It seemed a very decadent idea, buying yarn and needles on impulse because I wanted something to do just then- kind of like buying a sweater while you’re out because you forgot to bring one and you’re chilly.

I’d recently discovered a yarn shop charmingly situated in an old house, with yarn piled in all the rooms. I must not have noticed on my first visit that the owner was one of those disapproving yarn ladies who thinks you’re doing it wrong. While I was there, I watched her sniffily tell off a weaving student for being a dilettante, because she’d decided weaving was not for her after all.

The shop didn’t have that much sock yarn, either, and it was rather more expensive than I was comfortable with. But I was there, and I wanted yarn, and she was glaring at me like she knew I was just going to fondle her yarn without buying any. I felt like a deer in the headlights.

I bought some yarn.

Which I didn’t even end up liking that much. It was some kind of hand-dyed stuff, and the irregular blotches of color reminded me of ugly turtleneck sweaters from the 70′s. Moreover, the socks bled horribly when gently hand washed, which kind of shocked me, given the price of the stuff.

Despite all this, I enjoyed knitting those socks. They took forever, as socks will, and I liked that because it forced me to disengage the part of my brain that was in a hurry, giving free reign to the part that enjoys the process. Not to mention the alchemy of shaping the sock and turning the heel. As the Yarn Harlot recommends, I stopped regularly in the process to admire my own cleverness.

But I wasn’t entirely convinced I wanted to do it again.

Not Impressive

You know how when you’re broke, the first time you come into a little money, you’re like  aww right, now I’m in the clear!

Well, it turns out I wasn’t, as they say, out of the woods yet. It’s all about cash flow. No matter how much money I’m owed, if I don’t have the cash in my hot little when the rent (or whatever) comes due, I’m in trouble. Duh, right?

Since my work is freelance, sometimes there’s a significant gap in between me producing work and me getting paid for said product. My best strategy has been to hold tight and work my little tuckus off, since the faster the work is done, the faster I’ll get paid. That’s what I’ve been doing all this time! For realz.

Now that I have a tiny bit of breathing room, here’s somethig I’ve been saving up.

Behold, a sweater that has been felted twice? three times? I’ve lost track.

Now that's what I call felted.

This is more like what I had in mind when I sent the thing through the wash the first time: way smaller, thicker, fuzzier. In short, more like what would happen if you put a wooly sweater in the wash by accident. It turns out that if you’re doing it on purpose, it takes more washes to get the same effect, viz:

This one has fewer hot-water cycles under its belt.

I'm not sure this one changed it all. It was worth a try, right?

And finally, the crowning glory of my felted collection.

Look! It's the Felted Christmas Trees!

Let me just say, I think these are awesome. They’re wobblier than I expected, but that makes them look charmingly elfin compared to the mid-century modern thing I was going for. I am going to send them through the hot water one more time, because my idea of felted wool involves a kind of magical transformation wherein fabric that’s made of linked loops, and is thus sort of flexible, changes completely into thick fuzzy stuff whose origin cannot be so easily guessed. To my eye they’re not transformed yet.

In the meantime, I have more crafty stuff coming down the pipeline for your amusement. Stay tuned!

The first time I went to this meeting, I was like oh, la, fancy me, staying in a nice hotel and whatnot. This most recent one was the 4th or 5th time.

Let me just say, the thrill is gone.

For starters, I hate to fly. I mean, I can deal. I take drugs for anxiety and drugs for nausea, the combination of which (yes, I checked, it’s ok to take them together) makes me really sleepy. So as long as the flight is smooth, I can drowse and forget that I’m somehow suspended a terrifying 20 or 30-thousand feet above the friendly Earth. But even drugged up, one strong bump gives me a rush of adrenaline that has me thinking, please, please, do not let me fall out of the sky in this stupid tin can of a contraption. When that happens, I get out the big guns- my knitting. You’d be surprised how much it helps, having something besides THE FACT THAT YOU’RE FLYING to think about. I keep traveling by air- partly because there are far away places I need to go, and partly because I know if I stop, I might never start again.

And you know what I did on that fateful morning? I took some dramamine that was slightly out of date. Totally not a problem, right?

