A woman's work is never done...

"What on earth is this?", you ask?

Weeeeeeeeeel... tonight, looking around my house and seeing the amount of blankets knitted by me already present (and most of those piled on the floor in the bedroom at that!), I had to face reality - I just don't need another one (especially with the Ugly Argyle Sweater Repurposed Blankie in progress...

So, a final decision (at least, as final as they get around here!) was made to deconstruct the TTC Log Cabin project as a blanket - can one actually "deconstruct" something which is not yet constructed? Hmm...something else to lie awake about tonight! - and use the panels as a stepping stone for some mini-projects.

(You may or may not recall that one of the panels already has a starring role in my recent . I don't really expect you to keep track, of course. Given the manic pace around here recently, I can hardly keep up with myself!)

Given the freeforming fun I had with that piece, I thought I'd endeavour some freeform, without looking at the bible. Gasp.

So, studiously avoiding glancing at the bookshelf where Ms Dowde's trusty guide holds pride of place (as well as the pile of dishes in the sink - tonight's excuse is that JJ is off work tomorrow and will surely be bored and in need of things to occupy his time), I trundled off to the spare room in search of panels and scrap yarn.

And this is what resulted:

(I must harbour some form of guilt over not performing such helpmeetly duties as washing up. Certainly not consciously, though. And, for the record, I do manage to wash my face every day whether it needs it or not. Even behind the ears. My mother taught me well.)

The base piece is a log cabin square - the centre is the original swatch for my Bacardi cardi, aka the Cuba Libre (in different colours than I ultimately went with for the cardi). The "logs" were knitted during my work commute.

All of the yarn used in the project is my fave Super10 mercerised cotton (washable and Greek!!!! kind of like my face!). The freeform was worked with a 3.75 mm crochet hook and the rest was knitted with 4.0 mm needles.

This is my favourite bit:

Can you see the little dots between the "bars" that the chestnut yarn makes? Then a ray of coral light snakes around, underneath the bars and away... kind of like a homemaker getting some respite from all that slog (not that I would know anything about cleaning house. You'll note I don't take a lot of pics of my home environs!).

This was originally supposed to be a half-moon (for no real reason) but turned out a bit differently.

These are the eyes of the piece... my (lame) attempt to reproduce my eyeglasses with crochet.

This is another little "fence" bauble:
And finally, another shot of the prison bars because I like them so much.
The crochet work only took me 45 minutes!!! I love freeform. And it goes quicker when you don't look at the book (I should try that at work! Then again, maybe not).

So, I guess this is No. 3 in my Cliche/Momilies Series (No. 4 if you count Eastern Promise...). (in case you're not keeping track, Nos. 1 and 2 were Haste Makes Waste and Fit to be Tied. 3 cliches in 3 days. I'm on a roll!!

In signing off, I'm sure you'll be glad to know that today heralds the anniversary of the marriage of Anne, Princess Royal and Peter Phillips, commoner. I'm not sure which day heralds the anniversary of their divorce. Oh well.

Cheers,

Kristina

PS. And the dishes? I strongly suspect that they'll still be hanging out in the sink tomorrow when I return from the Lawyers of Last Resort Cheap Keith's And Half Price Snax session at the pub tomorrow... a woman's work is truly never done, am I right?

eastern promise

Well, I didn't get to do any real work on my Carmen Miranda headdress tonight because:

(a) the hardware store sold me the wrong inserts for my new glue gun! grr... (everyone should know by now that I don't read packaging!); and

(b) I broke the basket by trying to use the power drill on it.

Sob. I was devastated.

So, I had to make this instead:
I'm quite excited by the latest finished object (which I started and finished last night) although it is rather goofy, really.

So why do I like it? It seems like my first real attempt at blending knitting, crochet and mosaic - and it's 3-D! (without glasses), at least when you look at it from the bottom up (which I realise would be awkward for what is intended to be a wall hanging... unless you're as short as me, that is).


Cool, eh? Sea glass, a sari silk sea bed - and silk flowers!

I don't know that the photos capture that this piece is actually done in two layers. Here's how:

I took an old glass frame with two panes of glass in it, spraypainted the back one blue, and put these two swatches (both Super10 except for the orange which was Super3) on it:

After that, I inserted the top piece of glass and shoved in some unretrievably fankled (JJs word) sari silk:
I then grabbed a bunch of freeform crochet shapes which I had done on the TTC some time back and which have been patiently awaiting a home since (This freeform was accomplished with more than a little help from Freeform Knitting and Crochet by Jenny Dowde. We type A monsters love books that tell us how to be spontaneous!!)

The flowers in the front are made from two types of sari silk and Handmaiden Silk Spun. The spirals are made from Mission Falls Cotton (teal) and Fleece Artist of unknown name that I scored at a yarn swap recently. Let's not forget the vintage buttons which I acquired at the St Lawrence flea market some time back and which are now front and centre in the flowers!

The "sun" is Belle Print silk.

I glued these all on using contact cement. I then added sea glass, tiles, glass beads and stained glass in no particular order and with no real rhyme nor reason.

And - voila!

Why is it called "Eastern Promise"? I don't really know. The colours remind me of Greece and what I imagine Turkey to be like; it has sari silk, Fleece Artist and Super 10 all from east of here; it has mysterious spirals... take your pick! The theme is not so consistent... originally it was just supposed to be flowers on a sea bed and a sun but things kind of went haywire.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun and didn't take very long. I am thinking of gifting it to a friend/coworker but frankly I don't know that anyone but me will like it... I'll take it to work today and see what happens.

Warmest regards to Rudolph Valentino on this fine November day - The Sheik opened on 6 November 1921, making him famous! (Eastern Promise... Sheiks... hmmm).