Sweet Juniper WoodCraft

One Line Slashed from "To-Do Before I Die List": Knit My Son a Sweater

2009-12-07T13:27:00.005-05:00

After I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to learn to knit, a kind reader commented: "If you're serious about the knitting thing, send me an e-mail - I can give you lots of good tips on which books to buy (and not) and what type of yarn/needles to start on. There's a lot of variety out there and it can seem veeeerrrry intimidating."

Of course I emailed her immediately, saying, "Yes, I'm serious! I've been taught the basic stitches a few times and even made a scarf once, but it never stuck and the knitting needles always ended up stuffed back in the closest. Any tips you have on where to start would be really appreciated, since all the choices are overwhelming."

The kind reader -- DW -- wrote me back an 800+ word email. She told me everything someone in my position would need to know about knitting. She told me which books to buy (this one), what websites to check out (ravelry), and what to stay away from (synthetic yarn, overly complicated lace work). She suggested that I find a simple, small project to start on, and most importantly offered to do a knit-along with me, walking me through a project and helping me interpret the knitting instructions. I told her I wanted to make Gram a sweater, and she suggested that we knit Joelle Hoverson's Child's Placket-neck Pullover Sweater, from her book Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

DW sent me a shopping list, and I bought everything I needed and started watching youtube videos explaining how to cast on, knit, and purl. My first knitting projects were a few 6-inch squares for a local fundraiser (the squares were sewn together to make large blankets).

After a few dozen of those, I had the stitches down and DW prepared an instructional PDF explaining how to start the sweater. Seriously, can you believe how nice that is? She even took pictures of herself doing each step, and broke down the knitting instructions into plain English. Then, magically, after I'd completed the first step, she sent me the next installment. My sweater started to take shape:

Over the course of a month, I knit a sweater. Here is the final result:

And here's the best part: she took every one of our emails and every one of the instructional pdfs she made (there are 9!) and put them up on her own blog. You guys: she is so awesome. If you ever wanted to learn to knit, and if you happen to have a child you could make a sweater for, you really have no excuse now. I tried to learn to knit twice before, and failed both times. In the summer of 2001 I was in China, and one of my major goals that summer was to learn to knit from one of the countless old ladies I saw knitting every single day. One was kind enough to try to teach me, but I think she'd never encountered someone with fingers as giant and clumsy as mine. Despite her kindness and multiple attempts to explain knitting to me, I couldn't even cast on. A few years later, when we were living in San Francisco, I paid a fair sum of money to take an introductory knitting class at a gorgeous independent yarn store in Hayes Valley. After spending all that money on the class and expensive yarn, all I had was a pretty goofy looking scarf with lots of gaps and holes that I never wore.

But, as DW has pointed out to me, my conversion to a knitter is now complete. I have totally joined their club, and as evidenced by my tendency to buy yarn and expect my husband to engage in a conversation with me about how beautiful it is, and how awesome it is that its from a Michigan fiber mill. He refuses to talk about yarn, and luckily for me, DW has not stopped answering my emails yet. He is also a bit annoyed because now when I sit next to him on the couch I knit rather than scratch his head or rub his back. Tough luck, dude, scratches don't keep your kids' hands warm (next project: mittens).

I think the reason I finally learned how to knit this time is because I made something I really wanted to make, and something that Gram needed. It is cold here, and wool sweaters truly keep babies much warmer than cotton or acrylic ones. I loved the design of the sweater, and I was thrilled to see it take shape before my eyes. DW breaks the pattern down into easy steps, and the process was so satisfying that I started on another project the same night that I finished the sweater.

(If you use DW's instructions and make a sweater, please email me! I'd love to hear from you and see the final product.)

[EDITED TO ADD: The comments weren't working, so that's why they are turned off. It's not because I don't want to hear from you -- I totally do. Email me, or leave a comment on DW's site. My user name on ravelry is sjwood -- you can also contact me there.)

Previous Project: Halloween Costumes 2009

Pegasus and Griffin Costumes

2009-10-30T15:57:00.001-04:00

[note this is Jim, not Wood writing]

Halloween is definitely the favorite holiday around here. I kind of hated it during the whole sexy/clever period of our mid 20s, but now that we have kids, I just can't imagine a better holiday experience than dressing up AS WHATEVER YOU WANT TO BE with all your friends and then going out in the dark to get a bunch of candy. Beats Hanukkah by a mile.

This was my year to do the Halloween costumes, and if my kid wants to be Pegasus for Halloween, I am going to make sure she really feels like Pegasus. The kid and I have been talking about and planning this costume together for six months. Maybe longer. We have drawn sketches. Diagrams. At some point she got it in her head that the costume would really fly so we went to Greenfield Village and went to the Wright Bros bicycle shop, "to learn about how to make things fly." We learned that it is really hard to make things fly but she figured that if we used enough feathers it just might work.

The boy is still too young to make big decisions, but he likes to roar, loves wild things, loves the lions and eagles at the zoo, and he carries around his griffin toy all the time. With a last name that means "griffin" in Dutch, we thought we could incorporate a lot of the ideas from the Pegasus costume into a griffin costume for him, and we liked the idea of two mythological hybrids on Halloween. Next year, when he cares, he can be a power ranger or whatever. Today I still have control (moo-hoo-ha-ha-ha).

