Knitting away: the finished Bainbridge Scarf and a Buttonhead

My knitting mojo is in, for the moment, like a tide of creativity. Sometime, it'll go out again, and the shore will be bare, and all those sea creatures that live in the boundary zone will be exposed for a little while, visible to us land-dwellers ... er, where was I? Oh, yeah. For now, the knit stitches are swelling. When they recede, they'll leave behind lots of new knit projects for all to see. Does that make more sense? ;)

Of course, let me ruin my cute little metaphor by prematurely showing you what the waves have brought in. No need to wait for the tide to go back out. It's the finished Bainbridge Scarf!


Is it ridiculous, or what? You really need to see it on me — it can be tied a couple of different ways and it's really ridiculous (in a good way) when worn. But you may have to wait for cooler weather to come down southward before I feel like taking a picture. Or maybe I'll get impatient and snap a horrible mirror photo. ;)

I also cast on a Buttonhead hat with some handspun, for the knitalong on the Leethal Knitters group. This handspun, to be precise:


You can see another view of the yarn here.
This is the beginning of what promises to be a very texturey, colorful, personality-ful hat.


It looks like it's going to be a quick knit, too. Look for the finished hat in the next week or two, depending on what happens with my life, universe, and everything.

Craft or Bust Week 38 Check-In and Roundup (September 19-25)

The holiday season's coming up — where are you, CoBers? Surely you have gifts to make that you could count toward your CoB crafting ... ;) In the meantime, it's back to me and Jessica, neck and neck!

Roundup of Week 37: What We Crafted From September 12-18

Last time, on Craft or Bust...

• Jessica worked on Karl's gloves some more, and witnessed the invaluable power of the lifeline when she noticed the thumb gussets just weren't coming out the way she wanted. She also knit the pieces for a D&D themed bag, also for Karl, and knit some more of That Mitten.

Check-in for Week 38: What Have You Done Lately? (September 19-25)

My crafty gears are a-grinding ... Last Sunday, I was at the Florida Fiber-In in the morning and back here at S&C headquarters by afternoon. We went to the park to refresh our brains after the stressful and sleep-deprived drive home, during which I was uncharacteristically worried about something having gone wrong at the house. (Thankfully, nothing did go wrong. That I noticed. ;)) I took pictures and some video at the park, which I still need to upload. I also baked chocolate cookies. Monday, no craftiness, aside from buying some lobster claw clasps. Tuesday, I photographed some of the first mate's jewelry and sorted ex-trashed belongings. (Does the latter count as creative?) Wednesday, there was more sorting of ex-trash and more chain mail jewelry photos, and I also cast on the Bainbridge Scarf, my first continental knitting project. Thursday, I put together a craft show application (yayyy!) and did a bunch of research on fibers for some handspun yarn. Friday, I knit some more of the Bainbridge Scarf, baked beer bread, and ordered some Cotswold locks. Saturday, I did more research on fibers and dyes for handspun yarn, and sacrificed a thrift store sweater to the Fiber Recycling Gods. Apparently as a reward, I won some yarn from the Grad School Knitter (and that's a link to her blog)! Then I finished the body of the Bainbridge Scarf and added green leaf-shaped ties — done! ;D

Your turn! Share your own crafty accomplishments from the past week in the comments here, and don't forget to use the standard check-in format on the rules page!

And as always, if you're new to Craft or Bust, check out the CoB rules page and sign up if you like — it's easy!

Adventures in Recycling (or, So Begins the Death and Rebirth of a Sweater)

I had a problem: My sense of yarn is not as good as my sense of fabric. I mean that quantity-wise; I tend to add yarn to my stash in increments of one or two balls (or skeins, or whatever), not knowing what on earth I'm going to do with it. Then, when I do figure out what the yarn would be great for, I never have enough yardage.

This is not a problem I have with fabric. I can find a great fabric, buy one or two yards (for probably the same amount of money it takes to buy one ball of yarn — sigh ;)), and know that when I finally decide it should be a skirt (or a shirt or a tote bag or a pillowcase or a sharktopus stuffed toy), I will have enough fabric to make what I want to make.

