Knitting Fresh Brioche: Creating Two-Color Twists & Turns

When I was shopping in the Vogue Knitting online store (using up my gift certificate that was part of my conference package last fall), I selected this book just based on the cover.  Okay, so I peaked at the patterns on Ravelry before I completed the order, but I thought that the designs looked stunning.  I don't know much about Brioche knitting but I thought that Knitting Fresh Brioche: Creating Two-Color Twists & Turns by Nancy Marchent might give me insight into a new technique.  

I expected that Brioche knitting would be similar to the Knit one Below technique but the lines here flow and twist to create more than just vertical stripes.  This is a whole new world with new terminology.  Thank goodness the book had a hefty tutorial section with full color step by step photographs for these techniques.  The first 50 pages of this book are teaching you HOW to brioche.  I imagine I will also have to watch some videos but it is not the fault of Marchant, sometimes I personally learn easier when I can see someone do it.  This is super a fantastic resource to have in hand as I attempt to try something new!  Since the charts have completely different symbols, it is helpful to have multiple pages dedicated on how to read them.

Knitting Fresh Brioche is a stitchionary in addition to a learn to Brioche and pattern book.  Each of the stitch motifs are shown with color photographs of the RS and WS of the fabric, written instructions and charts.  The stitches have twists and turns like organic roots flowing through soil.  I am mesmerized looking at the patterns and can't wait to have the chance to try swatching out some of these designs.

I had an epic failure when I tried to make some mosaic mittens.  I am sad to say that I quit working on this project entirely.  I was fine until the increases on the thumb started and I had to keep track of where to put them in my head since the chart accommodated a few different sizes.  It probably would have gone better had I recharted the sections I wanted to make.  With a shawl or scarf I might have better luck trying out a complex slip stitched colorwork design.  Brioche seems much more complex on the outset but I think it only feels that way because I haven't tried it yet.

All of the patterns in this book are scarves and shawls because Marchant's stitch designs really almost design an entire neck wrap themselves.  All of the stitch samples were done in the same two colors, so now Marchant knit samples in different fiber types, weights and colors to show how much variety you can get out of these beautiful stitches.  All patterns have both written instructions and charts.  I really appreciate that there are both male and female models showing off the garments.  You might think that all of these flowy winding patterns look feminine but they are also a much more interesting version of a striped pattern.  I think that Keith might end up with one of these coming his way!  

I love finding new crafts and techniques to experiment with.  I cannot wait to try out Knitting Fresh Brioche and am super excited to use Marchant as my teacher.  I know that with her book I'll create something beautiful.  

Trick or Treat; Smell my Feet

Handprint and footprint art is all over pinterest, how hard could it be to recreate?  Well we tried to take some foot prints and hand prints when Lucky was 10 days old, and we ended up with ink everywhere and never got a decent print.

I found a picture of a three tiered wall hanging that I really wanted to recreate.  The set featured footprint ghosts, handprint spiders and footprint Frankenstein monsters.  (It can often be hard on Pinterest to find the original article featuring the craft versus someone who borrowed pictures from a bunch of different sites.  I try hard to link back to the original.  In this case the original source was not linked.)  

Of course, the first step is to paint the canvas background.  I planned to do two coats of the color on each creating one Orange and two Black canvases.  Looking closely at the original I realized that I was missing some yellow paint, I will need to pick that up on my next trip to the craft store.

The first coat of paint went on nice and thick.  I've found that some of the craft smart paints can be pretty thin so certain colors may need multiple coats but with the black and Orange I should be fine with two coats total.  I am doing the painting on packing paper on my carpeted third floor because the toddler and puppy rarely come up here and this way I don't have to lose my dining room table for hours waiting for things to dry.  Hopefully I got no splatter on the carpet!

When it was time to to do the handprints and food prints I was nervous.  I thought it was going to be a messy disaster with a crying toddler.  Boy was I wrong!  We started off with some tests on construction paper to get a sense of the paint thickness I should paint onto Lucky's feet.  We had Lucky in the high chair and Keith was present to keep Lucky from kicking me with a painted foot.  Lucky LOVED having his foot painted and kept saying "foot foot" as we were practicing.

The practices were helpful to see the pressure and how we had to align his apendages.  For his hands we painted them and Keith held them from behind to keep him from panting everything.  Lucas LOVED making hand prints and seeing the results after touching the paper or canvas, and kept requesting to do more.  I know that this is only the beginning of the hand/foot print art that we will do in this household.

LAB Hand and foot prints at almost 23 months old

Now I just have to adorn these like the cute pinterest picture.  I let the prints dry before I started my decorating.  I was nervous about my penmenship, but figured that I could always paint over and redo any mistakes.  I plan to decorate the canvases exactly like the pinterest images, but maybe taking it a little further if I have more blank space.

