Gosh

Several exciting things I have done recently:

I PASSED PHYSICS! I was so very worried I wouldn't, and the fact that marks took forever to be posted wasn't helping with my mindset. I did not do spectacularly, but considering the course I am pleased with my mark.

I WROTE A PATTERN! It's a pattern for my dreadlock hat, and you can find it HERE. (Ravelry link only for now, I may post this on my website at some point, if I ever get around to making it a proper website.) The pattern is only $1, I fully endorse it! Just look at how lovely the two I made are:

I finished all my x-mas presents on time! I will post pictures once I have them, I need to get my family to take pictures of themselves in my lovely creations. I am rather pleased with myself for finishing everything before I got home, even if I was just knitting for immediate family.

I remade a table to be a delicious monster named Soysauce! His birthday was January 1, 2011, he is a bundle of joy brought into my life by a glue gun. His teeth are made from an old wedding dress!

I found a bunch of semi-decent yarn at the thrift store! Including some delicious neon
laceweight (ie, string). I'm gonna make lovely lace arm warmers that will glow under blacklights!

I got paid (wooo!) by Rare Funk; I hadn't ever picked up a cheque from them, so it was quite a satisfying amount.

I had an unfortunate incident with a can of custard. Delicious but painful.

I dyed my hair...this one may sound less exciting, but dying dreadlocks is a difficult, dangerous, and deadly business.

I am so very much not ready for school to start. It is complicated and difficult even when I like the courses. It's only been two days of classes, and I've already slept for 2.5 hours on campus.

Plans

I just finished reading Sweater Quest, by Adrienne Martini and it has inspired me! First of all, it's a great book, it has a great flow to it, and I read it in a couple days because I couldn't stop! I totally recommend it. It inspired me to work on more interesting/challenging projects. I've made a few shirts and a sweater before, but now I want to learn Fair Isle...not on the same scale as Martini, I'm going to try a hat first. A wander through Ravelry came up with a few patterns I liked; atm I'm leaning towards Tracery Tam, but still considering Joni, Midnight Sun Tam, Floppy Fairisle Hat, or Star Flower Tam. Too many choices! The Fornicating Deer Chart definitely deserves an honourable mention though.

I also want to make socks! I haven't made socks before, mostly because I'm not really a big sock person...I tend to wear thick tights or nothing. But I think knitting socks is something I should know how to do, so I picked up some orangey-greeny sock yarn from Michaels, and I'm going to use Knitty's Universal Toe-Up Formula.

I've finished a couple more hats, which I'm happy enough with, but not really excited about. I'm going to take them to Rare Funk sometime next week...I meant to take hats this week, but I had a whole bunch of assignments to catch up on, and couldn't seem to find the time.

This hat is crocheted, I started it about a year ago, but only just finished it. I've made a similar hat before, I really like the spiral pattern. Acrylic single-ply yarn, it's really soft and I like it! It does pill a bit though.


This one is 100% wool. This is the first hat I've knitted, and I didn't use a pattern (of course) so it's a liiiiiittle wonky...but still wearable! I am reasonably pleased with how it turned out.

Next I'm going to see if I can make red and aqua look good together. This could be interesting, here's the yarn I've got:

It will at least be distinctive.

I also got some colourful tape for hula hoops! It's actually hockey tape from the sports store, it's cheap and colourful and I got a whole bunch of colours. So now my hoop has a few different shades of blue on it, so exciting!

I'm making a couple more hoops for friends, which is exciting, I've made back the cost of the materials already. Not sure if anyone else wants to buy hoops from me, but I still have pipe left over, so possibly I'll just make myself some different sizes.

In dumpster diving news, I found 21 tubes of watercolour paint the other day.

They were all in clean packaging, I don't know *why* they were thrown away. More free stuff, I guess, but still. No wonder everyone hates north america.

I'm home for thanksgiving this weekend, and I found some yarn bombing! I wish I'd had a camera with me, but no. In true London, ON fashion, it had been burned by someone...wtf?! It looked like it had been nice before...

Dyed Yarn and Beads!

So far I've dyed two of the skeins I got a few days ago! Both are dip-dyed with food colouring, and steam-set in the microwave. I'm really happy with how they turned out!


This one reminds me of this gum.



The first one I re-skeined after dying it on a slightly smaller niddy-noddy, which is why the different colours are all mixed up together; the second one I just twisted into a hank. Which do you think looks better? I'm not sure which I prefer.


I got inspired by this person's photos to play with polymer clay again! I made some beads and mushroom pendants. I forgot they were in the oven, so they got a liiiiiittle overcooked. Heh, oh well.



I threaded them into sets and attached them to little cards because I'm going to take them to Rare Funk. I've got an assignment account there, but I haven't really used it, only taken some hats there aaaages ago. I have some armwarmers I knitted that I might take there - I made up the pattern so it's legal for me to sell them. Ftw!

I'm kind of annoyed at Canada Post, I wasn't home when they delivered a package, so I have to pick it up, which is fine, but it is not at the post office that is LITERALLY around the corner from me, or at the one which is a 5 minute walk away, or the one that's a 10 minute walk away. It's actually not that far away, but there are THREE post offices that are closer than the one I have to go to! Bah.

Also, for some reason I got 407 views on my flickr two days ago - waaay more than usual. No idea what's up with that.

Craft Fai(r|l)

I went to a craft fair with a friend, but due to poor attendance and the fact that almost everyone who DID show up only wanted to buy x-mas oven mitts, sales were not good. However we both broke even! I even made $2! But since the table was $10 and we split the cost that is not saying too much...

I did, however, make 2 things at the fair, a hat:



and a tag:





While walking back to the bus station afterwards, we stopped in at a store called Rare Funk, which sells things on consignment from local artists. Long story short, you can now buy my hats at Rare Funk in Kitchener, ON!

And that includes these two new ones:





Selling things in an ACTUAL STORE (very exciting) means I had to make price tags/business cards. Since I'm a little terrible at photoshop/GIMP I decided to handmake them...this included cutting the card, writing the words and drawing the picture. (and colouring the picture with crayons!) It doesn't sound too bad except I made a lot of them.



There is a definite value to handmade things, but when there's lots and they're all pretty much the same...sometimes commercial solutions are perhaps more appropriate. (Though commercial solutions don't let you colour things with crayons)

In the spirit of making things from paper (including an ATC for a swap. I think I hate ATCs a little, but this was the first one I've done so now at least I know better) I made a postcard.



It's not a ...bad? postcard? But I think I'm not cut out for scrapbooking or similar things. I suppose it's just as well, the fewer craft supplies I'm addicted to buying, the better.

A little bit of gloating to end this now:



THAT'S RIGHT. I ORGANISED MY YARN, MOTHERFUCKERS! IT IS NO LONGER IN A BUCKET OF TANGLE.

/gloating.