Look, it’s the quilt label! Actually, like, attached to the quilt and everything!
There have been times when I’ve thought that I’d never finish this project, or any other project ever again. So I’m just going to go do a little “I finished it!” Happy Dance over here…
Here’s my first plied yarn! I’m very excited to have produced something that even a layperson would identify as yarn. Not spectacularly wonderful yarn, but hey – I’m new at this. It’s 25 grams of yarn, about 40 yards, 2-ply. My plying technique definitely needs some, well, technique. (click to biggify the picture; penny included for scale)
First Yarn!
I’ve now started on my first not-just-for-practice spinning. This is some corriedale (that’s a kind of sheep) from Four Crows Farm, located in southern WI. I’ve got over 8 ounces of roving, which is a ball bigger than a basketball. I’m not sure what this will turn out to be. Socks, eventually, maybe? Or something lacy? It’ll depend on how thick/soft/tightly spun the yarn is is once it’s plied and washed. Those are variables that I can theoretically control, but I’m not experienced enough to be able to decide what I want in a yarn, and then produce it.
Singles, penny provided for scale; click to biggify
I hope you can see that I’m now doing much better at keeping the thickness of the yarn even. I still need to work out some ergonomics issues (holding my arm in the air while spinning for extended periods is not terribly comfortable); maybe I need to buy a spinning wheel?
It is time to reveal some of the Christmas secrets. Here are some very cute pot holders Nancy made for all of us.
Mine are blue and Rebecca’s are red. I don’t know what other colors were used. Perhaps Nancy will post about her process of combining two sets of instructions.
Here are some thread catchers I made for the other crackpots. From the side:
From the top:
The thread catchers can sit on your sewing machine table, and you can put all the snips and ends of thread in them to save for another occasion (or to keep them out of the vacuum cleaner). Or you can fill them with chocolate. They are made from some of the hand painted fabric I made during the summer. Aha! At last an answer to the question about the fabric, “What is it for?”
You can read more about my fabric painting adventures here.
I found the pattern here. Thanks, Leanne!
I bought a new winter jacket this winter, and discovered that my mittens clashed horrendously with it. On the plus side, the hat I made last year coordinates nicely.
To avoid a fashion faux-pas on an international business trip, I decided the week of Thanksgiving that I needed to make myself some new mittens. My ultimate goal is to make another pair of stranded (multi-color) mittens – I have a ton of options in my Ravelry favorites and queue, but I knew there wasn’t time before my trip.
Instead, I whipped up a pair using some lovely wool-alpaca yarn that was originally intended for a sweater; I was unable to come up with a yoke design I liked for the sweater, so the yarn has been marinating in my stash since last year. The pattern was pretty much self-designed, based on various mitten patterns. I was in such a hurry that I managed to muck up the thumb gusset increases on one mitten and didn’t go back to fix them. (note the lack of photo of the palm side). The yarn is worsted-weight yarn, but I knitted at a very tight gauge on small needles to make them warmer and more wind-proof.
Of course, the weather at my destination was a little too warm and rainy for my new jacket, so I took different outerwear on that trip – though I did take the mittens.
I finally finished the embroidery this morning (I’d been wearing them with just the vine and one flower on the left mitten, and nothing on the right), and here they are:
(they really are the same size as each other)
I snapped this picture of Marty’s fans* admiring her works at the State Street Gallery. Both of her pieces in the exhibition sold – to people who aren’t relatives. We’re so proud!
M and E, true fans of art
*they may be relatives, but that doesn’t diminish their fandom.
Now that my Christmas Crackpot projects are (nearly!) complete, I can start working on making some Christmas decorations for our house. I’d like to make a Christmas table runner and some Christmas placemats. I saw the pattern for this quilt in the November/December ’08 Quiltmaker and thought I might be able to modify it slightly to make it a rectangular placemat. Here’s the first attempt – I think it turned out great!
P.S. To Cathy – This is my first time putting a link in my post – pretty advanced, don’t you think? 🙂
It wasn’t my idea in the first place.
It wasn’t even my idea in the second place.
But we’re going over to The Dark Side.
What would lead us to this point? Greed? Social pressure? Or just the state of the world today. Something else? To think about this any more will just lead to despair. So we don’t think about it.
They say it’s a slippery slope. And we slid down. First, the CD player bought second-hand from a college student. Then a touch tone phone with an answering machine. Next, a cell phone–never mind that it was a refurbished model with a pre-paid plan. Finally, the updated phone service with the free month of cable TV. Ach, yes, it’s a slippery slope.
We’re going over to The Dark Side.
We’re keeping the cable TV.
Here is the current progress on my December BJP.
The idea I’ve been thinking about is the longest night of the year. Well, that’s a little misleading. What I’ve really been thinking about is that there are still sparkles on the longest night of the year.
So I decided to use dark beads that sparkle. I’m almost (but not quite) embarrassed by the number of different kinds of dark sparkly beads that I have. And I can’t believe how much time I spent sorting through them to choose the ones to use! There is a reason for the title of this blog. The entire situation is a little crackpotty!
If you look closely, you’ll see a diagonal line leading to the upper right corner. Maybe I’ll use it and maybe I won’t. There is also a spiral sketched in the lower right corner. I’m not sure if I’m going to put a spiral there either.
If you look even more closely, you can see a small blurry spot on the diagonal beaded lines. That’s a snowflake in the air between the camera and the page. My method for getting a good picture is to put the item on the floor just inside the patio door. Then I open the door and the screen for the best light and take the photo with the camera set on macro with no flash. Snow can be a hazard at this time of year. But I am dedicated to my art (such as it is)!
I believe I’ve mentioned before that cleaning up my stuff leads to no good end. A case in point is the pin I worked on in mid September. I cleaned up the pin so I could work temporarily on another project. The pin was apparently insulted so it went missing. It was in none of the logical places. Or quite a few illogical ones. I even wondered if I had brought it to a workshop to show and then left it behind. That was part of the inspiration to work with the dark sparkly beads again for the December BJP.
Well, wouldn’t you know? The pin showed up. It was in the bag with all the dark sparkly beads. Naughty pin!
Here is my current 2008 Christmas Gift Bag Collection, all ready to be sent off to Hungary – as soon as I finish the label for Kristof’s quilt.
Okay, so this is probably the last thing you ever would have thought to see me post to this blog:
Because what I really need right now is another hobby, right?
I don’t know what happened: I went to Michael’s to get gift bags and photo frames, and somehow I walked out with yarn. And knitting needles. After completely getting rid of all my yarn and needles a couple of years ago (hi Rebecca!) because I only have time for one craft obsession at a time, and that was before I had a baby.
What was I thinking??!?
Well, as much as I try to follow Nancy’s advice to keep my sewing station set up so that all I have to do is sit down and sew when I get a few free minutes, it just wasn’t happening. Something about having a toddler who likes to play in my study and pull things off of tables that we think he can’t reach…fun things like pins and scissors. Knitting is much easier to keep out of a toddler’s reach, and much easier to pick up, knit a row, and then put it down to go extricate said toddler from whatever he’s gotten into this time.
So, what you see above is the test swatch for a project that I’m Not At Liberty To Discuss. I’ve learned, however, that knitting is even more like riding a bike than riding a bike is. I probably haven’t used knitting needles in a decade or more, but I picked them up, cast on some stitches, and away I went with hardly a stumble. I might only know how to knit and purl, but I really do know those!