From: bkt@blacks.jpl.nasa.gov (Barrie Trinkle)
Subject: More projects
Organization: Image Analysis Systems Group, JPL
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 02:23:49 GMT

jill@super.org (Amelia L. Scott) writes:

>How many people out there have finished a really fun 
>project lately?  Or, like me, thought about several 
>while you're working on 2?  I'm dying to hear what other
>people are accomplishing.  

I recently finished knitting the "Starry Night" sweater from a North 
Island Designs kit (I know, I know, a *kit*--how awful--but I bought it
when they were having a great sale and I really did love the look
of the sweater).  Land's End (I think) has also sold this kit in
the past, so some of you may have seen it even if you don't get the 
North Island catalogue.  It was for my boyfriend, who decided that
he didn't want the little embroidered stars on it, so it just has the
dark trees silhouetted against the lighter evening sky.  I also changed
the neck--it had a fancy neck he didn't like in the picture, so I knitted
a plain ribbed crew neck.  It's very pretty, very masculine-looking
and WARM (I'm not sure when he's going to get the chance to wear it :-( ).

Now I'm supposed to be working on the sleeves of a sweater that my
officemate and I decided to knit for a mutual friend (partly so that
we could annoy him by working on it in public :-) ).  It's from the
book _Sweaters for Men_ by Alice Starmore, which I bought at a great
book sale.  My officemate has done a great job of the back and is nearly
finished with the front, and I've barely started on the first sleeve.
One problem is that it has a complicated-looking-but-simple-to-knit
pattern, sort of a checkerboard pattern of blocks of seed stitch alternated
with blocks of ribbing.  Karen had no problem with the pattern, since
she didn't have to do any increases or decreases until she'd done so
much of the back that the stitch was automatic.  I'm having trouble
(and have had to rip out several inches back to the cuff twice now)
because it's really hard getting the pattern down AND working in
a 2-stitch increase every 4th row (the entire stitch pattern is a 20-row
repeat).  I think I'm going to resort to graph paper this time.

I've been stealing time from the above to experiment with trying to 
make jewelry using very fine macrame.  There is a woman up in Northern
California (maybe Mendocino, I'm not sure) named Karen Smith who does
AMAZING jewelry this way.  I've seen her work twice now at the 
Contemporary Crafts Market show in Santa Monica--I bought one of her
pins just for inspiration.  I don't even wear pins, but I found that
I just couldn't leave the show without buying something from her
(I hung around her booth so long she must have been getting nervous!).
My second visit to the CCM was just yesterday.  Once again I found myself
wondering how some of these people make a living--we talked to a
quilter who hand-pieces and hand-quilts 20 quilts a year and seemed to
be charging ~$900 for them.  That's only $18,000, MINUS her materials,
and she said she basically quilts every waking minute for 9 months 
a year!  I sure am glad that there are people out there who love their
craft so much that they're willing to share it with others for so 
much less than it's really worth in terms of human sweat and care.

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
..nothing is so fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech as the run of 
a good library.
				Robertson Davies, _Tempest Tost_
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.textiles