All the Projects

currently listening to: Shameful Metaphors by Chevelle

Is this not a true statement for everyone who does any kind of craft work? I knit and crochet and dabble in a number of other things as well, but it has been a while since I was able to finish anything. There was a hat a while back that I did while on a road trip to D.C. That was an 18 hr+ drive in a minivan with another chaperone and 2 high school students. thank all that is good in the world that I was not in the 15 passenger van!

That aside, I've got at least 2 things I'm trying to finish this month to put in the county fair in a few weeks.

The first is this cowl that I started working on not too long ago. The pattern is free, Abstract Leaves Cowl and not too difficult. I'm working with a really beautiful Merino wool mix that I got from the Yarn Barn  on a club outing in May.

The other is a set of fairy wings that I'm putting together to hopefully wear to the Renaissance Festival in September. I'm not sure if they will be finished in time for the fair, or if they will turn out any good but it's my first wire working project, and almost my first project working with plastics so we will see. If they are any good when I finish I will post a tutorial. My Goal was to make them adult sized, and have them so that they could hang down my back rather than stick out and get in the way. That last part will be more about how I affix them to a harness when I get the rest of the 4-piece set completed. The photo here is the nearly completed first wing. The harness will have it hanging lower on my back than where it is being modeled here.

Terriermon

Sweater frontpiece

The rest of my ongoing projects include this Terriermon amigurumi that only needs his face stitched on, the beginning few pieces of a Happypotamus  amigurumi and the front piece of a sweater called Rings of Saturn.

Happypotamus flowers

Those are in addition to the Babette Blanket that it currently on hiatus because it is almost finished but needs one more granny square but I don't want to buy a whole skein of black yarn right now for just one square.

Bits and pieces

Currently listening to Stars by Sixx A.M.

So between my own Babette project and the blanket my club is putting together for a charity project I've got well over 100 little bits and pieces of blankets littering my house.

That said, joining squares is nothing new to anyone who has been crocheting for any length of time. A quick google search of Crochet Granny Joins brings up all sorts of useful things. I'm using a simple whip stitch to join my Babette squares, but for the club blanket, with both crochet and knit squares, all roughly (and roughly is a good way to term it) 5" I need something that's going to be a little more forgiving of the differences between the squares. I decided to try a flat chain join.

Believe it or not, between these two blankets, this is the first time I've actually been joining things together like this. Both of these were little experiments for me. This is the video I used on the chain join courtesy of Drops Design.  Here's a sampling of the club blanket. I've got twice that many squares again to add on after this though.

The woes of online searches

With the roast in the crockpot, my most recent granny square finished and the laundry finished, now it's time to start the real work. I'm just over a semester away from graduation, and by this time next year hope to be in another school working toward my master's degree. That means graduate school shopping. Deadlines for applications will be coming due soon so I have to start seriously searching.

The hope is to get myself out of state though I know that will be more expensive. Really, schools should offer a discount for out of state students instead of the other way around. It would be a great way to increase the diversity of ideals within their student bodies. Random opinions aside, I have for some reason been fixated on the idea of going to Arizona. I don't even have a school picked out; though the field is narrowed to three from that state. I also want to look in Oregon.

The problem with looking for information on the websites that universities have set up is that so much of what is there is useless, and to find what I'm looking for I have to sift through literally every page on their website to get the one or two useful things for me. KU had a wonderfully informative and easily navigable website for example, Cal State however, had nothing, not one piece of the information I was looking for.

Rant finished, I've got some more online shopping to do and then some phone calls to make to try to get real info.