This is Sid: 

He's a dragon, and I made him for the Little Stuffies swap. Part of the swap was to make an introduction card, and include some other small present, so of course, I had to make the dragon some loot to hoard. And I also bought him some chocolate coins to guard for his new owner. His intro card was a wanted poster.

Well, I had some difficulties in getting the bulky flyer attached to the spinning wheel. It didn't fit on there the way that I expected it to, and it took some fiddling to get it to line up right. I am sure there is an easier way to do it than what I did, but what do I care? It worked. 

I started work on the first of my Fairy Tale swap items today. This may be one of the sillier craft projects I have thought of. I hope that it turns out the way I see it in my head.

I had started these mittens for a certain purple-loving friend as a Christmas present: 

Only then, during a conversation we had last week, she happened to mention how much she liked the cabled mittens I had done for a few people, and now I am worried that these are not interesting enough. What do you all think?

Lest you think I have been receiving more than I've been giving, I have actually been hard at work making a few things. First off, I have my first My Little Pony recon. The pony started out looking like very pink. And I made a little fortune teller/gypsy pony which I named Sasha: 

She also had 3 fortune telling dice, and note cards explaining how to use them in a black velvet bag. My partner seemed to like her, so that is all good. In return, I received an awesome zombie pony. Which has joined extrajoker's cthulhu cabinet on our shelf of weird crafts. The zombie pony came with her own severed arm on which to munch. Mmmm...human flesh. I also finished my items for my second partner in the Miyazaki swap:

A Totoro sketchbook

A Muta stuffie (from The Cat Returns), and a Spirited Away themed box.

And I received from my first partner, A soot sprite tote bag, Kodamas stitch markers, and Totoro and Mei stuffies. I also received a thank you present from the person I made the fall bag for. She sent me skully stitch markers. Well, I said I wanted stitch markers, and then I received 4 sets of them in 2 weeks. Woo-hoo! So that's kind of where my crafting is at these days. I am currently brainstorming ideas for the Fairy Tale swap, and am also signed up for a small stuffie swap, so I will continue to be very busy.

I subscribe to the Berroco e-newsletter primarily to ensure that periodically I get a good laugh. Only the last few KnitBits newsletters actually contained patterns for things I want to make.. That's just wrong.

So, yeah, more yarn. Got to play with the wheel a bit on Fri night before my plague overwhelmed me. I learned that trying to make yarn when feeling very tired and ill is not necessarily a good idea, unless you intend to make novelty yarn. 

So my yarn experience started with this very autumnal bundle of wool, which, because I wanted to experiment a bit about how I prepared it, I split into 3 sections, which wound up fitting almost perfectly on a bobbin apiece. The first one looked pretty good. The second one, while very different, also looked okay.  The last one, well, it's definitely more of a novelty, lots of overspun/underspun bits, tufty things sticking out and whatnot: The plague pretty much hit me full force halfway through this one, and I completely lost the ability to do more than one thing at a time. As a side note, I tried to ply this yarn with some pretty gold stuff, which looked really nice, except when it got all tangly and made the yarn develop buboes, resulting in it being painstakingly unwound by me, and my lucky roomie, who gets to witness most of my crafting disasters in person. =/ Should probably stop playing with the yarn and focus on some of my swap things which need to get done. Heh.

So, in addition to my adventures in spinning, I am also working on other crafty things. Finished up everything for partner #1 of the Miyazaki swap: There was the stenciled tote bag seen earlier, though I did clean up a couple of the sploochy parts with cream colored paint to match the background fabric. 

A Nausicaa themed journal, which I am missing a picture for.

 And a little Jiji stuffie: 

 There was also a Jiji magnet. There were supposed to be more magnets, but they met with an accident, and only the one came out okay. Oh well. That stuff is all on its way to its new owner. I also have been working on this fall themed bag:

 The back is still plain, but I think I am going to consider this baby done, and get it out the door. I have other things to do.

I made yarn!

Okay...so it's a little over-twisted, and wonky in bits, and varied in thickness...but still...I made yarn.

Cool, huh?