But notice! The first sentence of this post is in the past tense. I admit that the problem isn't solved completely, but I have found a solution, and occasionally I even remember that it's already in my stash.

The perfect-fit cheap solution: Recycle old sweaters into yarn. I get cool, unique yarn, and it inherently comes in yardages high enough to make, say, a whole sweater. ;)

The one thing this solution isn't? Quick. But you know that saying about fast, cheap and good ... You get to pick two of the three. This is a case where that's true.

And my stashing habit is also easily fed by sweater collection. I have boxes of thrifted sweaters waiting to be transformed, phoenix-like, into cool new yarny things. Meet today's victim:


Rarr! I am sweater ... but not for long!
It's a soft, cuddly cabley thing that I would honestly love to turn into something for me. But the joke's on me, because I can't. And this is why:

Oh, the bunnanity!
CRAP. I am allergic to angora.

Another reason I really meant it when I titled the post "Adventures in Recycling." ;) I'm not deathly allergic to angora (though I don't know anyone who is...), but it's enough to make me itch and sneeze and generally be uncomfortable. The last time I tried to recycle an angora sweater, I did all three of those things. This time will be different ... oh, yes, this time will be different. At least, I'm going to do everything in my power to make it different.

Weapon Number One in the Battle of Fiber Artist Vs. Angora: over-the-counter allergy medicine. Because my allergy is mild, I'm hoping a mild allergy medication will help. Cross fingers.

Weapon Number Two: a bandana. For tying over my face, specifically, to minimize the amount of angora fluff that makes it into my nostrils.

Weapon Number Three: gloves. I doubt I can knit or weave with gloves on, but who wants to bet I can't rip out knitting with gloves on?

Bonus Secret Weapon: sheer force of will! I don't think it'll actually make me stop itching, but if I can wear my pretty angora-blend sweater (which a well-meaning family member gave me for Christmas) all day because I Goshdarn Want To Wear It, I can spend an hour or so ripping apart an angora sweater and another hour or two weaving it ... right?

If I don't post again for a while, let's hope it's not because I've suddenly gotten so allergic to angora that my hands have swelled up too much for typing. ;) (Doesn't seem that likely, does it? I really hope not...)

Learning to knit continental with the Bainbridge Scarf; also, bread

Post-Debacle recovery continues apace. My broken knitting needle cable is keeping me from finishing the last bit of ribbing on my hooded shrug (arrrrgh!), so I cast on a quick new project while I'm waiting for the cable replacement to arrive (or for myself to get impatient enough to just go buy a new circular needle). Also, new project = because I really needed to practice continental knitting before what I learned at the Florida Fiber-In wore off.

My chosen pattern for the First Continental Knitting Project is the Bainbridge Scarf (which you can find as a free PDF download on Pepperknit). So far:


Yelllooooooowwww...
In case you're wondering what the crap happened to the corset project I was working on right before Dragon*Con, I really would have liked to get back to that immediately after coming back from Atlanta, but the pattern pieces and the mock-up corset were among the things that got rearranged and/or thrown out in the Debacle. I actually found the corset mock-up when we dug through the trash last Friday (so THERE to the person who threw it out to begin with!) but it's currently awaiting its turn in the washing machine, so I haven't been able to bring myself to work on that again. Plus, the craft room is a bit of a mess, since the person who rearranged part of the house decided to use that room as a holding area for nearly everything that didn't get thrown out.

Anyway, today I also made bread.


Beer bread, to be specific. It was from a mix someone gifted us a while ago, but after the sad loss of my sourdough starter (yes, another casualty of the Debacle), it helped remind me of exactly why I need to get off my butt and bake more. Besides, it smells just as good as bread made from scratch, and I'm sure it'll taste yummy, too. Maybe I'll go find out right now. ;)

Stash and knowledge enhancement at the Florida Fiber-In and beyond

Fiber, fiber friends, and fun — that's what the Florida Fiber-In is about! And now the cheesy alliteration is out of my system, and we can all move on with our lives.

This weekend past the first mate and I headed out to the Florida Fiber-In, held in Orlando this year. (The earlier part of that day was taken up by our visit to the local landfill to rescue what we could of our Trashed Belongings — but that's a topic for another post.)

