Roses should smile

The Rose Roxy doll is finished.  The rather well-written pattern is from zabbez.com.

The little lady asked for one little modification. She requested a smile.

Cleaning out my desk

Last week I pulled out all the little unfinished projects around my table and took a stab at finishing them.  I had 3 unfinished items, and now I'm happy to say that they're all done!

I have a tatted bookmark...

a rainbow loom bracelet (pattern by YarnJourney)...

and a unicorn finger puppet (pattern by WhisperedWhimsy).

Impatient

I made a start at finishing some of the little projects decorating my table.  I even made some progress, but in the end, I was my usual impatient self and started a new project (Rose Roxy from Zabbez).

The little lady saw it and said, "Ooo, so cute, but it would be cuter with a head!"

Got to choose one

I've been playing around with Kak Jon's little tatted motif, trying to find ways to interweave them.  I thought I'd gotten a decent way through, then I really looked at it this morning and realized I'd done the joining in two different ways, one through the side, and one through the middle.  Now I've got to choose one and cut off the bits that aren't woven the right way.  I guess I've forgotten some of my tatting wisdom after all.

I'll post one more picture of the knitted shawl (design by Ilga Leja) before I stop talking about it.

Little touches

My latest baju kurung is done.  I've made dozens of these, so it's hard to get excited about it.  Still, it's those little touches, the hand stitched necklines and hems that make a home made piece of clothing worth the effort.

The shawl is pinned out and drying.

While I attempt to wait patiently, I'm reviewing the small projects sitting around my table, trying to chose one to finish off.  (Let's not even think about the big projects; the huge doilies and edging stuffed in any free nook or cranny)

From left to right, there's a tatted motif, some rainbow loom flowers and a crochet soft toy.  I suppose I'd better tackle these before I start something new.

Time for the pins

My 'blossoms by the brook' shawl is finished!  Or um, somewhat finished.  All the knitting is done.  All that's left is to weave in the ends and block it.

I had to go out and buy some foam squares for blocking.  The last blocking surface I had (a big piece of styrofoam) got turned into trees for one of my kids' projects.  I've got the surface now, so tomorrow, time to break out the pins.

Something I used to do

I seem to remember that I used to do a lot of tatting.  I still like my tatting shuttles, but I'm just fickle when it comes to crafting.  I do whatever I feel like, no rhyme and reason to it.

Jon over at Tat-a-Renda shared a little motif, so I decided to break out the shuttles and see if I can still flip a knot.

Looks like I still can.

Blossoms growing

The 'blossoms by the brook' shawl is growing.  If fact it's gotten a little overgrown.  I followed the pattern until the last few rows and realized I had a lot more yarn left.  So I unraveled the top 10 or so rows of decreases and added in some more repeats.  It really, really hurt to watch those long, long rows getting undone, but I decided I'd rather that than have a lot of unused yarn.

I'm pretty sure there's enough yarn to finish.  Unfortunately, pretty sure is not the same as absolutely sure.  Ah well, when in doubt, knit faster.

Tissue foil

I thought I'd show origami shells again.  They are all folded with tissue foil which is a layer of aluminum foil sandwiched between layers of tissue paper, all held together with mounting spray.

This is the first time I've folded tissue foil.  It's weird stuff.  You can erase folds and scrunch and sculpt it in fun ways, but if I spend a lot of time folding with it, the back of my teeth start to ache.

The top two are the hawk wing conch designed by Robert J. Lang.  The bottom left ones are the sea snail shell and the spiral shell designed by Toshikazu Kawasaki.  The shell in the middle bottom row is designed by Davor Vinko.

In other crafts, I've pulled out the sewing machine and started work on my baju kurung.  I read this article about serging and finally got around to teaching myself how to finish serger threads.  This is the neatest underarm seam I've ever done!