It's been a while since I made any soap, and I still have lots of lye and oil around so someone has been pushing for more soap to use up the lye. :D

So I threw together a recipe (olive, canola, palm, and coconut for the curious) and figured I'd use up the aloe juice in the back of the fridge (unfortunately I didn't finish it off with this batch) and why not use some cut St. John's Wort while I was at it, and some tangerine and ti tree essential oils.

I had to beat the lye about a bit to break it up but that went well enough, no mishaps which is always a plus when handling lye. I dissolved it in water, half the total liquid for the recipe. The other half I did with the aloe juice into which I put the SJW after running it through my coffee grinder. My coffee grinder was bought entirely for grinding up herbs and things for soap and has never been used for its intended purpose of grinding coffee beans. I let the aloe sit on a warm burner while the lye cooled and measured out my oils.

While I was measuring my oils I realized I had palm oil and had accidentally used palm kernel oil in my calculations. A quick check with the calculator showed me that adding half a pound more palm oil would make my lye amount work. I normally make 8 pound recipes so it was a relief to find that the mold, an old plastic shelf that is a convenient low pan when you flip it over, will hold 8.5 pounds. My vertical mold holds only 8 pounds and the only reason I hadn't prepped that one was that I was expecting the soap to get rather hot while curing. That turned out to be a very good bit of foresight on my part.

Anyway, I warmed the oils just enough to melt them all, turned off the heat and went about doing a cold process soap. The lye went in and I stirred it for a while, then added the aloe, letting most of the vegetable matter stay in the pot, what went into the soap will add nice flecks of scrubbiness. At that point the soap was a nice creamy egg yellow. Alas, the aloe juice has sugars in it and lye and sugar means heat so it was shortly looking more like pumpkin pie.

Then I added the tangerine and ti tree oil... hello hot and seizing soap!

Suddenly my nice calm cold process soap was a fast moving hot process, without turning on the stove. The stick blender (long used for soap and missing several "teeth" off it's guard) was brought into play and I now have 8.5 pounds of dark glossy brown soap cooling in the mold. Well, cooling after it finishes reacting, it's still very hot right now.

I'm sure it will be fine.

I know a few members of my friends list/circle sew, therefore I will share out a link for drafting a corset and if you then use their link to share the link with a friend you can get a second PDF for including gussets, gores, and corded panels. Do note that this is basically an advertisement for Foundations Revealed, but the tutorial (which is for altering an existing pattern but could be adapted to drafting from scratch) is useful.

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. )

Someone made a Wall-E from bits and pieces of, well, junk. I am in awe.

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*toshirodragon/TamashiToshiro@IJ*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! )

I just finished a toe-up gusset and flap sock heel. I think this will be my preferred toe-up heel (and since toe-up is my preferred method it will likely be my preferred heel in general). The yarn isn't really right for this sock though, beyond the variegation fighting the pattern it should be knitted in a firmer gauge but the pattern doesn't scale and probably wouldn't fit if I dropped a needle size or two. Ah well, knitting it was more to scratch an itch than to have useful socks.

And yes, that would be my first set of shoe lasts that the sock is modeled on. I should also get off my butt and do something on that project as well. I'm not sure that those lasts are even the right size anymore, I started the project that long ago.

I've been swatching the heck out of the #10 bamboo crochet thread I have. It's nice on size 0 needles and while it's not the best for cables (too slippery and soft) the cables don't look horrible. It's definitely better for things that don't require a lot of stitch definition.

Still haven't frogged the sweater even though I know I should. I keep taking it out and measuring, as if the extra six inches of ease will just go away if I do that. Part of my reluctance is that I haven't figured out the best way to fix the problem, or where the problem came from exactly. Sure my gauge may have just loosened up as I got comfortable with the pattern, but what is part of the problem is a method error in measuring? The major part of the hesitation is just the amount of work that has gone to waste. I started that sweater at the end of March last year, and while it sat most of the summer untouched it still represents a lot of work, over forty thousand stitches worth.

While trying to avoid thinking on the sweater I made some eye-searing, cat-scaring slippers:

Modular/domino knitting is addictive. I've added a cardigan to my queue that uses the technique for the "skirt" from underbust to hip. Since I have the yarn for 3-4 other sweaters already it's pretty far down the list though.

I'm about forty percent finished with that heating pad cover. It's ideal TV knitting, but I don't watch that much TV. :D

The shawl is still in the bin, I should take that out and work on the next segment rather than starting something new.

And spring seems to be the time of the year for sewing urges. I need to give my machine a thorough cleaning and tune-up and investigate my fabric stash for ideas. I know I don't have the stuff for one of the things I want to make, so have a shopping list to puzzle over:

5 buttons - metal and shanked, preferably riveted/"jeans" style
4 buckles - sized for 1" straps
54 eyelets - "standard" size, 2-part preferred but unlikely locally
1 D-ring - 1" size
2.5 yards light to medium weight twill or heavy broadcloth

About thirty four of the eyelets could be replaced with rivets, they're decorative rather than functional. They could also be omitted entirely but some of the charm of the original item might be lost if they were.

I'm contemplating setting up a blog in my domain for a craft blog. It would have postings about patterns I'll be putting up for sale (and I'll probably have a few free ones) and assorted technique and springboard ideas. Since I'm into more than one craft (even if it looks like all knitting all the time these days) I need a non-craft specific name for the blog. The blog name will end up being used as my Ravelry store name as well so it shouldn't be too cutesy or generic.

The sorts of things that are likely to turn up on the craft blog:
knitting patterns
"choose your own" knitting pattern (AKA, fill in your own gauge and measurement guides)
knitting technique tutorials
how to make knitting charts with a decent paint program (PSP for me but it plan to generalize)
crochet patterns
sewing patterns
how to draft sewing patterns (specific patterns that I don't feel like grading and working up PDFs for)
beading projects
wire projects
heck, maybe some soap recipes
tatting patterns, if I ever do more than dabble with it
ditto with sprang

You get the general idea. :)

I was thinking "Making Stuph" but that is very generic, even with the verging on cutesy Stuph spelling. "Teph Makes Stuph" is today's thought. Whatever I come up with will have a subdomain on tephras.com so whatever.tephras.com should also be a memorable URL easily associated with the site name.

I'm sort of tempted to swipe the name of my dead crafting comm on LJ, Internet Refrigerator, iFridge.tephras.com? :D Yes, I could do the technique posts to internet_fridge, and I may do that, but it wouldn't be kosher to take that comm for the pattern selling part of the plan.

Some one toss me some ideas? Random thoughts?

Crafty Pantry just popped into my head. I need to kill it with fire.

A biking (bicycle, not motorcycle) jacket with LED turn signals, and it's a DIY project!