Vogue Knitting Live New York

Talk about some yarn porn. I went to Vogue Knitting Live in NYC a few weeks ago and regretted not wearing horse blinders to the marketplace.

I spotted the Bloom Loom at the Boye booth. Seriously digging all these colors.

 

The main reason I was at VK Live was to assist Jean Moss with her Japanese-style short row class. Here are some of Jean's samples from the class. I wasn't familiar with this particular short-row technique before this, but now I'm a convert. (Here's a how-to if you want to give it a try. I swear it's easier than wrap and turn.)

 

A lot of the ladies in the class saw the sample on the left and envisioned a knitted skirt or necklace.

Reconstructed Basket-Weave Tee Shirt

When my friend Kristen brought this basket-weave shirt as her project at my crafty birthday party, I have to admit that I panicked a little. It involved way too much -- gasp! -- math.

Kristen had never used a sewing machine before, so the two of us put our noggins together. Kristen figured out the length of the strips, cut them, and even did some of the sewing.

We used two basic long-sleeved tees from Target ($6 each). Kristen cut strips out of one shirt that served as the horizontal woven pieces, then wove those pieces into the vertically-cut strips of the other shirt. We pinned and sewed it along the side seams.

Jersey doesn't work as well as something like a sweatshirt because the jersey curls in, giving you more space between weaves. But I still liked the finished shirt.

The most impressive part? We worked on this shirt until midnight after work on a weekday, and we didn't mess it up!

Have you ever reconstructed a shirt?

Cozy Scalloped Cowl

It occurred to me that my last two posts were both about boozy craft parties. Sorry to let you down with this boring post!

 

Sometimes my mom randomly buys a few skeins of yarn and asks me to make her something with it. This Lion Brand Jiffy yarn is one example of that.

She only bought one skein, so I searched the Lion Brand patterns to find something small. To my surprise, this scalloped cowl popped up.

 

I gave this to my mom as a Christmas present, even though she technically chose and paid for the yarn. Is that wrong? Eh.

My Crafty Birthday Party

Birthday cow made and gifted to me by Jenn W.

As any December baby will tell you, it's hard to have a birthday party during the holidays. Instead of competing with evening holiday parties, I decided to celebrate my December birthday with a little craft party, luring my friends by offering my hoard of craft supplies.

Leather Craft Night

There's nothing like a boozy craft night to turn a bad week into a good week.

My friend Jessica came across a huge supply of leather and was nice enough to share it with our friend Suzie and me. We ordered pizza, listened to the Lemonheads, and thumbed through craft books for inspiration.

Suzie cut out different colors to make a flower, loosely based on the necklace on the cover of 30-Minute Necklaces. She also braided leather strips to make what kind of looked like a lanyard keychain from our crafty kid days.

We were inspired by a lot of jewelry projects, like Mystery-Braided Leather Cuff
and Camp-Inspired Leather Crafts.

Fabric-Covered Storage Boxes

Part of my Hurricane Sandy organizing meant dividing my craft supplies by craft -- sewing, embroidery, knitting -- to make everything easier to find.

I didn't have enough room in the closet, meaning some of these boxes are going to be out in the open on a shelf. If I'm going to look at these every day, they may as well be pretty!

I bought a plain white box from The Container Store for $4 and used a hot glue gun to cover that sucka in scrap fabric leftover from my Peony dress. Then I filled it with my embroidery supplies.

Crocheted Legwarmers

Fall means boots. It also means crocheted legwarmers.

The photo above appeared on the Martha Stewart Living Instagram, taken by my lovely coworker Justine, who always makes me look cooler than I actually am.