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.

Noro Scarf

DSCN0734, originally uploaded by alicen.

This is the second scarf I've made like this, and also the second one I've lost. I knit it on the trip to Turkey, and then lost it at work the second time I wore it. BAH.

Catching up

IMG_0792, originally uploaded by alicen.

I have a rather large backlog of projects to post, so hopefully I'll be getting to that soonish.

This is an aluminum tile that I made in a workshop at the Crucible before Christmas. It's supposed to be Baba Yaga's hut, though I'm not sure how much of that came through. The method was sand-casting - carving a block of sand and binder into the right shape, then pouring in the molten metal.

Sweater progress

Sweater, originally uploaded by alicen.

I finally started a sweater from the yarn Laura gave me last Christmas. The pattern is Vivian. My yarn is quite a bit fuzzier than what's shown (Berroco Peruvia) and sort of mossy green, which makes the whole thing more subtle and organic looking.

t-shirt quilt

DSCN0285, originally uploaded by alicen.

I made a quick-and-dirty quilt from a bunch of oversize t-shirts Tom wasn't ready to throw out yet. It really needs to be quilted a great deal more, but it's so relentlessly tacky that I can't quite bring myself to put more time into it. Being made out of old t-shirts (and an old jersey sheet), it's reeeeaaallly soft though.

Potato Stamps

DSCN0274, originally uploaded by alicen.

While in Portland we made stamps from potatoes an used them to print on fabric. These are some of the results.