I made these for my aunt, who is a fan of my simple made-on-the-fly jewelry. The first set is my favorite. I like the second one too, but the almost transparent white beads give a much cooler effect in person.
I started working on a tutorial for the earrings in the second picture, but then I decided they were too bland and easy to figure out.
Someone in the Random Act of Kindness swap received an adorable cat tote as an extra her package. I had to have one, and immediately thought how easy it would be to make. One tote bag, one black fabric marker, and one small container of brown fabric paint later...
I think the tail on the back really makes it. The original is in the RAK swap gallery, but it's pretty much the same thing on a yellow tote and a bit neater (I believe it was store bought, so the cat details are machine printed). I made it yesterday afternoon and brought it to crochet lessons I was teaching that evening. It makes me smile every time I see it.
This is a procrastinated post of procrastinated Christmas presents. Most of my family received two boxes in the mail from me this year -- one of bought gifts (on time) and a second box with one or two handmade things. The handmade boxes were only sent a week or two ago, and I still have another one to go.
These sets were for my Aunt. She's the only person who asks for jewelry, so I usually only make jewelry when I make presents for her. Sadly, the box was badly crushed in the mail and arrived with its contents falling out. Apparently one set of earrings was missing and one of the bracelets was broken, so I'm glad I took pictures beforehand.
I'm very happy with how they came out. I haven't done off-loom bead weaving before, but it was a lot of fun and I love the results. The patterns are from the free section of http://bead-patterns.com/, and they were very easy to follow.
If any experienced beadweavers have some awesome tips to share, I'd love to hear them!
It's been so long since I've posted on any board! I joined Shop the Swap, and I guess it's just been sucking up all my time.
Everyone who saw me knitting this thought the blanket was made with crochet. I guess because of the holes that the yarn overs created? I don’t know, it looks pretty knit to me. I used Lion Brand Cotton Ease, which is 50% acrylic and 50% cotton. I’m trying to shy away from full acrylic yarns, but I wanted this to be able to be tossed in the wash with whatever else I happen to be cleaning. The half cotton made it more pleasant to work with, I think. I used about 1.5 skeins of each color. I probably could’ve made it a bit larger since I had some of each skein leftover, but I was tired of working on it so I decided I should probably just cast off. I’m excited to have a blanket I made which is decently sized enough that I can use it, and I really like the colors (even though the yarn I used was just pulled from my stash).
The pattern is here, if anyone wants to give it a go. It’s a very, very simple pattern that gives a pretty stylish result. I memorized it pretty quickly and worked away on the blanket while watching movies.
It's midnight where I am, so let's get some Fiber Friday goodness going! I have many pictures I need to take, but here's the one I actually have on my computer right now:
It's some of the last handspun I did on my drop spindle, plied on my spinning wheel I received shortly after I finished drop spindling it. 100% Tussah silk, 100 yards, the green is hand-dyed. Incidentally, that's some of my first dye-work. It came out well, I thought, although I still have about 3/4 of a gallon of the dye left, and my fingers were stained for days afterward.
I am working right now on turning it into fingerless mittens, which is to say I have the cuff of one mitten done.
It's a little late, but we did actually eat this pie on Pi Day (Sunday, 3.14) I have been meaning to make a Pi Day pie for many years, and finally this year I had enough forethought to gather all the ingredients and be ready. I'm pretty sure I've never made a fruit pie before, and next time I make one I will be sure to take the time to make my own pie crust. That store bought stuff is pretty gross. It's blackberry, 36 ounces of fresh fruit mixed with some sugar and flour. Very easy recipe, and pretty good, but I think the not-so-good crust definitely ruined it a bit.
You can see that I was a little overzealous with brushing the top with egg. I had too much left and I didn't want to just dump it out!
