Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

Art Yarn

So, when I spin yarn, it is not smooth and fine. It is varying and chunky and funky. This is why I like the book Intertwined by Lexi Boeger, because as far as she's concerned this is ART YARN and doing weird things to it is just fine by her.

So since I had access to the spinning wheel last weekend, and got some free roving, I decided to try some of this.

Skein #1 is T-shirt scraps left over from the quilt, which is told how to do in the book, with brown (free) alpaca roving. The book says to use 1 inch wide scraps, but I thought that was kind of huge for this, and indeed, one centimeter wide scraps seemed to work better for me. You're supposed to spin the roving first, then stick an edge of fabric between 2 pieces of roving to start it out. The fabric wraps around the roving (ish), and you use random bits of roving as glue to hold the parts together. Mine has more visible roving than the ones in her book, but whatever. I also ended up spinning a second single of just plain roving and then spinning the two together into yarn to hold it together better.

Skein #2 is done similarly, but with gold cording I had around and some random wool I found in a bin.

Skein #3 is done like usual, but I had saved the tiny scraps of my various colorful handspuns and wove them in there randomly.

Other than the last one, it's pretty tricky stuff to do.

You're probably wondering: what am I going to do with this stuff? I HAVE NO IDEA.

The Skirt From Hell, Latest Reboot Update

One week ago, I re-started the #12 skirt (most recently mentioned here). Once again, casting it on was terrible and I had to do it a few times and casting on on tiny needles SUUUUUUUUCKS, but...

So far this week it's...gone okay. Few screwups and nothing requiring major frogging so far. I have over 3 inches done.

Go figure.

Swirl Skirt

 

I really like this one, and once again took the opportunity to use up random yarns around the house. Which is why I have a striped orange ass (love how that one darker streak of handspun hits the ass crack!), but whatever, I usually have a giant backpack on anyway.

Mmm, sherbet look.

In other yarn news:

(a) I bought a bunch of cotton yarn. Not sure what I am going to do with it yet, other than I seem to be on a "Summer of Skirts" kick again.

(b) Once again I am considering restarting--AGAIN-- the #12 skirt. Which, as you'll have noticed from all of those whiny posts, IS A REALLY STUPID FRIGGING IDEA TO KEEP TRYING AGAIN AND AGAIN, RIGHT?

This time I went out and bought an extra set of #5 needles to just leave them on, rather than using my KnitDenise set. One of the #5's in my kit just constantly keeps unscrewing itself somehow and that is a huge pain to deal with in this project.

I really do want that skirt someday, but really, WHY DID THE CREATOR OF IT START IT FROM THE GIANT HEM UP?!?!?! The other skirt I've done like that is Hot Tamale/Ring of Fire, which I also had to cast on umpteen stitches for, restarted a bunch of times, flabbergasted the hell out of my friends when they watched me attempt to make it... and in the end I don't even wear it because the bottom is too tight with the Fair Isle and the top is freaking huge. It makes me wonder if there's a way to do it from top down rather than bottom up, since I just don't seem to get the hang of it as designed. Then again, am I even smart enough to figure that out?

And the quilt/blanket thing is done

So here it is on my bed.

My overall instructions, should you want to do this thing:

1. Pick a sturdy-ish fleece blanket
2. Do a lot of math to figure out how many shirts you can fit on the thing at its dimensions
3. You probably should put on the goddamned interfacing on the shirts, or else be prepared to deal with a lot of weird adjustments and wiggling when you pin/sew the shirts together.
4. Sew each strip separately at first. Then lay out the strips, sewing #1 to #2, the bottom 2 strips together, then #3 to #1-2 (i.e. the first two strips sewn together), until you work your way to the middle.
5. When you've got 2 quilt tops, fold over the edges and pin them to the thick fleece hem, leaving some edging sticking out. Pin both layers together through the entire thing to keep them lined up.
6. Sew the sides BUT NOT THE CORNERS, leave them for last. This will require effort.
7. Hand sew the corners. Sew one layer to the fleece in the middle, but don't try to sew the entire 3 layers together at once. It just breaks the needle. Do the same for the other side. (If you're me and find that one corner stretched itself out on both sides in an unfixable way, slap some patches on the corners and hand sew them on too.)
8. In lieu of doing a tie quilt, because both sides don't line up to do that, get out your hand needle again and at middle junctures between the strips (do about 3-4 per row), tie a knot on the end and then stick your needle through the top layer and the fleece, but not the third layer (again, too hard to do). Pull out the needle on the other side, and then tie the two ends together. You're basically doing a subtler tie quilt. Do the same thing on the other side.

T-shirt dress

I bought this shirt (XL) on my birthday, thinking it needed to be a dress. It was surprisingly difficult to make this one. The skirt part took like five minutes or something, but wrangling the bodice (with shelf bra built in) was a real bitch. Despite it being an XL, I ended up using a lot of scraps that barely fit to make the back, and I had to put some triangles at the top so I didn't flash people, and I ended up using the hem to make the straps more sturdy. The sewing on the bodice isn't the best, but hell, I didn't think I'd finish it at all for awhile, so it's good.

It does look nice, though. I wish the weather was actually warm enough to wear it now...