The Crafting That Doesn't Ring Any Bells

As I'm sure all of you fellow bloggers know, there are some blog posts that are hits, and others that are misses. The hits are normally the ones where you post some incredibly gorgeous finished project. The misses are where you talk about your lame work in progress. This is the lame work in progress post, only it is even more boring than that. So, I've been working on my hideous anklet socks which bring me down every time I look at them. Both Helen and Paul (who are creating a cooking blog between them, the traitors) ask me why I keep going on these socks that are sucking my will to live out from under me. I answer, because I must. Once I start something, I always feel I must finish it. It's the way I roll. I'm going down the foot of the second one now and if I just dedicate like two or three nights to them, I'll finish them, but I'm not even out of the hole then! I still have to make Nathan a matching pair of ugly socks since I will have approximately two hundred yards of sock yarn left when I'm down my own ugly socks.

Also, if you like to cook, you might want to check out the H & P cooking blog, The Secret Is Salt. Paul hasn't posted there yet, but Helen has already built up a good number of posts. I've already run the idea of cooking at my mom's place once in a while across them since my mom redid her kitchen to be twice as large as it once was, and it is mainly composed of counter or table space. The only bad part of that idea is that Paul would need to pack up most of our kitchen tools and pantry before we went.

So, what other non-sexy, non-ugly-sock stuff have I been doing? Well, buying sewing patterns, fabric, and slip stitching stuff. I ended up a failure in the cloth buying department again. Twice. I bought some lovely embroidered silk for a top. I needed a yard and three-fourths for the top. I got two and an eighth. I bought some kitschy cotton (with cartoon cats drinking coffee) for some silly boxers for myself. I needed a yard and three-fourths. I bought a yard and a fourth. I think I'm not meant to buy fabric, people.

I did buy a soft cloth book kit from Joann. It was fast to make (most of the work is pinning the layers together), and it was a cute result. Please ignore the fact that I've protected Nathan's full name from the internet with some awesome Photoshop scribbles.



Nathan was totally not interested. Five seconds after I took the next picture, he threw the book at the floor and nearly kicked it.



I liked the results though, and my mom has never been so impressed with me! Take that, Nathan!



After finishing this on the machine, I spent one full night just slip-stitching crap. I've learnt a lot from that. First, I'm a suck-ass slip-stitcher. Seriously. Check out that first picture in original size on Flickr. You'll see where I 'slip-stitched'. I ended up whip-stitching on my first attempt after I screwed up. By the third slip-stitched page, my work was improving to non-hideous. I also slip-stitched the waist band hole for my wrap skirt, which allowed me to finally hang it in my closet.

Since I haven't been getting much crafting done, I've decided I'm going to take some advice from Gives Good Knit, the podcast. She has decided to have projects for days of the week. I think I'm going to do this too. I have sewing, knitting, cross-stitch, and drawing. I'm just going to have to divvy up the days. I will detail more about this in the future.