May the Fourth Be With You!

Yes, I am a huge nerd. But I'm not the only one! Enjoy these super nerdy thrift store finds in honor of Star Wars Day!

First an R2-D2 thermos, now a lightsaber. One could make a whole set of super nerdy beverage containers, and it would be awesome! Almost makes me wish I were a coffee drinker...

My husband loves waffles almost as much as he loves the Millennium Falcon, he was very excited by this find!

I know, this one isn't Star Wars. But original printings of Star Trek comics, tech manual, and ship blueprints is so hardcore nerdy that I feel it belongs in spirit if not specifics.

May the Fourth be with you all!

Linen Washing - Easy Mode

I collect a lot of vintage linens from thrift and antique stores; I'm always on the lookout for good fabric and fine hand embroidery. Unfortunately a lot of these old pieces are yellowed or stained from years of use. However, I have found the perfect weapon with which to combat these entrenched stains: Oxy-Clean

This small scoop is plenty for washing several small items or even a large tablecloth

The basic recipe is: soak the stained fabic in Oxy-Clean and hot water for a couple hours, rinse and hang dry. 

Most old embroidery threads are quite colorfast, but it pays to be a bit careful. It's always a good idea to dab a bit of your Oxy-Clean solution on a discrete corner and make sure the colors won't run. Red dye in particular tends to bleed more than other colors. If you're worried about the colors, try using cold water first. It might not get all the stains out, but it's safer for the colors.

Also, make sure to rinse your linens thoroughly to  get all the Oxy-Clean out. If there's still some left when you iron the fabric, it can leave a brown stain. This stain too can be easliy removed with another soak, though.

Before washing - note the yellowed spots on the lace as well as the stains on the linen

After soaking for ~3 hours in hot tap water and Oxy-Clean - All the yellowed spots are gone!

As a bonus, Oxy-Clean will even lighten the marks from permanent iron on transfer pens or pencils! So if you slip up when transferring a design, or can't cover the lines completely with your stitches, Oxy-Clean can help!

See the blue shadow under the grey stitch just to the right of the red? That's the line from an iron on transfer pen.

Here's that same stitch, after soaking in the same Oxy-Clean bath as the runner above. The blue shadow is no more!

Vintage Craft Book Feature: Knitting in Vogue (1981)

Another of my many needlework hobbies is the collection of vintage craft books. Found in dusty corners of second hand shops, in pride of place in used book stores, these old tomes often contain beautiful nuggets of crafting wisdom, and a heaping helping of vintage charm. Reviving the techniques, tips and retro projects is just one more way for us to bring back the wonders of the handmade.

Knitting in Vogue 1981

This book is one of my favorite vintage knitting finds. It's not just a window into the knitting style of the early 1980's, but also a window into earlier styles through the lens of the 80's. Each pattern is a reprint or reworking of an older Vogue Knitting pattern, made for 'modern' audiences.

Each garment is modeled in it's 'new' form, with all the retro charm you could want.

And there's also an image for each from the original pattern, so you can see how it was originally worn and styled.

All of the designs end up feeling a bit timeless, seeing the same garment modeled in these different styles. I really like just flipping through and looking at the pictures. Even if you don't want to knit any of the sweaters, it's a great coffee table book.

This was also the book with the pattern that eventually became my neon stepsister sweater :)

Borders Abound

 It's free pattern friday! This time it's a trio of fantastic border designs, and a bit of stitching inspiration. These patterns are also great for drawing, painting, or whatever your craft of choice. Enjoy!

Wait...What?

I shop at thrift stores a lot. Really, a lot. Clothes, books, decor items, cookware, raw materials for my shop; most of the goods I buy come from second hand shops. This is partly because I am cheap and refuse to pay full price for new when perfectly serviceable things are available used.  Mostly, however, I shop at thrift stores because they can offer some hidden gems found nowhere else.

Sometimes these gems are beautiful and unique vintage clothing, or quality kitchenware for a bargain, and sometimes the value of a find is just that makes me laugh:

So I'm a pretty avid cyclist, and I do occasionally enjoy wearing a ruffly dress and stilleto heels, just never together. I'm guessing whoever set up this photo has never experienced either one. She's using a proper cyclocross carry position at least. It is a track bike, and thus could possibly have toe clips which theoretically would fit her footwear. Though it would have her leaning way too far forward for that low neckline...

So...Post Cereals sponsored a "pounds thinner" pattern? 'Eat our sugary cereal and gain weight, then sew a dress that hides it!'

I get that they are just describing the style here, but seriously 'Empire Sorcery in Five Different Evening Moods' sounds like a collab jazz album between Darth Vader and Palpatine.

Nothing snarky to say about this one, I just really like the hair and shades on the little floating dude. He is very anime though, right? Like a little floating fairy sidekick.

Tale of a Stepsister Sweater

One of the many things I dabble in is designing knitting patterns. Most often I do so because I conceived of a desire for a garment and couldn't find an existing pattern that was exactly what I wanted. So I try to make my own.

When watching the live action Disney Cinderella movie for the first time, I fell head over heels in love with the honeycomb sweaters Anastasia and Drisella wear as they try to stuff their feet into a glass shoe.

In one of my many vintage knitting pattern books I happened to find this gem from 1952. Suddenly making a dreamy stepsister sweater of my own seemed possible. Altering the neckline and sleeves wasn't too difficult. The pattern was really easy to follow and adjust.

 Next I needed yarn. Luckily for me, my local thrift store always has 'good' yarn. I found 8 skeins of this shockingly chartreuse textured dk and bought it all without a second thought or even a project planned. Someday I would be making a hi-vis sweater and it would be glorious. When I found the teal and green variegated yarn at my LYS, I knew it was to be. 

So, with my newly altered pattern and awesome yarn, I got to work. My chief inspection officer 'helped' a lot in this process.

There's the finished project in all it's neon glory, and I even have 4 skeins of that yarn left!
 

The Magic of Graph Paper

I am an avid and primarily self taught knitter. I learned most of the techniques I know by trial and error as I worked a pattern that was probably too advanced for me at the time. Collecting these tricks and techniques into one place is hopefully as helpful to others as it is to me. 

One thing I have always struggled with when designing a pattern is how to distribute increases or decreases to make a curved edge like for armholes and shoulders. And then I had a bit of an epiphany; if it's hard to visualize, draw it!

So this is just my short hand sketch, so it may not be super clear for others, but I'll try and give you an idea what's going on here:

I was trying to make a nice curve for a sleeve cap. So the first this I did was sketch in the shape I wanted. I only drew one curve, since the shape will be symmetrical, just imagine the other half to the left of the drawing. Since knit stitches are wider than they are tall, each square on the graph is one stitch and two rows.

Once I had the curve in, I used a ruler to draw straight lines to approximate it. Using the grid, I just counted how many stitches needed to be decreased in how many rows for each straight line segment. The bottom line of numbers in each set on the diagram is that count. Multiply the count by two to account for the other half of the sleeve cap, and then simple division gives the distributions listed in the top line. At that point, just work from the bottom up.

For this example that means:

    Decrease 1 stitch each side every 4 rows, 8 times, for a total of 16 stitches decreased over 32 rows, then

    Decrease 1 stitch each side every 2 rows, 6 times, for a total of 12 stitches decreased over 12 rows, then

    Decrease 2 stitches each side every row, 4 times, for a total of 16 stitches decreased over 4 rows.

And now you have an easy step by step to follow to make the curve!

For the curious, here's how those sleeve caps turned out :)