ME3

hiya from a.,

sorry but the blog will be properly updated when I finish Mass Effect 3.

see you space cowboy...

I Dyed That Day (Part the I'm in Love)

Hiya from a.,

Today I have a triangle shawl to show you.  I have started to make a few more of these, mainly if I have a multi-coloured yarn, I like how this shape can show off colours.  It works for striping or just a whole mess of colours, like what I have here.  This is from a fibre that I dyed and spun.  The dye method was just my standard colour dump into my giant pot, I wasn't trying to make something too specific.  I only used strong primary colours (so yellow, red, blue), but there are places where they blended so there is also a fair bit of orange, some green, and a bit of purple.

As usual I spun a two ply and it ended up being a fairly tight ply and shifted colours around in interesting ways.  A close up shot will better show the variety that ended up in the yarn:

You can see all the different colours that this ended up creating.  I am really pleased with the results.

see you space cowboy...

Just an Everyday Bag

Hiya from a.,

I only have one project to show you today, and it is one that I actually made a couple weeks ago, but it was put into use so quickly, that I forgot to show it off.  I made myself a new bag/purse.  It is large, which is why I hesitate to call it a purse (especially as the inside is just a big cavern like a tote bag), but it functions like my day to day purse.  This bag is the product of two fabrics.  One is from one of the ever amazing FLBs (thanks a) who purchased it for me as a gift before leaving the twin cities.  Now I know that this happened awhile ago, but it took some time to find the perfect pattern and some complimentary fabric.  This happened when my next door neighbour (whom I've known all my life) decided to get ride of all the fabric that she realized she was never going to use.  I received some amazing wools, and great lining fabric, and this other fabric that I knew would go perfect with that other gifted fabric.  This is the result:

It ended up being this great round catch all bag, great when I go out with r as it can hold stuff from a library run, the comic book store, or art supplies/yarn.  The woodsy pin up fabric contrasts nicely with the heavier grey/green.  The bottom had been cut on an angle and then you sew elastic in the bottom to add the gathering/circular shape (the pattern is from the original 101 One Yard Wonders).  The inside is also lined with the pin up fabric:

There is more elastic at the the top to hold the bag fairly closed.  I like it, it is fun and also practical at the same time.  The nice thing is that I also have plenty of both fabrics left to play with.

see you space cowboy...

Cross Stitch Skulls

Hiya from a.,

Here is a little cross stitch thing I did last week/over the weekend:

It is from a book called Twisted Stitches that is all skulls and zombies and the like. This is one of the simpler patterns, but as I am skill relatively new to cross stitch, simpler is better.  I am pleased with how it turned out.  It is supposed to be made into a bookmark, but I think I might have r. do some painting around it and we frame it.
And for an added bonus here is a photo of me trying to cross stitch:

I apparently needed the help of a certain feline friend.

see you space cowboy...

Sweater

Hiya from a.,

I made a sweater for Christmas and realized that I have never put it up yet.  I actually made two sweaters but the first was a disaster, so I had a week to make a sweater to wear Christmas eve.  Luckily it was going to be a little lacy and in crochet which means that you can actually get it done in that time frame. 

It is made with Paton's Angora Bamboo, which I have to say is a great yarn to work with, it is soft and takes stitches wonderfully.  Here is a closer view of the stitches:

You can see that it was fairly open which made it go quickly.  It was also a top down raglan style project which has the advantage of being done in one piece so that you can try it on as you go and have very little (if any) seaming afterwards. Here you can see the sweater over the dress that it was made for:

It is clear that r. looks nothing like his family.  I am pleased with how it turned out and have worn the sweater since with other things.

Now this has nothing to do with the sweater, but look - sock!:

see you space cowboy....

A Simple Box

Hiya from a.,

Just a little bit ago a few of the always amazing FLBs sent me a small Christmas box.  It was a standard short rectangle UPS box, and after holding awesomeness it was able to serve the purpose of drying stand for the spray painted basket.  Recycling wasn't going to be here for a few more days so I decided to play a little. I grabbed scissors, glue, and fabric and played the good old game of 'I wonder if'
My plans actually worked and here are the results:

I cut off the four top pieces to make a level, open, box and the cut those tops to the same height as the box.  I then cut them to various sizes to make dividers (the long divider is the long top piece, it didn't need any cutting down).  I covered the interior, sides, and dividers with glue and put down some pink corduroy fabric that I had in my stash. 

The pink goes over the top where it meets a crocheted sleeve.  This is a double stranded chunky yarn worked with a P hook so it went pretty quick.  I made it tight so that you don't see any of the cardboard of the UPS box, but also to add a tiny bit of extra structural integrity. 
I had wanted to organize my sewing area a little better and now I have thanks to a UPS and an afternoon of playing.

see you space cowboy....

Well, at Least it's not Another Scarf?

Hiya from a.,

I seem to have developed a new obsession that is taking away from the making of yet another scarf.  It appears that I like to make cases for my e-reader.  I was content with the second one I made, the one I showed you.  But I took out all these books about felting from the library and I always have animal based yarn just floating around, so I decided to crochet and felt a new slipcase.  In one of the books I learned an interesting fact - in felting crochet (in comparison to knit) shrinks/fulls the most in width, not in height.  So your height only needs to be a little larger than the desired finish, but you need extra space in the width.  I made the initial crochet about 2 inches wider than it had to be and sure enough it came out shrunk to just easily slide in the kobo.

