hello pineapples

Adventures in Sewing: Tragedy and Triumph

Boo melting socks! Seriously. Who knew socks could melt?

What the heck am I talking about?

I'm talking about this:



That is a melted sock. I was sewing monkeys on the machine and thought it would be easier to iron the sock first (the edges curled up). Instead of making my life easier, it made things so much worse. What you see there is my attempt to remedy the situation without having to ditch the sock altogether. I folded it over - which will make for much shorter legs - in order to hide the holes. The monkey will still have a crunchy leg and I may still have to do some creative embroidering to cover some wee holes, but there is hope that I will save this monkey.

On the bright side: I sewed two monkeys on the sewing machine! I'm using my pal J.Lau's Brother LS-1217, which seems to have much better tension when it comes to stretchy fabric.

Before I sign off for the day and get back to my work, here's a picture of the gnome meeting Henry at WWKIP day:



They look pretty good together.

And finally, a trailer for the documentary 'Beautiful Losers', which I found via Love, Me:



It's not about the Leonard Cohen book, but about DIY, graffiti, music and a group of artists. It looks like it might be awesome. I'm hoping it'll come to Halifax; with luck, for the film fest. If not, I'm sure Video Difference will bring it in some day.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Thursday, June 19, 2008 1 comments  

filed under: craft mishaps, sewing machines, sock monkeys, socks, wwkip

WWKIP Day

Aside from the fact that I nearly collapsed with exhaustion because of my mad quest to get as many photos as possible for the scavenger, World Wide Knit in Public Day was great. The Halifax organizers should really be patting themselves on the back right now. It was fun to be out on the lawn of the library with fellow knitters and there were some fantastic prizes (thanks to some very generous local yarn stores). I was happy to get to hang out with Hark for a bit. I can't remember the last I saw her, let alone spent time chatting with her. I also had the chance to meet some new people.

I did well with my attempt at the scavenger hunt: 60 points! I had taken some liberties (i.e. I wasn't able to get on the ferry or buy a beaver tail. lack of cash was the reason for both) and would have been okay if they weren't counted, but I guess they were. Aside from about six items crossed off before today, everything was done this morning. I started around 9:30 a.m. and I covered the bulk of the south end of the peninsula. My feet still ache a little. And for a person with some serious social anxiety, I managed to say the following an awful lot: "This is an odd request, but can I'm participating in a scavenger hunt and I was wondering if I could take your picture. Holding my knitting". Most of them thought I was a bit odd, but were more than happy to pose with my knitting. For the pics without people, I used my roaming gnome and put the sock on his head - just to make the photos a bit more interesting to look at. SO, to those who agreed to hold a stranger's knitting for a photo: merci beaucoup!

Now I need to go crash. It has been long day.
A bientot!

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Sunday, June 15, 2008 0 comments  

filed under: knit, socks, wwkip

No Socks in my mailbox!

Sock Wars update: still alive! Amazing!

My assassin's assassin is now dead (giving my assassin more time to knit). I guess this buys me more time. Interestingly enough, a bunch of people below my target (her target and then some) are all dead. So I imagine that my target is a fast knitter and I'm helping her win the game. I think I will have to e-mail her soon, to reassure her that I am indeed still in the game and that she's just a lucky sock warrior.

Speaking of socks, I may have to consider throwing in the towel if I'm not soon assassinated. This weekend is the IWK Telethon and for the past couple of years, I've been volunteering to help kids make their own sock monkeys. The IWK is the children's hospital for the Maritimes and I'm part of a section of groups that provide activities for the kids. There's usually Michael's Crafts doing foam crafts and the Discovery Centre doing sciencey stuff.

Each year I get a little wiser and try to get more and more of the sewing done before the Telethon. The first year that I was there, I had the kids sewing the whole monkey themselves! Aside from some monkeys with stuffing coming out of their limbs, the kids were able to do the sewing, but I was completely overwhelmed - I ended up doing most of the sewing for kids. I had one friend with me and one or two of the ladies from Michael's abandoned their table to help. It was madness! Last year was better, but this year I'm going to make sure that all they have to do is stuff, do a quick whip stitch over the hole and then give it some buttons. And since I want to get this monkey prep work done before Sunday, I will need to either quit the sock war or put my socks on hold until next week. I'll probably put it on hold; I suck at quitting things.

I had brought two sample monkeys with me last year to the telethon and someone from the Michael's booth actually bought one! Seeing as I wasn't there for the sales, that monkey money went back to the IWK.

And on the topic of socks and monkey money: I also need to get some monkeys to Love, Me. I have a few started, but haven't had the chance to work on them because of the quilt and sock wars. And most unfortunately, the darling Mrs. Downstairs moved out of town and now I have no one to help me with some of the sewing. She would help me by doing up their legs and arms on the sewing machine. Although, I suppose, even if she didn't move, she kind of has her hands full with a one month old. Baby Downstairs is not quite ready to sit idly by while her mom is at the sewing machine. I guess this means I've got to get over my fear of sewing machines and either (a) figure my machine out, or (b) sell my machine and get a simpler one (with drop in bobbin).

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 0 comments  

filed under: sock monkeys, sock wars iii, socks