Product vs. Process Crafting

I hear a lot about "Process versus Process" in material that I read and listen to.  I have mostly heard it referring to knitting, but it can be applied to sewing as well.  It can actually be applied to anything that you can think of (some you may have to think harder than others), but we'll just focus on crafting.

Process crafters are simply crafting for the sheer bliss of doing something.  Knitters love the hypnotizing rhythm of the knits and purls, quilters enjoy cutting large pieces of fabric up into many small pieces, and then sewing them back together, scrapbookers could happily sit for hours trying to find the perfect colors of paper to complement each other.  If you find yourself working on projects and you're not really worried about when you get them done, but rather are enjoying the creative process, trying new things and maybe taking risks with the projects, you may enjoy the process more than the finished product.  Being a process crafter can be described as crafting for yourself, rather than for other people.  This means crafting for the purposes of relaxation, maintaining sanity, etc, not necessarily making crafts for yourself.

Product crafters are more pleased with the finished product, rather than enjoying the time when they are making the project.  This is pretty self-explanatory.  Your projects may have a deadline (even if the deadline is vague or mobile), and you may not particularly love the project while you're making it, but once it is done you do like it.  Product crafters will craft for other people, whether it is for the purpose of gifting or selling.

I have tried very hard to decide which type of crafter I am.  I really do enjoy the process of most crafts.  I love knitting and sewing, and I'm happy to do either of those all day.  Scrapbooking is another story.  I love the finished scrapbooks, but I am not really good with colors and patterns, so I don't enjoy trying to figure out what should go where.  I got a scrapbook for my wedding from a cousin who makes them for a living, and it is beautiful.  When it got to us, all that we had to do was choose pictures and insert them into the book.  I chose the pictures and had them printed, and there the scrapbook and pictures sat, for a year and a half.  Finally, a friend of mine was visiting and decided to do it for me, since I clearly was never going to do it.  The finished product looks great now, but the process was not very exciting for me.

There also seems to come a point for me in most projects that I stop enjoying the process and am just waiting for the product.  I tend to go pretty wild in choosing really large projects, like queen sized quilts, six foot long cable scarves, and the like.  I can temper this disenchantment by keeping smaller, simpler projects going on the side, which messes with my deadline but keeps me from tossing the larger projects altogether.  I also have this obsession with making lists of projects that I am either working on currently or have promised to people, and I love to cross things off that list, which appeals to the product crafter side of me.  My husband also tells me that if I were truly a process crafter, I would knit a huge piece of fabric and then rip it all out, and just be happy because I was able to knit for a while.  I'm not that in love with the process.

What kind of crafter are you?  Do you appreciate the time spent working on the project, or do you relish the finished product?  Or, are you a little of both?  I would love to hear your points of view on this subject!

(finally) Finishing your hat!

Hello!  I want to apologize again for keeping you all hanging on finishing your hat.  Hopefully I will be a bit more on the ball for the next knitalong or quiltalong.

I did, however, finally finish my hat so I can tell you about it!  Once you have finished your final round for the leaves, you are done with the red yarn, and the decreases are worked using only the green yarn.  Cut a short tail off of the red yarn (maybe 2 to 3 inches), and leave it hanging inside the hat.  Start round 31 in the pattern with your green yarn.  You've already done some k2tog's if you did the earflaps, but here's a refresher video:
http://www.knittinghelp.com/videos/decreases

You can choose to do either the k2tog on the left at the top, or the ssk on the right at the top.  I tried it both ways and it didn't look too terribly different.  Follow the pattern until you have 9 stitches left.  You are then going to knit those stitches for six rows, forming the stem.  Then, the final row consists of k2tog 4 times, and then knitting the last stitch.  You'll have five stitches left, and you will need to cut a tail and thread your tapestry needle with that tail.  Then you need to draw the yarn through the last five stitches, and pull them closed.  I then put the needle down through the center of the stitches (or as close as I could get), and pulling the stem inside out, tied a knot to secure the yarn, and wove the end in a bit.  To weave in all of your ends, I basically just thread the ends on my needle, and then pull them through some of the purl bumps going in one direction, and then I come back through a few bumps in the other direction.  There are lots of videos on youtube if you are interested in seeing how other people weave in their ends.  Here is what my hat looked like before weaving in the ends or adding straps:

Once you are done weaving in your ends, you can add straps to your hat in a couple of different ways.  I knit what is called an Icord, and a video to show you how to do that is here.  You'll have to scroll down until you find the video, it's close to the bottom.  The Icord is a knitted tube.  To do mine, I picked up three stitches at the bottom of my earflap like so:

I then started knitting the icord off of these three stitches.  You can also pick up a few stitches and knit back and forth, creating a flat strap with the purl bumps on both sides of it.  Another option is to pull one long length of yarn through each of these three stitches, and then braid them together to create braided straps.  Or, you can leave straps off altogether.

You can then embellish your hat by adding seeds if you would like, using the duplicate stitch.  Take your black yarn, and duplicate the v's made by various knit stitches wherever you would like seeds to be.  I chose not to do this once I finished my hat.  After this, you are done!  Here is a picture of my finished hat:

It would be nice if I had something other than a glass to model the hat, but times are tough and we have to use what we have!

