Fine Yarns & Witchy Goods for Fiber Witches
Rachel Price of Spincycle Yarns
Lindsay Vega, Five Boroughs Yarn
Jocelyn Tunney of O-Wool
Cecilia Nelson-Hurt and Louis Boria, fellow Latine members of Vogue Knitting’s DAC
Aimee Gilles of La Bien Aimee
Annmarie from Harrisville Designs in her new Nevasca Shawl!
Sheep!
Melanie, Ana, and Annie!
My finished pair of toe-up socks, not blocked and ends not woven in yet…
I am new to knitting socks. I only started knitting them this past January. So back in February, Ana offered a Crash Course on Toe-Up Socks through Vogue Knitting Live. I decided to take it, and I have fallen in love with knitting toe-up socks. Since taking her class, I decided to knit a pair using Crazy Zauberball in Indisch Rosa.
The pattern I used to knit my socks was provided by Ana with the class she taught. I thought this would work perfectly with my self striping yarn. I’ll let you all be the judge of that! The one thing I really contemplated was how close I wanted the pair to match. With luck, they turned out pretty close. It wouldn’t be a hand knit by me without a mistake! I noticed that I was short a stitch when I got to the ribbing of my second sock. To fix it, I just added an increase in that round to even it out so the ribbing would work out. I had knit the second sock in a day, and didn’t have the heart to rip it out and restart it. In all, this pair of socks took me about 4 days to knit.
The start of my toe up socks after I just finished the toe shaping.
The other slight issue with my socks is that there’s a hole right where the heel meets the rest of the sock. When I weave in my ends, I’ll take some of the scrap yarn and fill in the hole.
The main benefit of knitting toe-up: as soon as the heel is finished, the sock can end whenever you like! I have found that 6 inches after the heel is the perfect height for me. I personally prefer magic loop over double pointed needles for socks, but toe-up can accommodate both methods!
Want to learn how to knit socks? Join Ana’s Toe Up workshop next month!
The second sock after I had finished the short row heel.
My practice sock from Ana’s Vogue Knitting Live Toe Up Course back in February.
Last time I introduced you to the idea of modifying a tarot deck, and showed you three was to trim a deck. This time I’m going to show you how I renamed the court cards in the Wayhome Tarot.
There’s so much I love about the Wayhome Tarot. I love the table setting in the 10 of Pentacles. the circus horses of The Devil, and the heart and brain of the Empress and Emperor. I love that it’s a non-human deck, showing the natural world. This deck made so much sense to me. The creators, Bakara Wintner and Autumn Whitehurst, write that “each image could reasonably be found on a single, winding walk through upstate New York.” I used to live in Western New York, and these images seemed like home.
I bought this deck because I love how the court cards were imagined: human silhouettes containing the essence of the card. I absolutely loved the King of Swords as a modern windmill/wind farm. But I absolutely hated that it was called Father of Swords. I bought the deck anyway, thinking that I could work with Father/Mother/Son/Daughter rather than King/Queen/Knight/Page. I couldn’t. I kept seeing my father’s face whenever I drew a king card. I couldn’t work that way. Court cards are already some of the trickiest cards to interpret, and I couldn’t deal with the associations this naming convention was bringing up. I knew I had to do something about them.
I thought about trimming, but there was no way for me to do it evenly across all the cards. The Majors and Minors had the name of the card written across the bottom, while the court cards had the names on the top. If I couldn’t cut out the names, then I had to cover them. I thought about just writing a new name and sticking it on, but I couldn’t get my handwriting even enough. I asked for advice from Tarot with Scissors, and dredged up my grad school notes on archival preservation materials, and got to work.
I found a close enough font match in Papyrus 12 point. I used Avery 5260 address labels that I had on hand, and printed off a sheet containing the new names.
I trimmed them to size using an X-Acto knife.
I colored them in with an alcohol-based marker (Art Alternatives Illustration Marker in E2 Sand) so that it wasn’t bright stationery white. It isn’t an exact match but it’s consistent across all court cards, so I’m OK with that.
I sealed everything with 2 coats of satin Mod Podge, to prevent the edges of the labels from lifting.
I am so very happy with how this modification turned out. I’m using it for my daily draws this month. Depending on the humidity, the Mod Podge gets a little sticky, but it’s no big deal. I can do an overhand shuffle and a riffle shuffle and the labels aren’t lifting. And while there is a thickness to the court cards that isn’t present in the rest of the deck, I can’t feel it enough to “cheat” in my readings.
This modification, while drastic, has changed the Wayhome tarot from something that I wanted to love but couldn’t, into one of my favorite decks.
You just bought a tarot deck, and you love it.
Except, maybe, one thing doesn’t resonate with you.
Maybe it’s too large for your hands and it’s difficult to shuffle. Or you don’t like the borders.
Or perhaps you want to make it more your own.
Some people believe that you shouldn’t change a deck at all. Others think that a deck is a tool, and tools should be used, and if they can be made better (more useful), they should. I’m firmly in the latter group. If you have a deck that languishing and gathering dust for want of a few modifications, then make those modifications so that you can use your deck!
