A fancy shawl, a simple headband, a wee heart and some epic socks

Time for another crafty photo update, me hearties. ;D

Finished: Hairpin Lace Shawl
Pattern: Woman's Hairpin Lace Shawl from Coats & Clark

So I finally! Finished! My first hairpin lace shawl! As UFOs go, this one wasn't too bad — less than a year old when I finished it off. Ha. ;D And it also conveniently illustrates the fact that with a camera that I can actually change stuff on (you know, like the aperture! And the shutter speed!), I can finally take photos of my projects draped on random other stuff. (I can also fail to remember to take the cluttery porch crap out of the first few photos I take, and then end up liking one of the early photos.)


Finishing this shawl made me want to go crochet other stuff — but most of the hairpin lace projects out there that I want to make involve paying for patterns, and right now I don't have any spare pattern money ... sniffle. I may be forced to design my own hairpin lace something-or-other just to get a fix.


Finished: Three-String Headband
Pattern: Simple Crochet Headband from Creativeyarn

If I want to design my own hairpin lace, though, it'd probably be useful to actually kind of know how to crochet. (Since hairpin lace is a kind of crochet and all. Yeah, yeah. You know it already, right? ;)) So I'm sloooooowly re-teaching myself to crochet by doing easy things, instead of jumping straight to hard things I don't understand that will confuse me and turn into UFOs sitting on the mountainous pile of temporarily abandoned projects. Here's one of the easy things in question (and look! I can take pictures of my own head with the new camera! ::hugs camera::).


Finished: Heart Coaster
Pattern: Heart Sachet from Lily/Sugar'n Cream

One of the things I loved about crochet when I first started doing it is that it's fast. And it's pretty easy to make cute shapes if you actually understand what you're doing (which I didn't then and kinda-sorta do now — a few years of knitting seems to have helped out with my understanding of things like increases and decreases ;)). So having no money + needing a Valentine's Day gift for B = crochet to the rescue! Voila, crocheted heart coaster!



In Progress: Epic Socks
Pattern: "Bling (Arkansas)" by Adrienne Fong, originally published in 50 Socks (50 States & More)

And I finally cast on the second pair of socks I'm knitting as a trade for yarn — officially the pattern is called "Bling," but I'm calling them the Epic Socks because of a comment someone made about how they sound. ;) They're lace and beaded, and can I tell you a secret? Shh — I've never beaded lace before. In fact, I can't remember beading my knitting before ... at least not successfully. Unsuccessfully, sure; I have a bunch of yarn and beads sitting in a basket in the craft room that were meant to turn into a beaded shawl. But both the lace and the beading on these socks are turning out to be way easier than I expected. Is my knitting mojo high this month, or was that just a contrast to the fact that it took me almost three hours to knit the hemmed beaded cuff? Yeah, that's the thing in the photo right here. Three hours, 'cause it's folded in half and knitted to itself with multiple sets of double-pointy objects that had to interact with each other in friendly ways.


So there it is. That's what I've been doing lately. Let's pretend this is a Craft or Bust update and you guys can tell me what you've been making now, too — right? Right??? Talk to me already! ;)

Pics: Crafty Projects I Have (Very Recently) Known

Because I keep sitting down to write blog posts and they keep turning into massively epic expositions on human nature and my experiences as a human being, and then I keep going back to edit them and turning them into almost completely different expository epics, and it has thus far been an endless cycle that's kept me from posting anything here, today I am Buckling Down and just posting some photos of crafts I've been doing. HA! You now have proof that I exist! Feel free to report the discovery to the local newspapers. ;)

So, ahem, to get to that crafty stuff...

Finished: ChiChi Tea Towel
Pattern from Yarnplay at Home by Lisa Shobhana Mason

I finally found the crochet hook that I needed to finish the edging on the ChiChi tea towel, so I went ahead and finished it. Yay!


