Lexi made two egg heads but she’s refused to allow me to photograph them because she wants to post them on her blog.

For some reason I thought this project would be a little more involved than it actually was. Eggmond’s collar is a bit of cardboard tube scavenged from an aluminum foil box, connected with white glue. I drew his face on using sharpie marker. Then we filled his head with potting soil and topped it off with a sprinkle of wheat grass grain (which are just starting to sprout.)

I’m growing quite fond of Eggmond.

Superstition from FiberOptic.

I just finished the two on the left (the one on the right is from before.) The new skeins are sock weight, and Navajo plied to keep the colors in solid blocks.

I am also working on buttoning up some sewing projects. First there were the needle rolls:

Even though this one has my knitting needles in it, I’m keeping one of the other ones, my needles are purely for display purposes.

I feel so organized.

And then there were my bloomers  and chemise. Those are finished now, but I’m still holding off on the hardware for a corset. Should a busk and boning magically appear on my sewing table that would be finished next, but I’m not going to count on it happening any time soon. I finished my last corset by gutting the hardware from a bustier, for better or for worse, I’m all out of bustiers that I’m willing to chop apart.

So that’s pretty much it for now, at least until I run into some more slightly less than finished projects.

The Black Coffee roving from FiberOptic is almost sock yarn now.

Please excuse the greenish hue, my camera does that under fluorescent lights. The greenish hue doesn’t exist in real life and I’m sure it could be corrected in Photoshop except that my attempts at correcting it turned out far worse than the original.

Note to self: If I *must* own expensive software, I might want to learn how to use it before it is obsolete.

At least I managed to get an accurate picture of the finished Dragon Tile.

I was worried that the red wouldn’t stand out against the gray background but it seems to stand out just enough.

Good lighting didn’t hurt either.

I’m itching to do some botanical dissections in thread. I’m thinking pillow covers.

The above paragraph probably explains why my husband rarely buys me flowers or houseplants doesn’t it?

I haven’t put forth any serious spinning effort in a while, every once in a while I grab my spindle and work on the reddish brown baby alpaca but the wheel has languished in the closet since August.

Opal knows what it takes to get a girl spinning again and put it all in one care package for me. Caramels, warm hats, comfy socks, and of course yummy roving. Thank you Opal!

Not pictured is the HK notepad, the coolest cabled hat ever (I’m not taking it off) or the caramels (because I’ve eaten them and they were yummy) or the gorgeous bracelet (note to self, buy more batteries for camera.)

Aren’t the amigurumi the cutest ever? Lexi loves them so much (according to Lexi they know all the funniest lines from Finding Nemo, it’s rare to find such movie loving crocheted sea dwellers.)

The roving is called Evil Clown, but spun up I think it is more “kind hearted Gypsy princess” than white faced carnie gone bad.

On other fronts I was called an “elitist b*tch” because I commented on how many knitters and spinners had cool blogs. That’s almost as good as last week when I was called a passive agressive control freak, not sure what that was for, or what the writer hoped to accomplish so I’ll go on assuming that the writer of that message had a psychotic break of some sort. This is the best I can do since I’ve given up on the cussing words.

I was offline just after the inauguration (power outage) but I did watch the inauguration ceremony and President Obama’s speech online prior to the outage and I made some notes when it was was clear I wouldn’t be able to comment until the lights came back on.

First and foremost is that I have a dim recollection of the National Lampoon’s “The lost white house tapes” and I half expected, half hoped that there would be a swearing out ceremony for George W. (perhaps Jesse Jackson could have delivered it.) I was rather disappointed that there was no swearing out ceremony.

Second was that the hot phrase on Fox News, was “a peaceful transition of power”– their correspondents must have said “a peaceful transition of power” at least 20 times in the ten minutes that we actually watched the live feed online. So much so that I figured that Fox had gone with the “If you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all” bit of wisdom.

MSNBC was much better, and still it was a little creepy coverage-wise. There were many comparisons between Obama and Lincoln and Obama and Kennedy. As nice as those comparisons were, I figure it’s not good luck to compare a newly elected president to two presidents who, when all is said and done, are most famous for being assassinated. Don’t jinxy Obama!

(Yes, I am just superstitious enough.)

I’m using a single thread in a fine needle to lay out the black lines, once those are finished then I’ll be able to go back in and flesh out the negative space using a background color (yet to be decided) and then start working on the small detail areas of the dragon. The rest can be filled in like coloring in a coloring book.

Inevitably there’s a rule of craft tools. When one, such as myself, decides she no longer has an interest in continuing with a craft and sells off all her supplies for said craft it’s just a matter of time before a major brainstorm and those supplies would have (if they were in the person’s possession) been put to good use once more.

This makes me reconsider everything. After all, that knitting machine that I’ve been not using may be the next thing. Right now it’s a cobweb decorated white buffalo, but sometime in the future it might actually become some sort of necessity. Then again, if I keep it around I may never have that stroke of genius that actually justifies it’s presence.

Dammit. There really should be a kind of reverse rental service, people could come and take my junk away until I decide I need it, then they could give it back to me. Wouldn’t that simplify things?

I digress.

This is a 3.5×3.5 inch square, I’ve run completely out of the light blue that I was using for the background. All those little loops eat a lot of embroidery floss. I’ll have to get more first thing in the morning as I’m eager to get this off of the hoop and start something new.