Historically, I've been pretty bad about hard-core socializing at the fiber-in, even though that's a large part of what it's about. I just have this separation in my brain between stash/knowledge acquirement and socializing. At Dragon*Con, I socialize while I'm waiting for one of the other two things to happen — I don't go primarily to socialize (any more; arguably, socializing was more important to me when I first started attending). And I treated the fiber-in a similarly antisocial way for the first two years I went, but this year I was determined to be one of the Cool People chatting it up in the knitting/spinning circles.


Wearing name tags is a good way to encourage people to find you accessible. Wearing a knit name tag at a fiber event is an even better way to provoke interest and random spurts of conversation from passersby.
And I win! I did what I set out to do, and there's even a small amount of photographic evidence. ;) (For instance, I am the spinner with her back to the camera sitting closest to the table in the foreground of this photo. You can also see a bit of me in this photo.) I met a lot of new people, hung out, had fun, and learned some new skills: First, how to make a skein on a niddy-noddy (I had until then used chairs, a swift, and been spoiled by my skein winder), then how to knit continental — without twisting my knit stitches. And I even got to spin on a neat Pipy Wendy spinning wheel, which has a crazy metal flyer frame and a lovely, addictive spinning rhythm. I got to see the inestimable Ginger spin on every kind of spindle under the sun, including a trindle, a Navajo spindle, a takhli, and a Russian spindle. And I had two yummy new kinds of tea served up by the knowledgeable and pleasant Pat.

I admit I did a wee bit of shopping as well.


Clockwise from top left: Yellow vintage mohair yarn and tatting shuttle, two balls of Cascade Fixation and a lace shawlette pattern, five skeins of ladder yarn, a skein of superwash Merino, some blue roving (or is it top?), a large cake of rose-colored Merino roving with a skein of bison/cashmere/nylon yarn, and, in the center, most of three skeins of dishcloth cotton. At the far left edge of the photo, you can see the corner of a knit handbags booklet.
The two bits of spinning fiber, I bought from official Fiber-In vendors. The rest of it I acquired at the auction to raise funds for running the event and at the "destash" garage sale on Sunday morning. I also bought some purse handles and other handbaggy accessories that were supposed to go to the garage sale, but that I got late late Saturday night (or early early Sunday morning, depending on how you demarcate your days ;)) from the person who was meant to bring said items to the garage sale.

I imagine I'll make some kind of shawly thing out of the yellow mohair and put it up in the Etsy shop. Come to think of it, I bought something nearly that same shade of bright yellow at the Fiber-In last year, so maybe I was actually compelled to bid on the mohair out of some awareness of a yellow-buying theme. I also now have a tatting shuttle, which will hopefully inspire me to figure out how the crap tatting works.

Oh, and yesterday the first mate and I went to a local thrift store to check out what was there in case some of our Trashed Belongings were actually Donated Belongings (the person who "cleaned" our place while we were at Dragon*Con has been known to donate things to a specific local thrift store, sometimes even with permission ;)). We didn't find any of our stuff, but I did pick up a miniature easel that I'm hoping to use with my triangle loom, and a vintage book of men's sweater knitting patterns that has some wonderfully cheesy photos in it.


So while there has, indeed, been loss this month, there have also been fresh gains. And the space once taken up by the belongings I lost is quickly being filled up by new ones. So there, evil Loss! Fie on decluttering! At least, fie until I decide to do my own decluttering. I do want a clean space in which to exist. I just want to clean it myself, rather like I want to do my own learning and growing rather than having someone else's learning and growing agenda foisted off on me. How weird of me. ;)

Craft or Bust Week 37 Check-In and Roundup (September 12-18)

I have a lot of non-CoB-related stuff to say this week, so watch the blog for more updates (and pics!) soon. As far as CoB goes, let's just get blathering!

Roundup of Week 36: What We Crafted From September 6-11

Last time, on Craft or Bust...

