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Category: Crafts

Craft projects of mine

  • Two More Monkeys…

    Two more monkeys…
    I had hoped that this week would finally mark the end of my sock-monkey-making labours, but it’s not to be. I made the fellow on the left there for my friend Kyrenia, who’s leaving our company and moving to Melbourne with her boyfriend. (Check out his jaunty wool scarf; it gets cold in Melbourne!) To my chagrin, the entire office fell in love with him and I had requests for three more. I couldn’t say no. I’ll be sewing blasted sock monkeys til I die! The rockstar monkey on the right is at long last being shipped off tomorrow to Adrien. His scarf is knitted from eyelash yarn and it’s so tomorrow, you know. If I have to make the damn things, I can at least make them fashionable. 🙂

    Kyrenia's Monkey     Adrien's Monkey

  • MonkeyYet another sock monkey…
    At last, I can cross another sock monkey off my To Do list. This one was commissioned by a well-known blogger as a Christmas surprise for his sweetheart. (I don’t want to give it away in case said sweetheart should stumble across this.) He’s stripey white/tan/brown with blue eyes. Cute, huh? Now there’s only one to go… He’ll be there soon, Adrien, I swear!

  • Two more Gryffindors!Two down…
    …one more go to. I am a Gryffindor scarf makin’ machine! These two are about to be sent off to Adrianna in Pennsylvania. I’ve got one more to finish before Christmas and then I’m taking a much needed break. I’m sick of scarves! 🙂

  • Weekend Accomplishments
    Did I mention that it’s Labour Day here? I really needed the three-day weekend. I entertained some of my girlfriends from the office here Friday night – in case you were wondering, that wasn’t me flashing her boobs on OfficeCam, incidentally – and spent most of Saturday recovering. I also knitted like crazy. I finished another Harry Potter scarf order – a Slytherin for Kathy. Check it out. (Did I tell you that I got my hair chopped off a few weeks ago? Because I did. It looks like crap here though because I was out in the rain.) I also braved the school holiday hordes in the city today to get myself some new gym shoes. I went to the Athlete’s Foot in Centrepoint and got properly measured and Fitprinted. It turns out that I have relatively flat arches but I’m weird in that I tend to roll my feet to the outside (whereas most of my flat-footed brethren roll to the inside). So I got hooked up with some sweet New Balance Women’s 811 running shoes. (Apparently they’re a new model because I can’t find them on the site anywhere.) So that’s my weekend done!

    Slytherin Scarf       My new shoes!

  • The Crafty Garden
    Since we now have a lovely tiled courtyard to fill up with plants, I decided to start with a succulent garden (since my friend Kevin has one and it’s gorgeous). I bought the plant stand at Kmart and then picked out some sempervivum, a green Jellybean, and another unnamed plant. Yesterday the Snook helped me transplant them into some record bowls I had made. On top I put decorative pebbles and some of the reject glass marbles left over from making marble magnets. Pretty huh? We also planted some basil and cherry tomatoes in the small plastic pots, so hopefully we’ll have some homegrown veg this summer.

    Succulent garden  Close-up

  • Knitted Baby Cardigan

    Baby SweaterKnitted Baby Sweater
    My boss Andrew’s wife just gave birth to a baby girl last Friday and I wanted to make them something special. (Okay, so I also wanted to suck up and use some of my extra wool.) I found this pattern for a quick garter stitch sweater knit cuff-to-cuff. I had to start three times but the finished version only took me about five hours. I know it’s blue; but that’s all I had – and it does have pink buttons! I hope it fits.

  • Greek Key Jumper

    Snookums in his sweater

    Curse be damned; I knitted the Snook a sweater. This is my first seamless and patternless sweater and the first of my own design. The stripe pattern is from a woven scarf his mother gave him a few years back. (I just graphed it and worked it twice, once in reverse.) The sweater itself is green and the pattern’s in grey. It’s made of a thick Aran wool and it really absorbs the light, which makes it pretty hard to see here. It’s got a regular crew neck and raglan sleeves, which means the seamlines run up diagonally from the armpit to the neck (like a sweatshirt). My biggest problem was getting the cast-off collar loose enough to fit over his head! Here some more pictures of him in his favorite modeling poses:

    The first is called “The Beach is That Way!”…

    The Beach is That Way!

    …and the second is “What Time is It?”. I make him do them whenever he tries something on, because it cracks my shit up.

    What Time is It?

  • Storm at Sea Quilt

    Storm at Sea Quilt

    It’s done! Today is the wedding of my friends Kenya and Sal, and this is the quilt I made for them. It’s a traditional American pattern called “Storm at Sea”. I started it just over a year ago (but I took a bit of break in the middle of the summer). The top was machine-pieced but I quilted the whole darn thing by hand. I also used a bias binding for the edge, which was a first for me. All in all I’m really proud of how it turned out. And isn’t the basket cute? I saw it in a shop yesterday and realized it was the perfect way to package the quilt.

    Storm at Sea Quilt

    Here’s a shot of the quilt pattern itself. As you can see, it’s all made up of triangles and squares but somehow they kinda fool the eye into seeing curves and waves.

    Storm at Sea Quilt

    The Snook is actually standing on a chair and holding the quilt up here (and hiding behind it) so you can get an idea of how big it is. It’s probably about queen-sized, I’d say.

    Embroidery Detail

    I suck at embroidery, but it’s sorta tradition that you personalize the quilt for the receiver. Here’s my, uh, “rustic” attempt at adding their initials.

    Like I said, I’m proud of it. And hey, that’s one more thing I can cross off my crafty backlog!

  • Sweater Sampler

    Sweater SamplerThree-Legged Dog Sweater
    Just kidding. It’s actually a Sweater Sampler from Jacqueline Fee’s book The Sweater Workshop. She recommends you knit this thing so you can practice all the different techniques you need to knit a seamless one-piece sweater (the Holy Grail of knitting, as far as I’m concerned). It has different widths of ribbing, increases, decreases, a cardigan placket with a buttonhole, a hidden pocket, a knitted belt, two-color knitting, and four different kinds of cast-offs. Fun, huh? It reminds me of a Thneed. It took me a few days but I’m a lot more confident now. Onwards and upwards!

    Sampler Front      Sampler Back

  • Harry Potter Mini-Scarf Bookmarks

    Harry Potter Mini-Scarf BookmarksMy friend Steph is a primary school teacher and a few months ago she was admiring the Harry Potter scarves I’d knitted. Since I had lots of the yarn left over, I told her I’d knit a mini-scarf to use as a bookmark for each kid in her class. They’re extremely simple and you can finish several in one night. I used a normal DK (8-ply) yarn and a slightly smaller needles size than recommended. (This makes for a bulkier bookmark.) Cast on 8 stitches in red, knit six rows, and switch to yellow. Knit six more rows and switch again, each time carrying the unused color up the side. When you’ve got thirteen stripes, cast off and weave in the ends. Add three tassels on each end, made from one strand of each color. Voila! And I even managed to get them done before the next movie comes out. 🙂

    (Special thanks to Amy, who helped out by knitting some up from her own stash.)