Gnome or Tomten Ornaments for Your Tree

If your background is Scandinavian, they are Tomten elves.  If not, you can just call them gnomes.  I made several of these yesterday to put on my tree and to give away.  Must say they were really fast and fun to make (other than burning my fingers a bit...)

Here's how I made them.  

Supplies needed:

2 pieces of felt about 5” x 8” each for hat front and back~your choice of colors

Small amount of fake fur fabric for beard

Small pom poms for nose and top of the hat

Sewing machine, thread to match color of hat

Hot glue gun.

Scotch tape or painter’s tape

Ribbon to make a hanger

1.      Print and cut out the hat shape. (pattern below) If your printer shows the shape to be about half the width of the paper in landscape view, it’s about the right size. Either increase or decrease the pattern as needed.  Mine is 7” high by 4 “ wide.

2.     Lay the paper shape on your felt and draw around it. Do this on each piece of felt but cut out the back piece and leave the front piece  for now. (Makes it easier to sew the two pieces together.  Your pen markings won't show.)

3.     Embroider a snowflake or other design by hand or machine onto the front hat piece.  I did the snowflake by machine, but a name or the year would be cute either by machine or by hand.

4.     Onto the front hat, tape a 8” ribbon loop down out of the way of the seam but the ends included in the seam. Lay the cut out back hat piece onto the front hat piece. Pin around so it matches perfectly.   Sew around with a straight stitch using about a 1/8” seam leaving the bottom open.

5.     Cut out the front piece to match the back, trim and clip corners. Turn right side out. I didn’t, but you can stuff lightly with polyfil. Remove tape.

6.     Cut a piece of fur the width of the hat and as long as you want it. Glue onto the hat front (across, bottom and sides.) The dotted line can serve as a guide for placement.  Fold in the felt hat bottom and either glue or sew shut by hand.

7.     Glue nose pom pom and tip of hat pom pom.   DONE!

PS I got my miniature pom poms at a fabric store in the craft department.  You may want more of a flesh colored nose, but these colors were what I had on hand.  For the white one, I rolled up a piece of fur and glued it into a ball shape for the tip of the hat. As I mentioned, I burned my fingers a bit…   we do suffer for our art…sigh. So be careful if you are using the glue gun.

Here's my white one.  It was so cold where he lives that his nose turned blue!!!

I tried to do the whole thing with my embroidery machine, in the hoop as they say.  All went well until I tried to attach the beard.  The foot just wouldn't go across the thick fur and got caught.  Hence this method by hand with the glue gun was born.  Still fast.

Hope you enjoy!

Zentangle and DAK

I hadn't heard of the term "zentangle" before and happened upon it by accident.  I thought many of the designs would make terrific scarves.  Maybe other things too, pillows?,but I started with scarves.  Here's how I did it:
1.  Google 'free zentangle' or 'free adult coloring book pages'.  There are so many, it's a little overwhelming.  You'll want black and white images that are not copyrighted.
2.  Pick an image you like and click on it to enlarge it.  Right click on it and choose Save image as.  Give it a name and save as a jpg or bmp.  I like to save to my desktop temporarily so it's easily accessible.

3. Open the Paint program (or other image processing program that you are familiar with).  Open the image.
4.  Paint will tell you how many pixels the image is in both directions.  You can resize the image in Paint or in DAK.  I find that resizing it first then putting into DAK works better.  Resize the image so that the width is compatible with the number of needles on your machine.  Write those numbers down. The original was 211 by 288 pixels.  By removing some of the width and doubling the length I got it to the size I wanted.
5.  Open DAK.  Now there are at least two ways you can convert this image to a knitting pattern.  I'll tell you the easiest way, in my opinion.  You can use either stitch designer or the graphics studio.  I used  stitch designer.  When you open the stitch designer part of the program, choose  File...new.  Specify the number of stitches and rows from #4.  Now go Edit...paste.  Voila, you have a stitch pattern.  You may need to fool around a little in terms of cleanup or deleting stitches and rows. 

The biggest obstacle is that black and white images aren't really black and white.  You typically will get lots of whites and lots of blacks.  Replace all the whites until you have just one shade of white.  Do the same with the blacks and grays.

Left click on the color you want and right click on the one you want to change, then click on the arrow marked in red. This is what I got when I converted the sunflower image.  Took a little time, but not too bad. Make sure you have one main and one contrast color.

I made a folder called Zentangle designs and saved all of the conversions in that folder.

It's fun to vary the colors keeping just two colors in work.  (You may want to do dbj, in which case you could do more than one color in a row.)  I chose to use fairisle, because on a scarf that I'm going to fold over and seam the long side, long floats won't matter.  The floats will be hidden inside the scarf.

Some designs are not rectangular and I wanted to add some length so in addition to doubling the image, I chose to knit several inches on both ends in plain stockinette.  I think it's fun to fool around in the program--- call me geeky, I guess. Some colors I thought were interesting:

If you try this and have some difficulties, write to me and I'll try to help.

