Tell us how you really feel.

Subtlety in crafting: Anti-Hummer T-shirt.

Some versions of...beads that I like, I guess.

While not engaged, or especially interested, in making beaded jewelry myself, I really like online window shopping for beads. There is, admittedly, very little I won't online window shop. Like an ill-fated crow, I am often distracted by bright, shiny things.

Brown-veined sea green gaspetite turquoise--I love the smoothness of the beads, and the color is fantastic. Personally, I'm not sure that I would wear jewelry made out of these beads, unless they were about half the size, but I wouldn't mind having one on my desk. To look at for zen moments or some shit.

Gray blue sponge coral rondelles--These I would definitely wear--I love everything about them: color, shape, irregularity, porousness. They look like especially nice chunks of concrete. They're utterly fascinating. I keep revising what I say about them and failing to note it adequately. It is a lucky thing that I never fancied myself a poet.

Flat turquoise briolettes--Lilyriver has been doing a lot with briolettes lately, and I've really liked the pieces she's made. What's striking to me about these beads is how the briolette shape gets streamlined and abstracted in the flattening. These are postmodern beads, man. Deep.

Bonus Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Pink coral nuggets--These look like diseased gum tissue. Gross. Gross. Gross.

Sitten here knitten my mitten, kitten.

I finished these mittens awhile ago, but I am moved to post evidence of completed projects instead of evidence that I buy a lot of yarn. I have made many, many socks (I cannot, however, say that I have made many pairs of socks), and mittens are, of course, in the same vein, but not something I had tried before. I made them out of stash yarn, which made the project doubly satisfying. Technically, I think, aside from a few bits around the thumb gusset, I did fine, but I miscounted the stripe rows, and one gray stripe turned out slightly larger than the other. For my next pair, I think I'll either reduce the stitch count or use smaller needles, because these are slightly too large. I used this pattern in the adult female size and supplemented a few unclear parts (i.e., the direction of the increase stitches on the thumb gusset) with the pattern in Knitting for Peace (a fine book, whatever you think of charity knitting). Oh, one last adjustment: I used size 3 dpns instead of 4s because I didn't have 4s.

Wearing the finished mittens makes me feel like high-fiving people. Alas: almost as soon as I finished them, it became too warm for them.

You've earned it. [See details inside.]

While searching Etsy for black teardrop earrings--one for each man I shot in Reno just to watch him die--I found some other earrings made out of millefiori beads. I'm not usually a floral person, but I am attracted to the sort of mod-ish shapes and colors and also, as always, proliferation and multiplication. I was able, luckily, to find these, which allow me to both memorialize my kills and express my newfound love of tiny flowers.

Right now I am full of Lilyriver's handmade spinach risotto.

Digging for beads

Okay, so I was searching for neon beads -- God help us all -- and I turned up these dinosaur fossil beads. Can this possibly be for real??? Regardless, I am going to buy them.

Consumerism 2

Another knitty shirt. I can only hope The Bolter has not already bought them.

Crafty consumerism

Avoiding the responsibility of creating something myself, I found this fine t-shirt for those who are crafting.

knitstrology?

According to Knit1 Magazine, we Scorpios should indulge in some open-air knitting this spring. At least we're not among the poor Cancers advised to knit themselves bra-tops.

Advice/Decisions/Temptation

So, I think I'm going to devote tomorrow night to one of my projects. Now it is just a matter of choosing: headband, blanket, blanket2, plastic bag bag, possibly unrealizable bracelet idea, or some new earrings that I can hurry up and never sell on Etsy. Too many options!

Also, I asked for advice about my shop, and the sellers in the Etsy forum have advised me to raise my prices, which would itself be an entire project.

It's possible that I may end up just SHOPPING for craft supplies, probably at my favorite bead store . I'm still trying to decide to what degree I can allow myself to like Swarovski crystals, but I've got to say that I'm digging those big cube beads they've featured on their homepage.

Like dew drops on a lotus leaf, I vanish.

Apparently, I can get a lovely brown shade with coffee grounds, a fact that only encourages my favorite vices: coffee and thinking about dyeing. I took the plunge and bought some cream wool and some taupe wool from the Yarn Barn, the lovely eBay shop with the unbelievable prices.

I have invited a new contributor to come chat about marbling, but she has proved reluctant. Soon I'll be excerpting from her blog and posting for her myself.

I can feel it calling in the air tonight (hold on).

