going quiet

I'm thinking this may be the last post in this blog. No, no, I won't stop knitting. But the reality is what with all the other things I have going on, I'm not going to be doing as much knitting as I thought I was going to be doing when I started this blog, and having a whole blog devoted to that same small amount of knitting seems a little silly.
And stressful to try to keep up ("I need to knit something to put in my blog!" That's like the cart leading the horse, and when it comes to that, you have to stop and rethink what you're doing).

So. Whatever wonderful knitty crafty things I do from here on out I will just pop into my other blog. I didn't want to just pull the plug on this one and not explain. I'll leave it up, in case people who haven't checked in in a while stop by. (I always think its sad and frustrating when you have a blog you like, then it goes quiet, but you still check in, thinking maybe they're just taking a break, then after about a YEAR you figure out they've just let it die.)

Also, I'll be candid here ~ my etsy shop is not going gangbusters like I was hoping it would. No one seems to want my little pillows and I wonder about keeping all that going as well. I don't have the knack for etsy, that certain something that all the popular etsy people have. So that may be going bye-bye as well in the near future.

I'd like (and need) to concentrate on my illustration and other art projects. I have children's book projects and colored pencil projects that are completely filling my dance card for the foreseeable future. But this has been a fun little adventure, and I'm glad I gave it a whirl. And thanks to everyone who's stopped by and left comments or bought something!

ANTS

I haven't had a chance to do any knitting all week. I know, I know, Wilson needs friends, but he's just gonna have to wait a bit.

Yesterday I woke up to ANTS, an army of them, legions of them, making their way across the rug, all the way across the room, to a bowl of cat crunchies. These guys weren't just swarming a bowl of food, they were moving in. There were a few bigger sized ants which I assumed were generals or sargeants or something, directing the operation. I'm sure the queen was back in the nest packing up her things, getting ready for the move.

They'd been at this for hours. It was just horrifying. You know how it takes you a minute to process what you're seeing? I did the eye-rub thing, thinking maybe it was just a long piece of yarn that had somehow been dragged across the room, then up the wall...no... wait...its ANTS

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!



So I knit this little homage to them. I will hang it on the wall. Its almost 4 feet long all together. I don't know what the fringe is all about exactly, but it seemed appropriate. Maybe its representative of how I smeared them all with wet paper towels (because you can't exactly spray RAID all over a rug).
Ants don't bleed, do they? I don't want to think about it. ~~shiver~~

I also did a colored pencil piece about them. It took 2 pieces of art to get this worked out of my system! Art therapy rocks!!

Not really knitting, but close

My needles have been napping for a few days now, while my colored pencils have been busy. I've been drawing knitting, instead of actually making it.

This little piece was done with Derwent Coloursofts, which are my new favorite art supply. I like that they're soft and go on fast. I still do many layers, and this piece was burnished, so it took longer than some of my other yarn pieces.

