When your hobby becomes your job do you give yourself a day off?

The tatting blisters are back. The calluses had apparently gone soft from lack of constant taughtly-pulled thread being run across them so now there are blisters. The scratchy wool yarn from the decrepit old sweater in the back of my closet has irritated the palm of my hand. I'm going cross-eyed from retaking and editing photos all the time. Do I get a day off now?

Of course, if I took a "day off" what would I do? I'd knit shawls from prayer shawl ministry, I'd organize my yarn bins, I'd search online for patterns. I'd do the same thing I do every day! I need new hobbies! Any suggestions?

Curses! Foiled Again!

The lavendar cardigan was cut along the front facings! Argh! Okay, now I have to try and figure out what to do with the fronts since they're useless to salvage yarn from. Hmmmm, there's something to think about.

Maybe I can sew them into a purse and line it. I must have some lavendar fabric lying around somewhere. Everyone cross your fingers that this works!

Frogging Friday!

Three more sweaters to frog for yarn! For any non-fiber freaks out there, frogging means to rip apart a finished/semi-finished piece to recycle the yarn or fix a mistake. (Comes from the idea of rip-it, rip-it, ha ha, get it?) Well here are my latest vicitms:

So excited! I got great yarn out of the last three, just haven't had a chance to reuse it or photgraph it yet. I was disappointed that the last lavendar sweater had a hidden surprise. The V-neck shape was cut out of the piece, so I lost a lot of yarn, but I still got a fair amount. Just goes to show that you can't take for granted that the edges are whole under a collar. Hopefully that won't be any such surprises with these latest sweaters, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Adventures in Unravelling

Hooray! Three more sweaters to unravel for yarn!

No matter how I adjust them, the pictures don't do justice to the incredible colors of these three sweaters. I'm sooooo excited to rip them apart and turn them into something new. Even though, I have no idea what that new thing will be yet.

It's done!

Well, here are the first pics of the completed scarf.

So there it is: "One Perfect Rose"

I was going to place two 3-d rose squares, one at each end, but Dorothy Parker's poem "One Perfect Rose" kept repeating in my head and I decided to put just one 3-d rose as the second motif on one side and not balance with another on the other side.

Now, for anyone who knows how symmetrically-minded I am, you know that this was a major step away from my comfort zone. I'm very pleased with the results, though, so I may have to spend less time obsessing in my quest for symmetry. Now, when Chris gets home from Jury Duty, I'll have him take pics of me in the scarf (in the nice hot sunlight, ugh) and post it to my store. Hooray!

Isn't it purty?

So here we go, the first pic of the scarf from the recycled yarn!

Not a great pic, I know. But it's dark, wet, and muggy outside, so I had to snap a quick pic inside. I think it's turning out really well. I guess I'm about half done now. I'll just have to see when it feels long enough.

It's soooo soft and wonderful. I really want to keep it! But I won't. I'll sell it when it's done. For now, I just get to enjoy feeling the wonderfully soft yarn running through my fingers as I work on it. One of these days, I'm going to make something wonderful and soft for myself.

Finally!

Well, at last I've finished disassembling two sweaters and washing the yarn to reuse. So far the scarf is turning out well, pictures to come! But for now you can see the pink yarn drying in hanks:

Keep in mind, I wound all those hanks by hand and at least the same amount of green yarn as well. If I wasn't aching for a swift before, I definitely am now. Literally!

I also figured that I might as well work with the second little bottle with something I have a lot of to avoid a similar situation as the predicament I found myself in before. Since I have a lot of black DMC tatting thread, that what I'm working with. I've got the bottle covering done and I just have to work on how I'm going to turn that into a necklace.

The thread ends are still there because the glue hadn't dried yet. I still need to get something better than just Fray-Stop to keep the ends secure before I cut them any shorter. So far, I really like this one, though. I hope it continues to turn out well.

Well, now that I've jinxed it, I might as well go work on it some more.