Tarot, is after all, just pretty pictures on paper. And it’s easy to transform paper. Scissors, glue, tape, stickers, glitter, contact paper, hole punches… there are so many ways! There’s a wonderful Facebook group called Tarot with Scissors: Deck Modification, Crafts, and Art. Members share their projects, tools, and techniques. I’ve spent hours looking at their creativity.
Two of the most popular modification are trimming and edging. Trimming is where you cut a deck down to a different size (usually cutting off the borders) and edging is coloring in the edges of a deck with marker or ink. I haven’t felt the need to edge a deck, but I’ve trimmed a few.
Trimming is one of the easiest things you can do to a deck. You can do it with scissors. Here I am using regular scissors to cut along the line (takes me back to elementary school art class). I’m trimming the 10 of Cat Treats (Pentacles) from the Cat Tarot by Megan Lynn Kott.
You’ll get a neater edge, and it’ll be easier on your hands, with just a few tools: an X-Acto knife, a metal ruler, and a self-healing cutting mat. This time I’ll trim the 7 of Cat Toys (Wands)
Line up the ruler with the edge of the artwork on the card. Using firm pressure on the ruler to hold the card in place, cut next to the ruler with the knife.
The card will have square edges. You can leave them, but if you want rounded edges, you can use scissors, or buy a corner punch.
If you decide you like trimming decks, you may want to get a paper trimmer, or even a guillotine. Depending on the thickness of the cards, you can cut multiple cards at once with a trimmer or guillotine. I’m trimming the 4 of Cups.
The Cat Tarot is a standard size tarot deck measuring 4.75” x 2.75” (120 mm x 70 mm). Once the borders are trimmed, it measures 4.33” x 2.33” (110 mm x 60 mm).
Have you modified a deck? What have you done to make a deck your own?
Next time, I’ll share a more extreme deck modification.
Making our own clothes means we get to create bespoke pieces that fit our bodies just the way we want. I find this process to be empowering, and an act of resistance all on its own. That said, this often means having to adjust patterns and sometimes, it means re-knitting pieces when we get an unexpected result.
When swatching for a project, it’s important to swatch flat for projects knit flat, and in the round for projects worked in the round. Our gauge can differ, because when we work stockinette flat, it involves both knit and purl rows. Stockinette in the round is all knit rows. There is a slight difference in the amount of yarn used in creating a knit stitch versus a purl stitch because of how we wrap the yarn to create them (yes, even though it’s just the same stitch backwards). So this means that we can see a gauge difference in a cardigan when we are working the body flat, and the sleeves in the round.
When working my Comfort Fade cardigan, I first worked my sleeves as written and ended up with sleeves that didn’t fit right, and it’s because of my gauge difference between flat and in the round. Switching to in the round for the sleeves made my row gauge looser. Instead of having 8 decrease rounds total as written in the pattern, I ended up with 6 decrease rounds by the time I reached the 15.5” sleeve length called for. I decided to go with this and knit my cuff, only to find in the end I wasn’t happy with the fit. This cardigan is intended to fit with little ease on the sleeves, and this left me with very baggy sleeves past the elbow.
This is one of those moments where I had to remind myself of the joys of handmade clothing and slow stitching. I could either leave the first sleeve as is, knit the second to match, and spend years being cranky every time I put on this sweater that the sleeves didn’t fit quite right. (and yes, I’d be unhappy every. single. time. I wore it, like with the pair of socks I fudged back in 2014, I still haven’t forgiven those socks)
So I decided to rip the sleeves out and recalculate the decreases - and I’m sharing the process so it can help some of you along the way too!
My original sleeve had:
6 decrease rounds every 17 rounds, plus 3 more rounds to reach 15.5”.
The cuff added an extra 3.75” for a total sleeve length of 19.25”.
That makes a total of 105 rounds, at a gauge of 27 rounds = 4” (pattern) gauge was 32 rounds = 4”
Since I was modifying the sleeve anyway, I decided to take out an inch in total length.
My new sleeve had the following parameters:
18.25” total length, with a 3.75” cuff.
14.5” before the cuff to accommodate 8 decrease rounds. I actually decided to add 2 more decrease rounds for a total of 10, to remove a bit extra ease along my forearm.
At 27 rounds = 4”, 14.5” of length gives me 98 rounds to accommodate 10 decrease rounds
98 rounds divided by 10 is 9.8 rounds. I rounded down to 9 rounds.
My new sleeve will be knit as follows:
Decrease every 9 rounds a total of 10 times (90 rounds worked)
Knit 8 more rounds even, for a total of 98 rounds worked before starting my cuff.
So I’m going to take deep breath, sip my Queen of Wands tea, and remind myself that I love knitting, and it’s totally okay to spend another week reknitting this sleeve. Now time to rip out the original sleeve….
Pattern: Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry
Yarn: La Bien Aimee Merino DK