I've put them up on ebay, and also made some cards and am working on some products to put in my CafePress shop.

~~~~~
I found this fun site. Prudence Mapstone does the most wonderful freeform knitting! The "scrumbles" are fabulous! (They're in her Gallery section.)

Wilson

Ta-Da!

I think I have successfully created the first possibly transgender, racially ambiguous PILLOW of indeterminate age who's ever lived.

I'm not sure if his hair is a "'fro" or a "grandma 'do".
Or if its his natural color or if he uses Miss Clairol.


Wilson likes to be referred to as "he", although the rosebud mouth begs to differ.



I can tell you for certain that Wilson is a film buff ("films", not "movies", please) with a particular fondness for anything in grainy black and white; loves mushrooms, and collects photos and replicas and ephemera and knick knacks representing such (but doesn't really eat them all that much); likes clocks, but not digital ones; loves the color green and has a green bathroom; has a fear of band-aids; loves macaroni and cheese; and likes his pillowcases ironed.


I think he needs some friends, don't you?

No new news

I'm so boring, knitting-wise.

Its been a wild week with other work and storms and now my dryer won't work. I have wet towels and a tablecloth and undies hanging around the house, strategically located near heating vents. Its a charming "look".
The next 3 days I will have a series of handymen of all sorts parading through my garage and yard fixing said dryer and the back fence. Oh boy.

So I haven't worked on "Wilson" anymore (that's what I'm naming the little knitted guy below, in honor of the movie "Castaway". (Thanks Beth and Maureen for the idea!)

I am happy though to have been accepted into Ravelry. I was on a looooooong waiting list (like, over 1,000 people) so I was surprised when they emailed me.

Hopefully I'll get to my needles sometime over the weekend and will have a Wilson update before too long. I want to see how he turns out too!

New friend

I think I've been spending too much time alone. You know how crazy people start talking to inanimate objects like they're alive? Yeah, well, I've started knitting myself some new friends to talk to.

This is the first of the "pillow people" (trademark, copyright, blah blah).



I'd like to add some hair, haven't quite worked that out yet.
Like my sophisticated "hold it together while I sew it up" colored toothpick thing? It works.

I did a cable along the bottom, just like I said I would. It kind of gives it a base to sit on. I don't know why a sideways cable is an adequate "body", but it is.



I just have one side sewn up so far. You can see how these develop. Amazing how the sewing up fixes the curling stockinette stitch problem. Then when they get stuffed they just plump up like magic. That part is fun, seeing them come to life.

I can't wait to finish this one and see how she turns out.

Liam, Genevieve, Randall, Amelia...

...Sonia, Gerald and Clark.











They're all up on etsy now as the "Petite Pillows" Collection.

We're bracing for a set of bad storms this weekend. One's already come through, and I'm not looking forward to the next few days. I hate big scary wind. So fingers crossed, but if the power goes out and you don't hear from me for a few days, you'll know why.

NEW YEARS SALE on etsy

I put these and a couple other pieces for sale in my etsy shop if anyone's interested.
(The scarf with the pin is now sold, sorry.)


There was actually some SUN today, so I was able to take pics of my little pillows.
I'll put them in the shop sometime this week.

Happy New Year everyone! Let's hope its healthy and prosperous and good in all ways for all of us.

one more done

The bits from the last post all sewed together and stuffed:



I departed from my usual pattern and used the "do-dad" yarn to stitch around the edges, instead of the main yarn. It looks cute, but you can't really see it in this picture, except for just a bit on the bottom left corner. It gives it just a little pizzazz.


This is the beginning of the next one. I'm using a red red Merino wool with a weird textured red yarn with "bits" woven into it.



I have an idea about incorporating some cables into the next batch of these. I love cables.If I had my way everything would have cables knit into it. Yes, everything.

new pillow bits

The weather is cold, the sky is grey, there's a nice fire in the fireplace and I can't move because of a Christmas-stress bad back. So what else is there to do but knit?

Here's the start of another little pillow.

"This way and that way" front:


Curled up stockinette back:


A little do-dad for the front, which will also get a red heart button:


These are the yarns I knit together for the pillow itself:


And this is the cool stuff I used for the do-dad:


The whole pillow is about 6 inches wide. I stuff them with regular poly-fill, then sew up the edges in the same yarns I used for the pillow itself.
I just love these little guys!

Red

I love red. Red reds, bluish reds, pinky reds, orangey reds. What a great color.

I'm thinking Valentine's Day already, because I was woefully last-minute and behind on Christmas this year, and vowed to not do that again. So I'm trying to get ahead a bit.

I found some cute little red heart buttons, and decided to make some little Valentiney pillows. These are not the "real" official pictures. I have to wait for a good sun day (good luck, this time of year). I will put these as well as the others from before up on etsy and see what happens.

These two are actually more pink and raspberry and maroon, but the heart button is very red, so it makes a nice combination.



I love mixing yarns together. These two are a raspberry wool, then a VERY interesting kind of candy striped almost pinkish red and white, which also varies from way fat to eensy skinny. Its the weirdest, coolest, funnest thing to knit with.




I think I'll do some wintery bluish ones too. I have some nice tweedy yarn that has blue in it that I think might be nice.

hand made ittie-bitties

Well, I tried.