Wrong. Trust me- you do not want to sit beside me on a plane when I haven’t had my dramamine (or in this case, dramamine that TOTALLY DIDN’T WORK). I get all sweaty and shaky, like some kind of nut job. I clench my jaw because I know that part of the trick to not freaking out is NOT FREAKING OUT. Also, the weather had been bad, and the pilot did that thing where he came on the intercom and warned us of “a little chop.” Asshole.

You can betcha, I got some fresh new dramamine during the changeover at DFW.

As for the meeting itself- I guess big corporate meetings are the same everywhere. The staying in a hotel part is nice. You get a huge soft bed in a very dark room and a maid to clean up after you. But of course you have to get up at 7am so you can pick up your name tag and your big-ass binder before you eat your scrambled eggs and fruit.

Some of the meetings are a soul-crushing waste of time, and some of them are hard work, and they’re all punctuated by breaks in which one is offered cookies, brownies, and other stuff you really shouldn’t eat- and expected to socialize. I enjoy that part. Really I do. But lawd people, I work at home most of the time. All that interaction makes me tired.

There were two really wonderful things. The hotel had a courtyard where I could stand in the beautiful, beautiful January sunlight, perfectly warm in my jeans and a light jacket. (No, I did not wear business clothes. I do not own business clothes). I kept finding myself out there, soaking up the light.

Also, I got to have dinner with some lovely folks that I see very seldom. I tried mole, and there were margaritas. That was good.

But the cat is not the only one who’s glad I’m home.

My first quilt ever.

I was into simple patterns, but I couldn’t resist adding a few flourishes- i.e. the not-completely-solid colored blue fabric, the cut-off corners. I hadn’t learned yet that if you lean towards the dead simple, it’s best be brave and squash your doubts that the simplicity isn’t enough. Because it is.

I was really proud of the star quilting around the borders, though.

Starz

It did take a long time to finish, but I found the hand quilting lush and meditative, hypnotic even.

It was around this time that I first saw the wonderful Gee’s Bend quilts. If you haven’t seen them, they’re a revelation- or at least they were to me.

For my second quilt, I wanted bed-sized. There’s something in me feels the absolute rightness of things that are both beautiful and useful. (Although I’ll admit this might be a bit of willful self-deception, given that handmade objects- and quilts in particular- are not really necessary or practical in the modern world).

I sketched lots of designs. I agonized. I bought fabric and started laying out the quilt. I made mistakes. The design was uber-simple, but cutting and sewing really big pieces of fabric in any kind of precise way can be surprisingly difficult. I did the piecing by machine, because the kind of long, straight seams involved would be so tedious to sew by hand.

I was staying with my sister at the time, and the only place to work on such a big thing was the middle of the living room floor, also accessed by multiple cats and one stinky rambunctious dog. By the time I got the thing basted together in a more or less wrinkle free way, it was covered with pet hair.

Then there were months of endless hand quilting, and months of me not touching the thing, because it was never going to be finished. I moved. I moved again. And, finally:

Useful

I continued to quilt by hand, but by then making something useful was feeling a little bit like an obligation. There was still that part of me that loves the utilitarian, but I was beginning to think there might be a place for completely useless objects.

For me, this is one of the distinctions between art and craft. I suppose this must be a controversial subject, and I don’t presume to speak for anyone but myself- but I look for art to shift my perspective or tickle my brain. I expect crafts to be pretty- even beautiful- and/or do something useful like keep me warm at night.

Anyway, the limitations of hand quilting are…very limiting. So I gave myself permission to do something small, quickly made, and therefore lacking any practical use.  I was in my local quilt shop looking at fat quarters- and I thought by god, I’m just going to buy some ones I like, and that I think will go together. I’m going to experiment. It doesn’t have to be useful.

Once again, I did the piecing by machine and the quilting by hand.

Quilty Thing #1

Another one- as yet unquilted

At some point, I decided I wanted to try quilting by machine. I’d already hooked up with the vigorous online interest groups dedicated to using vintage sewing machines, and lots of those folks use their old machines for quilting. It was a nice counterpoint to the people who maintain that using a domestic (i.e. not industrial or longarm) machine for quilting is a bitch.

