Thursday, June 11, 2020

What's that? A Mat?



Hi there! I made a tarot mat! It is inspired by this crochet pattern: https://tarotreadingsfromabitch.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/tarot-mat-with-pocket-crochet-pattern/?fbclid=IwAR22M5D2MUa4Ay0-ObSZ50ZBpP7RJxuV0ow09ohhcRO3BpwFntVliTnv6go
My sibling made asked me to make this for him, but I said, "no can do! That's a crochet pattern." But then I looked at it, and thought that it could be easily translated into a knitting pattern! So I kind of winged it. I wanted to use the seed stitch to allude to the pattern and create a nice base for the cards to lay on as well as provide a nice texture to touch. I made it yellow to orange to red to resemble fire. To make the transition between the colors, I knit two colors at the same time for three rows. I started with about 64 stitches, I believe. Now I don't remember. Then I decreased towards the end to make my wrap around string. Now, these are my tarot cards that I used for reference. They're Hobbit themed! However, I do not know the size of his cards. I tried to sneakily find them, but couldn't. My sneaky skills have been lost since childhood, I guess. Haha. 
I made this for his graduation! I typically don't love making things for people, just because it takes a lot of time and they kind of often get bored of it after awhile, or they request something and keep bugging me about it. It's understandable and fine, I just typically like knitting for me and not having to worry about someone else's perception of it. Maybe that's what's so difficult about art. Oftentimes you have to share it with others and it's a personal thing that stops belonging to you after a while. I do love giving to others and knitting really shows that you time to slow down and think about them. 
I'm still working on my sweater! This was a fun interlude. 
I didn't get a chance to take in progress pictures, but here are some completed ones!
Image Description: a small knitted mat with a pocket with three cards laid out and a stack of cards next to it.
Image description: A close up of the mat with the box of cards in the pocket.


Image description: The small rolled up rolled up.
Image description: The whole mat laid out. The colors go from yellow to orange to red. The red part leads into a smaller strip. 

Monday, May 25, 2020

Big Blanket!


Big blanket! I bought these needles (size US 50!) and yarn like 2 years ago. The yarn is a size Jumbo 7, used for a size 50 needles. The big yarn is pretty expensive, so I don't often have the opportunity to knit with these needles. Worth it, though! At first I tried to make a blanket using the seed stitch, because I thought it would be cool to use a more complicated stitch, but I decided to redo it and do stockinette because the seed stitch was just looking a little weird.
Knitting with huge needles is definitely a different experience! It's more of an exercise and I have to do it pretty slowly. I cast on 18 stitches here, which is about 2 more than can comfortably fit on one needle, so I also have to be conscious about not letting the stitches slip off. What a great reminder to slow down and pay attention.
Knitting during quarantine is helping me a lot. I've learned that having projects that I work towards is super satisfying for me. Getting a little further on a long term goal, even one as small as a possible blanket is very energy inducing for me.
I believe I mentioned this before on this blog, but this project reminds me of knitting artist Anna Mo! Click here for her instagram! Click here for an article about her "chunky knits! She makes blankets and other things with giant yarn and needles. Her art is even bigger than size 50. I don't know a lot of knitting artists, but I am hoping to get more artistic with my knitting soon.
The first photo is me knitting on a small couch in my room! Below the big blanket, you can see a peek of my sack! Remember the sack I knit? I still have it and it still brings me joy whenever I see it. I don't think I have enough yarn to make a full blanket, but I'll knit until I'm done with the yarn! Knitting is so fun!

Image description: A hand resting on a big pair of needles and yarn in order to show the size of the needles.
Image description: Sarit smiles with her mouth closed, while in the process of knitting.

Image description: Sarit smiles with her eyes closed holding up her partly knitted pink blanket.