I have been dying to try papercutting because I've seen so many gorgeous things done with it. However, I can't draw worth crap, so I figured I was kind of screwed. Then, brilliantly, I had one of those crafty ideas that just builds on itself. I was looking at wallpapers (the kind for your computer desktop, not your walls ), and there was this technique to get a vector-ish looking image that someone was discussing. Basically, you use a filter in Photoshop called "Cutout". I thought "Hey, that would adapt itself to a papercutting." then "HEY I could do some of my totally awesome MMORPG (Guild Wars) characters." and then I thought "Hey, Valentine's Day is coming up. You know what I bet my boyfriend would appreciate? A freaking Guild Wars card!" I also came up with a game related poem to put inside, which I'm super bloody proud of because I also can't write worth crap. I am a spinning/yarn/resin/fabric/baking kind of girl.
Normally I don't post personal-type stuff, but this just blew my mind, and I figured it could help out someone else looking for something awesome to do for Valentine's Day (or any other holiday. Or just because.)
Images!
The finished card! Christ I am so proud of it. That's my first papercut design! Is that not insane?!
After I adjusted the images in Photoshop (it took forever and a day to get it to something I liked), I made the filled in bits as dark as I could and printed them out. To trace through my fancy thick white paper, I rigged up a spur-of-the-moment lightbox by clipping the paper/printed image to a clipboard, then extending it over the end of a piano bench with a desk light shining up through the bottom.
This may or may not give a better idea of the lightbox type rigging.
Just an image of everything traced out, ready to cut. I think this looks pretty sweet too.
Aaand cutting it out. You can see the printed photoshop image behind the cuts because I didn't bother to remove it until the end. I worked in front of my computer with the image open so I could refer to it constantly and not have to do any creative artistic things on my own.
Oh, and here is my cheesy poem (that I am also super proud of, which is why it goes in the post). If you don't play Guild Wars, you probably won't get it, but you can get a general idea (and see how easy it is to make up your own!). It was actually inspired by a Woot shirt that had Mario/Sonic/Player 2 references, but this is more "us".
Bean cakes are red Minor runes are blue Please click accept And join my group
I'm not sure I've ever posted in this board, but I'm an avid knitter (though still not too advanced). I recently did a personal swap, and these are what my partner requested: calorimetries! I think this is a fairly well known pattern, but just in case, you can find it on knitty, here.
The teal one is a lovely Australian superfine Merino superwash, for her friend that is unlikely to handwash and lay to dry. The cremey grey is 80% baby alpaca and 20% silk (from Debbie Bliss). It's ridiculously soft.
One of my coworkers took a shift of mine at work, and she was super excited about me making her a hat. She sent me a couple pictures, but mostly she wanted a pom pom, teal color, and a hat that wouldn't fall off her head. It took me forever to find some yarn, but today I found this lovely 100% superfine merino superwash. I finished up the hat in an evening and am super excited for the pom pom I made.
Yep, that's right, it's cabled, but you can flip it over and there are just more cables! I was ultra excited when I found this pattern because I love the way cables look, but I usually only knit scarves. Since the backs of cables tend to be ugly, I didn't think they'd fit a scarf very well, but now they do! The pattern was pretty simple, I don't usually knit too much and I could follow it. Hiiiighly recommended.
Anyway, here are some pictures. They're not particularly representative of the color (it's actually a much prettier, deeper red), but it's the pattern you should check out, so I figured color didn't matter too much. It's packaged in a box right now to send to one of my newest, awesomest friends who just moved to the other side of the country.
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The original is in the RAK swap gallery, but it's pretty much the same thing on a yellow tote and a bit neater (I believe it was store bought, so the cat details are machine printed). I made it yesterday afternoon and brought it to crochet lessons I was teaching that evening. It makes me smile every time I see it.
I have many pictures I need to take, but here's the one I actually have on my computer right now:
It's blackberry, 36 ounces of fresh fruit mixed with some sugar and flour. Very easy recipe, and pretty good, but I think the not-so-good crust definitely ruined it a bit.
I had too much left and I didn't want to just dump it out! 
