Roads to Safe Places

I finished my first ever cardigan, the Gyre Cardigan.

Even though I did cave and knit a swatch (I hate swatching. It seems like such a waste of time), I got worried at first and started out with thirty stitches more at the beginning because it seemed too small, and several larger things that I'd knitted turned out far too small. It was very difficult at first to judge whether or not the cardigan would when it was still on the needles.

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I should be doing several things for work at the moment, instead I'm learning how to do cable projects, starting with, what else, a scarf. It'll go well with my green hat, though.

Look what I made for T., angie_21_237's little girl. Not that she's old enough to care, but I'm really happy with the result and am working on one for Crocky and me.

I used baby-appropriate wool that is washable and dyed in dye that does not threaten anyone's health. Well, and this pattern.

I finished my second major knitting project today, this shawl. This is the first time that I'd blocked anything I knitted, and I'm rather taken with the result. It went from something much smaller and slightly curly to this:



The finished product with tassels looks like this:



Everything I knit turns out about only about 2/3rds the size it's supposed to be, so I still have a long way to go. My stitches are also not as even as they could be, and my first squat puffy attempt at tassels also does nothing to compliment this very light lacy shawl. I'm doing a second one for myself right now. 

I'm done! I couldn't do much during the past five days because of my cold, and here is the result:



Even though as you can see there are some unevenness when it comes to flower centres and yarns I'm very pleased with the result. I'm not sure what to do with this happy little fellow now, but it was still great to make.

A while ago I came across an "Athenian Scarf" that had a very strange and intricate-looking pattern which I forgot about because what I could just about do was a chain stitch and some pot holders in single crochets.

Now, a bit later, I found this again and also found out that it is called a "broomstick lace". It looks like this:



And as everything that I tackle in this woolly adventure that I'm on, it's really easy, otherwise I wouldn't be able to do it. YouTube has video tutorials of this here. I'm not using that kind of intimidating-looking "knitting needle" (what can you knit with that? It looks like something you'd take vampire hunting), I'm using the handle of the plunger that Crocky uses as a mute for her trombone. That's actually supposedly why it's called "broomstick lace", because you use the handles of broomsticks for it, and thus quite a witchy pursuit.

I'm now on ravelry and I finished two projects since then- the dragonscale bracers -  they can't really be worn in public, but they're really warm and pretty - and a hideous fluffy pink bear ear hat with earflaps which wouldn't even look cute on a child. A brave soul who'd put that thing on, but it was fun to crochet while it lasted and then not fun enough to salvage when I couldn't get the beanie base to get large enough to fit and thus had to resort to the hideous earflaps. Ah, well.

Bracers:


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I finished my crocheting project: I made it a neck warmer rather than a scarf, though. I'm thinking about making some fingerless gloves or gauntlets in the same pattern now that I'm done with this pattern. I actually bought the yarn to knit a scarf, but it looks as though knitting will have to wait a bit longer.

This is it. Front:


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With the last week more or less spent half-delirious on the couch I wasn't up to much. Reading was out of the question because I couldn't concentrate well enough, so I watched TV a whole lot and made another foray into modular origami. With my disastrous attempts at fröbeling and the more successful attempts at the bascetta star (video tutorial here) I branched out. I don't like the look of the modules needed for the bascetta star, they do wind up looking untidy and jagged. They're the blue and orange things on the photo.

My attempts with the sonobe module (video tutorial here) were successful, too, but the result looks far more like a ball than a star, so it's not really Christmas decoration. It's also not as see-through that I had hoped. On the picture, it's the grey item in the background.

I think at the moment my favourites are the fairly easy omega stars (video tutorial), they're the small orange and yellow ones on the picture, which unfortunately also wind up looking rather untidy and they always tear in the corners when I try to fold them over. The tutorial makes it look really easy to end up with far superior, tidier, pointier stars, but I didn't manage.



Edit: I found a less messy module than the one used in the Bascetta star that can be used to make a dodecahedral star (video tutorial here):



Brought to you by the two piles of student papers that I had to ignore all of last week and that is too forbidding to scale now. I really like this module, though, and I think this could probably be used to make other stellated polyhedra.

EDIT II: Send help. Here's another icosahedral star following a design and using the modules by Francesco Mancini (video tutorial here).



Oh, the work? Um. Yes, the work. The mountain is slowly getting smaller, but I can't believe how much work has piled up. I returned to school to a completely filled pigeon hole with work students handed in last Friday, and since I missed three tests with all of my small classes I spent the Friday afternoon correcting those. They're actually quite fast, but altogether I still took three hours.

It was Crocky's sister Teddy's birthday party yesterday, or rather, one of them- this was the "queer adult edition". I was reacquainted (do people still use this word?) with Crocky's and Teddy's older bisexual foster sister and Crocky's bisexual godmother. I've often marvelled at the fact that my MIL, who died in 1991, had so many queer friends and foster children, and then wound up having a bisexual daughter, too.

Teddy, my former Russian learning partner, is still at it because she's planning to spend a few months in that country on her world tour. I'm slightly jealous because I could never do the same. I'm worried for Teddy, too. Still, I hope she's going to have a great time touring the globe and will return home safely. She cooked a tasty dish from her Russian cuisine cook book for us.

We spent the time eating, laughing, and trying to fold Fröbel stars. which their foster sister brought. The English Wikipedia has this to say:

"Froebel stars are very common in Germany, although few people know how to make them."

To which I can testify- IRL I don't know many people who can do Fröbel stars. I know that my grandparents could make them and my mother can, too, but I am convinced that in my generation I think that only the incredibly crafty like angie_21_237 can do it- and the latter is the head of a kindergarten, so it's probably basically her job to know these things.
I have the shrewd suspicion that you talented flisties are probably experts at paper crafts happily fröbeling away, too.

We did end up with things resembling the stars, though and were quite proud of ourselves.

If you want to have a go yourself or need a refresher on how to make them, here's something that looks a lot like the directions we had:

In my search for autumn-related arts & crafts projects I came across some very worthwhile-sounding things, like the leaf lantern, the idea to stick colourful dried leaves to your windows with self-adhesive book covers (not sure if I'd be looking forward to scraping the glue off the windows afterwards, though), a leaf mobile (or, as in this case, leaf gratitude mobile). 

I'm thinking about doing a leaf mobile now, and I kinda want to do it with dried leaves instead of paper or clay leaves. Let's see, maybe I can find some maples somewhere today. 

EDIT: also, if I was still in kindergarten, I'd totally want to do a leaf crown. This looks SO much easier and more convenient than the stupid daisy chains I tried to make over and over at that age.