Some Neck Stuff

Hiya from a,

A couple things for you today.  The first harkens back to my last post.  Remember how I showed you the yarn that I dyed and spun in three days?  Well I then took that yarn and made something from it in 4 days.  I turned fiber into object in one week.  Now I want to be clear, you are a bit of a dumbass if you try to do something like this on a regular basis, but it was fun to push myself to see what would happen (I don't plan to make this kind of turnaround a regular habit).  Here is the small shawl I made from Christopher Lee is free:

You can see that the yarn is darker than it looked in the other photo I showed you.  I even blocked this project because the yarn was rather bouncy so it needed to be pulled out a bit.  Here is a close up of the stitch pattern:

What I am really pleased about (aside from the fact that it came out pretty) is how the colour really came out in subtle stripes.  That was not especially my intent, but how cool is that?

The next thing that I have to show you is also really cool, but in a more geeky way.  The FLBs always meet on Sunday Mornings at the Spyhouse on Nicollet.  The girl working knows us well as she has been there as long as we have, and when I went to get a coffee, she flipped over what I am about to show you and was all jealous that I had this:

My more nerd friendly readers will know right away who these two heads are, but for those who don't (hi Mom) this is Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers from the Scott Pilgrim comic books.  The books are awesome and the movie that came out was crazy cool too.  Anyways these charms were a thank you from a friend for watching a neat cat.  What I did was use guitar string to make the silver loops/hanging apparatus that you see (it makes sense as one, I have an abundance of guitar strings floating around the house, two, scott is in a band in the books).  Then I crocheted up the chain, making two different strings so that Ramona hung above Scott (which makes total sense if you know the books).  Add a loop and a button at the back and you have a necklace.

As you faithful readers know, I tend to show you finished projects, instead of stuff that I am in the middle of.  I decided though that since I am working on a really huge project right now, I'd show you the various stages of making it.  This stage is about 12% done:

Some of you know what this is going to be, but it should be fun to what it all come together.

Take care.

Are We Not Skulls?

r: It appears that the one thing I can definitely draw are skulls. I can sketch other things, but it seems skulls are something at which I excel. This is fine with me of course. I like skulls. I've watched the Crow a million times so I definitely love skulls. And, as we've discussed before, I like dia de los muertos. So I've combined my two loves. These skulls were drawn in pencil and then inked (painted?) over with paint pens. I used Elmer's paint pens instead of the fancy German ones because I was at Joann's and not Utrecht when I bought them. Paint pens are great I find for doing this kind of hybrid inking/colouring. You get crisp, popped colours with no bleed-thru or glue headaches (we've all gotten a little high from markers accidentally before so I'm sure you know what I'm talking about). The "No More Snakes" skull was done on St. Pats which accounts for the theme; the Devo Skull was inspired by the Groovie Ghoulies song, "Devo." Hope you like. Oh, and sorry you can see my hand through the one scan.

I dyed that day part something or other (oh and a sweater)

Hiya from a,

I have a couple things to show you today and they are actually things that I am really pleased with/proud of having made.  The first is some handspun yarn.  I can buy really cheap (but not horrible quality) bare roving at a local yarn shop.  This leads to the mad monkey laboratory - which is me dying fiber in a pot on the stove.  I wanted to create a very dark/bright saturated look, which I think I accomplished.  Then of course I went a little mad spinning, as I wanted to see how it would turn out.  This caused me to learn that I can spin a 1.8 oz single in the time it takes to watch 10 Simpsons episodes.  Also that this will kill your back.  This didn't stop me though from spinning the other single and getting to the plying in two days.  So I ended up dying, spinning, plying, and setting within four days.  This is the result:

It is called Christopher Lee is Free and is about 355 yards.  As always it is a little darker than the photo but not by too much.  I love how it turned out, and when I crochet it up, I'm thinking an open lacy stitch to show off the colours.
The other thing I have to show you is that I made a sweater.  It is the first piece of clothing I've made that I don't hate afterwards.  I started following a pattern, but didn't like how fussy it seemed, so I ended up doing my own thing.  I am sure that all you faithful readers are shocked that I just tried to figure it out on my own.  Anyways here are the results:

It has a neat texture and I love the colour and how the neckline turned out.  So that is what I accomplished.  Oh and r. finished the first draft of his dissertation.  We are totally in kick ass mode.
Take care.

A couple of bits

Hiya from a.,

I have a couple pieces to show you today - the first being a cowl.  Now I made this cowl because one of the people in crew was working it and I thought it was pretty.  It was an easy project and to make sure that it was different from the other I used a yarn with different shades of blue and a lighter weight yarn as well.   This is the overall result:

Sorry if I look a little crazed, I hadn't had any coffee yet.  It's nothing fancy, just a simple stitch, but looks really pretty.
Here are a couple of close ups to show more detail:

With the second photo here you can see the stitch a bit more, and you might be able to tell, it is in fact the same stitch as the log cabin blanket that I showed you last time.  With a smaller hook and yarn it really does produce a different look.  The other thing that I am proud of with this cowl is that this is a custom dye job that I did.  It was a bare white yarn with tweedy flecks (you can't really see those in the photos).  What I did was use 3 three colours.  A basic blue, a blue tinted towards green, and a blue tinted towards purple.  I poured them over the yarn in stripes, and then when I turned over the yarn I switched the stripes around and this is what came out.
The other thing I have to show you is one of my favourite things to make - fingerless gloves.  I used striping yarn that I got for cheap and I love how they turned out.  Now a couple of the flbs teased me, queen of orderly things, that my stripes don't match, but I'm actually okay with that.  I didn't have a  specific pattern, I just worked on the one glove and made lots of notes so that the second would match and here are the results.

They came out cute and cozy and I love them.
That's what I have for you this week, next week I might actually have a sweater to show you.

Take care.