- How do you transport pavlova? And do you pre-assemble it or not?
- Inventor Makes Fuel Out Of Brewery Waste
- Giant Knitted Squid – Amusing. I tend to prefer knit graffiti that involves actual skill and creativity, like this.
Category: Crafts
Craft projects of mine
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Shared today on Google Reader
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Sock Monkeys
For those of you who don’t know, back in 2004 I actually posted a photo tutorial for making your own sock monkey. So even if you don’t win this year’s Oscar Contest, you can always make your own!
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The 9th Annual webgoddess Oscar Contest
My annual Oscar Contest is now open! I have added an additional category this year (“Best Cinematography”) to hopefully help avoid ties. If you pick the most correct answers, you’ll win the big prize: a pair of custom-made, one-of-a-kind Black Swan and White Swan ballerina sock monkeys! One is beautiful, pure, and repressed; the other is totes sexy-crazy. They might just be my best sock creations yet. (However, I disclaim all responsibility if you use them to act out the movie and then it drives you insane.)
SPOILER ALERT!
Once upon a time, there was a young ballerina named Nina. She was beautiful and pure and kinda repressed, and her greatest dream was to dance the lead in Swan Lake. She lived with her demanding mother in a tiny womb-like apartment and didn’t have any friends. She was a little weird.
Through a series of events that may or may not have involved a pilfered lipstick and a stolen kiss, Nina got her wish and got picked to play the Swan Queen. As rehearsal wore on though, Nina started to get paranoid. She began to fixate on the new dancer Lily. Was someone following her? Who was that lurking in the shadows and behind mirrors?
Nina was perfect as the White Swan, but she couldn’t embody the sexuality and ecstasy of the Black Swan. She tried everything, but mostly her creepy Mom kept thwarting her. It really started to get to her. She spent a lot of time looking in mirrors. She got a weird rash on her shoulder.
On a night of reckless abandon, Nina goes to a club with Lily, drops Ecstasy, and makes out with a random dude. Then in the taxi, Lily makes a move…
They spend the night together – OR DO THEY? – and it pretty much facilitates Nina’s full psychotic break. She freaks out on her Mom and has some more avian hallucinations. On opening night, she wrestles with Lily in the dressing room and dramatically stabs her. Nina’s Black Swan persona finally emerges.
Exhilarated, Nina dances the third act as the Swan Queen passionately and sensually. As she dances, her arms sprout feathers and become full black wings. She loses herself and transforms into the Black Swan, earning a standing ovation. The whole audience wonders what the hell just happened.
But what becomes of the White Swan? Pretty much just what we all expected. OR DOES IT?
THE END
Actually, I’ve got some more photos so you can see the details of the prizes. First, the White Swan. She features a white dress with feather detail, white tutu, pink ballet shoes, and white feathered headpieces. She has a mysterious rash on her left shoulder.
Next, the Black Swan. She features a black dress with feather detail, black tutu, pink ballet shoes, and a black crown (of pipe cleaners). She has red button eyes and hand-painted makeup on her face and hands. She also features velcro down the back of each arm so you can attach a pair of black feathered wings.
Massive thanks go to Kunaal and Josh for all their help, especially with the fantastic photos. And as always, thanks to the Snook for inspiration and assistance.
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Opera in the Domain 2011
This was the fifth year in a row for our unofficial knitting meetup at Sydney’s Opera in the Domain. We had about twenty people in our group in the end, all gathered together under the stars listening to Bizet’s Carmen. I’d never seen that opera before, but the music was instantly familiar from hundreds of movies and commercials. I thought Carmen and Escamillo were great, but I just couldn’t buy Don Jose as a romantic lead. (I whispered to Rodd that the actor reminded me of this.) There were sound problems throughout the night, especially with Don Jose’s microphone. I have no idea how the people at the back of the Domain were able to hear anything! But the dancing was great, and I was bopping along in my seat to a lot of music. Too bad the story has such unlikeable characters!Anyway, the day actually started long before that. I was the first one from the group to get to the Domain at about 12:40pm, and I could see that the field was going to fill up faster than usual. Reecie arrived not long after and we quickly set to work defining our area with blankets and shade tents. Within half an hour we were already having to defend our spot from invaders! Luckily reinforcements arrived soon and we mostly managed to fight off encroachers. (The nerve of some people! Turning up right before the show and thinking they could plop down right in front of us.) We picnicked and drank wine and knitted and got interviewed by some local news cameramen. It was a lot of fun!
