Made these for my boyfriend (who is 6'3" and looks like you really don't want to mess with him) to wear in the evenings while hiking the Appalachian Trail.  He wanted something wool, but didn't specify that they had to be serious.  The embroidery is a bit preschool-tastic, but he loves them.

The wool is hand-dyed too - my first foray into dyeing yarn. Probably not something I'd use normally, but you never know. And the white swirly bits are made of some of the very first yarn I ever spun myself.

A skirt made from $3 of fabric purchased at Goodwill.  Possibly not my color, especially with the green hair.  But very good for spinning around in.





I purchased a rolled hem foot for this because I couldn't stand the idea of ironing the hem (which is at least 7 yards) in the 80+ degree weather.  Rolled hem foot for the win!  It was wonderfully quick, and the hem is very neat-looking.  Beyond that it's just a lot of rectangles, gathered, and a drawstring waist.  Very, very simple.

A while ago (maybe a year?  Maybe two?) my brother wanted fingerless gloves.  They were great to work on while I was on vacation at my mother's house, but then real life resumed and they were too complex to actually work on while in transit or anything, so they didn't get finished for a long, long time.




Even I think I'm insane for the color work.  There wasn't really any pattern except maybe I flipped through Alice Starmore (http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Starmores-Book-Fair-Knitting/dp/0918804973) for ideas about patterns at some point.  I looked at knitty for ideas about how to divide for fingers, but at this point I basically just wing it anyway (I've made a fair number of pairs of gloves).  Usually it works out.  When you're doing the second one you at least have a template to follow.

And yes, that is a fire flower:
http://themushroomkingdom.net/images/smb/fire_flower.gif
More or less.

So a while back my friend and I watched Ninja Scroll, a movie with a plot that might as well have been designed by 13-year-old boys.  I got fascinated with some of the clothes, and decided he needed some.  This was the result:


(The shirt, not the utilikilt.)

Here's another:



The whole thing is decent quality cotton.  It's pretty thin (not like something you'd wear to tae kwan do, which is usually very heavy, almost canvas).  It took 3 yards with no wasted fabric.  All the pieces are basically rectangles.  I did french seams inside to make it more durable, and 1/4 inch hems everywhere that didn't have a facing.

The black facings are black cotton with medium-heavy weight interfacing inside them to keep them from getting all scrunched up when washed.  They're all just long straight strips, folded over and sewn down.  Nothing fancy.

It closes with hooks and eyes, like so:



The original plan was to add frogs along the black bit at the top, but I couldn't find nice ones and ran out of time to make them.  I just moved, so I'm now in a different state and not going to continue working on the shirt.  I did promise to make another one for another friend, though, so maybe I can refine the design with that.

This is my first time posting in this category.  *waves*

I guess this could technically go in reconstructed, since I stole the pages from an old notebook, but I think it's its own thing.







At any given time, I have a notebook that I carry everywhere and use to record everything from class notes to to do lists to sketches and random writings.  I have a big pile of past ones, with all sorts of stuff in them.

The one I had before this was big, about 12" x 9".  It turned out this was really too large.  The thing was heavy, and too big for anything smaller than the bag I use when I take my computer places.  So I didn't use it as much as I wanted. 

My solution was to cut the pages from the old notebook (not show) and use them to make this thing.  It was done quickly, and all but the initial sewing was done in a bar while hanging out with friends, so it's not terribly precise.  But it's very functional. 

The cover is some leather I had lying around.  The clasp is a magnetic clasp of the sort used on purses (purchased at the store where I get leather scraps).  The stitching that holds the signatures together (there are 6) goes through the cover and is exposed on the spine.  The strips of leather add stability to the spine and can also be used to clip pens etc. onto.



Now it goes pretty much everywhere with me.

Questions/concerns/criticism welcome.