Finally a Tree (follow up)

FINALLY I HAVE GRADUATED!!!

Such bittersweet moments, the pros and cons are endless, but in the mean time let's just focus on the pros for now. 

After two years, I have finally completed knitting my sweater with the leaf lace pattern ;___;

Because there is no more classes I have to worry/study for. Leaving me with a lot more free time to continue to knit.

Before I tried to knit a shrug and after the wash and dry it was stretched that I ended up not being so satisfied with it. Thus I torn the who thing apart.

Thus I would to take this moment to document the process.

**THIS IS THE WAY I KNIT MY SWEATERS, might be useful or it might not be.
IT'S JUST TIPS I FOUND USEFUL WHEN KNITTING.

I'm the type of knitter that sucks at reading the instructions such as the chart below, so I just knit to how I think/imagine it will turn out. (Basically interpret to the best of my ability xD)

With the sample ribbing and pattern you can then figure out the gauge, stitches per inch, giving you the best estimate of stitches you should cast on for the body.

                      

**Here I happen to use a salmon knitted sweater I had bought a while back. Like I stated above I'm bad at instructions but also measurements. Therefore I'm using it as a reference for the ideal length when it comes time to decrease for the arm and the neck line.

Honestly the back and front piece are knitted similar when decreasing for the arm, it just varies for the neckline. 

Depending how deep and wide you want to decrease is all base on preference.

I knit the front and back piece separately. The front I cased on 170 stitches.

From that 170, the ribbing is a 2x2. After desired length then you may start your pattern. This leaf pattern is worked on 10 stitches plus 2. 

I added an extra two just so that the two ends, facing the right way, is purl.

Just keeping knitting as you wish, if you wan a longer jumper knit longer.

Pit
When you get to the arm section, armpit, you would do a decrease of a 5-4-3-2-1.
**Right side facing you for example, you would be decreasing 5 stitches, the follow your pattern to the end. After that row the wrong side, decrease 5 stitches, then knit to the end stitch (note that you have 5 stitches less). Continue to decrease 4 stitches on the right side, then decrease 4 on the wrong side. continue till when you only decrease 1 stitch. 
This will give you the curve of arm. Total of decreasing 10 rows total.

Neckline

This is where your work splits into two due to the symmetry of the neckline.

After the decrease of the pit you just continue to knit a few inch or so of your desired length.

This varies on how you want to decrease, either a wide neckline, v-neck, or a close one. 

**Here I choose a somewhat larger neckline, so I ended up decrease in 5-5-5-5-4-3-2-2-2-1-1-1-1. till I have about 25 stitches. This decrease begins in the center and you knit all the way to the end towards the outside.

Optional Shoulder

If you look at any shirt you will notice a little slant from the top of the neck to the sleeves. To create that slant so it drapes over the shoulder nicely when you wear it. As you decrease the neckline to about 30 stitches I would decrease 5 stitches every time I was on the wrong side knitting towards the middle as I still decrease the neckline by 1. (which took me ten rows total to bind off all stitches)

Arms

Cast on as many stitches that wraps perfectly around your wrist.

**For my arm I'd cast on 60 total.

Rib the arm like you did for the body, I like knitting them the same length. 

After the ribbing, ever 8 stitches you would add a one stitch increase. By doing this increase after the ribbing it gives it this little nice puff. If not you'll have a very straight sleeve.

Increases for the arms. After every 6 rows of knitting you increase 1 stitch one each side. When you fold your sleeve in half it will be even and much easier for assembling at the end.

**For my piece ever six rows measured to be one inch, so every one inch I added one stitch on the right side then when I get to the end and reverse side I added another stitch to the wrong side. 

Keep increasing on either side every six rows till you get to the pit as you decrease.

For the arm decrease, it is similar to the body but rather than stopping at 1 you continue decreasing 2. It will be decrease 5-4-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2 etc. You'll keep decreasing knitting until you have about two inches left, which left me with about 20 stitches.

Assembling

I assembled everything with the help of the sewing machine. I start off with the shoulder, the attaching the arms aligning the center to the shoulder, the two pits together. After the arm is assembled, you're missing the long seams along the body to the end of the arms at the wrist. I just sew that in one sew straight.

Ribbing Neckline

I like to rib the neckline last, when the shoulders are finally assembled. Just cause I don't like there to be a seam. You can use double ended needle of cable. Rib the same way, usually the ribbing I would keep it to be one inch max then bind off.

Hopefully you have a complete sweater (:

Happy knitting!!

Will upload more pics of sweater and polish up the instructions more carefully in the near future.

Man on the Moon!!! Stencil Project :}

I'm not going to lie as much as I love Japanese culture, I equally love the Korean culture as well. Though most if not everyone I know is focused on Korean pop, the hallyu wave, I somewhat drifted away and am listening to more of the rap/hip-hop/r&b genre. 

For those who don't know of Eluphant....well now you do xD 

After watching the music video "Home, Sweet Home" from the album "Man on the Moon" that they produce these past couple months (I forgot when).
I can finally say that I never fell more in love with an astronaut. By that term I mean in general not necessarily the actor that played the role, though I think he would look more handsome without the guy liner (that bothers me).

