What have I done?!

Look what I did. I made an Etsy store--http://mack.etsy.com I'm calling my line of handmade goodies "mack." Obviously, it's named after the demon-cat. I thought it would be appropriate. So far I've listed a necklace and two pairs of earrings. I'm not convinced that it's a viable move business-wise, but it's sort of a fun little distraction (especially since finals begin next week) and it can't hurt. It cost less than a first-class stamp to list those babies.

Green Bags

The bags totally deserve their own post:

This is the bigger of the two bags, and while I can't really decide which one I like better, I really love this one a lot.

I don't know enough about fabrics to know what to classify these fabrics other than cool. I love that there's grass stenciled across the front (I'd said my favorite color was grass green!) and that the two (really cute and green) buttons on the fastener conceal a snap closure.


This is made of a snuggly green fleece and is absolutely adorable, in case you couldn't tell. It has a button closure and the sweetest little lace-trimmed pocket inside.

I'd asked for the bag to be big enough to hold a novel and both of these do, comfortably, with lots of room to spare. I'm so happy!
Plus, her sewing skills are amazing. All of the edges and seams are just so neat and perfect that I am just in awe. Go look at her amazing stuff here!

Craftster Rocks my Socks off

Look at all the goodies! A fabulous Craftster not only fulfilled my wishes for a hobo bag and altoid tins to cover, but also sent me a whole lot of booty in addition to making me two bags!
The haul list:
-three small altoids tins and one giant one
-PEARL EX gold powder to blingify my polymer crafts
-a bag of assorted buttons
-a bag of assorted ribbons
-beautiful fairy postcards
-typewriter key letter/number stickers
-If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow book.
-two fabulous hobo bags

Close-up of the trinkets--these will be perfect for assemblage necklaces!:

Ribbons and buttons (also already thinking of crafts for them):

The postcards, stickers, and the totally sweet little book:

Pressure's on!

I've put up YET ANOTHER projects list in the sidebar--this time of gift knits! Since some of my giftees might possibly read this blog (it's a slight chance but not impossible) I'm not going to put up pictures.
So why would any of you care?
Hmm, I guess you wouldn't.
BUT...I will put pictures up once they're received. So think about that. And place bookmarks accordingly. Because I know your life won't be complete without seeing the crap I make for people. It won't. Really.

Cotton Ubernatural - Done!

She's done!
Pattern: Ubernatural, by Glampyre
Yarn: Bernat Cotton Tots in "Wonder White" and "Little Boy Blue"
Needles: #13 (as opposed to the pattern's #11s) and #15 Denise circs.
So you may or may not have instantly noticed while looking at the above picture, but this thing is crooked. The two fronts are seriously not the same size. Somewhere very early on in my attempts to re-math the pattern's errors (don't get me wrong, I love the idea and execution of the pattern, it's just really error-filled, even after looking at the errata.) I went astray and didn't notice until I was blocking. Sigh. I don't think it looks bad, I actually think it adds to the chunky-yarn charm of the sweater. Nonetheless, I am upset at myself for letting such an egregious error slip though.
For the sleeves I didn't do any shaping at all, just continued the arm stitches in stockinette until I felt like starting the ribbed cuffs (which are just the tiniest tad too long). I think the size is fine, I was worried that I'd stopped the increases too early, but the cotton is very soft and floppy and if anything I'm worried that as it wears it will get bigger and droopier.
I got the buttons at the dreaded Wal-Mart on sale. I was all upset because they had these pretty mother-of-pearl-ish buttons that would have been perfect, except they only had 6 of them in stock. Then I rummaged in the sale bin and found these ivory buttons with a swirl pattern and ended up getting 8 for $2. Yay.
So in summary:
Cons: Crooked. Cotton is floppy. Cuffs TINY BIT too long.
Pros: Cute. Snuggly. Fits great. Buttons on sale.
I'm happy.
Another headless shot:

Black Friday Goodies

I was good this year and didn't drag my ass up 3 hours before the butt-crack of dawn to buy things that I didn't need, and spend all afternoon filling out rebate forms. It was fabulous.
I did, however, go to A.C. Moore and use a 60% off coupon on the above Clover circular gift set. It was $64 originally, so these 7 bamboo circulars and the needle roll only ended up costing me $26. Can we say---SCORE!
The paper cutter/scorer is something I've wanted for a long time (it's one of those things that you periodically wish you had, but you usually don't NEED) and it was on sale for $6.
The two balls of eyelash yarn are for yet more scarves. Watch out. If you're on my gift list this year, you just might get a furry drop-stitch scarf.
Consider yourselves warned.

