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Category: Crafts

Craft projects of mine

  • Scarves Galore

    The Easter Crafting Marathon continues. I’ve finally finished my red mohair scarf, which you can see below. The other two are scarves I’ve made in the last couple weeks.

    Snookums and the Rock Star Scarf Me and the Red Mohair Scarf Blue-green Mohair Scarf

    First you have Snookums modelling my “Rock Star Scarf”, which is knitted out of Faux Fur. It’s this crazy yarn with lots of little hairs sticking off it that actually looks like fur once you knit it up. (Let me warn my fellow knitters: It was insanely difficult to work with. You can’t see any of the stitches so if you drop one, you have to start all over.) The second and third scarves are both made of mohair, which is incredibly soft and fuzzy and beautiful. I did the blue-green one first as a gift for my Dad’s wife Cindy, and I liked it so much I got the red to do my own. Pretty nice, huh? They’re both about six feet long and six inches wide. I can’t wait to wear mine outside (if it ever stops raining)…

  • Hello Kitty Underpants

    Hello Kitty Underpants

    Behold, my underpants.
    Okay, I’d like to start off by filling you single (and gay) guys in on a little secret: all girls have “granny pants”. These are the nice comfy cotton underpants we wear when we’re sick or out of laundry. No, they’re not sexy at all. Last Christmas my Mom sent me a nice pack of new plain white granny pants (as Moms are wont to do). They’re functional, though huge, and though I haven’t worn them yet, I’m not about to let them go to waste. They could be a little bit cuter though. That’s why I decided to try to liven them up a bit with some of this iron-on transfer paper (considering that I get a pretty nice staff discount). I wasn’t sure about a design until I came across a set of Hello Kitty brushes for Illustrator last week. With that, the plan was made.

    The transfer paper was actually really easy to use. As I understand it, it’s coated in a kind of waxy stuff that melts when you iron it, thus coming off the paper and trapping the ink onto your shirt. That’s why you’ve got to trim pretty good around the image, because even where there’s no color you still get a layer of stuff. The design itself feels a little stiff right now, so I’m not sure how comfortable it’d be to wear a great big design. I don’t know how well they’ll hold up in the wash either, but quite frankly it’s not too big a worry. They’re only underpants. 🙂

    (Hmm. Given that I officially got “on” the Net when I started college in 1995, it’s taken me about eight years to put my undergarments online. Geez, I’m like a porn star now or something.)

  • Drat.

    Murphy’s Law: Upon completing your first batch of Hello Kitty iron-on transfer underpants (heretofore known as the Cutest. Panties. In. The. World.), your digital camera’s batteries are sure to be dead. Pictures are forthcoming, I swear.

  • Record Bowls

    Record Bowls

    Well, that’s some progress. Starting from the bottom and going clockwise, that’s Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”, Culture Club’s “Colour by Numbers”, Stryper’s “To Hell With the Devil”, and the Carpenters’ “Now and Then”. I basically followed the Get Crafty instructions, and I really can’t stress how friggin’ easy this is. They recommend an oven temperature of 200F, but my oven wouldn’t even go that low. I just turned it down as low as possible. Put a bowl upside-down on a cookie sheet, whack the record on top, and set it in the oven for about five minutes. Pull it out (use a hotpad or you’ll burn yourself like me!), whip off the flimsy record, and shove it down inside another bowl to mold it. They don’t give off toxic fumes or anything, and they don’t get melty enough that you see fingerprints. (In fact, I think mine are somehow shinier now than they were before.) You’ve only got a few seconds to work with ’em though, so be quick. I went for a couple different shapes here. (It’s not possible to get them perfectly round, so don’t even try.) I think I’m going to glue some marbles to the bottom to act as legs and use a piece of tape to cover up the hole. Voila! Ultra trendy potato chip bowls. I’m so selling these at the Glebe Markets this year.

  • Craft Backlog

    I am not allowed to start anymore new crafts until I finish the old ones. Seriously. Right now I have on my list:

    • My first sweater, which is about 1/4 done.
    • About a foot of scarf made from some gorgeous red mohair.
    • A baby blanket for my little brother, of which I have, like, six blocks out of fifty.
    • A rugby scarf, which is currently just in the “piles of wool” stage.
    • Knitted socks for the Snook, of which I have only wool and a vague idea.
    • Record albums waiting to be turned into bowls. (see above)
    • Album covers waiting to be turned into purses.
    • Half a dozen pairs of socks waiting to be turned into monkeys.
    • A couple groovy old tins waiting to be painted and decoupaged.
    • My “Storm at Sea” quilt, still waiting to be finished and edged.
    • “Hello Kitty” images ready to be printed onto transfer paper and ironed onto my underpants.
    • A pile of miniature Harry Potter scarf bookmarks to be fringed and finished.

