crafting « the thing itself and not the myth

[Crafting for Other People]

I have a ridiculous amount of unphotographed knitting — which should not be at all surprising when you consider how long it’s been since I’ve posted any here — but once I got all organized to shoot at least some of it, the weather refused to cooperate.

However, I did finally upload about six months worth of photos to Flickr, so there’s a little blog fodder there. Today, Stuff Wot I Made For Other Folks. Click through to embiggen!

Pond Friends stacking toy [Ravelry link] for my coworker’s baby on her first birthday. It was made for her, but it lives in my office, so that there is a toy for her when she visits me.

My best friend had a baby this fall, so of course she got a bunny…

And also nerdy (and rather inappropriate) onesies. The first three were painted by Kat, and the latter three by me. Points if you get all the references.

A Doctor Who cross-stitch for my friend Joy on her birthday. SO much fun to design and stitch! A little dangerous, because I have so many other ideas, and it would be far too easy to spend all of my time designing and making nerdy cross-stitch pieces/

And a Christmas TARDIS.

Whew! That is a lot of baby and nerd craft action! Coming someday, if it ever stops raining, ALL OF THE SOCKS AND LACE. And maybe some of my sock yarn blanket, which is currently just a box full of beautiful, colorful squares.

01Mar

[With Glowing Hearts]

Filed in crafting | knitting 3 Comments

So, how awesome were the Olympics? I mean, really. I didn’t get to watch a lot of it because a) the coverage in the States is truly awful and b) in the middle of it all I went to 15 movies, but still. Pretty great. And as an American living close to Canada, I was most pleased with the results. USA with the record number of medals? Canada with the record number of golds? The USA forcing the hockey game to OT to make Canada fight for the win? Basically, so far as I am concerned, that’s pretty much the best way it could go. Well done, everyone.

I am a sucker for the whole thing, though. I blame the fact that I had bronchitis for the entire Lillehammer games, and thus am fairly sure that I watched every minute of coverage.

Of course, the most important thing about the Olympics is that they are a pretty fantastic opportunity to get some crafting done. To that end, I participated in the Ravelympics again, and I will tell you all about it after the jump. (BTW, I just changed the RSS to full posts, so a) we’ll see how it handles the jump and b) sorry if there’s feed barf. These things happen.) Continue Reading

02Nov

[There's a girl with a crown and a scepter]

Filed in crafting | knitting 5 Comments

In a fit of insanity I decided to make a Max costume for Halloween. (I started it before I saw the film, so it’s lucky that I turned out to be totally obsessed with it.)

Pictures of the hoodie, crown, & scepter, plus more than you ever wanted to know about how I made them, after the jump (or by clicking “view original post” on Facebook.) Continue Reading

20Oct

[Baby stuff!]

Filed in crafting | knitting 4 Comments

We had a baby shower today, which was pretty exciting, partially because I have had my contribution wrapped up in my living room for nearly two months. (The baby herself has been around for nearly three!)

It’s also exciting because it means I can finally show you guys some more of the crafting that I did this summer. What, you want me to blog things chronologically? It’s never going to happen.

After the jump, baby knitted & crocheted things of cuteness. Continue Reading

28Apr

[Make your own V neck tee]

Filed in crafting 5 Comments

Also, over the weekend I altered a tshirt. It was a very simple alteration, and there’s a lot of tutorials on the web, but apparently I am incapable of doing anything crafty without documenting it. Four pictures, after the jump. Continue Reading

28Apr

[Four things from the past week ish]

Filed in crafting | life | photos | theater 5 Comments

Something I found irritating:

Something I crocheted:

Something I was given at work:

Something I went to see:

05May

[Lift your arms up to the sky]

Filed in crafting | photos 7 Comments

I hope you all had a groovy weekend. I feel like I was wicked busy and didn’t actually get anything done. I spent all of Saturday on the bus running two errands on opposite sides of the county. Yay. I passed a RickRollin’ Scientology protest while transferring buses downtown.

There was also an Anonymous there offering free hugs, but I failed to get a good picture. Woe.

The second errand was the more interesting of the two, as it was a trip to get the supplies to turn this:

into this:

I think I will name it Edith. The laptop is named Adrienne. Edith isn’t after anyone, but it seems to fit. A few more shots of the process live on my Flickr under the tag laptop case.

