New look, new resolve

I hope you will find the new blog design and layout cleaner and more inviting to read. I certainly feel encouraged to come over here and write more.

I’ve noticed, as I’m sure you have, a large number of year-end summary posts detailing the various accomplishments and industry of other knitters and crafters. “I should make one of those,” I thought briefly, before I was discouraged by a sorry lack of productivity to show for myself.

The funny thing is that, while I have excuses aplenty (full-time school, overwhelming personal life stuff, busying myself with NYC) it’s not that I haven’t been knitting. I actually knit quite often, but I am not finishing anything. Or if I do, I’ll leave out some tiny but super-important step, like weaving ends in a scarf or hat, or sewing buttons on a sweater.

I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s lazy and silly of me, and I’d like to finish these projects and put them to use. So the good news is, very soon I’ll have a pile of imminent FOs to show you. The bad news is, you’ll probably have to wait until 2012. But since that’s right around the corner, I’m calling it all good.

Coincident with turning over a new crafting leaf (since really, you would not believe how important crafts are to maintaining my sanity), I’m drumming up a new set of Crafting Resolutions. (You’ll note I said Crafting, not just Knitting, wink wink.)

2012 Crafting Resolutions

  • Gather together all nearly-finished projects and block, sew on buttons, weave in ends, or perform any finishing tasks to transform them to FOs.
  • Finish at least one project each month (including photographing it and posting it here).
  • Make long overdue gifts for my family: Cobblestone Pullover for my father, Cable-Down Raglan for my mother, Oiled Wool Hat and matching gloves for my brother.
  • Knit a sweater using the yarn I bought in Iceland (related: tell the internet all about my trip to Iceland).
  • Make at least one pillow from the number of pillow kits I obsessively accumulate.
  • Learn to use my sewing machine, and sew at least four projects.
  • Branch out with needlepoint, cross-stitch, crewel work, etc.
  • Do not buy any more yarn or crafting supplies until marked progress has been made on finishing some major projects.

These resolutions probably look pretty familiar to those of years past, and alas, they may be my perpetual crafting goals. This year, however, I have a plan, and I hope you will enjoy watching it unfold.

Heeeeee

This little bit of cross-stitch is literally filling me with glee every time I look at it.

I reckon you can probably guess its subject, especially if you know me well or have ever looked at my Twitter icon. I have a feeling this silly little thing will become one of my favorite craft projects I’ve ever done.

Craft-Adjacent

I haven’t made much time for crafting of any sort lately – I haven’t even fixed the sweater in my last post yet, which is kind of shameful.

When it came time to make my Halloween costume, I had all these grand ideas and really the best of intentions, but well… you know how it goes. I dressed as Tippi Hedren in The Birds, and in the end I was pretty happy with the way it came out.

I have always wanted to be a Hitchcock blonde, so this was a fun costume, if not my most successful crafting venture of all time.

I wrote much more about it on my regular blog, if you’re interested in the details of my silly birds and the challenge of making a costume with only corrugated cardboard and a borrowed suit.

I do hope to make some more time for knitting and crafting soon. I have all these great projects in the works and an intense desire to do things with my hands that aren’t Calculus problems. I’ll try not to be a stranger.

Handmade Ornaments

Since my mother likes to keep the Christmas tree up through Epiphany, we get extra time to admire the decorations and ornaments around the house.

The tree was beautiful this year, but unfortunately my father’s puppy Smooch has taken to chomping up ornaments daily.

Including the baby Jesus from my mother’s DiGiovanni Nativity set. Whoops.

Inspired by some sense of posterity, I decided to photograph some of the cross-stitched ornaments I’d made when I was a child, lest they end up like Smooch’s other prey.

My mother bought me fabulous Christmas ornament kits when I expressed an interest in counted cross-stitch. They came with cute little frames, cardboard backing material, a square of Aida fabric, a tiny little pattern, the right-size needle, and generous lengths of all the DMC colors you’d need. I kept the whole kit in a sandwich bag while I worked on them and thought they were just the most charming things.

This church ornament was the very first cross-stitch project I ever did. I love its painted wood frame, and I still have to smile at those cute little stained glass windows.

My mother and I were admiring this ornament, and she asked how old I was when I made it. I turned it over, saw that I’d clumsily embroidered 1991 on the back, which I showed her. She looked at me, perplexed, as she tried to count back from 2007.

We both got a good laugh when I rolled my eyes and said “Mom, I was born in 1981.”

This cat and mouse were my two favorites (even though I can see an error in the cat now) because they were the cutest designs and also in part because they used a very fine-count Aida cloth.

At that time, I usually worked on 12-count, and I think these were 14 or 16 count, so I felt terribly sophisticated.

I was kind of a snot about this swan because I felt it was too simple and easy, stitched on 12-count fabric.

I also wasn’t as wild about the rocking horse because it had almost no back-stitching, which at the time was one of my favorite parts.

That was my 10-year old sensibility, of course. Now I think they’re all adorable, and I admire them fondly. I love having something that I made more than 15 years ago so well-preserved and cared-for.

Then again I shouldn’t be surprised. My parents have kept ornaments I made at a very politically-correct kindergarten: a geeky snowflake,

and their personal favorite, my star of David.

Lastly, while I’m admiring my favorite ornaments, I had to post a photo of this one, which I did not make, but which we bought many years ago from a basketry artisan at a Pennsylvania Dutch folk festival in Kutztown, PA.

I just love this weaving, and I want to learn how to do it.

When I return to Brooklyn, I may take a stab at finishing some of the other cross-stitch pieces I have had “in progress” for 10 or 15 years. I was really into stitching way before knitting, and I actually got quite good at it, so it’d be nice to pick it back up again.

Ahh memories.