Fleece

IMG_0061, originally uploaded by alicen.

I went to Maker Faire last weekend and picked up, among other things, a bag of assorted hand dyed fleece. This necessitated my learning to card the wool. (Thanks to Jess for letting me use the carders!) I will probably spin it into bizarrely variegated yarn for socks or something. Hopefully I'll get a better picture of the next step.

Things I've made but haven't blogged: Various hand-sewn clothing, progress on a couple of quilts, various repairs and upgrades (replacing buttons, etc.), experiments with letterpress, yarn purchases, and more.

Headband

DSCN0938, originally uploaded by alicen.

I've been messing around with things from this book recently, and this is one byproduct. I've been really enjoying the process of creating lately, of watching elaborate designs emerge from little bits and pieces. I'm also fascinated by the idea of owning lots of carefully complex things. This isn't fancy, exactly, but it contains far more attention to detail than most things in my home.

Oh, and one more picture.

instant window seat

DSCN0913, originally uploaded by alicen.

Tom and I made this two nights ago in about twenty minutes. Ingredients:

1 defunct coffee table found on the street
2 dead computers
wood scraps
a couple magazines
circular saw
pliers
blanket

We removed the legs from the table (they were too short and really wobbly) and then removed the molding from the back of the table. Then we put it on top of the computers. We cut the wood scraps to size to even out the height of the computers, and jammed them in.

The computers are heavy, so it's quite stable. Long term plans involve storing things underneath and getting or making pillows to fit the space. The light in that window is great, so I think it'll get lots of use.

Circus vest!

Tom found this picture:



And so I made this:





It still needs edging and probably some decoration (all the stitching that's visible now is actually structural).

Card Weaving

DSCN0853, originally uploaded by alicen.

Only a couple of years after Laura sent me a book on the subject, I got around to doing a test card weaving project.

Card weaving is a way of weaving without a fixed loom. You have a series of cards with holes in them. Different color thread is threaded through each hole, and the cards are twisted to put different combinations on top. There's a pretty good explanation here.



It's a very old idea and can be done with all sorts of materials. I used cotton thread purchased for something like $1/ball. My strap (which is 4 or 5 feet long) is a simple diamond pattern, but you can quickly get much more complicated.

The process is surprisingly fast - this only took me an hour or so to set up and weave. I'm not sure how much call there actually is in my life for narrow bands of fabric (and the width of these things is sort of naturally limited by the nature of the weaving process), but it's definitely something I'll do again.

Knitting, quilting and so forth

Tom went to China for two weeks for work. It rained pretty much the whole time, so I spent a lot of quiet time making things (and watching the fourth season of Heroes). I finished off a number of ongoing projects. First of all, the socks I started at my cousin's wedding last March:



These went through several knit and then rip out iterations before the final form took shape. Then they sat on my bedside table for three months with an inch left to go on the final sock.

I also finished off the leg warmers from the flight back from Istanbul. They are part of my strategy to wrap all my extremities in tubes of wool. Very versatile.



There was also quilting - hexagon experiments. I did the actual piecework for this one three years ago, but didn't know what to do with it until recently. Hopefully my mother doesn't read this; it's for her.



This one is all new. It may be a Settlers of Catan board in disguise.



It's approximately 18" by 24". I did the quilting by hand on the bus to and from work. It was very relaxing. I've convinced myself that I can competently piece hexagons, so a big quilt (with rather larger pieces, for the sake of sanity) may be up next. The piecing didn't actually take that long, but I really sort of hate machine quilting, and doing a bed-size quilt by hand is out of the question (just not portable enough).

I also added ribbing and shaping and so on to this t-shirt (it was boring before).



And here's a belated picture of Tom's Christmas present



It's on a hooded sweatshirt, which he's wearing here



This went over very, very well.

Succulents!

IMG_0826, originally uploaded by alicen.

These are now planted in little pots scattered around on my window sills, but I haven't got a picture yet. Tom and I biked to Flora Grub through an industrial bit of San Francisco and returned with many tiny plants. I did the repotting last weekend, so now I have a bay window full of little green things.