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Here’s a bunch of non-knitting things I’ve been working on lately:
I made a couple of notecards (the first one of which I sent off to the boyfriend) out of stuff around the house. I love cardmaking but sadly have few occasions to use them. At least I’ll have lots of lovely ones for including in swaps.
A little notebook out of a pad of post its and some cardboard. If anyone’s interested in a tutorial for this, let me know! It was pretty simple but I know I would have appreciated a tut for notebook making that didn’t require sewing or making signatures.
I made yarn! It’s about 30 yards, according to my rudimentary measuring system (find book about a foot tall, wind yarn around book, count strands on one side, multiply by two, divide by three). Two ply, pretty thick and thin but loads better than my previous attempts. It goes between a fingering weight to a bulky weight, though it mostly sticks to worsted-ish. I think I’m going to try to make a calorimetry or some sort of headband/earwarmer type thing.
I made more yarn! I dyed this with kool-aid as roving, then spun it as a fingering weight-ish single. It’s overspun, but that’ll get better the more I practice.
I’ve found I really enjoy spinning, so I will definitely be doing more of it. Now I just need to find a good place (probably online) to get roving, preferably already dyed and for a reasonable (read: cheap) price. Or maybe I’ll just dye it myself. Knit Picks has some nice dyes available…
Sorry for the radio silence, people. My hard drive crashed and I needed to install a new one, so I’ve been without a computer since… Thursday? Friday? Something like that. Anyway, on to crafts:
I recently tried my hand at swap organizing! I put together and organized (with co-organizer edwards1) a Post Secret swap. If you don’t know about Post Secret, check out the official website here. The basic premise is that people write their secrets (normally with an artsy element) and send them to Frank and he puts some of them on the blog. He’s also done several books of Post Secret cards.
This swap was similar. I put everyone into groups and gave everyone some addresses. Each person made five secrets and sent them to five different people and got five secrets, one from each person. Here are the secrets that I received:
My secret still secret
For 15 years, my stepfather and I didn’t get along. For one 1 year, we didn’t speak. The last 5 years have been great. All it took was 120 miles.
I may not cry in front of other people but that doesn’t mean I don’t cry.
I would say yes in a heartbeat.
Back:
We’re not even dating… He knows I have feelings for him… He doesn’t know I’m in LOVE him!
I think Harry Potter sucks!!
Mine were also quite crafty, but I’m not going to post them here (because they’re secret). If you want to see the rest of the secrets in the swap (including mine), the gallery is located here.
No new FO’s to report (shocking, I know), but I have certainly been knitting and crafting. I’ve been working on a tank top:
(Razor Cami in Caron Simply Soft cause it’s what I’ve got onhand and I want it out of the stash)
and a little cardigan for my littlest cousin:
It’s in some random sport-weight acrylic I got from my grandmother ages ago (it’s been in my stash basically since I started knitting). The cardigan is the 24 months size, so I hope it will fit him during the winter. He’s not even a year and according to my sister (according to the baby’s sister), he’s already in 18 month size clothes. We’ll see.
In non-knitting news, my sister and I spent an afternoon being crafty, resulting in this:
We made paper! Ground up newspaper and magazine pages in a blender, dumped everything in the sink with a bunch of water, then strained the pulp and let it all dry. It’s thick and some of it’s quite fragile, and it’s a strange grey color, but I like it, and I’ll definitely use it in some paper crafts. And there’s glitter in it!
So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. I did another round of the Ongoing Wish Swap, so that will be happening soon. And there might also be a little tutorial type of thing… Stay tuned!
I did, you know. That’s the only explanation for why I’ve taken up card making in earnest. It all started with these books I got out of the library. Cardmaking books. About card making.
And it was all downhill from there. I gathered as many supplies as I could find in my house: Construction paper, elmer’s glue, ribbon, a magazine, scissors, fabric glue, buttons, and water colors. Plus these books I got at a sale at the Fredericksburg library, one in German and on in French. At the time, I figured they’d be useful in some sort of papercraft. Anyway, I spend several hours with the supplies and the books, and this is what I came up with:
My favorite is definitely the one with the pink bow and the panties (or I guess it could be bathing suit bottoms), but I am really quite fond of the wine glasses too. They’re not perfect by any means, and I am definitely more crafty than artsy, but I rather like them. I would prefer to use cardstock and I would eventually like to get better supplies/better quality so I can sell them in my artfire shop (in the sidebar). At the moment, I’ll work on my technique and use them for friends and for swap packages. These are definitely a lot prettier than a sheet of notebook paper. : ) Also, I’ll include a note that they can just glue a sheet of white paper over my note to reuse the card. Eco-friendly! I mean, they are already because of the books and the magazines, but still.
