I think that everyone crafts for different reasons.  While I love giving gifts, I am all about process.  I am incredibly pleased by pieces of a sweater laid out on a bed.  I love socks in progress, as though they are falling out of the circle that my needles create.  Charts and graphs sing a siren's songs to me.  Their black and white symbols demand to be recreated in color.  My first real craft was cross-stitch.  I 
think that this was not by chance, because I asked to be taught many crafts over the years.  Cross-stitch, though I could never say it is my favorite, is a sort of guilty pleasure now.  After all, cross-stitch is so non-essential.  It only makes things better, never practical.

When moving offices not too long ago, a co-worker and I found an opened, but unused, cross-stitch kit in the bottom of a file drawer.  How tragic, my secret mind thought, and so I took it home to sew and personalize.  The fact that the text on the cross-stitch made little sense was only a bonus.  The other aspect of cross-stitch being so decorative is that it is almost always saccharine.  Wise words become pablum when stitched in little x's on even weave fabric.  Only, that isn't quite what I mean. Wise words are still wise, but serious and well meaning tripe are stripped bare and revealed to be nothing more than greeting card sentiment.  However, when that powerful force of banality is harnessed, I think the results can be quite charming.  One of my favorite artists, Steotch, creates samplers of pop-cultural idioms.  The surprise is the joke, because no one expects much out of cross-stitch.  Not that I did anything revolutionary, but I altered this little picture of a sleeping kitten so that it also included a silly, boastful phrase about the Reserves department in the library.

And just to document my process, I took pictures after completing the stitching for each color. Cross-stitch looks so mechanized and pixilated to me, that laying down the colors, almost like a printing process, seems like a natural step.

If you found this appealing, then may I please recommend this and this, some great Lego build stop motions that I can't get enough of.

A slightly larger partner in crime to my smaller mantis from a few months ago.  A co-worker saw my little mantis, and the large one from longer ago (both have made it to work somehow, on different desks).  She asked if I might make one for her daughter who had a spring birthday and is also graduating from high school, and, more importantly, had been working on a final art project, a watercolor of a mantis.  I had been itching for the chance to make another mini-mantis/work any Hansi pattern small, with no real justification for doing so, and I liked the serendipity of the whole thing. 

When I was at Stitches South in April, I made a special point of visiting the Miss Babs booth.  I had gotten overwhelmed there at Stitches West and wanted another crack at it.  Not only did I purchase many beautiful skeins of yarn for socks that you will hopefully see here before too long, but I was also able to get two little half balls of sock yarn for the mantis.  The beautiful depth of the Miss Babs yarn makes you never want to buy machine dyed yarn again, until you remember how much it costs.  For the special toy though, I think it is totally worth it.  And this guy is special from the tops of his antennae down to the tips of his tarsi. 

The other lovely thing about this Miss Babs yarn is that they use very poetic names.  Sometimes I resent poetic naming on yarns because I feel like I'm just being tricked into yearning for a yarn that isn't available,  that I don't really need* because of some deep emotional attachment to some movie.  The yarns for this project though, are so thoroughly beautiful, and I had to buy the yarn for a project, so the names are just icing on the cake: Violets in the Grass and Ghost Ship.  Beautiful and evocative.

*as though there is such a thing, but I can still aspire to be practical.

Because this yarn is a little fuller than the yarn I used to make the tiny mantis, I went up a needle size to 00 needles.  I also made sure to amend my earlier mistake and not trim off the tops of the wires inside the legs.  This time I left them long and bent them so they fitted nicely into the body.  The result was a much more stable mantis who can actually stand with his abdomen off the ground completely if he so chooses.

Well, I had fun making the mantis, and I thought that was that.  I feel pretty strongly that I can't take money for making something from a pattern that I didn't design, so I just said don't worry about it, and my co-worker was very appreciative.  And then she and her daughter spoiled me rotten.  I got two beautiful cards, one with a charming paper cut, and one of them hand painted by the recipient herself of a little parrot, a gift certificate to a local yarn store, and the most beautiful bouquet of flowers, which really match the mantis quite well.  I love trading a craft for a craft, and I certainly don't mind working for flowers when the project itself was intriguing anyway. 