For the final embellishments, I started with the decoration types shown in the original photo and then became more confident and branched out a bit on my own.  I love my mini pumpkins surrounding the ghosts, even if my spacing isn't quite so even.  I added a date about the monster feet so that in 30 years we'll know which child created these prints and how old the munchkin was.

Finally, I had to add the ribbon ties to the project.  This is the last step, and I'm surprisingly a little nervous.

I cut the 5/8" x 3 yard ribbon into two equal pieces.  I wanted to make sure there was enough ribbon on top to trim to the bow/hanger I wanted.  Then I spaced the canvases and used Elmer's glue to secure the ribbon to the canvases ~2" away from either end.  I was more concerned with the ribbons being taught between the canvases versus on a canvas itself.

It was so hard to wait for the glue to dry.  I wanted to just flip over the canvases and see how the ribbon looks but I didn't want to mess it up.  Patience is not one of my virtues, but I'll try to wait it out.  

These are so adorable!  I cannot think of a better way to commemorate the celebration of a 2 year old's Halloween birthday party!  It will be so fun to pull this out of storage year after year at the beginning of fall.  I wonder what other fun holiday themed hand and foot print projects we can come up with.

A Monkey Woobie

Over the last few years, my circle of friends that I consider family has expanded considerably. This past summer I had to prepare Woobies for two babies set to join us in this world, Lucky's Godmother's first born and Lucky's baby brother or sister.  (I've known what woobie I wanted to make for my second child for a very long time, but that is the story for another post!)  For Laura's baby, I selected the monkey woobie.  I thought this woobie was adorable plus it sort of looks like an ewok.  What do you think?

I haven't knit a woobie in over a year now since I last made the Giraffe Woobie for Pals Baby #9.  I don't really remember the nuances of the pattern, but I kept really detailed construction notes from each woobie in case I was ever going to make one again.  This helps me keep track of rounds without having to count my stitches quite so much!

I used KnitPicks Shine Sport in Mongoose (Brown) and Cream and knit the woobie on size 3 (3.25 mm) needles.

My woobie collection

I had to use a new set of size of knitting needles for this project.  I accidentally snapped my last pair when I put it in the top of a soft sided suitcase on my way to Boston!  I know that KnitPicks would replace my needles if I wrote them, but this was a user packing error, not a fault of the needles.  One of the cables was a little loose so I had already ordered a pretty Caspian Wood set when I discovered the cracked pair.  Lucky me!

I realized that my size 3 and below dpn's were packed in with my stuff headed into storage rather than in my "while in limbo" kit.  I'll be able to complete over 50% of the woobie using a magic loop, but at some point I'll have to stop and wait until I have access to all of my needles.  This is only a bummer because although I don't NEED to finish this before the baby shower at the end of June if I were able to finish it then I could include it with the other shower presents.  I hope I will still finish as much as possible while this is one of the only projects I have access to.

Notes from Construction - I took a ton of notes on previous woobies, but since it has been a while since I've finished one and my notes are spread out over 4 different posts I decided to consolidate some of my notes that I kept looking up on this woobie so I can have it in one place for next time.  

• I'm so glad for my previous notes!  With 300 stitches to cast on I'd be tempted to use a backwards loop cast on, but I see that I did a longtail cast on in the 4 previous woobies that I knit.   With the longtail caston and skipping the first knit round I'll be ready to go.  I made sure to do 4 arm lengths for my long tail before casting on.  Nailed it!  Over one arm length of yarn left over.   
• Mongoose Ball 1 weighs 52 g.
• As with the other woobies, I do my decreases differently than is written in the pattern.  Slip the first stitch of the round, knit until 2 sts before marker and make a cdd.  The first slipped stitch becomes part of the last cdd.  
• Ball 1 completed near the beginning of round 16.  Brown Ball #2 weighs 53 g.  
• CC2 (cream) weighs 30 g.  It weighs 22.5 g after the 3 cc rounds.  
• Each time I knit a woobie I forget how long it takes to combine the CO edge with the live stitches.  Things will speed up after this round, because the decreases will make things smaller and smaller and smaller!
• Brown Ball 2 completed on round 39 (15 rounds past the 3 round cream contrasting stripe.)  Brown ball #3 weighs 52.0 g.  
• In past woobies, I had some counting errors with my decreases, and this caused me to count my stitches frequently.  I haven't counted heavily, except to check whether I was close to 35 sts between each marker to begin the extra decreases.  I decided for good measure to check them all and got (41, 41, 41, 41).  Woot woot, I'm on target!  
• When I hit 35 sts between markers, I knit 1 round without decreases and started adding the extras.  
• Next round, S1, K 15, CDD, K14, CDD around.  
• Brown ball 3 completed after round 71 was completed (60 sts remain), 47 rounds past the cream stripe.  Brown ball 4 weighs 51.3 g.
• After I hit 28 sts, I knit 1 more round before the next set of decreases.  (52 rounds total past the cream edge)
• During the crossing for the bottom of the head I accidentally dropped some stitches.  Ugh, but with an extra needle things were quickly back to normal.
  
