1st Real Post!
Well, hello fellow crafters! Hello, friends! Hello to any mortal enemies who may be reading this, too! (But watch your back if you truly are an enemy for I am forceful with needle and swift with high temp glue gun!)
I've been considering incorporating a knitty aspect to my regular blog, however I think my wonderful readers there might start to drool and go cross eyed at mere mention of my passion for baby kid alpaca and a new cabling method, so here I am! Inspired by two of the lovely ladies with whom I knit on a semi-regular basis, Kat and Ariel, who each have really excellent knitting blogs themselves (these two gots some serious power knitting juju!), I have decided to amble over here to Blogger(tm) and start up my own crafty blog. It's a crafting blog and not a knitting blog since I like to spread the Mod Podge love in other areas of my life as well. I have entitled myself the Daft Crafter since I rarely finish a project and I find it's a convenient nom de web considering the use of the word "daft" gives me a built in excuse to produce really odd and possibly not very good crafty results. (This way, you see, if I create something that's actually cool it will come as a surprise and make me seem modest, which will, in turn, make me look even more admirable as a crafter and, by extension, citizen of humanity. That's my grand plan, anyway.)
First up, the project I'm currently working on. This is my first attempt at lace knitting. As per usual, I can't just take a pattern and knit it, I need to change it in some way. I'm using the Branching Out pattern from Knitty, however since my yarn is so spider-webby thin what I'm doing is doubling the pattern with a strip of 3 knits in the middle to separate the two sides. I have found that my needles (size 3) are still a bit too large for the yarn, so that the pattern isn't too clearly defined, however I still like how it's turning out, and I'm hoping that blocking it may straighten that out a bit.
OKAY I'LL ADMIT IT: I have never blocked in my life. I'm simply too impatient. Same with sewing, when I was in college I'd make a dress, a skirt, whatever, and would just start wearing it before I even hemmed it. Fortunately I was rather adept at faking hippie back then, so combinations of unhemmed funky calico approached acceptable. Ah, college... The days of American Spirits and gallons of coffee...
::shake shake::
So, here are some stats, and some pictures:
Yarn: Filatura Di Crosa Baby Kid Extra
80% Mohair Kid (love that halo!)
20% Nylon
Color: 310 (which means something like Cloud, in my estimation)
Dye Lot: 0130
Purchased at: Windsor Button on Temple St in Boston, a yarn shop so very close to my heart.
Oh, I could die in a big nest of this stuff... It really is absurdly soft.
I've so far completed, oh, about 4 or 5 inches of the scarf. This is one of these turn off the television, the radio and the phone, lock yourself in a room with all lights off except for a spotlight directly on your work and don't even attempt to drink water while doing this for even that is too much distraction kind of patterns, so it's something I only work on between other projects, as I would probably go mad with the stress of it if I were to continue straight on until it was finished.
Here are a couple angles of what I've done so far:
So you can see it's a little undefined, but I still like it. :)
Meanwhile, a couple weekends ago I went to Woolapalooza at Drumhill Farm in GORGEOUS Lincoln, MA with my friend Crystal (who I taught to knit just last night! Haha! Another recruit to the wooly side!) and discovered my love of sheep and spinning yarn.
Here we have the adorable old man in his adorable knit hat with sheep on it, shearing the first ram of the afternoon. I had no idea how this was done, but it is an absolutely hilarious process. See, in order to be able to shear the sheep without it going all haywire, you have to get it into a submissive position where it'll just relax and let you do yo thang. I have no idea who the first person was to figure this one out, but apparently taking the little fluffer and sitting it right down on it's rump is the best way to do it. The sheep just sat there and let itself be shorn, with, I might add, a rather resigned look on it's face.
Sigh... domp dee domp dee domp... Go ahead... take my wool... Sigh...
And after:
That sucker looks relieved and about ready for a martini!
Here are a couple other awww-inspiring photos from our trip.
So that's that, the first of hopefully many posts. I'd like to foray into the world of sock knitting soon. As I said, I'm very inspired by my fellow knittresses, both of whom are sock knitting fiends.
Off I go to enjoy this GORGEOUS and sunny 70 degree day! Happy Spring, everyone!
