle foliage? idek man, i just want COLORS. and i want to fill in the whole canvas, no white space.
I don't have any particular links to patterns, because I've been doing the convert-image-to-pattern thing, but pinterest is a pretty decent cross-stitch resource. Unfortunately, it's hard to separate the free from the not-free, which does get annoying. This tumblr has a stitch-of-the-week thing going on, that doesn't use the standard x stitches, but they're still designed for aida cloth, and you could probably do some pretty color things with them. Or for the picture conversion, I use pic2pat.com. Some pictures get complicated to convert, but ones with stronger color blocking and fewer lines convert less painfully (like the cascade one I did). And the most recent (most painful) thing I've done is use excel, put the image I want as a background on the spreadsheet, fiddle with the rows and columns so the cells are squares and trace over it with symbols and colors.
I quite like using stitchboard.com. Some suggestions from my Pinterest ... patterns phoenix rainbow horsey squarey pattern swirly pattern some cute fishies interlocking triangles another thing you can do is find a b & w pattern you like, then stick it in Paint and go nuts with the color replacer. that's how i made my treble clef. you could also search for tesseract patterns.
you guysssss pinterest won't let you navigate if you're not logged in, and i refuse to get an account because they won't let you navigate if you don't. i hate that kind of attitude. so pinterest isn't a source. ;_;
