afghans and sweatshirts and new projects (OH MY!)

a project that is actually for me

the DH gave me this lovely sweatshirt for Christmas

I decided to embroider snowflakes on the front

in the process of doing this I learned something new about my Viking

the snowflake on the top left of the picture and the one on the bottom right are pieces of the same embroidery pattern -- if you let the program run through the whole pattern you get the one that is sort of in the center

this whole idea came to me as I was watching the orderly progression of the embroidery (with the stitch count running along on the screen)

pretty neat -- now I wonder what other designs I can dissect that way

back before Christmas I had started this baby afghan (so I'd have some easily portable project to take to my daughter's at Christmas)

I finished it last night

this one is soft and drape-y -- very nice

so now I have nothing on the sticks except the ongoing charity afghan squares

I need to remedy that!


when I was in the fabric store yesterday I found this fabric

it will be the perfect addition to the needed bark fabrics for the redwood trees

I hope to get to play with the ink/starch combo today if we get back from our errands early enough



if you are a longtime reader you may remember this

this was the dragon from the quilt we designed and made for my nephew a few years ago

I'm thinking about next year's Christmas presents already, and the making of 3 bathrobes in the last week made me think it would be kind of neat to make him a kimono style robe

and make it out of navy blue with sashiko style embroidery all over it

and put a sashiko style dragon on the back of it

and why would I want to use someone else's dragon pattern when I have a perfectly good one right here in hand?

there will be sketching and drawing and marking

oh yeah, when I bought that tree bark fabric yesterday, I got the required dark blue cotton and the fusible interfacing too

I also picked up the fabric to make a shop apron for the DH so he doesn't get wood glue and paint on his shirts, and some fabric to make myself a sort of smock to wear when I'm working with dyes and stuff --- and all of this fabric has been through the washer and the dryer (I was doing laundry yesterday anyway) and its ready for me to start working with

the newest beading project is making me crazy --- putting a net around just the edge of a very large, very deep glass cab is not as easy as the round shape would have one believe --- I've tried three different methods and each has been pronounced a failure (with the attendant bad words!), but last night after setting it aside in favor of browsing through a new beading book (which is AWESOME!), I had another idea for how to do it, so I'll be trying it again

and of course a trip through a new beading book gave me some ideas for a couple of new bracelets and a necklace project or two

gee, yesterday I thought I didn't have much in the way of projects to work on

TA DA! I just created a whole new list of them!!