Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

I finally mailed out my womb yesterday...

for Wombs on Washington. I had to do something to make it a little more political, so I put a picture of myself (happily, not all that recognizeable- you never know with this government) with a big X through it and "I am nothing but a uterus to you" written around the picture, then pinned it on.

And a minor bit of personal beading.

I bought this piece the other week, and this is what I put together with it to go with a shirt I just got.

And on the right is what I did with my apple-and-snake bead- made it into a pendant as best I could. So cute!

I did some glass beadmaking on Sunday.

As usual, I'm not particularly good at it (and I'm especially not good at photographing it), but here's some vague attempts at what I did in class. Most of these shapes up here came out okay in the shaping, except for the saggy-ass one here.    

This rather sad thing here on the right is supposed to be a glass fish. It um, didn't have a good time. Even worse, the dang thing broke when I tried to take it off the mandrel, so this is the only picture in existence of the thing.

This one on the left has a flat bottom and was supposed to be a turtle. You would not believe how much the whole making-arms-and-legs thing got buggered, though. So now it's um.... got a bunch of different mingled colors that all blobbled up.

This one started out as a screwup- I was trying to make another fish, but a big ol' block of yellow glass broke off and stuck to the red. What to do, what to do? Twist the thing over to make it into a little snake with an apple. This came out so cute, I adore it. My best bead EVER.

Sadly, I've only managed to get three dang beads off the mandrels, and that may be ALL I can get off the dang things. Sometimes they just plain stick. And as previously mentioned, the fish broke. But much to my utter relief, the snake and apple survived intact and off the mandrel! YAY!

The sweater and skirt together

So, this is what the sweater and skirt look like together... to be honest, not great. Frankly, if my arms weren't put up in this picture you wouldn't be able to see the skirt garland at all. *sigh*

One person (without seeing this, mind you) said to me, "Just don't wear the two together," and I agreed with her!

So when I went out today wearing the skirt for the first time, I went with another purple sweater. Much better.

Finally, I found a good vest

If you check the recent comments, Lorena pointed out the side to side knit cardigan that uses random scraps from the Knitting calendar. Well, I went looking for that pattern this morning and found the Side to Side Vest also in there. I think I'll do that one sometime, since it's smaller, yet still quite cool, and uses up random yarn as well. Hooray!

In other news, I'm almost done with the easy (back) part of the Hallowig. I've almost used up the first skein of yarn, so once I finish that I'll move on to doing the top half. I would have liked to have had the back longer, but oh well. I don't really know HOW I'm going to do the top half...sigh. I hope it works.

What to do, round 2

As a followup from yesterday's post, I've decided to do some of the patterns in Knit1- the tie-front shrug and camisole. Both are out of ribbon yarn, the swooningly beautiful Incredible. I found a ball of Rainbow in a store once and bought it without a project for it, just because it was so lovely. I think I'll make the two out of the same yarn and then wear them together. Won't that be lovely?

I'd like to make a matching ribbon skirt too, but (a) I can't find a pattern, so I'd have to wing it, and (b) it's gonna cost me $50 in yarn alone just for the two tops. Which is frustrating.

And speaking of ribbon yarn, I found my old stash left over from this tank top last summer. I think I bought 5 skeins of the Berroco Zen and then used maybe half of that. They don't sell this color in the store any more since I bought it out, and I've got maybe around 2 skeins left that I could use in....something. Don't know what, though, since I DON'T want to make a scarf (a summer scarf in 110 degree heat here? Nope.), or a cape/poncho (just not me) or something else teentsy.

But if I've got leftovers from the Berroco, and I have a ball of Rainbow that won't go with the rest of it due to dye lot issues, and if say, I got ahold of some more stray ribbon yarns somewhere...perhaps I could make some kind of Leftovers vest? Wouldn't that be COOL in ribbon yarn?

I love ribbon yarn.

I really should just go order 10 balls or so of Rainbow already here...

What next?

What shall I make after the Hallowig is done? (I haven't done much on it yet, so no photos. I'll get back to you after five hours on shift volunteering tonight.)

I'm bouncing back and forth between three different ideas for spring/summer (well, it'll be summer by the time I finish:)

• Some sort of Boobholder sweater. Not this pattern necessarily, but I have a black boobholder tie-on sweater and a pink tie-on sweater and love them, and it'd be nice to have some in different colors. (I can't find a pic of what I want online, alas.) I want one with sleeves, though. I have a pattern from Knit 1 for a furry one, and I've already got the yarn for that from a project that got too tangled to finish. I might have another one or two about.
• Another tank top. Perhaps the Sigma, or perhaps another ribbon tank, because I really like those, especially in the hot Davis summer. I've got a few other patterns from books/Knit 1 that would be good as well. (Damn, I wish i could go to this ribbon extravaganza, but that's the day before my birthday and a weekend, so my time's obligated to be out of town with the parents.)
• Another skirt, because I'm so dang thrilled with how mine came out. Maybe design another one of my own now that I know what works, or maybe do the flaming skirt 'cause it's funky.

Gah. I honestly don't know what to do. I want to do all three at the same time, except if I worked like that I wouldn't get any of it done during the warm weather season.

Maybe what I'll do is the boobie-sweater first in a vague attempt to have it done before June, then the tank, then another skirt. Estimating a couple of months per item makes things a bit tricky, doesn't it?

And it certainly helps that my favorite kind of ribbon yarn is fat on sale this month and next month.

Beading in the dark.

Since another online craft fair was announced (ends the weekend of Whole Earth, so I guess I'll just end my auctions in a week instead of 2), I have known that I should get plugging away at making new pieces. I'll have to have them done before my birthday weekend and I won't have much time going on. So while I'm home today (felt crappy upon waking up, due to phone ringing all morning I gave up on sleeping in), I figured I should do some beading. I think the two top pieces here came out rather well.

I did end up having to redo 2 of the 3 necklaces. This last one I made last night in my dark apartment and didn't notice the bead colorations were off in places. Grr. I like this one, but I don't think anyone would EVER buy it given the weight, so it's more of an experiment, and I tried not to knock myself out too hard on finding more than 2 colors of matching beads the way I normally would.

I am so not in the mood to bead these days. It's very sad. All I want to do is knit, but my knitting is slow and not for public sale. Oh well, given how sales went in the fall, I don't think I should be knocking myself out too hard to come up with merchandise in the spring.

My skirt is done!

I am so proud of myself, I could bust. It's done! Doesn't look too bad, either!

Will post a picture of it with its matching sweater after the skirt's been blocked and dried. (Well, it just got blocked, but dried'll take a week.) Hopefully I can have it dried by Thursday or Friday so I can go show it around to certain folks.

I made a tutorial for how I altered the pattern on this skirt here.