And here's another photo of the full towel. Please excuse the fact that I kinda sorta made the photo obscenely bright when I was tinkering around with it in Photoshop, and also the fact that I am Too Lazy (or maybe Too Impatient) to go back and fix it right now. Or maybe ever. (I got a new camera for my birthday, and this was taken with the new camera in iffy lighting on a not-quite-white background. Too many variables = wonky photo adjustment. I'll get better, I promise. On future photos. ;))


Finished: Crocheted Organizer Basket
Pattern: Stash Baskets from Bernat (You need to have a free account to see the pattern, by the way.)

Apparently finishing the tea towel put me in a crocheting mood — and why not? I went through a crocheting period right before I started knitting regularly, even if I gave up crocheting for the most part because I couldn't figure out how it Really Worked. ;) I am also in dire need of storage solutions uniformly across the house. So I crocheted an easy little basket to help me organize the bathroom, and — wonder of wonders — to match the tea towel. (Matching bathroom decor may not be miraculous to you, but I don't think I've ever owned two towels that matched each other, much less owned bathroom accessories that match. It's, er, my eclectic style, right?)


One ball of the cream-colored yarn didn't manage to be enough to finish the sides of the basket, so my basket has a racing stripe. (The bottom is also blue.)


In Progress: Brigit Socks
Pattern: Brigit from Monkey Toes (Link leads to a Ravelry page where you can download the pattern.)

I've also made some amount of progress on the first Brigit sock, which happens to be the first full-fledged sock I've ever knit for myself. The other socks I've knit for me have been missing bits: One pair has no toes and the other pair has no toes and no heels (because they're yoga socks).


That's a good way to psych yourself into doing socks, by the way ... Or at least, knitting socks with the scary bits missing made me ridiculously aware that a sock is basically two tubes joined by a fiddly bit, with some decreases at the end of one tube. As the decreases aren't any scarier than the ones in a hat, the only scary bit remaining is the fiddly heel bit, and if you slavishly follow the heel directions in a good sock pattern, even the heel isn't very scary.


See, look! I knit this heel differently from the way the pattern said to and I wasn't scared at all! ;)

In Progress: Hairpin Lace Shawl
Pattern: Woman's Hairpin Lace Shawl from Coats & Clark

Finally, I've picked up this poor old abandoned hairpin lace shawl that I started with some recycled yarn last year for the first HPL-Along on my Ravelry hairpin lace group.


The crochet hook for the tea towel was hiding in the hairpin lace project bag (because hairpin lace is actually a form of crochet, even though I forgot that while I was puzzling over where the Size G hook had gone), and after I borrowed the hook to use for the tea towel, I couldn't just leave the poor shawl alone again. Only one more strip to go ... or maybe two. And then more joining. Uh ... I should stop thinking about that or the shawl might end up in the UFO mountain again. ;)

And ta-da! That's it for the stuff I've been doing that has to do with yarn. I do have about 4,000 photos of food I've made and/or consumed in the past couple of months, though. To post another photo-riffic post, or not ... That is the question. ;)

Hairpin lace, anyone?

Today's the first day of the very first hairpin-lace-along over at the Hairpin Crochet Ravelry group, in honor of which, I post here a photo of one of my very first pieces of hairpin lace. Yes, it's very red.


Hairpin lace in worsted-weight cotton. Hurray.
For the first HPL-along, we're doing the woman's hairpin lace shawl pattern from Coats & Clark.

Feel free to come on over and join us if you want to try your hand at hairpin lace (or maybe you're a seasoned hairpinner already!). The HPL-along basic info thread is here. All you need is yarn (768 yards or less, according to the pattern), a crochet hook, and a hairpin lace loom. You can even make your own hairpin lace loom; there are some ideas on the Ravelry HPL group's resources page.

I think I'm going to end up using a really light yarn and wearing my "shawl" as a head scarf or a belt. I seriously do not need to add another item to the already-overflowing scarf and shawl drawer, especially since, you know. I live in Florida, where there's not a lot of call for scarves and shawls, even lacy ones. If this project works out and doesn't frustrate the crap out of me, I'll probably make an HPL sarong — which I will use. I hope. ;)

Ahh, practicing the yarn arts in a humid, hot climate...

