craftiness abounds...

there is one aspect of the gimpy back situation that has, in fact, been rather nice. i have been knitting and crocheting like a mad woman. first off, i finished owen's hoodie!!!! woo hoo! they are all visiting at the ancestral home in lovely but freezing cold pittsburgh, where the hoodie arrived in plenty of time for their departure home to holland. i'm just happy that i managed to finish the fecking thing before he finished high school! i had jokingly started thinking of it as his graduation present, since it was supposed to be for his first birthday and he turned two in january. i think it will be big for him, but he can grow into it.

















i have also finished my first felting project and lemme tell you, felting is fun!!!! well, it's not actually felting... technically what i did is called fulling, but in the common parlance of the crafty world at the moment it's called felting. it's all about marketing in the end, i suppose. i made the backpack below and gave it to my niece, rachel. it was great to get a call from her telling me how much she loves it! yeah!!!!
















i added a little inside pocket, which the pattern lacked. it was kind of accidental... i realized i screwed up the little outer pocket, so i just finished to so i could sew in a zipper and voila! you can see the side pocket there, with the blue edging. there's one on the other side, too. my flower petals aren't as round as in the picture for the pattern but heck if i can figure out what i did wrong. i can't for the life of me figure it out, but they look nice so no harm, no foul. i guess i could have sent drew for my crocheting books, since i wasn't going to run around the house for them with my back and leg hurting. i had to wrestle them into shape after pulling them out of the washer as they still looked like deformed star fish but i think they look enough like flowers, even if they are skinny petaled.

right now i am working on a baby blanket. drew's cousin had a baby so i thought, seeing as how i've got all this time on my hands, that i could make a baby blanket. i am getting there... i have to make about twenty more granny squares and there will be pictures, just not today.

sorry for the huge time gaps between posts. last two weeks have been pretty chronic with the herniated disc, but hopefully that will change. eventually.