A little quote, just a little quote

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself." - Neil Gaiman

Happy New Year to everyone and anyone!

Renewed Wardrobe Step 0.1

Hello!

For a while now, I've been having the idea that I want to make more of my own clothes. This means that I am looking for patterns that I would realistically wear, while at the same time trying to imagine a new style for myself. The point of making my own clothes would be to be able to wear exactly what I want to, because clothes stores don't always have what I like.

So far, I have made a skirt that I have worn several times. Keeping in mind that kind of style, I've started knitting what I affectionately call a Boyfriend Cardigan.

It's actually called a Division Cardigan. I originally found the pattern here, on a blog that I really like. 

I got the yarn for Christmas, it's Berroco Vintage DK yarn. I love it so much! It's so nice to knit, very soft and it gives very neat stitches. Also, it's machine washable, which is always a plus, and not ridiculously expensive. I highly recommend it.

I've been knitting a lot for the past few days, which is so nice, because frankly, winter break is not winter break without a good knitting project. Last night especially, I had my knitting, my cat, my fireplace and my tea; I was a very happy Blue Cat. 

I think I should mention that since I took these pictures on Christmas day, the sweater has grown a good 7 more inches. 

That was your next episode in what I got for Christmas! 

I've been posting nearly every day, wow... enjoy it while it lasts!

Mrs. Claus

Hello!

For Christmas, Mom Mrs. Claus made me a present.

 Meet my new computer case. Isn't it gorgeous?

After Mom made her beautiful iPad case I asked her to make me a computer case. Now, here it is!

I was the one who picked the fabric, but the rest is all Mom! It's lined and padded too, so that I won't accidentally destroy my laptop, which considering how desperately clumsy I am, is all too possible. I tried to take a picture of the lining, but it didn't turn out great. It's a coral red, like the flowers are.

So there you have it, one of the first crafty projects that I was given this holiday season! I love it, I can't wait to show it off.

Among other things (and being the first of several)

Hello!

Christmas has once again come and gone, as it tends to do, but the season isn't quite over until the 1st of the New Year, so in that spirit, I will be doing several posts showing what crafty things I received this year as well as the ones I gave.

The first in this series will be the bunny hat and fingerless gloves that I made for my friend Bella. I knit them in light gray acrylic yarn on size 4.5 and 5 circular needles.

So that's basically what the hat looks like when it's being worn (she wears it better than I do, to be honest). I made a basic hat with circular needles, with about 1.5 inches of ribbing at the bottom. Then, I knit the ears on straight needles, just your basic knit stitch. I made up a random pattern for the increases and decreases and voilà! A beautiful bunny hat!

As for the gloves, I completely made up a pattern, as you can probably tell because the cables aren't really symmetrical. In any case, they fit and she liked them, so that's really all I could ask for. 

So there you go, episode one of however many that will be explaining what I've been doing and hiding from you for these past weeks!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

Past Present

(See what I did with the title, it was a play on words, geddit? I'll just let myself out.)

Hello!

My gift giving has been happening very out of order, which means that I can show you another one that I made and gave before Christmas.

My friend Addie over at A Functionally Messy Blog goes to school with me and often says that she is bored in class. I decided to find a remedy to that problem and make her a kit of things to do. I made her a pencil case and bought colored pencils and eight colorful mini notebooks.

The pencil case was made with a pattern that my mom makes often as gifts and that I wanted to try. I made it out of organic cotton that I found at the local fabric shop with adorable little bunnies on it. 

The pencil case is lined with green polka dots. I love polka dots. And stripes. I usually wear at least one of the two every day. Anyway, yes, the inside is lined with very cute green polka dot cotton. 

The zipper was by far the hardest part, seeing as the rest is just rectangles and straight lines. I just don't like topstitching alongside zippers, because I can never get it straight. It was relatively okay this time, but still, not my favorite thing to do. 

Other than that, I added a bunch of colored pencils and notebooks, one of which I partially filled with quotes and song lyrics. I do quite like quotes, I find other people's words very inspiring.

So that was part two of I don't know how many of the presents that I made this season!

Happy Christmas Eve/Tuesday!

That time of year again...

Hello all!

Well it's that time of year again... The time where I spend all my free hours working on projects that I can't show you, because they are meant to be surprises for friends and family. As a general rule, said people read this blog, so we're going to keep it all hush-hush until the 25th.

Let it be known though, that I have a lot of cool stuff to show you!

There is one present, however, that I can show you, because I gave it to my friend yesterday (because I won't be seeing her again until after the holidays, not because I randomly decided that I was going to give her her gift 11 days early.)

She is a huge fan of the Percy Jackson book series, more specifically of Percy Jackson himself. She told me all she wanted for Christmas was Percy. So, I took her word as my command and...

Voila! Percy Jackson! 

I followed the description of him from the book: green eyes, black hair (maybe not that long, but oh well)... He also wears an orange t-shirt. I decided to make it a sweater because who wears a t-shit when it's below freezing and snowing outside?

The letters on the sweater are CHB, which stand for Camp Half-Blood which is the main setting of the Percy Jackson series. It's a camp for demigods. Don't judge me because of the B. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to get it right and this was as good as it was going to get.

So I made this doll out of stretchy cotton jersey again, which is a fabric that I have a love-hate relationship with. The result is really nice, but the sewing is horrible. So this time, I cut out the same pattern twice, once out of the cotton, and once out of white fleece. I sewed the two together, which eventually meant that I was basically handling the fleece instead of the cotton. It was a good idea, one that I still have to fine-tune, but I think I might be onto something. 

As for the pattern itself, I based it off of the one I used here and tweaked it a bit to make it smaller. 

For the sweater, I basically knit four squares (two for the body and two for the sleeves) and sewed them as best as I could. I'll eventually learn how to make a sweater with just circular needles, because I hate sewing sweaters, no matter how small they are.

So there you go, the first Christmas present that I can show you guys!

I've discovered that I have a really bad method when it comes to making presents. I started off by knitting half a hair of gloves. Then I sewed something that I still haven't finished. Then I sewed this guy (in two days, I'm really proud of myself). Then I sewed something else. Then I knit the other half of the pair of gloves... You get the idea. It's not good.

To all those who, like me, have one more week before winter break, stay strong! We will make it! There's only one week, which is really only five days by school standards! 

See you all soon! 

Alba

Hello!

I made a doll a while ago.

Her name is Alba and she's really difficult to photograph.

She is entirely my design, as you can probably tell by the lopsided arms but we don't talk about that. She is made out of the same weird stretchy fabric that I made this guy out of. It's so hard to sew and a pain to stuff and I still use it because, I mean, come on, it looks really cool.

Her hair is made out of fake white fur (and is the primary reason why she is hard to take a picture of) which gives her a cool punk look, but as she is wearing a cute collared flowery blouse you know that she is more of a fairy than a punk (maybe she's a punk fairy?). Anyway, I was going to give her wings, and then I was going to give her elf ears and then I didn't because she looked fine the way she was and I didn't want to mess her up by adding too many other things.

So there you have it! Two days of my Thanksgiving break! It was worth it, I think she's very cute. 

Hopefully, I will have more time to make stuff as the winter break is fast approaching, but probably not, because the universal high school teacher agreement is "Oh three weeks? Let's cram in as many things as we possibly can!" It doesn't leave very much time for creative endeavors such as this, as you can imagine. 

Have a lovely week (well, end of week at this point) and all that!