Superfringe!

That's the second hairpin lace scarf, which is getting sent today for the "Anything you can do..." swap. More crazy crafting yet to come!

Accompanying illustrations

Here's that hairpin lace scarf I did the other day (not the latest one, of which I still need a good photo or two):



And here's that necklace I finished today as an extra goodie for a swap (and this one isn't even late ;)):



Woo!

Quicksilvery

I started another hairpin lace scarf yesterday in Blue Heather Wool-Ease, and finished it today. Woohoo! It came out pretty much the way I wanted it to, too. And I plied, skeined, and washed 30 yards of brown alpaca yesterday for knitting into a necklace I-cord today. I even worked a few inches of my second Mystery Skein Swap item, and plan on doing some more tonight.

So I also just gave in and bought Stitch Diva's Lotus Smock Dress and Camisole hairpin lace pattern (perversely neglecting the skirt pattern I've been ogling for months because it looks easier to figure out on my own -- and this is maybe a hint of the Can't Do Anything Easy rule kicking in again). I may have to go and buy some yarn for this one with my nonexistent money, since it requires double-knit weight yarn, of which I do have five skeins or so ... in different fibers and completely unmatching colors. ;) But I want to learn some more advanced hairpin lace techniques, and the patterns available on the Internet are pretty slim pickings.

Anyway, more spastic crafting today seems likely. I have a few swaps that are slightly overdue thanks to the energy sink that is FLaRF, with its Three-Day Weekends of Doom, and I Will Catch Up, thanks to my darling hairpin lace loom and a fit of general mild quicksilveriness.

Brian's shirt at last

I ended up fixing the thing with the hairpin lace by unraveling loops till I came to a point where I could put them back on the loom without the loom popping apart. Wheee, tension. ;D But I didn't feel like working on it after that, so I picked up Brian's much-abused pirate/fighting shirt and set to mending the re-tear and, so as to avoid a re-re-tear, finally putting in those gussets. I like gussets. ;)

As of right now I have one gusset set in, and I'm about to tear out the armpit of the other side so I can put in the second one. It must get done tonight, since Brian can't very well fight with a shirt with a giant hole in the armpit. ;D

Next shirt modifications: Actually put a patch behind the mend (I know, I should have done it before, but I figured the gusset would help keep it from happening again more than the patch ;)), and put drawstring casings on the sleeves. After that, when I have time, I ought to actually just put cuffs on, but that's probably not happening in the next couple of weeks, and the casing is a quicker, workable fix.

I should have known...

I've managed to finish one project on this hairpin lace loom and now it's acting funky. You'd think two pieces of metal and two bits of plastic with holes in them would be simple enough to manage, but the metal sticks keep wanting to warp even when I take some of the loops off the end of the loom. It's probably my tension, but I don't know how to fix this short of frogging the entire strip and starting over, and that's pretty disheartening considering how short on time I am today, and the fact that the swap this is for is already late. (Not that I'd be able to get it done today even if the loom weren't acting funky, but it'd be nice to feel I made progress. That's not too much to ask, is it?) I was so enjoying the feeling of actually getting something done quickly, too. Grumble.

Maybe this is why I never do anything easy. ;)

Picture bonanza

Things I made for the Slacker Homemade Gift swap:







The red thingie is my first bit of hairpin lace ever, and it's a scarf. Yayyyy. ;) I need to get a good photo of the scarfage, itself, so I can feel safe sending away my firstborn. ;D

This is my Things with Wings matchbox, too, which was sent a bit ago, but I didn't post photos immediately:







I also received my own Things with Wings matchbox a couple days ago from Australia, and should be a good swapper and post photos, shouldn't I?

Speaking of swaps ... I wonder where my Spin to Knit handspun swap is? ;) My partner did say she procrastinates, but I hope she doesn't procrastinate herself completely out of sending me my skeins. ;) (I seem to have this problem acquiring handspun from other people...) I also need to finish and send my own skein for this month, actually. This FLaRF thing is kicking my butt in terms of time to craft 'n' swap.