Tephie's Personal Bombshelter MarkII

But then I do tend to drop off the face of the planet in the summer. Nothing all that unusual happened this year, I went and saw the family and came back with some paperwork to deal with but that's mostly settled now.

Unsurprisingly, I did some knitting. ( See what, some tiny, some not. )

On an unrelated note, any other Semagic users having trouble posting? It keeps telling me it can't connect to the server, and that server happens to be LJ, IJ, and DW!

In more ways than one.

So, I've been knitting things for Anjeni on small needles, sizes US#0 and #1 mostly (2 and 2.25mm) of late. And really, I never, ever, expected to knit with needles that small.

And they are too big.

So I used a Joann's 40% off one item coupon to get $1 shipping and ordered a Susan Bates sock set. It contains sizes 1 and 0, which I have but I could use another set of 0 anyway (and I now have three sets of 1s) but more importantly, it has sizes 00 and 000 (1.75 and 1.5mm). The cost for the 4 sets is still less than the cost of 2 sets in steel (the Susan Bates are aluminum) so I figured it was reasonable for testing if I actually can stand knitting that tiny.

So, onto the testing. ( Cut to spare the uninterested. )

Well, it's been a while so here we go.

First, some non-knitting things.

 

Some lounging around pants from a bit of old tee shirt and, more importantly, sandals. Finally something not slippers to wear on her feet!

Now on to the knitting. Up first, the hammock!


Unblocked, blocking, and done!

It's a bit larger than I was aiming for but it will work. I think. I still need to actually make it into a hammock for her.

( Booylicious pants under the cut. )

In an attempt to keep the knitting posts from being huge, and from my journals from being neglected for months, an update before I have tons of photos to link.

Anjeni has been basically hanging out around my PC since I got her. She has a stand in front of my knitting books and sometimes sits on the edge of the shelf above my monitor. Other times she sits in her favorite chair on top of my stacking drawer units on the shelf over my monitor. The chair and the stand are basically out of the way so she's there most, but neither place is very cat resistant nor are they good for photography. What to do about that? Clear out a shelf in the bookcase obviously.

She can stand in there, with about an inch of head room, so the ceiling is definitely low, but it works. The dresser is an old jewelry box, all drawers without a flip top for rings as most boxes of the style generally have. The chair and love seat were given to us by Kris.

Now dolls don't need beds really, but when you have set dressing you really should go for the whole shebang. Given the lack of room on the shelf she could have a narrow bed and her chair and dresser with basically no floor space, or she could go for something less Western traditional, such as a futon (no frame, so it would be folded when not in use) or, say, a hammock. A really spiffy and decorative hammock. A lace doily draped over a hammock "frame" (stretcher bars and edge lines the doily could be stitched to). Maybe some bead edging. It could be arranged decoratively in the corner when not in use perhaps. The first problem is the doily, the mechanics can be determined after that is made.

So I went looking for a good doily pattern to use and immediately hit on a problem. Most doily patterns don't have a firm size. Depending on your yarn/thread and needles/hook you can make any pattern in multiple sizes. In fact, a lot of the knitting patterns just tell you how many rounds they have. So I figured the best way to work around this problem is to make a small doily with the yarn and needles I plan to use and measure it to figure out how many rows my target doily should have.

Thirty two rows and barring the loops from the crochet cast-off, seven inches in diameter. I'm looking for a sixty round doily pattern. That turns out to be a rare, rare beast so I may be using an 88 on smaller needles.

So what to do with my test doily? As it turns out it's a bit small for a proper shawl for Anjeni, and the girl doesn't have anything to wear one with yet anyway. For now, it gets to live on her dresser.

In other knitting news, still doll related, pants with booty coverage in progress:



Japanese short rows are awesome, just saying.

Yep, about time for an update. Before I cut for images I feel I should inform you all that there is a shift in my knitting lately. You see, someone *cough*tamashitoshiro/ToshiroDragon@LJ*cough* sent me an extremely unexpected and generous birthday gift. As a result, my knit and craft urges have been focused on that gift for the past month.

First, the last thing I finished before my birthday:



Now I can say I've knit entrelac. I also knit all the purl side rows from the knit side, aka "knitting backwards".

Okay, onto the gift and the stuff I've made for it.

( Click to see what I got! )