Questions answered, and this week's projects

A couple of readers asked what pattern I used for the orange Cap Sleeve Top. It is called Cap Sleeve Top, by Robin Melanson, and can be found in "Nashua Handknits: Creative Focus Silk". There are a couple of other really cute patterns in the booklet that I want to try too. The Creative Focus Silk yarn was really nice to work with, but I would definitely suggest blunt tip needles instead of the pointy ones I used. I had to pay attention so I didn't split the yarn.

The two projects I am working on this week will be very close to being finished, if not actually finished, by the end of the week.

The Silky Wool Vest is such a quick knit, and it's fairly mindless so perfect for watching TV. I need a total of 16 inches after the division before casting off, and I managed to add 4 1/2 inches last night. Finding enough buttons in the right size and color might prove to be difficult though. I've already discovered that the fabric stores around me no longer carry the button loop tape I'm supposed to use (the kind used for all those teeny tiny pearl buttons down the back of wedding dresses), so I decided to skip that and just sew the buttons through both layers of knitting to finish the vest. Problem is I need about 28 teeny tiny buttons (about the size used for baby clothing) and I can't seem to find more than about 16 at the fabric stores. I may need to ask them if they can order them for me.



I got a bit disheartened last Fall with the Ravenna Satchel. I had a bit of a felting issue. Not too long ago, I decided to try using roving to needlefelt over the motifs on the intarsia piece to see if that would fill in all the icky parts.

So far, so good.



A close up photo of the area that I've done the needle felting on. I still need to go back over it again to make sure that any fuzzies at the edges get felted into the center, but I think it looks a heck of a lot better than before needle felting.



See?







Part of the felting problem I had is that the yarn I used, while gorgeous just knit up, left really long fuzzies that wound up felting themselves into portions of the project where they didn't belong. Although sometimes a tweedy look is what you're looking for, background color in blobs in the center of the flowers just wasn't cutting it for me.

I could not find roving in the exact colors I used, but I came fairly close on most of them, and will use the leftover yarn from knitting the project to do the outlining and other embellishments on the bag. So far the needlefelting is going pretty quickly. I might have to wait until this project gets another turn to get it all sewn together and add the handles and hardware, but at least some pretty good progress is happening to a Basket O Shame project :o)