Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

I told you it was the Summer of Crochet.

See, someone else picked up the terminology.

In other news, I think I will have to pick up Interweave Crochet now, because I am eyeing the baby-doll and kimono tops. Throw those onto the pile...

HOPEFULLY I will have finished the crochet on that dress tonight. Then I'll have finished it within 3 weeks! Rock!

Pondering.

Would it be tacky to make this skirt in various kinds of yarn? Because this requires 1700 yards of yarn, and apparently this is surprisingly hard to find in matching and cheap, and god knows it'd stash bust up the wazoo. And also, one of the yarn stores is closing and having a fat sale, but I doubt I'd find 1700 yards of anything matching there either. It could be fun, god knows I had a good time doing this sweater. It probably wouldn't come out quite so rainbow, but could still be cute.

In other news, the revamped crocheted dress is almost done, crochet-wise. I went out to the fabric store this weekend to find a pattern/fabric to make an underdress to put the crochet over so as to hide the see-through-ness. I also picked up more fabric to put under the shorter skirts I plan on making.

I am also working on these, but have only completed one shoe so far. The knitting is easy (though I had to size down), but the attaching the knitting to the shoe, even with poking through easy foam, really hurts the hand. Ergh.

Squee!

Spiderweb Skirt pattern is now online for FREE! That was the other pattern I was eyeing buying- I forget why I didn't at the time.

I think I am declaring it the Summer of Crochet, since all but one of the projects I want to do are crochet (I did attempt to start the knitted tank last weekend as a more portable project, but the tiny needles and the twists are flummoxing me). Hell, it may very well be the Summer of Crocheted Skirts (w/ one dress) now...

More from ceramics class.

Here's how glazing my piece came out- not well. I have been repainting it to refire four times by now. It probably won't come out great on the refire, but oh well, it's a first piece anway.

I did a couple of one-offs (i.e. pieces finished within a day) that are
drying/to be fired right now. This is  another tray thingie.

And here's a bunny! It looks just like the ones I draw, really.

And here's my trees on week three. With leaves attached.

And here's the finished (or at least sculpted) trees, with "hair" leaves on. By the fourth week, the female tree was starting to disintegrate (the tips of the branches are BREAKING OFF!), so I figured I had to end working on it real quick.

The class is officially over now, but I'll have to wait around for the other tray to dry, the first piece to get reglazed, and everything else to get fired and glazed. The CC closes in a couple of weeks, so I don't know if I'll have all of that done before the end of the quarter or not.

Houston, we have a pattern problem.

So, I'm working on the crocheted dress.

I'd like to say before I begin that yes, I did gauge samples of everything. All of them worked at size K hook. The gauge is definitely correct. As far as I can tell, the PATTERN is just plain wrong.

I got the boob-covering bit to fit fine at size large. Then I started to make the bra band at size large. I finished it. I tried it on....and it was flipping HUGE. Yes, I measured and yes, the gauge was CORRECT on what I'd done. And even on a size small (which was supposed to have a 30 inch band), when I measured that, it was too big to fit around me. (I'm a 32 around but usually wear a 34, and in General Bra Size When We Aren't Checking Ribcage, wear 36). I had to cut it down by a LOT to fit around me correctly (and actually be around a 30), to the point where I wasn't following the pattern any more. At this point I gave up on making the large size dress and after the boobs, am now making the smallest size dress. (Yes, that's weird.)

And it got worse from there.

The middle of the dress is supposed to have a diagonal spiral pattern going through it. However, the instructions as written just plain do NOT line up in order to make the spiral correctly. In order to even get what I've got going here, I had to fudge it. A lot. And once it gets to the size increasing, it's even MORE off (and I couldn't line it up all the way). And you'll note that at "done" level, it just...looks crappy. The holes come out looking large and gaping, it's barely long enough to sortakinda cover the public places... if you really yank it down...argh.

Problem #3 (which isn't photographed) was that the rows of shell trim that were supposed to be added at the bottom of this portion were written as "decrease 3 together" rather than "make a shell." You can't even step INTO the garment if you decrease 3 together every time, for chrissake!

I ended up ripping out ALL OF IT up to the red band at the bottom and starting over again. I'm just going to do plain old double crochet for rows and rows to make the middle and BS the thing myself. And I am definitely going to make it LONGER. I've got like 3 balls of yarn for it and the middle only took up about half of one- I can swing it.

But SHEESH. I am debating whether or not to complain to the magazine I got this out of. I don't know how to fix it/send in corrections, I just want to say it's frigging undoable. But on the other hand, there's also the possibility that I'm not terribly smart at crochet and everyone else gets it right, so...I dunno.

More wire wrap.

This year's booth.

More hemp.

Miscelleaneous necklaces made.

Whole Earth wrapup.

1. Made $120. This turned out to be more than I thought I did, as it was a slow year for everybody. The usual trope is that "everyone does better on Sunday", but in this case, not so much. I think it was because we had 18 people the first day and a whopping 10 returning on the second (don't ask me where they all went).

2. All of the runes I worked on? All of that hemp? All of the wire wrap? NONE of it sold. Not a bit. It was a good thing I decided to fish my old stuff out and put a good chunk of it up for sale, because that's all that sold.

3. What did work? Putting up a "Everything $5" bin where I chucked all my old pendants that I gave up on selling last year. Suddenly, people loved those.

*boggle*

Maybe I should give up and just sell EVERYTHING for $5.

4. However. There is the possibility of joining in a small alternative weekend craft fair-type thing that we heard about this weekend. Would have to get a business license and whatnot, but otherwise it wouldn't be a big financial layout. So, that could be interesting.