Scattered Projects

I often admire Bob--for many reasons, but at the moment for his model-making.  When Bob starts on a project, he works on that one project until it's finished.  He might think about the next one, and maybe do some planning or order parts, but he doesn't start on the next one until the first is finished.

Me--there are a lot of started projects lying around.  Several months ago I mentioned this one:

It's been sitting there for about 6-7 months because I can't decide if I like it.  And I have to finish spinning the the weft.

And there is this blob:

Lace always looks blobby while it's being worked.  This one dates back several years, when I spun the yarn to make this:

Gorgeous, yes.  But very complicated.  My style of knitting is "twiddling my thumbs."  I knit in the car when Bob drives; I knit while watching TV; recently I've knit a lot in the ER and hospital rooms while waiting on parents.  This project requires sitting in a quiet corner and concentrating on it. Not my cup of tea, so it's been sitting in the closet for years--every now and then I would feel guilty, knit a bad-tempered row or two, and shove it back.  I finally took my courage in my hands a couple of months ago and unzipped it back into a ball of yarn.  The yarn, after all, is handspun, and quite lovely, and I just had to admit that this particular shawl wasn't going to get finished.  The new one is almost done--meaning 5 rows to go, but it takes about an hour per row.  And I did stop in the middle of a row to knit the scarf that was in a few posts ago.  And something else has been started:

A young man of my aquaintance asked if I knew how to knit a dragon sock puppet.  Of course I said yes--and now I have to figure it out.  But unlike the lace shawl, which is 800 stitches per row and of thread-like yarn, this is fat yarn and big needles and only 28 stitches around, so it's going at a gratifying pace.  Now I have to figure out how to do the head . . .

Meanwhile, back on the other loom, the Project That Is Not Meant to Be.   Sometime in June I was supposed to attend a weaving workshop on how to get a warp on the loom with ease and grace (I personally can warp a loom, but it usually involves a wrestling match, yarn wrapped around various body parts, and some swearing).  I wound a warp to take with me--but the class got cancelled.  So I went ahead and put on on the loom in my living room, and wove a few inches.  That's when I had to disappear for a week or so to deal with parental concerns.   A warped loom + a new kitten = this:

Chewed threads.  I got it rethreaded last night--and now I have about a day-and-a-half before we go on a short trip to get it woven off before she finds it again.

And one more short project (done in one day!)  I wanted to try ice-dyeing.  Basically, you cover whatever you're dyeing (in this case a scarf) with crushed ice, and sprinkle dye powder on the ice.  As it melts the dye get distributed.  It's one of those techniques where you don't have much control--you just let it happen.  Here's the pan with the scarf buried in ice and the dye on top

Finally, the peacocks are molting, so I decided to take some of the feathers and make a collar:

It has a way to go.

So that's two weaving projects in progress, two knitting projects, one sewing projects--and one finished scarf.

For the cat-lovers, here's the warp-chewing demon who has also discovered my lovely sheepskin