Finished Object Friday, 8/24/2012

Well, I've had a very busy couple of weeks. Traveling! Getting sick! Quitting my job! It keeps a girl occupied! And has prevented me from posting. I've been fairly burned out on crafting the last week or two, and I'm certain it's a direct result of the push I made on my Ravellenic Games project. However, I DID finish it, last Saturday (as in, the Saturday still during the Olympics, not this most recently passed weekend) and now I finally have time to share it! I'm very, very proud of myself - I made 145 granny squares (I miscounted), sewed them all together, busted a whole bunch of stash, and FINISHED, all during the Olympics!! :)

And here it is!

That's a Queen sized bed...

Close up!


Succeeding at this makes me want to tackle and finish a few of the other larger projects I've had lying around...like the quilt I started two years ago...or the costume stuff I've been toting around to make for 5 years...I have the feeling that with my soon-to-be-unemployed status, I'll be getting a LOT finished that I've been wanting to complete for a while...that's the hope, anyway! :)

See what everyone else has been making on Tami's Ami Blog and Wisdom Begins in Wonder!

It's Friday But...

I'm pretty much just crocheting like a maniac. Nothing finished, nothing photographed...next week. Next week or bust... :)

Work in Progress Wednesday, 8/8/2012

Well, I finished the first 71 (by accident) squares for my Granny Square blanket, and then started to sew them together, and very quickly realized that it wasn't going to be as big as I wanted, and I immediately launched in to making another 39 squares. Those are now more than half way done, but life is busy (between work, social life, and ALL OF THE CROCHET) and I'm not going to take the time to take new pictures. So instead, here are pictures of the first 71 squares! :)











The current plan is to finish these 39, then see where I am in terms of stash busting. I'm DETERMINED to use up these colors if I possibly can (at least one skein of each needs to be done, done, done). As such, I'll launch in to making more based on how much material is left. I'm currently thinking I'll just keep making squares til the main colors are gone. I want to keep joining them, but if I start running out of colors, and all of the existing squares are already joined, then the squares around the edges will be wonky because they'll all obviously be made with a different array of colors, whereas if I just mix them all together before sewing it won't show at all. This plan might mean that I won't be able to finish before the end of the Ravellenic games...but I'll know that I've at least tried my damnedest. :)

Check out what everyone else is making over on Work in Progress Wednesday!!!

Work in Progress Wednesday, 8/1/2012

It's the Ravellenic Games, and I've been working my tail off (or, really, working my hands sore) tackling what, for me, counts as an Olympic event: trying to finish an entire granny square afghan in two weeks. I started at around 5:30 PM on Friday, and have been working during nearly all of my spare minutes since then.

My project calls for 72 squares. I made six entire squares before switching to a production line model, and since then I've made all of the centers; yesterday night I finally got to adding the outer layer to all of my squares. So I now have 12 completely finished squares, and 64 to go...and then joining them...and then, if I have time, I'm going to make more squares to make the blanket bigger and to use up the stash yarn that I've been using for this. I want all of that yarn GONE. :)

And here they are...

Finished Object Friday, 5/4/2012

Well, I'm kinda disappointed that this week was so busy that I failed to post a WIP Wednesday, even though I did get some nice progress done on a cross stitch I've been working on for the past couple years. But, I have a few finished projects, so I'm determined to get them up! :)

Pillow
Last year, I made a cover for one of the two cushions on my couch. Having the other still be, er, naked, has been really bugging me, and so I decided, as I start my effort at stashbusting big time, to use some fun fur I had to cover the pillow. Only downside? It used much less fun fur than I thought, so I still have a bunch left. Sigh.



Crescent Squares!
I made a second crescent moon square. ADORE. I'm so glad I got to test them, they're a great little pattern...

Spinning
So, over time, I've accumulated a LOT of random singles...

...so I decided to spin them all together. The biggest project was the black and white - I spun all the fiber I had left, and did my very first three ply!


Then I took the rest of those singles, and did a bunch more spinning...still three ply...




Productive week! :) For a change...

But the best part? This weekend is Maryland Sheep and Wool, squeeee!

Read more!! Wisdom Begins in Wonder!! Tami's Ami Blog!!

Finished Object Friday, 4/27/2012

I've got a few finished projects to show for the past few weeks! I had hoped to do more, but instead I've spent a lot of time going through my belongings and doing a massive expunging of stuff, a lot of which I've been carting around from home to home for a decade. No longer! But it's eating a fair amount of time to go through my stuff and then get rid of it (ie, resell and donate to charity, for the most part...). Here's what I've finished, though!