I've got several finished projects now that I need to post about, but I thought these were so neat, they needed a post all to themselves

I made these socks for a friend with whom bees figure prominently into our friendship.  I got the yarn ages ago, but I hadn't found a pattern that worked well with the yarn.  Pooling is the ugly and unwanted phenomenon where big blobs of one color in a variegated yarn plop themselves down in what otherwise is a pleasing random arrangement of the colors.  On socks this usually results in a pretty random sock and then one giant zig zag, thin-thick stripe of brown or something.  I'm not sure of the scientific support of this theory, but pooling usually happens with the ugliest color in the yarn.  Anyway, this yellow and black yarn was pooling badly with every pattern I tried.  Then I tried this pattern!  I guess the yarn still pools, but it pools evenly, creating the illusion of stripes or just more organic forms.

The socks are worked long ways, from cuff to toe.  The pattern is a few years old, and lots of folks on-line have already worked it, but it is new to me, and I'm excited about it.  The elegance, the simplicity, I'm going to stop gushing now.  I took some photos at different stages of the process and I will leave you with those:

Half a sock.  You first work decreases to make the heel shape, and then increases to make the toe shape.

As you increase and decrease on the sides of the toe, the little toe pocket forms by itself.

The whole sock finished.  All that's left is to sew up the back with an invisible seam.  I'd like to think it looks like a tiny tiger skin at this stage. 

Once again I've been working on gifts, and so I haven't been posting.  I still have to figure out a way around that.  But at least one gift has been presented, so here are the Sweet Alice Socks:

They were worked using the Sweetheart Socks pattern on Knitty, and inspired by a lovely color combination I saw on Ravelry.  That person did their socks in a deep red, but I thought I would just soften it a little by using this old barn pinkish color for a more feminine heel and toe.  Mostly worked by knitting stitches together and making new stitches instead of real cables, and also worked in worsted weight yarn, they worked up quickly and are super thick and warm.  This was the first time that I worked an afterthought heel, so it was a fun technical experiment.  The afterthought is that you work a piece of waste yarn where you want the heel to go, and then once the sock is complete you take out the waste yarn, pick up the stitches, and knit the heel.  The only negative is that you can't try the sock on while you are making it, but since most of my recipients live far from me, that isn't really a problem.

I saw this pattern while on a break at work and could hardly wait to get home to knit it!  It is designed by Cheezombie it is it wonderfully elegant.  The whole pattern is worked from tail to ball in one piece, with the flippers sewn on later.  This kind of subtle simple shaping makes me feel more confident about designing my own toys.  I made this guy with 000 needles and sock yarn, and then upped it to 0 needles and heavier yarn for the ball.  I think I will make another one and try making the ball even bigger to balance the proportions, maybe I'm even ambitious enough to make it look like a real beach ball.  It is hard to tell from the photo, but this guy is palm sized, as is everyone else in this post. 

This is a belated posting, but I love this little guy, and he deserves to be seen.  He is designed by Jessica Polka.  A little prawn pin, he was commissioned by a friend.  The yarn makes it I think, a pretty hand spun fingerling weight.  The color is ideal, but also, the woolyness of the yarn emphasizes the home made quality of the project which sends the essential awesomeness through the roof.  The eyes are small black beads.  The antenna are a flattened out spiral binding from a report that was being thrown away at work.  The first draft of this project was stolen by my cats, but I'm glad because this version came out so much better.  I sewed a pin back on him, and apparently he is much envied in his adopted hometown of Seattle. 

Another commissioned piece, a Trilobite broach.  Again, 000 needles and lace weight yarn.  He came out great, and even though they are so simple, I really like the antennae.  Also, I'm still loving this yarn.  There is enough of it that I think I will be making toys out of it for the next few years.  It is still the yarn from the mosaic hat! 

First, here are some photos of a finished project, the Fluency Gloves designed by Sivia Harding.  I came upon them in a post by Franklin Habit from the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat (I knew I should have gone!)

A while back I had had the "what do you want me to knit for you" conversation with a friend and we had settled on grey gloves.  I knew I wanted a pattern that was pretty and plain at the same time.  Subtle and not the least fussy, but complex enough that I would also have fun knitting it.  That is this pattern all over.  The original pattern has beads knitted into the spaces between the knitted ridges, but as I was going for the antithesis of fussy, I left the beads off.  I used an inexpensive Berroco acrylic so that these gloves can be washed without extra special care.  This yarn choice also means that they are super soft.  The recipient was super pleased. 