Reecie had an extremely cool little pop-up sun tent. She also specially ordered an inflatable pink flamingo for our camp. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?
Me and Reecie, trying to stay in the shade as much as we could. We faithfully reapplied sunscreen every two hours.
The cavalry have arrived! There’s Sally huddled under a tent, while Issy and Derek guard the eastern frontier.
Tia was the mum of the group for the day, making sure we didn’t get sunburnt and handing round all the yummy food she’d made.
These cameramen came around from Channel 7 news. They interviewed Sally first, then did a shot of several of us toasting the camera. Then they went back to interview Issy and Derek.
None of our interviews actually made it onto the news footage, but they did show us all saying “Cheers!” (Thanks to Daniel for the photo.)
Self-portrait looking towards the opera stage.
It’s the Bazinga Twins! Me and Issy wore the same shirt (on purpose).
Here’s me and a new friend – Amanda (aka Ptinutz on Ravelry). She came in the afternoon and her boyfriend came later. It was great to meet her!
By 6pm it was really starting to fill up and they asked us all to take down our sun shades. Here’s a shot of the crowd. It was really getting difficult to keep people from shoving into our area!
As usual, Mazda was going nuts with the corporate branding. They handed out fortune cookies that contained lousy ads instead of real fortunes!
Just before the opera started, here’s Reecie and Lucas having a little rest.
And that’s it for the photos! Snookums turned up just before the show with my dinner (Oporto and beer – he is awesome). When the show finished, we packed quickly and joined the crowds streaming to the city. Luckily it didn’t take us too long to catch a bus home.
Thanks to everyone who came along!
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Shur’tugal Socks
Shur’tugal Socks
This was the first pattern scheduled for the “Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club” I’m participating in. The idea is that the group (which is now up to 200 members!) chose six sock patterns via a vote and throughout the year we’ll be knitting them with wool from our stashes. (You can read more here, here, and here.) I have plenty of sock wool in my stash, so in December I tucked away six special skeins for this series. On New Year’s Eve, I pulled one out at random: the Shibui Sock in “Pagoda” (a beautiful burnt orange) that I bought at my Mom’s LYS in Goshen. I wound the two skeins together into a center-pull ball and then I was off!The problem is that I hated this pattern. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s really well-written. I’ve just found historically that I get really, really bored with tiny allover repeating patterns, especially those involving two-stitch cables. (Remember Conwy?) Plus I just could NOT memorise the pattern. Twice I picked it up at the wrong spot and had to frog back. I knitted both socks at the same time on 2.75mm circulars, and I did the larger size. It just seemed to take FOREVER. I was so thrilled to finally cast them off today and be done with it! They are pretty though. More details are over on Ravelry.
I will also admit to some irrational irritation with the pattern just because of the name. Apparently it has something to do with “dragon riders” and it’s from that book I hated.
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Robot Skirt
Robot Skirt
I forgot to mention that I finished my third skirt! This is the same A-line pattern that I used for the previous two. (It’s the one from the class I did at the Sewing Room last year.) The fabric is a thick cotton drill I got when I was visiting my Mom in the U.S. last year. Fun!The shoes are new Converse “re-issues” I got last weekend from Platypus. Only $39!
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Olivia’s Rainbow Blanket and BSJ
Olivia’s Rainbow Blanket and BSJ
Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the first two projects shown on my knitting round-up below haven’t actually been blogged yet! That’s because I only just finished them yesterday. First up is an actual, honest-to-god CROCHETED item: Olivia’s Rainbow Baby Blanket. This is a project that I basically made up myself. My Mom had sent me 5 balls of “Sugar and Cream” cotton last year and I’d idly started crocheting squares based on this pattern. When my niece was born a couple weeks ago, it inspired me to join them all up into a blanket for her. I did 12 multi-colour squares (rotating the stripes each time so the squares are all different) along with 4 solid squares. I joined them all together with Cream, then crocheted a Cream border all around. Then I did a scalloped border in a different colour on each side. I’m really happy with how it turned out! I was debating on whether to back it with some fleece or flannel, but I think I like it the way it is.
Next is yet another Baby Surprise Jacket. I used some Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed that was leftover from my St. Brigid. It came out quite big, but I figure she’ll grow into it. The buttons are made out of coconut. 🙂
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New Skirt
I sewed another skirt!