Dryer Spheroids...er balls

First, let me say that this is certainly not my original idea.  Lots of my friends make, use and love them.  What are they, you ask?  They are balls made out of wool, felted and used in the clothes dryer.  They beat up your clothes a bit so you don't have to use chemical fabric softeners.  And, for people who don't do well with the perfume in fabric softeners, they are a great substitute.  Claims have been made that they reduce the drying time, thereby saving energy and money. They also take care of static.  They probably last for years.  Any color wool will do.

One of the machine knitting guilds in Minnesota makes them and sells two at a time in a nice mesh bag to earn money to buy yarn for charity projects.  Nifty idea.

How to make:  you will find slightly different versions on the internet.  Here's how I did mine.  I used 100%  wool throughout.  First I wound a ball by hand, about 3-4 inches in diameter.  They shrink quite a bit when felted.  I  tacked down the yarn around the ball so that it wouldn't come unraveled in the wash.  The bottom ball shows how I hand sewed/tacked down the yarn.  (Not a very good picture, but you get the idea.)   I then wrapped the ball with wool roving, poking it into the ball with a needle felting needle in a few places.  Lots of people put the ball in an old nylon stocking and tie the ends for felting.  I tried that, and the roving grabbed onto the nylon as tight as can be. The roving and the nylon became one! It took a week, a little at a time pulling, coaxing, ripping the nylon off, inch by inch.  Lots of the roving came along with the nylon.  No fun!

So for the next ones, I was trying to come up with a solution to this issue.  I had purchased a bag of apples and they came in a nylon-ish, slippery, holey, woven bag.  Voila!  I used that, one dryer ball to the bag with lots of room around it and tied the ends before throwing into the washing machine for felting.  Worked like a charm.  No sticking.  So, that little hint will save you hours of frustration.  

You might want to felt your balls a few times so that they are sort of heavy, tight and dense.  (In case you were wondering, I don't think acrylic centers would work at all, nor would super wash wool.)  The ball pictured at the top will go through a few more washings before I use it regularly in the dryer.  Use them, 2 or more at a time,  with each load and see if they don't work well for you.  Maybe do your laundry when you don't need peace and quiet in the house because there will be some banging around in the dryer.

Why did I call them "spheroids"?  I can hardly believe this, but Blogger wouldn't upload the picture of the  "dryer balls" but would upload the  same picture re-named "dryer spheroids".   Hmmmm.......

Charity Hat Flower Technique- Free for Machine Knitters

I can't even believe how long it's been since I last posted.  Seems like the more I thought about it, the more I procrastinated.  O well, I'm back.

I thought I'd share a charity hat pattern that the members of my mk guild have been making.  It's more of a technique than a pattern.  You get to use your favorite hat pattern that works with your machine, yarn and the size you want to make.  My friend Bruce just posted on Ravelry a picture of the many he has made for charity.  They are soooooooo cute.  He used a rolled brim (fast) on his Brother KX350 midgauge.
So, without further ado, here is the technique.

Machine and Yarn: Use your favorite hat pattern for the yarn and machine you are using to get the size you want. Once you get the number of rows knitted you want for the height of the hat, transfer every 3^rd or 4^th stitch over one stitch to the left to make eyelets. (You need an even number of holes for the I cord to end up on the outside of the hat. Cheat if you have to. It won't show after you cinch it all up.) Put the emptied needles back to work, knit 2 to 4 rows. Do not remove from machine. Now make the flower “petals”. Can be the same or different color than the body of the hat. Set your machine to hold and *put/keep all but the right 3-4 stitches into hold. On those stitches in work, knit 20 to 30 rows (depending on how long you want each petal and which machine you are using). It helps to hold down the petal loop with your left hand and run the carriage with your right hand. Transfer those stitches the same number of needles to the left. There will be two st on each needle for the first row. Put the emptied needles out of work. * Repeat from * to *. When you reach the last stitch group, knit the petal and then hang the stitches back up, bind off.

Seam the side of the hat.

Make an I CORD: (to thread through the eyelets and cinch up.) Make a tight I cord about 15 inches long. Thread through, cinch up the top of the hat, tie a bow with knots at the ends of the cord. Voila, done. 

It's s very fun hat to knit and little girls love the frilly-ness.   Make some for your favorite charity! 

Fan Lace

I was drooling over cherylsterling's Fan Lace that she showed on Ravelry. She figured out the technique from just studying a shawl that another Raveler, Corsica, had in her projects. She persisted until she got it. Then she did a tutorial and uploaded the video to You Tube. You can find it here: http://loopsinstring.blogspot.com/2008/12/fan-lace-tutorial.html
It is a great tutorial, easy to understand and I was able to duplicate it without any problems. Here's a pic of part of my scarf stuck under the lid of my scanner. The top is the cast on, which I should probably do something about to make it more sturdy. Was concentrating on the technique, so will add a nicer edge next time. The left and right sides look identical. I used the midgauge machine because the standard wasn't available to me when I wanted to give it a try. I don't think it matters which gauge you use. I knit it with Mary Lou's Schuss Plus 100% wool, which I'm glad I used so that I could block it. Came off the machine looking like a poofy glob of yarn. I pinned out the points and steamed it pretty hard.
Isn't it yummy? I am anxious to try another yarn and see what it looks like. Oh, by the way, it turned out to be about 11" wide by 60" long using 6 groups of 3 in work/6 out of work needles, plus 3 at the end. I think it will be a nice size to wrap around my neck and tie once. Yea! Thanks Cheryl!!!

