Category Archives: tips and tricks

Lavender Sachet Tutorial

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A few months ago, while at the local Renaissance Fair(e?) I scored a jumbo-sized zipper plastic bag full of dried lavender buds for only $15 from Frolicking Deer Farms. It’s been sitting on my shelf for all this time, open, but not really living up to its potential.

Today, I decided to take the time to make some sachets. I like to do things assembly-line-style, because to me it seems to make the process go faster. I do this with everything. I’ll unload ALL of the groceries up to the porch, then haul ALL of them into the house and into the kitchen rather than taking each load all the way in. I don’t know, to me it FEELs more efficient even if it’s not.

SO…here’s my method for assembly-line-style lavender sachets.

You’ll need:

Lavender
Musiln or other fabric
Sewing machine
Pinking shears

The first thing I did was to fold a length of muslin in half. It doesn’t matter how much fabric you have, just so that you have two layers to sew together to make little bags.

Then, I stitched out a little grid. I used my machine’s embroidery function to spell out the word “Lavender” and then added some leaves and flowers. You could do this just as well with a straight or zig-zag stitch.

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The key is to create two rows of horizontal stitching between each row of sachets, so that you can cut them apart and have all finished edges. (Each row of vertical stitching here becomes the bottom of a bag.)

Now cut each section using pinking shears (pinking shears keep the fabric from unraveling at the edges), so that you have 3 finished edges and one open end.

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Fill each sachet with lavender, leaving about 3/4 inch at the top edge, so that you have enough room to finish the final edge.

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Finish the final edge, trim raw edge using pinking shears, and you’re done. Scrunch them around in your hands a little bit to release the scent.

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Slowly getting back into it! A little bit of design progress…

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Slowly getting back into the knitting

This is as much as I’ve gotten done in the last month! I already knit one version of this shawl, but needed to work on the lace chart a bit.
So this summery version is in Handmaiden Seasilk from Jimmy Beans.

The project bag is a Christmas gift from my BIL Aaron…you can buy one at www.etsy.com/shop/FruitLoopDesigns

This is the shawlette that I worked on for my example project in the first run of my Design Your Own Shawl class. I chose a stitch pattern that turned out to be directional:

Stefanie_shawlette

So that, instead of appearing to be mirrored across the center increase line, it looks slightly rotated. This makes the candle flames point in two different directions on either side of the increase line:

Stefanie_shawlette_1

The red lines highlight the way that each candle flame’s tail swoops across the shawl. And…you can see that they swoop in different directions.It’s a really subtle difference, but I can tell…and it’s been bugging the HECK out of me!

SO…I had to fix it by altering the lace chart so that instead of doing exactly the same thing in each section, I do the exact opposite.

For example, if one row of the lace chart in the first half reads, “k5, yo, k1, yo, k8″ the other side needs to read, “k8, yo, k1, yo, k5.”

So far, this is totally fixing the issue, and I think the final shawl will be really pretty. I decided to use something summery because we’re already in the 70s here!

Here’s my little treehugger:
Beautiful girl in her tree She LOVES sitting in this tree! Every time we’re out in the back yard, she asks to be put up in the branches.

Our fruit trees are blooming! There might be peaches:
There may be peaches

…and PLUMS!
there may be plums

I’m so happy that it’s warming up!!

In case you’re wondering…Olive’s doing GREAT! She’s nursing really well and gaining weight like she’s supposed to. She’s a really mellow baby, and takes great naps! Here she is in a tee printed by the fabulousJodi Green:

Olive in her Jodi Green original!

More Tshirt Yarn projects and a video how-to

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So we are well into week 2 of tshirt yarn class, and I’m really making a lot of projects!

Here’s a scarf that I knit, using a length of organic bamboo fabric that I cut into yarn. I overdyed it in tea! The tea stained the scarf in a really interesting way, and toned down the baby pink.

tea stained scarf

I also dyed this light pink yarn with tea:
tea-stained yarn drying

Here’s what it looked like fresh out of the dye bath:
tea stained tshirt yarn

It was light pink to begin with, and the tea added those darker tan spots. I can’t wait to see how this knits up!

Here’s a little video on how to use tea or coffee to dye things:


Find more videos like this on UPcycled Tshirt Yarn Class

How to join a new ball of yarn to your project (video post)

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I’ve been so engrossed in “Fitted Raglan Shawl” class that I totally didn’t blog last week!

I was on such a video blog roll, too!

Well. I’ve got some stuff. I’m working on LOTS of videos for class, and I thought I’d share this one with all of you:


Find more videos like this on Fitted Raglan Shawl Class

We’ve been having some discussions in class about how and when to join new yarns. I was always taught to join at the edge of the knitting, but I think that if you use a splice (like the spit splice that I show you in the video) you can just join new yarn anyplace you run out and need to start a new ball. There are certainly as many ways to join / splice yarns as there are knitters, so if you google, you’ll find LOTS of techniques. These are the two that I use the most.

By the way, that’s Cascade 128 in a beautiful light blue, almost silver gray color. LOVE IT for this shawl. I use a bulkier yarn and bigger needles for the video examples so that everything shows up. I’ll add the directions for this bulkier version of the shawl to the pattern when I finish it.