Yarnification

I’m reasonably sure I took this odd little quiz once before with radically different results.

(Maybe I was feeling less, er, scattered at the time.)

Your Brain’s Pattern

Your mind is a firestorm – full of intensity and drama. Your thoughts may seem scattered to you most of the time… But they often seem strong and passionate to those around you. You are a natural influencer. The thoughts you share are very powerful and persuading.

I upgraded WordPress to the new version right before I left for the rest of the weekend on Saturday. I figured it’d come out okay because I’d run the exact same upgrade on a different site of mine a couple days ago and it worked out just fine, so I didn’t do all that much checking aside from making sure the page would load.

But that’d be too simple, and the feeds have been broken all weekend. I think it’s fixed now.

I finished the Seraphina shawl last night (Heh. Just in time for the weather to turn warm) but the photos I took didn’t come out, so I’ll try that again tonight. Or tomorrow—we need to pick Sara up at the airport in Columbus tonight and then drive her to Athens and I may not be up for much by the time we get back home. Soon, though.

The memo bag is mostly done, but I’m dithering about the flap. The chevron rows on the flap are coming out just slightly narrower than the rest of the bag. It’s slight enough that if I tug on it it’ll straighten out and be as wide as the rest, but I’m afraid it’ll shrink a lot when I felt the thing and look weird when it’s done. So I can’t decide if I want to rip out all those rows and re-do them with a bigger hook or what.

I bought yarn for that little corset over the weekend. I didn’t mean to, meant to wait a while, but we were at Hobby Lobby and Don is such an enabler and all that. (Yeah. We’ll blame it on Don. I had nothing to do with it.) Paton’s Katrina in black. I decided against holding out till I found that Berocco suede because I knew I wasn’t going to find it anyplace closer than Pittsburgh and I didn’t want to have to pay shipping on it. That Katrina also looks less horrendously warm, which is nice.

The pattern demands that you use yarn that would knit up at 19 sts/4 inches, and this is 18 sts/4 inches, but I am not worried about that. (Famous last words?) I always have trouble making gauge because my stitches come out too small and have to change hook sizes and so on, so if anything, having yarn that’s just a smidge bulkier should help.

Words cannot describe how much I love this pattern.

I finally forked over the $7 for it yesterday. We’ll see how long it takes me to gather up everything I need to make it. I’ve only been able to find the boning here so far, and they have a $10 minimum order, which means I need to order enough to make two. But I don’t think I’ll order it for a few more weeks yet.

Need to hit Hobby Lobby sometime when I’m in Columbus and figure out what I want to make it with. I don’t know if they carry Berocco (which the pattern calls for, and which looks pretty) but I’m sure they’ll have something I can use. I definitely want something really nice for this project, but the closest LYS I know of is in Pittsburgh. Or Cleveland, I guess, since that’s probably a little bit closer than Pittsburgh. I’ve never found much in Columbus other than the chain stores.

Anyway, since “really nice” probably also equals “pretty expensive” (even though I only need a few balls of yarn) that’ll probably be another few weeks so I don’t kill the budget buying everything at once. Then I start wondering just what sort of yarn I want to make it out of—because by the time I get all this shopping accomplished, spread out enough that we can still, you know, buy food and stuff like that, it’ll be summer and hell, no, I am not making something that I won’t be able to stand to wear until fall.

And I need an afghan hook. Or three, because I can never make gauge in standard crochet with the size hook a pattern calls for and I don’t see that being any different with the Tunisian crochet except that I need to buy different hooks.

Hmm.

Well, I’ve got this going on at the moment:

so how could I resist? Anyway it’s a no-pressure thing, and I’m all about no-pressure stuff that still gives me a cute little link button. And it would seem that the blouse I finished earlier this month would fall under this heading, too.

ETA on that purse in the photo above: who knows? I haven’t done any crocheting whatsoever in about a week. I plan to work on it while I’m minding the cash register later.

This is what I was working on that night last week when I realized that 2:30 AM is time to step away from the machine (clickable for full-size):

The pattern is here: Peasant blouse.

(May I also take this opportunity to note I just bought those jeans last week and was stunned to learn that I can fit into a size 10 and that the reason my old jeans were hanging off me was that they were just too big and not that they were old and stretched out as I had previously thought? This is a huge thing for me—I haven’t fit into a size 10 since 1995. I am still a lot chubbier than I was last time I wore that size, but, well, I was 22 then, and now? I am not.)

It turns out that georgette is a major bitch to sew with. Who knew? (Well, I didn’t. But then my sewing ability leaves something to be desired.) I had a really hard time keeping the stuff under control; this was the first time I’d done anything clothing-y in a couple of years at least and very probably the first time I used fabric that wasn’t either cotton or a cotton blend.

So it has some issues. The casing on the ruffle leaves something to be desired. Still, for a first attempt at a top in a couple of years, I’m relatively happy with it. I want to make another one, but I’m going to try to find an easier fabric that still drapes nicely because I am not ready to face more georgette anytime soon.

It turns out that no matter how much of a great idea it sounds like to just keep at the sewing project until it’s finished, 2:30 AM is really not the best time to be operating a sewing machine. If you can continue “sewing” for about 18 inches after the top thread breaks without noticing anything’s wrong, it’s really time to pack it in for the night.

In other news, I’m making Dawn’s felted memo bag. I got all the way to the point where it was time to start the chevron rows for the flap, decided it was way bigger than I’d meant it to be and that there was no way I’d be able to shrink it enough during felting for it to come out the size I’d like it, then frogged the whole thing and started over with a smaller hook. I’m about 20 rows in now and it seems to be coming out a better size.