Saturday I finally decided it was time to start sewing some of the skirts I’d planned. I’d bought a couple different fabrics over the past months, and last weekend I prepped them (basted the edges, pre-washed and dried, and ironed) and cleaned out my sewing machine. So I dug out the pattern from my class a few months ago and got stuck in.This is the one that I managed to finish (since it’s the only one I had a zipper for). The fabric is a very fine wale corduroy (light blue with dark blue paisley) that I got on Clearance at Lincraft. It was so cheap that I didn’t have high expectations for the finished product, but I figured it would be good for practice. To my surprise, it squared up nicely and didn’t give me any trouble at all. I laid out all my pattern pieces and remembered to make sure the nap all ran the same direction. The sewing was fairly straightforward, though I did have to refer back to my old skirt a few times just to double-check the order of operations. Sewing in the zipper was probably the scariest bit, and I played around with several different techniques (including sticky tape!) before settling on basting it in by hand just to make sure it didn’t shift around. I only made one tiny mistake in the whole project, when I forgot to leave a seam allowance to turn back at the opening of the facing near the zipper. (That’s the final step – to turn back the raw edge and tack it down on the underside of the zipper. I managed to get it to work, but it may fray a bit at the top edge. I might put some clear nail polish on it.) Here’s a bigger picture so you can see the true colour a bit better.
I wore the skirt to the barbecue on Sunday, and needless to say I’m THRILLED with it. The cord feels very soft and lovely to wear. My only disappointment is that the waistband seemed to bunch up by the end of the day. I had the same problem with the original skirt though too, so it may be a fit issue. Any sewers want to advise me? Or do you think I need thicker interfacing for the facing pieces?
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Sam Socks
While these turned out great in the end, I always seem to have terrible issues with Cookie A patterns. I bought Sock Innovations last year and this was my first project knitted from it. I discovered pretty quickly that there were major errors in the printed pattern. It completely omits the ribbing at the top of the leg, and it also tells you an incorrect number of leg repeats. (If you plan to knit anything from this book, I highly recommend you check the errata. There’s a LOT of it.)I knitted these on two 2.75mm circular needles. I could tell they were going to be tight around the ankle, so I cast on extra stitches so that I’d have a full extra pattern repeat around the leg. I knitted the heel exactly as written and just left the extra pattern repeat on the top of the foot. I usually like to knit my socks two-at-a-time, but that’s basically impossible with this pattern because you are constantly shifting the starting point of each round. So I was forced to knit each leg separately down to the heel, after which I knitted both socks together down towards the toes.
The wool is a single skein of Yarntini Mint Fizz Stripe that I received in a swap from @dancingman. It was lovely to knit with. The third photo (heel detail) is closest to the actual colours: spring green, aqua, and purplish-grey stripes. I had about 1.5m left over when I finished, which was perfect. I’m very happy with how these turned out! (More details and photos are on Ravelry.)
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Maile Sweater and Swirl Hat
Maile Sweater and Swirl Hat
Hey, I knitted something! It’s been months and months, actually. But last week my friend Kevin’s first child was born, and such a thing demands commemoration. I picked the pattern and the yarn before the birth, assuming that the combination would work for either gender. It helps that the father is Irish. 🙂
The cardigan is the Maile Sweater. It’s knitted from the bottom up in one piece. I actually knitted it twice: the first time on 3.5mm needle as per the pattern, and the second time on 3.75mm needles. (I thought it looked a little small so I frogged it and started over.) On the first attempt, I followed the pattern exactly including knitting the sleeves flat and joining them with no cast-off stitches. I wasn’t thrilled with it though, and the underarms had a few stitches that looked very stretched. So when I frogged and reknitted, I took the opportunity to experiment. The sleeves were knitted this time in the round via Magic Loop. When I joined them, I set aside 4 live stitches on the body and 4 live stitches on the underarm of the sleeve on waste wool. I later grafted these together (a la Elizabeth Zimmerman). It makes for a very nice finish, and it definitely made those first few rows after joining easier.
The wool is “Merino Chubby Sock” in Barleygrass by the Knittery. One skein was plenty to knit the jumper, and I had so much left over that I actually made a matching hat. The pattern is the “Swirl Hat” from Sheepy Time Knits. And I still have wool left over! This stuff goes a long way.
As usual, there are more photos and details over on Ravelry: Maile Sweater / Swirl Hat. Now I just have to wait to get a photo of the baby actually wearing them!
