Interweave Crochet

Today arrived my copy of the Fall 2009 Interweave Crochet magazine.


Projects:
~Szechuan Sweater - - Honestly, still a big fan of Robyn Chachula. I love the fit and drape of her items and this one does not fail. I love how it looks on the model. It looks very comfortable and well made. Love the frog closures! Robyn Chachula.

~Veronica Sweater - - I like the asymmetrical collar. The design looks very well fitted. I would probably adjust the button band some as the pulling on it is not flattering. Just make it more secure . . . maybe a ribbon on the back. Sarah Barbour.

~Moss Fern Wrap - - Very pretty. I like how geometrical and yet soft it looks. Lovely little contradiction. Kimberly K. McAlindin.

~Spice Market Tunic - - Love the design! Love the structured look. I like how the neckline isn't your average neckline. Such small attention to little details really add up to a wonderful design. The stitch patterns she used work so well together too! Looks like a great design, fits the model well too. Sheryl Means.

~Fortune Cookie Bag - - Not sure I like the flap and its hoodie shape. I understand the gimmick-ish part of it, but it doesn't actually look much like a fortune cookie to me, nor does it looks aesthetically appealing to me. Josephine Woo. It looks as if she keeps her better designs as ones you can purchase from her.

~Larkspur Wrap Sweater - - A nice looking piece. Don't so much care for how the shoulders sit, but otherwise looks nice. It doesn't quite look like the piece fit the model very well though, the wrong size? Sleeves a little too short, not a normal length. Looks a little like it's falling off of her shoulders . . .maybe to make the sleeves look longer? Not sure. Looks like it has potential, but isn't quite there. Well, I guess it does fit the model as intended . . . as it fits the designer in the same way on her blog. Not my style. Ellen Gormley.

~painted Desert Skirt - - Not a fan of this. The pleats look like bulky afterthoughts. It does not look flattering on the model. Just not a fan at all. I do the band on top and how it buttons, that is all. Kristin Omdahl.

~Cappuccino Cardigan - - Little disappointing that it only goes up to 41" bust, especially since it seems to be meant to be work with ease. Although the design doesn't look very complicated and could probably be easily sized up . . . so why didn't the designer do it? Any who, nice and simple design. I like the A-line look and it is well done. Designer is Maureen Basher, no blog.

~Tahoe Hat - - I like the two stitch patterns together. Nice hat. Designer is Marcy Smith, editor of Interweave Crochet. Pattern was made for their spotlight charity, Hat Box Foundation.

~Moorish Mosaic Afghan - - I like it, but don't. I think the design is nice, but so many of the squares were made with the colors in different places that it looks chaotic. Like an afterthought to be put together as one blanket. I think there are possibilities within this design, just more color structure is needed. Lisa Naskrent.

~Leaf Peeper Hats - - Nice hats, with a variety of different kinds. Designer is Lisa Soutendijk, no blog.

~Pink Lady Scarf - - Nice, simple scarf. Stitch pattern is simple enough as to not look overwhelming, but is present. Designer is Lisa Kugler, no blog.

~Orchard Mitts - - Love the stitch pattern used in this. The yarn works perfectly also. A nice and simple design that was very well executed! Chelsea Norquay, doesn't seem to blog much, but seems very talented.

~Adirondack Socks - - I think these are some of the best looking crochet socks I have ever seen. They actually look like they fit well and are comfortable. Definitely going to try this pattern when things slow down a bit! Patsy Harbor.

~Apple Cider Mittens - - They look nice. Not much of a mitten person myself, so I am not sure what to look for. I think it would be nice to try to make the hand in just the main color and add thrums of color afterward to make the mittens a bit warmer. Julia Vaconsin.

~October Vest - - It's nice to see guy stuff, but it doesn't seem to actually fit very well, six inches of ease? WTF?. Also seems a little short on him. There is not real shaping to any part of it. Oddly enough, it seems like the pictures on the site are more appealing than the ones they published in the magazine. Nah, don't care for it. Blue Ridge Cardigan - - Firstly, I am not a fan of applique. If you take the appliqued leaves off of this item, it looks like a nice cardigan. I like the button loops. It looks well structured and I like the shoulder seam. I could see this as a nice cardigan, without the leaves. Edie Eckman, website, no blog.

~Curried Cable Jacket - - Oddly . . . I really like this. I like the overlay which hides the zipper. I like the crocheted cables. I like the collar which kind of stands up. I would probably make it just a tad longer, but not much. I am usually not for short things, but this looks really good short. I don't necessarily think I would look good in something like this . . . but I do love the design. Pricila Gomes, website, no blog.

~Campus Field Cap - - I can easily see how some people might really like this , but I am not quite a hat person, much less a unique hat person. It looks well made and designed, just not something I would wear. Odd note, whomever photographed the item, did a bad job with the model. Her nose piercing(?) looks like her nose is decaying. Jennifer J. Cirka.


