Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

In which I take a stained glass jewelry class

I managed to get two pieces done today.

What I wanted to do was to make a piece based off of this card in my new tarot deck. Obviously I couldn't get the whole thing, but I wanted some kind of moon-related thing. I think I managed that pretty well, all things considered.

It was tricky, with the (a) roundness, (b) trying to fit the pieces together, (c) adjusting the design so that everything touched something in at least two places, and (d) me being unable to wrench the foil on the edges for soldering smooth enough because my hands are weak. I fear stained glass, like glass bead making, is going to be another hobby that I can't do All By Myself. Gah, because it was pretty cool. Soldering for glass is not nearly a pain in the ass the way that soldering on rings and metal jewelry is, plus it's freaking fixable. But in the end, it came out cool. Too bad it's a huge pendant, but making it smaller would have been even harder to do.

Kind of a funny- the teacher said we could put beads on a wire into the piece if we wanted, and I was all, "No, I won't, I won't go to the bead store or anything." So instead I went to the Farmer's Market for lunch and ran into a woman selling heart pendants. Ahem, look what I did after all.

This one was kind of a one-off, because they had a scrap bin that we went through for our pieces and these were already foiled. I figured what the hell, I'll do another thing with little work. It also came out pretty well.

I'd like to do this again, but I'm not sure if I could handle the foiling without teacher assistance. Maybe I'll take the holiday jewelry or suncatchers class with this teacher again and see how it goes.

Back to necklace making again

I haven't done this for awhile.

I got this lovely coral pendant from Kythryne a few months back. I'm normally not into coral, but it was a great shade of red and I loved her curly decoration of it. So I bought the whole front part of the necklace- the square beads, the drops, and the flowers- last month or so. However, that got *cough*rather expensive*cough*, so I was looking for some more economical way to fill out the back rather than buying each bead separately.
Today I found this red sponge coral, and I liked the feel and color of it, so what the hell. It's only going on the back of a choker anyway, right?

Truth be told, I probably should have paid up and filled out the entire thing with alternating drops and flowers. It does look a little funny to have the two divisons. But I'm making it for me and not for sale, so I suppose it doesn't really matter.

I found these pendants online and loved them, and wanted to do kind of a meditation necklace. I found some great moonstone chunks and some agate chunks that I planned on using for the back, and had bought a bunch of blue drops, purple drops, rose quartz beads and drops, beads with eyes on them, etc. for the front part. But the front having a lot of color and the back not having much just looked strange, and with Jess's help I ended up just taking out most of it and leaving a few differences here and there.

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.

More iPod holder issues.

I got requests from Jess and Doogie to make them iPod holders, so I went looking for the requested yarn colors- a green-blue blend for her and black and tan or red and white for him. I got lucky on his because I managed to find this yarn. I did not get so lucky on hers because the only nice color-blended yarn of the right shades in the yarn store was this very thin yarn. Well, what the hell, I'm winging these anyway, right?

Au contraire.

I started in on hers and the yarn was awful to work with. It seemed to mat up and tangle a lot, and after the fifth time the yarn just plain broke on me, I gave up and told Jess we need to go yarn shopping.

After this debacle, I decided to start in on Doogie's just to see if that yarn would work out...and so far, it has miraculously worked out well. It actually fits a lot better and without stretch issues so far. It's 100% worsted wool, and I think I need to get that stuff for anything else I do on these projects. Works so much better!

I have since been asked about holders by Kalamity, and whenever I can get to the yarn store when they're open again, I'll see what I can find.

Live by request!

After flashing pics around yesterday, I now have two people wanting iPod holders! Woo!

Annoyingly, I'd love to start new ones today, but the yarn store isn't open on Mondays (sure, pick the day I have five hours in which to sit at night). Grrr.

iPod holder, version 4.0

I did try to knit an armband for the version 3.0 crocheted iPod holder- my goal was to combine this pattern by kdka and this pattern by haykyn. I knit the armband as tight as I could and attached it with buttons, and it fits my arm fine. I made a few chains to attach to the back so I could attach the iPod to the armband OR use the necklace function if I didn't want to use the armband that day. However, once the iPod was attached to the armband...it just didn't stay up at all. Argh. I ended up cutting off the armband straps on the back and giving up on that idea. Oh well, nice try, I guess. In the meantime, I did manage to make the remaining band into a holder in itself, which wasn't too bad. At least I can peek in and see the song playing, if nothing else.

But later, I checked the armband pattern...and it was for the lower arm. What if I made a smaller band for my wrist and attached the pocket?... Well, it worked, surprisingly. It's staying on my arm for the moment. Too bad I don't know how to do buttonholes (or would have planned ahead of time for this!) to have a decent hole for the headphones to come out of, but oh well! Still cute!

iPod holder, version 3.0

Since my first holder came out so sketchy-looking and my second one was better, but still kinda scraggly, and I now had instructions on how to make a better-fitting one, I wanted to make a replacement for it. This does fit better, though there was some gapingness on the side edges. I tried to fill in with kinda-decorative crochet on those sides, but it looks a bit odd. Oh well. The new necklace bit came out well, and I changed the back of the holder to be closed with an actual button rather than little crocheted balls. Seems securer already.

The tank is DONE!

Voila! I (hopefully) figured out how to steam the thing, which I'm glad I did at the CC rather than at home. Knowing me, I probably would have forgotten something important then. I sewed it up while on shift last night and then went around showing it off. Something cool about knitting- no need to break out the sewing machine to sew anything up, just go back and forth a bit with a tapestry needle and you can't even tell where the seams are. Nice.

Here it is lying flat just after I finished sewing it together, front and back. It feels surprisingly thick, albeit filled with holes and obviously not something one goes bare under. I got a lot of questions as to "Is it supposed to be a crop top?" Me: "It's going over something. Does it matter?" Though in the picture it looked more knitted together...and longer...but oh well!

Here's the picture we took in the CC last night. I had to borrow a shirt to wear under it for the picture. (It looked surprisingly good with the green/blue buttondown wrap shirt I had on originally, but it didn't show up that well in photos with that on.) This took a few shots to get because well, my hair kept looking doofy and stuff. I told my manager I'd go post it on craftster (i.e. the site we all look at while on shift), so I need to get to doing that when I'm done posting this.

And finally, this is the shirt as it's meant to be worn, with a purple tank top underneath. (Pardon the shot on the left, I was trying to get a closeup and didn't smile so well with the concentration.) It also looked quite cute with the capris I'd had on that day tool. It's pretty damned funky- like a vest, and yet not. I'm glad I put the beading into it. Still need to find something to wear with it on the bottom though.
I plan to wear the shirt to my final knitting class tomorrow and show it off. Yeehaw!

Now, on to attempting to make the furry vest during my last day of class... Someone asked me last night if I tried to wear clothes matching the yarn I was working with. Heh.

Almost done! Whee!

Actually, technically all the knitting IS done at this point, but I'm not considering it done until I can put it on my body. I still have the dreaded steaming to do, followed by the sewing. The sewing I can handle (even if I stupidly already wound one of the stray side strings in when I shouldn't have, ahem), but the steaming freaks me out. I don't really know HOW to do it, much less line it up perfectly with pins on a tiny ironing board. Maybe I'll just do it tomorrow while I'm volunteering. I would like to have it finished by Wednesday so I can show it off, but who knows there.

Here's the back of it, the "right side", which looks much less buggered than the "wrong side."

And here's the front piece, which came out very nicely, all things considered. I did figure out how to fix the beading issue- just drop a bead on each side so it went from 4-5 to 2-3, and it worked well and easily and all lines up relatively well.

Yay! I'm done! Not much left to go!