]]> http://yarnporn.com/2008/11/igolochkoy/feed/ 2 http://yarnporn.com/2008/08/the-pixies-are-hard-at-work/ http://yarnporn.com/2008/08/the-pixies-are-hard-at-work/#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:50:49 +0000 wendy http://yarnporn.com/?p=253 The collar is now on Lexi’s dress, and the sleeves are basted on but still need to be serged. The pixies’ work ethic seems to leave a little something to be desired since they keep getting distracted by things like watching movies, making soap, taking the dogs for walks, reading books and buying holiday print fabric. Those darned pixies are much better at buying things than finishing projects.

Have you ever seen a fabric and thought “Wow that is perfect for X project, I’ll get it!” and then you pay for it and get it home and can’t effing remember what project you had in mind? Yeah, that’s exactly what I did– twice now. I have two different sets of coordinating Christmas fabrics in 1 yard, 1/2 yard and 1&1/2 yard lengths– and now I don’t know what I intended to make. But it must be good enough to make at least two– I have no clue.

I’ll probably remember, on Christmas Eve. I think the holiday stress from last year is finally catching up with me.

Whatever the project is, I know it requires quilt batting, because when I picked out the first set of fabrics, I also made a point of getting low loft poly quilt batting, which is weird because I actually have cotton quilt batting. I seem to have lost my mind, if you see it would you kindly return it to me? I miss it.

The pixies also found a nice online source for loaf molds for soap making and faster than you can clap your hands and say “I believe in fairies” they were ready to order. (I’m liking the pixies because blaming them for everything means I don’t have to take personal responsibility– pixies are awesome.) I’ll post when my order comes in, but I believe they use USPS priority mail, the prices are great; my only real complaint is that Spiritcrafts isn’t very well advertised, so I haven’t found it till now. If I’d found them sooner I would have molds and cutters already– instead I’ve been using a plastic bin for my cold pour mold (which, granted does work, but doesn’t make my soap very pretty.)

So right now I’m working on: a batch of castile soap (which is taking an agonizingly long time to saponify, typical for non-pomace olive oil), Lexi’s dress, trying to remember the mysterious forgotten intended holiday project, and reading “the Ghost Map” by Steven Johnson.

I haven’t done much that’s been yarn related, which is probably somewhat responsible for the non-blogging that has been going around here lately. Although I am starting to get my craft on again, I’m just not terribly yarny at the moment.

Or seasonably appropriate. I try to stay on top of the handmade gift making prior to the holidays, which means starting about yesterday in order to make sure that everyone that wants a handmade goody gets one.

Today my crafty goodness is centering around Christmas trees. My great-grandmother Cora used to make the most fantastic fabric centerpiece trees out of holiday calico prints. I think my mom might still have one packed away somewhere, I haven’t seen it since I was a kid. My version is scaled down (4 inches tall instead of 20 inches), all straight lines (Grandma Cora’s had zig zagging curls so that you could actually hang treats on the “branches”) and I added a little trunk.

I was only planning on making two more of these if this one turned out (I wasn’t sure it would but I think it’s kind of cute now that I’ve finished it.) I’m now sorely tempted to make a tiny saccharine sweet textile forest. I’m thinking the next one should have some strategic rickrack.

On the chance that this might turn out I took pictures of the construction process. So here are the instructions:

1) Cut six triangles of fabric. Make three pairs with fronts inside. Stitch around using only 1/8th inch allowance (if you’re going to sew with a machine give yourself 1/4 inch allowance) leave bottom open.

2)Trim corners and turn, finger pressing seams.

3)Line up triangles and stitch with a running stitch straight down the middle, turning in allowances over the bottom.

4)Stuff with filling (I used poly-fil) Stitch the bottoms closed (I used a hidden stitch, but a whip stitch will work.

5)Glue brown felt onto something round, I used the plastic lid from a spray bottle, but a little one inch pvc pipe or a wooden thread spool would also work.

6)Glue trunk to tree.

Josey’s tooth fairy box disappeared some time ago, although he has a very promising wiggly tooth that will need to be exchanged in the near future. Lexi hasn’t yet started losing teeth but it’s never too early to prepare is it? Hence, the beginning of a tooth fairy box for my little darling.

I seriously forgot how fun decoupage could be. There’s a lot of waiting for the modge podge to dry. There’s also a lot of fussing with air bubbles. Fortunately after it sets up I’ll be able to sand it and then start adding all the necessary bits of trim and whatnot to pretty it up a bit.

And because I really don’t have an off button when it comes to crafting, I brought out another box to work on while the tooth fairy box was drying. This one is larger, creatively enough made from box wood, that I purchased years ago from a now defunct art and quilt store.

I honestly do not hoard art supplies. I swear I don’t. Some grand project will strike me as a fantastic idea and I’ll go get what I need. Then some part of the greatness of my project will be undermined by this really stupid thing called “reality.” So the supplies go into their newly assigned places and I go on with life. Then during the holidays, my birthday and every other time I see a family member someone will give me more art and craft stuff.

So right now I have the creative equivalent of religious guilt (for not using what I had at my disposal) and craft oriented attention deficit disorder. I will call this state “craftaholism.” There is no 12 step program, there is no cure.

My husband said “Someone took all the sunshine and tubby toast and left these dead bodies.”

Lexi said “Ok, my kitties.”

Josey said “Why don’t they have tails?”

Greta says “…”

And that about sums it up doesn’t it?