(And I know, bad pictures again. I should just rename this blog "THE BAD PICTURE BLOG".)

What you're looking at is a little red poofy throw rug I knitted to try to match the little red poofy rug my Mom actually has in front of her sink at home.


I used 000 knitting needles and fancy fun fur eyelash yarn. People, let me just issue a warning here: Never try to knit that kind of yarn with those skinny needles. (In case you don't know, 000 needles are skinnier than a piece of dry spaghetti. Yes. That's small.)

The thing is, the eyelash yarn is wild and crazy. Its essentially a thin strand of yarn with long hair coming off of it. And when you knit with it at this scale, it ends up being a jumbled mess on your needles and you absolutely cannot see the stitches. Its like knitting blind. And god help you if you drop a stitch. Which I did. A couple of times. And then casting off. !!(#&@*$^!!. It took me about a half an hour to cast off about 15 stitches, I kid you not. It wasn't pretty. I ended up threading a regular needle and just whip stitched the heck out of the finished edge, just to make sure I'd caught up all the stitches.

The cool thing about this yarn though is that it does cover all your mistakes. So the knitting itself can be a mess, but no one can see it!!!

I gave this thing a "haircut" after it was all done. The yarn "hair" is actually 2 to 3 times longer than what you see here. So you can imagine. I should have taken a picture of it before it got trimmed. It just looked like this mass of red...something.

I took a picture with the spool of thread just so you can get an idea of the scale.




Anyway.

Moving along....

I also knit up a wee little pillow. Its a little under 1/2" wide. I used some skinny cotton and the same 000 needles. If I was really good I'd have unraveled the 4ply yarn and only used 2 ply or something, but I didn't.



I should probably embroider something on it. But you know what? I'm done.

itty-bitties

I found my Mom the cutest little doll house for Christmas. It was just too much fun stocking it with little itty-bitty goodies! If you "do" doll houses, you know what I mean. I think I may have found a new addiction.



(Sorry for the blurry pictures)
A plate of deviled eggs. Its about an inch wide! Each egg has paprika sprinkled on top, and parsley garnish all around.



A plate of bacon and eggs (sunny-side up, just the way she likes them), a tea kettle (a lot like hers) and a soap dish that will go in the bathroom, hanging on the edge of the tub.



A tube of toothpaste, toothbrush and cup. The tube has a label that says "toothpaste" on it.



A chrome toaster with white toast (and you can make the toast go up and down!), a red and white pitcher, a black old fashioned telephone, a TV remote, and a can of Maxwell House coffee and box of Sweet-n-Low (which still has the $2.50 price tag attached, oops.)



Fancy towels and two boxes of tissues (and the eggs again). I just couldn't resist the tissues, they were too too cute! One box will go in the bathroom, the other on the bedside table I think.



I want to make her some little teensy pillows and maybe a kitchen throw rug for in front of the sink. Good thing I have 0000 sized knitting needles and skinny yarn!
I think I'll give her the house with just the furniture in it, then let her unwrap all the goodies and prop it herself. I also found doilies, playing cards, a whole set of dishes and silverware, lamps, coffee mug, etc. etc. etc.

I can't wait to give it to her! Now I have to hide it, and figure out how to wrap everything...

buttons, buttons

I have buttons on the brain. I'm on a hunt for little plain wood buttons to use on my pillows. Why are they so hard to find?

Michaels, Joanns, Hancock Fabrics...very small selection. I'm quickly using up my stash from over the years, buttons I've accumulated from who knows where. No, I haven't looked online yet. I think I may have to hit flea markets pretty soon. The other night I caught myself looking through my closet, going "well I never wear this anyway, I could just rip off the buttons", but stopped myself.

This is my sad find at Joanns today. They also had some little packets of wood buttons in different sizes, and I did get them, but they don't have much character.



I do think these are pretty cool though. Celtic knots. And I like that they're not shiny. Why is everything shiny? Or plastic? Or shiny plastic, and shaped like teddy bears or footballs or palm trees or something?



I guess I should be thankful I don't have to shop the 1897 Sears Catalog for buttons. How much fun would this be? All in black and white.


Or worse, shop for yarn!


All they have is a description. "German knitting yarn". That's it. And listed colors. Can you even imagine? How on earth did women shop for yarn back then? I don't think they had fancy little yarn boutiques, do you? Knitting was something practical you did to make things to keep you warm in the winter. Knitting for "fun" probably didn't even exist, except amongst the idle rich. And then they'd hire someone to do it for them.

Wow, times have really changed, haven't they? Its mind bending.

They're mulitplying

Two more! These are the longer ones, obviously. Same yarn, same idea, just different shape and embellishments.



I did plain backs on these. Again, its the same yarn, but its just so variegated that it looks totally different from pillow to pillow.



And these are the starts of the next two (knit yesterday while sitting for hours at the car place, getting new spark plugs, fun.) It amazes me how they go from these funny little uneven "nothings" to a nice pillow with just a little stitching and stuffing.
These are oblong, and just slightly bigger than the two above. I don't know why I'm subconciously making them bigger and bigger...I need to make the next ones smaller, and I think I'll go back to squares.
Gosh, I wish I didn't have actual illustration work to do, as well as helping my mom get her Christmas tree (well, and getting my own tree as well!), shopping, cat stuff, CHRISTMAS, life in general. I just want to sit and knit pillows.