The Pegasus costume started with the idea of having wings she could control with her hands (she really thought she was going to be able to fly). I rigged up some wire in the shape of two large wings and strengthened them with quarter-inch dowels, creating a wooden handle in the middle of each wing for her to grip. I ordered a box of feather boas from some sketchy website that came up in google shopping (how can they charge $6 for 50 boas? I am guessing these weren't free-range fowl feathers; I am totally waiting for my credit card number to be used in an order for $4,000 worth of poultry hormones to be shipped to Qinshan, China). I braided the boas through the wings, hot-gluing them when necessary. They are pretty heavy.

For a tail, we bought a $3 weave from the wig store in our neighborhood.

The mane is the beard from Gram's 2008 Halloween costume, which I originally made by gutting a stuffed goat we bought at the thrift store.

Because she was going to be using her arms for the wings, I had to construct two fake horselegs to come out of her chest area to simulate the look of Pegasus just taking flight or rearing up on her hind legs. For that I took two dry cleaning hangers and twisted them together, hand-sewed the fabric around them and connected the bare end to a third in the tunic so that they wouldn't droop. We experimented using one of Wood's old bras, but it worked out best just to sew a "pocket" for the wire.

They really stuck out well, and because they're wire she can adjust them to look however she wants.

Wood sewed the tunic and the pants from her own pattern. I think they look amazing. We bought the furry fabric months ago and when we originally started working I felt like it was a little off with all that ribbing, but it looks fine in the finished product I think. The hooves and the booties are felt.

The head was the trickiest part. I came up with the idea to have it on top of her head attached to a hood and Wood executed it perfectly. She used part of an old fleece blanket for the mouth, nostril, and eyelashes, and we sacrificed an old stuffed frog in the Salvation Army pile for the eyes. This photo (click to make it larger) gives a much better view of the head, which we based on the simple idea that a horse's head is like two triangles attached at one end.

Gram's costume was challenging because he really didn't seem to want to try anything on. Wood did a beautiful job on the pants, using a wire (like the front horse legs) for the tail. It's really flexible. I added a bit of Juniper's 2006 Panda costume to the tail (I liked the idea of creating a sense of continuity with the materials from year to year).

For the Griffin, we just attached boas to an old fisherman's sweater he'd nearly outgrown (we wanted to make sure these costumes would be warm enough for trick-or-treating), and Wood sewed on the hood she made from the cool lion fabric I picked up many months ago. I took the eyes from a stuffed animal that no one cared about anymore, and glued black fur and feather over them to give him an eagle scowl. The beak was a $2 mask thing that I sewed to the hood. I knew he would never actually wear it on his face. I wanted the kids to be comfortable in these costumes. I built wings for Gram that draped across his back and stuck out like a heraldic griffin's, but he really hated them and I thought his arms made pretty good wings. I may figure out a way to make them work before trick-or-treating. I know the griffin costume focuses more on the bird elements than the lion, but I think the lion tail is a cool surprise. We used Maurice Sendak's griffin from The Griffin and the Minor Canon as inspiration.

So there were no patterns, we just used stuff that was already around the house (unwanted clothes, toys, wires, hangers, etc.) and re-purposed them for the costumes. Total cost was about $28 for both together (not including shipping on the boas). The Pegasus was the more expensive of the two because we bought almost a full yard of fabric (the Griffin needed less than half a yard). There were probably four nights of work put into these costumes.

I know that seems like a lot of work to go into a Halloween costume, but we'll use these for imagination games until they grow out of them. I was a little worried that she was going to be disappointed that she couldn't actually fly, but when she got into that costume, stopped talking, and started communicating only in whinnies and neighs, running around with her arms outstretched, and smiling nonstop, I knew the whole flying thing was just part of the fun, an imagination that doesn't need boundaries right yet. And when I showed her that photo at the top of today's post, she said, "See, I told you I'd be able to really fly."

Previous Project: Picnic Blanket

Picnic Blanket

2009-10-08T11:02:00.000-04:00

I have been searching for a perfect picnic blanket for years. I've looked in stores and online, and I've never found one that was just right (at the right price). I wanted something pretty, lightweight, and easy to carry that I could bring to the beach or playground or just put down in the backyard for an afternoon snack.

It didn't occur to me to make my own blanket until I was drooling over the book Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts. Luisa kindly sent me the book a few months ago, and as soon as I saw the picnic blanket featured in the book, I knew I wanted to make it. It was a great combination of something that I really needed -- the perfect afternoon playground blanket -- with a project that would challenge me but that I also knew I could finish. It was my first chance to make a pretty large quilt (twin size), but the instructions called for tying instead of quilting (I'm still intimidated by the idea of trying to maneuver a huge quilt sandwich through my machine) so it was perfect.

I love how it came out, and we've been using it nearly every day since I finished it last month, from our own backyard to the beach. I even brought it with me to the apple orchard this morning.

Sweet Juniper WoodCraft

One Line Slashed from "To-Do Before I Die List": Knit My Son a Sweater

Pegasus and Griffin Costumes

Picnic Blanket

So long, summer projects

Unicorn Shirt and Skirt

Welcome, little Metta

The Memories Quilt

The Perfect Summer Dress

Shadow Puppets: The Birth of Pegasus

A Morning Wood Surprise

This year's Easterwear

Nursing cover

Local Parents Think Fellow Mom Superhero, News at 11

Birthday crafting

Valentine's Day laptop sleeve

Street urchin pants

Four years old today

Kimono Pajamas- A Beginner Pattern Project

An even easier beginner project

Easy beginner project: The Doll Quilt

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