Learning experiences

Does it count as improving at knitting if I'm learning more ways to make mistakes, and more ways to fix them? Actually, I think I made the same mistake on my Bias scarf as I did a few weeks ago, and I still don't know quite what I did. I also don't have any idea what search terms I used to find the page that helped me last time, so I had to come up with a different strategy for fixing it. Since I apparently can't stop messing up this scarf, I'm learning from last time and posting my links here: how to pick up a missed yarn over and correcting a missed yarn over. I unraveled back past the mistake, until I basically had a row of knit stitches missing all the yarn overs, then did the purl row and picked up the missing yarn overs as I went. Success! This way is much easier than what I did last time, so hopefully I will have learned from this and know what to do next time (I won't even pretend there won't be a next time) I make my weird mistake.

Christmas decorations!

I'm one of those people that would rather not see Christmasy stuff everywhere until December, but when it's a question of making decorations by hand I think it's fair to start a little sooner than that. This year I'm using Lucy of Attic24's bauble decoration pattern to make ornaments for our tree. I simplified the pattern a bit since I don't have any cute buttons or beads, so instead of making the hanging loop as a separate chain, I'm just chaining it as I crochet the two circles together and then joining it back into the edge. I'm happy with how quick and cute they are!

By the way, if you haven't visited Attic24 before, I recommend it - I always find Lucy's love of color and crochet very inspiring.

11/11/11

Here's the picture I took at 11:11 on 11/11/11 to add to Flickr's group. And here are some more I took this afternoon, walking around the neighborhood:

 

Yay fall colors!

Pretty

  

Pretty fall day...

Pretty latte....

And pretty happy with how my Bias scarf rescue operation turned out. I got all the stitches back on the needles, correctly oriented, and managed to salvage most of the yarn-overs that I had no idea what to do with. There are two, I think, where I didn't get the correct number of twists, and you can tell if you're staring at that row looking for that particular mistake, but those two places will be minuscule compared to the whole scarf when it's finished. Once I go a few rows further, I think even I will probably have a hard time finding them... but for now, I am putting that aside to work on crochet because I need some instant gratification. 

Handi-hour

The Renwick Gallery has the best of all museum after-hours events: Handi-hour. It combines some of the best parts of being a kid (unlimited craft supplies) and being an adult (having a couple beers after work), plus snacks, a scavenger hunt, music, and getting to hang out with a museum's collections after everyone else leaves. Tonight was my second Handi-hour and it was even more fun than the first one, since we got there early enough to get good seats and lots of supplies.

My coworker's coaster

My coworker's coasters

This time the crafts were tile coasters and felt coffee cup sleeves, although as usual you were free to make whatever you wanted, and lots of people did. I stuck to the suggested projects this time and spent the evening making a coffee sleeve. It's enormous, but it actually fits perfectly on my water glass, which is now very pretty and floral.

Then I came home and spent over an hour trying to fix a mistake in my scarf and get all my stitches back on the needles. One of my stitches is dropped and a few are twisted, but all are currently accounted for and I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll have time (and patience) to get everything going in the right direction again. And then once I do, I'm taking a crochet break.

Eyeballs!

On Sunday I had a fit of craftiness during which I decided that not only do I want to knit all the things and that my photo album needs a lot of attention but also that it's time to resume making amigurumi. I probably would have started right away except that my stock of safety eyes was running low, plus I wanted some cat eyes so I could make some proper kitties.

I worry that someday CR's Crafts will disappear, but fortunately they still seem to be going strong, so I ordered enough eyes for twenty-five creatures (I think that will last me a while) and three days later, here they are!

I'm excited to use the cat eyes because I've never gotten "fancy" safety eyes before. The plan is to make Beth Doherty's Hep Cat, maybe with some minor wardrobe variations. First, though, I think I might work on a few new Christmas ornaments, because despite how wonderfully fast CR's Crafts ship, I already added two things ahead of the cat pattern on my Ravelry queue.