Keiser Graphics

I know it has been a while, and I apologize for my site being down, but I am now back. I have a new knitting pattern available online and it is free! It is for a wallet made of sock yarn. I love all the crazy colors that sock yarn comes in, but I’m not sure I want a pair of socks made with them. So I made this funky little wallet that stays stiff by the credit cards it contains.  Since there wasn’t really much sizing involved in this pattern I didn’t have to make 5 versions with it like the Stick Shift Cozy.

You can download the Sock Yarn Wallet Pattern for free from my site here.

Well I didn’t post anything last week. The reason being is that I was busy writing out this new knitting pattern that I just finished! Yup it’s the Seed Edge Bolero and it’s super cute. Now I would have posted this a long time ago, but on my first attempt at designing this lovely little bolero I put the armholes in the wrong spot so I had to tear the whole thing apart and start almost from scratch.

One interesting thing is that it has top down knitted pleats. I looked all over the internet to find how to do top down knitted pleats and could not find any information. I also looked in many library books and my friends books on how to do this and could still not find any information. Finally through much trial and error I figured out how to do it on my own. I’m pretty pleased with my cleverness on this and included an illustrated tutorial with the pattern so anyone else making my pattern would know how to do this. Now one might ask why bother with knitting top down pleats, just knit in the other direction and the pleats become really easy. This wouldn’t have worked in my case as I wanted the bodice to be one piece with only two seams at the top of the shoulders. Top down pleats was the only way to accomplish my design with the simplistic seaming and I’m quite happy with the results.

Now it’s time for me to run ahead with my next knitting project. I’m making a cute wallet, and that pattern will be free when I finish it. I’ll probably have a new tutorial for you next week as well.

Well yesterday I released to the public a new Free design for a stick shift cozy. Now I’d love to take full credit for this design, but it was my husband’s idea. A couple years ago for my husband’s birthday we bought him a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 9 MR in graphite gray color. Here is a link to an article about the Evo 9 so you can understand my husband’s obsession with his car:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/mitsubishi-evo-ix-mr/

I swear if he could bring that car into the house and up into bed I’d be sleeping on the couch. The car is very pretty, and on the inside the stick shift in its sleek design is made of metal and is also very pretty. Though being made of metal on a hot day (and we get plenty of those in Southern California) it will burn the gear locations into the palm of your hand. On a cold day it will feel like you are shifting your car with the cold end of a popsicle. When I started to learn to knit my husband took a huge interest in my new hobby and asked me if I could make him a stick shift cozy to not only protect his hands from the elements, but to match the colors and design of his car.

I actually made 4 cozies. The first design fit, but it looked sloppy. I had knit the top in the round and all of the decreases and such made it very difficult to embroider the Mitsubishi logo into the top of the cozy. The sides of the first design where not knit in the round, and it had an unsightly seam in the side. The second design aesthetically was nicer, in that I had been knitting longer and this time the top was knitted normally with left and right slanting increases and decreases. This made embroidering the logo much easier. I also knit the sides in the round. Though when it went on the stick shift it didn’t hug it as well as the first design. The third design was similar to the second as I was on the right track, but too did not hug the stick shift as well as the first design.

I was very frustrated, and so close to completing the design correctly. I tried again, beginning with taking new measurements and redoing my gauge. I was inspired after seeing in a book a simple way to gather by knitting a 1/1 rib in a smaller needle. The top was completed the same way as in try 2 and 3. The sides were knitted in the round, but when I got to the part where I needed it to hug the stick shift I began the 1/1 rib on a smaller needle. When I got past the gathering part I went back to the original needles and let the material flare out like a long dress with a mermaid bottom. On a recent project I had learned how to crochet a single chain, and I had the idea to do that on the cozy to create piping around the top. It was actually very easy, as all I did was pull the chain stitches through stitches in the cozy and it created a very clean nice piping.

The most daunting task was trying the cozy on the stick shift. I had already 3 tries that were close but not perfect and I was very hopeful that this cozy would fit. To my and my husbands delight it fit perfectly, so I quickly took some pictures, wrote the pattern, and posted it up free for download so that others could also make one of my designs. You can find the pattern free for download here:

http://www.keisergraphics.com/galleries/knitting/StickShiftCozy.html

Already after a single day I have found people are making my pattern! I hope they enjoy it as much as I have.