maker faire, family style

The Maker Faire celebrates the risk takers, the doers, and the makers of things. So does our family.

A couple of posts of the past week have shared some of Leah's projects, but the rest of us have been happily working, learning, exploring, and making things too.

Scott's still enjoying working with borosilicate glass to make these tiny rings that we've dubbed fruit loops. We're not sure exactly what they'll be yet, except that they're pretty and they feel irresistably good rolling around in your hands.

They might be jewelry components, Pandora/Troll bracelet beads, stitch markers, or ______? The picture makes them look larger than life. The smallest loops fit up to a size 5 needle, with only a 1 cm outside diameter! Multiple recent commenters mentioned that they use bigger needles and sometimes have difficulty finding pretty stitch markers that will fit, so Scott has also made some in larger sizes, up to 17 mm outside diameter with a 10 mm hole. Keeping their size in mind, please feel free to leave a comment if you have ideas about how they could be used.

Jesse has been honing his skills in the renovation of his bedroom. He helped with all of the sheetrocking and mudding, installed most of the wood floor (all done now), did his fair share of the painting (sage green, all done), most recently helped carry some of his new furniture upstairs, and chose the rugs and all-important lava lamp. Many details still to be completed, but he's sleeping in there again and is happy with how it's all taking shape.

He also has a new rocket in the works, this one a three-phase blaster that will go half a mile up. Finishing work (paint, decals, launch rings, etc.) in progress. Wanna hear an otherwise stoic young man squeal with delight and do a happy Snoopy dance? Big rockets. :-)

And then there's my work in progress, Scott's silly Terror Fish sweater. Only one more row until I start the lettering!

(Sorry for the bleh pic on this dreary day.) This Intarsia is definitely a slow and fiddly process, but once I got used to all of that, I didn't really mind. I read a tip on Ravelry about not using bobbins for each color section, but just using a few yards of each yarn, letting the strands dangle and tangle in the back. When they get too twisted to use, just pull a strand out of the tangle, from the top, and then do another strand until all are untangled. Lather, rinse, repeat. I'm doing some crazy mash-up of that technique, bobbins for colors that I use a lot of, and two-handed fair isle/stranded knitting for the striped body areas. I'm sure I'm breaking every rule in the book, but it seems to be working well enough for me. I'll pick up the provisional cast-on stitches at the bottom and knit down for length and ribbing later.

I was bummed for a moment when I realized that some of those lowermost red spot had been knit with the yellow yarn, so at that point I just continued knitting the "red" stitches in the gray background color. This morning I threaded a needle with the red yarn and duplicate stitched over the yellow boo-boo stitches and then continued duplicate stitching over the gray stitches that should have been red. I left the gray stitches underneath, but picked out the underlying yellow stitches. The red stitches are holding the fabric together as the yellow had done and the duplicate stitched red stitches in the top portion were much easier to add in afterward than while knitting. I love how many solutions there are for knitting problems as you progress along the skills and knowledge continuum.

Scott has had some big disappointment this week, upon learning that two of the original fishing buddy tribe aren't able to do the traditional opening day of trout season weekend camping/fishing trip because of work/family/economic problems, but he still plans to have a blast with the remaining fisherpals and it looks like he'll be wearing a fish sweater that is just goofy enough to match the weekend's fun.

Also fun? Having cupcakes and sheep and other beads selling almost as fast as he's making them! Since we're also trying to gear up for wool festival season and the farmers' market, and my seasonal clients are emerging from their winter lull, so there's an extra lot going on here lately, but it's all good, so yay!