Knit-Nerd-Rant

Hello all! I promise I haven't forgotten this blog, or making patterns for others to enjoy.  Part of the delay has been my being too busy, and part of it is that my now 7.5 year old laptop is really starting to show its age. So, the most recent one is designed because I needed to use this absolutely scrumptious yarn I found at Scrap DC's Labor Day weekend sale.  It's called Peru Chunky Luxury (out of production now). It's 70% Merino, 20% alpaca, and 10% silk, and entirely yummy.  The only problem is that all I had was a 73 yard (50 gram) skein, and this needed to be used for something worn near the face because of reasons. That or it would be kept as a pet. I also found at Scrap DC an unlabeled single twist wool yarn that is probably some sort of merino/lambswool and is lovely and soft as well, and a nice contrasting color.  All together, I knew it wasn't going to be able to create anything large. So, after finding some patterns online for similar short sc...

So things have been crazy lately - lots of work, lots of trying to fit in some social life, I've taken up a belly dance class (after about a decade of no training), and I've been working on a new cross stitch design for my Etsy store . (Spoiler, it's going to be starring Grumpy Cat!) Another reason for the radio silence is that I have finally finished up a quilt that has been sitting in my craft closet for AGES. Years and year ago, I found some really funky faux fur fabric on sale - just about a yard and a half. I could never figure out what to do with it, but eventually settled on using it as one side of a quilt.  I found some similarly colored old t-shirts that I had planned to incorporate into some quilts, and started piecing together the patchwork. Also, a couple years ago, I had found at a yard sale an old quilt frame. I've done 2 quilts before this project, and both ended up being bears to work with once I had the patchwork layer done and was on to q...

So I had to quickly think up some gifts for some of the in-laws-to-be. We went down to visit them for Thanksgiving, and will be up with my family for Christmas this year. So we decided we would bring down everyone's Christmas gifts while we were in town. Sister-in-law-to-be and her fiance are tough to buy for, so we got them a couple gift cards.  I felt really guilty about it, since it's not the first time and it always just feels like a cop-out.  So I decided to use some scrap yarn lying around to make something to put the card in - a gift card cozy. Shout out to my friends at Hudson Trail Outfitters , regional chain in the DC area, and their promotional gift card rebate deal that gave me one to use for demonstration purposes!  It's cute, takes very little time to knit up, and makes it feel less like a cop-out to give someone a gift card.  I made 2 of them on the 2 hour flight there, so definitely very quick! I used these supplies: Scrap yar...