Textileophile

 Hey there, I haven't been in a heavy crafting mood in the last few days, so it seems as good a time as any to chat about what I've been working on through the heat wave.  Ok, so it's not an atypical summer here, it's just that the heat has been sustained for weeks without relief.  It's been hell trying to keep up my running and stay cool.  I suppose I'm still just getting used to California summers again. So, I have a few finishes, a new WIP, some TDF spinning and some very fun news! First off: I finished my Lurid Socks!  (the cat helped!).  These are exciting!  I tried to get them to match, but they're more like sisters than twins.  I did my usual sock.  You would think it'd get boring, but you're talking to someone who is playing FFIX for the third time in two months, so it's well established that I don't get bored doing things I enjoy. I started a new hat with some new yarn!   This yarn is scrumptious!  It's a new to me dyer, Ca...

 Last I spoke I was down to one single WIP. Well, I have a few more now.  And that's a good thing. I casted on a crochet sweater last week!   The day I did this, I agonized for hours about the colors.  I got out my stash and threw some options together, lots of rearranging and sampling stripes.  I'm sure my friends were completely annoyed by the whole shenanigans.  And Then, the day after this picture was taken, I scrapped the whole thing and started over. Now THIS IS PODRACING , err, I mean A GOOD COLOR COMBO!  It's perfectly my aesthetic.  moody, dark, and a little romantic.  Think a librarian who has a penchant for biting necks.  So, basically just a librarian. XD That's been getting a little bit of love every day. I can't crochet all day long, my wrist protests after about 30 minutes. So, I do about two rows and then move on to other things. The pattern is called A Good Vintage Cardigan by Fran Morgan.  I made some modification...

 Hey there blog, I keep thinking there's gonna be a good time to blog, or I'll feel it.  I think I have the summer blues?  or maybe it's just the political climate and loss of pocket friend just completely sucking the joy out of my life right now. I don't actually have an enormous amount lot to talk about or share.  surprise surprise.  But, there is some, so I'll get on it. I finished my Hawaii socks: Not a lot to share about it. This is the typical 64 stitch, eye of partridge heel.  The difference is, I suppose in the way the yarn was dyed and sent to me.  It's dyed and wound so that you have two perfectly matching socks at the end of it.  It's a feature of Must Stash yarns, and I can't recommend them enough if you wanted to treat yourself.  I think that I'm going to make a pair of shorties with the remaining yarn, probably give them to my MIL. Somewhere in there I casted on the hat that I spun that yarn for and finished it: This was a simpl...

 Ok, so my moods have been up and down the last week or so since the loss of our dear pocket friend, Arayti.  I've still been crafting every day, that goes without saying. A mutual friend sent me a bit of Arayti's famous Cormo fleece.  Arayti had been sharing it far and wide since it's acquisition several years ago, and we fondly referred to it as Pebbles the Wonder Cormo!  I was next in line to get some when she fell sick 7 months ago.  I wasn't really put out about that specifically, there is plenty of wool in the world, but I did lament the loss of that connection to her.  Anyway, that friend decided to share some of her part of Pebbles, and I got it in the mail on Monday.  Tuesday I spent the whole day with it: This was washed overnight, btw.  If I knew more about the whole process, I would have washed it again, and possibly a third time.  but it was fine.  It just had a lot of lanolin.  Lanolin is the oil that sheep produce to ...

 I finished my new mushroom bag the other day: here's a close up of the embroidery: I like the bag a lot.  More than the first one, because I think the colors suit the embroidery that much more.  More evocative of the forest and autumn. But alas, dear readers, I have some very sad news. A beloved member of LSG, Arayti, died yesterday morning.  It was a very abrupt, sudden loss.  A lot of us in the crafting world are deeply hurting and saddened by this turn of events.  She was a lovely, wonderful person.  Words really cannot get across how special she meant to everyone she interacted with.  She was a light. She will be deeply missed. I wrote to a friend yesterday: "I remade my lost mushroom bag. I am inclined to say that I wish we could gather up all the good things to remake our arayti and then we'll find her there. but that's silly. you can remake mushroom bags, you cannot remake friend."  Hold your loved ones tight and tell people clos...

Hey there! I'm back with more crafting to share and sadly, a tale of woe. I suppose I'll give you a woe sandwich with crafting bread. The final fantasy 9 cross stitch is starting off with a hitch, a half hitch!  I'm only kidding, there's no knots in cross stitch: Here's a sort of idea of the design, I threw it into one of the pattern makers that I talked about last week, though I had to break it into pieces to get it to work.  This is not a big deal, I often work on multi-paged cross stitches.  this one is a little more complicated than that though. The layering of the characters in the paint program I was using caused a few of the characters in the front row to get blurry.  None of them in the final design will be blurry.  I'm using the large picture as the template, for counting where to start the characters compared to the others and doing the title, which didn't get messed up by moving it around.  Then I'll print out each character's pattern (or ...