I liiiiiiive! Crafty picture spam and the Tour de Fleece 2013

Yessss! I exist.

So ... I did that "falling off the planet" thing that I do every so often, but I'm back! (For however long it lasts.) For a while there, I wasn't doing a whole lot of (physical) crafting, but I did actually finish one long-standing creative project: writing a novel. Working on another now, but that's not what this blog is about, really. ;)

Anyway, recently I've been back on the crafting thing (mostly for my Etsy shop, but hey, that definitely counts). Look! Proof!


My very first handwoven bow! Tiny, pink, sparkly! How can that be bad? ;)



More handwoven bows, these for a custom order.


Loose dyed wool, cool-colored batch. Eventually these will make it into the shop. *crosses fingers* Since I don't really need more fiber sitting in my stash and staring at me like "Spiiiiin meeeeeeeeeee."


Assorted beaded shawl pins in cool colors. (You may sense a theme here.)


A paper-cut bookmark with the kanji for "silver" on it (hence the silver paper — I'm sooooo clever, I know ;) ). This one's actually for me and not the shop. (Whaaaaaaat???)


...And yet more bows! Bows, bows, everywhere!
OK, enough pic spam. The whole reason I got off my butt and posted here finally is that I'm going to be doing the Tour de Fleece again this year, and this time I'll even get to watch the Tour de France on an actual TV. That's as opposed to watching it streaming on a tiny computer screen. Of course, I may do something odd like turning off the sound for the TV and putting on the streaming video anyway. I've grown rather fond of the Eurosport announcers in the past few cable-TV-less years...

So far I've been terrible about checking in on the usual TdF Ravelry group, but I have officially joined Team Nevermore, hosted by the eternally awesome Threeravens Yarn and Fiber Studio. I'm even on the ball enough to have some shawl pins ready to ship to Christiane (leader of Team Nevermore) as prizes for the team. And rather than loading myself down with a bunch of crazy goals, at the moment my sole, singular, one and true goal is to spin up as much as ever I can of an alpaca fleece that I promised someone I would turn into yarn for them, because I really uber-seriously do not wish to slack on that any more. Yeah ... I think I've entered the Twilight Zone.

And that's where I am right now in the world of craft. Cheers, woo, and all that jazz. If I stay in this bizarrely productive Twilight Zone then there should be more updates to come, but hey! Who's even watching any more, right? ;) I'm probably talking to myself here! Ha, ha ... Awesome. For the whole one person who's probably going to read this, you rock, and I'll do my best to come back and keep you entertained as well as my meager skills allow.

For now ... Toodles!

Image dump!

After the famine comes a feast: today is the day of photo dumpage, meaning I finally uploaded a bunch of the photos I've been taking. I may not actually dump all the photos I have to dump ... ;) [Note: I did. Ha. ;)]

One of my latest finished projects is -- ta-da! -- the Jamaica bag, from One Skein Wonders:



And that's for me, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, I finally finished something else for me. I'm on a bit of a roll. ;) Going through the UFO list will necessarily make me knit for myself, since I tend to neglect me most, by starting things for me and then rarely finishing, which takes up space and keeps the stash static. Hiss! Now that I'm mentioning stash, though, I should note that all the knit projects in today's photodump were knit from stash. The Jamaica bag is stash left over from yarn I bought for knit Christmas ornaments.

I've also knit another bag lately, this one a semi-angel for the April Fool's Fun swap on Swapbot:



That's a version of Purl McBigBottom that I'm calling Funky Purl McBigBottom, also, as noted, made with stash yarn: some white acrylic and an expensive Fun Fur type yarn for the main body, with some red worsted weight cotton thrown in at the bottom where I ran out of furry stuff, and in the handle for coherence. Yay. ;D That's two yarns that I've had for a while, and some random red scraps I wasn't sure what to do with. Great success!

The other item I made for that same swap is this shawl:



Because I've been wanting to knit a shawl for a while even though Florida is the Land of No Shawls. ;) I haven't woven the tails in on that one still, since it isn't going out till the recipient has an address again (positive vibes to her on her husband -- possibly soon ex-husband? -- situation), at the very least. That's all straight from the stash, including some pink for Faire bunny slippers I never made, some orange left over from Halloween, some random fuzzy stuff from a scarf for my sister and for which I have developed a hatred, and some sparkly pink stuff from a necklace knit as part of a trade. I'm working on another on a similar design, using the same Simple Yet Effective Shawl pattern, for a private trade with the swap coordinator for April Fool's Fun. ;D I'm also making her a pair of matching wristwarmers, which brings me to...



...the items I knit for the Mystery Skein Swap, which were received yesterday, and well appreciated, by the lovely Elabeth (good luck to her on her new knitting shop endeavor :D), who apparently has been thinking of knitting some wristwarmers for herself but hasn't gotten to it yet. Hurrah. :D That yarn, entertainingly enough, is also stash ... just not my stash. Part of the idea of the Mystery Skein Swap was to have someone make something for you out of something you obviously have a bit of a block on ... like everlasting stash yarns. ;)

I've also been arting a bit lately (which is much prettier than it sounds, I hope ;)), including carving a neat stamp based on a mandala. I kind of wanted to keep the stamp, but at least I still have the test sheet to play with:



And I seem to be on a purplish theme lately, too; for the Purple Postcards swap, it's pretty obvious why, but the bookmarks and the wish stones weren't required to be purple, sooo...







...I guess it was just a phase. ;)

And that's your photodump for today, that's your photodump for today-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay ... that's your photodump for today. ;D