Yes, I skipped Day 6: share. I couldn’t think of anything I already had a picture of and nothing else presented itself during the day. In fact, I ate the rest of the ice cream for lunch. All by myself. I did not share. Because I am the maman and sometimes mamans deserve all the rest of the ice cream.
Which brings us to today, “a shape.”
The stained glass window in my front door provides an assortment of shapes to choose from.
This tree is on a scarf I made on my knitting board, lo these many years. It has been languishing in a bin, waiting for someone to love it enough to take it home. In other words, I made it for my Etsy store. I made up the pattern on my own. I even had to sketch out my own little grid because I had no graph paper at the time. The scarf used up two partial skeins of yarn that wouldn’t have made anything on their own, but I think the combined effect turned out pretty nice.
This swathe of white fabric kept me plenty busy this summer. I probably could have sailed a boat with it. But instead, I did some interesting Frankenpatterning to create a comic-con costume for my friend’s daughter. Any among you who are video game aficionados will recognize this character.
The garb of Ezio Auditore from Assassin’s Creed
Ok, so now it’s white and black and red all over.
This was a fun, yet maddening project. The fun was getting to collaborate with my friend over several weeks; each weekend having a fitting with Miss F, then sending all the kids out to play while R. and I chatted and worked on our respective crafts. Also fun was trying out some techniques I hadn’t done before, namely the slashing on the sleeves. This is reminiscent of Renaissance styling. I found a very helpful tutorial done by a woman who creates her own garb for Ren Faires and the like.
Sleeve in process
Slashes are cut, showing the black underlining
Finished sleeve, ribbon details and topstitching. The garment looks rumply because Miss F is much taller than me, so it doesn’t hang right on my dress form.
The maddening part was, I had to create this costume basically from scratch, using art from the video game and a fan-drawn diagram of the key components of the costume to translate it into real life. For the hood, I used a cloak pattern that I have, but turned the hood piece around to give it the trademark point in the front. The body of the garment was a combination of the cloak pattern and a woman’s suit dress pattern from the mid-90s. Of course, neither of those two patterns truly captured the complete look, so there was a lot of measuring, drafting, sketching, and trial and error. If I were to ever do it again (which I won’t), I know what I would do differently. There’s always value in learning.
Miss F had a fantastic time at the comic-con, rocked her costume, met new friends, and even won the costume contest! She mailed me the sweetest thank you note afterwards and R. presented me with a couple of beautiful thank you gifts that she made for me. But you’ll have to wait to see those…
Another knitted thing, this time with stripes and this time for Granota. I finished this sweater more recently (about a month ago). I tried blocking it out earlier this week, but it didn’t take, so here it is pinned out again for another round of blocking. (For non-yarny people, that means steaming it into its final shape; if I don’t block it, it curls up like a scroll which makes it awfully hard to sew together. Even if I did manage to sew it together like that, can you imagine how rumpled and “homemade” it would look? Blocking is a necessity.) This is the wrong side showing. Cross your fingers that it will block out right this time!
One thing that makes me extra excited about this sweater is that I was on a mission to use up yarn from my stash. The aqua and the variegated are the only ones I managed to kill off, but at least the others are reduced!
Baby Sprinkaan (18 months) climbing up a sand dune this past summer. If that’s not joyous, I don’t know what is.
It lives!!!
Once again, I’ve resuscitated the blog to participate in The Idea Room’s photo challenge for the month of December. I’m going to do things a little bit differently this time and post about things I’ve made in the last, uh, however many months.
To kick it off, we’ll start with “warmth,” which was actually yesterday’s word, but when you’re chronically late like I am, what’s one day out of a whole month?
Warmth:
May I present to you, my very first ever knitted grown-up sweater. It’s my second ever knit project, the first being a tiny sweater I knitted for Baby Sprinkaan just before he was born. I’m pretty proud of this. I made a thing! I made a wearable thing! And it is made out of the thickest, softest, chunkiest yarn I could find.
Cozy Wool — I think it’s the Michael’s store brand
I have to wait for the very coldest days to break out this sweater or I’ll actually get too hot. I think that qualifies for “warmth.”
This sweater was fun and relatively quick to make, owing to the thick yarn and the humongous needles used to make it. Here’s a photo showing the size of those suckers compared to a regular ol’ pencil.
Mondo knitting needles
I’m actually considering making another sweater like this in a different color. The next time I make it, I’ll pay better attention to gauge and measurements so that I don’t have to add an extra band of ribbing around the bottom to make it long enough to fit me.
Another one of my famous “design elements.”
To quote Rana as a 3 year old, “I’m is all worm and snoogly.”
It’s low-key here, but this is big stuff to the kids — eating sausage, crackers, and cheese in the living room while watching a movie! We’ll have our traditional strawberry floats later tonight!
And, in the spirit of celebration, here is the sign that Konik made for his bedroom door. The party was supposed to have taken place on Christmas day (Christmas music, dancing, and confetti, he said), but we all kind of forgot to attend (he also forgot to remind us). But he still has the sign up and it’s just too adorable.
Go and party well and wisely! Happy New Year!
To be fair, this is today’s early morning and not yesterday because, by the time I bothered to check what the word of the day was, it was decidedly past “early morning.”
I guess I need to wash my windows.
The word of the day for December 26 was “busy.” Apparently, I was too busy to take a picture. “Relax” is apt for the 27th, though. I saw off my parents and brother as they headed south to visit our other brother and grandmother. My kids were wired from three days of company, cookies, and stocking candy, so I sent them each to their rooms with a book and I sat down with a cup of tea.
Two Frogs and a Grasshopper 