As requested, a crafty post.

I was a complete ass and didn’t photograph the wallet/coin purse thing I made for The Bean for her 22nd birthday. It came out really cute and used the same yarn as the Weezer Purse I made her last year. I’ll snag it back from her, and photgraph it, so you can see. If the Spinstah remembers the thing I was knitting when we went to see the Yarn Harlot, she’ll have a good idea what the wallet looks like, since that’s what I used for the outside portion.

I was given some bulky, grey wool from Iceland by a friend of mine who moved away last year. I didn’t want to make it into a garment because of the major itch factor, so I decided I’d make a throw rug or throw blanket– whichever it turned out to be. It’s a lap blanket, after all. The itchiness won’t bother me because it will be used in the winter when the likeliness of bare skin touching it will be quite slim. It came out ok. I crocheted it, and I’m not too handy with crochet, so my decreases at one point are really lumpy and make this weird bump thing. I should have decreased in the middle rather than the edge. I crocheted it one way, then turned the piece, so that the rows would be going perpendicular, but by doing so I’d have to decrease a bunch of stitches so that it would be the same size. Yeah… no planning involved, so that’s what I get.

I’ve also been working on a secret project for my friend who had a baby in April. I haven’t been to see the baby yet, though. She gave birth two weeks before the end of the semester, and I wanted to give her time to recover before I went to see her, plus school was keeping me busy. Then I caught the Plague, and was ill for three weeks. The last few weeks I have no excuse, just that I haven’t gotten around to phoning her; I have a suspicion that I am a bad friend. But I’m making a super soft snuggly surprise for her little boy, so hopefully I can bribe her not to hate me. I’ll post pix when it’s done and after I deliver it to her, so I won’t ruin any surprise– not that she visits this site, but on the odd chance she should pop over, I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.

I’m making a purple shawl for myself out of some subtle, varigated, bouclé yarn that JeT’s mom got me for Christmas. I’m not doing any lace, because I think the yarn would obscure any fancy stitches, so I’m just doing it in garter. Though I think I might rip it out and start over, as I don’t like the way the edges are coming out. I keep forgetting to slip the first stitch to make a nice chain selvedge. It’s looking too lumpy, even for bouclé, so I think I’ll start it over. I’m not that far along, really, so it’s not a big deal.

I’ve since abandoned the sock, because I want to use some other yarn. I love the colorway I’ve chosen, but it’s wool, and I don’t feel like hand washing socks, you know? I’ll get some fun sock yarn from Knit Picks and make some socks on my vacation. I’m going to be sitting in a truck for hours each day with my family, and there’s only so many games of the Geography Alphabet Game that one can stand.

I never did get around to sewing the ribbon handles on my red felted bag that I was making at the end of the semester. The bag came out great, I’m just lazy, and so it sits on my knitting shelf in the living room, waiting for me to sew the last two ends on. It’s not like it’s very difficult, and I even left the red thread and needle in the bag, so I wouldn’t have any excuses not to finish the damned thing. Oh, well. I’ll get to it.

I should also get back to my sweater sampler from Jaquiline Fée’s The Sweater Workshop. It’s about 2/3 done, so I really should get cracking on that. The book is amazing. It’s written exaclty the way my brain works. Don’t you love it when you can find something written exactly for you and your quirky brain ways? I need guidance in knitting, because, while I’m a good faker, I’m not really that good, and I don’t know very many things. But I can’t follow a pattern to save my life. I modify the hell out of it, so that any guidance the instructions could provide have no bearing on the thing I’m actually making. Then when I get stuck, because while I’m quite imaginative I can’t imagine my way out of the messes I create, the project gets set aside indefinitely. This book is full of instructions for creating parts of sweaters: various sleeves, necklines, waistbands, armholes, etc. You pick how your sweater will look, figure out your own gague, and use the pattern bits to create your very own frankensweater that will fit exactly the way you want. Genius! Enough guidance to help me through the tricky bits, yet free enough to let me feel like I’m being creative. It’s going to be a real triumph when I actually finish the sampler, because I’m following the pattern almost exactly. I say almost because I’m working with a handful more stitches than directed so my piece would fit on the circulars I’m using. Close enough for me.

So that’s a summary of most of the projects going on. I want to get a Flickr account and use that to pop some pictures into this blog, so once I go through the motions and actually get that done, I’ll have photographs of the projects to actually share. But this should satisfy your crafty reading for now. And if not, go read someone who actually finishes projects.

I’m off to meet the JeT in Boston to see the EELS at the Somerville Theatre. Woo!