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Christmas Knitting: Brown Cabled Hats

Every year, I decide to knit everyone Christmas presents some time around December fifth, and frantic knitting ensues. However, so far I’ve managed to get everything done on time, so I think my “system” is working. Also, it gives me an excuse to stay in my house knitting and watching TV shows on netflix for most of December.

Bulky brown cabled hat for my little brother, who is freezing his butt off in Louisville, KY. Yay for people who actually require bulky knitware. This knit up in Malabrigo Chunky from Clever Knits. (The very best thing about having a friend who owns a yarn shop is that I can email her and be all “AHHH I need some bulky wool in a boy color!” and she will make very clever recommendations and then deliver the yarn to me.) I did a simple 10 stitch repeat for this – Knit 2, purl 2, front crossed cable over 4, purl 2. This was over a total of 70 stitches, so I crossed all the cables the same way; if I’d had an even number of cables I would have alternated which way they crossed. This fits my brother perfectly, even though it is a crazy-huge pointy elf hat on me. It knit up quickly and is very soft and warm. Success!

Cabled brown hat for my boyfriend! This one started off as a simple ribbed hat, and then about an inch in I decided I wanted to do horseshoe cables instead. (Knit two, purl 2, horseshoe cable over 8 stitches, purl 2. Repeated 8 times.) I like making horseshoe cables on gifts for people, because I think they are pretty and also they are supposed to be lucky, which is silly but a nice thought. Switching over meant that the ribbing and the cable pattern doesn’t match up at all, which makes me very sad, but Christmas Knitting waits for no man! In Christmas knitting, you keep going even if the cables don’t match up! Especially Christmas knitting on size 7 needles. This was knit using some Cascade 220 I had lying around, which honestly I am sort of meh about – it wasn’t as soft as I would have liked. But it made a good weight of hat for wearing around San Diego, and since my boyfriend is a Canadian werewolf whose body temperature is always about twice as hot as mine, I think a lighter hat is probably good.

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2010 12 26 Cyn Knitting Comments (2) Permalink

Two Random Quick Projects

My boyfriend and I collaborated on this awesome puppet at the last Adult Puppet Cabaret. I decided that he was a Piggard, half pig and half lizard. I also managed to burn my boyfriend’s hand with the hot glue gun while we were making it, but you have to suffer for art, right?

My friend Steve is a bit of a grump, leading me to create the Is Steve Wearing His CrankyPants website to make fun of him about it. So for our department holiday skit, I made him an actual pair of crankypants, which were presented to him in the skit. Hooray for iron-on glitter letters!

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2010 12 09 Cyn Misc. Projects Comments (2) Permalink

Cethalapod Hat

Octopus hat! Octopus hat! I knit this from the Berroco Vintage #302 booklet. I first saw it at my friend’s yarn shop, Clever Knits, and was all “That is awesome, but it might be too ridiculous.” Then a two weeks later I went back and bought it, because nothing is really too ridiculous for me. I knit it up in O-Wool for the hat, and Cascade 220 for the octopus. (The octopus is knit separately and sewn on, and the legs are crocheted on.) This knit up super fast, it took me about two days, and it was ridiculously easy. A++, would knit again. (And probably will, since everyone I know who has seen it seems to want one.)


(Don’t mess with me in my octopus hat, bitches.)

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2010 11 30 Cyn Knitting Comments (3) Permalink

Old Comic

I recently found this cartoon I drew in college, and I was struck by how much it still describes my life. Click the pictures to embiggen.

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2010 10 05 Cyn Comics Comments (2) Permalink

Quick Party Salad

I had to make something to bring to a party on Saturday, and it had to be both appealing to omnivores and substantial enough that it would be okay if there was nothing else there I could eat. Also I was busy all day, so I had to make it in about half an hour. I decided to do a grain salad kind of thing, so I grabbed the quickest cooking grain in my kitchen, and started chopping up random things while it was cooking. I have a mint plant that’s being going out of control, so I decided to use that and do sort of asian flavors. And I wanted to use lime juice because I ended up with a billion limes some how. The result turned out delicious! Even the omnivores liked it. My boyfriend thought it had too much mint, but he clearly does not like mint as much as I do. The only sad part was that everyone ate it all up so I did not get leftovers!

Ingredients:

4 tomatoes
1 12 oz package baked tofu
3 cups cooked grain of your choosing (I used a Trader Joe’s mix of rice, barley and spelt.) (You could probably use a little more grain if you wanted.)
1/2 bunch cilantro
3 green onions
5 or 6 sprigs of mint
Juice of 1 lime
chili oil
sesame oil

Chop up everything that needs chopping, then mix it all together!

