Some things got done

These are the two market bags I made. I super love them. The pattern I used is the self pouching market bag. The yellow one, I actually followed the pattern and it actually all tucks into a pocket in the bottom of the bag. The blue/green one, I sort of followed the pattern but used a thicker cotton yarn and didn't make the pouch and used a bigger crochet hook. I think I used about 2.5 balls of peaches and cream cotton yarn. Of course the blue/green one is bigger and deeper. But they work really well. Yay!

This is the Ballband dishcloth I made. I love how the colors pooled on this. Actually I loved it so much, it is going to go into my blanket instead of being used to wash things. And speaking of blankets, I got all the squares for the HP blanket finished, ends woven in, and mailed off. I have 6 squares that were extra from my lovely ladies and I will be getting 9 back from the swap. I might have to make a few more squares to figure out what size I want to make it.

But I think I am done with cotton yarn for a while. I need to soak my hands in moisturizer and make sure my wrists still work.

And in other news. If you are bored this fourth of July weekend, head on over to the Mountain State Arts and Crafts Fair in Ripley, WV. I will be there Friday and Saturday with my fiber guild demonstrating spinning and being all dressed up like a pioneer woman. Yay!

Cotton and Makeup

I have been on a crazy cotton yarn kick and just finished a market bag, working on another, and making a ballband dishcloth. My fingers are probably going to fall off by the end of the week. I will try to get pictures before they do.

But I have also been playing with some makeup. I had some money in my paypal account and have been toying around with what to spend it on for a while now. I finally decided the other day. I got some makeup off of Etsy. I am here now to tell you how wonderful it is.

The shop is Pure Natural Minerals. They are my first foray into mineral makeup. I've always been very hesitant because I was never entirely convinced it would work and I didn't want to spend upwards of 10-20 dollars just to try it out. And that was what hooked me first. She offers samples of pretty much all her products. She was even so kind as to allow me to get samples of concealor. The concealor was my biggest concern. I have bad undereye circles. And the occasional blemish. The store has regular concealor, yellow and green. Also getting samples allowed me to figure out what shade of foundation would work best for me. I'm pretty pale so I wobbled between fair and light. Turns out I'm not as pale as I thought and the light works pretty well for me.

What did I get? I got:
2 samples of foundation; light and fair
4 samples of concealor; light, medium, yellow, green
1 full size Big Blue eyeshadow
1 full size Moss green eyeshadow
1 full size Rose Blush
1 sample of finishing veil

So I've tried it all. The foundation gives me a really nice coverage. My skin is much more even so I know I have makeup on, but it looks so much more natural then my liquid foundation. I don't have to worry about lines or smudges. It looks great. I apply the foundation after I use concealer. And to be honest, I think I really like just using the yellow and green. The yellow goes on under my eyes and I dot the green on where I need it. Once I put the foundation on it no longer looks like I am coloring by number on my face. :) And the finishing veil really does just finish the whole look. Essentially just like putting powder on after using liquid foundation. If I had to classify my skin, I would say I am t-zone oily. I haven't had any problems. I think it keeps my skin much dryer. And when I've been outside in the makeup, I haven't felt like my face is melting off. It stays dryer than normal and it is really handy since it is getting so humid.

I'm not really much of a blush girl, but she was having a great sale so I snagged some. I have really rosy cheeks naturally, but since the makeup actually covers I find a little blush adds back some color to my cheeks without being overpowering. In fact that is the one thing I really like about the eyeshadows too. The colors aren't overpowering. I don't put on the eyeshadow and sit there smudging my lid for 5 minutes to make myself not look like Mimi from the Drew Carrey show. It is subtle and professional looking.

If you are interested in mineral makeup but don't want to spend a lot, I highly recommend Pure Natural Minerals. Zach even told me that I could buy whatever I wanted if it meant I would throw out some of the seriously old makeup I've collected over the years. It seems like a great deal to me since I won't need it much anymore. :)

Progress

I've gotten a few things done and played around with my fiber stash a bit. I figured I can finally give you guys some pictures.

First off, these are some earrings I crocheted. I call them Dangling Neucleotide Adornments. Like DNA. I'm so funny. They are cute, but in the thread, you have to starch them into the curly shape. I am going to try them in wire to see if they keep that shape better. The pattern for these is super simple. Mostly just fiddly since they are so small.

