Is she looking at me accusingly?

I suspect it’s becaue she knows I started a new project when I’ve already got half a dozen in the works. I think my next post might have to be a “confession” post about everything I’ve got going, and the stage it’s in.  Might be good just to get myself a little accounting. I think I forget about things after a while. (Actually, Callie’s hoping I will feed her here, and confused about the yarn I’ve put in front of her face that she knows she’s not supposed to touch.)

So this sweater is loosely - and I do mean loosely - based on a sweater in the May/June 2009 issue of Crochet Today called the Summer Breeze Cardi by Elena Malo. It’s a fairly simple 3/4 sleeve cardigan, but the part I’m truly using is the yoke. I can’t find a decent link/picture, so here’s a picture of the cardigan from the magazine.

The changes I’m making to the pattern (dangerous!) are:

1. I am not making a cardigan, I’m doing a single front piece with a back piece, and I plan to do some shaping to it so it won’t be just a straight sweater.
2. I’m cutting out the bubble stitch detail. It’s just not me.
3. No button (obviously).
4. I made up my own stitch pattern for the body and sleeves. The way the picture is shot doesn’t show you there’s extra detail at the waist and on down to the hem, and I guess that just turned me off of using this mostly plain pattern.
5. I will be attaching a simple charmeuse shell to the inside. It’s not a closed pattern at all.

My stitch pattern is simple:  Row 1 treble crochet, Rows 2 and 3 single crochet. Repeat.  This is what it looks like. The yarn I’m using is pedestrian. It was handy: left over from my flower blanket, the humble and yet pretty Caron Simply Soft in Autumn Red. I really love the color of this yarn, actually, and I have three extra skeins (I got carried away). So yarn snobs will just have to sniff at my acrylic, and I will itch tremendously at their wool. It’s a fair trade.

The things I’m keeping about the pattern are:

1. The open-stitch yoke. I like how far down on the shoulders it comes. I may even only do two rows. I do hate things that come up too far on my neck.
2. The split in the yoke. Although I’m not making a cardigan, I’m going to split the yoke in front. I like the detail.
3. The 3/4 length sleeves are staying. I will need to remember to make mine fitted like that.
4. The construction of the arm and body pieces. I think the pattern is fitted together pleasingly.

I am not very far along on this, so we will see.  If all goes well, I predict I will have a sweater to wear in October (what, you don’t think I’ll keep at this continuously, do you?). The timing is really fine, because no one in their right mind wears a sweater during the summer months here when it’s 95 - 110 F all the time. It would just be awful to sweat that much.

Lastly, I leave you with me and my coworkers from last Thursday. It is an odd pic for me to post, as it is of people which I have never done before, but I’m feeling a bit nostalgic (already) because the one on the far left is leaving us. I’ve spent a lot of time with these three folks over the past three years. These have been my friends and cohorts in fundraising and putting on that enormous 550-person lunch I talked about: Abby, Margaret-the-wonder-boss and Will. Yeah, and that’s me in black, with a small flower in my hair. Abby’s going to be so surprised to see this here! She sometimes ready this here blog. Hi Abby!

I’m going to go figure out what all of the projects I’m working on now really are.

My Weekday, Comic-Style

I have a drawing tablet, and I’m not afraid to use it. Wait! That should read “I have a drawing tablet, and I have no *$%&* idea how to use it. But I’m fixing that. In my ongoing quest to conquer my nemesis, Illustrator, I knew the next step was to draw something from scratch. So I got out my Wacom drawing tablet and selected the pencil tool. I soon remembered that my drawing tablet is an older variety and takes a bit of blunt force determination to get it to do kind of what you want it to do. But I prevailed! As proof, I present to you a bit of levity in my first comic, entirely drawn on computer! I can tell that drawing with the tablet is going to take practice, it’s a little like learning to write all over again.

Guess I should say something about what I drew? The first 2 are morning - I go find exercise of some type nearly every day, and I am working on running in a fun run in November, if you can imagine (I can’t). Coffee is a daily requirement, a beverage which my colleague Will usually makes. I will euphemistically refer to his concoction as “coffee” but it’s more like “coffee-flavored mud.” I advised him of the one-scoop-per-cup method of measuring this morning, and he laughed at my insistence on measuring.

The middle is my whole workday. I sit at my computer with periodic trips to the printer. Woo! Excitement! Action! Adventure! Seriously, I think that 95% of my work is computer related. That is why there is morning and sometimes afternoon exercise. Otherwise I would turn into a boneless puddle or would have to resort to one of those foot-pedalers under my desk, and I’m not ready to admit defeat yet.

In the evenings I play with my computer and cats and dog, and occasionally cook, and usually I do some more sitting and watch some sort of sci-fi and do some handiwork. I love sci-fi and can often be found watching old episodes of Star Trek and Firefly (gorram cancellation) or perhaps a new episode if the TV stations can be convinced to make new ones of the three I like. I prefer to do my more active crafting work on weekends, but I’ve been known to paint on a weeknight.

What to draw next??

Part 1: The Office - Is your cube boring and beige too?

Obviously, as a crafter-by-night, that means I am a something-else-by-day. And boy is my office boring. I recently moved from a yellowish-beige cubicle (ugh!) to a square white box of an office. Definite improvement - but it needs more!

So, thinks crafty-me: What can I do to turn my office into a Delight? Aside from doing a whole moroccan fabric draping thing, it will have to be smallish projects that add life and color to walls, desk and Big Gray Lateral File. So this post is about various things I am doing, have done or would like to do about my work space… things that are relatively simple, easy to implement and easy to remove, too!

Here’s Part 1 of probably a few, as I transform my white box. Hope these help you liven up your desk!

1. Make Boxes - we all have a million little items on our desks like paper clips, staple removers, etc. So make a box and hide them, store them, organize them. Try this simple Recycled Paper Box idea from Etsy Labs, or recycle old vinyl into this funky shape bowl from ReadyMade, or go for a more complex folded-magazine box as shown in this Flickr tutorial.

[Update: Ran across this handy video tutorial from Etsy Labs on making bowls like the one above out of vinyl. Actually, I found quite a few tutorials by searching You Tube for "how to make a record bowl."]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOpAGZJmV0A]

2. Your Corkboard - you have one, right? A place to put the memos, the post-its, the calendars that get sent around for all the office staff to never read. A place for that really obnoxious Dilbert comic you found that makes fun of exactly your situation at work? Why have a gray or beige one when you can have a custom-fabric-covered, rearrangeable one? Try this simple tutorial at Apartment Therapy Chicago or another more fancy framed board, ribbon board, or rubber band board from Martha Stewart.

3. Following up on that, Your Pushpins - more custom fabric covering, this time courtesy of the stylings of How About Orange? She shares a pretty simple, snappy and yet quite stylish-looking way of making your own fabric-covered tacks. She even shares where to get the materials! So make them to match your custom corkboard. Make them to clash. Either way they’re better than the standard plastic tacks.

4. Business Card Holder - Take a little of your office DIY stylings on the go, too, with this nifty fabric card holder from Little Things by Magda. Simple, stylish, unique and ever so much more fun to pull out at a business meeting or networking gathering. I used to carry my cards with a binder clip! Granted, it was blue, but how much more cool is this?

5. Do You Drink Coffee? Have a Plant? If so, maybe you should consider making your own coffee cup or even making your own plant pot if you have enough fake fluorescent light (and who doesn’t?) to make a plant grow. How so? It’s my observation that many cities/towns - including my own! - have make-your-own-pottery shops. The one near me is called Cafe Monet. Try searching “paint your own pottery” with your town name in Google.

Until next time, happy decorating