I know I am an inconsistent blog poster and no amount of New Years resolutions is going to change that.  I'm usually either working on gifts and so I can't post the photos early, or I'm working on 6 different projects at once and they are all in the embryonic stages, and so they don't look like much.  But then that means no posts.  So here, with very little fan fair are several photos of works in progress that I hope to post more on later when they have grown up a little bit.

A wedding gift for August

A sleeve, attempting to understand the properties of sizing up needles and yarn.  No those are not space men along the bottom.  

Will I ever realize my dream of a truly tiny seahorse?  I need to get some thin yarn for his belly and then time will tell.

Afterthought heel on a pair of socks that are finished but not yet gifted.

My purse project, a scarf for my husband.  It grows slowly.

A hibernating sweater.  Bought the yarn in 2008 for sweater A, tried again to use the yarn on sweater B.  This is sweater C, and I'm not that into it, but when do I just throw the yarn away?

At some point I figured that I like knitting tiny things so much, I should just knit with thread.  Maybe not, because I haven't worked on this in quite some time.  But someday, I'll have...a lovely sachet.  A sachet I went blind for. 

This octopus is another Hansi Singh pattern.  He is done in worsted weight yarn and is larger than I typically make my toys.  He is bigger because he is destined for a very special project which is finally getting some momentum.  More on that later. 

Just finished a pair of socks for my husband.   They are the Java Socks pattern from the most current issue of Knitty.  They have a little two stitch cable all over them, which is good because it is more interesting to knit than just plain ribbing, but is bad because it still became kind of monotonous.  The pattern is special because the decreases that happen after the heel are done across the ankle instead of down the side of the heel.  The pattern is nicely written so that the decreases just become a part of the flow of the ribbing.  My husband says that these socks fit better in the ankle than any others that I have made for him. I think part of this is the construction, but I also think that having an all over rib helps because it gives the fabric a lot more stretch, thus making it fit better.  

I just didn’t want to pin this onto the end of the sock post because I think it is good enough to stand alone.   Step with me into the Way-Back Machine for a moment...

At times in my life, I have made many sock monkeys.  When I first learned, at a workshop in college, I made monkeys out of a compulsion.  They are easy to make, and they develop their own personalities.  I made a heap of full sized monkeys and then tried to give them away.  It is the problem of any craft, what to do with it when you are finished.  

For a few years, I was making and selling my little monkeys at the sadly now defunct Bare Hands Gallery.  I made them with baby socks and each monkey had little button eyes, and some other piece of flair, a little parrot button or a bell or something.  It is exhausting, however, to make 30 little objects creatively without knowing who they are for.  

On the other hand, it is really fun to make one object creatively knowing exactly who it is for.  

This sock monkey is for my dad.  I shot for a rough verisimilitude in the face, and though professionally my dad plays the violin, in his spare time he has been pursuing the mandolin.  This little monkey owns my best attempt at a knitted mandolin.  

As you may be aware, most fabrics are either knitted or woven, and even commercially produced socks are knitted, just on the tiny needles of a machine.  This was my first time making a monkey coming from a more knitterly perspective, and as I sewed the pieces together, I found my hands attempting to graft the tiny stitches instead of just sewing them together.  The result might be neater, but not by much, and it probably isn’t worth the eye strain!  

I’m trying to be better about posting projects right after they are finished.  Christmas makes that impossible, and birthdays are not much better.  My mom’s birthday was on Valentine’s, and she has already opened her present, so I can now post it here:

It is the Skew pattern from knitty.com.  The pattern incorporates a very interesting diagonal construction.  The whole thing is worked from the big toe, over and then up.  The heel is also different, with the increases going out to the side, and then being folded towards each other and grafted together.  It is hard to explain, but I recommend knitting it if you get a chance.  

I actually ended up knitting the pattern twice.  For most of my knitting life I have existed with size 1 ½ needles instead of regular 1s.  It was the kind of purchasing fluke that happens when a novice buys needles, but I was a well informed novice, so I bought Addi Turbo’s, expensive needles, in slightly the wrong size.  The first pair of skew socks were made using the slightly larger needles, and it actually made a big difference in the size of the socks.  These slightly too big fellows have now gone on to a friend with slightly larger feet.  

Also, since they were for my mom, I decided that the more muted colors simply weren’t as appropriate as some festive red.  

I will say though, that working this pattern has restored my faith in variegated yarn a little and I'm thinking more positively about hand dyed yarn.  I'll be at Stitches West this weekend, so it may be that I come home with an arm full of hand dyed and make nothing but socks for a while.