  
• I haven't had to do colorwork on the face of one of these woobies yet.  Well, I've done a color change but that doesn't really count.  This monkey has some stranded colorwork!   The floats are rather long, but I don't think they should be too noticeable.
  

  

Less than 2 months after casting on for this woobie I've closed off the head.  Just the ears to go and then this cute little monkey man will be ready for Mr. Blue Harvest!

I lost my yarn scale in the middle of this project, so when you see weights with decimal points then you know I'm weighing on my new, more precise scale.  My old scale (MIA in the move) is +/- 0.5 g and this scale is +/- 0.05 g (although I'd really put it closer to +/- 0.1-0.2).  In the grand scheme of things I might round the numbers but we'll see how things go.   This scale is smaller than my old one, maybe 4" across or so.  I may have to use bowls more frequently to weigh yarns and other projects, a ball of yarn hangs over the edge and makes the reading less accurate.

After I finished the embroidery, Lucky (now 22 months old) kept stealing the monkey from me "Aaaa aaa aa aa" so it was really hard to take a picture.  Each time I got the woobie set up he would snitch it from me!  Soon he was carrying around both the monkey and the zebra like a proud little guy.

I mean, who can resist this face?

In the end, I had 36.6 g left of Brown Ball #4 and 16.9 g left of cream ball #1.  This project required 29 yards of cream (13 g) and 379 yards (172 g) of the brown.

These woobies are going to be great friends.  I can't wait for our little boys to meet and play together!

A Glittery Web

Last summer, I took a break from unpacking to think about Lucky's second birthday party.  We are going to a wedding the weekend after his birthday, and his dad has some travel, so the best time to have the party is on Halloween itself.  What fun!  Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays so I'm excited to throw a two themed party.  (Plus I will then have many awesome decorations for years to come.)

Isn't this web fun?

I immediately started a Pinterest board and started looking up fun DIY Halloween crafts.  One that I knew I wanted to try right away was this Glittery Web Table Decoration.  It looks simple enough, right?

To start you don't need a lot of items, just glue, glitter and some wax paper.  

I'm doing a smaller scale test of the craft now to see how well it works out.  If I like it I might make some other glittery table decorations and allow Lucky to "help" me out.  (Can a 22 month old really help with glue and glitter?  Hmmm...)

I taped two pieces of wax paper together (with the tape on the bottom) for a bigger work surface and started drawing a web with my glue.  The instructions I was following recommended chilling the glue, but I found that it wasn't that runny at all.    I started with a cross and then added more lines into the asterisk shape until I liked the density.  (8 full lines, 16 spokes total)  

I wish I hadn't taped the wax paper and didn't use a crease.  Some of these spines aren't going to stick together well so I might have to do some surgery in the end to hold it together.  We'll see.  This is learning after all.  

I started connecting the spokes with a swoop from the outside in.  This helped me space things the way I wanted.  I also found that the connections over the crease seem to be stronger now so maybe this will actually hold together.

silver glitter

When I was adding the glitter I ran out of silver before I had completely covered the web.  I added some white glitter to the missing spots and then shook the glitter around a bit to try to cover every part of my web. 

silver and white glitter

Right now it is looking awesome!  Unfortunately I am now a the hard part: waiting.  I have to wait 24 hours for this to dry before I shake off the extra glitter and then I have to wait another few days to peel off the wax paper.  I also have to hope that my toddler doesn't pull this off of the dining room table and decide to roll around in it, I don't feel like cleaning glitter glue off of Lucky AND our newly finished floors!  Despite my impatience, right now I think this web looks really fantastic!

The next morning I tried to tap off as much glitter as I could.  The web is pretty, although a little wrinkly in the center where there was the most glue.  I love the sparkles!  As tempted as I am, I am not about to try to peel the web off of the wax paper right now.  I did sort of check a corner and it didn't feel like it would peel off easily... but I didn't really try because I didn't want to ruin it at this point when the instructions say to wait two days.  

I ended up waiting more than two days to peel off the web because I wanted to have enough light to photograph it and I didn't want to do it while the toddler was around (he was quite attracted to it, I was afraid we were going to get a glitter explosion!)  The first bit was really easy to separate from the wax paper.