In knitting news: Climbing Vines is DONE and all sewn together. Pictures soon. I also just finished a tank top out of Cascade Sierra, so that’s coming also.
At long last, the items for the Craft my Wish Swap on Craftster have been sent and received by the intended parties, and I have finally received my final package from sg1psychopath, which came all the way from Great Britain and somehow managed to do that is less time than it took for Nikimac’s package to get from Virginia to Washington. *shrug*
Anyway, here’s what I got from sg1psychopath:
Sweet buttons (the red ones will probably go on my version of Lilith, which I think I’m just going to design myself), a phone holder, which I will make an honest effort to use, a bookmark, a little box with shells (which she didn’t make but had around) and a pillow cover, which doesn’t have a pillow in because she (understandably) wanted to save on shipping, and one of these days, I’ll just haul my ass to Michael’s to get my own pillow form.
And here is what I made for my partners:
For Nikimac:
A little itsy-bitsy sweater for her baby due in July:
I’m so excited I got to make this. : ) I used Lion Brand Cotton-Ease, US 10/6mm needles and the 5 Hour Baby Boy Sweater pattern. It’s so tiny and so cute! Now I want to make a ton of baby sweaters. : )
Also, this little earflap hat for her two-year-old son:
I freehanded the pattern top-down using US 7/4.5mm dpns, red Ella Rae Class wool, and blue Lion Wool. The earflaps were picked up after casting off, and there’s a border of single crochet around everything. I love this hat too because it’s cute and tiny.
And also this kickass apron:
Oh my God… This apron. It is my opus. Okay, not really. But it WAS extremely frustrating and turned out extremely AWESOME. I am kind of sad I don’t cook and therefore have absolutely NO use for any such thing because I really love it. Niki really loves it though, so that’s good. : )
I was going for a retro sort of look, and I think I got it. I found the fabric at Walmart on the day before send out (yep, I did this all the night before, as I do everything) for $1.50 a yard and bought a yard. And I used every inch. The white bits are pieces from various t-shirt scraps. The ruffle at the bottom was extremely frustrating and I did not enjoy sewing it on and poor Mary, my sewing machine, did not enjoy sewing it on either. She does not like knit fabric. Nor did she like this this, seersucker-ish fabric that the main bit of the apron is made of. But she pulled through like a champ, and it looks awesome. I am SO SO proud of this thing.
For JanelleJ:
Amigurumi Fruits and Veggies:
With faces! Cute. Had to put these off til the last minute because I lack food-colored yarn at school. Fail. I actually intended to make many more of these than I actually did, but I ran out of time and also desire. And food colored yarn. So I have a pear, a lemon (which I made up and did NOT use a pattern for, even though there’s one on Ravelry), and an orange which actually looks more like a peach and I guess it doesn’t matter which. Pretty basic patterns.
A stuffed elephant:
I improvised this design using Vanna’s Choice, left over from Talia way back. It’s based on the crochet elephants I used to make, and I definitely like the knit design much better. Mostly because I prefer knitting and find it’s much faster and much less annoying. *shrug* I think this little guy came out looking pretty cute though. : )
Headbands for her two-month-old:
Basically some elastic and some fabric scraps. These were definitely a last minute decision, and I, of course, made them Thursday night. I like how them came out though. They were very simple, and I would definitely make them again given an occasion.
Decorated Notebooks:
The smaller one I got in a previous swap but knew I would never use, so I slapped on a carrot (one of her desire themes/motifs) and called it a day. The other one I am MUCH more fond of, but I went through a couple different octopuses before settling on that one. I think that one is adorable though. The paper inside of it is the innards from a small notebook that was missing a cover. So I glued some black construction paper to the spine, slapped on an octopus, and called it a day.
And because I didn’t make anything large like the apron I made for Nikimac, I also threw in two skeins of Bernat Matrix and two spools of ribbon. You don’t need pictures of those.
I’ll be honest. I picked the Matrix because I wanted it out of the stash. I have no regrets.
Stitch, Brinn, Stitch! 