Once upon a time I was a new crafter who had no yarn. So I asked if anyone had some yarn they wanted to get rid of, and ended up with a box from my grandmother's attic and a box from a friend's mom, and I still have a lot of those yarns.
One of them was a huge ball of cherry-red aran-weight acrylic. It was soft, so that was a plus. It was brighter than a lightbulb, and nothing else seemed to go with it, so those were minuses. I fooled around with it for a while and could never find anything that it wanted to be, so I gave up on it and shoved it back into my Stash Tower.
Two days ago I was watching some of the Olympics from February that are still on our DVR, and needed something mindless to work on. I pulled out this yarn on a whim and asked if it wanted to be a small blanket. It said...
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Monday, June 23, 2014
Flash Your Stash 2014
Every year on Ravelry we have a thread called "Flash Your Stash", for which we crazy yarn people drag all our yarn out of its nooks and crannies, spread it out over our couches/tables/king-size-beds/floors, and take pictures of it. It can be very amusing to see how the stashes change over the years, so a lot of us do it annually. (Besides, it's a good incentive to reorganize the stash as we put it all away!)
I did take part in Flash Your Stash 2013, as you can see if you follow the link. Also as you can see, my stash was pretty meager and mostly consisted of inherited scraps.
Unfortunately, this year is quite different. This year, it covers the gameroom table on which I assembled three-foot afghan blocks. Yeah. This is going to be scary.
Ready? Here we go.
I did take part in Flash Your Stash 2013, as you can see if you follow the link. Also as you can see, my stash was pretty meager and mostly consisted of inherited scraps.
Unfortunately, this year is quite different. This year, it covers the gameroom table on which I assembled three-foot afghan blocks. Yeah. This is going to be scary.
Ready? Here we go.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Card-Making Endeavors
As I mentioned earlier, my grandfather died this April. Now that life has settled somewhat, my grandmother decided it was time to start writing thank-you cards for the dozens of people who came out of the woodwork to help and support her.
Something you have to understand about my grandmother: She took up card-making as a craft several years ago.
The way I am about yarn, she is about cards. She has diecutters, various types of ink, the hugest collection of stamps I've ever seen (yeah, the rubber ones like kids play with), embossing powder, ribbons, glitter. She makes these work-of-art cards for every birthday and holiday and we just marvel. When my aunt moved out, Grandma took her room and converted it into something like a study/craft room. The closet is like a tiny card workshop. It's fabulous.
But she has 50 to 100 thank-you cards to send out, so she reluctantly decided she'd save herself the work and just buy them. So off she went to every store she could think of, looking for simple elegant thank-you cards that suited her taste. Unfortunately, she couldn't find anything that wasn't tacky or too plain. She could always find something to improve, and she wasn't willing to send out any less than the best. Eventually she gave up the hunt and resigned herself to making them. Still not quite ready to make them all from scratch, however, she found a box of 50 black-and-white patterned plain cards she could embellish, and enlisted my help.
So Thursday afternoon we planned and had a few mild arguments over the designs. (Mostly I just sat around while she tried things, and occasionally gave input on ribbons.) Friday afternoon we really set to work, and I was smart enough to pull out my camera and take a bunch of pictures of the process to share with you.
Something you have to understand about my grandmother: She took up card-making as a craft several years ago.
The way I am about yarn, she is about cards. She has diecutters, various types of ink, the hugest collection of stamps I've ever seen (yeah, the rubber ones like kids play with), embossing powder, ribbons, glitter. She makes these work-of-art cards for every birthday and holiday and we just marvel. When my aunt moved out, Grandma took her room and converted it into something like a study/craft room. The closet is like a tiny card workshop. It's fabulous.
But she has 50 to 100 thank-you cards to send out, so she reluctantly decided she'd save herself the work and just buy them. So off she went to every store she could think of, looking for simple elegant thank-you cards that suited her taste. Unfortunately, she couldn't find anything that wasn't tacky or too plain. She could always find something to improve, and she wasn't willing to send out any less than the best. Eventually she gave up the hunt and resigned herself to making them. Still not quite ready to make them all from scratch, however, she found a box of 50 black-and-white patterned plain cards she could embellish, and enlisted my help.
So Thursday afternoon we planned and had a few mild arguments over the designs. (Mostly I just sat around while she tried things, and occasionally gave input on ribbons.) Friday afternoon we really set to work, and I was smart enough to pull out my camera and take a bunch of pictures of the process to share with you.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Early Morning, A Quilt, And Incoherency
I was still awake at five-thirty this morning. My brain wouldn't shut up, and I wasn't physically tired enough to use my body's inclination toward sleep to calm my mind down. So I got up, made myself a cuppa (TJ's Mango Black Tea with plenty of cream and sugar), and ventured outside with a blanket thinking I would watch the sunrise. Instead, I ended up watching a lot of clouds.
But that wasn't bad. I could actually watch different layers of clouds blowing across the sky at different rates, which was fascinating. I also caught glimpses of a gibbous moon when empty patches in all the layers lined up just right. And of course there were the birds. I heard plenty of chirping from seven or eight small birds that looked like they were setting up some sort of aerial football (soccer) game which eventually dissolved into flirting, a few annoying crowing noises from the ubiquitous grackles, and at least one mourning dove said good morning. The mourning dove in particular made me smile, since one of my brothers taught himself to imitate that call on an ocarina, so perfectly that I could never tell whether I was listening to an actual bird or a plastic potato.
--
So the crocheted thing from my last post. The one that kicked my ass with embarrassing ease? It's a blanket.
What, you already figured that out? Okay okay fine, let me give you some more detail.
At least a year and a half ago, probably closer to two years, I promised Ian that I'd send him to college with a blanket if we were still together. In August, he moves approximately 200 miles south to start his junior year, and when he does... his blanket will absolutely not be finished. But I should have it done for his second semester. I think the wait will be worth it, considering how much symbolism I managed to cram into one blanket. Here's what it should look like when finished:
But that wasn't bad. I could actually watch different layers of clouds blowing across the sky at different rates, which was fascinating. I also caught glimpses of a gibbous moon when empty patches in all the layers lined up just right. And of course there were the birds. I heard plenty of chirping from seven or eight small birds that looked like they were setting up some sort of aerial football (soccer) game which eventually dissolved into flirting, a few annoying crowing noises from the ubiquitous grackles, and at least one mourning dove said good morning. The mourning dove in particular made me smile, since one of my brothers taught himself to imitate that call on an ocarina, so perfectly that I could never tell whether I was listening to an actual bird or a plastic potato.
--
So the crocheted thing from my last post. The one that kicked my ass with embarrassing ease? It's a blanket.
What, you already figured that out? Okay okay fine, let me give you some more detail.
At least a year and a half ago, probably closer to two years, I promised Ian that I'd send him to college with a blanket if we were still together. In August, he moves approximately 200 miles south to start his junior year, and when he does... his blanket will absolutely not be finished. But I should have it done for his second semester. I think the wait will be worth it, considering how much symbolism I managed to cram into one blanket. Here's what it should look like when finished:
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