I did a stitch where it alternates single and double crochet which gives the fabric a denser texture than if you stick with one stitch throughout.  I used a medium sized bead in place of a button as a closure.  I did add a little extra zip to the other side of the case:

I learned after some trial and error that I am not great at just cutting out of felt if I don't have a pattern (my freehand tree looked like a sad alien), but I did manage to free cut the letter A out of black felt.  I then used embroidery floss to add colour and texture to the A.  There is bright pink, yellow, orange, and green in the A.  I then used a little bit of tacky glue to hold it in place and stitched it on with black floss.  I think it came out cute.

The other thing I did was an organizational change.  With us now having to gaming systems we needed somewhere to put our wii titles (and our spillover dvds). r. had already sacrificed a shelf to the xbox cause so it was my turn, I had to give up my yarn stash shelf.  Luckily we had gotten a gift basket for Christmas which I could use to hold the yarn.  This is what it looked like at first:

I am sure that you dear readers are aware that a beige wicker basket isn't quite our style.  Using spray paint, however, is our style.  Here is how it looks now:

Black gloss spray paint is everybody's friend.  The basket did have a couple places where spokes were poking up a bit and I didn't want them to catch my pretty yarn.  Just as I was taking about sewing a lining the perfect fabric showed up from e.  in a great and wonderful box from the flbs.  Seriously e. has amazing taste in fabric and here is a peek at the lining (you can just see it poking up around the edges of the basket):

I has pink and has skeletons of cute animals.  How awesome is that!!!!!  Storage solutions should always involve skulls.

see you space cowboy....
 

We'll Ignore the First Version

Hiya from a.,

For Christmas I received the awesome gift of an ereader.  I had never been sure how I would feel about one, but now I get twitchy if I'm more than twenty feet away from it.  I just love the thing, and I call it my tin dog (which if you know what that means, you know how highly I regard this machine).
I know you can buy attractive cases to carry these things around in, but this is us so of course I just decided to make one myself.  This was also done in  part because I don't like the cases where the ereader stays in it.  It turns out I really prefer holding the machine itself, so I needed more of a slip cover than anything else.
Thus I made one, and it didn't turn out great.  It was a girly patchwork and the patchwork came out well but the quilting and binding just came out crooked and lumpy and I just wasn't satisfied.  The next day I went back to the drawing board, and simplified my ideas and ended up pleased with the results:

I had had some left over scraps of black kona and I had bought this jelly roll of these bright fabrics so I put it all together in a checkerboard fashion.  Here is the whole of the back:

I have to say that this is the best that my corners have ever turned out.  I am in love with chain piecing.  It looks nice and bright and cheerful and I like that.  It does have some stuffing and is quilting to add a little protection for the tin dog, but I quilted along the seems so it is easier to see what I did from the inside:

You can see that I just followed the grid of the square for the quilting.  It is a little had to tell in the photo but the pink inside lining actually has small polka dots.  The pocket top is just a continuation of the checkerboard.
I am happy with the results, but you know me, I'll probably make myself several covers, just so that I can change them out when the mood suits.

see you space cowboy....

A Song

This video shows where the magic happens, or at least some of the magic. The musical magic (you can't see them, but there are 3 amps by my feet and some guitars strewn about). This was, in part, an attempt to see if I could write a straight up folk song after going to a folk festival. I have written an ironic take on the folk song with my cohorts in the Zen Arcades Project, but I was trying to play this straight. It's a simple I-IV-V progression in the key of G, but I play the V chord (in this case a D) as a 7th for two measures at the end of the verse to bridge to the chorus. This kind of progression is at the root of so much music especially in the country/folk/blues spectrum. Since I've learned it, and how to transpose it to different keys, it has made writing songs so easy. Hmm, maybe I'll provide a handy chart of the I-IV-V at the end of the post. Anyways, the hard part of writing a song like this would be coming up with the lyrics and I went to school for a very long time in order to learn how to write so I can't really offer a capsule look at the process. SO JUST DO IT. If you want to write a song just put some words that fit the rhythm of your strumming and changes and show that bad boy off. As Sniffing Glue magazine once said, here's a chord, here's another, here's another... now start a band (I'm paraphrasing).

I-IV-V Chords (the I chord indicates the key)
A D E
B E F#
C F G
D A G
E A B
F Bb C
G C D

Back for the New Year

Hiya from a,

Well we managed to pull off all our Christmas gifts (finishing on the last day).  Of course we didn't take any photos so you won't necessarily see the full range of our awesome, but trust us - it was indeed awesome.
I don't have a lot to show you today, but a lot is brewing in the works, so there should (finger's crossed) be regular weekly updates for the next little while.
Of course the first thing back I have to show you is a scarf.  I was able to score a bunch of different sale Noro out at Spun Fibre Arts in Burlington (it's where I buy my pretty yarn, if I'm not buying it online).  This is a chunkier Noro, that is cotton/silk/wool/nylon.  With cotton being the primary fibre it meant that it didn't have that epic scratch factor that Noro can have.  I bought two different colourways and striped them together how you often do with Noro:

It is long and bright and cheerful when I wear it long it hits  well below my coat (I would have loved even longer but I ran out of yarn. 
Also we got a new amazing camera for Christmas so you know how I always would complain about the colours not being quite true to reality - not a problem any more. 
see you space cowboy....