Finished Tunic Sweater/Dress

Finally!! This ended up being one of the longest projects ever! 8 months!! (Granted it spent a fair amount of time in the UFO basket) The kangaroo pocket tunic style sweater dress out of Knit Scene magazine. This is the one I ended up completely starting over when I was already 4 balls into it, due to huge errors in my pattern reading skills!! This was one of the fussiest patterns ever!! Not that it was hard so to speak, but many stitch changes, and lots of shaping, and multiple pieces to be sewn together at the end, and stitches to be picked up for the neck and pocket!

And for all of the shaping, the waistline is still very loose compared to what I thought it would be, but I've decided I'm Okay with it. It's definately meant to be a layering piece in my wardrobe, so the loose fit will work just fine.

The yarn was Knitpicks: Wool of the Andes: worsted weight, super wash. Can't beat the price!!

Finished Sweaters

I finished my scrap sock yarn sweater! I love the end result! This was, by far, the easiest sweater I've ever knit. It's knit top down, all in the round...just pure knitting!! Now, the version for me has a wide open neck and 3 quarter length sleeves and just a bit of waist shaping. There's a curl at the neck and waist and the cuffs.

It whipped up so fast, and I still had so much yarn, when my husband asked for one like mine, I said "No Problem!!" And I knit one up for him too!

This picture was taken very early in the morning, and he wasn't feeling into the spirit of posing for pictures, LOL. To make the pattern more masculine, I narrowed the neck, did full length sleeves, skipped the waist shaping and added a seed stitch cuff to the sleeves and bottom edge to remove the curl. Despite his clear lack of excitement here, he does love the sweater!!!

I have just enough scraps for another one for me, in warm fall colors. I had planned on starting it right away, but now I'm in the middle of art madness again, so we'll see!!!

Side Projects

A new vest with pockets. My Rhuemy keeps telling me to wear vests. It's meant to keep the core of the body warmer, thus pushing more heat to the extremities because my hands and feet are always freezing. I'm certain this isn't the style she means, but it is a vest. I did a trade with Twilight for this recycled cotton yarn that she ripped from an abandoned sweater. (This isn't exactly the outfit that it's meant to go with.) I love the pockets. My wardrobe has a serious deficit of pockets in it, lol.

I love the racer back style over the tracitional vest back shape. I'm not a huge fan of vests in general, but this one is really gonna work for me.

This is a little raglan sweater that I'm knitting out of my sock yarn scraps. I have 6 years worth of leftovers!! It's an almost zombie project that is all St. knit stitch. It's exactly what I needed to knit to relieve my overloaded brain.

Progress on the Other Side

I'm almost there!! So close!! Now it's getting to the point where I just have to put it all together. I'm hoping to get at least one good trial run before taking it all to the gallery. Keep your fingers crossed for me. This is the street sign for my intersection. It's still a bit tipsy, so I'm working on firming it all up.

The yarn that Twi spun for me, made up of years of scraps, is beyond perfect. I'm still amazed at what an incredible job she did. It turned out exactly like I envisioned, and it has been a total joy to play with. As it passed through my hands...I kept seeing pieces of old friends, tiny pieces of all the old projects I've worked on. It's like a scrap book of yarn.

Twilight helped me find ( she found) the exact matching paint I needed!!!

This is the completed Dream side panel.

This is the completed Reality side panel.

Oh my god, I'm getting so amped up!!! I can't wait to see all this in the gallery!!

Some good detail shots.

Dancing Nasties Completed

The complete title of this piece is:
Frolicking; or The Dancing Nasties: An Idle Mind at Play It's size is 75" Tall and 50" Wide.

These are my little I-cord dancers.

I had so much fun with this piece, it really helped me just loosen and lighten up!!

And I had alot of help from my friends on this one. Danielle and Twilight helped me play with my dancers and find out what they wanted to be doing with themselves. Polli & Lacivia helped by felting the dancers as I made them!! My husband actually engaged in the making, which he almost never ever does, LOL. We all had alot fun in the process.

Finished Mind Dancers

Here we are, she's finished! I've already had to offers to buy her. Mind Dancers is 39" X 56". She's needle felted on a large wetfelted canvas, with a knitted frame. She's a combination of cotton, wool, mohair, and cashmere. This is a close-up view of a needle felted detail.

The main characters are a applied knitted fabric w/needled detail.

The face shape in the center is 3-Dementional, which puts my work into a category called 2 & 1/2 - D. I love it. It's made of raw mohair locks.

The frame is knitted cotton, the border pattern is a very old Viking design that was translated into a knitting pattern. The 4 corners are each different square panels, also with traditional Viking symbols. This one is 2 dragon heads facing together, top right corner.

I embroidered sporadic outlines around cabled designs to help them "pop", especially when viewing from aways back. Top left corner.

Bottom Left corner. 2 dragon heads facing away.

Bottom right corner. The St. John's cross, but earlier known as the symbol for happiness.

I'm so pleased with how this piece turned out. It was a great exercise in putting together a jumble of materials and techniques that I've been anxious to try. The whole thing was a pleasure.

Postcards for BTF 2011

Merce & Thebes did a fabulous job on the postcards for this year's show!!