Gonna Get My Fibre On

Woosh. Okay, so 2008 did not go quite as imagined fibrologically speaking. It ended well, though, and 2009 is looking very rosey indeed!
So here's a sampling of what I'm working on now.

First, some sewing, which is very exciting because I'm finally starting to feel like I'm figuring it out. I got Amy Karol's book, Bend the Rules Sewing, from a friend for Christmas, which is totally cool 'cause I've been reading Amy's blog for ages now unbeknownst to my friend. Anyway, in the book Amy suggests using cotton flannel fabric for interfacings, which got me thinking of cotton flannel in a whole new way, i.e. as more than my favourite sets of sheets. I had a chunk of handwoven fabric that I'd planned to turn into a baby blanket, so I got some flannel am edging it with that. Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself!



I had a few tiny scraps left over from making the edging, and I've been cursing the lack of unpinned real estate in my tomato pincushion, so I whipped up this little guy, too.



Maybe it's just me, but I think it's almost unnecessarily cute. Plus I'm quite taken with the way that the pins coordinate with the fabric, without any planning whatsoever on my part. It is also the first thing I have ever made in a totally spur of the moment, "Huh, I could use one of those, I think I'll make one. Oh, look, it's done and now I've got the thing I wanted and hey, wasn't that easy!?" kind of way and also without any kind of adult supervision. Very exciting! AND it's the first pic I've taken using my latest camera/lighting/backdrop scheme which I am quite pleased with, so what's not to like?

There are some full sized (24") pillows as well, which I may try to take some pics of later but they won't fit in my new photo setup and I'm too lazy to take the camera off the tripod and make the bed and all that.

Lest you think that I'm only sewing with commercial fabrics, here are a couple more recent projects. A stash of new eyepillows for a local yoga teacher...


...and a little drawstring bag that I actually made a few months ago and have been using ever since.



I'm not totally happy with the interfacing in it - used the heaviest iron on stuff I could find, which turned out to be fusible fleece, so the bag is pretty stiff and the cord doesn't pull up as it should. I'll use flannel in the next one and see how that works!

So that's the sewing. I am also knitting, for the first time in years. I am quite enjoying myself and it's lovely to have some little thing to do while e.g. waiting for my honey at the doctor's office. I have also found that I am no longer horrified by the thought of using little needles; used to be that anything smaller than a size 7 was simply Not Worth My Time, but I've just ordered some size 1 needles for socks and am quite anxious for them to arrive. Here are the socks I'm working on now, using needles much too large with coils that simply won't unbend, so there's been a fair amount of swearing involved:



There were also a couple of hats knit for Christmas presents, one for my father in law (the first thing I'd knit by hand in 15!! years!!) which required zero (0) swearing at all, and another for Ron that I've dubbed the muffin-top owing to its rather bizarre design. That one required a small amount of swearing when it became clear that the hat was too big so I had to tear out all the ribbing at the bottom, pick up the stitches and knit it back down. Still, not so bad. Now if he'd just wear the darn thing, I'd be happy.


Oh, and there's a scarf on the go as well. It was the first thing I started (on a lark, at the Unspun Heroes Christmas potluck, 'cause someone had decided we should all knit that evening rather than spin. Hmph.) Of all my projects, this one has required the most swearing because I keep forgetting to pay attention during the lace-making row and wind up with less stitches than when I started. Still, I am persevering and have about 30" done.



I think I'll have to slow down on the knitting front, sadly, as I have definitely noticed a return of the ol' carpal tunnel syndrome which I got in the first place when I added knitting to my signing-all-day and typing-all-night routine back in the early 90's. I'd hoped that it wouldn't bother my wrists now since I'm neither signing nor typing nearly as much but it does still seem to aggravate it. So... I either have to slow down and work at it a little at a time or binge-knit (my usual MO), blow out my wrists and then give it up entirely for another 15 years. That doesn't appeal, so I'm going to try to take it easy. I'm sure there's a new year's resolution in there somewhere.

So that's sewing and knitting. There's been a fair amount of weaving in the past couple months (and the past couple days, for that matter) but I'll save that for my next post. Trying not to binge and fast on the blogging, too!