So the week before Christmas, I knitted my fingers to the bone to finish these items for my family.


Cabled fingerless mittens
Christmas present for Jill Berroco Ultra Alpaca color #6288 started 12/15/06, finished 12/18/06



I had been wanting to work with this yarn for a while, but hadn't any projects in mind, until I was looking for "blue" yarn for mittens for my stepsister. I loved this color, and the mittens ended up being just as soft and warm as I expected.


Elbow length cabled fingerless mittens
Christmas present for Alicia Classic Elite Wings color #2330 Started 12/19/06, finished 12/24/06


My niece asked for pink elbow length cabled fingerless mittens. And who am I to say no to her? Actually got this yarn on sale, so I didn't feel too bad about having to buy pink yarn. Speaking of which, I have lots extra. Any of my knitting or crocheting friends want some pink yarn?

Belated Crafting Day Post

With everything else going on in my life, I realized that I completely forgot to talk about how much fun I had visiting heathertea and everyone for crafting day, back on the 16th. Her new place is really nice, and there was lots of room for me, heathertea, ladygwyn, and sryder to spread out our crafting (and food) supplies. (In case you didn't know, food plays a very important part in crafting day.) So, it was much better than trying to squish us all into my living room. It was really great to see everyone. I've missed heather and am glad she and jon moved back to this general area, and even though they live nearby, I don't see enough of sarah and gerry, so it was cool to hang out with them too. So, thanks guys. You all were pretty much one of my only bright spots in this holiday season. =)

Also, I got a significant amount of knitting done, which enabled me, ultimately, to meet my goal of finishing my stepsister's and niece's presents by Christmas. Too bad I didn't actually get to see them, but that's a story for another time.

For now...enjoy some pictures:


mmm...cookies


ladygwyn's yarn: proof that actual crafting went on here.


sewing: I really like this picture


my knitting in progress


The best brownie cupcakes ever


Framboise lambic


Cheese!

Hooray for finishing things!

I think I may be done with everything for the Fairy Tale swap, which means that I will be sending out on time. Earlier this week, I was sure I was going to be late. I am pleased with everything, though I am a little disappointed that 2 of the items I attempted were complete and utter failures. =/

Still, this wraps up my swapping activity until after Christmas, which means I have a whole week to get my act together for Christmas presents for the family. Woo! I am feeling completely overwhelmed by the holidays, and more than a little uninspired. Here's hoping that our crafting day get together this weekend will help motivate me.

So I made some more yarn, and again, I am at a loss about what to call it. It is probably going to become fingerless mittens. It's very soft and squishy, and I like it. Also, it's the most even of the yarns that I've spun thus far, though a bit bulkier than I intended.

I put up my little Christmas tree at work. It's the only one I will get this year, so I am excited about it.



It is currently decorated with a strand of red yarn, some glittery crochet hooks, and a bunch of stitch markers Yes. I have hot dogs, skulls, and cheese on my tree. You gotta problem with that?

It still needs some sort of topper, and some other decorations. Suggestions are welcome.

Also, in other swap news, I recently got into the ATC phenomenon, and participated in my first two swaps. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of my first card before I sent it off to its new owner, so hopefully she'll take one I can steal from the internets soon. But I received this card for the Craft themed ATC swap:



I am amused that it is kind of piratical, because the second swap I participated in had a pirate theme, for which I made these 3 cards:









And so far, I have received this one:


Cool, huh? I am having fun with this art form. But then, I have always like the challenge of making tiny things. I am also busy at work making stuff for the fairy tale swap, and think I finally know what I am going to make. Now if only I could stop messing things up.

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.