And she likes to take pictures, too!

One of my weekend projects was to make myself a light tent. I was inspired by Lolly's post a few weeks ago, and I followed the tutorial that she used on Strobist.com. In about 30 minutes and for less than a few bucks, I had this: This is definitely going to help my jewelry making business...I can take some pretty sweet pictures with the macro setting and my light tent!!

She rises again...

Thoughts on:

• Jewelry - The show went o.k. I was a little overpriced for where I was selling (rural Missouri town's local festival) so I didn't sell as much as I hoped, however, I got a TON of compliments on my stuff. Jewelry is an expensive hobby - and I try to only use REAL materials (silver, real swarovski crystals, etc.) so we'll see what happens in the future. I've been scouting at a few craft shows and am going to do another one in December in Des Moines, so we'll see.


• Etsy - Jewelry leads me to Etsy. My entire family and many of my friends are not near me. But they have friends that want to buy my bracelets...and they have friends that want to buy and so on. I think I'm going to set up an etsy shop to sell online. There are a zillion etsy sellers out there, but I'm cool with that!


• Knitting - I finished a few things - Grace's Hat and my first sock. LOVE that hat - can't wait to get a proper photo up with baby Grace in it and LOVE the sock. I often wear that lonely sock on my foot around the house. I will not make it's mate. I think I'm going to frame it for my craft room (seriously!) I also just cast on for a new baby sweater (what is it with me and baby stuff??)


• Craft Room - my friend came over this weekend and helped me re-organize my craft room. I've got before photos, but no after yet...but I'll post them when I get them. I'm putting together a big box of yarn, beads and scrapbooking supplies and giving them to a local art teacher for use with her elementary students.

I think that's it for me. I'm going to also be refreshing the look of this blog. What was I thinking with pink and green? It's so icky now!!!

I'm not knitting, but I am creating

The situation: I have a baby shower to go to this weekend. I wanted to knit Tulip Toes, but my knitting time has been severely cut down because I've been so busy. Enter the fleece blanket. A fairly quick (2 hours max) project that is guarantted to get some oohs and aahs at the baby shower! Yes, the baby is due in August, but it's IOWA so it's going to be a cold winter, and this blanket will be nice and toasty - and big enough to last for several years. (Finished size is 52" by 46".)

I purchased 1.5 yards of two kinds of fleece - one floral, one striped (I love stipes and flowers combined!!) Then I spread the fleece out, cut off the selvage edges and put one piece of fleece on top of the other to trim them both to the same size. You'll see in the above photo, I've also cut a 4" square out of all four corners of the blanket. It helps the blanket lay flatter. This next shot shows the contrast fabric on the other side, and the 1" by 4" strips that I cut into the sides.

I reccommend cutting and fringing opposite sides - and when you tie, start in the middle and work out - it helps keep the blanket from distorting. Me cutting (notice the other sides are already fringed and tied)And me tying - yes, this shot should have been before the previous, but oh well!

Close up for the blanket - I love how the frings flips over to the opposite side and shows the pattern on the reverse - it's so pretty! The final product with it's beauty shot on my chair. Please note the flowers in the background that J got me for my 28th birthday yesterday!!

The Baby Blanket that wasn't Meant to be...

Stinkers. We've all had a few. I had high hopes for this blanket. Very high hopes. It was my first baby blanket project - it was my first "I made it up myself" pattern, and my first attempt at holding three strands of yarn together at once. It did take me a while to start/finish it, and alas, I finished it too short of what it needed to be. It's nice and wide (about 40 inches!) but not long enough.

It also has a few small errors, like this hole.

And, it has a square where I knit pieces of it wrong so there are knits where purls should be and purls where knits shall be. I think this blanket is going to be gifted to my 3-year-old niece, who can care for her baby dolls with it. I'm still working on my log cabin blanket and that's going to be a big winner - I can already tell!

Oh, and I finally figured out why my photos are so grainy sometimes...when I upload them from home (on dial up) they only can upload a certain amount...so they are pixelated. I'll try to be better about uploading from work, but this is all I've got right now!

Strangest Baby Blanket Ever!

Remeber this? I hadn't finished it and it's well over a year old. The good news is it's done now. The bad news is that, well, let's just say say that the blurry photo is the best thing about this knit baby blanket. I'll have to wait to be home during some natural light to take some photos of the other issues with it.

In other news, tonight I'm going to see Barack Obama at a town hall meeting in Des Moines. I'm not a political person, but an advantage of living in Iowa is that all of the presidential hopefulls visit here often, so I figure I should take the opportunity to see them all while they're here. For the record, I am not a republican or a democrat. I'm open to anything!

I am a knitting machine!

I made three hats this weekend! I actually made two on Friday night, one on Saturday, and then I tore out the top of one on Sunday and reknit it. Of course, big needles, big yarn, and small hats, but they're so cute! The blue ones remind me of little gnome hats. Even though it's still January, I consider these my official start to Project Spectrum!!

Pattern: Bulky Baby Hat by Blue Sky Alpacas

Yarn: Bulky Hand Dyes in Dark Blue (large hat,) Duotones in Blue on Blue (small hat,) and Tahki Yarn Baby Print in Color 41 for the medium sized hat.

Pattern mods: In the blue hats, I stuck to the pattern and the decreases at the top got me a pointy gnome-like hat. I modified the decreases in the medium sized hat for a flatter crown, and later ripped out the smaller hat's top to flatten it out.

Comments: Very quick knit - big yarn, big needles. The pattern calls for Size 15 to get gauge (1" for 2 stitches) and I ran out of yarn on the blue hats at that needles size while getting gauge. I re-knit them with a size 13 on the dark blue and size 11 on the duotone blue and they're just fine. It's a very, very basic and easily memorable pattern that can be translated to many different yarns!

I'm using photoshop to "save photos for Web" but the second one still seems grainy...any tips out there??

Calorimetry

Look - I finished something! Calorimetry, by Knitty. Please notice that even though I have a large head, it is a tiny bit too big (look at the crown of my head!!) I did stick to the pattern, but never measured for gage. Here it is folded in half with a postcard for size comparison;Gratuitous close-up of the yarn I used. It's hand-dyed wool that my secret pal from Round 7 got me. If I remember correctly, she bought it from and E-bay seller. It's got great color...looks just like a sunset to me. Unfortunately, it was not my first finished object of 2007 - it was actually my last finished object of 2006! My first object for 2007 is a sideways knit scarf!
Can anyone give me a heads up if my photos are looking a little too grainy? I try to size down the files so I can upload them to flickr from home on dial-up, but it seems like I'm making them too small.