And Then There Was Juggling

Last night I was reading a book about 3 Aboriginal artists that had converted their paintings into knitwear designs. While the designs themselves were pretty cool, that isn't the part of the book that spoke to me. They are telling their own personal stories on their sweaters. And I wanted to do the same. Kangaroos are lovely but don't have anything to do with my life.

So I grabbed some knitting graph paper, and designed something close to my own heart; a woman juggling. I've juggled since 1977. It put food on my table when I had no other income. So it means a lot to me. I hope I have time to make the design into a sweater, a vest, a pillow or something. But probably not until 2014. I'm swamped with projects right now. The juggler is juggling five balls, a goal I've worked on many times but never mastered. If I ever get to go to another juggling convention, I'll wear it.

Snowy Day

We went to Apple Valley today and I got to work on my knitted blue scarf. It's about five feet long now.

No sooner than we got the groceries into the house, it started to rain again.  An hour later the rain had turned to hail. Then right before dusk, it started to snow. My first snow at my new house! I watched it until it got dark out. I wonder if the ground will be white in the morning. We'll see.

I finally live somewhere that is cold enough to wear the sweater I knitted. It's the yellow one in the photo. It's mostly been in a drawer. My boyfriend didn't even remember me making it. Out of sight, out of mind I guess.


Hail in the yard.

Cold morning.



Yesterday morning was foggy and beautiful.

Purple star pin

This is the last thing I finished. They run about $25 plus tax and shipping if you'd like to request a custom order. This one will be a Christmas gift. Hope she doesn't read my blog.

Paint Then Crochet Then Paint Then Crochet

Today I got to paint outdoors in a patch of sunlight using my new easel. I tried to finish the painting I started Sunday Dec. 18, 2011 at the archery range. I can't believe after painting daily for over a month I spent a week and didn't paint at all. That's what holidays do to a schedule. I still have to add the finishing touches to the painting but here it is so far. I'm glad I got to finish one of these more complicated paintings. 

The rest of today I worked on the monster sweater I'm crocheting.  I've been having technical difficulties with getting the rows to line up. I think I finally figured out what is going wrong, but there is no turning back now.  No matter how many years I've been crocheting (since 5th grade), I still get lost following a pattern sometimes. So here is a photo.  Yes, crochet is messy during the process, especially when you use a lot of colors.

Sweater Redo

Sometimes when I design things I can tell they are not going in the direction that I wish them to go. Such was the case with the sweater I was crocheting. After about ten rows, I could tell I'd accidentally decreased and wound up about 30 stitches short on the circumference. That's a lot. I see no choice but to start over. In the long run I hope it will be worth it though.

Multicolored Crochet Sweater

Tonight I totally obsessed over a new sweater I'm crocheting. Eventually my hands gave out and the clock passed midnight, so I had to set it aside. I was going to use a pattern in a vintage crochet book, but I couldn't make heads or tails out of it.  So I'm duplicating it based on how I think she did it. That could be a disaster. But at least I'm enjoying the process. It's mostly shades of purple and gray.

Sweater in July

Well it may be too hot out to wear it for a few months, but at least I finished the sweater. I looked up my last Flickr photo on it and that was Dec. 2008. So it's been sitting in a bin about a year and a half and I had it finished in a bit more than an hour. How silly is that? Even though I added some extra inches to the arms, the sleeves are still a bit on the short side. Other than that it fits pretty well. I really had no idea if it was going to fit because I couldn't really try it on until all the seams were sewn together. Before that I just had a ballpark fit. I'm glad it fits; not perfectly but well enough I can wear it.

A Plethora of Projects

Yesterday I was busy as a bee finishing earrings for my Etsy shop. Then it got dark before I got all the photos. And I was spent after a long day crafting.

I also got some knitting done on my canopy cover. It's a big project so if I hit it once a day to move it along I won't stress over it.

Don't forget to enter the earring drawing I listed a few posts ago.

I just found out my niece is pregnant too. So that makes her, my daughter and two of my friends. It seems like there is one other person too. So I want to get busy with the baby booty knitting before it's too late. So much to do, I feel torn in many creative directions.

Oh, and I'm finishing a knitted sweater today. I swear the sun will not go down before I am wearing that darn sweater! I'm not putting it back in a bin to get lost again.

Confetti Sweater Cont.

I worked on the Confetti Sweater first thing this morning. I have the back and front finished. I'm also not going to have enough of the multicolored yarn to make two sleeves. My options are buy another skein if I can find it, look through my stash and see if I have more I forgot I had, make the sleeves plain yellow, or make yellow sleeves with a multicolor border along the bottom cuff with the yarn I still have.

Confetti Sweater (knit)

I've dubbed my mostly yellow sweater the confetti sweater. I bound off the back section of the sweater this morning and started on the front. The front is just like the back and done from the bottom to the top, only near the top you divide it in the center for the v-neck.

Tonight I'm going to take a break from knitting and work on holiday cards so I can get them in the mail on time. Which begs the question, if they are not Christmas cards, but holiday cards, do they even have to be there by Christmas day?

Sunday Crafts

First thing this morning I worked on my knitting loom making a scarf I call Buttery Sunshine.
Then later this afternoon I switched to knitting needles and worked on my sweater. I'm almost done with the back of it.
I also re-watched my video on gourd art. I just don't have enough time in the day to get to all the projects I want to work on. But having a blog keeps me plugging away. I always want to make sure I have something new to share with you all.
My boyfriend is sitting on the floor surrounded by a colorful swirl of dyed goose feathers trying to sort out what he needs to order for the arrows he's working on.
That reminds me; I glued the nocks on my arrows too.

Knitting a sweater

Today I started knitting a sweater that I know will be too small for me. But I thought I would learn useful techniques and maybe figure out a way to make the next one bigger.