Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

The Princess Leia Carrie Fisher Tribute Sweater is finally done.

Another cardmaking class

Summer of Flowers, week three

Continued from here.

15. Carnation.

This one wasn't too bad, it's of the "cast on a bunch of stitches, bind off a bunch of stitches, repeat for ages, then coil it into a ball" school of flower (i.e. chrysanthemum), put later into a nice little shelf.

16. Floribunda Rose

Kind of a more complicated version of "cast on a bunch, bind off a bunch" because there's some shaping involved and I had to pay more attention to it, but still not too bad. Has a little coiled bit in the center of the flower as well. 

17. Hollyhock.

This was kind of unusual for this book so far, you basically knit a funnel and then roll the funnel up to make it into a flower. Came out better than expected.

At this point I have now finished the "basic" designs (which were a bit hard for basic, I'd say!), so this makes me nervous to move on to the Intermediate Designs section.

18. Cherries

Why is this intermediate? It wasn't too hard, mostly just using short rows to shape the giant cherries. I could not really figure out how to make the knobby ends at the tops of the cherry stems, though, just kind of knotted off and said "screw trying to figure this out."

19. Ladybug

Really, this was pretty easy as well, probably should have been in the basic section. Cute to make.

20. Clove Carnation

Now this one really sucked.

First, I cast on 51 stitches as per the instructions. I could not for the life of me get the count to come out even and right after doing the first row (which is a lot of "Knit 2, increase to 3 in a weird way, knit 2, decrease 3 to 1 in a weird way" and was kind of painful to do), over and over and over. I checked Ravelry and several other people said they had the same problem and a few of them said they cast on 41 stitches. I tried that, still didn't come out. Tried 42, still didn't come out. Wrote out exactly how many stitches I was supposed to have and came out with around 41 and it still didn't come out right. On the Ravelry page it said there was an error in the printing and there was an updated version of it online on the Lion Brand website.

And the Lion Brand website is fucking awful since they redid it, every goddamned time I end up having to reset my password because it won't let me log in. So after I did THAT again of course the link to the updated pattern didn't work, nor did searching on their awful website. A Google search finally located it--but the error? Wasn't in the 51 stitch cast on, according to the publisher. No, it was in how they wrote out the CROCHET. Because in addition to the painfulness of the knit2/increase/decrease row (I only got it to come out even once and just gave up and fudged the rest of the time), this thing wants you to do WHAT with crochet now?! Seriously, the bind off is...crochet? What? It did not make sense. I debated just giving up on this flower entirely except it's kind of weaksauce to give up on a flower 20 flowers in, so I just fudged...something. It was weird. 

I guess it came out okay and approximates the picture, but seriously, what the fuck was this? 

21. Citrus Leaf

 

Easy-peasy by my standards. Most leaves are pretty easy once you get how they work, really. 

Summer of Flowers, week two

Continued from here.

 

8. Double Daisy. Jeebus christ, this was hard to make. The pattern seemed a lot more complicated/wonky in bits, I don't quite think I did it right, and I needed to thread a drawstring through both centers of the white layers to get them to be small enough to shrink. I don't get why it's telling me to "pad it slightly with spare yarn" on the center since it doesn't say to make two centers and what am I padding when I'm covering a center hole? 

9. Snowdrop. This was pretty easy to make, though I think it needs a bit more sewing up on the petals than the pattern seems to indicate. 

10. Small Leaf. Just as easy and quick as Large Leaf. Easy peasy day.

11. Acorn. These were pretty easy to make as well. 

12. Dahlia. This one took kind of forever to make, like the chrysanthemum. I kept having to look at a dahlia painting off and on throughout the day I was making it (it was part of a scavenger hunt) and that was amusing.

13: Clematis. I don't think I quite sewed the petals together in the intended way--I sewed them a bit more-but I'm fine with it looking like a six pointed star, and also I haven't the faintest idea what a clematis actually looks like. What really sucked about this pattern was how you were supposed to make the center...I still haven't the faintest effing idea HOW one was supposed to make the center, which looks like there's tight bits in the middle and then there's a bunch of loops around the edges. I tried multiple times and hell if I know how that is supposed to go. I just...I dunno, winged it in the end. It seemed like she wanted extra yarn/edges/loops in between every stitch, so that's what I did. Oh well, seems to work well enough. I don't feel like redoing it. 