My New Favorite Scarf

I present to you--The Grass Scarf!
Specs:
Yarn: Moda Dea Eden in "Fig Leaf", Bernat Matrix in "Acid Axis" (who came up with that one?!)
Needles: 10.5 Aluminum
Pattern: Basic 3-wrap drop-stitch over 11 stitches.
Despite this being possibly the fastest knit ever, it still took me approximately 2.5 hours of knitting just to whip this baby up. But I love her. I love her sooo much. She ranks up with my White Cleo and Pink Mobius Stole as one of my favorite things I've knitted, but unlike the above two I might actually wear this. And possibly wear it every single day. I love it that much.
Gah. This was so easy that I may now be addicted to novelty yarns. Yikes. I see a lot of drop-stitch scarves in my gift-giving future!

Close up of my precious

Grass Scarf WIP

For some reason I suddenly got the urge to make a dropped-stitch scarf after my anatomy exam on Monday (which I rocked, incidentally). This sort of kind of may have coincided with a sale on Fun Fur at A.C. Moore.
I've never really gotten into novelty yarns (outside of my Vegan Fox forays), probably because I just can't picture them making a sweater that doesn't look stupid on me.
I've never gotten into making scarves out of novelty yarn because I've always felt it was sort of like cheating---that instead of making beauty out of the knitted stitches, that you just relied on overpriced/frou-frou yarn to give your FO style and character.
And you know what I've discovered? I was totally right, and I LOVE IT.
Finally, I've hit the instant gratification jackpot. I don't know why I've denied myself for so long. Throw some fun fur, some baby yarn, and some ribbon together, do a bunch of yarn overs and dropping stitches for about an hour, and voila! You have a scarf! A cute, soft, shiny scarf that you can give as a gift to some poor lucky friend!
This one below is for me:

I'm in love with this yarn. It's so ridiculously soft that you swear they must have shaved some really cute, small, helpless animal to make it. (No! It's 100% Nylon!) It comes in colors that have to do with the fall of man (get it? "Eden") like Serpent, Apple, and this one, Fig Leaf. It's got the most fun little blarbs in it. (Like slubbing, but these are actually disconnected roving-like ovals spun into the main fibers = Blarbs. Duh.)
This scarf is looking so pretty to me that I sometimes take a step back and wonder: if I weren't a knitter, would I find this attractive or repulsive? Has looking at novelty yarns for too long convinced me (wrongly) of their aesthetic appeal?
Hmm.
No. I love it.

Haulin'

You may remember a while back I mentioned that my talented mother won $75 at Michael's for being the fastest knitter. Today we went over there and cashed it in:

Look at the pile!
We got yarn for three sweaters and lots of bonus.
-10 skeins of Patons Brilliant in an adorable lavender sparkle--surprisingly soft for a sparkly yarn, and on sale, to boot!
-3 skeins of TLC Amore in a red color my mom likes
-10 skeins of Lion Micro Spun in a brilliant blue
-1 skein of pink Bernat Soft Boucle
-1 ball of Bernat Matrix
-2 skeins of Moda Dea Eden in that grass green I've been obsessed with lately. I've been actually eyeing this yarn for a while. I try not to buy yarn that's not for a specific project, so I've held off until now.
Yay free yarn! Now my mom has yarn to knit herself sweaters (quickly) with!

And, err, I got some yarn out of it too. Sweet.

What I sent

I sent some stuff to fulfill wishes for craft crap and a surprise:

Some fabric, some yarn, and some stuff I made.

The turtles and buttons are made of fimo, and the button earrings are my first attempt at such. I actually liked the way they came out so much that I made a pair for myself.
I made a green cane for the turtles' backs, and made buttons from the remaining cane. I hope they hold up ok.

Flower Pins!

I wished for a pin/brooch to pin together shawls and capelets for November, and look at all the great ones I got!

