Sticking out & new yarn

Are you surprised when someone recognizes you and you think they shouldn't? I always am. I guess in most cases it has something to do with the red hair. In yesterday's case it may have had to do with the red hair and looking like I'm too young to be knitting. (although I'm way older than I look and have been knitting since I was 6. But, I digress.)

So, I went into my LYS yesterday and after nicely telling the middle aged lady that I was just looking around, I proceeded to spend about 1.5 hours picking out yarn for my four next projects. 4 projects! After the penguin, I've been floundering a little bit as to what to do craft wise. I've felt so weird about not crafting, but I never had time to get to a yarn store. (The store I normally closes before I'm done work on weeknights and if open for only a few hours on Saturday. Not idea. ) Finally, yesterday I got my chance! And did I take advantage of it. I think I spent $130+ on yarn. But at least I'm ready for my next 4 projects. 

So, I went to checkout with armloads of yarn. The woman who rang me up said - "I haven't seen you in a while." I took a closer look, and I recognized her too. She'd cut her hair since I'd last been in the store. But it's one thing to recognize the owner of the shop and another to recognize a patron who only comes in once every like 6 months. I told her that I'd been without a craft for a while and was remedying the fact. "Yeah," she said. "When you walked in I realized you haven't been around in a while."

What? Do I stick out that much? I did once pretty much imply I didn't want her help choosing the yarn for my project (Oops. I wasn't trying to be mean, but I didn't need her help...) but hopefully that hasn't made me notorious. Hopefully, she only recognized me because of the hair an age. Either way, at least I got to shop for an hour and a half by myself. 

And here's what I bought! 

The red is for a gender neutral afghan for a small bun who is going to become either my niece or nephew. (Yay!) The dark blue is a sweater for the same small miracle. The green will be a sweater for me! February lady. And the light blue is for leg warmers. Yes. I know... Leg warmers. We'll see how that goes once I get there. 

I haven't done much yet, since I only got the yarn yesterday and I've been busy with other things on my errands/rest day. (Oil change, shopping, Stanford volleyball game...) But I did my swatch, and it turned out okay I think. As close as I can hope for. 

And then I started the sweater. Can't wait to do more! Although for now, I'm off to soccer. 

Penguin

It's done!

My next little project. It's a penguin (obviously) and I made him/her for a friend of mine who is pregnant with her third child. 

Her first two kids got afghans, but I don't think that they got used, so I decided to make something different. (Plus, I didn't want to buy yarn and make an afghan if it wasn't going to be used, and I had all of this cheap yarn left over from old projects. cheap? Yes.)

But I like him! I think he's quite cute. I have a few other doll patterns from the same book, and I think I might make the one of the elephant for Xavier for Christmas. We'll see. 

Finally finished and Framed!

Here it is! Finally finished and framed even.
(Sorry it’s another post about this! It’s the last one, I promise.)



I ended up solving my dilemma by writing “September” in a different font than their names. I had to do that anyways so that it would fit! September is just too long and it would have been too tall to fit if I hadn’t used a smaller font.
On the whole I’m pretty proud of it!
But there are a few things that I would do differently next time. Most of them have to do with the framing, so it isn’t too big of a deal.
- I don’t like how far apart their names are. I actually redid the names twice, but wasn’t willing to do it a third time to get the spacing just as I wanted it. I really should have planned that one out better before hand.
- For the framing, the mats don’t totally match. As in, the mats aren’t perfectly square to each other. I should have done measurements rather than just using the mat that came with the frame as a reference.
- I should have cut the aida down to a smaller size, angling the corners as well and then used a sewing machine to finish the edges. As it is now the edges aren’t done. And it was hard to close the back of the frame. If I’d cut the edges so that there would have been no overlap, there would have been one less layer to have to close into the frame.
- I need better tape for finishing off. Hockey tape just isn’t where it’s at.

Now next time I just hope I remember all of this!!

long, long time ago. In a craft far, far away…
Ha!
So, you may remember this cross-stitch. Well, I finally have the date to add it in. So the gift is almost complete. After that I just have to worry about framing it! Eek. I’m planning on framing it myself. That will be a first. I'm not sure how it's going to work. I chose this particular craft so that I could try to frame it with a standard 8.5 x 11 frame. That's the size of the picture. But I'm worried that I'm not going to do the framing right. Maybe I should read up on that on the internet...

But let’s step back a second, I have another problem.


roblem? What's problem? How could I have a problem with adding in a few words?
Well, It’s a font problem. After many font trials, I chose one that I partially made myself. Well, I copied it. The capital letters come from a book where I saw the ‘A’ and fell in love with the way it looked. (The book was Alex and the Ironic Gentleman.) But since that time I’ve returned it to the library. And now, happy couple are getting married in September. If it was August, I’d be golden, but I don’t know how to do the ‘S’ in that font! Eek. It’s not a very intuitive font, so I don’t know what I should make it look like.

Either way, it’s going to be a mad few days of crafting and framing. I’m going to try and get my latest afghan done too. I made it sort of on a lark, but I have a different friend who lives in the same town who is having a baby in December. These friends are common friends and thus I’m thinking I can mail them at the same time to the same person, to be divided between them. So, I will need to get that done for Friday too to get it out on time. Yikes!

Wish me luck. And fast crafting.

Another bear

Oh. I know. My crafts are so boring lately. Here's yet another bear. But this one was requested. And I hope he will be liked once he is delivered. (Yes. Although this is a mother bear patterned bear, it isn't going to that cause, but to a friend.)
And with all of the Olympic watching I've been doing, I've had a lot of time to craft. I'm also almost done a very small afghan I've been working on. I got the yarn for cheap, but there wasn't a lot of it. I think that it's going to turn out nicely. We'll see.

A look back: My first ever project

This is a look back at my first ever knitting project! How cool! I found this when I was looking for something else on a visit to my parent's house last week and recognized it instantly. I remember my mom teaching me how to knit and then starting this scarf for me. I remember working on it on the 1.5hr long bus ride home. I adorned a teddy bear for years once it was complete. Notice how the two colours aren't even. I did the green side first, and by the time I was that much done the maroon, I couldn't take it anymore and quit! Ha.



But look at it! Look at the huge holes that are rife through the green side.



And I love the two lone rows of perl in here. My mom must have thought that I was getting bored, or showed promise to have tried to teach me that!



Anyways, I loved seeing it and thought I would share.
And yes. I'm stilly trying to come up with my next project...

My German Bear

So, in the beginning this bear was going to be a cowboy. I was making his shirt plaid, and then I was going to give him a bandana rather than a scarf, but by the time I was done with his outfit, something was just wrong. I really didn't like him. His head looked funny, his legs looked funny. He just looked funny all over. After I gave him his face, things didn't look any better. So, I decided to give him a hat. He needed something to make him special. So I whipped up this hat, added a pompom, and when I sewed it in place, somehow it just made me remember those german guys you see at Oktoberfest.

Maybe not exactly. But somehow it was close enough, that now I sort of like him. I think the hat makes him sort of cute.