This shawl/stole was wet felted. I am currently a bit fascinated by wet and nuno felting. But I really don't have the space/workstation to really give it a good try. To be honest, a cadavar table would be perfect. Especially if I could get one with a drain it in. Essentially a big table with a lip on it to keep water in. Again, more of a fascination I picked up a Maryland. But I made this shawl to match my graduation dress. It is black merino wool and wenslydale locks in all sorts of colors. I think I need to needle felt a couple spots to even out the felting.

Speaking of felting, this was my second attempt at needle felting a giraffe. The first attempt actually is now living life as an alpaca. I think it is much happier. But somehow I managed not to get a picture of it. So the giraffe will have to suffice. It is wool over a pipe cleaner base. These take a lot more time than the little sheep do. Knitty has a really cool tutorial on blending fibers with handcards. I was going through my stash and started pulling out all of the stuff I got or dyed when I was first starting to spin. My initial stash started as about 1 pound of corridale I dyed myself. I ended up making things a bit felty and I guess you could now consider me a bit of a fiber snob. I have to love the things I am spinning and the corridale just isn't cutting it for me anymore. So I started playing around. The blue and brown started life as 4 oz of corridale dyed teal and chocolate. I blended it with an oz or two of chocolate alpaca fiber. It is sooooo much softer and fluffyer. I can't wait to give it a try. The botton ball was rose and green but had gotten pretty felty. So I blended it with those same Wensleydale locks that I used for the felted stole. It is really hard to describe what I ended up with. Essentially rainbow colored. It is now much softer and loftier. I think there are a couple of other braids of roving that are going to be getting this treatment.

I still really hate to put pictures of half finished things up on my blog. It makes me feel guilty I think. I am about 1/2 way done with my Clapotis. I'm technically halfway done. But I think once I finish the straight rows I might be deciding to add more repeats. I think I want it longer than it is going to turn out. We shall see how much length the dropped stitches add.

Still working on my Eva Shawl (first link is designer's blog and second link is to the PDF of the pattern) and I finished one of my Tree Frog Socks. It is a really neat pattern and the yarn is really bright colors (Sorry for the Ravelry Link). Hence the name I gave it.

Oooo and I have a HP square update. The girls in my SnB have super motivated me. Several of them made me squares for the blanket and I am so so thankful for that. I am now technically finished with what I need to send in. But the funny thing is, I am making extra squares so that I can keep more of the squares that they made for my blanket. I figure they will mean more to me than a stranger. Totally feeling the love in these squares.

World Wide Knit in Public Day

A little bit of knitting and a little bit of Starbucks and some gorgeous weather made for a great day.

So much done, and nothing finished

I am discovering that the best way to work though this slump is to just grab whatever looks good in my bag and go with it. So I am getting a little bit done on everything. But it means nothing is getting finished. So no pictures. I suppose I could take In-Progress pictures. But then it doesn't look as good as it will at the end. So you will have to live with just my words. I will attempt to be amusing.

Well, I did finish something last night. I repurposed some old fleece fabric and the rice from a different cold pack to make a new and improved version. I made it very long, so it can stretch all the way across my stupid back. And although I forgot to turn it so the seams were inside, I essentially sewed long sections to compartmentalize the rice so I wouldn't end up with big lumps and could lay on it. It looks pretty much like this one in theory, but not nearly as pretty or well sewn or fashionable. I was desperate and I didn't really care what mine looked like as long as it made my back cold. Also didn't take pictures. I guess it counts as a finished object. I'll see what I can do.

This weekend, I spent some time thinking about selling stuff on Etsy. It is sort of funny. I made some money from a pattern and realized (although I knew all along) that it essentially became money I could by stuff on. It wasn't planned on so it won't go to bills or groceries. I think it would be excellent to turn it into my fun money. I won't feel deprived of buying the pretties, but I don't feel irrisponsible buying stuff I don't really need. So I worked on some of my needle cases. I have quite a few designed I just need to put them together. I think I have decided to sew to reinforce the edges. I have decided upon a closure for them finally. (Haley, I can kidnap yours back and use yours as the prototypes if you like). I also came up with my list of things I can sell, what do you think?
1. DPN/Crochet hook cases
2. Straight needle cases
3. Circular needle cases
4. Sewing needle books
5. Felted animals (maybe, I need to work on designs)
6. Felt Balls/Beads
7. Patterns I design (I need to get on writing up some ideas)
8. DNA earrings (hey, these are a finished object, I could take pics of these, would also sell the pattern)
9. Sets of my scrubbies (they are the only thing I have ever enjoyed making multiples of, and they work up super fast)

I think that was all I had come up with so far. I got a book on felting from the library so I was going to look at it and see if there were any techniques I could play with. I don't think I have the proper space to do a lot of big felt work.