I'd specifically mentioned the tape measure rosette as being one of the ones I liked in my wish--and I got not only a beautiful PINK large one but two absolutely darling baby ones too. My camera won't focus, but to give you an idea of how little they are:

I love the toile one--it has a swank vintage-y button with stars around it in the middle, and it goes perfectly with this capelet:

Craftster continually rocks my socks off.

Unconditional Receiving!

A fellow craftster fulfilled my October wish for stitch markers, and WHAT stitch markers they are!

These are totally sweet. She used the prettiest glass beads! My favorite is the swirly wire one.

These are the cutest animal charms! I love the monkey and they all have such great little animal expressions. They're like pets for my WIPs!

Unconditional Sending

I made some crochet earrings and chicken-themed stitch markers for a fellow Craftster in the November Unconditional Swap.

These earrings are simple crocheted flowers out of embroidery floss, made with a size B (I believe) hook. The patterns for the flowers came from my Reader's Digest Ultimate Sourcebook.
I went a little crazy playing with the Fimo and made some chickens:

The chickens before they were baked--with the penny for size comparison.

The finished stitch markers, a blurry picture because those little things just don't stay still!

Whoo!

I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon working on a covered altoid tin (it would be my first!) for my mom as a birthday present. I was so inspired by these amazing tins (and various other polymer clay goodies) to actually play with Fimo. I was roughly following this tutorial on covering an altoid tin, but damn, it is much more of a pain than it would seem, particularly when you're trying to roll out sheets of clay with a pencil. (I guess it's sort of my own fault for not going out and getting some real tools.) The tin is blue and yellow/gold with my mother's Chinese name on top. I'm planning to put some swirls and arrangements of flowers as decoration.
As I was working on the tin this afternoon, my mom walks into the house and tells me she has good news. She reaches into her bag and hands me a $75 gift certificate to Michael's. She and a friend were in the shopping center this afternoon, and Michael's was having a yarn party of some sort with a fastest knit & crochet contest. They entered and both ended up winning--she was the fastest knitter and her friend was the fastest crocheter.
And I get to reap the rewards. She's the greatest.

Fun with Fimo

I was at Joann's browsing around for no good reason and couldn't resist picking up a block of fimo to try my hand at making all those cute little mini foods I keep seeing on Craftster
$15, half a day, and 20 minutes in the toaster oven at 265' later, we have:

The penny is the obligatory size marker, of course. On the left are some early attempts with a block of translucent (who knew?) fimo colored with eyeshadow to make cake slices, really crappy rabbits, and some flowers. If I had known I was using translucent clay (i.e. actually read the package) I wouldn't have tried to make the things I did with it. On the right are my versions of Twinkies, Ho Hos, and Cupcakes which are made of opaque clay and have yet to be baked, actually.
And there goes another day of my life, magically transformed into tiny globs of plastic crap.

State of Ubernatural

This is how far along I am on my cotton ubernatural. I'm almost done! Unfortunately I'm really afraid I made it just an increase too small , but since I'm lazy I figured I might as well block the hell out of it and see if it goes anywhere. However, being cotton, it might just get sodden and yucky. We'll see. I have to actually take apart and re-do the bind-off on the bottom ribbed hem, it's just not springy enough. For someone who spends as much time knitting as I do, I sure don't pay enough attention to finishing techniques...

Blue Earrings

Big deal. I made another pair of earrings. Wow.

The library of life...

Here's the progress on my (right) DNA Cable fingerless glove. It's being modeled by one of my favorite books. (I'm so pretentious--what are you going to do about it, huh? Huh?)
It's in a sport-weight blue acrylic blend on #4 dpns, following a classic Bernat pattern from the 40s but with DNA substituted for a simple cable down the middle.

Whoo!

Yay! Exam month is over! As a celebratory gesture, I cast on for those fingerless gloves I wanted to make. I changed my mind about the yarn, though, I decided that the green wool would be too itchy after all, so I settled on using the same blue acrylic mix I used for the mittens I made my mom. It's just the right texture.
I'd post pictures but they're just not too exciting. It's just a cuff so far.

You'll also notice (or not) that I broke my projects list on the right sidebar into yet another category: projects awaiting frogging. I just felt so guilty when I looked at the WIP list that I HAD to break it up into smaller pieces....