A Victim Of Craft Insanity
I'm a craft fanatic! I knit, I make jewelry. I customize dolls. I'll do almost anything crafty that involves fabric, fiber, paint, glitter, glue, and whatever cool stuff I can find at the local craft stores. I go crazy buying craft supplies and experimenting with them and occasionally I even manage to sell a thing or two. Right now I'm totally obsessed with knitting. So much so that my old enemy Tennis Elbow is rearing its ugly head. I've bought about a million dollars worth of yarn lately and am knitting like a fiend. I'm not a particularly experienced knitter just yet, so it's mostly triangle shawls right now, but I'm slowly increasing my repertoire of skills. So in case you haven't figured it out yet, I'll be posting all my projects on here.

My Real Dog, Taz
The dog dressed like a lion below the header isn't my dog, the Pomeranian above is. My Taz. I'm not a good enough knitter to make the lion costume in the pic yet, but I'd like to make it for him someday, though he looks pretty much like a lion already, he hardly needs the costume! I did just buy him a cute jester's collar. I haven't received it yet. I got if from eBay. I'll put up a pic when it gets here.

Monday, May 28, 2007

One Of My Current Projects




I'm currently attempting this shawl, with major variations. Since I'm still a beginner knitter, it's a really basic pattern. The pattern calls for a woolly specialty yarn on 10.5 needles, but I'm doing it on size 13 needles with a threading boucle, to make a summer weight lacey kind of shawl. I've also doubled the size. I'm a plus size so I like my shawls to actually go around me. I'm funny that way : ) Especially when it looks like the chick in the demo pic is about a size 2 at best. I never trust the pictures that come with patterns. They always show them on the smallest models possible to make the item look bigger than it is.

The yarn I'm using is cool. It's a thready boucle with a touch of metallic in it. The colors remind me of sherbet. It should be pretty. I'm only on the second row, so it's hard to see how nice it is yet. I've made several shawls with thready yarns already and I love how they turn out, so this one shouldn't be any different. I have yet to get pictures of them, but I just got a new digital camera, so hopefully I'll have pictures of them soon. My only gripe with this particular yarn is that it's a bit sticky. The fibers in it grab onto everything! They even grab onto my cuticles while I'm knitting. That might make for an ultra-clingy shawl. I'll see what happens after a few more rows. If it looks to be too dreadful, I'll have to pull it out. This yarn might not work well on its own. Will see.

I also have a shawl going with Lion Brand Homespun, which is one of my favorite yarns. One day I'll be a good enough knitter to work in the more expensive, natural fibers, but for now I stick to the cheaper, fake stuff, and as far as that stuff goes, I love Homespun. It's kinky, colorful, soft, wooly, and a pleasure to knit with for a beginner like me. And at $5-6 a skein, it's reasonable, though I actually try to get my yarns cheaper than that if I can. Ebay can be a great source for good buys. Once I get better at knitting and take on higher quality projects, I'll start using higher quality yarns as well. I like the stuff I'm doing now. The shawls are pretty, and I love the novelty yarns, fake or not. They're just so much fun!!!

I've made good progress on that Homespun project, so I'll get some pics of that up later.

I've got a bunch of stuff I need to get photographed now that I have a decent camera. I have a load of dolls that need to have good pictures taken. I tend to go back and forth on my enthusiasms. Right now I'm a knitting fanatic. Then I move away from that and into dolls or jewelry, then on to something else. I just go where the muse leads me, lol. I've been knitting so much lately that my tennis elbow is acting up big-time.

Time for dinner. Supposed to nice here tomorrow. Maybe a photo session and get some pics up.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.