Needles & Nilbogs

 I made myself a new pair of fingerless gloves yesterday!  They are Very Green.  That’s all that’s the post. 

 Well, it’s been a while. I’ll spare you the excuses, except for the fact that I’ve done a lot of writing (college essays and fanfic) and some crochet, and that’s about it lately. So here’s the Christmas presents, and I’ll talk about the writing soon. (read: I’m doing a few things tonight and scheduling them for various days over the next few weeks, while I attempt to get back into at least saying Something on a semi-regular basis.) I made Mom a rainbow scarf for Christmas, and finished it on December 27, instead of several months later, which happens unfortunately often. This is it in the sink, all scrunched up. An early process picture of the rainbow scarf; it’s broomstick lace, 30 stitches across with an H hook (it’s some red heart yarn that isn’t unforgettable but seems pretty similar. I have a Thing for single ply rainbow ombrés.) and worked around my 1 inch ruler in groups of 3.  More of the scarf blocking The scarf all laid out on towels; it’s Long.  Close up of it...

 Tech week happened, sorry. Brief photodump today, but I’ll probably be better able to blog starting in January after all my college apps are in — I’m thinking about maybe dumping the “only posting on thursdays” thing at least until then and probably after too, cause that’s really feeling constricting. I wanted a schedule to force me to do stuff but now I’ve gotten really busy and I should probably at least reevaluate the schedule situation.  Anyways these are all my recent projects most of which speak for themselves.

 Hello from the state fair, where my Forget-Me-Not Table Topper placed first in class (16-18yo) and best in division (youth fabrics and textiles)!!! That’s all, now a brief photodump of all the cool stuff I saw.  My piece These are all the cool crafts. 

 I’m thinking about halloween already. I know it’s kind of early, but I wanted to do something really detailed this year. I’m going to try to be one of the characters from a book series I like, the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. And given that weapons are a no for this, it has to be one of the humans, which means I need a feed interface.  Interfaces clip into the ear, and they can look like anything. I made one with pull tabs from soda cans and some thread, plus the clips off of a pair of clip-on dangly earrings. Yes, I should have been spinning. Yes, I promised myself I’d only spin this month. No, I haven’t been spinning.  On my right ear, showing where to put the clips (it’s not exact) and what the shape looks like Lying on my bedspread The process was pretty simple, although this is definitely a multi-craftual, complicated project. I’m not sure how well I can explain, but I’ll do my best.   To do something similar, you’ll need three of the pull tabs (the thing...

I’ve been reading a lot about antique/vintage crochet lately, so I’m going to review one of the books I’ve been using as reference. The book is Civil War Ladies: Fashions and Needle-Arts of the Early 1860’s , and it’s a collection of articles from Peterson’s Magazine, coming mostly from 1861 and 1864. I got it from a friend of my grandfather’s, who was also very fond of older patterns and craft history.  Overall, my general impression is definitely good; it’s very clear that the patterns are not reproductions, they’re original. This does mean the patterns are hard to understand sometimes, and they occasionally look odd to my modern eyes, but I can follow most of them.  The subject matter is mixed. Peterson’s published patterns for all sorts of fancy work, alongside poetry, songs, and fiction (mostly cut out from this book). There’s embroidery, patterns for sewing, knitting, crochet, netting, the occasional tatting project, and some that are unclear or useable for multiple craf...

I think I’ve mentioned this almost everywhere I exist on the internet, but forgive me one more bit of crowing. My crochet work made the state fair! I’m entered in the Student Showcase of the California State Fair (July 15–July 31, if you’re in the area and want to see it), with the Forget-Me-Not Table Topper. This project ( Ravelry link ) has actually been a really long time in the making.  Framed and ready for drop-off! A few technical details before I talk about the story: it’s basically a granny square where I replaced some of the sides with filet for a while. If you want to do something similar, you need to leave edge clusters at each side so that the increase pattern can be maintained, and then there’s a setup row of all mesh before you can work the pattern. It’s basically working the opposite of the granny stitches; dc in each ch-space, and chain over each cluster (use the same number of chains as the number of stitches in the cluster, and be aware that this means it will be ...

 I’M FREEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! … sorry. School got out today. Anyways, I’m just going to get that out of my system.  Ahem. Who wants to see crocheted Platonic solids, aka dice? This has been my project since the school carnival, and basically it’s a lot of granny squares/pentagons/triangles that are either crocheted or sewn together and stuffed kind of loosely. I took no notes and wrote no patterns, and I gave the pink/purple cube to my brother (he asked for one, I made it in his favorite color).  Also, if anyone does something like this, I’d suggest sewing it together rather than crocheting it, because whip stitches were easier and prettier than the crochet. These are DMC perle cotton and embroidery floss, in mostly random arrays of color that looked good to me. My standard 1.5mm steel hook continues to be my favorite crochet hook, and I used it here. My suggestions for anyone who wants to try something similar: sew rather than crochet them together, look up nets for polyhedr...