Plus I really like the lyrics.

End thoughts of the MV: SOMEONE FLY THIS MAN TO THE MOON ASAP, THAT'S WHERE HE BELONGS ;  ^  ;

As the person that I am I couldn't help but notice that their album artwork is perfect for stenciling.

 Without further to do, lets get the process going ^  ^

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

some suggestion but not required, gather what you think you'll need

1. Stencil kit/construction paper/or plastic folder (If you plan on making duplicates I recommend the stencil kit, but since I was cheap and didn't want to pay so much I just bought really sturdy construction paper or a plastic folder. Anything that can withstand paint since it'll be wet for the most part.)
2. Fabric paint (I bought Jacquard Textile - 123 White)
3. Jacket (I originally planed on a shirt but they ran out so I bought a F21 black hoodie)
4. Paint brush 
5. The enlarge imagine (any image you desire/size)
6. Tape (to hold down the image on the paper to stencil)
7. Exacto knife/box cutter/or razors
8. Iron (very end to set the fabric paint permanently)
9. Cardboard (used to place between your fabric so the paint doesn't leak over to the back or the front of the fabric)

**I'm sure they have spray on fabric paint, so you can skip the brushes, but you'll still need them to fill in the lines at the end from the stencil.

I tried to stencil by parts but that failed because I wasn't able to center the piece correctly as I was trying to match it with the pocket. So the above Image I ended up washing it all off ;  ^  ;

Bottom line: Don't be lazy!!! You'll regret it.

 As you can see I stenciled out what was white from the original album cover. Places where I seem was too tedious to cut out I just ignored it. You want all the pieces attached and not fall off, so cut wisely.

Once I centered everything so that the cassette part of the astronaut suit is matched up with the pocket I taped it down.

After that just paint at free will ^  ^ though you have to hold down parts of the stencil that are more fragile and can be easily moved.

It's a really rough first coat of paint but once I got the general outline of it, I waited for the paint to dry a bit before peeling it off. If not it will be difficult to peel it off.

Once the stencil is remove, you can go over and repaint it as many coats of paint as you wish.

The thing with this Jacquard paint, especially the white one is that it is really translucent so I ended up going over the jacket about five to six times.

I'm not going to lie the first layer did give the sweater a lot of character cause of different texture.

Finished Project :}

How the cassette is painted right where the top of the pockets are sewn on.

The back was really plain looking to me so I painted on the album title :3 

Props to those who can pick it out if I wear it out and they know the music video or the album.

For the sleeves when I can get my hands on those squirt bottles, I was going to dilute the paint and squirt it on the sleeves just to create the nebula effect.

Whenever I get to it, I'll edit this those post again.

Then camera whore away~ wheeeeeeee (only cause I needed anew default :d)

But on a serious note it's really simple to wear, it is a regular jacket after all. 

I'm too lazy getting dressed up....xD

Where I'm at it been raining the last couple of days so the temperature plummet even more. So I wore a petticoat (not shown) over it and scarf to top it off ;3

Winter will be approaching soon, so defiantly stay warm guys :}

Enjoy stenciling and painting!!!! 

Don't forget to iron it to heat set the paint permanently!!!

New Mint Project :)

Been so long since I have knitted and here I am again with this mint yarn.
I took it apart from a shrug that I knitted a year back, simply because it expanded way too much after the washing process and it looked to bulky after it was completed.
Hopefully this time around it will be a perfect knit ^ ^

Ahhh this leaf lace design seems to be really nice (I shall link the design when I find it).
After I finish knitting this jumper, I'll look like a tree if I ever match it with brown pants of some sort.

Here I am using a jumper I bought a while back as a template for the length and width of this new project.

So far on my knitting needle I have 170 stitches on a number four needle. The gauge I believe is 8 stitches per inch.

I'm not looking forward to knitting the arms though, since I have always had trouble with them ;___;

After two weeks of knitting and school, this is how it turned out ^ ^

Kusudama Ornaments

There are so many tutorials out there that already that will show you step by step on how to fold and glue the kusudama ball together. So I will not even try to do that, for Folding Tree has a really detailed instructions going on.

Though when I started to fold them and then gluing they were really dense and that was the part that really annoyed me. 

To just have one kusudama ball you need 60 sheets of origami paper. The end results are pretty, but I feel like I could have gotten more out of my folds. So I decided to cut mine into three. 

I had all sixty sheets folded into one another (individual flower petals) color cordinated so I know the color scheme I had.

There I had six kusudama going, but since I said I cut the petals into three, giving me three different sizes.

Because I had the petals cut before assembling you can see that the ball is less dense cause it is hollow. 

Once I had finished all the folding, cutting, gluing. This is the result, and I must say I am very happy with how it turned out. Though I gave it all away to the bae.

 I had to package them and head out to Sacramento.

We barely got to hang these ornaments onto the ceiling and from what we had gotten up it looks amazing with the Christmas light going in the background.