I was so into this that I made a different version the next day with rice, asparagus, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, black beans, capers, olives, lemon juice and a “Parisian salad herbs” mix from Penzeys. Also very yummy, but not quite as tasty as first version.

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2010 09 20 Cyn Cooking Comments (1) Permalink

Pickles

My friend Marisa and I made these refrigerator pickles for Burning Man. From left to right, there are two big jars of cucumbers, one of green & wax beans, and one of purple carrots with onions and peppers. We made up a quadruple batch of the pickle brine from Smitten Kitchen’s pickled carrots, and added a couple of tablespoons of pickling spice to it once we had pickled the carrots. We also added dill to everything. It was super easy, and hopefully these guys will taste delicious on the playa!

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2010 08 19 Cyn Cooking Comments (1) Permalink

Hula Hoops!

I love making hula hoops almost as much as I love hooping. All of my hoops are loosely based on the Jason Unbound tutorial. I also always wrap duct tape around my joins, and make sure that any shiny decorative tape is covered by either gaffers or electrical tape on both sides to keep the edges from getting super beat up.

This was made with all of the leftover tape remnants I had lying around. I think it turned out pretty good, despite it’s haphazard nature. Also apparently I love neon spike tape.

Two more hoops – the one with the pink stripes is a blatant rip-off of a hoop that belongs to a girl in my hooping class, because I saw it and was like “WANT.” The other one was an experiment with having a stripe of tape going over the main tape in the opposite direction – I like it, but I think it would look cooler if I’d waited to add the green tape and put it over the pink spike tape.

This was originally going to look like the pink hoop in the previous picture, but before I added the pink spike tape one of my friends was like “Oooh, that looks so cool with the black and pink together”, so I decided to use black instead. I think it makes for a more elegant, understated hula hoop, the kind of hoop you would take to prom with you.

I made one of my hoops collapsible based on the collapsible hoop instructable. Folding the hoop up seems to make the joins wiggle open a little bit, but I just pop them back together when it’s open.

I’m so excited about my new foldy hoop that I’ve already managed to scrape it up in two places. This is why I can’t have nice things.

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2010 08 09 Cyn Hoops Comments (0) Permalink

Pants Pants Pants (and Shorts)

This weekend my friend Helena organized a “Crafternoon”, and I took my sewing machine over to our friend Matt’s house where we all made pants. (We also went on a field trip to the fabric store the day before. Helena is a total fabric-buying enabler, she’s all “Oh, you need at least an extra yard of that.”)

I couldn’t resist this fabric. So ridiculous.

Helena just kind of made up the pattern for these shorts for me. And came up with the idea of using the rainbow ribbon on the side. She is a genius!

These are pretty much the perfect “lounging around the house on a Sunday morning” shorts.

But I’m especially excited about their hula hooping potential! I didn’t actually own any shorts before this, and they’re very useful for hooping around your legs, since the hoop sticks to your skin better than your clothing.

We also made wrap pants! Helena showed us how from an internet tutorial she’d read, I’m guessing it was this one. These turned out cute enough to actually even wear outside the house! At least, I wore them to the grocery store today and no one actively made fun of me.

Hooping shot!

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2010 08 08 Cyn Sewing Comments (0) Permalink

Playing Around with an Arduino

I recently bought an arduino to use with my hexayurt project. My goal is to use it to control groups of Red, Blue and Green LEDs so I can do color cross-fading. (Examples here and here.) Here are a bunch of probably very boring videos of what I can do with my new toy!

First I made the on-board LED blink. I used the helpful Blinking LED code from the arduino site.

This is the same code, but with an LED attached to pin 13 and ground. (Pin 13 has a built-in resistor.)

Same code, but with a different pin. I moved the LED to my breadboard, and added a resistor.

And finally, here it is switching between three different LEDs.

I also got it to slowly switch between the LEDs to create a color-melding kind of effect, but my video turned out even worse than these.

Bonus fun fact: I’ve managed to use 40 pink LEDs in various craft projects in the last 2 months.

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2010 07 27 Cyn Electronics Comments (0) Permalink

Elephant Skirt

Sometimes it is nice to work on a project that does not involve fake fur or LEDs, but does involve crazy paisleys and elephants. Working with nice, smooth, non-stretchy normal fabric is so nice after all the random crap I am usually sticking into my sewing machine. It just works! My sewing machine does not get all upset at all, it just sews it together!

This skirt was a basic a-line skirt that I threw together a pattern for based off of my measurements, but it did involve both putting in a zipper and using bias tape. The zipper thing went very well, although I had to redo the waist a couple of times because it started out all huge. I think I tend to make things too big because I’m afraid of making them too small and having to throw everything away. Also, I think I am a little bit in love with bias tape now.

PS. Photographing skirts is hard.

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2010 07 04 Cyn Sewing Comments (1) Permalink