Finally, I got into the office this morning and found this, the most perfect tshirt, on my desk, a gift from a coworker.

Speaking of socks, I bound off two pairs this weekend (Gred & Forge & Toe-up Embossed Leaves.) All praise Grumperina’s stretchy bind-off, which I found vastly simpler than EZ’s sewn bind-off, and so neat and stretchy! I am going to weave in ends at knitting tonight, and then maybe there will be pictures later this week. Maybe.

08Apr

[Al Gore needs no pants]

Filed in crafting 7 Comments

I’ve been carrying reusable grocery bags for a while now, which I like a lot, but I wasn’t such a fan of advertising for the grocery stores I got them from.

Last month I stopped at the craft supply and picked up some fabric paint, then asked folks over at the ephemeral blog to talk me out of writing Al Gore facts on my bags.

They failed to do so. The results live after the jump; may it be on their souls. Continue Reading

16Oct

[Its contents watched by Sycorax and Patagon in parallax]

Filed in crafting | life | photos 16 Comments

Last week’s everyday photo prompt was “inside the fridge”, which worked out well for me because it was organics week.

The only thing missing is cheese. And the freezer door, which holds ice for my bum wrist. And coffee, of course.

Also last week I had an off-site meeting in the International District. I am wicked jealous of people who work at that Center — they’re a block from Uwajimaya. On the way to the meeting I scoped out the windows at Kinokuniya Books. I am a little afraid to go past it during business hours, especially since they have stuff like this awesome Totoro hoodie in the window.

(Also, I read the reviews on Yelp. DVDs! Other Studio Ghibli miscellanea! Japanese knitting & crochet books! Seriously, I don’t think I should be allowed in this store.)

This weekend has been eaten by the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. A friend won a pair of party passes, so I got one, which I think is hilarious. Obviously, I have not gone to any of the parties.

I also went to Spamalot.

[Sir Photo-not-appearing-in-this-blog]

And in the little time I was at home, I was doing mad crafting. Click through the jump for projects include Hooray for me gloves (round 3), sweatshirt pillow number one, and Ron’s Animal Crackers Hat.

08Oct

[And they're all made out of ticky-tacky]

Filed in crafting | knitting 4 Comments

…I don’t have pictures for this stuff yet, but I can’t resist posting. Pictures will come later this week.

So! This weekend I finished Samus! Huzzah! I have been working on it since January (!!!) but the bulk of that was the tedium of the cable. The stockinette & finishing flew by, and the finished cardigan is so cozy!

Sunday night I reknitted Ron’s Animal Crackers hat (from the third Harry Potter movie). I had wanted to make it for some time, and then I had a skein of green leftover from the Irish Hiking Scarf. Perfect! The first time it knitted up beautifully, but a bit too small, so I frogged it and added another repeat, and now it is awesome.

Then I took the leftover dark red and cast on Rose’s Wristwarmers (from the “Doomsday” episode of “Doctor Who”). If I have enough yarn & they turn out well and everything, I will have a sweet little winter set, with the bonus that it’ll be fannish without being obviously so.

If I wasn’t hoarding all my vacation for silly little things like trips to England, I would be sorely tempted to take some time off to plow through some crafts. I have a big crochet project I’m working on, plus I need to add the buttons to the three sweatshirt pillows, plus I want to redecorate/finish decorating my bedroom, including riffing on this crocheted headboard idea & getting some prints off of Etsy, plus I need to generally reorganize so I can spread out a t-shirt quilt (which includes taking a trip to Ikea to get shelving for my craft area), and then I saw this on ikeahacker and thought it would be super fun to do that with the shelves, as the ones I’m planning to get are not exactly beautiful.

*falls over*

Speaking of England, that’s where I was a year ago, so if you feel like looking at pictures, you can look at those. Click through to the Flickr set.

In blog news, I installed the plugin for threaded comments, which appears to be working quite well. I also (a while back) installed the one for comment reply notification, but as far as I can tell it’s not working. Woe.

Peace out.

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I live in Seattle. I have a BA in English & an MLIS, but instead of using either of those degrees in an obvious way, I work in human services. My top three addictions are coffee, film, and knitting. Sometimes I like to pretend I am interesting. Generally I fail.