That's it for this knitalong.  I would love to see pictures, you can email them to me at alexandyjATgmailDOTcom.  Is there something in particular you would like to knit or sew next?  I will try to be better about timely posts in the future, so let me know what you are interested in doing.  I hope you enjoyed doing this knitalong!

I'm still here!

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know that I am still here!  I know I haven't blogged in a really long time.  It's been a little crazy around here, with the Maine Shop Hop happening during the month of April, and my husband and I are getting ready to move, and we have family visiting.  I haven't had any time for any knitting, let alone working on my hat and taking pictures.  I have a baby blanket on my needles for a baby born last Saturday, and I thought I would be done by the time he was born, but I'm only half done.  I promise I will blog about the rest of my hat soon, but until then, if you have any questions just drop me an email at alexandyjATgmailDOTcom, or comment on this post.  I apologize again for the long absence.

Knitalong: working on the hat body

Have you been working on the body of your hat?  I have, and thought of a few things I should tell you.  If your stitches feel tight on your needles, that's okay.  As you go along, your stitches will get looser, so don't worry about that.  Also, in the pattern, it says to do a specific number of rounds, but in the earflap hat pattern from Julie (http://heyjulie.wordpress.com/2007/03/20/babykids-earflap-hat/), she says to knit the body of the hat until it is 3.5 inches from the cast on edge, so I did that rather than the specified 25 rounds, and I had to do a few less rounds in order to get my length.  Now I'm ready to start in on my green yarn to make the leaves.  Here's a picture of the body of the hat:

Once the body is the length that you want, we'll start adding the green yarn.  Where the pattern says "Leaves" is where we start.  You'll add in the green at the beginning of the round, and just leave the tail hanging to the inside of the hat.  Knit 1 stitch with the green yarn, carry the red yarn behind the green, and knit 7 stitches red.  Repeat this combination of 8 stitches until you reach the first green stitch again.  Then, start round 27 by knitting 3 stitches in green, and knitting 5 stitches with the red yarn.  Carry the yarn you are not using behind the stitches on the inside of the hat.  Here is a picture of what my hat looks like after finishing out the body of the hat.

And here is a picture of the inside, where I carried the yarn I wasn't using across the back of the other stitches I was knitting:

That's it for the hat body.  As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!  Next time we'll do the decreases for the top.  Hope to see you then!

Knitalong: Adding earflaps and beginning the hat

I hope your earflaps turned out well, and now it is time to start the body of our hat!  To start, you need to learn to do the cable cast on (video here), if you don't already know how to do so.  A tip for this cast on: don't pull the stitches tight after transferring each one from the right needle to the left needle.  You need to try to keep this cast on loose in order to make it easier on yourself.

Cast on 10 stitches using the cable cast on.  If you are using double pointed needles, I would suggest trying to get as many stitches on the needles as possible, and then moving them around to space them out afterward.  For example, I wanted 24 stitches in between the earflaps to be on my middle needle, and the earflaps to be on the other two needles, along with the rest of the stitches.  I cast on as many stitches as would fit onto the first needle, then moved some over, and then I continued to cast on.  It can be pretty difficult to try to cast on stitches over the gap created by two different needles, so we'll try to make it easier on ourselves.  Once you've cast on your first 10 stitches, you are going to knit the first earflap right on after your 10 stitches.  Here is a video that Julie posted on how to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ0i6XWFwa8

After you've knit the first earflap on, cast on 26 more stitches.  Then, knit the second earflap on.  Finish by casting on 10 more stitches.  Now, you can join your round.  To join, just start knitting into the first stitch that you cast on.  Once you knit the stitch, pull the tail tightly to make sure there isn't going to be a huge gap.  Note: for the first few rounds, there will be a gap, but just do your best to tighten the stitch joining the last and first stitches, and we'll be able to close that gap at the end.  Make sure that your stitches aren't twisted!  If you look at all of your needles, the cast on edge should be closest to the floor when you hold your needles parallel to the floor.  If this edge comes up and over one needle in any spot, it means that you twisted your stitches, and you will end up with a fabric that you definitely don't want for this project.  If you are knitting on double point needles, you will want to make sure that you also tighten the first stitch that you knit off of every needle, just like you did the first stitch.  Gaps can form between your double point needles, and pulling the first stitch on every needle tight will decrease your chances of "ladders," or spaces between each stitch that run all the way up the fabric.

Once you've joined your cast on round, you can start knitting!  In the pattern that I gave to you, I made a mistake on Round 1.  It should read as follows:
Round 1: k9, k2tog, k12, k2tog, k25, k2tog, k12, k2tog, k10.
All this row is going to do is close up the gaps that formed around the earflaps when you knit them into the cast on row.  You can skip reading this row, and just do Round 1 as follows if you feel comfortable doing so:
Round 1: Knit to one stitch before the first gap on earflap one.  Knit two stitches together to close the gap. Knit to one stitch before the second gap on earflap one, knit two together to close the gap.  Knit until one stitch before the first gap on earflap two.  Knit two together to close the gap.  Knit until one stitch before the second gap on earflap two.  Knit two together to close the gap.  Knit until the end of the round.