Wednesday, May 13, 2020

A Day Of Stress, but It's All Good Now

Here's a fun lesson for you all: sometimes you should just take a break.
I've been working on this sweater since late March. It has little hearts on it! The pattern calls for it to be made in parts, so pictured below are the front (with 4 hearts) and the back (2 hearts). Then I will make the arms and sew them all together.
This fateful day I was working on the front and it said to "work both sides of the neck at the same time, using separate yarn for each side." There were some other factors that were confusing and was also mixed with the fact that it was like 2 am didn't help. I was freaking out because I thought it wanted the front and the back to be knit at the same time. And that did NOT make sense! Also, there were things later on in the pattern that did not go with it. Anyway, I stressed out for a very long time. I scattered things across the floor: do I add circular needles? Do I need to take the placeholders off of the back side? Anyway, after a time of freaking out on the floor and reading and re-reading, I went to bed. THEN the next day I preceded to do the same thing. BUT then I figured it out. It was about making sure the two sides of the neck are the same length because you slip the middle parts of the neck on a stitch holder and each side has a different ball of yarn. Anyway, so now I'm working on the arms using this technique! Both of the arms need to look identical, so in order to make sure that is true I am knitting them at the same time with different balls of yarn. You can see this in the last photo. Hooray!
Hey, so it's quarantine time! So, knitting is a way dive deep into a project to avoid thinking too much about quarantine. So fun! Bye!






Sunday, January 12, 2020

I Can't Hear!!!



Hey, what's up! I found this picture of another pillow I made! I now have this proudly displayed in my apartment, whoo! I made this over the summer using intarsia and sewing two rectangles together. I just really enjoy putting words on stuff, I guess! Let me express myselllffff!! I CAN'T HEAR!!! People forget that a lot and it is annoying. Look at me combining disability activism and knitting. What a darn blast!
Enjoy the photoshoot below!




Pillows about my FAMILY


Hey whaddup GLEEKS! I'm back, bitches!! When I was a young lass, and in pre college, I believed that I would have to get rid of all of my hobbies in order to secure the promise of a brighter future. WOw, boy was I WR-IGHT. I was right...
HOWEVER, the genius that I am has allowed me to trick the college system into letting me do whatever I want. I achieved this because my Feminist Theory professor (she's very cool) was basically like, "do whatever you want for your final as long as it has something to do with this class." So then I decided that I wanted to 1. knit and 2. force my family to hang out with me. THus, the family pillows were born!! I made 6 pillows in like 3 weeks for 1 project. I asked my family about their relationship with their own gender and then made decorative pillows, which was supposed to nod to the domestic expectation of the mother to create decorative pillows that exemplified what the family was supposed to be. I wish I had explained that more in my paper, but I am still PROUD OF MYSELF. I have learned in college to be proud of the work that I do, because I work hard in school and not to only be proud if someone else tells me they think I should be proud. Does that make sense?
Anyway, here is a picture of me working on one of the pillows during work, lol. Please don't fire me, Harold. I really enjoy this job. I just didn't have anything to do that day because school was basically over at that point! This person came in the office, though to ask me a question and I retained direct eye contact while talking to him. Talk about #girlboss. I really hate that term, but ok.
Ok, the picture at the bottom are the pillows! Mine is the one that says "burp." My Abba's says להגן (Le-ha-geyn) in Hebrew. Casper's says Jester, Ema's says Rebirth, David's says Tough, and Lee's says Lee, but in Hebrew. Everyone has a different reason why their pillow says something different, but that's for them.
This is a knitting blog, dang it! Let's talk about knitting! I still don't know if it's called intarsia or faire isle. I've looked this up like 100,000 times, but I still end up confused. I believe it's called intarsia. Anyway, that's how I did the letters. I use graph paper and draw in the letters. Sometimes, if a letter looks funky, I'll look up a template type thing. With the area around the letters you have to use stockinette stitch. I haven't tried it with other stitches, but I'm not sure how that would work. I really like using a knit border around stockinette so that it doesn't curl around the edges. It doesn't matter as much, because I sew the edges to each other anyway, but it's my preference. These pillows are pretty basic to make as I just create rectangles and then sew them together and use fluff for the inside. When I sew them, I do it with the outside faced in to ensure that it's harder to see what I've sewn. As a caution, just make sure that the letters aren't too close to edge, like the "T" in tough was. To make the bag for Lee's pillow I made a rectangle, and put it in half, and sewed the edges with yarn. Then to make the clasp, I weaved yarn through the top and tied it together. I think they're all really cute! It was a bit frustrating at times, as I messed up the Hebrew thinking that I had to start the intarsia on the right side, but you start at the left side just as you do with English. Ok, this has been long! I love doing this blog! whoo! <3