Deviant Dispatches

Ladies and gents: the Neverending Quilt, in its almost-full glory. It's a whopping 49 squares in size, and covers our queen-size bed with ease. It's a good extra blanket in winter, and will make a solo appearance in summer as a more lightweight covering. I'm quite pleased to have the worst of it over with, especially since I've been working on it for more than two years now. But alas, there is still more work to do: an edging all the way around. It will be black, but other than that, I have no clue what I'm going to do. Seeing as the quilt is now functional, I think it will take me a while to get around to that. I'll still aim for having this thing completely finished by the end of summer, but in the meantime, I have something else to worry about. Socks.

For all the knitting and crochet projects that I finish with flying colors and immense pride, there are 20 others that see light for a moment on the drawing board and are hopelessly crushed. I often have trouble figuring out what I want to make, what to make it with, which craft to use, and what pattern to follow (or whether to use one at all). Most of these attempts are unraveled (frogged) before long. I use the same yarn to create something worth working on, something that will satisfy my momentary desires. Unfortunately, some of those end up getting nowhere, too. You know a couple of them by name: the Neverending Quilt and the Sweater That the Universe Denied . It's been ages since I worked on the quilt; it's been longer for the sweater. Here are a few others. They may not have been sitting around for four years, but they certainly have been collecting dust. I started this topsy-turvy watermelon scarf last summer, when it was warm and gorgeous and this yarn was y...

 For quite some time, I've wanted to make myself a black shawl. I have lots of shawls in many different colors: blue, purple, orange, tan, grey, and green. But none of those shawls can be worn with everything in my wardrobe. I wanted to make something more versatile - and lighter weight, so I could wear it in this ridiculous weather that we are calling "summer" instead of "hell on Earth," for some reason. That meant making lace. I love it more every time I make it. I made the pattern Summer Flies by Donna Griffin (click pictures for more detail). It's done on size 8 needles and works up really  fast - I started this pattern at the beginning of the month, and I had plenty of time to work on some other projects in between, too. This is the first curving shawl I've made, too - all the others are rectangles or triangles.  By the end, there were 400 stitches per row, but that was the only somewhat boring part of this pattern. Throw on some ...

Now that Christmas gifts are complete, I've returned to one of my eternal projects for the time being: the Neverending Quilt. In surprisingly short time, I've managed to sew the first nine squares of this quilt together, resulting in a small blanket about one square yard in size. The squares are uneven, despite my efforts at blocking, and there are still myriad threads lounging about, waiting to be of use. But it's a semi-functional blanket at last. According to the phrasing on my list of goals, I've completed goal 3 on my list of 25 things to do before I get older. I'm pleased with that, but I'm going to keep working on it. I still have a few more squares to attach. When I say a few, I mean 18. And I have 22 more to make yet. At this rate, it will take me another 3 or 4 years to complete The Neverending Quilt. Just when I thought I was starting to get somewhere, the dang thing slaps me in the face. Some glorious summer, Spousal Unit and I will ...

My birthday this year has come and gone. My list of 25 things to do before turning 27 was pathetically attempted and has even become lost in the shuffle of living in a place not my own. I have a mention of it on my blog, here , which discusses the things I attempted and did not accomplish, as of June. I still have not accomplished any of them. I feel kind of pathetic. I'd love to give you a recap of the goals I achieved, as my friend Sandy does on her blog, but seeing as I lost the paper I wrote them on (which was a piece of scrap paper), I cannot do that. Wedding stuff was on there, along with seeing my childhood friend again for the first time in 18 years at the wedding. Beyond that, I do not recall. I'll let you know if I find that piece of mischievous paper again. The whole point of doing a list like this is to keep things exciting, to be bold about life when I might otherwise not be, and to keep challenging myself. Also, to remember to do the things I want, rather than not...

My camera is rather far away from me right now, so for today's post, I shall use my powers of Incredibly Accurate Description to provide you with details. Also, that would be a great super power which would look really lame in the face of Flight or something. I've been on a roll with the crafting lately. My recent decision was to do my best to work only on projects I already have going, and to avoid starting a new one till I finish some of those in progress. Last week, I finished my grandma's shawl and sent it for her birthday. It's made of a French blue chenille-esque yarn, a slightly lighter shade than you would see on traditional blue-on-white china plates. It's long - about four and a half feet, I think - but thin, a foot wide at most. The pattern I made up features shell-shaped curves and loops throughout and includes three colors of beads along the length. Pearlescent green, purple, and silver decorate the edges, making the shawl look fancier than it is. Despi...

I've decided not to work today. Okay, my boss decided that. Because it's cold outside. It's cold enough to freeze your beard just by breathing. My Midwest friends are saying, "Yeah, so?" My New Mexico friends are saying, "Holy crap! Frozen beard!" This may be in part because last week, we were wearing t-shirts outside. Thanks for catching up with the rest of this hemisphere, New Mexico. It's winter. Really, the wind chill this morning was -27, so I decided to stay in today. After going to the chiropractor. And the bank, and the grocery store. And to take out the recycling. Okay, so now I'm really not going outside again. Instead, I'm working on this. It's one of five bajillion quilt squares I need to make. (Actually, it's #18 out of 45.) I've been working on this damn thing since last spring. As you can imagine, quilt squares have the potential to get boring. So I tend to project-jump. If you don...