Retrospective

Happy New Year everyone! 

2011 was incredibly crazy for me.  I published six designs, made four pairs of socks, knit a sweater for a cat, sold toys at a craft sale... and that's just the knitting!

I made a little collage of all the things I've finished:

The project from 2011 that I'm most proud of is (of course) my Blackbird Shawlette.
The project from 2011 that I use the most are my Pomatomus Socks - I love having socks of my own!
The strangest project from 2011... well, that's hard to decide.

Of course, I didn't include photos of the 12 hedgehogs that I made for the craft sale, or the pile of bricks that I'm knitting for a project I haven't blogged about, or the latest design that I'm slow cooking.  I DO have a camera, though, I got one for Christmas, so... expect more blogging!

December has been incredibly busy, but, I know that I'm going to be able to use these next few days before school starts up again to hit the ground running.

What's in store for 2012? Not even I know!

How about everyone else? Best project? Biggest mistake? What are you happy to be finished with?

Notes From my First (Kind of) Craft Sale

Wow, it has been a crazy week! When the Metal Works Club approached Hooks and Needles about doing a craft sale, I thought "Whoa, cool!"  It seemed really easy.

1.) Make a bunch of stuff

2.) Sit at the table from 10AM - 4PM, M-R.

3.) ???

4.) Profit

Half of the profit would go to Hooks and Needles, since we're seriously in need of funding.  Right now, it's funded out of the pockets of the e-board, which is kind of stressful at the beginning of the year when we need supplies and when we want to do ANYTHING.  The other half goes to the person that made the item.

To answer your question, no, I'm not the only person who made stuff! Or sat at the table! W even helped out and sat at the table when no one else was around... bless his heart!

At first, people were being kind of rude, remarking how the stuff was expensive.  If they just offhandedly said something, I ignored them, but if they made a point off it, I commented how, per hour, I make about $2 from each hedgehog - just factoring labor in!

But after the first two days, hedgehogs started selling like hotcakes.  I took commissions, and I'm now 11 hedgehogs deep.  Six of them are dark brown.

At $20 a hog... that's a lot of cash for the club!

I'm excited to count all my money when the craft sale is over next week :3 And, partially inspired to open an etsy shop. 

Until then, though... I need to eke these babies out by Monday.  So, I'm going to be dreaming of sewing scales onto hogs...

P.S. - We looked at the metal scales and the naked hedgehogs and invented this:

Metal hog!! I think I could thread the scales onto the yarn before knitting.

Blarglglarmp.

Yes, I'm aware that the title of this post is not a word.  It is more like an onomatopeia, an expression of the feelings I've been feeling over the past week or two.  My new quarter has started, and I did a really stupid thing and picked 20 credits worth of classes.  Also, I'm driving back and forth between Rochester and work, and putting in between 15 and 20 hours for them each week!

Factor in trying to have a relationship, being president of a club... there is little to no designing going on, and very little crafting! 

But, I have an apartment! It's a different room in my old apartment, so it's nice and familiar.  Also, I got to take all of my junk out of storage, which is always a plus! It's so nice to have a quiet space to study and do work in, and not feel like I'm troubling people all the time by sitting on the couch or at their table, or cooking in their kitchen.

I have been working for the Hooks and Needles craft sale, too! I managed to finish five softies and four hats, which I'm pretty proud of considering I haven't even finished W's puppets... I had a bit of an assembly line going for hedgehogs but I never finished them.  Right now these are sitting on my desk...

With THESE...

Super delicious and colorful felt from Lupin Handmade. My housewarming present to me. :)

On top of all these things, the new DAL mood boards are done! My co-admin of the group made it, so, I'm really grateful.  I seriously don't know what I'd do without her :)

Winter 2011 Mood Board Submissions!

The next round for the Design Along is going to start soon, and mood board submissions are open until this Sunday! The theme is "Birds of a Feather."  And as usual, I'm showing off the images I chose to contribute :)  I actually have a LOT of bird photos, but they're all on my external hard drive, which I forgot to take with me during break.  C'est la vie. So, I dug around the internet looking for photos for the board!