This is what it looked like when we I had them hanging at my apartment.

A Recycled Transformation

It was the first time in my life that I had tried to deco a case with rhinestones. Although I was super excited, the mistake that I made was that I was way to focus on making the Hello Kitty bow to be the actual shape. By doing that I ended up shifting up all the rhinestone everywhere, none of them click and follow the linear pattern.

 

It been two years since I had this same case, and you know what it's time for a new.

I ended up just recycled my Belkin case. So what I ended up doing was I took a razor blade and just start slipping it between the case and rhinestone, cutting the glue.

But you can always buy a new case, I just didn't have the patients to do so, the whole waiting for shipping xD

With all the rhinestone being removed. I gave the case a good sanding to obtain the smooth surface.

Instead of just sticking to rhinestones, and creating a gradient of red, pink and white. I remember that I had a skull necklace with an ornate frame. I personally did not like the skull so I literally knock the center out with a hammer.

This second time around I wanted picked out pink rhinestones. I was not going to settle the rhinestones not being align therefore I had taped down the case, and start gluing lines of rhinestones in straight lines.

The most difficult about deco-ing is when you hit the corners and it's not a perfect or even the edges, but you just got to move on. After all the rhinestones are align, the only last thing was to pick out the center piece, the picture.

Hooray!! it's complete. I ended up picking out a an old picture which is super meaningful to me.

She, my mom, will now always be with me everywhere I go :}

Recycle a tshirt

A while back I wrote about my two goldfishes and how I painted them on my shirt, been two years ago almost three, I still have another extra white large t-shirt from then. At that moment in time I had already cut the sleeves off of. I thought that I messed up on the cut so I have abandon the shirt for a while with my jackets that I don't wear anymore, till I did some sorting this past weekend.
Without anything further to do let's begin.

So what do you need?!

1) any t-shirt really, recycle a t, doesn't have to be new
2-3) fabric paint of your choice and paint brush(s)

4) pen to draw the outline

5) your imagination?! know what you want on it

6-7) paper clips and cardboard to keep in place and not bleed through the other layer
8) iron, never forget the IRON

I just went ahead and found a picture that I like, which is a skull. I wasn't sure if I was aiming to cut the shirt up some more so when you wear a different color underneath you'll see the design or just paint it on with fabric paint. But I decided to paint non the less.
~

Not so long for screen printing close t-shirts, that was a pain in the butt. Thanks to Connie and Alvin for not abandon and throwing all the duties onto me cause I was not obligated to paint them.
But I swear I told myself that I never touch fabric paint again, well you know what I lied!!!!

So here was the picture I picked, I got lazy and I really did not want to draw this by hand. So I cheated and traced it onto the t.

Just blew the picture up really large on the screen, or monitor.

You can see the pen marks of the sketch, it took about fifteen minutes to draw. 

Don't even worry about the pen marks because it doesn't have to be perfect cause you be painting over it, one to either cover the lines, two just smooth out the curves as you paint.

After that you just paint away.

This took me two hours to paint in total. Not bad if you ask me. 

Got myself a new muscle t-shirt.

I did this as a relaxation project, but there would have been more stress if I had messed up ; ^ ;

How I wear it?!

It is rather large on me, but I how I like to wear it is that when I'm wearing shorts I rather just let it hover over, same with leggings. If I wear it with jeans, I would tuck in the front and let the rest flow down.

Love t match it with the gradient anywhere from white to black, or just give it a pop of neon, absolutely stunning!!!

More pics on how I wear it to come.

IRON IT!!!!!

Don't forget that for fabric paint you must iron over before washing it, don't make the mistake I made two and a half years ago. It was rather a sad moment in the time and effort I put in. So don't let it get wet until you iron.

Just read the labels and you'll be fine as long as you follow it.

A Doraemon Blanket This Time?!

When I picked up a little last spring, I technically went crazy making his pillow and blanket. Took me thirty two hours to hand sewn the Mamegoma seal, the character from San-X. I started on his blanket with the same concept, but I didn't finish it in time but it turned out really nice.

It was so early my brain had stop functioning!!

and so the progress of the blanket begins

I ended up tracing and cutting out everything, for I want it to be the same font and size.

After placing everything in place kinda lol

I hate hot gluing so everything was hand sewn, the blanket was no exception, though I did use the glue gun to keep things in place so it would have not shift.

Since just the white fleece was too think and plus it looked so messy on the back a second layer was a must.

I choose pink and he'll learn to love it :)

The bottom of it was still so plain cause I left room for a quote, something my little throws around frequent, also and inside joke we've created or I like to think so.

People told me that I have already done so much and I should just end it there, but it just didn't feel nor looked right to me.

Finally the finished product with all the side knotted.

So my question is should I make another one, for myself this time?!

Doraemon or sticking to San-X duckling hmmmmm

With all the different faces of his.

I too deserve something nice!!!!!!!

Maybe this time I should just cut all the piece out and have my mom run it under the machine, cause I don't know if I would want to spend a whole quarter on it.