Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

My One Skein attempt.

So, I got the idea: why not do a knitted tarot card out of yarn scraps? I drew up a design on graph paper of a tower with lightning and clouds at the top, and a tower with the top on fire. And a guy falling down from it.

At first, it looked quite cute, with the grass done in moss stitch. I was using 4 mm needles. I had enough scraps, and even so much as one strand of peach yarn worked. I finally had a use for the brown/black combat yarn I used to make that iPod holder awhile back.

But...it got screwier towards the top as I was trying to balance more colors. And I forgot to do the clouds in garter stitch and had to do one at the last minute on the last row. But it was such a pain in the butt to do by the top I didn't want to undo what I'd managed to get in, so I left it like that.

The worst part is, I don't know HOW to fix this, but ever notice when you do detailed Fair Isle, you can end up with gapping holes? Yeah, the fire part is all gapping holes that didn't "naturally" close up. And it's all come out pretty bulgy despite my trying to leave room on the strings at the back. (You don't want to see the back of this sucker.)

Guh.

A quickie update:

Have been making more Jayne Cobb hats. Just finished two. Will see if I have enough left of the yellow to make a third.

Still working on the scarf.

And after all of that is over, I want to work on entries for the One Skein contest. Well, technically I did one already, but the thing came out SO bizarre.

I really need to upload pictures off of my camera already. I'm not so used to doing that during "school break" season.

Reading this, I thought the same thing.

"I often fantasize about all the sewing I would like to do in my lifetime. I think of the cute skirts, adorable bags, and reconstructed clothing I could make. The biggest problem? I hate sewing. Or, at least I convince myself that I hate sewing. The thing is, sewing requires the seamstress (or seamster) to be tied to that blasted machine. You can't take sewing on the plane with you. You can't throw it in your bag when you are on your way out for the day. You can't take it to the cafe with you. If you are going to sew, you are stuck at home cutting out patterns & fabric, stitching, or troubleshooting what is wrong with your machine at the moment."

This is why I rarely do any sewing. (Especially since my machine died.)

But lately, I keep feeling the urge to do T-shirt surgery. I have a bunch of free shirts from where I volunteer that are cool, but even the smalls are just too big. (And most of us are not size 0, so nobody really knows how they come out that way.) And whenever I'm in Natomas I keep eyeing this book and drooling.

But really, if I buy it, how likely AM I do to T-shirt surgery? I have to wait around until April to get into where I volunteer (and I can't even work on anything in there on a weekend until May, really, because they're closed for 3 out of 4 weekends and the open one is Easter weekend) in the first place in order to borrow a sewing machine, and we don't even have a sewing store in town to get notions at. So it's not like I'll actually USE the book.

But...it's so cute... *sigh*

Good news and bad news:

The good news: I finished the cardigan.

The bad news: Don't have pictures at the moment, because this sucker NEEDS to be blocked. Unfortunately, I don't know when I'll get around to doing that.

And the very sad part... it's too small. Which is to say, I can wear it unbuttoned, and was planning on doing so anyway, but this thing will NOT button. Goddamned big tits.

*sigh*

The cardigan so far.

Swapping in some other projects.

Jess requested that I make her a few items. Namely:

(a) a scarf out of this weird yarn (Ara...something starting with a D...I'll look it up...),

(b) another Jayne Cobb hat.

As for the cardigan, I'm about to join the sleeves and body together. Eeep.

Current progress on the cardigan.

Last night of maquette class.

Nothing too drastically new to see, I mostly redid the teeth and added eyeballs and did a ton of smoothing.

On my own, I have to:

(a) bake it for an hour to set it in place,

(b) sand the bulgy bits,

(c) primer it, and (d) paint it with acrylics.

This may take awhile.