• Lesley has recently started back at university and is thus Quite Busy, but she has indeed been crafting! She's been knitting her Sprout Blanket, has one sock half done, and knit a hemp washcloth for a knitting group member who's moving to Halifax.
• Jessica cast on and ripped out Karl's gloves two more times (no one should ever say knitting isn't work ;)), and finally got the cuffs right, so she safeguarded her achievement with a lifeline. (One of my favorite knitting "tools"!) She also cast on a mitten and knit about three inches during a defensive driving class — a good use of time, huh? (And she has also corrected me on my sloppiness from last week's check-in — she's only actually working one job, but she was offered more than one recently, which is where I got confused. :D)
• Susie knitted a Citron (awesome — I saw someone working on a Citron this past weekend, too), deconstructed capitalism, and ordered a spindle.

Check-in for Week 37: What Have You Done Lately? (September 12-18)

Me? On Sunday, I put together a little guide to the Florida Fiber-In for personal use and preregistered for the fiber-in. Monday, I didn't craft, but I did catch up with my Etsy messages. Tuesday, I went through my fabric stash looking for t-shirts to reconstruct and fabric for making a bag; bought some brown cotton seeds; called a local bead shop and put a chasing hammer on hold; and knit 10 rows on the hooded shrug. Wednesday, I took a bunch of wildflower photos on the way back from the post office and whipstitched together my handwoven one-stripe bag. Thursday, I picked up the chasing hammer from the bead shop, uploaded and organized my Dragon*Con Flickr set, and started organizing a list of craft shows to do in the next few months. Friday was "dig through trash for our lost stuff and, once clean again, drive to the Florida Fiber-In" day. Saturday, I attended a bunch of fiber arts demos at the fiber-in, took some video of the fiber-in on my phone, shopped for spinning fiber, knit on the hooded shrug up until my cable needle decided to come apart while I was doing the edging increases, finished spinning the purple sparkly batt I started a while ago, used a niddy noddy for the first time, and learned how to knit continental. Yay!

So what about you? Share your own crafty accomplishments from the past week in the comments here, and don't forget to use the standard check-in format on the rules page!

And as always, if you're new to Craft or Bust, check out the CoB rules page and sign up if you like — it's easy!

Summer reflections, and the one-stripe bag lives!

It's almost the end of the summer. How was yours? Mine was full of far more trial and tribulation than I'd hoped for (of course, who hopes for trouble? ;)), with golden moments fewer than I'd wish (but that's frequently true, too, isn't it?) ... and yet I still haven't fallen off the Craft or Bust wagon, which is a pretty darn notable achievement. Crafting despite crazy times and negative experiences isn't something I've been able to accomplish in recent years — until this year. So yay. That's my big positive accomplishment for the summer.

There's a smaller positive thing happening here at the end of the season, too. Summer's end is apparently inspiring me to dig out old UFOs (Unfinished Objects, in case anybody's going "What?") and work on them. One of them is the "one-stripe bag" I started last November — and hey, picking it up again before its anniversary is an accomplishment, too! ;)

Here it is on the loom, with various blue stripes of warp and sparkly silver and white crochet cotton as weft:


One of the things that took me forever was weaving the warp ends back into the fabric, which I did because I didn't want fringe, and at the time when I started this, I was still afraid of zigzag-stitching my handwovens.


Weaving in all those ends by hand got pretty tedious, but it does make a nice, clean, sturdy finished edge.
Even after I finished weaving in the ends, I was vaguely afraid to trim them off — as if the handwoven fabric would suddenly unravel if I did. (I know, it won't ... but the first time doing a thing is often a time of uncertainty. ;)) I wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to to sew the stripe together to magically turn it into a bag shape, either; the proportion between the handle and the bag depends on how you arrange the strip. (It sort of "spirals," with the two ends of the strip becoming the sides of the bag, and the center of the strip becoming the front and back of the bag and the shoulder strap.)

But with the Florida Fiber-In looming on the horizon, I kept thinking thoughts of bringing a handmade bag to show off. And so I got off my butt and just loosely whipstitched the thing together, telling myself, "I can always take out the stitching if I don't like the way it turns out!" So here's the result.


