I <i>Finally</i> Got my Invitation to Ravelry

I finally got my invitation to Ravelry. I'm pretty excited about it, but I won't have time to really get into it for probably another two weeks. I did put up one project. If you're reading this and you are on Ravelry, leave me a comment to tell me who you are so I can look you up.

Tracy_the_astonishing was too long for Ravelry, so I'm Trixolina instead.

Hyperbolic Crochet

I look at the People's Hyperbolic Gallery (link in the side bar of The Institute for Figuring) and I think to myself, "Now here's something I could probably become completely obsessed with."

I plan not to even read the how-to at all. I love that they found a practical project for this clearly useless (and I mean that in the absolute best way possible) art. Crocheting a coral reef.



There are lots of cool pictures on Flickr. I particularly like Knot by Gran'ma's stuff, hyperbolic and otherwise.

Baby Shower Invitations

This weekend, Justine and I printed the invitations to her Baby Shower. We used the total ghetto printing technique I've been using for a while: screens made from picture frames and old curtains, cardboard squeegie, no real equipment at all.

I like the way they came out, but they were a bitch to calibrate and it makes me want to build myself a proper screenprinting press. The work it took to print these would have been reduced by about 80%. Normally I'm not doing things in big runs or working with such a fine line and small design.

These are going out in the mail first thing tomorrow. Click the picture for a close-up.

Destashing

I was up in Vermont recently and Justine and I popped into the Warren Store. The Warren Store is a schmancy-pants "general store" in Warren, VT where they sell coffee, sandwiches, candy and beautiful clothes and jewelry made by small designers and artisans. It's fun to go in there and take a look. They had some nice handbags made out of old fur coats, and a few of these scarves, by Delinda Symes.



I like the way these scarves are symmetrically organized, using several different strands of different yarns. This could be a really great way to use up small leftover balls of yarn you have lying in your stash.

Here's my reverse-engineering of this piece:

* Cast on a ton of loops. You're casting on the length, not the width of the scarf.
* First Row: knit 5-10 stitches, let 5-10 loops off. Repeat to end
* Second row: knit the stitches on the needles and leave a yarn distance between your knitting equal to the one that's already there.
* Repeat 2nd row until you're done.

It might be interesting to only let out the yarn distance every other row. Then you'd get loops.