Green Yarn
My regular readers may recall when I bought this fiber last month while I was jonesing to spin, spin, spin!

Well, now I've spun it all up!


The color is closer to the top picture, of the two. :)

Square!
I've also made a couple 6" squares. One, I was teaching my friend how to crochet, so I made this while she was doing her first sc square...

Mine is the red square; the other is the first square she ever did. I think she did awesome, she learned way faster than I did, I'm very proud of her. ;)

This one is the first test I've ever done! I actually need to make a second and finish the test and give feedback and yardage and all of that...but I <3 it. :)

Have you seen what everyone else is making? NO? Check out Tami's Amis and Other Creations and Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Do eet! Now!

Work in Progress Wednesday - 4/18/2012

I had to be out the door two minutes ago - meeting friends to see Cabin in the Woods tonight - so this will be a SUPER FAST rendition of WIP Wednesday!

Square!
My team in Nerd Wars is putting together two six inch squares, one knit and one crochet. We're almost done; I helped out by pattern testing the crochet square, but I didn't have quite enough white (I don't think, anyway) so I stopped half way...

But the design is right, so that's what counts!

Spinning!

I bought those two hanks of green heather last month. I've now spun one of them, so I'm halfway done. Now I've just got to spin the other and ply them, and I'll be done. It's not that easy to work with, though, very slippery - had to spin it thicker than I wanted to.

Read the latest Work in Progress BUZZ over on Tami's Amis Blog

FO Friday - 4/13/2012

I'm back from my trip, and making things happen!! Literally! I actually MADE something! Wonders WILL never cease. ;)

Swiffer Cover
I hate wasting things. My swiffer is very convenient, but I cringe every time I throw away one of the covers. Having recently met a friend who informed me of how easy Sugar and Cream is to wash, I decided to delve in to my stash and crochet up a quick swiffer cover!

I won't get to try it out until I've used up my current stash of pads (I still have three left...) but after that, I'm hoping I won't have to waste any more pads for a long while! :)

I also got very good at loop stitch...

No other finished projects to show for the last month, though I did start some spinning yesterday which I'm sure I'll get done sometime next week. However, while I was away, TWO friends randomly decided to mail me fun craft-related packages. As this has NEVER happened before, having it happen twice in a short space was amazing and very exciting! The first, a friend from NW, knows me too well...

She made me a baseball bag and baseball bead markers! In the colors of my NY Mets!! Opening this up on Wednesday - about an hour before heading out to my first game of the season? I squeed. Literally, and loudly.


The other friend was stash diving and she found some AWESOME cloth. It's very unusual, but I already know exactly what I want to make with it!

There are about two yards in all, maybe slightly more, and it'll be perfect for my plan - a plan I hatched before I ever saw this fabric, which is kinda funny, really, and absolutely ideal. What is the plan? Nope, that'll have to wait until a Wednesday - hopefully, I'll have made some progress by this coming Wednesday...but we'll see, things are busy post-trip. ;)

Check out what everyone has been up to this week over on Finished Object Friday on Tami's Ami blog and Fiber Arts Friday on Wisdom Begins in Wonder!

Work in Progress Wednesday, 3/7/2012

Whew, another week! I'm feeling pretty good about my crafting this week, actually. First, for the first time in AGES, I've met a personal expectation: last week, I said I expected to be done with the cross stitching on the Dragonfly and Lotus pattern by this week...and I AM. I'm still working on the back stitching, but I think THINK I can have to done by Friday, so I'm not gonna post the almost-but-not-quite-done pictures today. But there's plenty else. :)

Dyeing
Last week, I bought this fiber to dye:

It took going to three different grocery stores, but this week I managed to track down packets of Kool Aid!

I'm REALLY excited to try dyeing for the first time, though I'm not quite sure when I'm going to find the time. I'm HOPING I can do it before I leave on the road trip I'm planning - nearly a month on the road, starting next Tuesday - but I may not get to it. Still, his weekend, there is a chance... :)

Spinning the Cloud!

I've been spinning the lovely Loop Fiber Arts cloud that I bought last week.

I've got two singles almost ready to go, and maybe another ounce of fiber left. I'd really like to get this done sooner rather than later, but I'm so close to finishing the cross stitch that I've been doing that more. So hard to pick which project to focus on. ;) Still, I've got to finish this spinning before I leave, since I'm not bringing my wheel on the road trip (though it's tempting, very tempting...I'll probably bring my spindle...)

