Better Late than Never

Here are some pictures of the two washcloths I made last week for Baby Nephew Alex (well, more for his Mum to use on him, really!). I've been interested in dishcloth / facewasher patterns for a while. There are so many different patterns and colours, they're quick and easy to make, and then you get to use them every day! Having something handmade and colourful always make those daily tasks much more fun. (Or slightly less tedious, anyway.)

In one week, I managed to make two:

Item number 1 below is a knit/purl relief cloth with a Rubber Ducky on it. Cute! The pattern is from Ravelry [member access only]. I enjoyed making this one. The only issue was - it only came in the form of a chart, and I can't read charts for the life of me, so I had to spend some time 'translating' it into written form, i.e. Knit 4, Purl 3, Knit 7, etc. I think I made a mistake somewhere on approximately the 50th row, but I managed to fix it up as I went along.

Rubber Ducky in Ochre.
The second cloth was my first attempt at Illusion Knitting. Check it out. This is how it looks straight-on:

Chequerboard in Honeydew and Denim - try to ignore the mistakes!
But if you lay it out flat and look at it from an angle, a picture emerges - voila!!:

One has to bend right over to see this effect.
See? See what I did there?
It looks really cool in the picture, but actually, I'm not that impressed with Illusion Knitting. I've only ever seen it used for scarves and dishcloths. And how often are you going to lay your scarf out on a flat surface to look at the picture? The chequerboard pattern was just a simple beginner's pattern, true, but they all look the same when viewed straight-on - i.e. stripes with weird, slightly bumpy bits here and there. The process of knitting it was intensively boring, and would be ten times worse with a more complicated picture. So my answer to the question of Illusion Knitting is, "thanks, but no thanks."

The yarn for both of these is Cotton from Bendigo Woollen Mills. Yeah, it seems a little exxy at $12 per ball, but they're 200g balls rather than the usual 50g. That's massive! The balls didn't look any smaller at all after I'd finished, so I think you could squeeze at least 6 washcloths out of each one. Or 4 hats. Or 2/3 of a shrug....

In more current news, I've started making a hat for my friend Bec who is doing the World's Greatest Shave. I'm so proud of her! When she asked me to knit her a hat, I was eager to get straight to it. Hopefully there'll be something worth photographing soon.

My Nephew!

I've been rather busy lately, and here's the reason why!

Introducing my nephew Alex.
Awwwwwwwwwww. I hate babies, but I love this kid!
I've been working hard on things for him, and done lots of work in my art journal. I'm also taking a new approach to writing. I've had ecstatic highs, and crushing lows. What is this, a cheap romance novel?

I'll show you some of this stuff when I get around to taking some photos.

Have a good week!
xx

Signs

Signs That 2010 is Going Well Already...

* I've painted my fingernails every week.

* I've tried at least two new art journalling techniques already.

* I exercised even when it was hot.

* I walked 3.7km last week - all in one go.

* I said no!

I *told* myself....

I told myself I wouldn't buy any more craft supplies this month. I've spent far too much on them already! (Actually, I don't really believe that. There's no such thing as too much! But somehow I don't think my doctor, pharmacist and landlord see things the same way.)
But when I saw a link to Angoo-Mart [now defunct] on Eccentric Spirit [now defunct] (a new blog I found today) I got so excited that I couldn't help myself! They sell deco tape online - lots and lots and lots of it! And it's so cheap that it wasn't hard to tell myself that I could justify buying a few. (Just a few, yeah, right!)
If you hear squealing in about a week's time, that'll be me!


cute deco tape (DXK series), originally uploaded by Angoo tape.

P.S. No, I didn't buy quite this many rolls!

What I've Been Up To

I've been dividing my time pretty evenly between art and craft.
On the craft front, I've started the famed Shrug:

I've decided to call it the Little Trilobite Shrug, as that's what the lacy shapes remind me of. I've done the upper back and just started the left front. I've also been plugging away on the Chequered Baby Blanket and I'm probably about 1/3 of the way through. I could be an Auntie any day now! So I'm starting to feel a pretty urgent need to work on it.

