Thursday, December 28, 2006

Hello, stranger.

My my, it's been a long time. My first semester of grad school took up a whole lot of my time. Oh, I still crafted. But there was no time for a proper blogging about it.

I finished my 6 week sewing class. The projects I have to show for it seem kind of plain and minimal in comparison to all of the things I learned. I learned some great hand sewing techniques, which actually greatly improves my enjoyment of the task. (If I can manage to take better pictures, I'll share the techniques I learned for those interested) I learned a great deal about my machine & a whole lot about the magic & importance of prep work in sewing.

Our first project was a pillow & pillow cover. Simple, but enjoyable.
Then we did a lined tote bag. The end result is pretty nice actually, but I wasn't a fan of the project. It was a lot of work to get it to fit properly & I'm not enough of a fan of bags to justify that kind of work. But I must say, I still learned a lot & have a great appreciation for those that do make bags so well.
Our last project was a wrap skirt. And thanks to my fabric purchasing, I learned about the skill of making the most of a piece of fabric when you've bought juuuuuussst enough (but barely). It's a little big, but I love it anyway. And as silly as it sounds, my favorite thing about it is that it has pockets. I think everything should have pockets.
Note: you'll have to excuse my picture taking. You should know that I don't even own a full-length mirror. Thus, photos like this need to be taken in the laundry room of my building in quick spurts so as not to appear like a crazed ego maniac to the other tenents.

This is a better shot of the colors though...
...with my new boots, which by the way..ahem, also have pockets.

Of course there was also holiday crafting to be done. I started making fabric ornaments like the ones my mom made for our tree when I was a kid. I always liked those best. But for reasons I won't go into now, I didn't end up giving them to anyone this year. So instead they are going into the fund of christmas crafts for next year.

But I did make myself some fabulous soft trees for my apartment, using the pattern by Little Birds. I love everything this woman makes. They are so simple, but beautiful & gratifying.
I also knit my brother a cabled hat around thanksgiving, as modeled below by my nephew. It's the "Basic Cable" hat from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation. You can't even really see it very well in the photo, but seriously..with a face this cute, who cares about a damn hat?!