I made my first bottle cap magnet yesterday. It came out pretty well. I'll post pictures when I finish the rest of the set. My office at work is starting to look kind of like my living room...with crafting supplies everywhere. I have a bag that I am working on, a bag full of felt pieces for a tiny animal I am making, a box of stamping stuff that I'm using on the magnets, my self-healing cutting mat, and several projects in various stages of completion strewn about the room. Heh.

In other news, someone picked me for the birthday swap, so I'll be getting a surprise package in the mail soon. It's not even someone I have crafted for, but of course, I had to go check her out, and she's posted some pretty cool projects, so I am looking forward to see what she makes for me. =)

Help, please. So, I am making this tote:

  

 I made the stencil based on a screen shot from the movie Kiki's Delivery Service. Here's the problem. The freezer paper did not adhere as well to the tote bag fabric as I would have liked, so there are lots of splootchy bits where the paint went outside the lines. Am debating whether I should handpaint the outlines to cover the mistakes, using regular paint, or dimensional fabric paint, or some other medium, leave it the way it is, or scrap it and start over. Thoughts?

I am such a slacker! A couple of people flaked on the skeleton/skull/bones swap that I was in, and because I had become friendly with the organizer (who was also the recipient of my crafting), she asked if I would help out by being an angel for the person who sent me the awesome package. I agreed, but said that I didn't have a whole lot of time to work on things for a couple of weeks, 'cause I'm busy with other swaps, but that I would get to it as soon as possible. Because she is awesome, extrajoker volunteered to help out and make something. The next thing I knew, she had made an etched glass bottle w/ secret note.  Why IS the rum gone? and an address book. and a Memento Mori Mirror. Hooray consonantal alliteration! 

And I had done: nothing. What a slacker I am. So, because one of the things she specifically asked for was some sort of bag, I whipped this up at work yesterday:  Tote bag with stamped skulls 

God. I suck. However, at least the person who made a completely awesome swap package for me is getting some good stuff in return. Thanks so much for your help, extrajoker. You rock.

Fingerless! Mittens that is.

  

I don't think I posted these before, but these were the first fingerless mittens I made, in white sparkly wool-ease. Impractical? Yes. But oh so pretty. 

Hand-dyed superwash wool. You can't really see in the pic, but I used a spiral rib pattern. And I reversed the pattern on the second mitten, so that the spirals go in opposite directions.

 

Most recent mittens. I finished these last night for a swap. The yarn is a marled, self-striping acrylic, but it's quite soft and nice.

This weekend we had a crafting day outing - lordavon, ladygwyn and I attended the Webs Knit for Hope event on Sunday. It was loads of fun. I was very good and only bought a little bit of yarn...and 2 knitting pattern books. Lordavon won pretty laceweight yarn:  Pictures can be found in the Knit for Hope Gallery.

Bub 2, and the knitting needle case have both made it to their new homes, and seem to have been warmly received. Yay! I am always glad to hear that people have liked their gifts.

I made this bunny last week and forgot to post pics. He's keeping Jack company on my keyboard now.

When I wasn't sleeping this weekend, I was working on this: 

It's a knitting needle case. Here's the inside: 

 I wanted to use some black pleather I had, but it kept breaking my sewing machine needles, so I went for the skullfinity print instead. I am mostly pleased with how this came out, but I think my sewing would be much improved if I had a nice big table where I could spread the fabric and stuff out to work on it. It's difficult to work in such a small space.

Mmmm....Brains 

Bub is done! He has his own copy of Salem's Lot, a gun, and, of course, a bucket o' guts.  Yay! Guts!

Me and Bub. Cute, huh?

Number of times today that someone has asked me what I am making: 3. Number of times that the answer was "Intestines": 3 You would think that people would stop asking me questions like that. Heh heh heh. I think Bub is going to like these tasty vittles.

Heard from my partner on the Skull swap, and she liked all of her presents. Yay! I can't wait to see what I get, though the sendout date isn't until Sat, so I may have to wait another week to receive. Finished little felt bunny, except he needs a pom pom tail, and I have no pom poms. Still working on Bub II. He's huge. And I've decided that instead of a sculpey bucket of guts, I want to make the bucket out of fabric, and fill it with parts. Maybe I can pick up some fake, gooey parts at the store, since it's about Halloween time. I might make him other props, too: a copy of Salem's Lot, a gun, and some headphones with a tape recorder. It'll be much easier since they don't have to be so wee.