The thing in the store didn't work out, unfortunately, but I've started a new venture: An Etsy storefront! For all you ignorants, Etsy.com is a website where people buy and sell their handmade stuff on the internets. I've been meaning to set up a storefront for a while, but didn't get around to it until I got home for summer break, which was about three weeks ago. Here's the link to my storefront:
InfiKnits.Etsy.com
My username/store name is "InfiKnits" (Genuis, isn't it? It came to me out of nowhere). So far I've got nine things listed- my three backpacks, the windowpane purse, sun pillow (which I've listed as a "custom image pillow"-- more on that in a bit), fabric strips purse, and three sweet entrelac hats that I've made in the last week.
So what have I been working on since I got home? Not as much as I'd like. I'm not sure how I spend my time, but it seems to fly by without me getting much done. I have done some cool things. I've been drawing charts and knitting some intarsia designs for the custom pillows. Here's the deal with those: I'm selling pillows that have custom image designs on them. I made a few sample designs, which I'll post here-- a cool sun, a flower, and a rainbow. I wrote on Etsy that I can make almost any image that a customer wants, but I'm not sure how Etsy's custom item deal works yet. I'm also working on another line of pillows with a similar theme, but more personalized. I've made one sample swatch so far. Basically, the idea is that I can knit your (or anyone's) initials into a pillow! The sample one has "A.L. (Heart) C.J." on it with a decorative border, but I can make ANY name/initial/word that is requested. I'm not sure how to translate that to Etsy yet, so this may be better explored on my (theoretical) website, which is nonexistant right now but which I HOPE to create in a few weeks. The website will offer more options for custom items, I think, and I'm really excited about that.
Pictures! You've seen the backpacks. I'll post the stuff I've been working on in the last few weeks, and the ADORABLE hats.
Intarsia sun I designed. That was the first one I made, and the one that helped me realize that knitting charts can be VERY deceiving. This is a problem I've been having. When you draw a circle on a knitting chart, it looks like a circle. But when you knit it, it comes out like a very FLAT circle. Knitting groooows horizontally. So I have to be more careful about that in the future and make things much taller in the charts if I want them to look normal in the knitting.
Cute flower, worked in intarsia. I used two solid colors and one varigated yarn for the petals, so it looks pretty cool. However, the stepping on the petals came out a little funky. It's much harder than it seems to make shapes round in knitting because of the stepping of each stitch.
Rainbow. One of my faves. I had to draw the chart twice because the first time it was way too wide (see above note about horizontal GROWING!!) and even this chart was pretty wide. However, I think it came out pretty cool. It is also worked in intarsia, and it was pretty easy as intarsia goes. The only tricky part was the cloud shaping because for intarsia you need a new peice of yarn for EACH occurance of EACH color within one row. So at times I'd be working with like four different supplies of white yarn. Luckily, intarsia makes it easy to disguise color changes, and what I love about it is that the fabric is FLAT.
The first entrelac hat I made. I had to experiment with the number of stitches, and the first few hats I made were with the wrong size circular needle so they came out a little looser than I liked, but they still look great. Plus, there's no binding off, and binding off in entrelac is really annoying. I started with nine rectangles of five stitches each, worked for five rows of rectangles, then I made the next row of rectangles with four stitches instead of five, and the next with three. Then I picked up stitches between each rectangle to create a solid fabric and steadily decreased until I had about seven stitches. I drew them together and tied them off. The only annoying thing about the hats is the weaving in of ends, but I have developed a technique which I think will help stop the ends from unraveling or poking out.
Second entrelac hat. Cute right? I love the colors. I made two more, one with two shades of purple, and one with red and orange, with a smaller needle that I bought at Michael's (size eights instead of ten). The fabric is much snugger and tighter. Definitely looks better. I'll be using those from now on.I can't seem to find a picture of my knitted initials. I don't think I uploaded any to the computer. Well I'll do that later (hopefully).
Again, sorry for the long lag. The reason why I don't post that often, by the way, is because this blogger interface sucks. When I upload pictures, the pictures always appear right at the beginning of my post even if I've typed six paragraphs, so I have to manually drag each picture down to where I want it to be positioned. It's really annoying. If it were easier I'd post a lot more.
Till next time... maybe BEFORE July rolls around!
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