whee and boo

whee! my craftster miyazaki swap stuff finally arrived! i don't have time to open it now (i should be running to the subway as i type), but will open & post some pics when i get home tonight. now, if only the stuff i ordered from ebay and the letter my mum sent would arrive...

also, boo. on the weekend i posted about my adventures in carpentry while the paint was drying on my project out in the garage. when i went back out to finish the job, my drill... died. just stopped turning on. grr! we opened it up and looked inside and it looked fine, so i've no idea what the problem is. so near and yet so far...

wow, it's a while since i've updated, hasn't it?

but it's not for lack of activity. i seem to be consumed by two impulses lately: nesting and napping. and nesting involves a fair amount of work! right now (and for the past couple of weekends... i find i really can't push myself these days, need lots of downtime) i'm working on building a proper sewing table.

have you ever noticed how most of the craft boards rarely touch woodworking? there's almost zero carpentry talk on craftster. for all the feminist talk of the stitch'n'bitch gals, there is still this huge gender divide when it comes to crafts. there are maybe 5 guys for every hundred gals posting on the knitting boards, and women still seem to avoid the more heavy-lifting crafts like the plague. i don't get it. it counts as "around the house" work, so shouldn't carpentry be traditionally done by women more than men? the only historical reason i can think of offhand for why this would be is that most of the traditionally female arts are doable while baby-sitting, but carpentry... well, not so much. the tools are loud, there's all that sawdust in the air (i dream of someday getting one of these), they don't make masks and goggles in infant sizes, etc.

but at least until thumper gets here, power tools are fun! we all need furniture! and more importantly, we all need places to work on our crafts and store our stashes!

while the garage fills with my lumber/varnish/screws/poswer tools stash, the soon-to-be-baby room is over-run with yarn and fabric. so, i'm building a sewing table (it sill be so nice to have something the right size for laying out patterns!) to put in thumper's room, with storage underneath for all of my stuff, and - this is the clever part - gate-legs so that it will fold down to a reasonable size (this is not a big room we're talking about) and conceal my crap as well. i am very very excited!!

also to come - pics of miyazaki swap stuff (when the packages arrive at their destinations). stay tuned!

daisies

i've decided the little green daisy dress is film-related, because i'm thinking i'll give it to the post supervisor of shorts in motion because her wee girl has had a rough go of it in the couple of weeks that she's been around. is that cheating? oh well.

i have five little daisies made so far, two to go. i went looking on knitting pattern central for flower ideas, and this was the closest to what i was looking for. i'll post my final modified flower pattern once i get some pictures up.

but i can tell you one thing - hand-knitting with fingering-weight wool on 2mm needles is reminding me all over again why i got the knitting machine. yikes.

almost finished!

well, it is ages since i have posted, and this isn't film related, but i've almost finished the wee dress/cardigan thingy (based on a nightgown pattern, but of course i had to change some things) that i started ages ago. in my defence we've been very busy with family and of course all i want to do is nap!

without further ado, here is filmcraft's first ever machine-knit project:





i have a million ends to run in, and i want to add little daisies where the bodice meets the skirt (and yes i know, the making of flowers is what has stopped me from getting the in the mood for love sweater finished, but i don't care).

help!

crap, crap, crap. can anyone point me to a source for spare parts for a fifty-year-old knitting machine?

this morning i was picking up some dropped stitches (whoops - i do that a lot) on my knitmaster 4500, and the latch on one of the hooks broke!

where on earth can i find a replacement? does anyone have an idea? i know some knitmaster (aka knit-king) users will buy additional machines just to use for spare parts, but i don't know where I would find one... i guess if i have to, i can take one of the end hooks and use it, and just never knit anything using the full width of the machine? that wouldn't be as bad as missing a hook in the middle...

poop.

meanwhile, here's something to amuse you: a knitting machine made of lego! link courtesy of kidoodles on the knittingmachines yahoo group.

photos!!

finally, some photos of totoro! there was a laundry emergency yesterday morning, so i didn't get the photos off the camera until now. but here he is, in all his fuzzy glory:





i'm especially please with the whiskers - they stand out nicely, without being prickly.

download pattern here: knitted totoro pattern

camera!

filmcraft has a camera again! i took pictures this morning of totoro (the neighbours must think i'm insane, playing with toys on the front lawn in my pyjamas), and will post them as soon as my husband gets out of the shower (apparently there is some software that needs installing before i can actually get at the pictures - serves me right for not making sure there was a card in the camera in the first place).

so soon! any minute now, i will edit this post and add some photos!