volcano socks

Voici my latest project: birthday socks for a volcano-enthusiast. The colours made me think of Iceland, which made me feel they should be appropriate for the occasion. I gave them away last night, and they appeared to meet with approval – at least, they seemed to fit perfectly and there was a lot of toe-wiggling. I really enjoyed knitting with this Noro Kureyon sock wool, as the way it changes colour acts as an incentive to keep knitting, just to see what it will look like a few rows on. I think I should use this kind of wool more often, then maybe I would get more (knitting) done.

I also added a bit of a silly touch – and this is something I have been saving putting up here until I had a project to combine it with:

I got a set of these labels made to sew into things I make and give to people, because I’m a softie sentimentalist at heart, and I like kitschy pink things to boot. Despite the resulting impracticalities of such a label in a sock (obviously it now poses a large risk to the toes), I couldn’t resist sewing one into these. I’m going to have to keep on not resisting like this for quite some time, seeing as I now have quite a large collection of pink labels in my possession.

beast-tastic

Perhaps it is a bit of a cheat to blog about a project nearly a year on from its creation, but I didn’t have time to take a photo of this one before I gave it away to its rightful owner as a birthday present. Currently, however, it is on loan to me for precisely this purpose, and there has been a bit of a drought on my blog recently, due to impending-finals-induced-work panic, so I recently made use of a sunny day to prance around in the garden photographing my handiwork.

It is a collection of photos of various different creatures (often in humorous poses), from squirrels to goats to a sunfish (!), that I have accrued over time, both on travels and closer to home. I made it for Joe, who suggested quite a while back that I should collate all my animal photos somehow, so it seemed appropriate to give the finished product to him. It has photos on both sides of the fold-out, zig-zaggy pages (all carefully cut to size at the desk of my cosy Parisian garret), with silly captions in gold pen underneath each picture. My sister aided me significantly in the dreaming up of suitable idiocies to complement each individual animal – needless to say, a good grounding in lolcats came in very handy here.

I seem to remember Joe suggesting he should get Volume II for his next birthday, but it might have to wait a little longer than that – it’s not every day you chance upon a photogenic beast.

the ruiner of dreams

The second of the parcels below contained this little fellow – a deceptively small and cute EVIL RULER OF THE WORLD:

He is a baby-sized Cthulhu (a slightly adapted version of this one) made as a kind of interim present until I finally summon up the courage to make a killer Cthulhu tea cosy. (On a practical note, I made him with the aid of these handy magic ring instructions – the best I have ever found.) He might be small, but he has the power to take over your dreams at night and terrorise you through them. He’s kind of put the whole ruling-the-world thing on hold at the moment, but when you least expect it he’ll come back to take over again and evil green monsters will start appearing out of nowhere.

Maybe even out of your own furniture…

happiness is in the post

What can they be? Little parcels of mystery, winging their way to two lucky recipients. I like getting unexpected things in the post so much – I feel it’s only fair to make sure that other people get to enjoy the same thing from time to time. I hope it all works out in some kind of overall post karma.

Update: in the first parcel was the last of my unfinished sock business (the fact that I have since agreed on more sock business is something I choose to ignore for the sake of this post) – it was my first ever pair of socks, made in the spirit of a Christmas sock-exchange deal with Franziska. Since making them, I now feel that my sock abilities have reached new levels, but we all have to start somewhere and this is where I started:

I finished making them over a year ago (which by that point was already late), but it’s taken me this long to finally weave in the ends and pack them off to her. Though I have still not got my half of the sock-exchange yet, so I can still feel a teeny bit pleased with myself. I have been told to expect elephant gaiters. I can’t wait. And I’m keeping my eyes open for a chilly-looking elephant…

And going back to post karma – it seems it really exists! Today I got a highly anonymous, late Valentine’s package from home. With beautiful earrings in. So there is postal hope for us all 🙂

driven to distraction

This week has been a bad one. With four essays to write in a week and a half, I knew it was going to be difficult and that there would be some hard times. I never imagined it would be this bad, though. As the fruits of my distraction arrive, I will document them here, one by little bad one… (My justification, by the way, is that the promise of imminent playtime ranks extremely highly on the list of incentives to write the damn essays in the first place.)

First of all I got a wool winder. I’ve wanted one of these forever, but they tend to be stupidly expensive for a useful bit of plastic that goes round and round. This one, however, was not, thanks to some sneaky ebay wangling. I’ve seen genius home-made lego wool winders with tutorials (!) and contemplated going down the same route, but in this case decided against it. Ultimately I guess I would like a swift to go with it, but again, bits of wood that go round and round are also pricey. So I’ll wait.

