Mothers Day Madness

This past Saturday, I suddenly came to the realization that Mothers Day was in only about a week! I hadn’t planned anything to make for my mother, and I hadn’t acquired any yarn specifically for the job. I racked my brain for something to make and suddenly remembered a pair of fingerless gloves I’d made for her a year or so back.

I’d been rather proud of them at the time, especially my work on the thumbs, which had been particularly challenging for my level of skill. I made them out of a coral colored Patton’s worsted wool. It’s not a particularly luxurious fiber, but it has good stitch definition. I happened to have about a skein and a half left of it too. So, I decided to whip up a matching hat.

 

I used the same pattern that I’d used for the purple hat I made not to long ago (see previous post) as the base and reverse engineered the cabling pattern from the gloves. I finally topped it off with a little hand-painted Malabrigo that I had in my scraps bin to give it a little extra flair.

I’m currently wet blocking it and hoping that the wonky gaps in the cabling work their way out. I’m fairly proud of the thing, but it’s longer than I’d like and I’m hoping that blocking it wide stretches that out a bit. I should have decreased more rapidly, but ah well. it will do.

 

 

Aches and Pains and Art in New Ways

As of late, I have been suffering from fairly severe neck, back and shoulder pain. I will not bore you with a chronicle of my suffering, but suffice to say, it has prevented me from any serious progress on any of my knitting projects. This has produced quite the gap in my creative time and an altogether different kind of ache in my psyche.

Therefore I have returned to an ancient cross-stitch project of mine that has been hibernating for almost a year or more. It is very pretty, but also very delicate and tedious work with much less room for creativity than knitting, so it is most definitely not my go-to when crafting. Nonetheless, I have picked it up again and am making quite decent progress.

Though it doesn’t look like much right now, this will eventually be a tiny piece in a much larger tapestry of the fairytale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. Eventually, it will look something like this…

 

 

As you can see, I have quite a ways to go. Meanwhile, I’ve also taken to sketching during my work breaks since I can’t haul all of my threads and fabric back and forth every day. (Well, I could, but I have not yet reached that level of crafting mania.) I have not produced much of merit, but I did finish a cute sketch of a hippie dude that I started when I went to an open mic comedy night with my boyfriend some weeks back.

So, like the dude, I abide, knitless, but not completely devoid of the joy of making even a small something with my hands.