Knee Warmers

Procrastination must end and UFO's (unfinished objects) are no longer allowed in my house.  OK, a few are fine, but I have decided to cull the herd and make the pile a little shorter.  First off, we have the intermediate phase of a UFC (unfinished concept.).  Pictured above are a pair of kneewarmers in prep. for my uncle the deerslayer.  Apparently his knees get really cold while laying in wait for a nice rack to mosey on by, and he asked for something like this.  It has been more than a year for sure, maybe even two since the original description was passed down to me.  I think I was dragging my feet because I didn't have a pattern and I didn't want them to be crappy.  The concept is a tube made up of 1x1 ribbing for maximum elasticity, with an afterthought heel for the knee bend.  I'm also going to try thrumming in the heel/knee.  Stay tuned. 

Tubercle-d!

I found this glass bauble at the big box craft store for 3 bucks.  It reminded me of an ammonite with tubercles on its keel and I had to bring it home with me.  With the new ornament I also found a perfect excuse to make my first attempt at chain maille jewelry.  The pattern is called barrel weave and it was tricky at first, but OK for a beginner.

The Scratchiest Blanket Ever

I trafficked my ~12 year old super Bond knitting machine to Texas (two regular ones bolted together) after x-mas for the express purpose of making this blanket. I found a new friend who loves scratchy blankets. She has a favorite that was crocheted eons ago and is starting to literally disintegrate. Her mother made her 5-6 new ones to replace it, but they were too bulky. It seemed to me a knitted one would be more lightweight. There was no way I was going to hand knit a giant blanket with red heart specially selected by touch test for maximum irritation at the nearest Michaels. It is done, and it is scratchy…

The in progress shot above might be a little too revealing, but I decided to share it anyway.  You see that while I may be messy and cluttered, it is only superficially "dirty"  as evidenced by a plethora of hand and dish cleaning agents as well as Lysol wipes.  My dietary staples of velveeta shells and cheese overshadow a bag of clementines that have been pushed to the side. And of course I have a tin of pickle shaped band-aids perched expectantly near my Invasion of the Monster Women lunch/tool box.

Metalsmithery

I'm trying some new things, like welding metal together.  I'm not very good at it yet and need extensive supervision at this point, but it's just so cool.  This is a radiolarian pendant I'm working on.  After I cut out the shape in copper, I proceeded to file the edges down in preparation for the next step.  I didn't realize until I after I fashioned the death star that I accidentally filed each side of the points at a perfect 45 degree angle.  So cute, so deadly.  (I filed those down yet, I'm far too clumsy to be walking around town with WMDs.)