Crafty

I've been on this sort of creative streak since the kids left to go visit over Christmas break. Part of what kicked it off was a sort of frenetic desire to make sure I was busy while they were gone, so I went and bought the materials to crochet an afghan. Part of it, sadly, is me making any excuse I can think of (subconsciously, of course) not to write. Can't write if I'm sewing, can I? (Soon as I finish this row, I'll get to writing...I promise!)

Anywho...the aforementioned afghan was sort of a disaster. I didn't like the way it was turning out. So I started fishing around for some other project to work on, and I came upon www.craftster.org. Have you ever been there? It's pretty awesome. Every crafty adventure you can think of...with pictures!

So I heard about people who do this weird thing. They buy thrift-store sweaters and pull them apart for the yarn. It took me a while to warm up to the idea. And then I found this hideous burgundy wool-blend 80s cardigan and a very plain, but pretty red, merino wool sweater set, at the thrift store for two bucks each. Two bucks! What would it hurt...

It took me about two hours to figure out how to pick the stitches on the burgundy sweater and to get it mostly all unraveled (since it was a cardigan, I had to throw away the panel that had the button holes.) In the end I had close to a pound of lovely, bulky, sort of curly, wool blend yarn. At the local yarn store here that much of this type of yarn would have cost me $30. Whoo! I crocheted it up into a sweet, very snuggly and warm, shawl.

The other sweaters were too fine to pick apart. The yarn was too thin. So I decided to felt them. I stuck them in the wash with a little soap and hot water, then I dried them on high heat. The result was thick felt. Lovely! And I got so much use out of it. I turned the sleeves into these cool arm warmers (I just cut a thumb hole three inches from the wrist in the seam, button-hole stitched around with gray yarn and did a blanket stitch hem on the bottom, and then sewed a little gray heart on the the top of the hand.) I made a tiny pair for Ruby out of the hem. I made a little coin purse out of one of the sleeves. And then I cut six and three inch squares out of the rest. When I find a couple more sweaters and felt them, I'll have enough squares to put together to make a wool patchwork blanket. Yum! (You'd know what I mean if it were negative four degrees where you lived right now! Burrr!!!!)

I also crocheted this adorable purse, from Crochet Today magazine.

















Only mine is heather gray and this soft teal. So pretty. I've never liked the end result of any sort of purse or other pieced together crochet that I've done. It always seems bunchy and just not right. This time I blocked it (pinned it to a big old floor pillow and sprinkled it with water, then set it in front of the heater vent and let it dry over night.) The end result was amazing...the purse laid beautifully. I'm going to line it tomorrow, because I'm afraid when I put stuff in it, it'll just get all stretched out of shape.

I will try to get off my ass tomorrow and take some pictures.

What crafty stuff are you in to? I taught myself to knit while the kids were gone, but I'm still not comfortable doing it.