~Swirling Bag - - Book Excerpt Pattern, from the book Crocheted Gifts: Irresistible Projects to Make & Give by Kim Werker. It's oddly constructed. I am not usually one for bags . . . I am not all that girlie. But any who, I think this would make a lovely project bag. I love the construction of it. I hope I have time to make this in the future.



Articles:
~Filet of Soul: One Man's Journey into Crochet - - Amusing article, but I am sure there are many who can relate to it. It is easy to put down another craft when you don't understand the intricacies that are involved. Franklin Habit.

~Finding Closure - - An article on how to stabilize fabric for closures. How to do zippers, hook & eye closures, and frog closures.


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Over all, the fit of the clothing is very good, especially for it being an Interweave magazine. I liked a lot of the pieces. I think these showcased some of the differences the make good designers stand out. A good designer can make even a simple piece look beautiful. You don't need to try to pack a hundred different aspect into a design to try and prove you are a good designer . . . it usually just points out that you aren't. This issue, Fall 2209, has made me glad I subscribe to Interweave Crochet. Hopefully it continues like this!

Food Friday

Ah, back to Food Friday. This recipe is from a show on Lifetime, called Mom's Cooking. The recipe I used was from the episode with JoAnn and Lisa. The recipe is called Salmon Wellington.

And here we go:

First we start out with the puff pastries.


I chose to only make one, as these things looked huge on the episode and knew there was no way me and the boy were each eating one. Unfold.


I used Tilapia, instead of Salmon because the boy is not really a fish eater, and Tilapia has less of that fishy flavor. I used a few small pieces since we didn't have any large thicker pieces. You need to lay the diagonal so it will fold correctly in the end.


Next we sprinkle some garlic powder and onion powder. This is a forgotten step in the recipe page, but it is in the episode.


She says that basically you want to cover it, I put a light sprinkle coating of each. I think honestly, I could have used some more. I also added pepper because I am a big pepper fan.


I wanted more even coverage with the cheese. So I cut my piece in half width-wise and length-wise and laid them out as such. I also used Monterrey Jack, instead of Mozzarella.


My chunk of semi-frozen cream of spinach is about twice the size of theirs, because I felt like more spinach.


Next you fold up the sides snug. Then the ends and pinch everything together so nothing leaks out.


Brush with egg whites. They say to cook on parchment paper, but I just sprayed some Pam and cooked it for 35 minutes with the oven preheated to 375.


This is what it looked like when it was done!



Massively super yummy! The boy is taking it to work tonight and will tell me what he thinks.

Would I change anything? Yes, I think there is a little too much cheese in the recipe. Next time I will just shred some cheese and sprinkle it on top. I will also try to put a little more seasonings on them.

This will definitely get made again as it was incredibly delicious!

A Gifting Concern

My birthday is coming up here in a couple weeks. My mother and my little sister, Echo sent my presents early. We will talk about most of them on Friday, as they are Food working items. But, my mother sent me this sweater that she made.







I like bright colors, but not so many all together. Not much of a rainbow person.

Any who, so the question is one of receiving a gift. When you receive a gift, is it now yours to change, so it fits you better as a person? Or should it be kept as is? I know my mother spent a lot of time and hard work on this sweater. So if I love the sweater, which I do. I have pretty much worn it every day around the house since I got it and even fell asleep in it a couple of times. Is it okay to make it more me and over-dye it? So I will love the color enough to wear it outside? Just wanted some opinions from people. If you gave someone a gift, would you be okay with it if they changed it to fit their personality better?

Glimpses

I was going to do a Food Friday today, really, I was. However, my soup ended up being more of a casserole since I over estimated how many noodles and beans to put in the soup! This is a common error of mine, unfortunately, this is why I do better with a recipe to base things off of. It's still good, just now what was intended. :) So we will return next Friday with a Food Friday.


So I have a few glimpses for you:

First, there is a good chance that I will not have time to finish the online tatting class that I started, hopefully she will run the class again. I am still catching up on school work from being sick and studying for tests this coming week. Tatting homework is getting more intense and I have missed the homework for the last two weeks, unfortunately. We shall see if I can catch up. This is part 1 of 2 things that were assigned a couple weeks ago. We were to pick a fellow classmates design and test tat it for them.






I chose to use some thicker crochet thread for this design as I thought it would compliment the design. I am also using two colors. It basically gets pulled out when I have a couple minutes between classes, because it's easy and very portable.

Secondly, we have my adventures in lace knitting:






However, from experimenting with the gossamer lace booklet, I don't think I should jump into the Olympic version of knitting. Instead I have chosen a doily pattern from Yarn Over to knit. I like their designs and they are easy to follow. Obviously it will look somewhat different since this version will be very open and lacy. It's going well though. After shoving my concerns aside and just going for it and just accepting it for what it is . . . I am actually enjoying it. We shall see if this lace knitting thing sticks with me, I've only had time to do about 17 or so rows.