Using Old Spinning!
I've decided what I'm going to do with this:

...which I made a couple weeks ago. I'm going to make Eva's Shawl, which a friend pointed out to me. It'll be my first shawl, which is damn scary, but I think it's a really good project to bring on the already-repeatedly-mentioned road trip. ;)

Not a Work in Progress, But...
The most exciting, fun fiber related thing I've done this week was a meet up with other New York City Ravelry ladies! I've never met a group of folks in quite this situation, but we were all geeks, and we were all Ravelers, and we'd all participated in Nerd Wars at some point in the past. (In the foreground is my friend Jenny, who is also my neighbor, she taught me how to spin!)

We met at Panera, and they all knit, and I cross stitched, and indulged in a bread bowl, and it was great fun. :)

Check out what everyone else is up to over on Tami's Amis and Other Creations blog!

It's Friday!

The first Friday of the new year! A bout of stress-induced insomnia chased me out of bed at 4:30 this morning, but I didn't let that worry me - I immediately got to work on my personal goals for the year to come, in this case, poking through my closet. Why? Because today, I'm going to the Farmers Market, which I intend to make a regular weekly task of. I want to go Green, it's one of my main goals for the year in fact, so I wanted to quickly sew up some cotton cloth bags to shove produce in so that I won't have to keep taking plastic bags at the farmers market, grocery store, or any where else. While I was at it, I decided to pull out a few other things that reflect my current crafting goals - to craft what I want to craft, when I want to craft it.

But first, my cotton bags! They took just over an hour to make. I made 2 big ones (like, to hold a whole head of romaine lettuce), 4 medium ones (like to hold a couple pounds of potatoes), and 8 small ones (like, to hold an apple or two).

I started with this muslin I got a few years ago to make curtains for an apartment I don't live in any more. It was plain, simple stuff - the same stuff I use as my photo backdrop, in fact.



Then, I cut it into 6 strips roughly the same width. Two of these, I left "as is," two of them, I cut along the center fold, and two of them, I cut along the center fold and then folded in half and cut again. This was all very approximate, but it got the job done.



To make them in to bags, I just sewed a flap along the top edge (so I could put in a draw string) then sewed up the sides. I used some random old scrap trim I had and some yarn bits to insert the draw strings, and then I was done, and ready to go!



At the same time, I pulled out a few things I want to work on. I've been loving Nerd Wars, and I'm not quitting, but it's caused me to focus almost exclusively on knitting and crocheting and spinning for the past year. I miss my other crafts. I miss sewing. I really miss cross stitching. It's time for me to start making better crafting choices. NW will manage, especially since I bet I'll be more productive across the board if I just relax and do what I want to do, when I want to do it.

So, what's in the pipeline?

Socks!
I started these socks in September. One is done (more or less) and this is the second. It's a great project for my purse - small, time consuming, and not too likely to fall off the hooks while I'm traipsing about town.

Sorceress Crochet!
Remember this project? It was what I was JUST finishing up when I stared this blog in August, 2010. I worked on it all that summer, and got it to this point...and then stalled before I finished the detailing work. I really want to get it done. It's so close. So out it comes, lets see how this goes. :)

Lap Loom!
One of my good friends sent me a lap loom for Christmas, with a note that I should use it to play with my homespun. She's BRILLIANT. So I'm gonna play with the loom, and see what I can do with the rainbow yarn I spun in November.

Cross Stitch Design
Lastly, I'm going through some rough personal stuff, and have felt pretty low for a few days, but last night I reached an epiphany point, and really finally absorbed (rather than just hearing and having it bounce off) that if I don't love me, no one else will either. While I was waiting to fall asleep, I thought about a strategy my step-mom uses, and that a friend of mine also suggested - leaving notes to myself. The one I was thinking about leaving was "I Am Beautiful," to help with my self-image. But then I thought...I should do this like I would do this. I wouldn't write a note. I'd MAKE something! So I'm gonna design and make myself a very simple cross stitch that says that, I already know how I want it to look. I feel really good about this project, and already have a few ideas for more.

