Stitch n' Knit

Want to make your kitchen feel witchier or want to add a bit of witchiness to your every day kitchening?   Buy a cute candle for your kitchen table.  Light it every time that you do kitchen magick or when you are cooking.  I like to choose a red or orange candle by default to be my imaginary “hearth” but sometimes chose a seasonal candle instead.  For example, right now my candle is wrapped in birch bark.

At some point I was also messing around with a 3D printed heart that was tealight-sized, but eventually that did not work for what I needed. Still fun though!

There are no levels in knitting, there are no exams to pass or goals to achieve before you can continue.

The Handsome Chris is a perfect beginner project. It's all one color, it's knit flat, you get to learn lots of new techniques all at once, but most of all it's engaging and you're working towards a goal you really like.

I would have impaled myself on my needles if I'd been forced to complete a Sophie scarf before I got to advance to something more "challenging" like a washcloth, or God forbid a ribbed hat.

My very first project was a self-drafted 11-strand intarsia double sided cable scarf, because I didn't know I wasn't allowed and that was what I wanted to make.

This attitude of mystifying certain fabrics as advanced really twists my stitches. I cannot do simple stockinette colorwork to save my life, but I can 3-color brioche without looking.

There are no levels in knitting.

like, I know the feeling well, I myself don't think drawing is hard. you put a pencil to paper, and you are doing it. but my experience in teaching drawing does tell me that it's hard for people to get over the learned self-reflection of "am I doing it right?", it's hard to have an idea, put it onto paper and then analyze WHY the drawing on paper isn't the way you envizioned it, and it is hard to then plan accordingly and adjust your drawing based on that knowledge.

The whole problem is that these skils (knitting, crocheting, drawing, etc) have been developped over centuries if not millenia. These skills have width and depth.

it's true that there's no preset levels of "learn this first, and then learn that", but there's definitely skills that are more superficial, and ones that require a deeper settled understanding of the tools you are working with, so that you can actually use the thinking part of your brain to process what you are doing and how that affects the larger craft as a whole.

They get frustrated

They get bored

And I think what we're seeing here is people who are coming from different sides.

25oz of fiber! I have to assume that's a lot, to be honest, I don't exactly know what an "oz" is.

@paladinkit, how did it go?

and here's all of 1-6 spun up, with some of 7 on the spindle!

I got this machine last August at the same garage sale as the 99k, and for the same agreeable price of $20 CAD. At first I just bought the 99k, but I came back at closing time and this one was still there, so clearly it needed my help.

I didn't know what kind of machine it was, and it turned out to be a Japanese made Singer 15 clone, which is a thing I'd never heard of! There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of information on them out there, but apparently there are a bunch of these out there under hundreds of different brand names because they could be ordered by businesses who wanted to sell their own sewing machines without having to manufacture them. I've seen pictures of them in quite a variety of fun colours too! This one says "Gimbels", which was an american department store chain. Not sure when it was made, but maybe 1950's?

The overall shape and inner workings are extremely similar to my Singer 15-91, but with the peculiar difference that the bobbin case is mirrored. So they can share bobbins, and feet, but not bobbin cases. This one also has a drop feed, and a setting to lower the feed dogs slightly for delicate fabrics!

It's been sitting partly disassembled on the back of my sewing table for about 6 months, but I finally got back to it a few days ago and now it's all clean and oiled and back together. Except the motor - I want to look inside to see if it has any crud to clean before I reattach that, and I want to watch some videos before I do that because I don't know my way around electronics.

It sewed right away, so there wasn't much of anything wrong with it aside from dirt and a bit of rust! But alas, the wooden case was too rotten to save, and positively reeked of mould. I figure I should be able to make a new case though, with perhaps some help and borrowed tools. There are also some paint chips I'd like to fill in at some point.