It looks a bit better on a person than on a door handle, but you get the idea. It's a little smaller than I wanted it to be, in my head, but that's okay, too. It's a good size for a casual walk — it'd fit a book, a small notebook, and maybe a small knitting project, which ain't bad.

More UFOs coming to a blog near you soon, maybe. And then maybe, in the newness of the new season, I'll feel inspired to start some new projects. :D

Exercise in contrasts: a wildflower walk and a sordid tale

I mentioned in the last Craft or Bust post (conveniently, the last post in this blog, so if you didn't see it, it's not far off ;)) that something traumatic happened, and oddly enough, although I've posted about it on some of my Yahoogroups and on Facebook, I have a strange reluctance to post about it here on the blog. I even have a blog post written (two versions of it, in fact), but I can't quite bring myself to post it. I guess the idea of having my trauma indexed by search engines is a little much at this point — which probably has to do with my natural inclination to avoid putting too many gory details out for just anyone to find, as well as with the fact that the Great 2010 Dragon*Con Debacle was basically a huge violation of my privacy and rights — not something that makes me feel like sharing myself with the public.

But I can't just leave you all hanging, since I've mentioned it — and hey, you lovely blog readers deserve to know about the trials and tribulations of my life just as much as, or maybe even more than, the people on Facebook and Yahoogroups ... I mean, you come here and actively seek out my blather! ;) So let me say what I can.

Basically, when we went on vacation over Labor Day weekend, the person who was watching the house decided to "clean" for us. Which of course means much worse than that.

Imagine coming home from a vacation to find your inside cat wandering around outside, no food in the cat food dish, your garden torn up selectively, and large chunks of your possessions missing — but not just the high resale value stuff; yes, your vintage furniture is gone, and your original artwork, but what's left of your furniture has been rearranged inexplicably and while most of your linens were thrown out, some of them were replaced with "more appropriate" ones, and the not-particularly-valuable-to-anyone-else missing items include your curtains(??), your financial and personal records, most of the decorative/kitschy items you bought to make your house into a home, your mementos, silly cute gifts from friends and family, years' worth of greeting cards, nearly the entire contents of your bathroom and a lot of what was in the fridge, a large chunk of clothing, a box of costumes you made yourself (including some you made ten years ago with your mom before you even knew how to use a sewing machine), and your sketchbooks and notebooks, containing years' worth of ideas and inspiration.

Oh, and the person who removed your belongings left you a morally righteous note that basically says you should be thankful that so much of your life has been thrown in the trash (and it was — in the sealed trash compactor 20 yards from your front door), because it was for your own good, to help you see that you're a horrible, unethical, valueless person — an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a devil worshipper — who clearly has no taste and whose time and financial investments have clearly all been a waste. Oh, and everything missing from your house was a manifestation of Evil and moral backwardness. (My purple vase, my sage plant, that package of white card stock and the first mate's smiling Buddha were so eeeeeeevil! :P)

That's basically what happened to me and the first mate, except that there was no note. We were told those things to our faces by the person who was supposed to be feeding the cats and watering the plants, when we confronted said person about where the heck our stuff had gone.

So ... that's the story so far. Nice, huh?

But it's not over yet. (Why make it quick if it can't be painless? :P) On Friday, we get to cross our fingers that the trash people let us dig through the contents of the trash compactor when they dump it out at the landfill, even though Friday is a busy day for them — and then cross our fingers some more that some of our stuff is somehow salvageable. If you'd like to cross your fingers with us, your added positive vibes are very, very welcome.

I've been pretty stressed out about the possible outcome of Friday. I mean, last week I spent a huge amount of time calling around, trying to figure out who picks up the trash and if they would even let us dig through it, then I was literally one step away from having everything settled so that I could dig through the trash last Friday — an entire week early, which would be one less week of trash piled up on our belongings in the trash compactor — and the property manager at the condo management company said they couldn't give the trash company permission to pick up the compactor early because it would somehow be a liability. Most of the people I've talked to about it, including the person at the waste management company (who would probably know if people were prone to suing each other as a result of being allowed to dig through trash for their lost stuff), one lawyer and one soon-to-be-lawyer, are pretty sure that the company just doesn't want to pay the early pickup fee, which is a massively lame excuse for a hugely uncompassionate act — I offered to pay the fees.

Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me in time to call their bluff and offer to sign a waiver of liability so they can't hide behind that excuse any more; by the time I'd thought of it on Friday, their office had closed. (Stupid me, I had other things on my mind, like inventorying the gigantic amount of stuff I lost...) And our personal schedules would have prevented us from going to dig through the trash until today at earliest this week. That's if the waiver of liability offer worked, and we could get the paperwork done quickly (ha!). So we just decided to wait until the normal scheduled pickup this Friday. Sigh. Which is the day we're supposed to leave for the Florida Fiber-In. Sigh again.

(Side note to the property manager: I honestly think hiding behind a supposed liability is despicable behavior. Every single other person of the many I talked to last week went out of their way to help us get our stuff back as soon as possible. You, on the other hand, appear to have been hiding behind your assistant and overhyping an irrational fear of extremely unlikely legal action rather than choosing to be a human being and to help two fellow human beings in pain and need. I wish this were The Mummy, where "nasty little fellows such as yourself always get their comeuppance." Rest assured that if your happiness or success ever rest in my hands, I will very clearly remember your irrational lack of compassion in what has been the most emotionally trying time in my adult life so far.)

Before everyone starts asking about legal action and involving the authorities, let me say: The person who did this to us is ... a family member of sorts. So ... another closely-related family member — let's say "the Responsible One" — will be replacing as much of our stuff as is replaceable. And since we're reasonably sure the person who did all this to us — let's say "the Righteous One" — isn't exactly ... mentally and emotionally stable ... it wouldn't really help much to drag the Righteous One into court; meaning it wouldn't necessarily prevent future bad behavior. So we're leaving it to the Responsible One to figure out how to set right the Righteous One's emotional and mental stability, if you know what I mean.

...and that was a lot more than I thought I would say about that.

I know this is my craft blog, but oh my heck does this fall right into the "safe space is necessary for creativity" theme I've been harping on for a few months. I mean, my craft stuff was miraculously mostly still here — the Righteous One did this on purpose, claiming the "business stuff" was important, but the effectiveness of this statement is diminished by the failure to remember that handmade costumes and business records are also business stuff — but a lot of it was rearranged, so that I wasn't sure where much of it was. (We did also find some relocated non-craft-related stuff that we originally thought was missing, but a great deal of the missing things are large enough that they would still be visible if they had been moved elsewhere in the house.) And, er, having someone come into my personal space and literally treat my treasures like trash is a huge drain on my emotional energy.

On the other hand, I do have a new source of inspiration: I can now make sure every replacement item I buy is something the Righteous One would hate but that I love. Yes. I can make my house even "worse" than it was before. I could even make sure my new craft projects and knitting designs are as "offensive" as I can make them (that is, creative, nonstandard and interesting — you know, evil!). I'd love to make my home so "morally wrong" (like it might have colors in it, and candleholders, vintage furniture, souvenirs of trips, handmade objects, and gifts from my friends and family) that the Righteous One can't stand to come through the door. Not that that will ever happen again anyway, if I can possibly stop it.

WHEW.

So there it is. You know the story, and I hope you can empathize, or at least not judge me harshly for being angry and hurt and honest (and long-winded ;)). Though my plans for post-Dragon*Con crafting are totally shot, I can't let this defeat me. I have to rebuild, and keep crafting, and put even more of my heart and soul into the business and into creating new treasures and mementos. And I'll start keeping new records, sketchbooks and notebooks. (EVIL!) That's the only way I can heal the gigantic hole in my life.

Which brings me back to that wildflower walk that's in the title of this post. Today while I was walking back from the post office, I made myself take a moment to look at everything that's blooming right now. It's kind of like spring here in Florida in late summer — and our growing season is, after all, backwards from the growing season in many places. (Our organic farm CSA runs from November through May, for example.) Almost everything is in bloom, and I've actually never noticed before today how many different colors of flowers we have just among the (probably) native species. Some highlights are below — I hope you enjoy, and that the sharing of my "roadside nature walk" photos balances out the negative thoughts I shared with you earlier.