All in all, for the first time in ages, I kinda feel like I have my crafting mojo back. I was excited to put all this together. I was excited to write this blog post. I'm excited to be about to cross stitch, and learn to weave, and to go back to designing things. I'm excited that I think that two of these ideas - the produce bags and the self-inspirational cross stitch - actually have some marketability potential, as I think about building this business more. It's a little hard to ignore the things that theoretically I HAVE to finish, but I'm just making myself relax. I have to love this again, first.


Read what everyone else is thinking this first Friday of the New Year, over on Wisdom Begins in Wonder and Tami's Ami and Other Crochet Blog.

Work in Progress Wednesday - 10/12/2011

Well...things haven't been good in the blog-o-sphere for me, in that I've been incredibly negligent. Internet had proved to be an unexpected issue during my vacation (which was fantastic) but now I'm back, and it's good to go. I've got a new philosophy towards this blog, a new attitude towards my craft business in general, a new tournament of Nerd Wars, a new addiction to Doctor Who, and probably some other new stuff I'm not thinking of. I've also got a PILE of Works in Progress, cause I'm in the middle of a lot right now! :)

Socks!
The longest-term of these projects, I started at the beginning of September, and it was my main trip project. I tackled my first ever pair of socks!

The less said about the tip of the toe, the better, but for the rest, I'm quite happy with how the first one turned out. Thank god for self-striping yarn!

Mystery Spot Blanket
I made that pillow in August, and now I'm on to the whole blanket. I've made 3 entire squares and am in to the fourth already.

I'm spacing out the making of this over the next 3 months, so I'm almost done with this month's quota. :)

Spinning
The last few days, I've spun this:

Pretty thin. I'll be plying it with this:

Just as soon as it arrives from the lady I bought it from in the UK. :)

iPad Case
And last but not least, this unpromising bit of crocheting is going to be a case for my iPad.


So, that's me! It's good to be back! And there's more in the works, just not actually started yet. :)

Read all about everyone else's WIP over on Tamis Ami and Other Crochet Blog!

Finished Object Friday, 9/2/2011

Well, I've missed an entire month of FO Friday, which means I've got an entire month of Finish Objects to share! And I did make a lot in that month...all of which were Nerd Wars submissions. Oy vey. It's definitely time for me to make something not NW related - and do a post about just what Nerd Wars is, so I can just link to that every time I talk about it. The super short version is...it's a Ravelry group for geeks. We're put on teams based on things that we are fans of, then compete to win points for our teams by making awesome FO inspired by our fandoms.

SO!

Under Arrest!
I made a little clutch for when I get arrested...




The Impala
My most ambitious FO of the past month, we were challenged in NW to make something out of non-traditional materials, so I used electrical tape, fishing line and wire to design a car.





I'm pretty proud of my little car, the wheels even turn and the doors open!

Gull Lace "Shawl"
I finally finished that "shawl"/blanket that I was knitting...

...only to discover that I seriously screwed up on my dye lots, and that my third spool was a flagrantly different shade. Fortunately, it doesn't actually show nearly as bad as in that picture!! I didn't even NOTICE til I took the shot...

Crochet Zouave Jacket
I also finally finished the crocheted zouave jacket I started in the spring.

As a reminder, I was making this based on a pattern from a fall edition of the Godey's Lady's Book published in 1862, but I discovered not long after starting that part of the pattern was actually completely incomprehensible, so I improvised like two thirds of it. It'd been like 4 hours from being finished for three months, so I'm glad to have finally FINISHED it, and I can wear it in the fall. :) The expensive, lovely fingering weight I used is soft as butta'.

Mystery Spot Pillow Case
Lastly, I made this pillow case (it's the both on both sides).

I finished this in 6 hours on Wednesday night, I've never crocheted so fast in my life, my hand wasn't hurting but it was getting crazy stiff. Unfortunately, it's much too big for the only pillow I've got, so it'll be a bit before I get a pillow that actually fits it.

Rainforest Worsted Weight
For good measure, I did some spinning! 8 ounces of pure wool, to be exact. I had four ounces each of blue and I had green, so I thought it'd be fun to mix them all together.

I just boiled it today, and once it's done, I think it's screaming "winter hat" - my old hat was made two years ago and has gotten so beat up that it's partly felted, just from all the snow it's been smothered in over the past couple winters.

Phew! It seems like a lot when I stack it all together like this, though in truth I spent most of the month feeling like a total slacker. Funny how perception is like that...

Go see all the awesome! Fiber Arts Friday! FO Friday! Wisdom Begins in Wonder and Tamis Amis and Other Creations blog - be there, or be...square? How about not-crafty?