Once you finish your first round, it's just straight knitting until you want to start making the hat smaller to fit the top of the recipient's head.  Here is a picture of my hat after I finished Round 1:

It's looking a little weird right now, but once I get some more rounds done for the body it will actually look like a hat! :)  When knitting the body, the pattern specifies knitting for 25 rounds.  Julie's pattern says to knit for about 3.25 inches from the cast on edge.  If you are able to measure the intended recipient's head from how far down they want the hat to go on their head (whether or not they want it to cover their ears, etc) to where their head starts sloping in at the top, you'll know how long to knit your hat body.  For adult hats, it can be from 4.5 inches upward, usually, and some adults have smaller heads.  You can guess as well, because if you did the earflaps, the hat itself doesn't have to go down over their ears.  Just make sure that you are tightening your stitches between each needle.  If you're on a circular needle, you don't have to worry about that.

That is all for today, I believe.  Do you have any questions?  Are you doing something crazy weird and don't even know what the right question to ask would be?  Let me know in the comments, or you can email me (alexandyjATgmailDOTcom replace the uppercase words with the appropriate symbols).  Remember, I'm also available to help in person if you are having trouble.  Just let me know!  Once we get the body done, we can start on the leaves.  See you next time!

Correction in the earflap hat pattern

Hi everyone, I just wanted to post real quick to let you know that in the pattern I posted, there is a mistake, right in Row 1!  Sheesh, can't trust me with anything!  The original pattern for Row 1 said to knit until there is one stitch, and noticeable gap, and then another stitch, and knit those two together to close the gap.  There are four gaps, one on each side of the two earflaps.  Row 1 in my pattern should read as follows:
Row 1: k9, k2tog, k12, k2tog, k25, k2tog, k12, k2tog, k10.
This will hopefully give you the right first row.  That's what I did and mine turned out fine.  Let me know if any of you have any problems.  Pictures tomorrow, but right now I have a date with my husband and the cats.  We're watching Gone With the Wind, and everyone is very excited.  Goodnight!

Earflaps!

Good morning everyone!  I finished my earflaps last night, and I am ready to cast on for the hat.  Before I do so, however, I wanted to show you a couple of pictures of what your flaps might look like.  Here's one looking at the right side of both flaps:

These flaps look really large for baby ears to me, but I guess it's better to have their ears covered well!  The edges farthest away from the needles are my cast on edges, and you might be able to see the tails there.  I cast on 7 stitches using the long tail cast on, per the pattern.  Then, you need to turn your needle and start going right to left again, on the wrong side of the piece.  You are going to knit the first stitch, purl to the last stitch, and then knit the last stitch.  Turn your work again, and knit the first stitch, knit the front and back of the second stitch (video here), knit to the last 2 stitches, knit the front and back of the second to last stitch, and knit the last stitch.  Every time you knit into the front and back of a stitch, you are adding a stitch.  This means for every right side row that you do, you should be adding two stitches total.  I try to make sure I am counting every once in a while so I don't miss an increase.  Once you have 15 stitches on the needles, you'll be on a wrong side row.  You can then purl every stitch in this row.  Turn your work so you're on a right side row, and knit every stitch.  Continue this until your earflap is the length that you want it.  Mine are 3.25" long.  Once I knit my first earflap, I set that needle aside after cutting the yarn and used another needle to knit the second earflap.  You can either keep track of the rows that you knit straight on the first earflap, and then keep track on the second one so they are the same, or you can just hold them one on top of the other to make sure they're roughly the same size. :)

Here is a picture of the right side of one earflap, and the wrong side of the other:

You'll notice that the earflap on the left is showing the purl bumps on the wrong side, and the earflap on the right is showing the knit v's on the right side.  I tried to make sure that my last row on the earflaps was a wrong side, or purl, row, but it doesn't really matter for our purposes.  You might also be able to see that the sides of the earflaps are curling in a bit.  That's okay, because each earflap is small enough that it will resist curling too much.  In the pattern, I specified to leave a tail when you cut the yarn from the ball at the end of each earflap, and said that 12 inches would be long enough.  That will definitely be long enough, but I made my tails between 5 and 6 inches.  You want to have enough of a tail that you can securely weave in the ends, but the earflaps are getting knit right into the cast on edge, so it doesn't need to be too long.

Alternatively, if you don't want to do the earflaps, you don't have to.  You can just cast on for the hat and start knitting, and once you get to the end you will have a hat with a brim that rolls, so you may want to make the body a bit longer.  If you are interested in this, you can wait until I cast on for my hat and just pick up with me there.

That's about it for the earflaps.  Take your time when making these, because it's possible that you're learning a couple of new things while knitting these.  Let me know in the comments how you are doing, or if you have any questions.  Also, like I mentioned before, I am available to help in person if you are around the Presque Isle area, so just let me know if you would like that.  If you want to send me some pictures (and I would love to see any!), you can email them to me at alexandyj(at)gmail(dot)com, and let me know if you're okay with me putting them on the blog or not.  Thanks for knitting with me!