    See? Lots. I keep thinking of new things I want to try, though! I’ve been eyeing the resin supplies at the local casting shop. I have no willpower.

  • SnB

    Crafty folks in Sydney are invited to tonight’s Stitch ‘n’ Bitch, hosted by gadgetgirl. I’m gonna be there!

  • Knitting

    Apologies for the light posting. I had a relatively relaxing weekend, except for my allergies which occasionally drove me crazy. We’re now fairly certain that I have a food allergy to “sulphur dioxide”, which is a fairly common food preservative (and unfortunately gets used a lot with red wine). I’m going to make an effort to avoid it and see if that helps at all.

    In crafty news, I attended an “intermediate” knitting class Saturday. I was surprised by how much I knew. In fact, I didn’t actually learn anything new. Cables, fixing mistakes, changing colors… I’d already figured it all out from my books. What’s more, some of the other girls – who’d been knitting for years – didn’t know ridiculously simple things, like how to pull yarn from the center of a ball or make a tassel. So basically I got a lot of confidence out of the class, and I took the opportunity to get the teacher to help me plan my first sweater. I’ve got all the wool (some lovely Jo Sharp stuff in plum) and I spent most of today working on it. I’ve got about half of the back done! I can’t wait to try it on.

  • Dr. Who

    Damn! There’s a Dr. Who Convention in town this weekend and I didn’t know about it. I should get over there and see if I can take some orders for scarves. Although now that I think about it, the kind of fan that would fly to Australia for a convention probably already has a scarf… right?

  • Craftiness + Hoochiness = Knitted Bikini

    Knitted BikiniCheck out what I made! I felt like I’d been making scarves for years, so as a change of pace I decided to knit a bikini using Get Crafty’s fabulous instructions. It’s knitted with cotton, not wool, and as I used a double thickness throughout it’s pretty dense (and therefore ensures no nipple visibility). Unfortunately this design is just not the right swimsuit for my body shape. The trunks, which just barely manage to go over my thighs, are pretty cute, but they’re so low that I have major plumber butt (even though I followed the instructions for “more coverage”). And the top… Well, I think the main problem is that string bikinis aren’t made for girls with larger boobs. I’m a C cup, and the whole triangle thing just doesn’t work. Even if I made them bigger, they still don’t fit the shape of the breast very well. (I really need to figure out how to knit one with an underwire.) So needless to say, I shan’t be sporting this puppy at the beach anytime soon. It was a fun experiment though.Some notes if you’re interested in trying it yourself:

    As I can’t get the kind of cotton recommended in the pattern here, I just went with normal DK weight cotton. Unfortunately I knitted a test swatch and my gauge was way higher than it needed to be. I was afraid to move up a needle size though, for fear that the weave would be too open (and I wanted to keep the nips covered). So I played around a bit and discovered that if I doubled up the cotton and went to a 5mm needle, I got the correct gauge and the fabric was nicely dense. Unfortunately that meant I needed twice as much cotton. Luckily I’d bought 4 50gm balls, and I used up just about all of it.

    Another problem: I knitted the two boob triangles on different days and my knitting tension changed significantly, which means they’re slightly different size. I’d suggest that you knit them both at the same time to avoid this.

    The biggest problem I had was the bit at the end of the pattern where it tells you to “single crochet” around the trunk elastic and the bikini chain. I posted a request for help on Glitter and was directed to this page of instructions. That’s for making a hair band, but I figured out fairly quickly to adapt it to what I needed to do. I did the bikini chain easily, but I decided not to finish the trunks since they don’t fit well enough to ever wear.

  • Oscar the Sock Monkey

    My Oscar Contest has officially stopped accepting new entries, so I figured I’d better show you all what you’re playing for. Meet Oscar the Sock Monkey! As you can see he’s all dressed up in black tie and silver sparkles. He’s got googly eyes and a big grin, and he’s even got his own little Academy Award!

    As the response to the contest was about ten times what I was expecting – 144 entries? Who the heck are all you people? – I’m also providing regular sock monkeys for second and third place. The Awards start at 5:30 PM Pacific time Sunday, which means 12:30 PM Monday afternoon here. As I’ll be at work all day at the draconian, no-Internet unnamed printer company, you’ll have to wait til I get home for the results to be tallied. Basically, plan on the winner being named about five hours after the Awards start. Good luck everyone!