Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

I knitted my own cat

This is the "Parlor Cat" pattern on Ravelry. Yes, we've now hit the point in quarantine where I have to knit myself another pet. My friend Yemi has two orange cats and was amused that I also made an orange cat. I'm naming her Amber. 

I ended up designing some back legs for it because I felt bad that it had no back legs in the pattern. The face came out kind of terrible--it really should have more legit eyes--but oh well, it's quarantine..

Yes, it's posed ominously above the hamster cage....but since neither are biologically alive, there's nothing to worry about. 

 

Scenes from Shakespeare

I finished doing Much Ado About Nothing today. Here is the ah, love note I wrote on behalf of Benedick:

Yeah, he gave up and just drew emojis. 

And me, all dressed up for the wedding, as it were. 

Rainbow/black and silver cable vest

Back in the before times, I had this idea to mingle something in my usual rainbow with something black and silver.I had reasons, okay?

While i was attending Lambtown last fall, I got a bunch of books and got the idea from reading one of them to put together my own vest. I knit this (Ravelry link only)  over and over again into different sized stripes and then sewed them together and crocheted around the edges to tighten up the neck and armholes. 

I bought this rainbow and black patch for this vest a while back because I knew I was going to sew it on the back, and handle the back a little differently because I had a ball and some leftovers from a previous ball of the rainbow but only one ball of the black, so I knew I'd run out of that one first. So the back is different and uses up the black enough to sew a patch to it. I also did the back smaller than the front because well, that's how nature gifted me as a front-loader. That worked really well. It felt a little short, so I used up the rest of the rainbow yarn to add some ribbing at the bottom. 

I am really tired of figuring out how to selfie myself in clothes.

Yes, I know people complain if they can't see your face, but it's so fucking awkward to pose and SMILE and aim all at once. 

This is as good of a back shot as you are going to get under the circumstances.

I'm surprised it's finally finished because this was my "portable project" and I only worked on it when I was at the bar or otherwise needed something small to carry around. I really didn't think I'd ever get around to finishing it since it was such a diddle-y thing. However, I've gotten more done on it since quarantine because I was trying to knit while walking around my apartment for exercise. Go figure. 

I'm happy it's done, but I'm surprised it's done this soon. Vests are the future these days because nobody sees you below the tits any more.

Baby Yoda Army, Round 2

Yes, I ran out of the usual yarn for one of them.

On the one hand, they are done. On the other hand, I am sad because I can't see the people I was going to give them to and there is no way in hell I am going to buy packaging and then go to the post office to mail them all out. So people probably won't ever get them. 

I really wish I'd finished them earlier, but I spent February making other presents and the like and.... yeah. We had no idea we'd lose all opportunities there. 

Dreamcatcher birthday presents

So it's a local friend's birthday. What the hell do I do in the darkest timeline for that? 

She showed me a dreamcatcher she made a few weeks ago, so I decided to attempt to make a version of that on my own, both in necklace and in one to hang on the wall.

She has a pacemaker/bad heart so she can't wear metal any more, so I had to do it totally metal-free. I've told her about crocheting necklaces, so decided to give her one of those.

'

I had some stiffening spray around the house I bought for some other project and never got around to using, so I tried it on these. According to the label it's supposed to dry within an hour or quicker if you blow-dry (and then it does wash out should you screw it up). It actually worked quicker on the bigger piece than the smaller one, which took overnight to dry both time, even after blowdrying. The big one was done and stiff in like a few minutes of blowdrying, so I'm not sure what happened. Was it a density issue?

I had to use the stiffening spray twice because of her medical condition and I figured out of paranoia I should wash them when I was done. I attempted to wash them in anti-bacterial soap, but then realized I literally had no way I could figure out if the pieces were dry without touching them with my skin, so so much for trying not to touch them or wear gloves :( Same problem I had with the Tempestry scarf. That took like, a week or so to dry in full, I think.

I hate how everything in the world now is a biohazard.

I ended up leaving a note on the bag to not open them for a few days, just in case. Sigh. I didn't quite end up throwing it on her lawn like I expected to--had to walk it to the sidewalk and then have her dad get it. But still, it feels so asshole and jerky to do that, and then have to stand across the street just in case I'm a walking virus after 2+ months of no human contact. And that she can't actually open presents on her birthday (it was a drive-by). 

Well, hopefully she likes the decorations. Eventually. 

Just posting this for future reference

During Virtually Maker Faire a few days ago, I saw a video on paper quilling. It's a thing I'd like to try sometime, and I did buy a kit to do that with before quarantine, so I'm saving it on the blog until I get around to actually trying it. Ditto this.

Tempestry Project is up

Here.

The Arne and Carlos Knitalong Vest

So this is what I ended up doing with the squares. They came together into a vest or tank top (eventually more of a tank top) very well, albeit a bit big on me. I did some adjustments on the crochet on the edges to get it to lie down flatter.

It is unfortunately really hard to selfie myself (sigh....) in this vest, but I attempted:

One extra square

So I decided to make a vest/tank top out of the knitalong squares, but I realized that I needed one more. I thought about designing one that said "This Too Shall Pass," except I'm starting to think that maybe it never will, so I couldn't stomach that. I decided to come up with a square that combined several themes from other squares.

.....Yeah, it's obvious where my brain is at :( 

 

I got a pet!

So I saw this online recently and thought it would be hilarious to make my own hamster and cage accessories  I don't have a pet because before this I was never home and it's too late to get one now, but heck with it, I'll make a hamster!

This is all the funnier to me because a coworker of mine went through 5 hamsters with her 4-year-old. They tended to die in random ways and she managed to substitute two new hamsters before her kid discovered the third dead body. I am told that after 5, they have now given up.

This reminded me of Rex, the mysteriously undying hamster in the Stephanie Plum series. Stephanie loses three cars a book, but somehow the hamster stays alive? I have decided that it's not contractual immortality--that one or both of Stephanie's off-and-on dudes must be substituting in new Rexes and she doesn't notice. She's not a good detective.

Hence why this one shall be named Rex The Undying. 

I have this weird plastic...shelf thing that generally sits behind me holding stuff like office supplies. I've decided to create "bars" on it and set it up so that it's behind me while on my personal Zoom. This should be a fun sight gag for people.... 

Water bottle, ball, bowl with lettuce and carrots in it.

All the items at once (there's also a snuggly bed).

The hamster has more "fresh food" than I do right now.