My Bowtie Scarflette

As I mentioned in my previous post I've been working on some new items for my Etsy store.  Sales have been slumping quite a bit, which makes me a bit sad, but oh well, that's the nature of doing business - you have busy times and you have slow times.  But it has given me a chance to try out something new.

This idea all started a few months ago when I went shopping with my sis and Ed.  We went to Anthropolgie because for my birthday they had sent me a coupon that gave me 15% off my purchase.  While there I came across a bowtie scaflette that had a cotton liner sewed into it.  I thought - that's brilliant!  Especially for wool items, because I know a lot of people (including myself) have wool sensitivies.

I knew I didn't want to sew in the lining by hand.  My hand sewing skills are not quite up to par.  I actually don't think I have the patience for hand sewing.  I find that when I first start off, my stitches look even and alright, but as I keep going my stitches get bigger and bigger, and then it just looks sloppy.  Yes I know, I'm impatient (couldn't you tell by my other posts? LoL).  I began to read up on how to sew items with a sewing machine to a knitted item and found out it was not so easy.  Knitted items stretch, so you have to be super careful when feeding it in through the machine. 

So a couple of weeks ago I had time to knit up a bowtie scarf - I got the pattern off Ravelry and it's quite simple really.  I bought some cotton material with a nice print, cut it to size, then headed over to my parents house to use their sewing machine.  I read on a website to use a zig-zag stitch, which I started out using, but for some reason the machine would miss some stitches and some of them turned out to be just a straight stitch.  I had the cotton material on top of the knitted material, and I think the thread wasn't catching the knitted material at the bottom.  After about 4 cycles of sewing and  ripping, I decided to go to a straight stitch - I finally had it! 

Just make sure you use a ton of pins to keep the everything together - this will also help prevent the knitted material from stretching too much.  And go slow - it's not a race! :D

My prototype turned out pretty good, but the final product turned out better.  Before I had a straight rectangular piece, but I found when I put the scarf on you could see the corners of the material sticking out.  So I ended up chamfering the corners. 

And here's my final product!

It's now for sale @ my Etsy Store

The Salad Incident

Since I started this blog I thought I would keep it just on knitting, but sometimes I find situations in my life that I would like to blog about.  I guess I could start up my old personal blog but I like to keep my life simple and sweet, meaning I'm a one-blog girl :)  So I guess I can occasionally blog about non-knitting stuff right?

Or.. mention one thing about knitting - my Etsy store sales have been slumping lately so I've been bummed about that.  That's ok, after a full holiday season of spending, 'tis the season for not spending!  I could relate - I haven't bought anything this month besides a $16 Ipod FM tuner that I desperately needed for all the road trips I have been taking for work!  This slump has allowed me to come up with more exciting new things to sell at my store... more about that on another post!

So I'm away on business tonight, and whenever I travel on my own I usually order room service.  But in the case of tonight, the hotel I'm staying at doesn't have room service.  So every time I stay at this hotel I always go to a local chain restaurant to get food.  I hate eating out on my own, so I usually go to the drive thru to get food, then eat in the semi-comfort of my hotel room.

The last time I went to this restaurant (which was last week) they forgot to give me cutlery with my order, and I didn't realize until I got back into my room.  I wasn't too happy about that.  So this time around, I kept reminding myself to ask for cutlery.  I ordered a dinner meal and a salad, and when my order came I made sure I asked for cutlery (which they forgot to provide... again!).  When I got back to my room I was so hungry I started eating my meal.. half way through I had this sinking feeling something was missing... my salad!!  I was so distracted by the fact that I might not get cutlery that I forgot about making sure everything I had ordered was in the bag!

I called the store (took me a while to get someone on the phone.. no one likes to answer the phone there!) and talked to the manager and she said the salad would be delivered to my hotel.  Now there is one thing I would like to point out - the restaurant is literally a 2 min drive to my hotel.  It took them 45 minutes to deliver a salad... AND the delivery guy forgot the dressing.  WHAT?!?!  The delivery guy said he had to go back to the store to get it.  I figured it would probably take him another 45 minutes, so I just said forget it. 

..... and to make matters worse I brought a knitting project I wanted to start and I realized I brought the wrong needles :(

It's just one of those days..... blahh!!

Men Can Knit Too! :D

I came across this interesting article about some students from a school in Toronto that formed a knitting club, and a quarter of the club are boys :)

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/article/914814--students-knit-scarves-and-friendships

See....men can knit too! :D