Last week I drew my second Mandala:

I've also been working on my Art Journal:

I decided to ephemera-ise (?!) the brochure I got at the "A Day in Pompeii" exhibition by gluing it into my art journal. This is one of the rare pages that I've had a plan for from start to finish. I really like how it's turning out. Perhaps I should plan them more often! I just had an image in my head of how I wanted it to look. All except for the inside of the brochure:

It's taken me about a month to get this far. I seem to start a lot of pages and then don't know how to finish them. Last week I went through my journal and marked all the pages in progress with sticky notes for convenience. There were 14!! Then I went through again and marked all the pages that I had a plan for. There were 4. But I'm not too worried about that. The whole point is to have fun!
This is another page that's been in limbo for a while. I started working on it again yesterday:

It's sort of dedicated to food and cooking. I cut some images of foods from supermarket catalogues. The page had a quote on it that was really irrelevant to the theme, so I copied it out on another page and painted over it. Today I tried doing some gel transfers on it, but they didn't really work out (see bottom left-hand corner). I'm sure I'll think of something to do with it one day soon!

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P.S. By "ephemera-ise" I just mean: "don't chuck in the bin."

Things That Irk Me #142

When instructions for a craft project say to use a certain material, but only say the brand and don't say what it actually is.

For example, I have seen a few projects lately that say, "use Elmer's to to attach the [whatever it is]". What is Elmer's? We don't have it here in Australia! They could at least say what it is! Is it a white PVA glue, a clear tacky glue, a school paste? Would it be so hard to add just a few words so that I know what SORT of glue to buy? Do I have to google it? Can I be bothered?

Egh!

Desperately seeking a shrug pattern!

I used to be a predictable crafter, a seasonal crafter. In the winter I would knit and crochet, in warm weather I would embroider, and in hot weather I would draw and paint. Now I'm all mixed up. It's the middle of summer and I want to crochet! Specifically, I want to make myself a shrug (or bolero, if you prefer). I never used to like them very much, but now I've realised they are my friend. I have a purchased one that I wear all the time. I can wear it to work when the weather's cool in the morning, take it off in the office when I've been moving things around, then put it back on when I've cooled down and am feeling self-conscious about my arms again. I love my shrug, but a girl needs variety, so I decided to make myself another one. I trawled through Ravelry until I had a short list of patterns. It took me quite a while. The vast majority of them were too long, too short, arms too long, no arms, front wrong shape, too lacy, too solid, too wierd, too many dangly bits, etc etc. The modular patterns with crocheted squares seemed to appeal to me the most, perhaps because I've been working on the baby blanket in modular form recently.

Still, none of them were quite right. Perhaps if I chose a stand-alone square block pattern and used the joining method in these patterns to construct a shrug? I can do that! I can use my existing shrug to work out the measurements! So then the process of choosing the right block began.

My long list consisted of about 15 blocks on Ravelry, not to mention any that might be in my 200 Knitted Blocks and 200 Crocheted Blocks books! I let things sit while I was waiting for my yarn to arrive - my first order from Bendigo Woollen Mills - yay!!! It arrived yesterday and now I want to get to work! I logged on to Ravelry today to record my new purchases in my 'stash' section, and then I decided to see what other projects had been made with the same yarn. (Ravelry is great like that!) Well, I just happened to come across this!

It's perfect! The body is made all in one piece, with the arms added by working along the armholes. So no sewing up or joining pieces. And the pattern is really pretty. There's only one drawback - it's not available for free on the Ravelry website. I can't have instant gratification, dammit! It's from Debbie Stoller's book The Happy Hooker. (Get it?) I'd borrowed it from the library some time in the distant past, so as soon as I got home, I went through my half-organised stash of photocopied patterns. But I didn't find any from The Happy Hooker in there! How strange! And how frustrating!

So I logged onto the Library website and put a reservation on it. There are 3 copies, and they're all out! How long will it be until I can have my shrug?

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All images thanks to Ravelry.