I saw these feathers as a background on a blog, and I bookmarked the image source - but not the blog! So, if you know where this is from, let me know please :)

These cute things were my wallpaper for a while.  From Corby Wallpapers

I've also seen these two cuties on the internet in various places.  Not sure where the original source is.

Then, these birds.

Finally, an awesome feather drawing.  

I'm bummed out that I left my hard-drive in Rochester! If only the submission time was a little longer, I could post up my actual photos... but oh well.

Just like last time, even if you're not interested in submitting a photo, could you please vote in this thread on Ravelry? It helps me put the board together!

Hoof Mittens!

A while ago I got an e-mail from Lesley at Lyonesque about this awesome mod to my Kitten Mittens!

She changed the colors to make hoof mittens :)

I love seeing people change my pattern, strange as that may seem.  It makes me feel like people appreciate my work, more than wanting to make something from it.  That the pattern inspires them to make something original, something new! So I was super psyched, and I kept telling myself "I have to blog about this!"

So, here it is! You should definitely check out her blog, too, because she has a matching hat that goes with them!

It's OVER! Oh, and I got to meet Anne Hanson!

First thing's first... my academic quarter is officially over as of today! I am so, so, so relieved, and so exhausted.  I can't wait for a good week and a half of vacation, then moving into my new apartment.  It's going to be nice to have a room to myself with a desk instead of, say, this:



Oh, see that bright thing on the table?  Monday, my friend Rebecca called me and said "The Rochester Knitting Guild is meeting tonight and I want to check it out... want to come with?"  Another knitting club to go to? Hot swift!

Anyway, I went on their website and saw that Anne Hanson, from Knitspot, was going to be there! I've been following her blog for a while, and I though - huh, funny, I never really looked at her patterns.  So I spent a few hours doing that on Ravelry - yes, maybe a good hour and a half.  There are a LOT of patterns!  I finally decided on making some Longjohn Socks.  It just seemed like a great mindless sock project for me to work on... and I'm loving it so far. 



It's been hard for me to knit with all the stress I've been under.  I enjoyed listening to Anne speak, but I liked being able to sit and knit just as much! It was also really cool to hear about her inspiration and see photos of her finished works juxtaposed against the photos that inspired them.  At the end, she even signed a paper copy of a fingerless gloves pattern that I bought!



It was also really exciting to see her trunk so - and to see all the versions of projects that people had brought with them. I wish I had brought W's DSLR so I could have shot photos of the night!

And, at the end of it all, I went home and made a creamsicle float.

30 Day Character Challenge!

This week has proven to be less hectic than I thought, but much, much more miserable! I have actually knit negative stitches in the past 7 days, since my DAL submission is a mess.  I don't know how I'm going to finish it on time - it is, (GAH) a real failure. 

But, I've started another thing - mostly inspired by my friends from school.  It's called the 30-day character challenge, and there's even a little Tumblr for it! It's really fun to see my friends' ideas... so, I thought I would try it out! Mine is a little different, though, since I thought that each character I make could be a toy design.

I feel like posting a single post every day would be a little too much work for me (it IS finals) so I'm going to post my character on the challenge Tumblr every day, then do a kind of consolidation post each week :)

So... for days 1 - 5...

These are two deer - they're named Dearie and Spot.  Not really much else here.

Day number two is Lola.  Lola is the only kangaroo out of her friends that doesn't have a kit, and such is incredibly depressed and a tad jealous.  She spends her time growing plants in the wasteland for others to enjoy.

Day 3 is Nina.  Yes, her name is Nina, and she is a pretty ballerina.  I have the complete ABBA discography! Don't judge me!

Day 4 is Windy.  Everyone calls her "wine-dee" but her actual name is pronounced closer to "Wendy." She suffers from a genetic condition where instead of getting fatter when she eats, she just gets longer.  It's known informally as "Snake-ism."

Day 5 is Senior Lemön, one of two lemon brothers! They cause lots of trouble for small western towns... not really enough to inconvenience people.  No one calls them by their names, mostly because they don't know how to say the o with two dots over it...

Anyway, there's week one! Week two will have better pictures (I hope) - I don't have a tablet like other people that are in the challenge (tears) so I'm just scanning doodles that I make throughout the day.