In between searching old posts and hitting "new topic," I wound up having to frog back to the beginning of my (thankfully nothing huge or sweaterlike) project, so I won't need this again until tomorrow, probably, but I am definitely going to need it, so I'll ask.

The item I'm making (for a swap, and my buddy seems detectivish, hence my vagueness) calls for a buttonhole.  I got to the end of the binding-off portion of buttonhole, and to the part where it asks me to cast on stitches again.  The only cast-on I know, however, is the long tail (I think) cast-on, which requires both the working strand and then a long tail, which I don't have since I'm in the middle of the project when the buttonhole comes in.

I've tried searching, but I'm having a hard time making heads or tails of anything.  Could anyone point me in the direction of a cast-on which uses only the working yarn?

Back to square one...   (Stitch one?)

My swap buddy has received, so I can post this now.  

This project also involved bookbinding and stuff, but I figured the embroidery was the more interesting part, so tada.
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It was all freehanded, and none of it really planned, except that I sketched the skull on paper first.  It's almost all the same stitch.  I THINK it's called stem stitch, but I'm not certain.  There's a little satin stitch on the skull, that's about it.

I burned the edges (THAT was a little scary.  Cotton burns way more easily than I expected) and then modpodged it to the cover of the swap journal I'd made.

Here are some pictures of the inside pages, just for fun.

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My swap buddy's received, so I can finally post pictures.  Yay!  These are both kind of conglomerations of craft skills, but since I'm super proud of myself for tackling cables, I figured I'd put them here.

First up, the eyeglass case.  
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I knit it from this pattern, except I decided to leave off the little tab.  This actually took me three tries; I shrunk it too much the first time, and the second time I experimented with doing it on my nifty knitter loom, which didn't work out well.  

It's sewn around a cheapy eyeglass case given to me by the eye center at WalMart, because I stopped to ask if wool would be bad for glasses, and they said yes.  So they gave me the case, and I made the piratey goodness around it.

The eyepatch is made of purchased craft felt, and the jolly roger was freehanded with a stem stitch.  (I think that's what it's called.)

On to the needle roll.
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I made the case using the free Kable pattern from Berroco.  I was a little terrified of the cables, which I'd never done before, and actually never planned to learn EVER because I was so, so intimidated by them.  So I had a couple of backup plans in place.  But I decided to try, just for the hell of it, and OH MY GOSH.  I DID CABLES!  :O  I think I did them correctly.  I'm  not really sure that I did it absolutely correctly.  (I'd appreciate, in fact, if someone more experienced than me would take a look at them and let me know if they look like they're supposed to.)  But they turned out nicely enough to be used, and I'm so, so happy about it.  They really weren't that scary at all.

I altered the pattern a little bit because I've FINALLY started using the needle case I got on sale at JoAnn, and one of the things I really like about it is that there are two pockets for things like point protectors and stitch holders and stuff.  Seemed handy, so I added one.  This one's made out of a skully bandanna found at Wal-Mart and some leftover craft felt from the eyeglass case.

All the buttons are made of shrinkydink.  I printed the pictures I wanted to use, then traced them with colored pencils on the (transparent) shrinkydink plastic before baking.

Here are the two prayer shawls I've made.    They were made using a pattern from a Lion Brand book called The Prayer Shawl Ministry.

This one was for a lady who is recovering (rather amazingly and awesomely) from some medical problems.  It was my first one, and by far the biggest knitting project I'd finished when it was done.

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It turned out to be a little more than 8 feet long.

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Posed on my couch, all glamorous-like.

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All tied up with a ribbon, ready to be given.  

And here's the second one I made.  This one was for my little sister, who was attending a church retreat thingie.  17 days from cast on to bind off, which kind of amazes me.  Can God knit?  Because seriously, I can't knit that fast.

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This shawl was closer to 6 or 7 feet long, I think.  This is my dog, Radar, "helping."  He likes to lay down on my projects the second they're flat.

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And here it is all bundled up to be given.  I had knit up a swatch to try out felting, and it worked, yay, so I cut a heart out of it to decorate the bundle with.  

I'm likely to make more of these, so I figured I may as well make a post for them, to keep them all sort of in the same place.

I've been looking at crochet and knitting needle cases, and appreciating how handy mine is, and I was thinking I'd really like a smart, portable case to carry my current embroidery project around in.  At the moment all my embroidery stuff is in a cigar box, and it's the regular version and the portable version.  I've been looking around, but I haven't really been able to find any examples of such a thing.  I can certainly make one up, but it would be nice to get some ideas from other places to consider. 

So my question is this:  Does anyone know any examples of an embroidery case sorta thing they can link me to?

What the subject line says.    How many swaps do you do in a year?  If you can't go by a whole year, then another set amount of time, like 3 months or 6 months, please. 

Okay, since this has been rolling around in my head since the first time or two I wandered into the swaps section, I thought I'd get it out of my head and up as an idea. 

Would anyone else be interested in a Lonelygirl15 (and company) themed swap?

I'd vote that it not start until after Newbie swap 3 is over, because I'm selfish and want to participate, mon.  But that's assuming there's enough interest, I shpose.  Anyone else out there up for combatting the Order?  Or... dancing with P. Monkey?