In His Steps

Original post date: 4/15/14 and last of the old posts on my crafting blog. Everything is officially moved back to this one! I've been blessed in my marriage with nineteen instant nieces and nephews (alright, eighteen, but we had one get adopted in a few months ago). One of my nieces does archery and her mother mentioned to me during Christmas that she would like some archery related jewelry. I found the right items at Hobby Lobby and then looked through my beads. These are the supplies I ended up narrowing down and using. Here is the necklace. And the complete set. A look at each earring. The other one... And another shot of the necklace. Other than the arrow heads, all of the beads are from my bead storage.

Original post date: 4/8/14 Rosslyn asked me to make her another scarf with some lovely Manos de Uruguay worsted yarn. Her last scarf was a fairly short one, so she wanted a longer one. I made this out of two skeins. I chose  this pattern  and it turned out really well! And here is the whole long thing. It took a bit to figure this pattern out, but once I did, it just flowed. Like every scarf, it's a bit of a slog by the halfway point, but I'm very pleased with the results.

Original post date: 4/1/14 I made  this cute sweater  for Rosslyn's doll Selby. Read about it in my link to my doll blog!

Original post date: 3/25/14 It got cold here, back in December. Cold enough that I made myself mittens. But these are not those mittens. These are the mittens of a man. A man with really long skinny hands. So much so that I had to add a repeat of the pattern and fudge the thumbs to make them longer. And it worked! After blocking, they look great and when it gets really cold, he's wearing them along with one of the knit hats I've made him. I love him.

Original post date: 3/18/14 My first pair of mittens! I was cold a lot in the beginning of winter, so I felt it was time to make myself a pair of mittens. Gloves don't do much to keep my fingers warm, but these work amazingly!

Original post date: 3/11/14 My new MSD size doll has majorly inspired me to knit for her. I found a  pattern on ravelry  for a hoodie and had to give it a try. Here I was beginning the kangaroo pocket on the front. Rosslyn helped me make Rania (my doll) a masking tape sewing dummy and we stuffed it with plastic bags from the grocery store (my way of recycling them). It helped a lot in do the fittings part of this project. Here I was beginning the collar at 3:30am. I had to teach myself intarsia to add the different color around the collar and hood edge. You can see the intarsia here on the backside of it, the looping of each color of yarn around each other like a chain going vertically up. Doing both sides of the collar now. This was the middle of knitting the hood, which is larger than the body of the sweater in some ways. Dolls have big heads, man. I weaved in the ends as I went so I wouldn't finish the project and have...

Original post date: 3/4/14 Awhile back, my mom gave me a large amount of broken jewelry of hers to repair. One of those pieces of jewelry was a long string of garnet beads (real garnet) that my father's stepfather had given her (this grandpa was a geologist). The string had broken and she had gathered as many beads as she could find. I restrung the necklace and brought it back, only for her to tell me she'd found six more beads. So, I offered her a pair of earrings to match the necklace, which she'd never had. She took me up on it. My mom doesn't like dangly earrings all that much, so I had to come up with something simple and not too long, or she'd never wear it. I opted on a simple cluster of three beads each. I think they turned out rather nicely. She was very happy with them, too!