I even took a machine quilting class at my local quilt shop, which was great, but of course we used their thousand-dollar Berninas, so it didn’t take away all my fear of screwing up a carefully-made quilt top with bad machine quilting.

So when I wanted to make a baby quilt, I went back to my old standby, machine piecing and hand quilting.

Lorenzo's Quilt

Since then I’ve been meaning to practice machine quilting on my treadle sewing machine. I figured I’d sneak up on it by making something useful, something that didn’t have to be beautiful.

I swear, my intentions were good. I got out a pattern for an oven mitt, which is sort of like two tiny quilts cut into a hand shape and then stitched together. But I didn’t have any whole pieces of fabric that I liked. I’d piece some more of the pink-and-orange fat quarters leftover from the quilty thing above.

Then I saw a quilt I really liked.

And I thought, hey, I’ll just piece something like that, quilt it, and then cut it into a hand shape. Except I didn’t want to cut it into a hand shape. So it looks like I have another quilty thing in progress.

Another quilty thing in progress

Oops.

Now practice saying the title of this post in your Helium voice. (Heeleeeyum)!

Moving on.

one pair finished

& one pair started

It’s so cold now that I don’t want to leave the house EVEN IN MY WOOLY SOCKS. I fear I may turn into some kind of a shut in. By spring I’ll be all pale and trembly, and the first time I step foot out the front door….ahhh! the sun hurts us!

Just kidding. I’ll just be suiting up for the grocery shopping (do-dee-do-dee-doo).

Filed under: finished projects, knitting ]]> http://christmascraftproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/for-me/feed/ 2 nellsdottir 80's socks blue sock start http://christmascraftproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/consider-me-blacked-out/ http://christmascraftproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/consider-me-blacked-out/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:28:21 +0000 nellsdottir http://christmascraftproject.wordpress.com/?p=804 ]]> Here’s a link to an summary of SOPA:

http://gizmodo.com/5877000/what-is-sopa

And an article with more detail:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Also, there are lots of places where you can plug your info into a form and send it off to (presumably relevant) places, should you lean in that direciton:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

http://americancensorship.org/

Did we decorate it with lights and shiny balls? Yes we did.

I did some research, and I’m pretty sure it’s a red spruce. (Correct me if I’m wrong, people)! If I’m right, then this tree prefers the conditions found New York and northwards. Which means I can’t take with me the next time I go south and plant it in the yard of an obliging friend. It has to be planted up north somewhere. Which is a problem, because my friends up here don’t generally have yards, and if they do, they mostly rent them and/or they are tiny. So I’m thinking on it. It seems unlikely that it will thrive in the hot, dry air in my apartment.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to keep it watered. (Which is harder than it sounds, because any significant amount of water runs right through the pot and out onto whatever surface it’s sitting on. It will only soak into the soil when watered very gently- and therefore repeatedly).

The other day I walked by and noticed the tiny bunches of newly grown, pale green needles. There’s something thrilling about seeing new growth where you don’t expect it.

It's alive!

Filed under: apartment gardening, nyc ]]> http://christmascraftproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/o-christmas-tree/feed/ 1 nellsdottir IMG_5640 IMG_5644 http://christmascraftproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/tiny-garden/ http://christmascraftproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/tiny-garden/#comments Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:41:45 +0000 nellsdottir http://christmascraftproject.wordpress.com/?p=758 ]]> Early last year someone posted a craft-pay-it-forward meme on facebook. (I hate the term ‘pay it forward,’ btw. But that’s what they called it). The rules were: you posted an announcement in your status, and you’d make something for the first five commentors.

It’s pretty much a no-brainer that I would do that.

This weekend I finally had a chance to deliver the last object- a succulent dish garden in a vintage coffee cup.

Step 1:

I don't necessarily recommend these particular brands of garden stuff, but cactus & succulent soil is good, especially if your container has no drain hole.

Step 2:

This little guy grew from a plant that grew from a coupla rooted cuttings I stole from a friend's backyard in L.A.