I think it's possible the sweater on the bottom of this page is eleven years old and still looking good because...

Forgive me/ they were delicious.

I just gave my wheatgrass plant a haircut and put the clippings in the freezer for a future dyeing venture.

Shower Ideas/Jogging Ideas

These are the best ideas of all, the ideas that summer to-do lists -- and now craft blog entries! -- are made of. Fair Daphne -- I mean, The Bolter -- has wisely suggested I list something besides earrings in my shop to draw in more customers. I'd considered trying a pendant, but I don't think that any of my tiny, fragile new jewelry-making skills would produce a pendant I wouldn't be embarrassed to list. But today in the shower, I had a vision of a really fun and possibly wearable bracelet I could make! Okay, to be honest, I had the idea for the NAME of the bracelet before I had the vision. Does that seems backwards? I may try to produce this bracelet tonight, if I can possibly justify it.

Also on our summer to-do (or rather to-try) list: hand-sewn knitting needle holders, made to be sold at reasonable prices. Have you ever priced these things? I don't care how fancy their fabric it, these people are kidding themselves.

I also want to make myself a perfect little pencil case and finish the two blankets I'm working on and find a quick and easy pattern for good grocery bags so that we can carry our own to the store and stop accumulating the plastic ones, which are currently filling up our broom closet like so many non-biodegradable skeletons. I'm trying to knit them into one big plastic bag bag, but it seems I can't knit fast enough to stem the tide.

Does that seem like too many projects for one summer?

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Scroll down for awesome.

Dyeing to meet you.

I had set dyeing as the outer limit of my yarn fetish, the Thing I Wouldn't Do, the I-tip-my-hat-to-you,-yarn-dyers-but-I-am- perfectly-happy-with-commercially-dyed-yarn-even-though-it's- probably-made-from-the-blood-of-rats. (Lilyriver describes herself as a grad student with hobbies or a hobbyist dabbling in grad school; unfortunately, given the torturous construction of that last sentence and the sentiments contained therein, both my "grad student" and "crafter" cards have been revoked. I can't go on; I'll go on:) As with all limits, of course, this one falls by the wayside as easily as any Lenten promise. I'm currently eyeing a pound and a half of cream-colored wool yarn on eBay, offered at a suspiciously low price, and thus I have set my eyes on the prize: Kool-Aid. The fruity smell will fade.

The Etsy Experiment

So I'm up to 21 items in my Etsy store, and 5 items sold (one still awaiting payment by money order). I gather those are pretty good stats for a first week, but I'm a pretty insecure person, and I just want proof that people LIKE me... I've been lurking in the forums there a lot and so far I've gathered that it takes more self-promotion than I'm used to doing and possibly more talent than I have available to be really successful -- but I'm not aiming for a profit so much as a positive Paypal balance.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a crafting blog, not an insecurities/finances blog. So! Besides the earrings, I'm also working through an obsession with knitted headbands. I've done one in purple that's essentially several very long rows of stockinette stitch. It rolls up and ties around my head (so far it only ties around my head inside the apartment -- if it makes it outside or, better yet, makes it through a day without ending up stuffed in the bottom of my bag, we'll know we have a winner.) I also finished a light green cabled headband, but it accidentally turned out man-sized, and I don't know any men to whom I could offer a green cable headband. So that one is definitely indoors only.

Re: the Craft Fight with the Bolter -- it was just like a Girl Fight, except instead of bite marks and scratches, it ended with a pair of earrings named after a Coleridge poem. Before long, we'll be narrating our crafting adventures as Pastoral Comedies.

Lilyriver and I have a crafting fight

L. wants to name her new black briolette earrings "Dragon's Blood," but I maintain that dragon's blood is red. We rolled a twenty-sided die and, as usual, she won.

Baguettes

I'm working on a felted tote bag (based on a Knitpicks pattern), and it's going fine, if rather boringly (rows and rows of stockinette). I am not going to do the needle felting and it's going to be a single color. I have a couple of concerns about the project. For one thing, I decided to use a single strand of yarn instead of a double strand, mostly because I did not want to pay 5 billion dollars for yarn, so now I'm worried that the bag won't be very strong. I can put a lining in it easily enough, though, so it could be all right. The other problem is the actual felting: I don't have much control over washer cycles since it's whatever piece of shit washing machine my apartment complex bought in the Jurassic period. So I'm basically just gonna go for it and hope for the best.