Where my stitches at?

I am thoroughly amused by the debate over that phrase on ravelry. I didn't find it *that* funny, but I did order the only t-shirt that doesn't have the phrase on it. I ordered the "I swatched ravelry" one, because really "where my stitches at?" just doesn't say "I was on ravelry before it was open to the public cuz I'm such a cool hard core knitter!" So yeah, ok, onto craftier things... craftier things with pictures!

My newest WIPs! Everything is on ravelry, so I'll put the links to my ravelry notebook, but for now they'll only work for other ravelry beta testers. I guess they'll just work normally after ravelry goes public. Maybe? Ok, here goes:

Noro striped scarf, but not in Noro. It's in Patons SWS. Surprisingly I couldn't find anyone else on ravelry who'd made the scarf out of this yarn, but it is turning out beautifully so far. The pattern (if you can call it that) is here. And all the details for the project are here. It is a christmas gift for Craig, part of my goal of giving only handmade gifts this year at the holidays.




Pictures of the two colourways I am using for that one:







I also have a Branching Out on the needles, from Knitty. For Craig's mom. Details here. It's blue, a Debbie Bliss yarn that I don't love working with. It keeps splitting whenever I try to psso or k3tog. At least the pattern repeat isn't very long, so I can just do an inch or so at a time then put it down pretty easily.


I've also been working on Halloween costumes. More on that later.

Score!

I decided I would go looking for yarn before work last night. I went into Liquidation World, not really expecting to find much. I was hoping for cheapo acrylic, but instead I found a wall of sparkly ribbony rainbow eylashy fun fur yarn. The kind of yarn you look at and wonder what anyone could possibly make from it. And there's a big sign in front of it that says that its all 50 cents a ball. Except for the one ball of greenish yarn sitting there with kind of a nubbly texture. I look closer and it's a brand name I actually recognize (Classic Elite, the yarn itself is Commotion), and it's a natural fibre! Well mostly, it's about 80% wool, the rest is nylon. And it's 50 cents! So I dug and dug, the rainbow yarn was flying off the shelves, eventually I came up with 18 balls of it, and they are all the same dye lot! I also found three balls of Duchess, which is even nicer. It's a blend of merino, viscose, cashmere, nylon, and angora in a bulky weight. I got a nice burnt orange colour, which is perfect for making some Halloween pumpkins. Though I'll probably save most of it for a scarf, since it feels nice against the3 skin. Not itchy! Grand total was eleven dollars and change for the whole thing.

I had to look up the retail price of the yarn, just so I could know how awesome of a deal I got. And they're both around $10 a ball original retail price. !!! I just got 21 balls of yanr for the price of one! That's over two hundred dollars worth of yarn for a little over ten bucks!

Lots o' pink fun fur - Halloween!

Before Burning Man I bought a bunch of cheap fake hair.I started making dreadfalls but it was taking forever with my poor weak kettle. So I still have a ton of it left, mostly in pink, but also some blue and a maroon-ish colour. A pony tail seemed like the obvious thing to make,so I decided my Halloween costume would be a horsey. A pink one, with blue accents, due to the the colour of the hair.


So taking a bunch of pink hair in my pocket and holding it up to different fabrics, in many different fabric stores,I must have looked like a lunatic. I originally wanted something with a smoother texture, sleek like a horse, but I think the fabric I got is great now. The colour is perfect, and it has the texture of a horse in winter. But softer! :) For the accent colour I went with sparkly blue, which turned out not to be so brilliant to line the top with. It makes me sparkly. Oh well!



The costume also will probably go to Burning Man, and I've been keeping that in mind while making it. When finished, it will have lots of parts: there's a top, skirt, legwarmers, armwarmers, four hooves, tail/belt, and headpiece. I've been working a little on each part, I don't think any one part is totally finished.


The top is from a pattern (except the straps), everything else is just straight out of my brain!

Ravelry

So I finally got a ravelry invite! It seems to be helping at encouraging me to knit. I'm hoping for an entirely handmade holiday this year.



So I've made six dishcloths so far, and have almost finished the Carie Cropped Cardi from Fitted Knits, and a matching hat. Don't really want to say exactly what is for who just yet, just in case ;). I have finished sewing two items for Craig for xmas also.

I went to Romni in Toronto the other day, and bought some nice yarn to make some nice gifts. Yay natural fibres! Debbie Bliss Merino Aran in a robin egg blue:



Brown Sheep Burly Spun in Lotus Pink:


And Brown Sheep Prairie Silks in royal amethyst:

Halloween

So I bought Simplicity 3675 to make a Halloween costume. I made the underneath dress part and I don't like it at all! I'm working on the corset part now, and it is going much better. I'll probably make a little fur circle skirt or something to go with it.

I guess I should mention I am dressing up like a horse. Well, sort of My Little Pony style, a pink horse. I've posted a bit in the Halloween Craftster sewalong.

Oh my goodness, I never posted my HP crafts!

OK, so chronologically this goes before that tote bag for the craftster challenge, but somehow I forgot to post pictures about. I did mention on the cloud bolero, well, Harry Potter day was it's intended goal, and it *did* get done in time.

The release of the Deathly Hallows was a great excuse for me to do some crafting, since I work in a bookstore. We didn't have a midnight release party, but we did open super early Saturday morning, and had lots of decorations and stuff.

I really wanted a little purple sweater, so I decided to dress up as Luna Lovegood. I also ventured into the realm of polymer clay for the first time, to make her radish earrings:




And made a cork necklace, to keep away nargles:




And decoupaged a Luna quote on the bottom:




I also wanted to make a little cardigan like the one Luna wears in the OOTP movie. I dont crochet, so I found a knitting pattern I thought would look similar (cloud bolero by ysolda) and knit it in a similar colour. People recognized it, so I guess it was close enough




I also made a pair of pants based on ones Luna wore in OOTP, and also put crazy shoelaces in my all stars like Luna's.






I was going to put in an elastic waist, but ran around the house searching for thick elastic for hours and hours before I gave up and decided to just sew on ties. I had to wear a big long t-shirt provided by work, and the bow looked all poofy underneath so that wasn't good, but I think elastic may have looked weirder. Of course pretty much as soon as I got home from wearing the costume, I found the jar of elastic hiding behind a box that I'm sure I looked behind at least a dozen times while hunting. Oh well.






I also made a bunch of buttons. Some to give away to kids coming to get the book:





And some for those of us working to wear:




And wands! These were everyones favourite! People kept asking to buy them, so we started giving them away for a donation to charity. They are based on the tutorial here. I ended up making a few more batches, but only took pictures of the first one:



I just got a CD of pictures from my coworker from that day at work, so hopefully I'll remember to upload them soon!

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It's called "The Answer is Blowin in the Wind"