I had a few breaks in the web overall, but ultimately it looks pretty intact when laying on a table!

I wasn't sure how I was going to store this delicate web, so I put it on a sheet of cardboard and sealed it in using plastic wrap.  Now I can store it gently until the party in 2.5 months!

You may wonder why I take so many step by step photos when I'm doing something that has a written tutorial.  The true answer is that it is for my own memory.  There have been times when I've wanted to re-create a craft but couldn't remember what size canvas or paint color I used and I've been able to turn back to the blog to find out the brands that I used.  ChemKnits started out as my crafting lab notebook, after all.

Planning a Halloween Birthday Party

Halloween is going to take over ChemKnits for the next few months!  I love Halloween so much.  It is really fun to decorate the apartment and to create costumes.  For Lucky's second birthday we decided to have the party on Halloween, which means that all of the decorations we create can be used for years to come.  I'm going to be spreading out many of these crating DIY projects over the next few months.  I can't wait for you to see what I've created!

I'm not sure how long it will take to get through all of the projects I accomplished for this party, but you will see a little bit of everything.   Coloring, painting, sewing, knitting.  I hope that you will enjoy this spooky twist on the blog as much as I will. These projects will enable me to decorate my house for Halloween in style for years to come!  Today I will share a few tiny projects that we created for our Halloween Housewarming Birthday Party.

Painted Bottles

It is fun to create party decorations out of things you have laying around the house.  For weeks we saved up old soda, milk and beer bottles and used our acrylic paint to create some magic.

I painted the beer bottles with two coats of black paint and then turned them into spooky or apothecary bottles.  

The milk jugs turned into ghosts with a little black paint.  I'll put battery powered candles in them to light them up tonight.  With some colored paint and faces, I turned the soda bottles into cartoons of Halloween characters.  Since this party is for toddlers, I am going for fun and cartoonish versus spooky in our decor.  

Finally, while these aren't bottles I also painted a cheap frame and flickering pumpkin stand I found at the local craft store.

Ruffle Streamers

I have a sewing machine now, so I wanted to try to take the crepe paper up a notch.  Two colors of crepe paper through a sewing machine with high thread tension and long stitches = ruffled garland.  This looks easy enough to attempt, and will give me 81 feet or so of sewing a straight line practice.

It works it works!  Stitch length = 5, tension 8 (I'm not even up at the highest!).  I will admit that I tested this a bit on fabric before I went to the paper because I don't know my machine that well yet.  I placed the streamer rolls in a bowl at my feet so they could unwind with ease.  I never had any tangles or major kinks in the streamers.  I only had to stop sewing when I needed a bit of a break.

The streamers basically sew themselves!  This is also my first time using the machine at the fastest speed.  I feel like I'm flying.  I ran out of the bobbin once, but now I know what happens (i.e. what to look for) when you run out of a bobbin (you get a lot of holes in your crepe paper!)

Keith and I liked how the streamers came out so much that I decided to try a three color version with black, purple and lime green.  The purple and green ill overlap each other and the black will be on top of them.  But I am going to sew this wrong side up, so we will not see the black really while sewing but see where the green and purple overlap.  This is really so I can make sure I'm sewing in the right place.

I started with a completely full bobbin and this time I didn't run out, although I am now almost out of black thread.  Time for another trip to the fabric store!


Sticker Goodybags

With the cookie treat bar at my party, I needed to have some bags so people could take cookies home with them.  I found some packages of treat bags that were 5"x9.5"x3" that would be perfect.  I got plain black bags and some fun Halloween Stickers so Lucky could help me decorate

With these stickers there is a little prep work before Lucky can help out because I have to remove the center parts of the stickers.  But I think we should have fun working on this together.

Lucky loved playing with the stickers.  He picked out which sticker he wanted next and I removed the backing.  Some stickers went straight onto the bag, and others first made a pit stop on his belly.   After 8 bags Lucky was begging to do more. I knew that we needed to wait and save some of these stickers for another day so we stopped.

Can you tell which bags Lucky decorated versus which ones I decorated?

Foam Pumpkins

With some 12x18" pieces of craft foam, I sketched out some pumpkin silhouettes and cut them out.  I plan to tape these to the floor with painters tape to create some pumpkin "stepping stones."  This will either be a fantastic game for the toddlers or they will immediately rip them up off of the floor.  Either way, they were cheap and easy to create.  

I'd better stop working on this post and get back to assembling the party decorations!  (Normally I schedule posts in advance, and while I started working on this one a while ago here I am finishing it up the morning of the party!)  I have made so many awesome things over these last few weeks that I cannot wait to share with you over the coming months.  I hope you enjoy Halloween taking over ChemKnits for a while!