Lace

Majora's Mask cross-stitch

I’ve finally gotten brave enough to start knitting some lace patterns. The first is a simple gauge swatch with lace on the front to turn it into a useful bag. The others are a bit fancier. Some sock patterns and a skirt that I may get up the courage to wear sometime.

I’m also planning on making the hooded sweatshirt from Stitch ‘n’ Bitch since I want to try making something other than tubes and squares. I never really make anything with seams. This way I get to try using mohair and experimenting with new techniques. Learning is never a bad thing.

The Majora’s Mask cross-stitch is coming along nicely, though I am still making a few pairs of socks at the same time. Dean’s mom asked me to make baby socks as a gift for someone in Portugal, and I’m making a few extras since babies grow so darn fast. I doubt the first pair will fit for long.

I seem to have lost my only crochet hook. I shall have to find that.

Keychains!

I made myself a clone of a keychain that I made when I was about 13 or so. It’s an adaptation of a bracelet pattern using brown, gold, pink, and pale peach. I’m surprised at how well that colour combination works. I found the scrap remains of the original keychain, got all nostalgic and such and made another one.

They don’t take very long to make – only about an hour, maybe less. I was reading my textbook at the time and wasn’t really paying too much attention to the time.

It feels good to be making things with the embroidery floss again. Things other than cross-stitch or embroidery, that is.

Bed Socks

I finally got to finish and give away the bright pink socks that Lisa wanted. They were a little big, but that was fixed and now they should fit just fine. They really are just sooo pink. They were fluorescing like crazy when she left with them. I don’t think I have a picture, unless there is one on the camera that I missed, but Lisa will have some soon and I can try to get a digital version.

I’m making myself some bed socks too, though they aren’t anywhere near as thick as the pink ones. I’m using Regia for once. REAL sock yarn. One sock is finished, and is a little loose, but I like that idea since I am planning on wearing them to bed and I’d rather not have my feet being ‘strangled’ as it were.

Wonder of Wonders

To be honest, a large part of me had never thought that this day would come. I can honestly say that I am engaged to the most wonderful person I have had the pleasure of getting to know.

I’ve spent much of my life feeling detached and inferior to those around me, unworthy of occupying the same space and time. It’s taken me quite a few years, but for the last three or so I’ve been feeling more like a person. I wouldn’t call what I was before that an actual person, since that requires some sense of equality with other moral thinking beings, and I certainly wasn’t feeling equal to anyone.

Sometimes I find myself reverting to that former thought pattern, but the funny thing is that I have grown enough since then to be able to dismiss those thoughts for what they are: fleeting doubts. It does nothing for my self-worth to encourage the belief that I am not worthy of things that other people have.

Even writing this is a bit of a regression, though a parting one. I do not want to spend the rest of my life wondering if I should have the things I do. I do not mean this in any materialistic way. Those things don’t matter. But personal relationships do.

I am very much deserving of having friends, a husband, a family. These things are not something that can belong only to the privileged few. They are mine, or can be mine. I have plenty of family. For all the grief they cause, sometimes I wish I didn’t, but at the same time my life would be pretty empty without them.

Something I learned as a child always comes back to me when thinking about this. The only reason why I am bothered so much by my family is because I care about them. I really do. They don’t need to be around, or talk to me much, or care what I do even. Just knowing they are in bad situations or doing stupid things makes me frustrated or angry because I do care what happens to these people. I love them or I would be indifferent to their situations.

With that out of the way, I am starting to realize that finding the love of my life and knowing that he loves me just as much as I love him, that he wants to be with me for the rest of our lives, this is something I can allow myself to have and cherish. I look forward to waking every day because of the prospect of being with him. No matter how bad things seem they can always be dealt with. The knowledge that someone supports me and is with me in such things makes life so much better.

To be honest, I always expected to spend my life alone. Partially because I thought I didn’t deserve to be with anyone else, but also because I believed that no one would want to be with me. After accepting this, I decided that the only person I had to live for was myself.

This is important, because it was this belief of being alone, of only having myself to depend on, which actually enabled me to begin trusting myself, and acquiring the strength to continue on my own. I would not be here today without this.

I understand that this is rambling all over the place, but basically I am trying to explain how that lost and lonely person became able to become the one I am today.

Muppet Socks!

I really like these. These were a product of a very long and stressful bus trip. I brought the travelling yarn bag and decided to start another pair of socks. I had left my fuzzy yarn from the hat and scarf I made in there, and so I started the ribbing with that rather than adding it at the end. It’s truly part of the actual body of the sock, rather than being simple embellishment.

[By the way, one of these days I’ll remember to post a picture of said hat and scarf, though it’ll probably be a while.]