If you haven't grown cacti from seed, it's pretty fun. Although they grow reeeeaaally slow. And no matter how many varieties the seed pack claims to have, this is the only kind I can get to grow.

Finally, these little guys are from a bigger succulent that I've had for a while and which propogates itself like mad. You brush by and a leaf falls off. Even if it falls on the floor, a week later it will have a cluster of tiny roots.

Step 3:

No, I didn't drill a drain hole in the cup. I know it's better with a drain hole, but I was afraid the melamine cup would crack if I tried it.

Step 3:

I'll admit to a bit of fiddling with the composition.

And, finally:

Voila!

Also,

I gave it a little water and put it in my sunniest window (not particularly sunny just then) until it could be delivered.

I think next I might try raising those succulents that look like butt cracks from seeds. (Apartment gardening is pretty limited. I try to make up for the lack of quantity by growing interesting stuff).

I’ve been meaning to try it. For like, years. Probably ever since I saw Leigh Radford’s Alterknits, which I liked so much I actually bought it. (Even when I’m not broke, I’m cheap. It helps to prevent future brokeness). One of the projects in the book is  blanket made from wool sweaters, felted and cut into square-ish pieces, and completely gorgeous. I’ve seen that particular idea lots of places since, but Radford’s book was the first that I’m aware of.

Naturally, once I’d bought a few sweaters the local thrift stores seemed to completely run out of them- or at least they ran out of ones that weren’t beige or brown. Or beige and brown. So I carried around a few sweaters for a long time until I got tired of it and returned them to the great thrift-store stream from whence they came. Of course, as soon as I did that I started seeing beautiful wooly sweaters everywhere, for almost nothing. I looked at them- and thought no, I’m not going to get sucked into that again.

There’s a cool idea in one of the  Mason-Dixon Knitting books, too (sorry, I don’t remember which one):  a pattern for little felted Christmas trees. Like all good crafting ideas, I’ve seen it all over Etsy since then. I guess in a way I’m guilty too, ’cause I tried out the idea without buying the book. I didn’t copy the pattern or anything. It seemed simple enough to knit a pointy tree-shape with leftover wool and then run it through the wash. Guess who has a project bag with three or four knitted, as yet unfelted trees plus various little balls of leftover green yarn?

Part of the problem was that I don’t have a washing machine in my apartment. (It’s like how L.A. apartments don’t come with refrigerators. A regional anomaly).

But when a couple of my go-to wooly winter sweaters got moth holes, I figured I’d felt them and see what happened. I could start a blanket like the one in Alterknits, or make little felted ornaments/ sachets/ etc. There are so many things you can make from a felted sweater. (And yeah, I know the technical term is fulled. But screw that).

Here’s the sweater before.

Sad Moth-Eaten Sweater (Knitpicks catalog for scale)

And here it is after.

Can you tell the difference?

Ok, it’s a little smaller. But I’m definitely going to have to run it through the machines again when laundry day comes back around. (And you know that can take a while).

Of course, correlation doesn’t prove  causation and all that. But it does imply that the stuff is absorbed through the skin and goes into your cells.  And the evil stuff, whatever it is, isn’t something that a cell can use for any of its normal cell activities.

Well. I’ve tried all natural deodorant (i.e. without all the BAD STUFF). It doesn’t work that well for me. Usually I buy it, pretend it’s working for a while, then admit I smell funny.

Anyway. Not long after I heard this story, my eye happened upon a bottle of Tea Tree Oil, which I use in facial soap because it’s antibacterial and helps clear up acne. In a flash of inspiration, it came to me: tea tree oil would make great deodorant. Why hadn’t anyone thought of it before? It would kill some of the bacteria on the skin, reducing the smell. Plus, it has a pretty strong smell of its own- sort of astringent, but far superior to sweat. If you ask me.

So today I swabbed some on my pits before I went out. (My sister is fond of complaining that in this city you have to wrap up warmly for winter, but the place where you’re going is inevitably overheated, so once you’re inside you sweat a lot).

The results, you ask?

I smell like an odd mixture of sweat and tea-tree oil. It’s better than no deodorant, but not as good as the ones with the BAD STUFF.

Just in case you were thinking of trying it.