Knitty Fall 2009

Well, it's that time again. The new Knitty is out.


Love the feature they have now of "Print Everything" or "Print Essentials"!


~Hex - - The lace pattern is simple but pretty. The shape and design of it would probably look really nice as a rug in another yarn. It's general design kind of reminds of a simplified Persian Rug. On a side note, I love the dress the model is wearing.

~Riverbanks - - Mixed feelings. I think I would like this better in another color. I also don't much care for the pointed part. It seems like short rows of some kind would have worked better. In general good idea, just not executed as I would prefer. If you look HERE, which is the designer's blog post, she shows a solid blue version, which I like much more and don't even mind the point as much.

~Colonnade - - Simple and nice. I like the way they show it worn and how the center part is solid. Basically warmth, but pretty also. I think even the capelet idea is cute.

~Bel - - First, I love the middle back. A lovely detail. I do think this would look better in a solid color for any of us larger gals, simply because the vertical stripes are not all that flattering. Otherwise the design looks very wearable. Especially in fall/spring times. I could definitely see myself wearing this.

~Girl Friday - - Nice and simple. I like it. Although if I knit it I would try to figure out a way to change it to a raglan shape, might not be possible due to the stitch pattern. Not much for the way the sleeves set into the body, but that is a complete personal preference.

~Holla - - Yes and no. I like the cabling and it looks like a comfy hoodie. I don't like how baggy it is or how it flairs out on the bottom. It's hard to tell, but the one picture with the hood on, doesn't seem to be flattering. It looks too small and very pointed. Overall, makes the model look probably bigger than she actually is.

~Renaissance - - Again with the vertical stripes. First what I like, I do like the "pleat" at the bottom of the V-neck, it is a nice attention point. Unfortunately that is all. The top makes the model look bigger than she probably is. The vertical stripes are not flattering. The thought keeps entering my mind that it might be better if it had been knit in a much finer yarn and therefor making everything look more delicate and less chunky. I am not sure though.

~Ruby Red - - Don't much care for it, unfortunately. The open, flared part at the bottom might look good on skinny people, but it will accentuate a problem area for larger girls. The buttons looked strained anyways and she is a small girl, I know that might be the look she wanted, but it makes the garment looks too small on her. The collar opens up too much, like the collar is too big for her. I just don't understand the puffy sleeves. The garment seems to have a lot of contradictions within it.

~Margot - - Such simplicity and yet it works so very well. The slight shaping looks wonderful on her. Very nice.

~Hydrangea - - WTF? I never understand the look of tank tops over dress shirts anyways, but this really doesn't look flattering. A mohair tank top?? Any who, this design would make much more sense if it had been a vest or sweater, especially sweater. The whole thin and layering thing is still in and would have worked well for that.

~Indian Summer Shrug - - Also don't so much understand the purpose of shrugs. This one seems both too big and restricting at once. Nothing more to say.

~Clandestine - - Ah, a Cookie A. design. Cookie is usually the one who breaks my belief of simplicity and beauty, as her designs are usually complicated and beautiful. I love the mirror image. Very nice.

~Cathedral - - The design looks interesting, but is hard to see in the fuzzy and colorful yarn. I like how the heel wasn't just something plain, but part of the design.

~Hat-heel Sock - - Very intrigued by the construction of these socks. Honestly can't wait to try this out. I am a sucker for learning new techniques.

~Midsummer Night's Dream - - Simple and nice.

~1 across - - Neat idea. Without the beads on there I wouldn't necessarily associate it with crossword puzzles. Not a huge fan of crossword puzzles though. I do like the look of the hat in general though, even without the crossword association.

~Sweetspot Scarf/ghan - - The theory behind this is very interesting. It almost makes a hidden art. My disappointment would be that this cannot really be transferred to many other items as it requires knitting flat and a certain number of stitches. But it is nifty.

~Kindly Sheep - - Nice idea, but for people like me, I have a hard enough time keeping track of two gloves, much less four pieces. I'm not to great with fiddly hook closures either.

~Kernel - - Simple and nice. It works well with the different yarn colors she chose, you can see the stitch pattern and the beautiful yarn at the same time.

~Mi Escuelita - - Nice and cute. I don't know much about kids cloths, so I don't have much to say. It does look a little short, which could be easily fixed, but that could just be the camera angle.

~Tanis - - Eh, I don't much care for this. Other than the colors, it's a fairly normal looking, nothing special hat. Not really for the shape or the colors.

~Zozo - - I honestly think these are adorable! I love the seeming simplicity of making them, but how complex and lovely the little guys look. Too freaking adorable! Will have to make these sometime.