Machine Knitting Video on Increasing and Decreasing

Three more minutes of fame. Here's the second video and it's on increasing and decreasing. I'm a little embarrassed because these are in no way very professional looking, they aren't really comprehensive and they originally were intended for just the sister. Also, to me it sounds like I have marbles in the mouth. The truth of the matter is that I usually have jelly beans, not marbles, in the mouth but not this time. o well. As long as it helps her progress...

Machine Knitting Ewrap Video Tutorial

I have a dear sister who is learning how to machine knit on a Brother KX350 midgauge. It's her first machine and she hasn't really seen anyone use a knitting machine. Maybe years ago when I got my first machine, but not lately, anyway. I had planned to visit her in Colorado last summer and do some instruction, but my husband got sick so I couldn't go. Trying to explain stuff through emails is difficult at best. So, this Christmas vacation my daughter is home and together we decided to try our hand at movie production. (Ha!) This isn't so great, but it's a beginning. Now let's see if I can embed the video into this post.



Weird...it doesn't sound like me. But, that was fun and a good learning experience. I tried putting it on You Tube as a private video because I don't feel that it's worthy of broadcasting around. But it was cumbersome allowing a list of people --- I didn't really spend the time to catch on. So I changed it to a public video and that seemed to be much easier.

We're all about video this month. A few members of the family have gotten webcams and are communicating with Skype. It has its drawbacks, but all in all, it's been fun seeing and hearing the person you're communicating with. Since it's free, there's nothing really to complain about.

Perfect Pom Poms

I was paging through Ravelry this morning (is "paging" the right word?) and came upon a beautifully knit Norwegian hat with a crummy pom pom. It occurred to me that I could post directions on how to make a good one. I hope my directions are clear. It really does make a perfect one. If you click on the picture, you'll get an enlarged view that you can print out.

We are supposed to get storms today, but so far it's sunny and warm. The more sophisticated the weather forecasting technology, the less accurate....
Like so many places, they say, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

Working on a felted purse. Will reserve judgment for a bit and if it turns out I'll share.

Tutorial Brother KX 350

Replacing the Sponge Strip on a Brother KX 350

1. Study the underside of the needle bed. Notice that the needles are on top of the sponge strip from this vantage point. Peek under the braces and you will see the needles are situated exactly the same way. There is no need to unscrew the braces, though.

2. Remove the yarn mast and row counter. Push all the needles forward, and with a flat edge, close all the latches. Remove each needle by pulling up on the butt and sliding it backwards and out. If it gets stuck, it’s probably because the latch opened up. Push the needle out and close the latch again and it should come out more easily. Lay the needles out in the order they were in the machine so that when you put them back, you can rotate the outer needles to the inner part of the bed. Clean the needles with some alcohol or a soapy solution if you think they need it. Dry them well. I did a few of my needles and nothing came off them, so I skipped it.

3. Grab one end of the old sponge strip and gently pull it out.

4. Vacuum out the channels if there is any fluff evident.

5. Put some Scotch tape around the end of the new sponge strip to help guide it through the channel. Starting on the right side, coax the new sponge strip under the first bar and push it through little by little. Use a 1 or 2 prong tool and push it little by little while pulling with your left hand. After a while, I found it necessary to pull up on the right side now and then before pushing the end further.

It’s kind of a painstaking process. You need to go under each “bridge” that holds the strip in place. Going behind the metal braces is a little tricky, but do-able. When you have the sponge strip inserted the entire length, make sure the sponge strip extends a little beyond the last needle slot on the bed. The strip should be about 4 inches longer than the bed to allow for this.

6. Now return all the needles to the bed.

You’ll probably develop your own technique, but here’s how I did it. I put the needle bed on my lap vertically with the back side facing me. I leaned the bed against the table. Grasp a needle the way it will sit on the bed. Push the needle hook through the slot on the right side at a 45 degree angle. Then once it’s through and is on top of the sponge, pull back a little and insert the needle through the second hole on the back. Sometimes it helps to push down on the sponge with your left hand. The needle will softly click as it slides into place. You really can’t put it in upside down. It doesn’t fit. You have to look back and forth from front to back to get the needle into the next available slot. It’s a little tricky to get the needles inserted behind the metal braces. Maybe save those for last when you have your technique down pat.

The needles will be snug in their channels. Your knitting will go a lot more smoothly now.