More nature pics, including some more from today, in my Florida set on Flickr.

And thanks, as always, for reading along. :D

Craft or Bust Week 36 Check-In and Roundup (September 6-11)

Sorry for the lack of posting, all ... I had a pretty traumatic week last week (and when I say "pretty traumatic" I mean it was possibly the most traumatic week of my adult life so far). I had so much planned — but eh. I'll post some details on what happened once I get my head a little clearer. Now, back to CoB:

Roundup of Week 35: What We Crafted From August 29-September 5

Last time, on Craft or Bust...

Jessica the Steadfast did battle with the back of the house alongside her mom on Sunday, and then took a well-deserved rest from crafting. During the rest of the week, she knit the thumb of one of the Fair Isle mittens, knit some of her dad's sweater, and got a couple of craft books. She started another new job, too, got a huge box of yarn from Knit Picks, started AND finished a trilobyte hat for her friend Alex, and darned one of her handknit socks. Sounds like a pretty good week...

Check-in for Week 36: What Have You Done Lately? (September 6-11)

In the past week, despite Traumatic Events by the name of the Great Dragon*Con Debacle of 2010, I did do a little bit of crafting. Sunday I was still at the con. Monday, I shopped at the con and bought a neat "transitional stone" cabochon to wrap someday. Then we got home to ... ridiculousness at the house. More on that in a later blog post. Most of Tuesday through Friday was taken up by trying to undo as much of the Debacle damage as possible. On late Friday I dug out some gift knitting needles and some gift yarn and started trying to knit a face scrubby to replace the one that got thrown out in the Debacle. Saturday, I tore out, reknit, and finished the face scrub, updated the CoB RAK list and sent it out, knit a few rows of Brian's long-abandoned Duel sweater, and knit and mucked up about half a wedge of my long-abandoned Perfect Pie shawl. Maybe today I'll unknit it stitch by stitch, since I was stupid enough not to put in a lifeline ... sigh.

So what about you? Share your own crafty accomplishments from the past week in the comments here, and don't forget to use the standard check-in format on the rules page!

And as always, if you're new to Craft or Bust, check out the CoB rules page and sign up if you like — it's easy!

Craft or Bust Week 35 Check-In and Roundup (August 29-September 5)

Check-in coming to you from Dragon*Con 2010 in Atlanta, GA! All things considered, it's slightly amazing I'm managing this check-in at all. ;D

Roundup of Week 34: What We Crafted From August 22-28

Last week...

• Jessica finished some socks, started a crafty journal, finished a pair of Fair Isle mittens aqnd swatched for the gloves redo, "reinvented garlic bread" and made macaroni and cheese and a raspberry cream pie, knit several inches of her dad's sweater, and spent time cleaning her bedroom.
• Meredith C. has checked in again after a while, and has since her last check-in been planning her first handspun sweater and working on a pair of Noro striped knee-highs.
• Lesley finished a pair of wool socks — her first homemade Christmas gift of the year. She also played with paper crafts by making "Homemade for You" tags with her knitting-themed stamps.
• Susie wrote up a "non-pattern" and put it up on Ravelry due to Blogger technical obstinacies, started her blog interviews, knit some of her Citron, crocheted, and worked on her Loopy Cowl, an original pattern by her.

Check-in for Week 35: What Have You Done Lately? (August 22-28)

This is what I did this week, interrupted by Dragon*Con, during which I stood in Many Lines: Sunday, I sewed an apron and knit 20 rows of the hood of my hooded shrug. Monday, I tried on a bunch of costume stuff and took photos. Tuesday, I put together a PDF of the costume pics from the day before and sent it off to the approving body at Robot, Monster and Ghost. Wednesday, I did some more costume trials with photos. Thursday I knit some of my hooded shrug during the 8-hour drive to Atlanta. Friday, I did Dragon*Con. What more can you ask? Saturday, I knit some more of my hooded shrug while waiting for the How to Make Booze panel.

So what about you? Share your own crafty accomplishments from the past week in the comments here, and don't forget to use the standard check-in format on the rules page!

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