Overall, it was a fairly good Knitty. As always, these are only my opinions and I encourage you to take a look at the patterns.

Accomplishment

One doesn't necessarily need to finish something to feel accomplished. When I was sick, a lot of things did not get accomplished, it kind of felt like a mud slide. I felt like doing nothing but sleeping. Today is the first day that I feel accomplished.

The apartment is not clean, but I did dishes and made some stir fry food for the boy to take to work tonight.

My mom, niece and sister's stuff is still not finished, but they are closer.

I did not blog every day this week, but every day that I was feeling better I did.

I exercised today. I called the dentist today. I am off to the bank and work shortly.

So I will leave you with some pictures:

Here is my homework (torso study), in which we had to pick 3 torsos from a xeroxed hand out and recreate them.




And I practiced a bit with this today! :)

Not Forgotten

I have not forgotten about my goal to blog every day for the rest of this week. I missed yesterday cause I felt sick and just needed to sleep. So I did have a momentary lapse of remembering, but I am here today. Unfortunately, nothing really crafty has happened since I last blogged. I am working on some drawing homework tonight and will remember to take a picture of it to post tomorrow. This drawing class will be interesting. It is taught by a different teacher than Drawing 2, which of course means different style. This man is much more into blocks, while the previous teacher was into shapes in general. I want to believe that I will learn a lot from this class, I truly hope it is true. After all, different techniques make us grow as individuals. Even though I expect this class to be difficult, I think this class will be worth it . . . I will learn from this class. I have a positive outlook.

Tomorrow marks the end of the school week, so hopefully I can get some art/craft things accomplished this weekend amongst all the work hours.

Color IQ Test

I know this has gone around before, but I saw it on The Yarn Yard blog today and took it. It is a Color IQ Test. I got a 3, which surprised me, but I'll take it seeing as it means I have almost perfect color acuity. The three I got wrong were in the middle of the blue-green area.

Sigh of relief

Boy has this been a long week, I should be back to normal sooner than the end of the semester though. Things have happened that made me realize I needed to think about what I really wanted to do.

First thank you all for your well wishes and get wells. It is much appreciated.

So:
~Spent Saturday night and Sunday morning(14 hours) in ER due to chest pain and trouble breathing. Long story short, I thank goodness do not have blood clots in my lungs or anything wrong with my heart. In the end, evidently, my cold irritated my heart burn to the point that stomach acid was pushed up into my esophagus and into my bronchial tubes where it caused horrible (felt like I was dying) chest pain and made it hard to breath.

~I also never want to have to have at CT SCAN ever again.

~I need to focus on taking even better care of myself, my snail's pace of fixing things is not going to work, I need to get my butt in gear.

~I was firm with my boss and will only be working three shifts a week.

~I cut my class load from 5 to 4, by dropping Printmaking and Paper Making(same teacher for both). I decided that the teacher was an too much of a complete jerk for me to be able to deal with him stress wise for a whole semester and picked up Drawing III, instead.

~I bought a whole bunch of extra heartburn medicine at Wal*Mart and will now be taking one pill every 12 hours, instead of taking 1 a day.

~I will not really be trying to integrate much dairy back into my diet as the doctor explained that dairy/milk can be very irritating to an acidic stomach like mine and that might be why I am lactose intolerant.

~You might see more drawing, painting, etc. on here. I had an odd dream last night in which I was a viewer watching two of ME discuss where I wanted to go with my art. They came to an agreement that I don't really do enough drawing and stuff anymore. Odd, I know, I rarely have odd dreams. Usually I dream that I get up, go to work, do dishes, etc . . . very boring. Any who, I think the dream had a point.

~I like blogging and want to do it more, my first goal is to blog for every day for the rest of this week. I need more goals.

~I will try to make an art portfolio bag this week out of duck cloth so I can ride my bike everyday, even when I need to take my art portfolio bag to school. Those paper ones fall apart so easily.

So, I will see you again tomorrow. The future looks brighter than it did a week ago.

Sick

Well, I am sick. So far it just seems like it has been some version of the flu. The boy was worried it might be swine flu, but if it is, it doesn't seem to be infecting me any worse than a regular flu.

I started to feel bad Tuesday toward the end of classes. Spent Tuesday night with a fever and vomiting. Fever had gone down a little Wednesday, I thought I was feeling better, but I spent the day sleeping and eating toast with butter and drinking water. I tried plain chips later in the day and got horribly nauseous again. This morning my fever had gone down to 99 (my normal temp is around 97.5) and I thought I was okay enough to go to school, but eating cereal and showering completely wore me out and I ended up throwing up all my cereal. So I missed all my dentist appointment, work study, and all my classes on Wednesday and today. Great way to start out the first week of school, huh?

Yeah, right now I am trying to eat some chicken broth and bread because I have to work tomorrow night! Hope everyone else had a better week than mine.