I have a lot of yellow sock yarn kicking around. I guess it was on sale and my sister liked the colour, because I got a package in the mail full of maybe nine balls of yellow and one orange. Since I decided to see how it knit up, it was next to be added. As well, I am finally experimenting with switching colours, and ways of better attaching them to keep projects from coming apart. Using two types of yarn in distinctly different colours was a good way to learn, I thought.

To continue that thought, I used most of what was left of the pink from the Inverse Socks to emphasize the toes and heels on these socks. The short row heels are comfortable, but I’ve yet to find out how well they wear. In any case, these socks were the product of several experiments and a couple of frogging sessions, but I think overall they turned out to be something fun to look at and wear.

The name is because they remind me so much of a muppet. I’m not sure if there is actually a muppet with this colour scheme, but it just seems so much to resemble the way they look. I think these shall be my sandal socks. [Yes, I know, the scandal!]

Functional Products

It’s been a while since I made something just for its functional purpose, rather than because I was trying a new technique or look. So I got bored and made some dishcloths. The first few were just average square ones, in that weird tan colour since my mom had it hanging around in her stash. The round ones I made when I got to the point where I did want to try something new.

I’ve been fascinated by that black-flecked white cotton for a while now, and finally caved and made a dishcloth out of that too. Since I made the first ones in February I recently (roughly a couple weeks ago, this post is after-the-fact) decided to see if I could make another from memory. It turned out quite nice I think.

I left a few of the tan ones in the kitchen. The flatmates pretty much ignored them, though one of them did (seemingly accidentally) get tossed in the trash. The other one has yet to be used. I am saving it as a housewarming gift for the new flatmates when I move at the end of the week. It can then be broken in properly.

I still have some more of the cotton hanging around, so I think I may make another one. I like the way that turned out and it would be nice to have a couple to rotate while the others are being laundered.

Scarlet Fever!

I’ve finally finished Dean’s red socks. All in all, I think they turned out rather well, though I must admit I am eager to try making some socks using intarsia or something to vamp them up a little.

These socks were quite fun to make. I used a short-row toe for a change on these ones, since they seem to wear better and be more comfortable. I was hesitant to try a short-row heel though, since I’m not sure how well fingering-weight yarn would wear if I do it that way. That experiment shall be done on socks that aren’t a gift for someone else.

Also, I finished the second pair of cotton socks for my mother. It felt really strange to go from fingering-weight yarn to worsted, but the socks turned out really well. I’m going to mail them out as soon as the holiday is over, so my mom can give the lavender pair a break for a change.

Pictures shall come later tonight once I find the camera.

Peacock Tapestry/Embroidery

I’m finally getting some real progress done on my cross-stitch. In the last couple days I’ve done most of the burgundy in the border, and when I get that done will be back to working on the main part. I’m not sure where I’m going to start with that, but I’m going to do one area at a time instead of doing one entire colour all over the piece. Doing that takes too long and makes it more likely I’ll make mistakes.

My next plan is to embroider the leaf motif of my sheets onto my duvet cover, possibly onto the blue pillowcases too, since that would tie everything together quite nicely and be a small project which won’t take too much time.

I’ve knitted the back pocket for the iPod cozy, but I have yet to attempt putting it all together. That should be done soon too, with pictures.

The Wonderful iPod Cozy

I caved in to the current fad and knitted Dean an iPod cozy. It took a bit of searching, but I finally found a red button that was the perfect size to close it.

It’s a work-in-progress. I’m probably going to knit a small pouch on the back for the ear buds. Since I didn’t think ahead enough to remember to slip a stitch on the top for them to be plugged in while it’s in the case, I guess that a pouch on the back will have to do.

This was my first time making something off the top of my head. I even took apart an old shirt that was hanging around to get some burgundy cloth to line it with. That was interesting in itself. Sewing cloth to knitted fabric is fun. I just hope that it holds.

Has anyone else tried making one of these yet?

My First Pair of Socks



Wow. I am both proud and saddened by these socks. They function as socks, which is great. But there are ladders and slipped stitches and other mistakes all over them. I even somehow misaligned the gusset. Thank god it didn’t hurt anything.

All in all, they are great, for the simple fact that they are warm, beautifully tacky, and they got me hooked onto the wonderful world of sockknitting.

I find it pretty amusing that the first time I saw yarn specifically for socks (in December) I bought tons of it and just jumped right in. My mom taught me to knit when I was little…I’m not even sure how old I was, so I was probably under five years old. She’s not all that capable of reading a pattern, or just doing something out of the blue like that, so I really was on my own. But it looks like they turned out fine.

I mean, I used dpns, they were smaller than any other knitting needles I had yet used, and that was a lot of knitting to do in a week. At least, the first sock took a week, the second took me a couple of sporadic knitting around classes and such.

I’ve done another pair since these, but my mom has magicked them away and so I have no pictures to show you. But the good news was I did those with a generic formula. I can make socks with any size needles and any yarn now, as long as I like the gauge. Pretty cool.

I’m off to finish the heel on my third pair.