Remember this post? Yeah, so I got the idea for the first recipient’s gift pretty much right away – and then life happened. Finally, 3 months and 1 day later, it’s done!
(Apologies in advance for dark and crappy photography; there is some detail that doesn’t quite come through in the pictures)
I present to you, Andrei, your Idea Pillow!
You are definitely an “idea” guy, I think. I hope you like it! It’s waiting for you, for next time we see each other. 
I wish I had made the pillow a bit bigger, and the applique a bit smaller in relation to the pillow size. My favorite part, though, is the zippered back:
which was incredibly tricky and clever, and brought to you by this post from house on hill road.
Two new additions to the store today – gloves and a scarf:
For a little while, I think I will be working on a few non-Etsy projects – a sweater for myself that has been WIP for a year and half; the first of my “I will give you stuff” projects (materials have been purchased), and a special order pair of gloves (need to find the right yarn).
On top of that, there’s thinking more about the design of this site, there’s working on my side website project with Jon, and you know, regular work
I have not completely forgotten about my Etsy shop – I was just collecting things I’d made until I had the motivation to pull out the camera and take photos of them. That turned out to be tonight, wheee!
Anyway – a couple of sets of coasters, and a couple pairs of fingerless gloves are now available in my shop. Holiday gifts, anyone??
…and not just about computers, either. You would have laughed to see how excited I was when I figured out how to make a blind hem on my sewing machine last night
I got a chance to upload info on the hats I’ve been working on recently last night. Check it out! Tell your friends!
Well, this latest hat is too small for a Sarah, and too big for a bear,
…it must be for the kids! This is the first child-sized hat I’ve made, and I’m thrilled that I chose this particular yarn for the project. You never can tell, with variegated yarns, what the color pattern is going to look like. This hat turned out to have the coolest swirl, like a soft-serve ice cream cone!
I am going to try and get this, and some of the other hats & scarves I’ve made, onto Etsy this weekend. While I’m at it, I will evaluate whether or not to migrate this blog to one I host myself, so I can add all those cool widgets that are supposed to attract the elusive customer! The downside: it [dreamhost] costs a whopping $6 a month!
To “celebrate” pulling off a great milestone at work (for me personally, anyway), I continued my current workaholic streak by finishing a handful of UFOs (UnFinished Objects, for the non-knitters in the audience)! I pulled three bags of projects in various states of completion from the downstairs closet, and one from the closet in the guest/craft room upstairs.
Here is the result:
There’s a hat I whipped up in the last week, a drop-stitch scarf and Victorian lace shawl that still need to be blocked badly, and the “Fisherman Shrug” from some knitting magazine that I started, oh, a year and a half ago.
Also, I have discovered fd’s Flickr Toys! Fun!
Spring is here, at least, in California (sorry to the Spun Monkey, the Parises, and everyone else in the northeast). My next set of coasters reflects the fact that the sky is blue, the grass is green, and the cherry trees are Barbie Pink.
Taking WIP photos is fun,
especially when Dom gets in the mix.
My current “TV time” craft is a knitted scarf, fantastic kelly green in a drop-stitch cross pattern, but that won’t photograph well at all until it’s been blocked. Pthththth, you’ll have to wait!
I was able to find enough seam allowance to finish two sets of six quilted coasters. Aside from the stuff I mentioned in my last post, I think they turned out pretty good. They’re headed for Angelfish sometime tomorrow
These things are not turning out exactly like I had hoped. I think I am unskilled at ironing round objects. A handful of them were quilted too close to the edge, and now I can’t turn under the edges. For those, I will bind with bias tape instead, and keep it in mind for next time.
Actually, things will be completely different next time anyway – I’m going to add a layer of interfacing to increase the stability, and I will sew the sandwiches together before I do the quilting.
The one plus: I have gotten a lot of practice with machine quilting since I started this project. On a small scale at least, my Kenmore sewing machine handles it just fine.
