Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

Yes, it was.

Turns out that this? Was a bad idea. I am giving up. Mainly because-- and I don't know HOW THIS IS HAPPENING-- but somehow I keep dropping or losing stitches in crochet and the farther along I go, the smaller my intended-to-be-12-inches-wide shawl keeps getting. I canNOT figure out WHY, but since the yarn I was using Has Issues when you try to pull it out (overly fuzzy = you don't want to take anything out), and I only have like 3 days and this problem keeps on going, NEVER BLOODY MIND.

Is it a crazy idea...

... to attempt to make a spur-of-the-moment large gift right now?

Yeah.

Eh, I'll probably give it a shot anyway. I heard of something called a  "reader's shawl" and am attempting to make one up. (Basically a stole with pockets.)

I made a silly hat

Once upon a time I had an awesome Santa hat. God only knows where it is now, but it's hard to find any that aren't made of cheap felt any more. (Though I did see a rhinestoned one today, I WANT ONE OF THOSE) I have been craving a crazy Xmas hat, and I like trees, so.... here you go.

The pattern I used was over here. I added my own garland and sewed on all of the random beads I have around the house that match nothing. It was a big hit!

What else to do?

At the moment, I don't really have any official holiday knitting to do, unless my mother suddenly changes her mind on something. That is really weird.

I am pondering the following:

• doing the legwarmers over
• Trout River, which I actually cast on today
• some kind of skirt, like Carnaby or the Dutch Treat skirt in Superstar Knitting, or uh... I have a lot of skirt patterns.
• attempting to make my own freestyle yarn garment thingie.

Legwarmer design, part 2

So, the legwarmers are done, kind of crappily photographed because I was wearing them (but not Photoshopped as yet), and I wore them out and about yesterday. I made a few adjustments on a few rows, but otherwise they pretty much came out as I thought they would.

I think I'd give them a B+ grade overall. They aren't as snug on me as I was hoping for--maybe it's the lacing up the middle, I don't know. I laced them up with one gold ribbon and one silver cord (I'm flashy that way) and even threaded some cord around the tops, but they still aren't as tight as my original pair I modeled them off. Maybe that wouldn't be an issue if I'd just seamed them like normal, I don't know. I may try to make another pair at some point to see about this.

I actually RAN OUT OF YARN three rows from the end of the second legwarmer, and had to substitute some similar-looking Red Heart at the top. I'm not sure if anyone would even notice. It does, however, make me wonder if my estimate of how much yarn this uses is off. It doesn't help that I bought some gigantic 200+ ball of yarn for these 2 years ago and I have long since lost the brand label, so I don't know how many yards it took me to run out. That and the lack of pics is why I haven't put up the pattern yet, which is otherwise written up and done.

Annoyingly, though, I wore them with boots yesterday and I think somehow they ruined the boots... or at least one of them won't zip up now for some strange reason. What the hell?!