Next I got a parcel full of eyes! (Prize for anyone who could possibly have seen that coming.) This is purely because the postage was free if you got lots of eyes, so I did. I reasoned that eyes always come in handy (maybe not the right expression to use?) and it’s best to have some spare rather than always having to order new ones and pay postage for each pair. Now I can make googly bright-eyed creatures galore at just a moment’s notice!

Then I got a package with a freehand embroidery foot for my sewing machine, so at last I can have a go at infinite wiggly lines in all directions – something I’ve long wanted to try – and to make it worth the postage I got some useful things since needles always break and it’s best to have a replacement to hand. Plus the shiny machine embroidery thread was to try out with the new foot.

And finally, I got an Aladdin’s cave of a parcel, with some two hundred different colours of Anchor hand embroidery thread! Ooh! From ebay also, my new favourite place (apart from Flickr), as this worked out at least five times cheaper than buying threads from a shop. So now I absolutely have to become a master embroiderer. Or else.

I said it was a bad week, didn’t I?

rounding up old promises

This is a pair of slipper socks that I promised to Becca for her birthday the summer before last (eek, how embarrassing! But at least on the plus side, it was not a promise entirely forgotten – I always get around to it, just not immediately…). The picture is not excellent, as I was in a hurry to get to a lecture, and she was in a hurry to catch a bus, so this was the best I could manage:

The green looks especially washed out here, but it was a good – I want to say ‘herby’ – colour. To stop them from wearing out, I got hold of a tube of something called Sock Stop, that you’re supposed to paint onto the soles of woolly socks, and it also gives them better grip. I was too afraid that I would mess up my beautiful socks if I painted it on before giving them to Becca, so I just gave her the stuff with the socks and left her to do the damage. I hope it wasn’t inappropriate…

Now I just need to post off the other pair of long-promised socks, and all my sock promises will be fulfilled!

sampling local samplers

Yesterday I took myself on a little outing to the Fitzwilliam Museum after my translation class. I asked the man on the desk to direct me to their textiles collection, which he did, but he muttered about how they didn’t have very much in the way of textiles to show. This appeared to be true. There were some rugs in the room next to the armoury, but they were hanging right at the tops of the walls, above some large display cases, which made seeing them almost impossible. Then there was a small collection of 17th and 18th century samplers, hidden in the fan gallery. Although there were only a few, they were very beautiful and finely worked. I took lots of pictures, but the light levels were extremely low, so they didn’t come out super clear:

While I was inspecting these samplers, considering how I might go about making one of my own, and simultaneously being bowled over by their tininess and the precision that went into working them, I made another new discovery: pattern darning. This is something I have never ever come across before, or at least if I have I didn’t recognise it. I think I would have mistaken it for weaving. I never knew this could be done, and it looks so attractive and so deceptively like woven fabric. Ah, yet another thing I would like to have a go at myself:

I would say I’d save it for a rainy day, but today I learnt that Cambridge is officially classified as ‘semi-arid’, and in the same category as most of the northern Mediterranean coastline in terms of how much rain we get. I guess I’ll have to wait.

new toys!

Over the holiday I made a new discovery – sashiko embroidery. It wasn’t entirely new, as I recognised the style, but it wasn’t something I knew anything about, and I wouldn’t have known what it was called. Of course I had to do a little research, and what better research than having a go myself? So here are this afternoon’s spoils, fresh from York’s Quilt Museum & Gallery online shop (I would really very much like to go to this place in person, but it’s not very convenient from where I am):

I am just sitting here gloating on my new toys and rubbing my hands at all the beautiful things I can make. And trying to decide whether I can justify trying them out straight away, or whether I ought to deal with the question of Proust and his restless subjective experience first. Oowee the possibilities!

snip snip!

In my most recent attempts to avoid writing essays (term hasn’t even started yet, and already I am coming up with avoidance schemes), I took inspiration from a book I was given at Christmas: Paper Cutouts. I had a go at making a couple of small ones to decorate a CD I made for a friend.

The process was a lot less fiddly than I had expected, so clearly there is hope for more extravagant projects in the future when I have a lot of work to avoid. The most difficult bit was gluing the cutouts once they were cut out, without tearing them. I think some fresher glue would probably help with this though…

Update: Now I know that this has got to its destination and there is no chance of spoiling a surprise, I can post photos of it!

for the travelling knitter

This is something I made in the summer but just never got around to posting here. A handy little roll-up knitting needle case for a set of double-pointed needles I got on Ebay that only had flimsy plastic wrappers to live in. It was super easy to make – only took me an evening, and I made it up on the spot.

The only thing I would change about it is the way the fastening works. I put the elastic between the outer and the lining, which means the end seam doesn’t lie flat when the case is rolled up. Instead I should have attached it on the outside somehow. Oh, and it still needs a button or something, but all in good time, all in good time…