Hat

Hiya from a.,

So, back from Christmas, and working on stuff for my own household again. Now I'd love to show you everything that I made for Christmas for the family, but that would imply that I took pictures of everything that I made for the family. I did not. There are photos of the dad hats but everyone who reads this saw those on facebook. Instead I will show you what I made on Christmas day.

I took a mitten pattern and was able to extrapolate it into a hat. I did this because I really wanted to use the celtic knot pattern. See my rather awesome mother in law, as a part of my Christmas gift, gave me yarn that she got me in Ireland - pretty cool, right? So I wanted to do something appropriate with it.

I also totally finished a sweater this week, but I'll show you that another time.
take care.

Merry Christmas

Just want to wish our faithful readers a very Merry Christmas. We haven't posted in the last couple of weeks, because we were working on gifts, and can't really put those up before people see them. So we will be back with regularly schedule craft awesomeness after the holidays. Everyone take care.

r: It's been awhile since I last posted, I know, but I've been busy or--more accurately--highly stressed. I have completed two projects however and thought I'd share them with you. The first image is of a tryptic I painted. It was inspired by b movie Go Go girls like Tura Satana  and, in the case of the quotation, Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. "It's Go Go not Cry Cry" isn't just a pithy line in a fake grindhouse film, it's a life philosophy. The Go Go Girls are done in silhouette because it's an easy stencil and I wanted to see how it would work out. I'm pleased with the result but choosing an image that conveys "Go Go" is harder than your would think. If you try it for yourself make sure to find an image that conveys motion. The figure on the right (green) is Lori Williams from Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! A source of constant inspiration. The two smaller paintings are a lot of acrylic paint on canvas board. A lot of acrylic paint. I purchased a set of loteria cards for the purpose of making something out of them and hadn't really figured out a use (other than as a border on my painting of the Blue Demon, how I love Lucha Libre) and had these Uncle Wiggily game cards and the same problem. So I decided to use them in a painting experiment where I exploit my natural tendency toward impasto along with acrylic paints supposed similarity to glue. Death and the Devil makes the text creepy, eh?
So that's what I've been up to. My next art project may be coming in the mail for some of you and I'm sure we'll put pictures up (bloody B&N selling out of the Edward Gorey Christmas cards I wanted).

It's Time for Some Cozy

Hiya from a.,

Winter seems to have settled in here, and I actually managed to finish a couple of blankets.  Blankets and I have a weird relationship.  It usually takes three, or even four, iterations before I am pleased with how a blanket is turning out (plus it turns out that if you are following a pattern, maybe you do want to in fact check the gauge).  The first I have to show you, though, actually was the first look for this particular yarn.  It is a small lap blanket for r. for when he is sitting on the cube and playing video games:

It's a v stitch which made it fairly soft and moveable, it is an irregular/regular stripe.  It works well for keeping legs warm when sitting somewhere other than the couch.  Now though, I will show you the more common use for this blanket:

This other blanket I have to show you makes me really happy.  I have tried in the past to make a blanket that is one giant granny square but I have never had enough yarn.  I finally though had collected enough Caron simply soft to pull this off.  I also had always tried to use a K hook, but found my N hook, which made it work up much faster.  I was able to get the granny square blanket made during the watching of all the Harry Potter movies:

It's great because I am usually the person sitting in this chair and I can completely curl up underneath and be all cozy.
That's all, enjoy.