14. Tulip. Not too hard to make, though the instructions as to how to sew up the bottom were kind of weird and I ended up just basically squishing the bottom together because I couldn't figure out the fold instructions. Ah well. The folks at knitting group were impressed, anyway. 

The Leia sweater is nearly done

Finished the front of it today, now it's blocking (along with the other sleeve I lazily put in there). I haven't sewn the cross stitch on yet, but it's all over but the sewing at this point.

Hm, now what? 

Playing with polymer clay

So my friend Jamie has finally made this blog! We made polymer clay things. She was attempting to teach me how to make butterflies, but I was somewhat clueless at it. She, however, is an expert at it (and we were working on a syllabus for a future class for her to teach tonight). I said she could use me as a guinea pig later.

Jamie would like you to guess which pieces she made and which ones I made. I'll put the answers beneath the spoiler cut...

Summer of Flowers, week one

So I got this book, 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet.

I went on vacation and got to see the UCSC Satellite Reef, which was awesome. I wish I had been able to see the entire crochet coral reef, which had closed by the time I got down to Santa Cruz. I am going around showing my pictures of it to people and going on about it. Now I want to do my own...something that epic.

Ergo, I have decided to try to make 100 flowers for 100 days (technically starting June 6 when I got the idea, even though I couldn't start until late that night), though I might not be able to do a flower a day. I think it just took me six hours over two days to make two flowers (in knitting, which takes longer). The book has both knitted and crocheted flowers (starts with the knit) and boy, did most of them take quite awhile.

1. Field Poppy. This wasn't too hard to make, but the time it took to knit the petals reminded me of "oh, yeah, I forgot knitting flowers takes so long compared to crochet." One of my knitting compatriots said it looks like a Belgian poppy. I will take her word for it.

 
2. Pointsettia. Had similar feelings on making this one as well, i.e. "this just took me two days to finish two flowers." I was expecting to churn out a flower a day, but not so much.

3. Carrots. Why are carrots in a book about flowers? Je ne comprends pas. That said, making the carrot itself was fun. The little green squiggles, not so much. Weird lazy chaining. I will say that the "cable" method she mentions of knitting new stitches into each next stitch has been helpful in making these things. The pattern is wrong though--you need to start with 6 stitches on the cast on and first row rather than 4 to get it to come out to the right stitch count. 

4. Rudbeckia. These were supposed to be fit onto 1 inch sized buttons. I found some 1 inch large cabochon-things around my house, which is why these are done now rather than the next time I go to the craft store. The orange top is a little big and you have to drawstring it pretty tight to get it to fit. 

5. Chrysanthemum. GOOD LORD KNITTING FLOWERS IS COMPLICATED. If this was done in crochet it would have been so much faster and a bunch of chains. Also a bit complicated to sew together, or at least you're sewing together a giant coiled bunched center and I had to start all over again. 

 
6. Primrose. Not too bad to make by comparison, pretty simple. (But again: would have been easier in crochet.) It took me until day 6 to have 6 flowers for 6 days.

7. Large Leaf.

Now this is what I'm talking about! Got this done in a half hour! Huzzah! 

 

Quarter of the Octopi

Last quarter at the Craft Center was the "Quarter of the Octopi," in which people made octopus-themed projects. Here are mine. 

Yup, it's an octopus mosaic, of course! zzbob on etsy does great boards. This is a rainbowpus, or perhaps a chakrapus.

I made this as kind of a winning "badge."

This is an octopus overskirt. It took a few redos to get to look right. It's supposed to go with an octopus shirt I ordered but didn't come in time for the party. 

 

The Princess Leia cross stitch is done.

Isn't she lovely? Only took six months!

Now I am working on the front of the sweater, adding some Fair Isle AT-AV's and guns and lightsabers and stuff like that. 

 

Mini-museum

sigh...more sideways photos.

Anyway, I like how the Manetti Shrem museum has crafting days. Today was "mini-museum" day, in which you decorate a box. I had fun with that.