Mostly crocheting!

I've been being more active on Ravelry, and sometimes even actually starting the projects I put in my queue! I know, awesome, right?

Here are some recent crafty photos:

This is my most recent finish, a headband I made in two days. I still can't decide how much I like the grayish lavender with the light green, but those were the only two colors I had in sport weight and I felt like learning how to change color. (It was surprisingly easy, given how much my mom complains about it.) For fellow Ravelers, the pattern is here.

 I made T-shirt yarn! It was easy and surprisingly relaxing. I used this tutorial to make the center pull ball as I went.

 I promised a finished headphone sleeves pic, and here it is! My friend said she thinks the cats won't bother them now, so I've got my fingers crossed. I used embroidery floss to mark the right and left earpieces, because I covered the markings on the 'phones themselves.

 Action shot of my dog using the bed I made for her! I made an oval version of a Craftster tutorial find, using some fleece blankets I got for 2 for $3. Can't beat that! I had enough left over to make two cat beds, but the cats won't use them anymore now that the Christmas tree is no longer a protective overhang.

D20 bag is slowly progressing... It turned out that I was counting the rows wrong at the beginning and end, so the edges are too bumpy, but I don't think it'll show when I sew everything together. My more immediate concern is finding a cure for the 16/20 blues...







I saved up this picture post for a while so it looks like I've been productive, but actually, aside from the headband and T-shirt yarn in the past few days, I've been slacking since I got back from Toronto. I want to get to Michael's and add to my yarn stash as inspiration, but I still have so much cross stitch to finish! Grr.

Christmas crafts and Toronto

I've got a lot of Christmas gifts I'm still working on. It's not as bad as it sounds: my sewing circle delayed our gift exchanging until January because several of us were out of the country - including me! I visited Toronto to spend time with my boyfriend for two weeks, just after Christmas. It was wonderful... We stayed right next to the fashion district and Chinatown, so there were TONS of awesome craft stores, cluttered with buttons to the ceiling, and upscale fabric stores with gorgeous silk dresses in the window I could never afford... But I got 5 zippers for a dollar, which made me super happy!

Anyway, I wasn't spending most of the trip crafting, but I couldn't update here with what I was doing, because we didn't have internet where we were staying. So I got about halfway through a crocheted D20 for the boyfriend (I'll mail it to him when it's done), and I finally finished the Kaylee bookmark I'd been working on for him since his birthday (in September!). Kaylee is our favorite character from Firefly, which we both agree is our favorite show ever. I used some cute free sprite patterns that I found, and made a pattern for Serenity by myself. I am so happy with how it turned out, but I can't show you the final product since I only finished gluing on the "sandstone"-colored felt to the back just before I left. There are pictures on the boy's camera, but I have to wait til he sends them.

I got a lot of machine sewing done this afternoon, but I can't reveal what, because it involves gifts for sewing circle members... Also, I'm not done with the non-machine sewing yet.

(NSFW after the jump; if you don't want to know about my sex life, stop now)

Family trip, a brief history of my crocheting, and first post!

I told my mom that I would come work on my grandmother's old house this weekend if she would help me with a set of headphone sleeves I'm making for a friend. It's my first crochet project, if you don't count the 100-foot-long chain I made before my chain stitch was even. The chain was going to be a scarf, but it was made with some terrible, scratchy acrylic from the 80s that I bought at Goodwill for practice, so despite being a gorgeous dark blue, I don't know what to do with it aside from wrap it around furniture.

I always thought crochet was magic, somehow. I think my mom must've crocheted around me as a baby, so I developed a little fetish for the shiny aluminum hooks. We have a ton of beautiful crochet Christmas ornaments that she made with glittery thread. Now that I've learned a few stitches (chain, slip and single crochet in rows and in the round), I'm still thinking that the fancier projects with those lacy holes and weird places to insert the hook are, indeed, magic. But crochet (at least sometimes) involves less counting than cross stitch, and definitely has less stopping to separate and smooth new threads, so I can do it more easily while watching TV or something.

At any rate, my mom confirmed my suspicions that it would be easier to do the headphone sleeves with sport weight rather than worsted weight yarn, and to crochet in spirals instead of in rows. And she gave me some sport weight yarn from her stash that works well with the headphone color.

I worked on it in the car on the way here, and some during the day, but slowly. I think I'm crocheting too tightly which is why I'm having so much trouble getting the hook in. It's prettier and neater when it's tight, though... *sigh* So now I've got a good six inches going... Only 4.5 more feet to go!