So remember the birthday crab?

Probably not. I didn't either. But yesterday I was inspired to finish knitting it. Hooray!

To remind you: this was my makeshift pattern.

This was the finished knitted piece. But it needed blocking, like whoa. The tension in my stranded work is atrocious, and I'm hoping some blocking will go a long way. Or not. We'll see. Now plenty of people, books and websites will detail the right way to block. I'm here to say there isn't one. I frankenstein the whole process and am usually pleased with the results.

My blocking starts with a bowl of room temperature water; too cold or hot can mess with the fibers since I used 100% wool (hand-dyed biotch).

I slowly push the piece into the water, but it's gentle so no major yanks or twisting.

When I get bored, and/or it looks pretty saturated (this is harder than it sounds, wool holds a LOT of water), I oh-so-gently squeeze the excess water. But again, the fibers are vulnerable to stretching at this point.

I'm a fan of blotting in a towel.

Make a crab rollup to get more water out. Again, be gentle. I'm serious.

Then to block the shape, I pin the piece down on a towel. No fancy blocking board. No fancy pins. Just a towel and some straight pins.

Now I know from the lobster pillow, that my kind of crappy stranded knitting leads to an oddly textured fabric. So as with the lobster, I placed a second towel and some textbooks atop to even out my lazy, uneven knitting.

Next: wait a day or two (I told you, wool holds a lot of water), trim the ends up and voila! Birthday present, the sequel. (Coincidentally, her 1/2 birthday is in 2 weeks...)

Commissioning crustacean accessories

To my delight, the lobster pillow was a huge success. So much so, that I've been offered handmade jewelry to make a companion pillow- a crab. Without a pattern, I've begun work on my own. A quick Google of "free clipart crab" led me to several great options.

I printed a few favorites, in hopes to convert the image to a knitting grid. Of course, this required a knitting grid that I clearly lacked. I designed my own in plain-old Excel and printed several slightly un-square graphs.
And then, in the highest kindergarten-level technology I could muster, I taped my crab image to the kitchen window, and then taped my graph paper over it for tracing. I was a bit skeptical, but it worked precisely as planned. So well in fact, that I made two distinct crab graphs to give B a choice.
She chose the more symmetric of the two, which I also preferred. I also took the initiative to dye some yarn. I think my first attempt didn't get warm enough and seems to be rinsing out too much. No pictures yet, but whatever. It's so light that I can easily overdye with just about anything.
I'll have to wait until the yarn dries to see how it looks next to the yarn used for the lobster pillow- I'm hoping it coordinates without clashing or looking like I just didn't match it very well.

...to be continued.

Birthday Crustacean

This gift was a direct response to my dozen+ homemade AMAZING blueberry cookies that I recently received for my birthday. I felt compelled to undertake a total DIY birthday gift for my true love, B.

First I wound little mini skeins of Fisherman’s wool that was hanging around in the basement. I was inspired to DIY all the way (and circumnavigate the closed yarn stores) by dyeing my own yarn. I used my tried and true Kool-Aid/microwave dye-job, purposely going for an uneven slightly kettle-dye-like look.

The pale blue-green took 3 tries to achieve. The first two were waaay to dark, and the final color was actually created by using the leftover dye water after I removed an unsuccessful turquoisey-green attempt (3 ice blue lemonade, 1 lemon-lime). Since the first batch into the water struck most of the green, round two ended up a seafoam-y color that I really liked.

The red-orange was the result of 1 Strawberry Kool-Aid, 1 Mandarina-Tangerine Kool-Aid, 1 Splashers Orange, and in a moment of panic 1 Flavor-Aid Lemonade. I was surprised by how red it was despite all the yellows added in, but the end color was pretty perfect.
Next, I knit a modified free lobster bib pattern (basically just using the chart), by CO 36 (pattern repeat plus 3 sts on each side) and k the first and last stitch on each row (RS and WS). I also omitted the garter st border. I knit 8 rows before starting the pattern and after finishing it.

If I were to knit this again (because seriously, I will probably need another knit lobster pillow…) I would add more sts on each side of the repeat. As you see it’s a stout pillow, and a little wider would cause the image to wrap around a little less in the claws.

Once knit and blocked, I really took a leap of faith and decided to machine sew the knit panel to the fabric backing for the other side of the pillow (since I didn’t really want a knitted back to the pillow). I had no idea if it would stretch or get screwed up- luckily it didn’t. (I had an idea it would work since I’d lined a purse this way a long time ago).I also had to customize the standard pillow-form to suit the odd size, and it totally worked out. I just unstuffed the form (which had a zipper closure), traced my lobster panel onto the pillowcase, sewed the new shape, cut it out and re-stuffed it. It sounds like a lot, but this was actually the easiest part.

Then I just fit the pillow into my custom case and voila. Happy Birthday, B!