This is the time of year sweaters go on sale. My goal is to “harvest” natural fibers to recycle at $1/sweater at the most. I really want to work on some shibori techniques: tying/puckering/manipulating the wool so that it resists shrinking in parts. Here’s a before picture of a failed shibori attempt:





Tyrone has asked me to make some sort of arm-covers for his slowly disintegrating computer chair. Last night, I finally followed through. I took the arms off of the failed shibori sweater and eyeballed a pattern for the arms of the chair. Here is a top view:





The openings of the arms were hemmed together with a blanket stitch. There was a hole in one of the arms, so I used an eyelet hole stitch in orange to liven it up. Here is a writer-view:

Here is a side view:





Click on any of the thumbnails for a larger image.

After admiring Katherine Shaughenessy’s Crewling Kits at Wool & Hoop for years, I was inspired to order one after finding out she published a very cool looking how-to book.

I got mine in the mail a few days ago, and I’m right in the middle of the of the “Birthday Wish” project.  I’ve dabbled a bit with embroidery, but I’ve always been disapointed by how minute the detail was, and how slow-moving each project turned out.

With crewling,  the wool fiber stitching seems to be much more forgiving than any embroidery floss I have ever used.  The first project is done on linen, and with a special crewling needle. In this case, I think it really helped to have the proper tools.  The whole process seems to be moving along quickly.

Just to let you know, she’s having an awesome sale, where you can get her new book, the “Birthday Wishes” kit, everything you need to start your own project, and her wonderful 3-D crewling designs.   The book is a very interesting read, not only outlining technique, but history.  The second half of the book demonstrates multiple places to display your new crewling ability, including ides for lampshades, skirt/jeans embellishment, greeting cards, and other appliques.

Maybe I’ll post a picture of my progress this weekend.  Have a good green beer weekend, too!

Spent today writing one pattern, re-writing another.  I didn’t get any of the pictures taken.  Looks like Tyrone is going to  help me tomorrow.

I’m looking for places  to send these patterns off too.  The knitty.com deadline is March 15, and so is magknits.com.  I don’t know if my patterns are appropriate for either.

Tomorrow, I think I’m going to write something up for readymade.com, and another thing for instructables.com.

I’m also attracted to supernaturale.com.  They have a really cool article on crafting your wedding.  I think I have a bunch to add to to it, and maybe even some fun failures.  I tried to make a 1930s deco bias-cut gown, but apparently in the 1930s,  I have a size 6 chest and size 14 hips.  The dress was also backless, so there was no way to structurally engineer a way to rectify the dress.  It was a good learning process.

There is another project I’m working on where embroidery doesn’t quite cut it, so I have a nice little experiment with crewling coming up next week.  Here is a bit of embroidery I did with a kit my friend Sarah gave me:  

It is from Sublime Stitching.  Click on the picture to enlarge it!

Ty and I took a walk around Holmes Lake today.  It is so nice and warm.  I want to start cutting back grasses with the hedge trimmer already, but it is too wet.